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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Gordon Keith, by Thomas Nelson Page,
+Illustrated by George Wright
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Gordon Keith
+
+Author: Thomas Nelson Page
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2004  [eBook #14068]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GORDON KEITH***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Kat Jeter, Charlie Kirschner, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
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+      or
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+
+
+
+
+
+GORDON KEITH
+
+by
+
+THOMAS NELSON PAGE
+
+With Illustrations by George Wright
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+A GRANDDAUGHTER
+
+OF ONE LOIS HUNTINGTON
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+     I. GORDON KEITH'S PATRIMONY
+    II. GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN OVERSEER
+   III. THE ENGINEER AND THE SQUIRE
+    IV. TWO YOUNG MEN
+     V. THE RIDGE COLLEGE
+    VI. ALICE YORKE
+   VII. MRS. YORKE FINDS A GENTLEMAN
+  VIII. MR. KEITH'S IDEALS
+    IX. MR. KEITH IS UNPRACTICAL
+     X. MRS. YORKE CUTS A KNOT
+    XI. GUMBOLT
+   XII. KEITH DECLINES AN OFFER
+  XIII. KEITH IN NEW YORK
+   XIV. THE HOLD-UP
+    XV. MRS. YORKE MAKES A MATCH
+   XVI. KEITH VISITS NEW YORK, AND MRS. LANCASTER SEES A GHOST
+  XVII. KEITH MEETS NORMAN
+ XVIII. MRS. LANCASTER
+   XIX. WICKERSHAM AND PHRONY
+    XX. MRS. LANCASTER'S WIDOWHOOD
+   XXI. THE DIRECTORS' MEETING
+  XXII. MRS. CREAMER'S BALL
+ XXIII. GENERAL KEITH VISITS STRANGE LANDS
+  XXIV. KEITH TRIES HIS FORTUNES ABROAD
+   XXV. THE DINNER AT MRS. WICKERSHAM'S
+  XXVI. A MISUNDERSTANDING
+ XXVII. PHRONY TRIPPER AND THE REV. MR. RIMMON
+XXVIII. ALICE LANCASTER FINDS PHRONY
+  XXIX. THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE
+   XXX. "SNUGGLERS' ROOST"
+  XXXI. TERPY'S LAST DANCE AND WICKERSHAM'S FINAL THROW
+ XXXII. THE RUN ON THE BANK
+XXXIII. RECONCILIATION
+ XXXIV. THE CONSULTATION
+  XXXV. THE MISTRESS OF THE LAWNS
+ XXXVI. THE OLD IDEAL
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+She was the first to break the silence (frontispiece)
+"If you don't go back to your seat I'll dash your brains
+  out," said Keith
+"Then why don't you answer me?"
+Sprang over the edge of the road into the thick bushes below
+"Why, Mr. Keith!" she exclaimed
+"Sit down. I want to talk to you"
+"It is he! 'Tis he!" she cried
+"Lois--I have come--" he began
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_INTRODUCTORY_
+
+GORDON KEITH'S PATRIMONY
+
+Gordon Keith was the son of a gentleman. And this fact, like the cat the
+honest miller left to his youngest son, was his only patrimony. As in
+that case also, it stood to the possessor in the place of a good many
+other things. It helped him over many rough places. He carried it with
+him as a devoted Romanist wears a sacred scapulary next to the heart.
+
+His father, General McDowell Keith of "Elphinstone," was a gentleman of
+the old kind, a type so old-fashioned that it is hardly accepted these
+days as having existed. He knew the Past and lived in it; the Present he
+did not understand, and the Future he did not know. In his latter days,
+when his son was growing up, after war had swept like a vast inundation
+over the land, burying almost everything it had not borne away, General
+Keith still survived, unchanged, unmoved, unmarred, an antique memorial
+of the life of which he was a relic. His one standard was that of a
+gentleman.
+
+This idea was what the son inherited from the father along with some
+other old-fashioned things which he did not know the value of at first,
+but which he came to understand as he grew older.
+
+When in after times, in the swift rush of life in a great city, amid
+other scenes and new manners, Gordon Keith looked back to the old life
+on the Keith plantation, it appeared to him as if he had lived then in
+another world.
+
+Elphinstone was, indeed, a world to itself: a long, rambling house, set
+on a hill, with white-pillared verandahs, closed on the side toward the
+evening sun by green Venetian blinds, and on the other side looking away
+through the lawn trees over wide fields, brown with fallow, or green
+with cattle-dotted pasture-land and waving grain, to the dark rim of
+woods beyond. To the westward "the Ridge" made a straight, horizontal
+line, except on clear days, when the mountains still farther away showed
+a tenderer blue scalloped across the sky.
+
+A stranger passing through the country prior to the war would have heard
+much of Elphinstone, the Keith plantation, but he would have seen from
+the main road (which, except in summer, was intolerably bad) only long
+stretches of rolling fields well tilled, and far beyond them a grove on
+a high hill, where the mansion rested in proud seclusion amid its
+immemorial oaks and elms, with what appeared to be a small hamlet lying
+about its feet. Had he turned in at the big-gate and driven a mile or
+so, he would have found that Elphinstone was really a world to itself;
+almost as much cut off from the outer world as the home of the Keiths
+had been in the old country. A number of little blacks would have opened
+the gates for him; several boys would have run to take his horse, and he
+would have found a legion of servants about the house. He would have
+found that the hamlet was composed of extensive stables and barns, with
+shops and houses, within which mechanics were plying their trades with
+the ring of hammers, the clack of looms, and the hum of
+spinning-wheels-all for the plantation; whilst on a lower hill farther
+to the rear were the servants' quarters laid out in streets, filled
+with children.
+
+Had the visitor asked for shelter, he would have received, whatever his
+condition, a hospitality as gracious as if he had been the highest in
+the land; he would have found culture with philosophy and wealth with
+content, and he would have come away charmed with the graciousness of
+his entertainment. And yet, if from any other country or region than the
+South, he would have departed with a feeling of mystification, as though
+he had been drifting in a counter-current and had discovered a part of
+the world sheltered and to some extent secluded from the general
+movement and progress of life.
+
+This plantation, then, was Gordon's world. The woods that rimmed it were
+his horizon, as they had been that of the Keiths for generations; more
+or less they always affected his horizon. His father appeared to the boy
+to govern the world; he governed the most important part of it--the
+plantation--without ever raising his voice. His word had the convincing
+quality of a law of nature. The quiet tones of his voice were
+irresistible. The calm face, lighting up at times with the flash of his
+gray eyes, was always commanding: he looked so like the big picture in
+the library, of a tall, straight man, booted and spurred, and partly in
+armor, with a steel hat over his long curling hair, and a grave face
+that looked as if the sun were on it. It was no wonder, thought the boy,
+that he was given a sword by the State when he came back from the
+Mexican War; no wonder that the Governor had appointed him Senator, a
+position he declined because of his wife's ill health. Gordon's wonder
+was that his father was not made President or Commander-in-Chief of the
+army. It no more occurred to him that any one could withstand his father
+than that the great oak-trees in front of the house, which it took his
+outstretched arms six times to girdle, could fall.
+
+Yet it came to pass that within a few years an invading army marched
+through the plantation, camped on the lawn, and cut down the trees; and
+Gordon Keith, whilst yet a boy, came to see Elphinstone in the hands of
+strangers, and his father and himself thrown out on the world.
+
+His mother died while Gordon was still a child. Until then she had not
+appeared remarkable to the boy: she was like the atmosphere, the
+sunshine, and the blue, arching sky, all-pervading and existing as a
+matter of course. Yet, as her son remembered her in after life, she was
+the centre of everything, never idle, never hurried; every one and
+everything revolved about her and received her light and warmth. She was
+the refuge in every trouble, and her smile was enchanting. It was only
+after that last time, when the little boy stood by his mother's bedside
+awed and weeping silently in the shadow of the great darkness that was
+settling upon them, that he knew how absolutely she had been the centre
+and breath of his life. His father was kneeling beside the bed, with a
+face as white as his mother's, and a look of such mingled agony and
+resignation that Gordon never forgot it. As, because of his father's
+teaching, the son in later life tried to be just to every man, so, for
+his mother's sake, he remembered to be kind to every woman.
+
+In the great upheaval that came just before the war, Major Keith stood
+for the Union, but was defeated. When his State seceded, he raised a
+regiment in the congressional district which he had represented for one
+or two terms. As his duties took him from home much of the time, he sent
+Gordon to the school of the noted Dr. Grammer, a man of active mind and
+also active arm, named by his boys, from the latter quality,
+"Old Hickory."
+
+Gordon, like some older men, hoped for war with all his soul. A
+great-grandfather an officer of the line in the Revolution, a
+grandfather in the navy of 1812, and his father a major in the Mexican
+War, with a gold-hilted sword presented him by the State, gave him a
+fair pedigree, and he looked forward to being a great general himself.
+He would be Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great at least. It was his
+preference for a career, unless being a mountain stage-driver was. He
+had seen one or two such beings in the mountains when he accompanied his
+father once on a canvass that he was making for Congress, enthroned
+like Jove, in clouds of oil-coats and leather, mighty in power and
+speech; and since then his dreams had been blessed at times with
+lumbering coaches and clanking teams.
+
+One day Gordon was sent for to come home. When he came down-stairs next
+morning his father was standing in the drawing-room, dressed in full
+uniform, though it was not near as showy as Gordon had expected it to
+be, or as dozens of uniforms the boy had seen the day before about the
+railway-stations on his journey home, gorgeous with gold lace. He was
+conscious, however, that some change had taken place, and a resemblance
+to the man-in-armor in the picture over the library mantel suddenly
+struck the boy. There was the high look, the same light in the eyes, the
+same gravity about the mouth; and when his father, after taking leave of
+the servants, rode away in his gray uniform, on his bay horse
+"Chevalier," with his sword by his side, to join his men at the
+county-seat, and let Gordon accompany him for the first few miles, the
+boy felt as though he had suddenly been transported to a world of which
+he had read, and were riding behind a knight of old. Ah! if there were
+only a few Roundheads formed at the big-gate, how they would
+scatter them!
+
+About the third year of the war, Mr. Keith, now a brigadier-general,
+having been so badly wounded that it was supposed he could never again
+be fit for service in the field, was sent abroad by his government to
+represent it in England in a semi-confidential, semi-diplomatic
+position. He had been abroad before--quite an unusual occurrence at
+that time.
+
+General Keith could not bring himself to leave his boy behind him and
+have the ocean between them, so he took Gordon with him.
+
+After a perilous night in running the blockade, when they were fired on
+and escaped only by sending up rockets and passing as one of the
+blockading squadron, General Keith and Gordon transferred at Nassau to
+their steamer. The vessel touched at Halifax, and among the passengers
+taken on there were an American lady, Mrs. Wickersham of New York, and
+her son Ferdy Wickersham, a handsome, black-eyed boy a year or two older
+than Gordon. As the two lads were the only passengers aboard of about
+their age, they soon became as friendly as any other young animals would
+have become, and everything went on balmily until a quarrel arose over a
+game which they were playing on the lower deck. As General Keith had
+told Gordon that he must be very discreet while on board and not get
+into any trouble, the row might have ended in words had not the sympathy
+of the sailors been with Gordon. This angered the other boy in the
+dispute, and he called Gordon a liar. This, according to Gordon's code,
+was a cause of war. He slapped Ferdy in the mouth, and the next second
+they were at it hammer-and-tongs. So long as they were on their feet,
+Ferdy, who knew something of boxing, had much the best of it and
+punished Gordon severely, until the latter, diving into him, seized him.
+
+In wrestling Ferdy was no match for him, for Gordon had wrestled with
+every boy on the plantation, and after a short scuffle he lifted Ferdy
+and flung him flat on his back on the deck, jarring the wind out of him.
+Ferdy refused to make up and went off crying to his mother, who from
+that time filled the ship with her abuse of Gordon.
+
+The victory of the younger boy gave him great prestige among the
+sailors, and Mike Doherty, the bully of the fore-castle, gave him boxing
+lessons during all the rest of the voyage, teaching him the mystery of
+the "side swing" and the "left-hand upper-cut," which Mike said was "as
+good as a belaying-pin."
+
+"With a good, smooth tongue for the girlls and a good upper-cut for thim
+as treads on your toes, you are aall right," said Mr. Doherty; "you're
+rigged for ivery braize. But, boy, remimber to be quick with both, and
+don't forgit who taaught you."
+
+Thus, it was that, while Gordon Keith was still a boy of about twelve or
+thirteen, instead of being on the old plantation rimmed by the great
+woods, where his life had hitherto been spent, except during the brief
+period when he had been at Dr. Grammer's school, he found himself one
+summer in a little watering-place on the shores of an English lake as
+blue as a china plate, set amid ranges of high green hills, on which
+nestled pretty white or brown villas surrounded by gardens and parks.
+
+The water was a new element for Gordon. The home of the Keiths was in
+the high country back from the great watercourses, and Gordon had never
+had a pair of oars in his hands, nor did he know how to swim; but he
+meant to learn. The sight of the boats rowed about by boys of his own
+age filled him with envy. And one of them, when he first caught sight of
+it, inspired him with a stronger feeling than envy. It was painted white
+and was gay with blue and red stripes around the gunwale. In it sat two
+boys. One, who sat in the stern, was about Gordon's age; the other, a
+little larger than Gordon, was rowing and used the oars like an adept.
+In the bow was a flag, and Gordon was staring at it, when it came to him
+with a rush that it was a "Yankee" flag. He was conscious for half a
+moment that he took some pride in the superiority of the oarsman over
+the boys in the other boats. His next thought was that he had a little
+Confederate flag in his trunk. He had brought it from home among his
+other treasures. He would show his colors and not let the Yankee boys
+have all of the honors. So away he put as hard as his legs could carry
+him. When he got back to the waterside he hired a boat from among those
+lying tied at the stairs, and soon had his little flag rigged up, when,
+taking his seat, he picked up the oars and pushed off. It was rather
+more difficult than it had looked. The oars would not go together.
+However, after a little he was able to move slowly, and was quite elated
+at his success when he found himself out on the lake. Just then he
+heard a shout:
+
+"Take down that flag!"
+
+Gordon wished to turn his boat and look around, but could not do so.
+However, one of the oars came out of the water, and as the boat veered a
+little he saw the boys in the white boat with the Union flag bearing
+down on him.
+
+The oarsman was rowing with strong, swift strokes even while he looked
+over his shoulder, and the boat was shooting along as straight as an
+arrow, with the clear water curling about its prow. Gordon wished for a
+moment that he had not been so daring, but the next second his
+fighting--blood was up, as the other boy called imperiously:
+
+"Strike that flag!"
+
+Gordon could see his face now, for he was almost on him. It was round
+and sunburnt, and the eyes were blue and clear and flashing with
+excitement. His companion, who was cheering him on, was Ferdy
+Wickersham.
+
+"Strike that flag, I say," called the oarsman.
+
+"I won't. Who are you? Strike your own flag."
+
+"I am Norman Wentworth. That's who I am, and if you don't take that flag
+down I will take it down for you, you little nigger-driving rebel."
+
+Gordon Keith was not a boy to neglect the amenities of the occasion.
+
+"Come and try it then, will you, you nigger-stealing Yankees!" he
+called. "I will fight both of you." And he settled himself for defence.
+
+"Well, I will," cried his assailant. "Drop the tiller, Ferdy, and sit
+tight. I will fight fair." Then to Gordon again: "I have given you fair
+warning, and I will have that flag or sink you."
+
+Gordon's answer was to drop one oar as useless, seize the other, and
+steadying himself as well as he could, raise it aloft as a weapon.
+
+"I will kill you if you try it," he said between clinched teeth.
+
+However, the boy rowing the other boat was not to be frightened. He
+gave a vigorous stroke of his oars that sent his boat straight into the
+side of Gordon's boat.
+
+The shock of the two boats coming together pitched Gordon to his knees,
+and came near flinging him into the water; but he was up again in a
+second, and raising his oar, dealt a vicious blow with it, not at the
+boy in the boat, but at the flag in the bow of the boat. The
+unsteadiness of his footing, however, caused him to miss his aim, and he
+only splintered his oar into fragments.
+
+"Hit him with the oar, Norman," called the boy in the stern. "Knock him
+out of the boat."
+
+The other boy made no answer, but with a quick turn of his wrist twisted
+his boat out of its direct course and sent it skimming off to one side.
+Then dropping one oar, he caught up the other with both hands, and with
+a rapid, dexterous swing swept a cataract of water in Gordon's face,
+drenching him, blinding him, and filling his eyes, mouth, and ears with
+the unexpected deluge. Gordon gasped and sputtered, and before he could
+recover from this unlooked-for flank movement, another turn of the wrist
+brought the attacking boat sharp across his bow, and, with a shout of
+triumph, Norman wrenched the defiant flag out of its socket.
+
+Gordon had no time for thought. He had time only to act. With a cry,
+half of rage, half of defiance, he sprang up on the point of the bow of
+his boat, and with outstretched arms launched himself at the bow of the
+other, where the captor had flung the flag, to use both oars. His boat
+slipped from under his feet, and he fell short, but caught the gunwale
+of the other, and dragged himself up to it. He held just long enough to
+clutch both flags, and the next second, with a faint cheer, he rolled
+off and sank with a splash in the water.
+
+Norman Wentworth had risen, and with blazing eyes, his oar uplifted, was
+scrambling toward the bow to repel the boarder, when the latter
+disappeared. Norman gazed at the spot with staring eyes. The next second
+he took in what was happening, and, with an exclamation of horror, he
+suddenly dived overboard. When he came to the top, he was pulling the
+other boy up with him.
+
+Though Norman was a good swimmer, there was a moment of extreme danger;
+for, half unconscious, Gordon pulled him under once. But fortunately
+Norman kept his head, and with a supreme effort breaking the drowning
+boy's hold, he drew him to the top once more. Fortunately for both, a
+man seeing the trouble had brought his boat to the spot, and, just as
+Norman rose to the surface with his burden, he reached out and, seizing
+him, dragged both him and the now unconscious Gordon aboard his boat.
+
+It was some days before Gordon was able to sit up, and meanwhile he
+learned that his assailant and rescuer had been every day to make
+inquiry about him, and his father, Mr. Wentworth, had written to
+Gordon's father and expressed his concern at the accident.
+
+"It is a strange fate," he wrote, "that should after all these years
+have arrayed us against each other thus, and have brought our boys face
+to face in a foreign land. I hear that your boy behaved with the courage
+which I knew your son would show."
+
+General Keith, in turn, expressed his gratitude for the promptness and
+efficiency with which the other's son had apprehended the danger and
+met it.
+
+"My son owes his life to him," he said. "As to the flag, it was the
+fortune of war," and he thought the incident did credit to both
+combatants. He "only wished," he said, "that in every fight over a flag
+there were the same ability to restore to life those who defended it."
+
+Gordon, however, could not participate in this philosophic view of his
+father's. He had lost his flag; he had been defeated in the battle. And
+he owed his life to his victorious enemy.
+
+He was but a boy, and his defeat was gall and wormwood to him. It was
+but very little sweetened by the knowledge that his victor had come to
+ask after him.
+
+He was lying in bed one afternoon, lonely and homesick and sad. His
+father was away, and no one had been in to him for, perhaps, an hour.
+The shrill voices of children and the shouts of boys floated in at the
+open window from somewhere afar off. He was not able to join them. It
+depressed him, and he began to pine for the old plantation--a habit that
+followed him through life in the hours of depression.
+
+Suddenly there was a murmur of voices outside the room, and after a few
+moments the door softly opened, and a lady put her head in and looked at
+him. She was a stranger and was dressed in a travelling-suit. Gordon
+gazed at her without moving or uttering a sound. She came in and closed
+the door gently behind her, and then walked softly over to the side of
+the bed and looked down at him with kind eyes. She was not exactly
+pretty, but to Gordon she appeared beautiful, and he knew that she was a
+friend. Suddenly she dropped down on her knees beside him and put her
+arm over him caressingly.
+
+"I am Norman's mother," she said, "and I have come to look after you and
+to take you home with me if they will let me have you." She stooped over
+and kissed him.
+
+The boy put up his pinched face and kissed her.
+
+"I will go," he said in his weak voice.
+
+She kissed him again, and smiled down at him with moist eyes, and talked
+to him in tender tones, stroking his hair and telling him of Norman's
+sorrow for the trouble, of her own unhappiness, and of her regret that
+the doctors would not let him be moved. When she left, it was with a
+promise that she would come back again and see him; and Gordon knew that
+he had a friend in England of his own kind, and a truth somehow had
+slipped into his heart which set at odds many opinions which he had
+thought principles. He had never thought to feel kindly toward a Yankee.
+
+When Gordon was able to be out again, his father wished him to go and
+thank his former foe who had rescued him. But it was too hard an ordeal
+for the boy to face. Even the memory of Mrs. Wentworth could not
+reconcile him to this.
+
+"You don't know how hard it is, father," he said, with that assurance
+with which boyhood always draws a line between itself and the rest of
+the world. "Did you ever have to ask pardon of one who had fought you?"
+
+General Keith's face wore a singular expression. Suddenly he felt a
+curious sensation in a spot in his right side, and he was standing in a
+dewy glade in a piece of woodland on a Spring morning, looking at a
+slim, serious young man standing very straight and still a few paces
+off, with a pistol gripped in his hand, and, queerly enough, his name,
+too, was Norman Wentworth. But he was not thinking of him. He was
+thinking of a tall girl with calm blue eyes, whom he had walked with the
+day before, and who had sent him away dazed and half maddened. Then some
+one a little to one side spoke a few words and began to count, "One,
+two--" There was a simultaneous report of two pistols, two little puffs
+of smoke, and when the smoke had cleared away, the other man with the
+pistol was sinking slowly to the ground, and he himself was tottering
+into the arms of the man nearest him.
+
+He came back to the present with a gasp.
+
+"My son," he said gravely, "I once was called on and failed. I have
+regretted it all my life, though happily the consequences were not as
+fatal as I had at one time apprehended. If every generation did not
+improve on the follies and weaknesses of those that have gone before,
+there would be no advance in the world. I want you to be wiser and
+stronger than I."
+
+Gordon's chance of revenge came sooner than he expected. Not long after
+he got out of doors again he was on his way down to the lake, where he
+was learning to swim, when a number of boys whom he passed began to hoot
+at him. In their midst was Ferdy Wickersham, the boy who had crossed the
+ocean with him. He was setting the others on. The cry that came to
+Gordon was: "Nigger-driver! Nigger-driver!" Sometimes Fortune, Chance,
+or whatever may be the deity of fortuitous occurrence, places our
+weapons right to hand. What would David have done had there not been a
+stony brook between him and Goliath that day? Just as Gordon with
+burning face turned to defy his deriders, a pile of small stones lay at
+his feet. It looked like Providence. He could not row a boat, but he
+could fling a stone like young David. In a moment he was sending stones
+up the hill with such rapidity that the group above him were thrown into
+confusion.
+
+Then Gordon fell into an error of more noted generals. Seizing a supply
+of missiles, he charged straight up the hill. Though the group had
+broken at the sudden assault, by the time he reached the hill-top they
+had rallied, and while he was out of ammunition they made a charge on
+him. Wheeling, he went down the hill like the wind, while his pursuers
+broke after him with shouts of triumph. As he reached the stone-pile he
+turned and made a stand, which brought them to a momentary stop. Just
+then a shout arose below him. Gordon turned to see rushing up the hill
+toward him Norman Wentworth. He was picking up stones as he ran. Gordon
+heard him call out something, but he did not wait for his words. Here
+was his arch-enemy, his conqueror, and here, at least, he was his equal.
+Without wasting further time with those above him, Gordon sprang toward
+his new assailant, and steadying himself, hurled his heaviest stone.
+Fortunately, Norman Wentworth had been reared in the country and knew
+how to dodge as well as to throw a stone, or his days might have ended
+then and there.
+
+"Hold on! don't throw!" he shouted "I am coming to help you," and,
+without waiting, he sent a stone far over Gordon's head at the party on
+the height above. Gordon, who was poising himself for another shot,
+paused amazed in the midst of his aim, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.
+
+"Come on," cried Norman. "You and I together can lick them. I know the
+way, and we will get above them." So saying, he dashed down a side
+alley, Gordon close at his heels, and, by making a turn, they came out a
+few minutes later on the hill above their enemies, who were rejoicing in
+their easy victory, and, catching them unprepared, routed them and
+scattered them in an instant.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham, finding himself defeated, promptly surrendered and
+offered to enlist on their side. Norman, however, had no idea of letting
+him off so easy.
+
+"I am going to take you prisoner, but not until I have given you a good
+kicking. You know better than to take sides against an American."
+
+"He is a rebel," said Ferdy.
+
+"He is an American," said Norman. And he forthwith proceeded to make
+good his word, and to do it in such honest style that Ferdy, after first
+taking it as a joke, got angry and ran away howling.
+
+Gordon was doubtful as to the wisdom of this severity.
+
+"He will tell," he said.
+
+"Let him," said Norman, contemptuously. "He knows what he will get if he
+does. I was at school with him last year, and I am going to school with
+him again. I will teach him to fight with any one else against an
+American!"
+
+This episode made the two boys closer allies than they would have been
+in a year of peace.
+
+General Keith, finding his mission fruitless, asked leave to return home
+immediately, so that Gordon saw little more of his former foe and
+new ally.
+
+A few days before their departure, Gordon, passing along a road, came on
+a group of three persons, two children and a French governess with
+much-frizzled hair, very black eyes, and a small waist. One of the
+children was a very little girl, richly dressed in a white frock with a
+blue sash that almost covered it, with big brown eyes and yellow
+ringlets; the other child was a ragged girl several years older, with
+tangled hair, gray eyes, and the ruddy, chubby cheeks so often seen in
+children of her class. The governess was in a state of great
+excitement, and was talking French so fast that it was a wonder any
+tongue could utter the words. The little girl of the fine frock and
+brown eyes was clutching to her bosom with a defiant air a large doll
+which the governess was trying to get from her, while the other child
+stood by, looking first toward one of them and then toward the other,
+with an expression divided between timidity and eagerness. A big picture
+of a ballet-dancer with a gay frock and red shoes in a flaring
+advertisement on a sign-board had something to do with the trouble. Now
+the girl drew nearer to the other child and danced a few steps, holding
+out her hand; now she cast a look over her shoulder down the hill, as if
+to see that her retreat were not cut off.
+
+"_Mais, c'est à moi_--it's _my_ doll. I _will_ have it," insisted the
+little girl, backing away and holding it firmly; at which the governess
+began again almost tearing her hair in her desperation, though she ended
+by giving it a pat to see that it was all right.
+
+The approach of Gordon drew her attention to him.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed in desperation, "_c'est épouvantable_--it ees
+terr-e-ble! Dese young ladie weel give de doll to dat meeseerable
+creature!"
+
+"She is not a 'meeseerable creature'!" insisted the little girl, mocking
+her, her brown eyes flashing. "She danced for me, and I will give it to
+her--I like her."
+
+"Oh, _ciel_! What shall I do! Madame weel abuse me--weel keel me!"
+
+"Mamma will not mind; it is _my_ doll. Aunt Abby gave it to me. I can
+get a plenty more, and I will give it to her," insisted the little girl
+again. Then suddenly, gaining more courage, she turned quickly, and,
+before the governess could stop her, thrust the doll into the other
+child's arms.
+
+"Here, you _shall_ have it."
+
+The governess, with a cry of rage, made a spring for the child, but too
+late: the grimy little hands had clutched the doll, and turning without
+a word of thanks, the little creature sped down the road like a
+frightened animal, her ragged frock fluttering behind her.
+
+"Why, she did not say 'Thank you'!" exclaimed the child, in a
+disappointed tone, looking ruefully after the retreating figure.
+
+The governess broke out on her vehemently in French, very comically
+mingling her upbraidings of her charge, her abuse of the little girl,
+and her apprehension of "Madame."
+
+"Never mind; she does not know any better," said Gordon.
+
+The child's face brightened at this friendly encouragement.
+
+"She is a nasty little creature! You shall not play with her," cried the
+governess, angrily.
+
+"She is not nasty! I like her, and I will play with her," declared the
+child, defiantly.
+
+"What is your name?" asked the boy, much amused by such sturdiness in so
+small a tot.
+
+"Lois Huntington. What is your name?" She looked up at him with her big
+brown eyes.
+
+"Gordon Keith."
+
+"How do you do, Gordon Keith?" She held out her hand.
+
+"How do you do, Lois Huntington?"
+
+She shook hands with him solemnly.
+
+A day or two later, as Gordon was passing through one of the streets in
+the lower part of the village, he came upon a hurdy-gurdy playing a
+livelier tune than most of them usually gave. A crowd of children had
+gathered in the street. Among them was a little barelegged girl who,
+inspired by the music, was dancing and keeping perfect time as she
+tripped back and forth, pirouetted and swayed on the tips of her bare
+toes, flirting her little ragged frock, and kicking with quite the air
+of a ballet-dancer. She divided the honors with the dismal Savoyard, who
+ground away at his organ, and she brought a flicker of admiration into
+his bronzed and grimy face, for he played for her the same tune over and
+over, encouraging her with nods and bravas. She was enjoying her triumph
+quite as much as any prima donna who ever tripped it on a more
+ambitious stage.
+
+Gordon recognized in the little dancer the tangled-haired child who had
+run away with the little girl's doll a few days before.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN OVERSEER
+
+When the war closed, though it was not recognized at first, the old
+civilization of the South passed away. Fragments of the structure that
+had once risen so fair and imposing still stood for a time, even after
+the foundations were undermined: a bastion here, a tower there; but in
+time they followed the general overthrow, and crumbled gradually to
+their fall, leaving only ruins and decay.
+
+For a time it was hoped that the dilapidation might be repaired and the
+old life be lived again. General Keith, like many others, though broken
+and wasted in body, undertook to rebuild with borrowed money, but with
+disastrous results. The conditions were all against him.
+
+Three or four years' effort to repair his fallen fortunes only plunged
+him deeper in debt. General Keith, like most of his neighbors and
+friends, found himself facing the fact that he was hopelessly insolvent.
+As soon as he saw he could not pay his debts he stopped spending and
+notified his creditors.
+
+"I see nothing ahead of me," he wrote, "but greater ruin. I am like a
+horse in a quicksand: every effort I make but sinks me deeper."
+
+Some of his neighbors took the benefit of the bankrupt-law which was
+passed to give relief. General Keith was urged to do likewise, but
+he declined.
+
+"Though I cannot pay my debts," he said, "the least I can do is to
+acknowledge that I owe them. I am unwilling to appear, even for a short
+time, to be denying what I know to be a fact."
+
+He gave up everything that he owned, reserving nothing that would bring
+in money.
+
+When Elphinstone was sold, it brought less than the debts on it. The old
+plate, with the Keith coat-of-arms on it, from which generations of
+guests had been served, and which old Richard, the butler, had saved
+during the war, went for its weight in silver. The library had been
+pillaged until little of it remained. The old Keith pictures, some of
+them by the best artists, which had been boxed and stored elsewhere
+until after the war, now went to the purchaser of the place for less
+than the price of their frames. Among them was the portrait of the man
+in the steel coat and hat, who had the General's face.
+
+What General Keith felt during this transition no one, perhaps, ever
+knew; certainly his son did not know it, and did not dream of it until
+later in life.
+
+It was, however, not only in the South that fortunes were lost by the
+war. As vast as was the increase of riches at the North among those who
+stayed at home, it did not extend to those who took the field. Among
+these was a young officer named Huntington, from Brookford, a little
+town on the sunny slope that stretches eastwardly from the Alleghanies
+to the Delaware. Captain Huntington, having entered the army on the
+outbreak of the war, like Colonel Keith rose to the rank of general,
+and, like General Keith, received a wound that incapacitated him for
+service. His wife was a Southern woman, and had died abroad, just at the
+close of the war, leaving him a little girl, who was the idol of his
+heart. He was interested in the South, and came South to try and
+recuperate from the effects of his wound and of exposure during the war.
+
+The handsomest place in the neighborhood of Elphinstone was "Rosedale,"
+the family-seat of the Berkeleys. Mr. Berkeley had been killed in the
+war, and the plantation went, like Elphinstone and most of the other
+old estates, for debt. And General Huntington purchased it.
+
+As soon as General Keith heard of his arrival in the neighborhood, he
+called on him and invited him to stay at his house until Rosedale should
+be refurnished and made comfortable again. The two gentlemen soon became
+great friends, and though many of the neighbors looked askance at the
+Federal officer and grumbled at his possessing the old family-seat of
+the Berkeleys, the urbanity and real kindness of the dignified,
+soldierly young officer soon made his way easier and won him respect if
+not friendship. When a man had been a general at the age of twenty-six,
+it meant that he was a man, and when General Keith pronounced that he
+was a gentleman, it meant that he was a gentleman. Thus reasoned the
+neighbors.
+
+His only child was a pretty little girl of five or six years, with great
+brown eyes, yellow curls, and a rosebud face that dimpled adorably when
+she laughed. When Gordon saw her he recognized her instantly as the tot
+who had given her doll to the little dancer two years before. Her eyes
+could not be mistaken. She used to drive about in the tiniest of village
+carts, drawn by the most Liliputian of ponies, and Gordon used to call
+her "Cindy,"--short for Cinderella,--which amused and pleased her. She
+in turn called him her sweetheart; tyrannized over him, and finally
+declared that she was going to marry him.
+
+"Why, you are not going to have a rebel for a sweetheart?" said her
+father.
+
+"Yes, I am. I am going to make him Union," she declared gravely.
+
+"Well, that is a good way. I fancy that is about the best system of
+Reconstruction that has yet been tried."
+
+He told the story to General Keith, who rode over very soon afterwards
+to see the child, and thenceforth called her his fairy daughter.
+
+One day she had a tiff with Gordon, and she announced to him that she
+was not going to kiss him any more.
+
+"Oh, yes, you are," said he, teasing her.
+
+"I am not." Her eyes flashed. And although he often teased her
+afterwards, and used to draw a circle on his cheek which, he said, was
+her especial reservation, she kept her word, even in spite of the
+temptation which he held out to her to take her to ride if she
+would relent.
+
+One Spring General Huntington's cough suddenly increased, and he began
+to go downhill so rapidly as to cause much uneasiness to his friends.
+General Keith urged him to go up to a little place on the side of the
+mountains which had been quite a health-resort before the war.
+
+"Ridgely is one of the most salubrious places I know for such trouble as
+yours. And Dr. Theophilus Balsam is one of the best doctors in the
+State. He was my regimental surgeon during the war. He is a Northern man
+who came South before the war. I think he had an unfortunate
+love-affair."
+
+"There is no place for such trouble as mine," said the younger man,
+gravely. "That bullet went a little too deep." Still, he went
+to Ridgely.
+
+Under the charge of Dr. Balsam the young officer for a time revived, and
+for a year or two appeared on the way to recovery. Then suddenly his old
+trouble returned, and he went down as if shot. The name Huntington had
+strong association for the old physician; for it was a Huntington that
+Lois Brooke, the younger sister of Abigail Brooke, his old sweetheart,
+had married, and Abigail Brooke's refusal to marry him had sent him
+South. The Doctor discovered early in his acquaintance with the young
+officer that he was Abigail Brooke's nephew. He, however, made no
+reference to his former relation to his patient's people.
+
+Division bitterer than that war in which he had fought lay between them,
+the division that had embittered his life and made him an exile from his
+people. But the little girl with her great, serious eyes became the old
+physician's idol and tyrant, and how he worked over her father! Even in
+those last hours when the end had unexpectedly appeared, and General
+Huntington was making his last arrangements with the same courage which
+had made him a noted officer when hardly more than a boy, the Doctor
+kept his counsel almost to the end.
+
+"How long have I to live, Doctor?" panted the dying man, when he rallied
+somewhat from the attack that had struck him down.
+
+"Not very long."
+
+"Then I wish you to send for General Keith. I wish him to take my child
+to my aunt, Miss Abigail Brooke."
+
+"I will attend to it" said the Doctor.
+
+"So long as she lives she will take care of her. But she is now an old
+woman, and when she dies, God knows what will become of her."
+
+"I will look after her as long as I live," said the Doctor.
+
+"Thank you, Doctor." There was a pause. "She is a saint." His mind had
+gone back to his early life. To this Dr. Balsam made no reply. "She has
+had a sad life. She was crossed in love but instead of souring, it
+sweetened her."
+
+"I was the man," said the Doctor, quietly. "I will look after your
+child."
+
+"You were! I never knew his name. She never married."
+
+He gave a few directions, and presently said: "My little girl? I wish to
+see her. It cannot hurt me?"
+
+"No, it will not hurt you," said the Doctor, quietly.
+
+The child was brought, and the dying man's eyes lit up as they rested on
+her pink face and brown eyes filled with a vague wonder.
+
+"You must remember papa."
+
+She stood on tiptoe and, leaning over, kissed him.
+
+"And you must go to Aunt Abby when I have gone."
+
+"I will take Gordon Keith with me," said the child.
+
+The ghost of a smile flickered about the dying man's eyes. Then came a
+fit of coughing, and when it had passed, his head, after a few gasps,
+sank back.
+
+At a word from the Doctor, an attendant took the child out of the room.
+
+That evening the old Doctor saw that the little girl was put to bed, and
+that night he sat up alone with the body. There were many others to
+relieve him, but he declined them and kept his vigil alone.
+
+What memories were with him; what thoughts attended him through those
+lonely hours, who can tell!
+
+General Keith went immediately to Ridgely on hearing of General
+Huntington's death. He took Gordon with him, thinking that he would help
+to comfort the little orphaned girl. The boy had no idea how well he was
+to know the watering-place in after years. The child fell to his care
+and clung to him, finally going to sleep in his arms. While the
+arrangements were being made, they moved for a day or two over to Squire
+Rawson's, the leading man of the Ridge region, where the squire's
+granddaughter, a fresh-faced girl of ten or twelve years, took care of
+the little orphan and kept her interested.
+
+The burial, in accordance with a wish expressed by General Huntington,
+took place in a corner of the little burying-ground at Ridgely, which
+lay on a sunny knoll overlooking the long slope to the northeastward.
+The child walked after the bier, holding fast to Gordon's hand, while
+Dr. Balsam and General Keith walked after them.
+
+As soon as General Keith could hear from Miss Brooke he took the child
+to her; but to the last Lois said that she wanted Gordon to come
+with her.
+
+Soon afterwards it appeared that General Huntington's property had
+nearly all gone. His plantation was sold.
+
+Several times Lois wrote Gordon quaint little letters scrawled in a
+childish hand, asking about the calves and pigeons and chickens that had
+been her friends. But after a while the letters ceased to come.
+
+When Elphinstone was sold, the purchaser was a certain Mr. Aaron
+Wickersham of New York, the father of Ferdy Wickersham, with whom Gordon
+had had the rock-battle. Mr. Wickersham was a stout and good-humored
+man of fifty, with a head like a billiard-bail, and a face that was both
+shrewd and kindly. He had, during the war, made a fortune out of
+contracts, and was now preparing to increase it in the South, where the
+mountain region, filled with coal and iron, lay virgin for the first
+comer with sufficient courage and astuteness to take it. He found the
+new legislature of the State an instrument well fitted to his hands. It
+could be manipulated.
+
+The Wickershams had lately moved into a large new house on Fifth Avenue,
+where Fashion was climbing the hill toward the Park in the effort to get
+above Murray Hill, and possibly to look down upon the substantial and
+somewhat prosaic mansions below, whose doors it had sometimes been found
+difficult to enter. Mrs. Wickersham was from Brookford, the same town
+from which the Huntingtons came, and, when a young and handsome girl,
+having social ambitions, had married Aaron Wickersham when he was but a
+clerk in the banking-house of Wentworth & Son. And, be it said, she had
+aided him materially in advancing his fortunes. She was a handsome
+woman, and her social ambitions had grown. Ferdy was her only child, and
+was the joy and pride of her heart. Her ambition centred in him. He
+should be the leader of the town, as she felt his beauty and his
+smartness entitled him to be. It was with this aim that she induced her
+husband to build the fine new house on the avenue. She knew the value of
+a large and handsome mansion in a fashionable quarter. Aaron Wickersham
+knew little of fashion; but he knew the power of money, and he had
+absolute confidence in his wife's ability. He would furnish the means
+and leave the rest to her. The house was built and furnished by
+contract, and Mrs. Wickersham took pride in the fact that it was much
+finer than the Wentworth mansion on Washington Square, and more
+expensive than the house of the Yorkes, which was one of the big houses
+on the avenue, and had been the talk of the town when it was built ten
+years before. Will Stirling, one of the wags, said that it was a good
+thing that Mr. Wickersham did not take the contract for himself.
+
+Mr. Wickersham, having spent a considerable sum in planning and
+preparing his Southern enterprise, and having obtained a charter from
+the legislature of the State that gave him power to do almost anything
+he wished, suddenly found himself balked by the fact that the people in
+the mountain region which he wished to reach with his road were so
+bitterly opposed to any such innovation that it jeopardized his entire
+scheme. From the richest man in that section, an old cattle-dealer and
+lumberman named Rawson, to Tim Gilsey, who drove the stage from Eden to
+Gumbolt Gap, they were all opposed to any "newfangled" notions, and they
+regarded everything that came from carpet-baggers as "robbery and
+corruption."
+
+He learned that "the most influential man down there" was General Keith,
+and that his place was for sale.
+
+"I can reach him," said Mr. Wickersham, with a gleam in his eye. "I will
+have a rope around his neck that will lead him." So he bought the place.
+
+Fortunately, perhaps, for Mr. Wickersham, he hinted something of his
+intentions to his counsel, a shrewd old lawyer of the State, who thought
+that he could arrange the matter better than Mr. Wickersham could.
+
+"You don't know how to deal with these old fellows," he said.
+
+"I know men," said Mr. Wickersham, "and I know that when I have a hold
+on a man--"
+
+"You don't know General Keith," said Mr. Bagge. The glint in his eye
+impressed the other and he yielded.
+
+So Mr. Wickersham bought the Keith plantation and left it to Greene
+Bagge, Esq., to manage the business. Mr. Bagge wrote General Keith a
+diplomatic letter eulogistic of the South and of Mr. Wickersham's
+interest in it, and invited the General to remain on the place for the
+present as its manager.
+
+General Keith sat for some time over that letter, his face as grave as
+it had ever been in battle. What swept before his mental vision who
+shall know? The history of two hundred years bound the Keiths to
+Elphinstone. They had carved it from the forest and had held it against
+the Indian. From there they had gone to the highest office of the State.
+Love, marriage, death--all the sanctities of life--were bound up with
+it. He talked it over with Gordon.
+
+Gordon's face fell.
+
+"Why, father, you will be nothing but an overseer."
+
+General Keith smiled. Gordon remembered long afterwards, with shame for
+his Speech, how wistful that smile was.
+
+"Yes; I shall be something more than that. I shall be, at least, a
+faithful one. I wish I could be as successful a one."
+
+He wrote saying that, as he had failed for himself, he did not see how
+he could succeed for another. But upon receiving a very flattering
+reassurance, he accepted the offer. Thus, the General remained as an
+employé on the estate which had been renowned for generations as the
+home of the Keiths. And as agent for the new owner he farmed the place
+with far greater energy and success than he had ever shown on his own
+account. It was a bitter cup for Gordon to have his father act as an
+"overseer"; but if it contained any bitterness for General Keith, he
+never gave the least evidence of it, nor betrayed his feeling by the
+slightest sign.
+
+When Mr. Wickersham visited his new estate he admitted that Mr. Bagge
+knew better than he how to deal with General Keith.
+
+When he was met at the station by a tall, gray-haired gentleman who
+looked like something between a general and a churchwarden, he was
+inclined to be shy; but when the gentleman grasped his hand, and with a
+voice of unmistakable sincerity said he had driven out himself to meet
+him, to welcome him among them, he felt at home.
+
+"It is gentlemen like yourself to whom we must look for the preservation
+of our civilization," said General Keith, and introduced him personally
+to every man he met as, "the gentleman who has bought my old place--not
+a 'carpet-bagger,' but a gentleman interested in the development of our
+country, sir."
+
+Mr. Wickersham, in fact, was treated with a distinction to which he had
+been a stranger during his former visits South. He liked it. He felt
+quite like a Southern gentleman, and with one or two Northerners whom he
+met held himself a little distantly.
+
+Once or twice the new owner of Elphinstone came down with parties of
+friends--"to look at the country." They were interested in developing
+it, and had been getting sundry acts passed by the legislature with this
+in view. (General Keith's nose always took a slight elevation when the
+legislature was mentioned.) General Keith entertained the visitors
+precisely as he had done when he was the master, and Mr. Wickersham and
+his guests treated him, in the main, as if he were still the master.
+General Keith sat at the foot of the table opposite Mr. Wickersham, and
+directed the servants, who still called him "Master," and obeyed him
+as such.
+
+Mr. Wickersham conceived a great regard for General Keith, not unmingled
+with a certain contempt for his inability to avail himself of the new
+conditions. "Fine old fellow," he said to his friends. "No more
+business-sense than a child. If he had he would go in with us and make
+money for himself instead of telling us how to make it." He did not know
+that General Keith would not have "gone in" with him in the plan he had
+carried through that legislature to save his life. But he honored the
+old fellow all the more. He had stood up for the General against Mrs.
+Wickersham, who hated all Keiths on Ferdy's account. The old General,
+who was as oblivious of this as a child, was always sending Mrs.
+Wickersham his regards.
+
+"Perhaps, she might like to come down and see the place?" he suggested.
+"It is not what it used to be, but we can make her comfortable." His
+glance as it swept about him was full of affection.
+
+Mr. Wickersham said he feared that Mrs. Wickersham's health would not
+permit her to come South.
+
+"This is the very region for her," said the General. "There is a fine
+health-resort in the mountains, a short distance from us. I have been
+there, and it is in charge of an old friend of mine, Dr. Balsam, one of
+the best doctors in the State. He was my regimental surgeon. I can
+recommend him. Bring her down, and let us see what we can do for her."
+
+Mr. Wickersham thanked him with a smile. Time had been when Mrs.
+Wickersham had been content with small health-resorts. But that time was
+past. He did not tell General Keith that Mrs. Wickersham, remembering
+the fight between her son and Gordon, had consented to his buying the
+place from a not very noble motive, and vowed that she would never set
+her foot on it so long as a Keith remained there. He only assured the
+General that he would convey his invitation.
+
+Mr. Wickersham's real interest, however, lay in the mountains to the
+westward. And General Keith gave him some valuable hints as to the
+deposits lying in the Ridge and the mountains beyond the Ridge.
+
+"I will give you letters to the leading men in that region," he said.
+"The two most influential men up there are Dr. Balsam and Squire Rawson.
+They have, like Abraham and Lot, about divided up the country."
+
+Mr. Wickersham's eyes glistened. He thanked him, and said that he might
+call on him.
+
+Once there came near being a clash between Mr. Wickersham and General
+Keith. When Mr. Wickersham mentioned that he had invited a number of
+members of the legislature--"gentlemen interested in the development of
+the resources of the State"--to meet him, the General's face changed.
+There was a little tilting of the nose and a slight quivering of the
+nostrils. A moment later he spoke.
+
+"I will have everything in readiness for your--f--for your guests; but I
+must ask you to excuse me from meeting them."
+
+Mr. Wickersham turned to him in blank amazement.
+
+"Why, General?"
+
+The expression on the old gentleman's face answered him. He knew that at
+a word he should lose his agent, and he had use for him. He had plans
+that were far-reaching, and the General could be of great service
+to him.
+
+When the statesmen arrived, everything on the place was in order; they
+were duly met at the station, and were welcomed at the house by the
+owner. Everything for their entertainment was prepared. Even the fresh
+mint was in the tankard on the old sideboard. Only the one who had made
+these preparations was absent.
+
+Just before the vehicles were to return from the railway, General Keith
+walked into the room where Mr. Wickersham was lounging. He was booted
+and spurred for riding.
+
+"Everything is in order for your guests, sir. Richard will see that they
+are looked after. These are the keys. Richard knows them all, and is
+entirely reliable. I will ask you to excuse me till--for a day or two."
+
+Mr. Wickersham had been revolving in his mind what he should say to the
+old gentleman. He had about decided to speak very plainly to him on the
+folly of such narrowness. Something, however, in the General's air again
+deterred him: a thinning of the nostril; an unwonted firmness of the
+mouth. A sudden increase in the resemblance to the man-in-armor over the
+mantel struck him--a mingled pride and gravity. It removed him a hundred
+years from the present.
+
+The keen-eyed capitalist liked the General, and in a way honored him
+greatly. His old-fashioned ideas entertained him. So what he said was
+said kindly. He regretted that the General could not stay; he "would
+have liked him to know his friends."
+
+"They are not such bad fellows, after all. Why, one of them is a
+preacher," he said jocularly as he walked to the door, "and a very
+bright fellow. J. Quincy Plume is regarded as a man of great ability."
+
+"Yes, sir; I have heard of him. His doctrine is from the 'Wicked Bible';
+he omits the 'not.' Good morning." And General Keith bowed himself out.
+
+When the guests arrived, Mr. Wickersham admitted to himself that they
+were a strange lot of "assorted statesmen." He was rather relieved that
+the General had not remained. When he looked about the table that
+evening, after the juleps were handed around and the champagne had
+followed, he was still more glad. The set of old Richard's head and the
+tilt of his nose were enough to face. An old and pampered hound in the
+presence of a pack of puppies could not have been more disdainful.
+
+The preacher he had mentioned, Mr. J. Quincy Plume, was one of the
+youngest members of the party and one of the most striking--certainly
+one of the most convivial and least abashed. Mr. Plume had, to use his
+own expression, "plucked a feather from many wings, and bathed his
+glistening pinions in the iridescent light of many orbs." He had been
+"something of a doctor"; then had become a preacher--to quote him again,
+"not exactly of the gospel as it was understood by mossbacked
+theologians, of 'a creed outworn,'" but rather the "gospel of the new
+dispensation, of the new brotherhood--the gospel of liberty, equality,
+fraternity." Now he had found his true vocation, that of statesmanship,
+where he could practise what he had preached; could "bask in the light
+of the effulgent sun of progress, and, shod with the sandals of Mercury,
+soar into a higher empyrean than he had yet attained." All of which,
+being translated, meant that Mr. Plume, having failed in several
+professions, was bent now on elevating himself by the votes of the
+ignorant followers whom he was cajoling into taking him as a leader.
+
+Mr. Wickersham had had some dealing with him and had found him capable
+and ready for any job. When he had been in the house an hour Mr.
+Wickersham was delighted with him, and mentally decided to secure him
+for his agent. When he had been there a day Mr. Wickersham mentally
+questioned whether he had not better drop him out of his schemes
+altogether.
+
+One curious thing was that each guest secretly warned him against all
+the others.
+
+The prices were much higher than Mr. Wickersham had expected. But they
+were subject to scaling.
+
+"Well, Richard, what do you think of the gentlemen?" asked Mr.
+Wickersham of the old servant, much amused at his disdain.
+
+"What gent'mens?"
+
+"Why, our guests." He used the possessive that the General used.
+
+"Does you call dem 'gent'mens?'" demanded the old servant, fixing his
+eyes on him.
+
+"Well, no; I don't think I do--all of them."
+
+"Nor, suh; dee ain't gent'mens; dee's scalawags!" said Richard, with
+contempt. "I been livin' heah 'bout sixty years, I reckon, an' I never
+seen nobody like dem eat at de table an' sleep in de beds in dis
+house befo'."
+
+When the statesmen were gone and General Keith had returned, old Richard
+gave Mr. Wickersham an exhibition of the manner in which a gentleman
+should be treated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ENGINEER AND THE SQUIRE
+
+Marius amid the ruins of Carthage is not an inspiring figure to us while
+we are young; it is Marius riding up the Via Sacra at the head of his
+resounding legions that then dazzles us. But as we grow older we see how
+much greater he was when, seated amid the ruins, he sent his scornful
+message to Rome. So, Gordon Keith, when a boy, thought being a gentleman
+a very easy and commonplace thing. He had known gentlemen all his
+life--had been bred among them. It was only later on, after he got out
+into the world, that he saw how fine and noble that old man was, sitting
+unmoved amid the wreck not only of his life and fortunes, but of
+his world.
+
+General Keith was unable to raise even the small sum necessary to send
+the boy to college, but among the débris of the old home still remained
+the relics of a once choice library, and General Keith became himself
+his son's instructor. It was a very irregular system of study, but the
+boy, without knowing it, was browsing in those pastures that remain ever
+fresh and green. There was nothing that related to science in any form.
+
+"I know no more of science, sir, than an Indian," the General used to
+say. "The only sciences I ever thought I knew were politics and war, and
+I have failed in both."
+
+He knew very little of the world--at least, of the modern world. Once,
+at table, Gordon was wishing that they had money.
+
+"My son," said his father, quietly, "there are some things that
+gentlemen never discuss at table. Money is one of them." Such were his
+old-fashioned views.
+
+It was fortunate for his son, then, that there came to the neighborhood
+about this time a small engineering party, sent down by Mr. Wickersham
+to make a preliminary survey for a railroad line up into the Ridge
+country above General Keith's home. The young engineer, Mr. Grinnell
+Rhodes, brought a letter to General Keith from Mr. Wickersham. He had
+sent his son down with the young man, and he asked that the General
+would look after him a little and would render Mr. Rhodes any assistance
+in his power. The tall young engineer, with his clear eyes, pleasant
+voice, and quick ways, immediately ingratiated himself with both General
+Keith and Gordon. The sight of the instruments and, much more, the
+appearance of the young "chief," his knowledge of the world, and his
+dazzling authority as, clad in corduroy and buttoned in high yellow
+gaiters, he day after day strode forth with his little party and ran his
+lines, sending with a wave of his hand his rodmen to right or left
+across deep ravines and over eminences, awakened new ambitions in Gordon
+Keith's soul. The talk of building great bridges, of spanning mighty
+chasms, and of tunnelling mountains inspired the boy. What was Newton
+making his calculations from which to deduce his fundamental laws, or
+Galileo watching the stars from his Florentine tower? This young captain
+was Archimedes and Euclid, Newton and Galileo, all in one. He made
+them live.
+
+It was a new world for Gordon. He suddenly awoke.
+
+Both the engineer and Gordon could well have spared one of the
+engineer's assistants. Ferdy Wickersham had fulfilled the promise of his
+boyhood, and would have been very handsome but for an expression about
+the dark eyes which raised a question. He was popular with girls, but
+made few friends among men, and he and Mr. Rhodes had already clashed.
+Rhodes gave some order which Ferdy refused to obey. Rhodes turned on
+him a cold blue eye. "What did you say?"
+
+"I guess this is my father's party; he's paying the freight, and I guess
+I am his son."
+
+"I guess it's my party, and you'll do what I say or go home," said Mr.
+Rhodes, coldly. "Your father has no 'son' in this party. I have a
+rodman. Unless you are sick, you do your part of the work."
+
+Ferdy submitted for reasons of his own; but his eyes lowered, and he did
+not forget Mr. Rhodes.
+
+The two youngsters soon fell out. Ferdy began to give orders about the
+place, quite as if he were the master. The General cautioned Gordon not
+to mind what he said. "He has been spoiled a little; but don't mind him.
+An only child is at a great disadvantage." He spoke as if Gordon were
+one of a dozen children.
+
+But Ferdy Wickersham misunderstood the other's concession. He resented
+the growing intimacy between Rhodes and Gordon. He had discovered that
+Gordon was most sensitive about the old plantation, and he used his
+knowledge. And when Mr. Rhodes interposed it only gave the sport of
+teasing Gordon a new point.
+
+One morning, when the three were together, Ferdy began, what he probably
+meant for banter, to laugh at Gordon for bragging about his plantation.
+
+"You ought to have heard him, Mr. Rhodes, how he used to blow about it."
+
+"I did not blow about it," said Gordon, flushing.
+
+Rhodes, without looking up, moved in his seat uneasily.
+
+"Ferdy, shut up--you bother me. I am working."
+
+But Ferdy did not heed either this warning or the look on Gordon's face.
+His game had now a double zest: he could sting Gordon and worry Rhodes.
+
+"I don't see why my old man was such a fool as to want such a dinged
+lonesome old place for, anyhow," he said, with a little laugh. "I am
+going to give it away when I get it."
+
+Gordon's face whitened and flamed again, and his eyes began to snap.
+
+"Then it's the only thing you ever would give away," said Mr. Rhodes,
+pointedly, without raising his eyes from his work.
+
+Gordon took heart. "Why did you come down here if you feel that way
+about it?"
+
+"Because my old man offered me five thousand if I'd come. You didn't
+think I'd come to this blanked old place for nothin', did you? Not
+much, sonny."
+
+"Not if he knew you," Said Mr. Rhodes, looking across at him. "If he
+knew you, he'd know you never did anything for nothing, Ferdy."
+
+Ferdy flushed. "I guess I do it about as often as you do. I guess you
+struck my governor for a pretty big pile."
+
+Mr. Rhodes's face hardened, and he fixed his eyes on him. "If I do, I
+work for it honestly. I don't make an agreement to work, and then play
+'old soldier' on him."
+
+"I guess you would if you didn't have to work."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't," said Mr. Rhodes, firmly, "and I don't want to hear
+any more about it. If you won't work, then I want you to let me work."
+
+Ferdy growled something under his breath about guessing that Mr. Rhodes
+was "working to get Miss Harriet Creamer and her pile"; but if Mr.
+Rhodes heard him he took no notice of it, and Ferdy turned back to
+the boy.
+
+Meantime, Gordon had been calculating. Five thousand dollars! Why, it
+was a fortune! It would have relieved his father, and maybe have saved
+the place. In his amazement he almost forgot his anger with the boy who
+could speak of such a sum so lightly.
+
+Ferdy gave him a keen glance. "What are you so huffy about, Keith?" he
+demanded. "I don't see that it's anything to you what I say about the
+place. You don't own it. I guess a man has a right to say what he
+chooses of his own."
+
+Gordon wheeled on him with blazing eyes, then turned around and walked
+abruptly away. He could scarcely keep back his tears. The other boy
+watched him nonchalantly, and then turned to Mr. Rhodes, who was
+glowering over his papers. "I'll take him down a point or two. He's
+always blowing about his blamed old place as if he still owned it. He's
+worse than the old man, who is always blowing about 'before the war' and
+his grandfather and his old pictures. I can buy better ancestors on
+Broadway for twenty dollars."
+
+Mr. Rhodes gathered up his papers and rose to his feet.
+
+"You could not make yourself as good a descendant for a million," he
+said, fastening his eye grimly on Ferdy.
+
+"Oh, couldn't I? Well, I guess I could. I guess I am about as good as he
+is, or you either."
+
+"Well, you can leave me out of the case," said Mr. Rhodes, sharply. "I
+will tell you that you are not as good as he, for he would never have
+said to you what you have said to him if your positions had been
+reversed."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"I don't expect you do," said Mr. Rhodes. He stalked away. "I can't
+stand that boy. He makes me sick," he said to himself. "If I hadn't
+promised his governor to make him stick, I would shake him."
+
+Ferdy was still smarting under Mr. Rhodes's biting sarcasm when the
+three came together again. He meant to be even with Rhodes, and he
+watched his opportunity.
+
+Rhodes was a connection of the Wentworths, and had been helped at
+college by Norman's father, which Ferdy knew. One of the handsomest
+girls in their set, Miss Louise Caldwell, was a cousin of Rhodes, and
+Norman was in love with her. Ferdy, who could never see any one
+succeeding without wishing to supplant him, had of late begun to fancy
+himself in love with her also, but Mr. Rhodes, he knew, was Norman's
+friend. He also knew that Norman was Mr. Rhodes's friend in a little
+affair which Mr. Rhodes was having with one of the leading belles of the
+town, Miss Harriet Creamer, the daughter of Nicholas Creamer of Creamer,
+Crustback & Company.
+
+Ferdy had received that day a letter from his mother which stated that
+Louise Caldwell's mother was making a set at Norman for her daughter.
+Ferdy's jealousy was set on edge, and he now began to talk about Norman.
+Rhodes sniffed at the sneering mention of his name, and Gordon, whose
+face still wore a surly look, pricked up his ears.
+
+"You need not always be cracking Norman up," said Wickersham to Rhodes.
+"You would not be if I were to tell you what I know about him. He is no
+better than anybody else."
+
+"Oh, he is better than some, Ferdy," said Mr. Rhodes. Gordon gave an
+appreciative grunt which drew Ferdy's eyes on him.
+
+"You think so too, Keith, I suppose?" he said. "Well, you needn't. You
+need not be claiming to be such a friend of his. He is not so much of a
+friend of yours, I can tell you. I have heard him say as many mean
+things about you as any one."
+
+It was Gordon's opportunity. He had been waiting for one.
+
+"I don't believe it. I believe it's a lie," he declared, his face
+whitening as he gathered himself together. His eyes, which had been
+burning, had suddenly begun to blaze.
+
+Mr. Rhodes looked up. He said nothing, but his eyes began to sparkle.
+
+"You're a liar yourself," retorted Wickersham, turning red.
+
+Gordon reached for him. "Take it back!" At the same moment Rhodes sprang
+and caught him, but not quite in time. The tip of Gordon's fingers as he
+slapped at Ferdy just reached the latter's cheek and left a red
+mark there.
+
+"Take it back," he said again between his teeth as Rhodes flung his arm
+around him.
+
+For answer Ferdy landed a straight blow in his face, making his nose
+bleed and his head ring.
+
+"Take that!"
+
+Gordon struggled to get free, but in vain. Rhodes with one arm swept
+Wickersham back. With the other he held Gordon in an iron grip. "Keep
+off, or I will let him go," he said.
+
+The boy ceased writhing, and looked up into the young man's face. "You
+had just as well let me go. I am going to whip him. He has told a lie on
+my friend, who saved my life. And he's hit me. Let me go." He began
+to whimper.
+
+"Now, look here, boys," said Rhodes; "you have got to stop right here
+and make up. I won't have this fighting."
+
+"Let him go. I can whip him," said Ferdy, squaring himself, and adding
+an epithet.
+
+Gordon was standing quite still. "I am going to fight him," he said,
+"and whip him. If he whips me, I am going to fight him again until I do
+whip him."
+
+Mr. Rhodes's face wore a puzzled expression. He looked down at the
+sturdy face with its steady eyes, tightly gripped mouth, and chin which
+had suddenly grown squarer.
+
+"If I let you go will you promise not to fight?"
+
+"I will promise not to fight him here if he will come out behind the
+barn," said Gordon. "But if he don't, I'm going to fight him here. I am
+going to fight him and I am going to whip him."
+
+Mr. Rhodes considered. "If I go out there with you and let you have two
+rounds, will you make up and agree never to refer to the subject again?"
+
+"Yes," said Wickersham.
+
+"If I whip him," said Gordon.
+
+"Come along with me. I will let you two boys try each other's mettle for
+two rounds, but, remember, you have got to stop when I call time."
+
+So they came to a secluded spot, where the two boys took off their
+coats.
+
+"Come, you fellows had better make up now," said Mr. Rhodes, standing
+above them good-humored and kindly.
+
+"I don't see what we are fighting about," said Ferdy.
+
+"Take back what you said about Norman," demanded Gordon.
+
+"There is nothing to take back," declared Ferdy.
+
+"Then take that!" said Gordon, stepping forward and tapping him in the
+mouth with the back of his hand.
+
+He had not expected the other boy to be so quick. Before he could put
+himself on guard, Ferdy had fired away, and catching him right in the
+eye, he sent him staggering back. He was up again in a second, however,
+and the next moment was at his opponent like a tiger. The rush was as
+unlooked for on Wickersham's part as Wickersham's blow had been by
+Gordon, and after a moment the lessons of Mike Doherty began to tell,
+and Gordon was ducking his head and dodging Wickersham's blows; and he
+began to drive him backward.
+
+"By Jove! he knows his business," said Rhodes to himself.
+
+Just then he showed that he knew his business, for, swinging out first
+with his right, he brought in the cut which was Mr. Doherty's _chef
+d'oeuvre_, and catching Wickersham under the chin, he sent him flat on
+his back on the ground.
+
+Mr. Rhodes called time and picked him up.
+
+"Come, now, that's enough," he said.
+
+Gordon wiped the blood from his face.
+
+"He has got to take back what he said about Norman, or I have another
+round."
+
+"You had better take it back, Ferdy. You began it," said the umpire.
+
+"I didn't begin it. It's a lie!"
+
+"You did," said Mr. Rhodes, coldly. He turned to Gordon. "You have one
+more round."
+
+"I take it back," growled Ferdy.
+
+Just then there was a step on the grass, and General Keith stood beside
+them. His face was very grave as he chided the boys for fighting; but
+there was a gleam in his eyes that showed Mr. Rhodes and possibly the
+two combatants that he was not wholly displeased. At his instance and
+Mr. Rhodes's, the two boys shook hands and promised not to open the
+matter again.
+
+As Wickersham continued to shirk the work of rodman, Rhodes took Gordon
+in his party, instructed him in the use of the instruments, and inspired
+him with enthusiasm for the work, none the less eager because he
+contrasted him with Ferdy. Rhodes knew what General Keith's name was
+worth, and he thought his son being of his party would be no
+hindrance to him.
+
+The trouble came when he proposed to the General to pay Gordon for his
+work.
+
+"He is worth no salary at present, sir," said the General. "I shall be
+delighted to have him go with you, and your instruction will more than
+compensate us."
+
+The matter was finally settled by Rhodes declining positively to take
+Gordon except on his own terms. He needed an axeman and would pay him as
+such. He could not take him at all unless he were under his authority.
+
+Mr. Rhodes was not mistaken. General Keith's name was one to conjure
+with. Squire Rawson was the principal man in all the Ridge region, and
+he had, as Rhodes knew, put himself on record as unalterably opposed to
+a railroad. He was a large, heavy man, deep-chested and big-limbed, with
+grizzled hair and beard, a mouth closer drawn than might have been
+expected in one with his surroundings, and eyes that were small and
+deep-set, but very keen. His two-storied white house, with wings and
+portico, though not large, was more pretentious than most of those in
+the section, and his whitewashed buildings, nestled amid the fruit-trees
+on a green hill looking up the valley to the Gap, made quite a
+settlement. He was a man of considerable property and also of great
+influence, and in the Ridge region, as elsewhere, wealth is a basis of
+position and influence. The difference is one of degree. The evidences
+of wealth in the Ridge country were land and cattle, and these Squire
+Rawson had in abundance. He was esteemed the best judge of cattle in all
+that region.
+
+Consistency is a jewel; but there are regions where Hospitality is
+reckoned before Consistency, and as soon as the old squire learned that
+General Keith's son was with the surveying party, even though it was, to
+use a common phrase, "comin' interferin'" with that country, he rode
+over to their camp and invited Gordon and his "friends" to be his guests
+as long as they should remain in that neighborhood.
+
+"I don't want you to think, young man," he said to Rhodes, "that I'm
+goin' to agree to your dod-rotted road comin' through any land of mine,
+killin' my cattle; but I'll give you a bed and somethin' to eat."
+
+Rhodes felt that he had gained a victory; Gordon was doubtful.
+
+Though the squire never failed to remind the young engineer that the
+latter was a Yankee, and as such the natural and necessary enemy of the
+South, he and Rhodes became great friends, and the squire's hospitable
+roof remained the headquarters of the engineering party much longer than
+there was any necessity for its being so.
+
+The squire's family consisted of his wife, a kindly, bustling little old
+dame, who managed everything and everybody, including the squire, with a
+single exception. This was her granddaughter, Euphronia Tripper, a plump
+and fresh young girl with light hair, a fair skin, and bright
+eyes. The squire laid down the law to those about him, but Mrs.
+Rawson--"Elizy"-laid down the law for him. This the old fellow was ready
+enough to admit. Sometimes he had a comical gleam in his deep eyes when
+he turned them on his guests as he rose at her call of "Adam, I
+want you."
+
+"Boys, learn to obey promptly," he said; "saves a sight o' trouble. It's
+better in the family 'n a melojeon. It's got to come sooner or later,
+and the sooner the better for you. The difference between me and most
+married men around here is that they lies about it, and I don't. I know
+I belongs to Eliza. She owns me, but then she treats me well. I'm sort
+o' meek when she's around, but then I make up for it by bein' so durned
+independent when I'm away from home. Besides, it's a good deal better to
+be ordered about by somebody as keers for you than not to have anybody
+in the world as keers whether you come or stay."
+
+Besides Mrs. Rawson, there were in the family a widowed daughter, Mrs.
+Tripper, a long, pale, thin woman, with sad eyes, who had once been
+pretty, and her daughter Euphronia, already referred to, who, in right
+of being very pretty, was the old squire's idol and was never thwarted
+in anything. She was, in consequence, a spoiled little damsel,
+self-willed, very vain, and as susceptible as a chameleon. The ease with
+which she could turn her family around her finger gave her a certain
+contempt for them. At first she was quite enamoured of the young
+engineer; but Mr. Rhodes was too busy to give any thought to a girl whom
+he regarded as a child, and she turned her glances on Gordon. Gordon
+also was impervious to her charms. He was by no means indifferent to
+girls; several little damsels who attended St. Martin's Church had at
+one time or another been his load-stars for a while; but he was an
+aristocrat at heart, and held himself infinitely above a girl like Miss
+Euphronia.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham had no such motives for abstaining from a flirtation
+with the young girl as those which restrained Rhodes and Keith.
+
+Euphronia had not at first taken much notice of him. She had been
+inclined to regard Ferdy Wickersham with some disfavor as a Yankee; but
+when the other two failed her, Wickersham fell heir to her
+blandishments. Her indifference to him had piqued him and awakened an
+interest which possibly he might not otherwise have felt. He had seen
+much of the world for a youngster, and could make a good show with what
+he knew. He could play on the piano, and though the aged instrument
+which the old countryman had got at second-hand for his granddaughter
+gave forth sounds which might have come from a tinkling cymbal, yet
+Ferdy played with a certain dash and could bring from it tunes which the
+girl thought very fine. The two soon began to be so much together that
+both Rhodes and Keith fell to rallying Ferdy as to his conquest. Ferdy
+accepted it with complacency.
+
+"I think I shall stay here while you are working up in the mountains,"
+he said to his chief as the time drew near for them to leave.
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind. I promised to take you with me, and I
+will take you dead or alive."
+
+A frown began on the youngster's face, but passed away quickly, and in
+its place came a look of covert complacency.
+
+"I thought your father had offered you five thousand dollars if you
+would stick it out through, the whole trip?" Keith said.
+
+Ferdy shut one eye slowly and gazed at Gordon with the other.
+
+"Sickness was barred. I'll tell the old man I've studied. He'd never
+drop on to the game. He is a soft old bird, anyway."
+
+"Do you mean you are going to lie to him?" asked Gordon.
+
+"Oh, you are sappy! All fellows lie to their governors," declared Ferdy,
+easily. "Why, I wouldn't have any fun at all if I did not lie. You stay
+with me a bit, my son, and I'll teach you a few useful things."
+
+"Thank you. I have no doubt you are a capable teacher," sniffed Gordon;
+"but I think I won't trouble you."
+
+That evening, as Keith was coming from his work, he took a cross-cut
+through the fields and orchard, and under an overshadowing tree he came
+on Ferdy and Euphronia. They were so deeply engaged that Keith hastily
+withdrew and, making a detour, passed around the orchard to the house.
+
+At supper Mrs. Tripper casually inquired of her daughter where she had
+been, a remark which might have escaped Keith's observation had not
+Ferdy Wickersham answered it in some haste.
+
+"She went after the cows," he said, with a quick look at her, "and I
+went fishing, but I did not catch anything."
+
+"I thought, Phrony, I saw you in the orchard," said her mother.
+
+Wickersham looked at her quickly again.
+
+"No, she wasn't in the orchard," he said, "for I was there."
+
+"No, I wasn't in the orchard this evening," said Euphronia. "I went
+after the cows." She looked down in her plate.
+
+Keith ate the rest of his supper in silence. He could not tell on Ferdy;
+that would not be "square." He consulted his mentor, his chief, who
+simply laughed at him.
+
+"Leave 'em alone," he counselled. "I guess she knew how to lie before he
+came. Ferdy has some sense. And we are going to leave for the mountains
+in a little while. I am only waiting to bring the old squire around."
+
+Gordon shook his head.
+
+"My father says you mistake his hospitality for yielding," he said. "You
+will never get him to consent to your plan."
+
+Rhodes laughed.
+
+"Oh, won't I! I have had these old countrymen to deal with before. Just
+give them time and show them the greenbacks. He will come around. Wait
+until I dangle the shekels before him."
+
+But Mr. Rhodes found that in that provincial field there were some
+things stronger than shekels. And among these were prejudices. The more
+the young engineer talked, the more obstinate appeared the old
+countryman.
+
+"I raise cattle," he said in final answer to all his eloquence.
+
+"Raise cattle! You can make more by raising coal in one year than you
+can by raising cattle all your life. Why, you have the richest mineral
+country back here almost in the world," said the young diplomat,
+persuasively.
+
+"And that's the reason I want to keep the railroads out," said the
+squire, puffing quietly. "I don't want the Yankees to come down and take
+it away from us."
+
+Rhodes laughed. "I'd like to see any one take anything from you. They
+will develop it for you."
+
+"I never seen anybody develop anything for another man, leastways a
+Yankee," said Squire Rawson, reflectively.
+
+Just then Ferdy chipped in. He was tired of being left out.
+
+"My father'll come down here and show you old mossbacks a thing or two,"
+he laughed.
+
+The old man turned his eyes on him slowly. Ferdy was not a favorite with
+him. For one thing, he played on the piano. But there were
+other reasons.
+
+"Who is your father, son?" The squire drew a long whiff from his pipe.
+
+"Aaron Wickersham of Wickersham & Company, who is setting up the chips
+for this railroad. We are going to run through here and make it one of
+the greatest lines of the country."
+
+"Oh, you're _goin'_ to run it! From the way you talked I thought maybe
+you _had_ run it. Was a man named Aaron once thought he knew more 'bout
+runnin' a' expedition than his brother did. Ever heard what became
+of him?"
+
+"No," said Ferdy.
+
+"Well, he run some of 'em in the ground. He didn't have sense to know
+the difference between a calf and God."
+
+Ferdy flushed.
+
+"Well, my old man knows enough to run this railroad. He has run bigger
+things than this."
+
+"If he knows as much as his son, he knows a lot. He ought to be able to
+run the world." And the squire turned back to Rhodes:
+
+"What are you goin' to do, my son, when you've done all you say you're
+goin' to do for us? You will be too good to live among them Yankees; you
+will have to come back here, I reckon."
+
+"No; I'm going to marry and settle down," said Rhodes, jestingly. "Maybe
+I'll come back here sometime just to receive your thanks for showing you
+how benighted you were before I came, and for the advice I gave you."
+
+"He is trying to marry a rich woman," said Ferdy, at which Rhodes
+flushed a little.
+
+The old man took no notice of the interruption.
+
+"Well, you must," he said to Rhodes, his eyes resting on him
+benevolently. "You must come back sometime and see me. I love to hear a
+young man talk who knows it all. But you take my advice, my son; don't
+marry no rich man's daughter. They will always think they have done you
+a favor, and they will try to make you think so too, even if your wife
+don't do it. You take warnin' by me. When I married, I had just sixteen
+dollars and my wife she had seventeen, and I give you my word I have
+never heard the last of that one dollar from that day to this."
+
+Rhodes laughed and said he would remember his advice.
+
+"Sometimes I think," said the old man, "I have mistaken my callin'. I
+was built to give advice to other folks, and instid of that they have
+been givin' me advice all my life. It's in and about the only thing I
+ever had given me, except physic."
+
+The night before the party left, Ferdy packed his kit with the rest; but
+the next morning he was sick in his bed. His pulse was not quick, but he
+complained of pains in every limb. Dr. Balsam came over to see him, but
+could find nothing serious the matter. He, however, advised Rhodes to
+leave him behind. So, Ferdy stayed at Squire Rawson's all the time that
+the party was in the mountains. But he wrote his father that he
+was studying.
+
+During the time that Rhodes's party was in the mountains Squire Rawson
+rode about with them examining lands, inspecting coal-beds, and adding
+much to the success of the undertaking.
+
+He appeared to be interested mainly in hunting up cattle, and after he
+had introduced the engineers and secured the tardy consent of the
+landowners for them to make a survey, he would spend hours haggling over
+a few head of mountain cattle, or riding around through the mountains
+looking for others.
+
+Many a farmer who met the first advances of the stranger with stony
+opposition yielded amicably enough after old Rawson had spent an hour or
+two looking at his "cattle," or had conversed with him and his
+weather-beaten wife about the "craps" and the "child'en."
+
+"You are a miracle!" declared young Rhodes, with sincere admiration.
+"How do you manage it?"
+
+The old countryman accepted the compliment with becoming modesty.
+
+"Oh, no; ain't no miracle about it. All I know I learned at the Ridge
+College, and from an old uncle of mine, and in the war. He used to say,
+'Adam, don't be a fool; learn the difference between cattle.' Now,
+before you come, I didn't know nothin' about all them fureign
+countries--they was sort of vague, like the New Jerusalem--or about
+coal. You've told me all about that. I had an idea that it was all made
+jest so,--jest as we find it,--as the Bible says 'twas; but you know a
+lot--more than Moses knowed, and he was 'skilled in all the learnin' of
+the Egyptians.' You haven't taken to cattle quite as kindly as I'd 'a'
+liked, but you know a lot about coal. Learn the difference between
+cattle, my son. There's a sight o' difference between 'em."
+
+Rhodes declared that he would remember his advice, and the two parted
+with mutual esteem.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TWO YOUNG MEN
+
+The young engineer, on his return to New York, made a report to his
+employer. He said that the mineral resources were simply enormous, and
+were lying in sight for any one to pick up who knew how to deal with the
+people to whom they belonged. They could be had almost for the asking.
+But he added this statement: that the legislative charters would hardly
+hold, and even if they did, it would take an army to maintain what they
+gave against the will of the people. He advised securing the services of
+Squire Rawson and a few other local magnates.
+
+Mr. Wickersham frowned at this plain speaking, and dashed his pen
+through this part of the report. "I am much obliged to you for the
+report on the minerals. The rest of it is trash. You were not paid for
+your advice on that. When I want law I go to a lawyer."
+
+Mr. Rhodes rose angrily.
+
+"Well, you have for nothing an opinion that is worth more than that of
+every rascally politician that has sold you his opinion and himself, and
+you will find it out."
+
+Mr. Wickersham did find it out. However much was published about it, the
+road was not built for years. The legislative charters, gotten through
+by Mr. J. Quincy Plume and his confrères, which were to turn that region
+into a modern Golconda, were swept away with the legislatures that
+created them, and new charters had to be obtained.
+
+Squire Rawson, however, went on buying cattle and, report said, mineral
+rights, and Gordon Keith still followed doggedly the track along which
+Mr. Rhodes had passed, sure that sometime he should find him a great
+man, building bridges and cutting tunnels, commanding others and sending
+them to right or left with a swift wave of his arm as of old. Where
+before Gordon studied as a task, he now worked for ambition, and that
+key unlocked unknown treasures.
+
+Mr. Rhodes fell in with Norman just after his interview with Mr.
+Wickersham. He was still feeling sore over Mr. Wickersham's treatment of
+his report. He had worked hard over it. He attributed it in part to
+Ferdy's complaint of him. He now gave Norman an account of his trip, and
+casually mentioned his meeting Gordon Keith.
+
+"He's a good boy," he said, "a nice kid. He licked Ferdy-a very pretty
+little piece of work. Ferdy had both the weight and the reach on him."
+
+"Licked Ferdy! It's an old grudge, I guess?" said Norman.
+
+"No. They started in pretty good friends. It was about you."
+
+"About me?" Norman's face took on new interest.
+
+"Yes; Ferdy said something, and Keith took it up. He seems pretty fond
+of you. I think he had it in for Ferdy, for Ferdy had been bedevilling
+him about the place. You know old Wickersham owns it. Ferdy's strong
+point is not taste. So I think Gordon was feeling a bit sore, and when
+Ferdy lit into you, Keith slapped him."
+
+Norman was all alert now.
+
+"Well? Which licked?"
+
+"Oh, that was all. Keith won at the end of the first round. He'd have
+been fighting now if he had not licked him."
+
+The rest of the talk was of General Keith and of the hardship of his
+position.
+
+"They are as poor as death," said Rhodes. He told of his surroundings.
+
+When Norman got home, he went to his mother. Her eye lighted up as it
+rested on the alert, vigorous figure and fresh, manly, eager face. She
+knew he had something on his mind.
+
+"Mother, I have a plan," he said. "You remember Gordon Keith, the boy
+whose boat I sank over in England--'Keith the rebel'?"
+
+Mrs. Wentworth remembered well. She remembered an older fight than that,
+between a Keith and a Wentworth.
+
+"Well, I have just heard of him. Rhodes--you remember Rhodes? Grinnell
+Rhodes? Used to be stroke, the greatest stroke ever was. Well, Rhodes
+has been down South and stayed at Keith's father's home. He says it's a
+beautiful old place, and now belongs to Mr. Wickersham, Ferdy's father,
+and the old gentleman, General Keith, who used to own it farms it for
+him. Think of that! It's as if father had to be a bookkeeper in the
+bank! Rhodes says he's a fine old fellow, and that Gordon is one of the
+best. He was down there running a railway line for Mr. Wickersham, and
+took Gordon with him. And he says he's the finest sort of a fellow, and
+wants to go to college dreadfully, but hasn't a cent nor any way to get
+anything. Rhodes says it's awful down there. They are so poor."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth smiled. "Well?"
+
+Norman blushed and stammered a little, as he often did when he was
+embarrassed.
+
+"Well, you know I have some money of my own, and I thought if you don't
+mind it I'd like to lend him a little. I feel rather piggish just
+spending it right and left for nothing, when a fellow like that would
+give his eyes for the chance to go to college. Grinnell Rhodes says that
+he is ever so fond of me; that Ferdy was blowing once and said something
+against me, and Gordon jumped right into him--said I was a friend of
+his, and that Ferdy should not say anything against me in his presence.
+He knocked Ferdy down. I tell you, when a fellow is ready to fight for
+another years after he has seen him, he is a good friend."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth's face showed that she too appreciated such a friend.
+
+"How do you know he needs it, or would accept it if he did?"
+
+"Why, Rhodes says we have no idea of the poverty down there. He says our
+poorest clerks are rich compared with those people. And I'll write him a
+letter and offer to lend it to him. I'll tell him it's mine."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth went over and kissed the boy. The picture rose to her
+mind of a young man fresh from fields where he had won renown, honored
+by his State, with everything that wealth and rank could give, laying
+his honors at the feet of a poor young girl.
+
+"All right, my son."
+
+That night Norman sat down and wrote a letter.
+
+A few days later than this, Gordon Keith received a letter with the
+post-mark "New York." Who was there in New York who could know him? Not
+his young engineer. He knew his hand. He was now abroad. As he read the
+letter he wondered yet more. It was from Norman Wentworth. He had met an
+old friend, he said, who had told him about Gordon and about his
+father's misfortunes. He himself, he said, was at college, and he found
+himself in a position to be able to help a friend. He did not know to
+what extent aid might be of service; but he had some means of his own,
+and he asked that Gordon would allow him to make him a loan of whatever
+might be necessary to relieve his father and himself.
+
+When Gordon finished reading the letter there were tears in his eyes.
+
+He laid the letter in his father's lap, and the old gentleman read it
+through slowly. He sat lost in reflection for a few moments and then
+handed the letter back to Gordon.
+
+"Write to him and thank him, my son--thank him warmly for both of us. I
+will never forget his kindness. He is a gentleman."
+
+This was all; but he too showed in his face that that far-off shaft of
+light had reached his heart and rested there.
+
+The General afterwards meditated deeply as to the wisdom of this action.
+Just then, however, Providence seemed to come to his aid.
+
+Old Adam Rawson, hearing that he was hard up, or moved by some kindly
+impulse, offered to make him a loan. He "happened to have," he wrote, "a
+little pile lying by that he didn't have any particular use for just
+then, and it had come to him that, maybe, the General might be able to
+use it to advantage. He didn't care anything about security or
+interest."
+
+The General was perplexed. He did not need it himself, but he was glad
+to borrow enough to send Gordon to college for a year. He sent Gordon up
+to old Rawson's with a letter.
+
+The old man read the letter and then looked Gordon over; he read it and
+looked him over again, much as if he were appraising a young steer.
+
+"Well, I didn't say I'd lend it to you," he said; "but, maybe, I'll do
+it if 'twill help the General. Investin' in a young man is kind of
+hazardous; it's like puttin' your money in a harry-dick--you don't know
+what he's goin' to be. All you has to go on is the frame and your
+jedgment."
+
+Fortunately for Keith, the old cattle-dealer had a good opinion of his
+"jedgment." He went on: "But I admit blood counts for somethin', and I'm
+half minded to adventure some on your blood."
+
+Gordon laughed. He would be glad to be tried on any account, he said,
+and would certainly repay the money.
+
+"Well, I b'lieve you will if you can," said the squire. "And that's more
+than I can say of everybody. I'll invest a leetle money in your future,
+and I want to say this to you, that your future will depend on whether
+you pay it back or not. I never seen a young man as didn't pay his debts
+come to any good in my life, and I never seen one as did as didn't.
+I've seen many a man'd shoot you if you dared to question his honor, an'
+wouldn't pay you a dollar if he was lousy with 'em." He took out his
+wallet, and untying the strings carefully, began to count out the
+greenbacks.
+
+"I have to carry a pretty good pile to buy calves with," he chuckled;
+"but I reckon you'll be a fair substitute for one or two. How much do
+you want--I mean, how little can you git along with?"
+
+Gordon told him the amount his father had suggested. It was not a great
+sum.
+
+"That seems a heap of money to put in book-learnin'," said the old man,
+thoughtfully, his eyes fixed on Gordon. "My whole edication didn't cost
+twenty-five dollars. With all that learnin', you'd know enough to teach
+the Ridge College."
+
+Gordon, who had figured it out, began to give his necessary expenses.
+When he had finished, the old man counted out his bills. Gordon said he
+would give him his note for it, and his father would indorse it. The
+other shook his head.
+
+"No; I don't want any bond. I'll remember it and you'll remember it.
+I've known too many men think they'd paid a debt when they'd given their
+bond. I don't want you to think that. If you're goin' to pay me, you'll
+do it without a bond, and if you ain't, I ain't goin' to sue you; I'm
+jest goin' to think what a' o'nery cuss you are."
+
+So Gordon returned home, and a few weeks later was delving deep into new
+mysteries.
+
+Gordon's college life may be passed over. He worked well, for he felt
+that it was necessary to work.
+
+Looking around when he left college, the only thing that appeared in
+sight for Gordon Keith was to teach school. To be sure, the business;
+"the universal refuge of educated indigents," as his father quoted with
+a smile, was already overcrowded. But Gordon heard of a school which up
+to this time had not been overwhelmed with applicants. There was a
+vacancy at the Ridge College. Finally poor Gunn, after holding out as
+long as he could, had laid down his arms, as all soldiers must do sooner
+or later, and Gordon applied for the position. The old squire remembered
+the straight, broad-shouldered boy with his father's eyes and also
+remembered the debt he owed him, and with the vision of a stern-faced
+man with eyes of flame riding quietly at the head of his men across a
+shell-ploughed field, he wrote to Gordon to come.
+
+"If he's got half of his daddy in him he'll straighten 'em out," he
+said.
+
+So, Gordon became a school-teacher.
+
+"I know no better advice to give you," said General Keith to Gordon, on
+bidding him good-by, "than to tell you to govern yourself, and you will
+be able to govern them. 'He that is slow to anger is better than the
+mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.'"
+
+During the years in which Gordon Keith was striving to obtain an
+education as best he might, Ferdy Wickersham had gone to one of the
+first colleges of the land. It was the same college which Norman
+Wentworth was attending. Indeed, Norman's being there was the main
+reason that Ferdy was sent there. Mr. Wickersham wished his son to have
+the best advantages. Mrs. Wickersham desired this too, but she also had
+a further motive. She wished her son to eclipse Norman Wentworth. Both
+were young men of parts, and as both had unlimited means at their
+disposal, neither was obliged to study.
+
+Norman Wentworth, however, had applied himself to secure one of the high
+class-honors, and as he was universally respected and very popular, he
+was regarded as certain to have it, until an unexpected claimant
+suddenly appeared as a rival.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham never took the trouble to compete for anything until he
+discovered that some one else valued it. It was a trait he had
+inherited from his mother, who could never see any one possessing a
+thing without coveting it.
+
+The young man was soon known at college as one of the leaders of the gay
+set. His luxuriously furnished rooms, his expensive suppers and his
+acquaintance with dancing-girls were talked about, and he soon had a
+reputation for being one of the wildest youngsters of his class.
+
+"Your son will spend all the money you can make for him," said one of
+his friends to Mr. Wickersham.
+
+"Well," said the father, "I hope he will have as much pleasure in
+spending it as I have had in making it, that's all."
+
+He not only gave Ferdy all the money he suggested a need for, but he
+offered him large bonuses in case he should secure any of the honors he
+had heard of as the prizes of the collegiate work.
+
+Mrs. Wickersham was very eager for him to win this particular prize.
+Apart from her natural ambition, she had a special reason. The firm of
+Norman Wentworth & Son was one of the oldest and best-known houses in
+the country. The home of Norman Wentworth was known to be one of the
+most elegant in the city, as it was the most exclusive, and both Mr. and
+Mrs. Wentworth were recognized as representatives of the old-time
+gentry. Mrs. Wickersham might have endured the praise of the elegance of
+the mansion. She had her own ideas as to house-furnishing, and the
+Wentworth mansion was furnished in a style too quiet and antiquated to
+suit her more modern tastes. If it was filled with old mahogany and hung
+with damask-satin, Mrs. Wickersham had carved walnut and gorgeous
+hangings. And as to those white marble busts, and those books that were
+everywhere, she much preferred her brilliant figures which she "had
+bought in Europe," and books were "a nuisance about a house." They ought
+to be kept in a library, as she kept hers--in a carved-walnut case with
+glass doors.
+
+The real cause of Mrs. Wickersham's dislike of Mrs. Wentworth lay
+deeper.
+
+The elder lady had always been gracious to Mrs. Wickersham when they
+met, as she was gracious to every one, and when a very large
+entertainment was given by her, had invited Mrs. Wickersham to it. But
+Mrs. Wickersham felt that Mrs. Wentworth lived within a charmed circle.
+And Mrs. Wickersham was envious.
+
+It must be said that Ferdy needed no instigation to supersede Norman in
+any way that did not require too much work. He and Norman were very good
+friends; certainly Norman thought so; but at bottom Ferdy was envious of
+Norman's position and prestige, and deep in his heart lurked a
+long-standing grudge against the older boy, to which was added of late a
+greater one. Norman and he fancied the same girl, and Louise Caldwell
+was beginning to favor Norman.
+
+Ferdy announced to his father that the class-honor would be won if he
+would give him money enough, and the elder Wickersham, delighted, told
+him to draw on him for all the money he wanted. This Ferdy did promptly.
+He suddenly gave up running away from college, applied himself to
+cultivating the acquaintance of his fellow-students, spent his money
+lavishly in entertainments, and for a time it appeared that he might
+wrest the prize from Norman's grasp.
+
+College boys, however, are a curious folk. The mind of youth is
+virtuous. It is later on in life that it becomes sordid. Ferdy wrote his
+father that he had the prize, and that Norman, his only rival, had given
+up the fight. Mrs. Wickersham openly boasted of her son's success and of
+her motive, and sent him money lavishly. Young Wickersham's ambition,
+however, like that of many another man, o'erleaped itself. Wickersham
+drew about him many companions, but they were mainly men of light
+weight, roisterers and loafers, whilst the better class of his
+fellow-students quickly awoke to a true realization of the case. A new
+element was being introduced into college politics. The recognition of
+danger was enough to set the best element in the college to meet it. At
+the moment when Ferdy Wickersham felt himself victor, and abandoned
+himself to fresh pleasures, a new and irresistible force unexpectedly
+arose which changed the fate of the day. Wickersham tried to stem the
+current, but in vain. It was a tidal wave. Ferdy Wickersham faced
+defeat, and he could not stand it. He suddenly abandoned college, and
+went off, it was said, with a coryphée. His father and mother did not
+know of it for some time after he had left.
+
+Mr. Wickersham received the first intimation of it in the shape of a
+draft which came to him from some distant point. When Mrs. Wickersham
+learned of it, she fell into a consuming rage, and then took to her bed.
+The downfall of her hopes and of her ambition had come through the
+person she loved best on earth. Finally she became so ill that Mr.
+Wickersham telegraphed a peremptory order to his son to come home, and
+after a reasonable time the young man appeared.
+
+His mother's joy at meeting him overshadowed everything else with her,
+and the prodigal was received by her with that forgiveness which is both
+the weakness and the strength of a mother's heart. The father, however,
+had been struck as deeply as the mother. His ambition, if of a different
+kind, had been quite as great as that of Mrs. Wickersham, and the
+hard-headed, keen-sighted man, who had spent his life fighting his way
+to the front, often with little consideration for the rights of others,
+felt that one of his motives and one of his rewards had
+perished together.
+
+The interview that took place in his office between him and his son was
+one which left its visible stamp on the older man, and for a time
+appeared to have had an effect even on the younger, with all his
+insolence and impervious selfishness. When Aaron Wickersham unlocked his
+private door and allowed his son and heir to go out, the clerks in the
+outer office knew by the young man's face, quite as well as by the
+rumbles of thunder which had come through the fast-closed door, that
+the "old man" had been giving the young one a piece of his mind.
+
+At first the younger man had been inclined to rebel; but for once in his
+life he found that he had passed the limit of license, and his father,
+whom he had rather despised as foolishly pliable, was unexpectedly his
+master. He laid before Ferdy, with a power which the latter could not
+but acknowledge, the selfishness and brutality of his conduct since he
+was a boy. He told him of his own earlier privations, of his labors, of
+his ambitions.
+
+"I have worked my heart out," he said, "for your mother and for you. I
+have never known a moment of rest or of what you call 'fun.' I set it
+before me when your mother promised to marry me that I would make her as
+good as the first lady in the land--that is, in New York. She should
+have as big a house and as fine a carriage and as handsome frocks as any
+one of them--as old Mrs. Wentworth or old Mrs. Brooke of Brookford, who
+were the biggest people I ever knew. And I have spent my life for it. I
+have grown old before my time. I have gotten so that things have lost
+their taste to me; I have done things that I never dreamed I would do to
+accomplish it. I have lost the power to sleep working for it, and when
+you came I thought I would have my reward in you. I have not only never
+stinted you, but I have lavished money on you as if I was the richest
+man in New York. I wanted you to have advantages that I never had: as
+good as Norman Wentworth or any one else. I have given you things, and
+seen you throw them away, that I would have crawled on my knees from my
+old home to this office to get when I was a boy. And I thought you were
+going to be my pride and my stay and my reward. And you said you were
+doing it, and your mother and I had staked our hearts on you. And all
+the time you were running away and lying to me and to her, and not doing
+one honest lick of work."
+
+The young man interrupted him. "That is not so," he said surlily.
+
+His father pulled out a drawer and took from it a letter. Spreading it
+open on his desk, he laid the palm of his open hand on it. "Not so? I
+have got the proof of it here." He looked at the young man with level
+eyes, eyes in which was such a cold gleam that Ferdy's gaze fell.
+
+"I did not expect you to do it for _me_," Aaron Wickersham went on
+slowly, never taking his eyes from his son's face, "for I had discovered
+that you did not care a button for my wishes; but I did think you would
+do it for your mother. For she thought you were a god and worshipped
+you. She has been talking for ten years of the time when she would go to
+see you come out at the head of your class. She was going to Paris to
+get the clothes to wear if you won, and you--" His voice broke--"you
+won't even graduate! What will you think next summer when Mrs. Wentworth
+is there to see her son, and all the other men and women I know who have
+sons who graduate there, and your mother--?" The father's voice broke
+completely, and he looked away. Even Ferdy for a moment seemed grave and
+regretful. Then after a glance at his father he recovered his composure.
+
+"I'm not to blame," he said surlily, "if she did. It was her fault."
+
+Aaron Wickersham turned on him.
+
+"Stop," he said in a quiet voice. "Not another word. One other word,
+and, by God! I'll box your head off your shoulders. Say what you please
+about me, but not one word against her. I will take you from college and
+put you to sweeping the floor of this office at twenty dollars a month,
+and make you live on your salary, too, or starve, if you say one
+other word."
+
+Ferdy's face blanched at the implacable anger that blazed in his
+father's eyes, but even more at the coldness of the gleam. It made
+him shiver.
+
+A little later young Wickersham entered his father's office, and though
+he was not much liked by the older clerks, it soon appeared that he had
+found a congenial occupation and one for which he had a natural gift.
+For the first time in his life he appeared inclined to work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE RIDGE COLLEGE
+
+The school over which Gordon had undertaken to preside was not a very
+advanced seminary of learning, and possibly the young teacher did not
+impart to his pupils a great deal of erudition.
+
+His predecessors in the schoolmaster's chair had been, like their
+patrons, the product of a system hardly less conservative than that of
+the Locrians. Any one who proposed an innovation would have done so with
+a rope about his neck, and woe to him if it proved unsuccessful.
+
+When Gordon reported first to the squire, the old man was manifestly
+pleased.
+
+"Why, you've growed considerable. I didn't have no idea you'd be so big
+a man." He measured him with satisfaction. "You must be nigh as big
+as your pa."
+
+"I'm broader across the shoulders, but not so tall," said the young man.
+
+"He is a pretty tall man," said the squire, slowly, with the light of
+reflection in his eye. "You're a-goin' to try the Ridge College, are
+you?" He had a quizzical twinkle in his eye as it rested on the younger
+man's face.
+
+"I'm going to try it." And Gordon's face lit up. "I don't know much, but
+I'll do the best I can."
+
+His modesty pleased the other.
+
+"You know more than Jake Dennison, I reckon, except about devilment. I
+was afred you mightn't be quite up to the place here; you was rather
+young when I seen you last." He measured him as he might have done a
+young bullock.
+
+"Oh, I fancy I shall be," interrupted the young man, flushing at the
+suggestion.
+
+"You've got to learn them Dennison boys, and them Dennison boys is
+pretty hard to learn anything. You will need all the grit you've got."
+
+"Oh, I'll teach them," asserted Gordon, confidently. The old man's eye
+rested on him.
+
+"'Tain't _teachin'_ I'm a-talkin' about. It's _learnin'_ I'm tellin' you
+they need. You've got to learn 'em a good deal, or they'll learn you.
+Them Dennison boys is pretty slow at learnin'."
+
+The young man intimated that he thought he was equal to it.
+
+"Well, we'll see," grunted the old fellow, with something very like a
+twinkle in his deep eyes. "Not as they'll do you any harm without you
+undertake to interfere with them," he drawled. "But you're pretty young
+to manage 'em jest so; you ain't quite big enough either, and you're too
+big to git in through the cat-hole. And I allow that you don't stand no
+particular show after the first week or so of gittin' into the house any
+other way."
+
+"I'll get in, though, and I won't go in through the cat-hole either.
+I'll promise you that, if you'll sustain me."
+
+"Oh, I'll sustain you," drawled the squire. "I'll sustain you in
+anything you do, except to pizon 'em with _slow_ pizon, and I ain't
+altogether sure that wouldn' be jest manslaughter."
+
+"All right." Keith's eyes snapped, and presently, as the outer man's
+gaze rested on him, his snapped also.
+
+So the compact was struck, and the trustee went on to give further
+information.
+
+"Your hours will be as usual," said he: "from seven to two and fo' to
+six in summer, and half-past seven to two and three to five in winter,
+and you'll find all the books necessary in the book-chist. We had to
+have 'em locked up to keep 'em away from the rats and the
+dirt-daubers. Some of 'em's right smartly de-faced, but I reckon you'll
+git on with 'em all right."
+
+"Well, those are pretty long hours," said Gordon. "Seems to me they had
+better be shortened. I shall--"
+
+"Them's the usual hours," interrupted the old man, positively. "I've
+been trustee now for goin' on twenty-six year, an' th'ain't never been
+any change in 'em. An' I ain't see as they've ever been too
+long--leastways, I never see as the scholars ever learned too much in
+'em. They ain't no longer than a man has to work in the field, and the
+work's easier."
+
+Gordon looked at the old man keenly. It was his first battle, and it had
+come on at once, as his father had warned him. The struggle was bitter,
+if brief, but he conquered--conquered himself. The old countryman's face
+had hardened.
+
+"If you want to give satisfaction you'd better try to learn them
+scholars an' not the trustees," he said dryly. "The Dennison boys is
+hard, but we're harder."
+
+Gordon looked at him quickly. His eyes were resting on him, and had a
+little twinkle in them.
+
+"We're a little like the old fellow 'at told the young preacher 'at he'd
+better stick to abusin' the sins of Esau and Jacob and David and Peter,
+an' let the sins o' that congregation alone."
+
+"I'll try and give you satisfaction," said Keith.
+
+The squire appeared pleased. His face relaxed and his tone changed.
+
+"_You_ won't have no trouble," he said good-humoredly. "Not if you're
+like your father. I told 'em you was his son, an' I'd be responsible
+for you."
+
+Gordon Keith looked at him with softened eyes. A mention of his father
+always went to his heart.
+
+"I'll try and give you satisfaction," he said earnestly. "Will you do me
+a favor?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you come over to the examination of the school when it opens, and
+then let me try the experiment of running it my way for, say, two
+months, and then come to another examination? Then if I do not satisfy
+you I'll do anything you say; I'll go back to the old way."
+
+"Done," said the trustee, cordially. And so, Gordon Keith won another
+victory, and started the school under favorable auspices.
+
+Adam Rawson asked him to come and live at his house. "You might give
+Phrony a few extra lessons to fit her for a bo'din'-school," he said. "I
+want her to have the best edvantages."
+
+Keith soon ingratiated himself further with the old squire. He broke his
+young horses for him, drove his wagon, mended his vehicles, and was
+ready to turn his hand to anything that came up about the place.
+
+As his confidence in the young man grew, the squire let Keith into a
+secret.
+
+"You mind when you come up here with that young man from the
+North,--that engineer fellow,--what come a-runnin' of a railroad
+a-hellbulgin' through this country, and was a-goin' to carry off all the
+coal from the top of the Alleghanies spang down to Torment?" Keith
+remembered. "Well, he was right persuasive," continued the squire, "and
+I thought if all that money was a-goin' to be made and them railroads
+had to come, like he said, jest as certain as water runnin' down a hill,
+I might as well git some of it. I had a little slipe or two up there
+before, and havin' a little money from my cattle, lumber, and sich, I
+went in and bought a few slipes more, jest to kind of fill in like, and
+Phrony's growin' up, and I'm a-thinkin' it is about time to let the
+railroads come in; so, if you kin git your young man, let him know I've
+kind o' changed my mind."
+
+Miss Euphronia Tripper had grown up into a plump and pretty country girl
+of fifteen or sixteen, whose rosy cheeks, flaxen hair, and blue eyes,
+as well as the fact that she was the only heiress of the old squire, who
+was one of the "best-fixed" men in all that "country," made her quite
+the belle of the region. She had already made a deep impression on both
+big Jake Dennison and his younger brother Dave. Dave was secretly in
+love with her, but Jake was openly so, a condition which he manifested
+by being as plainly and as hopelessly bound in her presence as a bear
+cub tangled in a net. For her benefit he would show feats of strength
+which might have done credit to a boy-Hercules; but let her turn on him
+the glow of her countenance, and he was a hopeless mass of
+perspiring idiocy.
+
+Keith found her a somewhat difficult pupil to deal with. She was much
+more intent on making an impression on him than on progressing in
+her studies.
+
+After the first shyness of her intercourse with the young teacher had
+worn off, she began for a while rather to make eyes at him, which if
+Keith ever dreamed of, he never gave the least sign of it. She,
+therefore, soon abandoned the useless campaign, and for a time held him
+in mingled awe and disdain.
+
+The Ridge College was a simple log-building of a single room, with a
+small porch in front, built of hewn logs and plastered inside.
+
+Gordon Keith, on entering on his new duties, found his position much
+easier than he had been led to expect.
+
+Whether it was the novelty of the young teacher's quiet manner, clear
+eyes, broad shoulders, and assured bearing, or the idea of the
+examination with which he undertook to begin the session, he had a week
+of surprising quiet. The school filled day after day, and even the noted
+Dennison boys, from Jacob Dennison, the strapping six-foot senior, down
+to Dave, who was the youngest and smartest of the three, appeared duly
+every morning, and treated the young teacher with reasonable civility,
+if with somewhat insolent familiarity.
+
+The day of the examination Squire Rawson attended, solemn and pompous
+with a superfluity of white shirt-front. Brief as was the examination,
+it revealed to Keith an astonishing state of ignorance of the simplest
+things. It was incredible to him that, with so many hours of so-called
+study, so little progress had been made. He stated this in plain
+language, and outlined his plan for shorter hours and closer
+application. A voice from the boys' side muttered that the owner did not
+see anything the matter with the old hours. They were good enough for
+them. Keith turned quickly:
+
+"What is that?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"What is that, Dennison?" he demanded. "I thought I heard you speak."
+
+"Wall, if you did, I warn't speakin' to you," said Jacob Dennison,
+surlily.
+
+"Well, when you speak in school, address yourself to me," said Keith. He
+caught Euphronia Tripper's eyes on him.
+
+"I mought an' I moughtn't," said Jacob, insolently.
+
+"I propose to see that you do."
+
+Jacob's reply was something between a grunt and a sneer, and the school
+rustled with a sound very much like applause.
+
+Next morning, on his arrival at school, Keith found the door fastened on
+the inside. A titter from within revealed the fact that it was no
+accident, and the guffaw of derision that greeted his sharp command that
+the door should be opened immediately showed that the Dennison boys were
+up to their old tricks.
+
+"Open the door, Jake Dennison, instantly!" he called.
+
+The reply was sung through the keyhole:
+
+"'Ole Molly hyah, what you doin' dyah? Settin' in de cordner, smokin' a
+ciggyah.'"
+
+It was little Dave's voice, and was followed by a puff of tobacco smoke
+through the keyhole and a burst of laughter led by Phrony Tripper.
+
+An axe was lying at the woodpile near by, and in two minutes the door
+was lying in splinters on the school-house floor, and Keith, with a
+white face and a dangerous tremble in his voice, was calling the amazed
+school to order. He heard the lessons through, and at noon, the hour he
+had named the day before, dismissed all the younger scholars. The
+Dennisons and one or two larger boys he ordered to remain. As the
+scholars filed out, there was a colloquy between Jacob Dennison and his
+younger brother Dave. Dave had the brains of the family, and he was
+whispering to Jake. Keith moved his chair and seated himself near the
+door. There was a brief muttered conversation among the Dennisons, and
+then Jake Dennison rose, put on his hat slowly, and, addressing the
+other boys, announced that he didn't know what they were going to do,
+but he was "a-gwine home and git ready to go and see the dance up
+at Gates's."
+
+He swaggered toward the door, the others following in his wake.
+
+Keith rose from his seat.
+
+"Go back to your places." He spoke so quietly that his voice could
+scarcely be heard.
+
+"Go nowhere! You go to h----l!" sneered the big leader, contemptuously.
+"'Tain't no use for you to try to stop me--I kin git away with two
+like you."
+
+Perhaps, he could have done so, but Keith was too quick for him. He
+seized the split-bottomed chair from which he had risen, and whirling it
+high above his head, brought it crashing down on his assailant, laying
+him flat on the floor. Then, without a second's hesitation, he sprang
+toward the others.
+
+"Into your seats instantly!" he shouted, as he raised once more the
+damaged, but still formidable, weapon. By an instinct the mutineers fell
+into the nearest seats, and Keith turned back to his first opponent,
+who was just rising from the floor with a dazed look on his face. A few
+drops of blood were trickling down his forehead.
+
+[Illustration: "If you don't go back to your seat, I'll dash your brains
+out," said Keith.]
+
+"If you don't go to your seat instantly, I'll dash your brains out,"
+said Keith, looking him full in the eye. He still grasped the chair, and
+as he tightened his grip on it, the crestfallen bully sank down on the
+bench and broke into a whimper about a grown man hitting a boy with
+a chair.
+
+Suddenly Keith, in the moment of victory, found himself attacked in the
+rear. One of the smaller boys, who had gone out with the rest, hearing
+the fight, had rushed back, and, just as Keith drove Jake Dennison to
+his seat, sprang on him like a little wild-cat. Turning, Keith seized
+and held him.
+
+"What are you doing, Dave Dennison, confound you?" he demanded angrily.
+
+"I'm one of 'em," blubbered the boy, trying to reach him with both fist
+and foot. "I don't let nobody hit my brother."
+
+Keith found that he had more trouble in quelling Dave, the smallest
+member of the Dennison tribe, than in conquering the bigger brothers.
+
+"Sit down and behave yourself," he said, shoving him into a seat and
+holding him there. "I'm not going to hit him again if he
+behaves himself."
+
+Keith, having quieted Dave, looked to see that Jake was not much hurt.
+He took out his handkerchief.
+
+"Take that and wipe your face with it," he said quietly, and taking from
+his desk his inkstand and some writing-paper, he seated himself on a
+bench near the door and began to write letters. It grew late, but the
+young teacher did not move. He wrote letter after letter. It began to
+grow dark; he simply lit the little lamp on his desk, and taking up a
+book, settled down to read; and when at last he rose and announced that
+the culprits might go home, the wheezy strains of the three instruments
+that composed the band at Gates's had long since died out, and Gordon
+Keith was undisputed master of Ridge College.
+
+His letter to the trustees was delivered that morning, saying that if
+they would sustain his action he would do his best to make the school
+the best in that section; but if not, his resignation was in
+their hands.
+
+"I guess he is the sort of medicine those youngsters need," said Dr.
+Balsam. "We'd better let it work."
+
+"I reckon he can ride 'em," said Squire Rawson.
+
+It was voted to sustain him.
+
+The fact that a smooth-faced boy, not as heavy as Jake Dennison by
+twenty pounds, had "faced down" and quelled the Dennisons all three
+together, and kept Jake Dennison from going where he wanted to go,
+struck the humor of the trustees, and they stood by their teacher almost
+unanimously, and even voted to pay for a new door, which he had offered
+to pay for himself, as he said he might have to chop it down again. Not
+that there was not some hostility to him among those to whom his methods
+were too novel; but when he began to teach his pupils boxing, and showed
+that with his fists he was more than a match for Jake Dennison, the
+chief opposition to him died out; and before the year ended, Jake
+Dennison, putting into practice the art he had learned from his teacher,
+had thrashed Mr. William Bluffy, the cock of another walk high up across
+the Ridge, for ridiculing the "newfangled foolishness" of Ridge College,
+and speaking of its teacher as a "dom-fool furriner." Little Dave
+Dennison, of all those opposed to him, alone held out. He appeared to be
+proof against Keith's utmost efforts to be friends.
+
+One day, however, Dave Dennison did not come to school. Keith learned
+that he had fallen from a tree and broken his leg--"gettin' hawks' eggs
+for Phrony," Keith's informant reported. Phrony was quite scornful about
+it, but a little perky as well.
+
+"If a boy was such a fool as to go up a tree when he had been told it
+wouldn't hold him, she could not help it. She did not want the eggs,
+anyhow," she said disdainfully. This was all the reward that little Dave
+got for his devotion and courage.
+
+That afternoon Keith went over the Ridge to see Dave.
+
+The Dennison home was a small farm-house back of the Ridge, in what was
+known as a "cove," an opening in the angle between the mountains, where
+was a piece of level or partly level ground on the banks of one of the
+little mountain creeks. When Keith arrived he found Mrs. Dennison, a
+small, angular woman with sharp eyes, a thin nose, and thin lips, very
+stiff and suspicious. She had never forgiven Keith for his victory over
+her boys, and she looked now as if she would gladly have set the dogs on
+him instead of calling them off as she did when he strode up the path
+and the yelping pack dashed out at him.
+
+She "didn' know how Dave was," she said glumly. "The Doctor said he was
+better. She couldn' see no change. Yes, he could go in, she s'posed, if
+he wanted to," she said ungraciously.
+
+Keith entered. The boy was lying on a big bed, his head resting against
+the frame of the little opening which went for a window, through which
+he was peeping wistfully out at the outside world from which he was to
+be shut off for so many weary weeks. He returned Keith's greeting in the
+half-surly way in which he had always received his advances since the
+day of the row; but when Keith sat down on the bed and began to talk to
+him cheerily of his daring in climbing where no one else had ventured to
+go, he thawed out, and presently, when Keith drifted on to other stories
+of daring, he began to be interested, and after a time grew
+almost friendly.
+
+He was afraid they might have to cut his leg off. His mother, who always
+took a gloomy view of things, had scared him by telling him she thought
+it might have to be done; but Keith was able to reassure him. The Doctor
+had told him that, while the fracture was very bad, the leg would
+be saved.
+
+"If he had not been as hard as a lightwood knot, that fall would have
+mashed him up," said the Doctor. This compliment Keith repeated, and it
+evidently pleased Dave. The pale face relaxed into a smile. Keith told
+him stories of other boys who had had similar accidents and had turned
+them to good account--of Arkwright and Sir William Jones and Commodore
+Maury, all of whom had laid the foundation for their future fame when
+they were in bed with broken legs.
+
+When Keith came away he left the boy comforted and cheered, and even the
+dismal woman at the door gave him a more civil parting than her
+greeting had been.
+
+Many an afternoon during the boy's convalescence Keith went over the
+Ridge to see him, taking him story-books, and reading to him until he
+was strong enough to read himself. And when, weeks later, the lame boy
+was able to return to school, Keith had no firmer friend in all the
+Ridge region than Dave Dennison, and Dave had made a mental progress
+which, perhaps, he would not have made in as many months at school, for
+he had received an impulse to know and to be something more than he was.
+He would show Phrony who he was.
+
+It was fine to Gordon to feel that he was earning his own living. He was
+already making his way in the world, and often from this first rung of
+the ladder the young teacher looked far up the shining steep to where
+Fame and Glory beckoned with their radiant hands. He would be known. He
+would build bridges that should eclipse Stevenson's. He would be like
+Warren Hastings, and buy back the home of his fathers and be a great
+gentleman.
+
+The first pay that he received made him a capitalist. He had no idea
+before of the joy of wealth. He paid it to old Rawson.
+
+"There is the first return for your investment," he said.
+
+"I don' know about its bein' the first return," said the squire, slowly;
+"but an investment ain't done till it's all returned." His keen eyes
+were on Keith's face.
+
+"I know it," said Keith, laughing.
+
+But for Dr. Balsam, Keith sometimes thought that he must have died that
+first winter, and, in fact, the young man did owe a great deal to the
+tall, slab-sided man, whose clothes hung on him so loosely that he
+appeared in the distance hardly more than a rack to support them. As he
+came nearer he was a simple old countryman with a deeply graved face and
+unkempt air. On nearer view still, you found the deep gray eyes both
+shrewd and kindly; the mouth under its gray moustache had fine lines,
+and at times a lurking smile, which yet had in it something grave.
+
+To Dr. Balsam, Keith owed a great deal more than he himself knew at the
+time. For it is only by looking back that Youth can gauge the steps by
+which it has climbed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ALICE YORKE
+
+It is said that in Brazil a small stream which rises under a bank in a
+gentleman's garden, after flowing a little distance, encounters a rock
+and divides into two branches, one of which flows northward and empties
+into the Amazon, whilst the other, turning to the southward, pours its
+waters into the Rio del Plata. A very small obstruction caused the
+divergence and determined the course of those two streams. So it is
+in life.
+
+One afternoon in the early Spring, Gordon Keith was walking home from
+school, his books under his arm, when, so to speak, he came on the stone
+that turned him from his smooth channel and shaped his course in life.
+
+He was going to break a colt for Squire Rawson that afternoon, so he was
+hurrying; but ever as he strode along down the winding road, the
+witchery of the tender green leaves and the odors of Spring filled eyes
+and nostrils, and called to his spirit with that subtle voice which has
+stirred Youth since Youth's own Spring awoke amid the leafy trees. In
+its call were freedom, and the charm of wide spaces, and the unspoken
+challenge of Youth to the world, and haunting vague memories, and
+whisperings of unuttered love, and all that makes Youth Youth.
+
+Presently Gordon became aware that a little ahead of him, under the
+arching boughs, were two children who were hunting for something in the
+road, and one of them was crying. At the same moment there turned the
+curve beyond them, coming toward him, a girl on horseback. He watched
+her with growing interest as she galloped toward him, for he saw that
+she was young and a stranger. Probably she was from "the Springs," as
+she was riding one of Gates's horses and was riding him hard.
+
+The rider drew in her horse and stopped as she came up to the children.
+Keith heard her ask what was the matter with the little one, and the
+older child's reply that she was crying because she had lost her money.
+"She was goin' to buy candy with it at the store, but dropped it."
+
+The girl sprang from her horse.
+
+"Oh, you poor little thing! Come here, you dear little kitten. I'll give
+you some money. Won't you hold my horse? He won't hurt you." This to the
+elder child.
+
+She threw herself on her knees in the road, as regardless of the dust as
+were the children, and drawing the sobbing child close to her, took her
+handkerchief from her pocket and gently wiped its little, dirty, smeared
+face, and began comforting it in soothing tones. Keith had come up and
+stood watching her with quickening breath. All he could see under her
+hat was an oval chin and the dainty curve of a pink cheek where it faded
+into snow, and at the back of a small head a knot of brown hair resting
+on the nape of a shapely neck. For the rest, she had a trim figure and
+wore new gloves which fitted perfectly. Keith mentally decided that she
+must be about sixteen or seventeen years old, and, from the glimpse he
+had caught of her, must be pretty. He became conscious suddenly that he
+had on his worst suit of clothes.
+
+"Good evening," he said, raising his hand to his hat.
+
+The girl glanced up just as the hat was lifted.
+
+"How do you do?"
+
+Their eyes met, and the color surged into Keith's face, and the hat came
+off with quite a flourish.
+
+Why, she was beautiful! Her eyes were as blue as wet violets.
+
+"I will help you hunt for it," he said half guilefully, half kindly.
+"Where did she drop it?" He did not take his eyes from the picture of
+the slim figure on her knees.
+
+"She has lost her money, poor little dear! She was on her way to the
+store to buy candy, and lost all her money."
+
+At this fresh recital of her loss, the little, smeared face began to
+pucker again. But the girl cleared it with a kiss.
+
+"There, don't cry. I will give you some. How much was it? A nickel! A
+whole nickel!" This with the sweetest smile. "Well, you shall have a
+quarter, and that's four nickels--I mean five."
+
+"She is not strong on arithmetic," said Keith to himself. "She is like
+Phrony in that."
+
+She began to feel about her skirt, and her face changed.
+
+"Oh, I haven't a cent. I have left my purse at the hotel." This was to
+Keith.
+
+"Let me give it to her." And he also began to feel in his pocket, but as
+he did so his countenance fell. He, too, had not a cent.
+
+"I have left my purse at home, too," he said. "We shall have to do like
+the woman in the Bible, and sweep diligently till we find the money
+she lost."
+
+"We are a pauper lot," said Alice Yorke, with a little laugh. Then, as
+she glanced into the child's big eyes that were beginning to be troubled
+again, she paused. The next second she drew a small bracelet from her
+wrist, and began to pull at a small gold charm. "Here, you shall have
+this; this is gold."
+
+"Oh, don't do that," said Keith. "She wouldn't appreciate it, and it is
+a pity to spoil your bracelet."
+
+She glanced up at him with a little flash in her blue eyes, as a
+vigorous twist broke the little gold piece from its chain.
+
+"She shall have it. There, see how she is smiling. I have enjoyed it,
+and I am glad to have you have it. Now, you can get your candy.
+Now, kiss me."
+
+Somehow, the phrase and the tone brought back to Keith a hill-top
+overlooking an English village, and a blue lake below, set like a
+mirror among the green hills. A little girl in white, with brown eyes,
+was handing a doll to another child even more grimy than this one. The
+reminiscence came to him like a picture thrown by a magic lantern.
+
+The child, without taking her eyes from the tiny bit of metal, put up
+her little mouth, and the girl kissed her, only to have the kiss wiped
+off with the chubby, dirty little hand.
+
+The next moment the two little ones started down the road, their heads
+close together over the bit of yellow gold. Then it was that Alice Yorke
+for the first time took a real look at Keith,--a look provoked by the
+casual glance she had had of him but a moment before,--and as she did so
+the color stole up into her cheeks, as she thought of the way in which
+she had just addressed him. But for his plain clothes he looked quite a
+gentleman. He had a really good figure; straight, broad shoulders, and
+fine eyes.
+
+"Can you tell me what time it is?" she asked, falteringly. "I left my
+watch at the hotel."
+
+"I haven't a watch; but I think it must be about four o'clock--it was
+half-past three when I left school, by the school clock; I am not sure
+it was just right."
+
+"Thank you." She looked at her horse. "I must get back to the hotel. Can
+you--?"
+
+Keith forestalled her.
+
+"May I help you up?'
+
+"Thanks. Do you know how to mount me?"
+
+"I think so," he said airily, and stepped up close to her, to lift her
+by the elbows to her saddle. She put out a foot clad in a very pretty,
+neat shoe. She evidently expected Keith to let her step into his hand.
+He knew of this mode of helping a lady up, but he had never tried it.
+And, though he stooped and held his hand as if quite accustomed to it,
+he was awkward about it, and did not lift her; so she did not get up.
+
+"I don't think you can do it that way," said the girl.
+
+"I don't think so either," said Keith. "I must learn it. But I know how
+to do it this way." He caught her by both elbows. "Now jump!"
+
+Taken by surprise she gave a little spring, and he lifted her like a
+feather, and seated her in her saddle.
+
+As she rode away, he stood aside and lifted his hat with an air that
+surprised her. Also, as she rode away, he remarked that she sat her
+horse very well and had a very straight, slim figure; but the picture of
+her kneeling in the dust, with her arm around the little sobbing child,
+was what he dwelt on.
+
+Just as she disappeared, a redbird in its gorgeous uniform flitted
+dipping across the road, and, taking his place in a bush, began to sing
+imperiously for his mate.
+
+"Ah, you lucky rascal," thought Keith, "you don't get caught by a pretty
+girl, in a ragged coat. You have your best clothes on every day."
+
+Next second, as the bird's rich notes rang out, a deeper feeling came to
+him, and a wave of dissatisfaction with his life swept over him. He
+suddenly seemed lonelier than he had been. Then the picture of the girl
+on her knees came back to him, and his heart softened toward her. He
+determined to see her again. Perhaps, Dr. Balsam knew her?
+
+As the young girl rode back to the hotel she had her reward in a
+pleasant sensation. She had done a good deed in helping to console a
+little child, and no kindness ever goes without this reward. Besides,
+she had met a young, strange man, a country boy, it was true, and very
+plainly dressed, but with the manner and tone of a gentleman, quite
+good-looking, and very strong. Strength, mere physical strength, appeals
+to all girls at certain ages, and Miss Alice Yorke's thoughts quite
+softened toward the stranger. Why, he as good as picked her up! He must
+be as strong as Norman Wentworth, who stroked his crew. She recalled
+with approval his good shoulders.
+
+She would ask the old Doctor who he was. He was a pleasant old man, and
+though her mother and Mrs. Nailor, another New York lady, did not like
+the idea of his being the only doctor at the Springs, he had been very
+nice to her. He had seen her sitting on the ground the day before and
+had given her his buggy-robe to sit on, saying, with a smile, "You must
+not sit on the wet ground, or you may fall into my hands."
+
+"I might do worse," she had said. And he had looked at her with his deep
+eyes twinkling.
+
+"Ah, you young minx! When do you begin flattering? And at what age do
+you let men off?"
+
+When Miss Alice Yorke arrived at the hotel she found her mother and Mrs.
+Nailor engaged in an animated conversation on the porch.
+
+The girl told of the little child she had found crying in the road, and
+gave a humorous account of the young countryman trying to put her on
+her horse.
+
+"He was very good-looking, too," she declared gayly. "I think he must be
+studying for the ministry, like Mr. Rimmon, for he quoted the Bible."
+
+Both Mrs. Yorke and Mrs. Nailor thought it rather improper for her to be
+riding alone on the public roads.
+
+The next day Keith put on his best suit of clothes when he went to
+school, and that afternoon he walked home around the Ridge, as he had
+done the day before, thinking that possibly he might meet the girl
+again, but he was disappointed. The following afternoon he determined to
+go over to the Springs and see if she was still there and find out who
+she was. Accordingly, he left the main road, which ran around the base
+of the Ridge, and took a foot-path which led winding up through the
+woods over the Ridge. It was a path that Gordon often chose when he
+wanted to be alone. The way was steep and rocky, and was so little used
+that often he never met any one from the time he plunged into the woods
+until he emerged from them on the other side of the Ridge. In some
+places the pines were so thick that it was always twilight among them;
+in others they rose high and stately in the full majesty of primeval
+growth, keeping at a distance from each other, as though, like another
+growth, the higher they got the more distant they wished to hold all
+others. Trees have so much in common with men, it is no wonder that the
+ancients, who lived closer to both than we do nowadays, fabled that
+minds of men sometimes inhabited their trunks.
+
+Gordon Keith was in a particularly gloomy frame of mind on this day. He
+had been trying to inspire in his pupils some conception of the poetry
+contained in history. He told them the story of Hannibal--his aim, his
+struggles, his conquest. As he told it the written record took life, and
+he marched and fought and lived with the great Carthaginian
+captain--lived for conquest.
+
+"Beyond the Alps lies Italy." He had read the tale with lips that
+quivered with feeling, but as he looked up at his little audience, he
+met only listless eyes and dull faces. A big boy was preparing a pin to
+evoke from a smaller neighbor the attention he himself was withholding.
+The neighbor was Dave Dennison. Dave was of late actually trying to
+learn something. Dave was the only boy who was listening. A little girl
+with a lisp was trying in vain to divide her attention between the story
+and an imprisoned fly the boy next her was torturing, whilst Phrony was
+reading a novel on the sly. The others were all engaged in any other
+occupation than thinking of Hannibal or listening to the reader.
+
+Gordon had shut the book in a fit of disappointment and disgust and
+dismissed the school, and now he was trying with very poor success to
+justify himself for his outbreak of impatience. His failure spoiled the
+pleasure he had anticipated in going to the Springs to find out who the
+Madonna of the Dust was.
+
+At a spot high up on the rocky backbone, one could see for a long way
+between the great brownish-gray trunks, and Gordon turned out of the dim
+path to walk on the thick brown carpet of pine-needles. It was a
+favorite spot with Gordon, and here he read Keats and Poe and other
+poets of melancholy, so dear to a young man's heart.
+
+Beyond the pines at their eastern edge, a great crag jutted forth in a
+sort of shoulder, a vast flying-buttress that supported the pine-clad
+Ridge above--a mighty stone Atlas carrying the hills on its shoulder.
+From this rock one looked out eastward over the rolling country below to
+where, far beyond sloping hills covered with forest, it merged into a
+soft blue that faded away into the sky itself. In that misty space lay
+everything that Gordon Keith had known and loved in the past. Off there
+to the eastward was his old home, with its wide fields, its deep
+memories. There his forefathers had lived for generations and had been
+the leaders, making their name always the same with that of gentleman.
+
+Farther away, beyond that dim line lay the great world, the world of
+which he had had as a boy a single glimpse and which he would
+yet conquer.
+
+Keith had climbed to the crest of the Ridge and was making his way
+through the great pines to the point where the crag jutted out sheer and
+massive, overlooking the reaches of rolling country below, when he
+lifted his eyes, and just above him, half seated, half reclining against
+a ledge of rock, was the very girl he had seen two days before. Her eyes
+were closed, and her face was so white that the thought sprang into
+Keith's mind that she was dead, and his heart leaped into his throat. At
+the distance of a few yards he stopped and scanned her closely. She had
+on a riding-habit; her hat had fallen on her neck; her dark hair,
+loosened, lay about her throat, increasing the deep pallor of her face.
+Keith's pity changed into sorrow. Suddenly, as he leaned forward, his
+heart filled with a vague grief, she opened her eyes--as blue as he
+remembered them, but now misty and dull. She did not stir or speak, but
+gazed at him fixedly for a little space, and then the eyes closed again
+wearily, her head dropped over to the side, and she began to sink down.
+
+Gordon sprang forward to keep her from rolling down the bank. As he
+gently caught and eased her down on the soft carpeting of pine-needles,
+he observed how delicate her features were; the blue veins showed
+clearly on her temples and the side of her throat, and her face had that
+refinement that unconsciousness often gives.
+
+Gordon knew that the best thing to do was to lower her head and unfasten
+her collar. As he loosened the collar, the whiteness of her throat
+struck him almost dazzlingly. Instinctively he took the little crumpled
+handkerchief that lay on the pine carpet beside her, and spread it over
+her throat reverently. He lifted her limp hand gently and felt her
+little wrist for her pulse.
+
+Just then her eyelids quivered; her lips moved slightly, stopped, moved
+again with a faint sigh; and then her eyelids opened slowly, and again
+those blue eyes gazed up at him with a vague inquiry.
+
+The next second she appeared to recover consciousness. She drew a long,
+deep breath, as though she were returning from some unknown deep, and a
+faint little color flickered in her cheek.
+
+"Oh, it's you?" she said, recognizing him. "How do you do? I think I
+must have hurt myself when I fell. I tried to ride my horse down the
+bank, and he slipped and fell with me, and I do not remember much after
+that. He must have run away. I tried to walk, but--but I am better now.
+Could you catch my horse for me?"
+
+Keith rose and, followed the horse's track for some distance along the
+little path. When he returned, the girl was still seated against
+the rock.
+
+"Did you see him?" she asked languidly, sitting up.
+
+"I am afraid that he has gone home. He was galloping. I could tell from
+his tracks."
+
+"I think I can walk. I must."
+
+She tried to rise, but, with the pain caused by the effort, the blood
+sprang to her cheek for a second and then fled back to her heart, and
+she sank back, her teeth catching her lip sharply to keep down an
+expression of anguish.
+
+"I must get back. If my horse should reach, the hotel without me, my
+mother will be dreadfully alarmed. I promised her to be back by--"
+
+Gordon did not hear what the hour was, for she turned away her face and
+began to cry quietly. She tried to brush the tears away with her
+fingers; but one or two slipped past and dropped on her dress. With face
+still averted, she began to feel about her dress for her handkerchief;
+but being unable to find it, she gave it up.
+
+There was something about her crying so quietly that touched the young
+man very curiously. She seemed suddenly much younger, quite like a
+little girl, and he felt like kissing her to comfort her. He did the
+next thing.
+
+"Don't cry," he said gently. "Here, take mine." He pressed his
+handkerchief on her. He blessed Heaven that it was uncrumpled.
+
+Now there is something about one's lending another a handkerchief that
+goes far toward breaking down the barriers of conventionality and
+bridges years. Keith in a moment had come to feel a friendliness for the
+girl that he might not have felt in years, and he began to soothe her.
+
+"I don't know what is the matter--with me," she said, as she dried her
+eyes. "I am not--usually so--weak and foolish. I was only afraid my
+mother would think something had happened to me--and she has not been
+very well." She made a brave effort to command herself, and sat up very
+straight. "There. Thank you very much." She handed him his handkerchief
+almost grimly. "Now I am all right. But I am afraid I cannot walk. I
+tried, but--. You will have to go and get me a carriage, if you please."
+
+Keith rose and began to gather up his books and stuff them in his
+pockets.
+
+"No carriage can get up here; the pines are too thick below, and there
+is no road; but I will carry you down to where a vehicle can come, and
+then get you one."
+
+She took a glance at his spare figure. "You cannot carry me, you are
+not strong enough I want you to get me a carriage or a wagon, please.
+You can go to the hotel. We are stopping at the Springs."
+
+By this time Gordon had forced the books into his pocket, and he squared
+himself before her.
+
+"Now," he said, without heeding her protest; and leaning down, he
+slipped his arms under her and lifted her as tenderly and as easily as
+if she had been a little girl.
+
+As he bore her along, the pain subsided, and she found opportunity to
+take a good look at his face. His profile was clean-cut; the mouth was
+pleasant and curved slightly upward, but, under the weight he was
+carrying, was so close shut as to bring out the chin boldly. The
+cheekbones were rather high; the gray eyes were wide open and full of
+light. And as he advanced, walking with easy strides where the path was
+smooth, picking his way carefully where it was rough, the color rose
+under the deep tan of his cheeks.
+
+She was the first to break the silence. She had been watching the rising
+color in his face, the dilation of his nostrils, and feeling the
+quickening rise and fall of his chest.
+
+"Put me down now and rest; you are tired."
+
+"I am not tired." He trudged on. He would show her that if he had not
+been able to mount her on her horse, at least it was not from lack
+of strength.
+
+"Please put me down; it pains me," she said guilefully. He stopped
+instantly, and selecting a clear place, seated her softly.
+
+"I beg your pardon. I was a brute, thinking only of myself."
+
+He seated himself near her, and stole a glance at her face. Their eyes
+met, and he looked away. He thought her quite beautiful.
+
+To break the silence, she asked, a little tone of politeness coming into
+her voice: "May I inquire what your name is? I am Miss Yorke--Miss Alice
+Yorke," she added, intending to make him feel at ease.
+
+"Gordon Keith is my name. Where are you from?" His manner was again
+perfectly easy.
+
+"From New York."
+
+"I thought you were."
+
+She fancied that a little change came over his face and into his manner,
+and she resented it. She looked down the hill. Without a word he rose
+and started to lift her again. She made a gesture of dissent. But before
+she could object further, he had lifted her again, and, with steady eyes
+bent on the stony path, was picking his way down the steep hill.
+
+"I am dreadfully sorry," he said kindly, as she gave a start over a
+little twinge. "It is the only way to get down. No vehicle could get up
+here at present, unless it were some kind of a flying chariot like
+Elijah's. It is only a little farther now."
+
+What a pleasant voice he had! Every atom of pride and protection in his
+soul was enlisted.
+
+When they reached the road, the young lady wanted Gordon to go off and
+procure a vehicle at the hotel. But he said he could not leave her alone
+by the roadside; he would carry her on to a house only a little way
+around the bend.
+
+"Why, I can carry a sack of salt," he said, with boyish pride, standing
+before her very straight and looking down on her with frank eyes.
+
+Her eyes flashed in dudgeon over the comparison.
+
+"A girl is very different from a sack of salt."
+
+"Not always--Lot's wife, for instance. If you keep on looking back, you
+don't know what may happen to you. Come on."
+
+Just then a vehicle rapidly driven was heard in the distance, and the
+next moment it appeared in sight.
+
+"There comes mamma now," said the girl, waving to the lady in it.
+
+Mrs. Yorke sprang from the carriage as soon as it drew up. She was a
+handsome woman of middle age and was richly dressed. She was now in a
+panic of motherly solicitude.
+
+"Oh, Alice, how you have frightened me!" she exclaimed. "You were due at
+the hotel two hours ago, and when your horse came without you! You will
+kill me!" She clapped her hands to her heart and panted. "You know my
+heart is weak!"
+
+Alice protested her sorrow, and Keith put in a word for her, declaring
+that she had been dreadfully troubled lest the horse should
+frighten her.
+
+"And well she might be," exclaimed Mrs. Yorke, giving him a bare glance
+and then turning back to her daughter. "Mrs. Nailor was the first who
+heard your horse had come home. She ran and told me. And, oh, I was so
+frightened! She was sure you were killed."
+
+"You might be sure she would be the first to hear and tell you," said
+the girl. "Why, mamma, one always sprains one's knee when one's horse
+falls. That is part of the programme. This--gentleman happened to come
+along, and helped me down to the road, and we were just discussing
+whether I should go on farther when you came up. Mother, this is
+Mr. Keith."
+
+Keith bowed. He was for some reason pleased that she did not say
+anything of the way in which he had brought her down the Ridge.
+
+Mrs. Yorke turned and thanked him with graciousness, possibly with a
+little condescension. He was conscious that she gave him a sweeping
+glance, and was sorry his shoes were so old. But Mrs. Yorke took no
+further notice of him.
+
+"Oh, what will your father say! You know he wanted us to go to
+California; but you would come South. After Mr. Wickersham told you of
+his place, nothing else would satisfy you."
+
+"Oh, papa! You know I can settle him," said the girl.
+
+Mrs. Yorke began to lament the wretchedness of a region where there was
+no doctor of reputation.
+
+"There is a very fine surgeon in the village. Dr. Balsam is one of the
+best surgeons anywhere," said Keith.
+
+"Oh, I know that old man. No doubt, he is good enough for little common
+ailments," said Mrs. Yorke, "but in a case like this! What does he know
+about surgery?" She turned back to her daughter. "I shall telegraph your
+father to send Dr. Pilbury down at once."
+
+Keith flushed at her manner.
+
+"A good many people have to trust their lives to him," he said coldly.
+"And he has had about as much surgical practice as most men. He was in
+the army."
+
+The girl began again to belittle her injury.
+
+It was nothing, absolutely nothing, she declared.
+
+"And besides," she said, "I know the Doctor. I met him the other day. He
+is a dear old man." She ended by addressing Keith.
+
+"One of the best," said Keith, warmly.
+
+"Well, we must get you into the vehicle and take you home immediately,"
+said her mother. "Can you help put my daughter into the carriage?" Mrs.
+Yorke looked at the driver, a stolid colored man, who was surly over
+having had to drive his horses so hard.
+
+Before the man could answer, Gordon stepped forward, and, stooping,
+lifted the girl, and quietly put her up into the vehicle. She simply
+smiled and said, "Thank you," quite as if she were accustomed to being
+lifted into carriages by strange young men whom she had just met on
+the roadside.
+
+Mrs. Yorke's eyes opened wide.
+
+"How strong you must be!" she exclaimed, with a woman's admiration for
+physical strength.
+
+Keith bowed, and, with a flush mounting to his cheeks, backed a little
+away.
+
+"Oh, he has often lifted sacks of salt," said the girl, half turning her
+eyes on Keith with a gleam of satisfaction in them.
+
+Mrs. Yorke looked at her in astonishment.
+
+"Why, Alice!" she exclaimed reprovingly under her breath.
+
+"He told me so himself," asserted the girl, defiantly.
+
+"I may have to do so again," said Keith, dryly.
+
+Mrs. Yorke's hand went toward the region of her pocket, but uncertainly;
+for she was not quite sure what he was. His face and air belied his
+shabby dress. A closer look than she had given him caused her to stop
+with a start.
+
+"Mr.--ah--?" After trying to recall the name, she gave it up. "I am very
+much obliged to you for your kindness to my daughter," she began. "I do
+not know how I can compensate you; but if you will come to the hotel
+sometime to-morrow--any time--perhaps, there is something--? Can you
+come to the hotel to-morrow?" Her tone was condescending.
+
+"Thank you," said Keith, quietly. "I am afraid I cannot go to the
+village to-morrow. I have already been more than compensated in being
+able to render a service to a lady. I have a school, and I make it a
+rule never to go anywhere except Friday evening or Saturday." He lifted
+his hat and backed away.
+
+As they drove away the girl said, "Thank you" and "Good-by," very
+sweetly.
+
+"Who is he, Alice? What is he?" asked her mother.
+
+"I don't know. Mr. Keith. He is a gentleman."
+
+As Gordon stood by the roadside and saw the carriage disappear in a haze
+of dust, he was oppressed with a curious sense of loneliness. The
+isolation of his position seemed to strike him all on a sudden. That
+stout, full-voiced woman, with her rich clothes, had interposed between
+him and the rest of his kind. She had treated him condescendingly. He
+would show her some day who he was. But her daughter! He went off into
+a revery.
+
+He turned, and made his way slowly and musingly in the direction of his
+home.
+
+A new force had suddenly come into his life, a new land had opened
+before him. One young girl had effected it. His school suddenly became a
+prison. His field was the world.
+
+As he passed along, scarcely conscious of where he was, he met the very
+man of all others he would rather have met--Dr. Balsam. He instantly
+informed the Doctor of the accident, and suggested that he had better
+hurry on to the Springs.
+
+"A pretty girl, with blue eyes and brown hair?" inquired the Doctor.
+
+"Yes." The color stole into Gordon's cheeks.
+
+"With a silly woman for a mother, who is always talking about her heart
+and pats you on the back?"
+
+"I don't know. Yes, I think so."
+
+"I know her. Is the limb broken?" he asked with interest.
+
+"No, I do not think it is; but badly sprained. She fainted from the
+pain, I think."
+
+"You say it occurred up on the Ridge?"
+
+"Yes, near the big pines--at the summit."
+
+"Why, how did she get down? There is no road." He was gazing up at the
+pine-clad spur above them.
+
+"I helped her down." A little color flushed into his face.
+
+"Ah! You supported her? She can walk on it?"
+
+"Ur--no. I brought her down. I had to bring her. She could not walk--not
+a step."
+
+"Oh! ah! I see. I'll hurry on and see how she is."
+
+As he rode off he gave a grunt.
+
+"Humph!" It might have meant any one of several things. Perhaps, what it
+did mean was that "Youth is the same the world over, and here is a
+chance for this boy to make a fool of himself and he will probably do
+it, as I did." As the Doctor jogged on over the rocky road, his brow was
+knit in deep reflection; but his thoughts were far away among other
+pines on the Piscataqua. That boy's face had turned the dial back nearly
+forty years.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MRS. YORKE FINDS A GENTLEMAN
+
+When Mrs. Yorke arrived at the hotel, Dr. Balsam was nowhere to be
+found. She was just sending off a messenger to despatch a telegram to
+the nearest city for a surgeon, when she saw the Doctor coming up the
+hill toward the hotel at a rapid pace.
+
+He tied his horse, and, with his saddle-pockets over his arm, came
+striding up the walk. There was something reassuring in the quick, firm
+step with which he came toward her. She had not given him credit for so
+much energy.
+
+Mrs. Yorke led the way toward her rooms, giving a somewhat highly
+colored description of the accident, the Doctor following without a
+word, taking off his gloves as he walked. They reached the door, and
+Mrs. Yorke flung it open with a flurry.
+
+"Here he is at last, my poor child!" she exclaimed.
+
+The sight of Alice lying on a lounge quite effaced Mrs. Yorke from the
+Doctor's mind. The next second he had taken the girl's hand, and holding
+it with a touch that would not have crumpled a butterfly's wings, he was
+taking a flitting gauge of her pulse. Mrs. Yorke continued to talk
+volubly, but the Doctor took no heed of her.
+
+"A little rest with fixation, madam, is all that is necessary," he said
+quietly, at length, when he had made an examination. "But it must be
+rest, entire rest of limb and body--and mind," he added after a pause.
+"Will you ask Mrs. Gates to send me a kettle of hot water as soon as
+possible?"
+
+Mrs. Yorke had never been so completely ignored by any physician. She
+tossed her head, but she went to get the water.
+
+"So my young man Keith found you and brought you down the Ridge?" said
+the Doctor presently to the girl.
+
+"Yes; how do you know?" she asked, her blue eyes wide open with
+surprise.
+
+"Never mind; I may tell you next time I come, if you get well quickly,"
+he said smiling.
+
+"Who is he?" she asked.
+
+"He is the teacher of the school over the Ridge--what is known as the
+Ridge College," said the Doctor, with a smile.
+
+Just at this moment Mrs. Yorke bustled in.
+
+"Alice, I thought the Doctor said you were not to talk."
+
+The Doctor's face wore an amused expression.
+
+"Well, just one more question," said the girl to him. "How much does a
+sack of salt weigh?"
+
+"About two hundred pounds. To be accurate,--"
+
+"No wonder he said I was light," laughed the girl.
+
+"Who is a young man named Keith--a school-boy, who lives about here?"
+inquired Mrs. Yorke, suddenly.
+
+"The Keiths do not live about here," said the Doctor. "Gordon Keith, to
+whom you doubtless refer, is the son of General Keith, who lives in an
+adjoining county below the Ridge. His father was our minister during
+the war--"
+
+At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of
+Mrs. Gates with the desired kettle of hot water, and the Doctor,
+stopping in the midst of his sentence, devoted all of his attention to
+his patient.
+
+The confidence which he displayed and the deftness with which he worked
+impressed Mrs. Yorke so much that when he was through she said: "Doctor,
+I have been wondering how a man like you could be content to settle down
+in this mountain wilderness. I know many fashionable physicians in
+cities who could not have done for Alice a bit better than you have
+done--indeed, nothing like so well--with such simple appliances."
+
+Dr. Balsam's eyes rested on her gravely. "Well, madam, we could not all
+be city doctors. These few sheep in the wilderness need a little
+shepherding when they get sick. You must reflect also that if we all
+went away there would be no one to look after the city people when they
+come to our mountain wilderness; they, at least, need good attendance."
+
+By the time Gordon awoke next morning he had determined that he would
+see his new acquaintance again. He must see her; he would not allow her
+to go out of his life so; she should, at least, know who he was, and
+Mrs. Yorke should know, too.
+
+That afternoon, impelled by some strange motive, he took the path over
+the Ridge again. It had been a long day and a wearing one. He had tried
+Hannibal once more; but his pupils cared less for Hannibal than for the
+bumble-bees droning in the window-frame. For some reason the dull
+routine of lessons had been duller than usual. The scholars had never
+been so stupid. Again and again the face that he had seen rest on his
+arm the day before came between him and his page, and when the eyes
+opened they were as blue as forget-me-nots. He would rouse himself with
+a start and plunge back bravely into the mysteries of physical geography
+or of compound fractions, only to find himself, at the first quiet
+moment, picking his way through the pines with that white face resting
+against his shoulder.
+
+When school was out he declined the invitation of the boys to walk with
+them, and settled himself in his chair as though he meant to prepare the
+lessons for the next day. After a quarter of an hour, spent mostly in
+revery, he rose, put up his books, closed the door, and took the same
+path he had followed the day before. As he neared the spot where he had
+come on the girl, he almost expected to find her propped against the
+rock as he had found her the afternoon before. He was conscious of a
+distinct shock of loneliness that she was not there. The woods had never
+appeared so empty; the soughing of the pines had never sounded
+so dreary.
+
+He threw himself down on the thick brown carpet. He had not felt so
+lonely in years. What was he! And what chance did he have! He was alone
+in the wilderness. He had been priding himself on being the superior of
+those around him, and that strange woman had treated him with
+condescension, when he had strained his heart out to get her daughter to
+the road safely and without pain.
+
+His eyes rested on the level, pale line of the horizon far below him.
+Down there lay all he had ever known and loved. All was changed; his
+home belonged to an alien. He turned his face away. On the other side,
+the distant mountains lay a mighty rampart across the sky. He wondered
+if the Alps could be higher or more beautiful. A line he had been
+explaining the day before to his scholars recurred to him: "Beyond those
+mountains lies Italy."
+
+Gradually it came to him that he was duller than his scholars. Those who
+were the true leaders of men surmounted difficulties. Others had crossed
+the mountains to find the Italy of their ambition. Why should not he?
+The thought strung him up sharply, and before he knew it he was standing
+upright, his face lifted to the sky, his nerves tense, his pulses
+beating, and his breath coming quickly. Beyond that blue rim lay the
+world. He would conquer and achieve honors and fame, and win back his
+old home, and build up again his fortune, and do honor to his name. He
+seized his books, and, with one more look at the heights beyond, turned
+and strode swiftly along the path.
+
+It was, perhaps, fortunate that the day had been a dull one for both
+Mrs. Yorke and Alice. Alice had been confined to her lounge, and after
+the first anxiety was over Mrs. Yorke had been inclined to scold her for
+her carelessness and the fright she had given her. They had not agreed
+about a number of matters. Alice had been talking about her adventure
+until Mrs. Yorke had begun to criticise her rescuer as "a spindling
+country boy."
+
+"He was strong enough to bring me down the mountain a mile in his arms,"
+declared the girl. "He said it was half a mile, but I am sure it was
+a mile."
+
+Mrs. Yorke was shocked, and charged Alice with being susceptible enough
+to like all men.
+
+"All those who are strong and good-looking," protested Alice.
+
+Their little difference had now been made up, and Alice, who had been
+sitting silent, with a look of serious reflection on her face, said:
+
+"Mamma, why don't you invite him over to dinner?"
+
+Mrs. Yorke gave an exclamation of surprise.
+
+"Why, Alice, we know nothing about him."
+
+But the girl was insistent.
+
+"Why, mamma, I am sure he is a gentleman. Dr. Balsam said he was one of
+the best people about here, and his father was a clergyman. Besides, he
+is very interesting. His father was in the war; I believe he was
+a general."
+
+Mrs. Yorke pondered a moment, her pen in the air. Her thoughts flew to
+New York and her acquaintances there. Their view was her gauge.
+
+"Well," she said doubtfully, "perhaps, later I will; there is no one
+here whom we know except Mrs. Nailor. I have heard that the people are
+very interesting if you can get at them. I'll invite him first to
+luncheon Saturday, and see how he is."
+
+It is, doubtless, just as well that none of us has the magic mirror
+which we used to read of in our childhood, which showed what any one we
+wished to know about was doing. It would, no doubt, cause many
+perplexities from which, in our ignorance, we are happily free. Had
+Gordon Keith known the terms on which he was invited to take a meal in
+the presence of Mrs. Yorke, he would have been incensed. He had been
+fuming about her condescension ever since he had met her; yet he no
+sooner received her polite note than he was in the best humor possible.
+He brushed up his well-worn clothes, treated himself to a new necktie,
+which he had been saving all the session, and just at the appointed hour
+presented himself with a face so alight with expectancy, and a manner
+which, while entirely modest, was so natural and easy, that Mrs. Yorke
+was astonished. She could scarcely credit the fact that this bright-eyed
+young man, with his fine nose, firm chin, and melodious voice, was the
+same with the dusty, hot-faced, dishevelled-looking country boy to whom
+she had thought of offering money for a kindness two days before.
+
+When Keith first entered the room Alice Yorke was seated in a
+reclining-chair, enveloped in soft white, from which she gave him a
+smiling greeting. For years afterwards, whenever Gordon Keith thought of
+beauty it was of a girl smiling up at him out of a cloud of white. It
+was a charming visit for him, and he reproached himself for his hard
+thoughts about Mrs. Yorke. He aired all of his knowledge, and made such
+a favorable impression on the good lady that she became very friendly
+with him. He did not know that Mrs. Yorke's kindness to him was
+condescension, and her cordiality inspired as much by curiosity
+as courtesy.
+
+"Dr. Balsam has been telling us about you, Mr. Keith," said Mrs. Yorke,
+with a bow which brought a pleased smile to the young man's face.
+
+"He has? The Doctor has always been good to me. I am afraid he has a
+higher opinion of me than I deserve," he said, with a boy's pretended
+modesty, whilst his eyes strongly belied his words.
+
+Mrs. Yorke assured him that such could not be the case.
+
+"Don't you want to know what he said?" asked Miss Alice, with a
+bell-like laugh.
+
+"Yes; what?" he smiled.
+
+"He said if you undertook to carry a bag of salt down a mountain, or up
+it either, you would never rest until you got there."
+
+Her eyes twinkled, and Gordon appeared half teased, though he was
+inwardly pleased.
+
+Mrs. Yorke looked shocked.
+
+"Oh, Alice, Dr. Balsam did not say that, for I heard him!" she exclaimed
+reprovingly. "Dr. Balsam was very complimentary to you, Mr. Keith," she
+explained seriously. "He said your people were among the best families
+about here." She meant to be gracious; but Gordon's face flushed in
+spite of himself. The condescension was too apparent.
+
+"Your father was a pre--a--a--clergyman?" said Mrs. Yorke, who had
+started to say "preacher," but substituted the other word as more
+complimentary.
+
+"My father a clergyman! No'm. He is good enough to be one; but he was a
+planter and a--a--soldier," said Gordon.
+
+Mrs. Yorke looked at her daughter in some mystification. Could this be
+the wrong man?
+
+"Why, he said he was a clergyman?" she insisted.
+
+Gordon gazed at the girl in bewilderment.
+
+"Yes; he said he was a minister," she replied to his unspoken inquiry.
+
+Gordon broke into a laugh.
+
+"Oh, he was a special envoy to England after he was wounded."
+
+The announcement had a distinct effect upon Mrs. Yorke, who instantly
+became much more cordial to Gordon. She took a closer look at him than
+she had given herself the trouble to take before, and discovered, under
+the sunburn and worn clothes, something more than she had formerly
+observed. The young man's expression had changed. A reference to his
+father always sobered him and kindled a light in his eyes. It was the
+first time Mrs. Yorke had taken in what her daughter meant by calling
+him handsome.
+
+"Why, he is quite distinguished-looking!" she thought to herself. And
+she reflected what a pity it was that so good-looking a young man should
+have been planted down there in that out-of-the-way pocket of the world,
+and thus lost to society. She did not know that the kindling eyes
+opposite her were burning with a resolve that not only Mrs. Yorke, but
+the world, should know him, and that she should recognize his
+superiority.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MR. KEITH'S IDEALS
+
+After this it was astonishing how many excuses Gordon could find for
+visiting the village. He was always wanting to consult a book in the
+Doctor's library, or get something, which, indeed, meant that he wanted
+to get a glimpse of a young girl with violet eyes and pink cheeks,
+stretched out in a lounging-chair, picturesquely reclining amid clouds
+of white pillows. Nearly always he carried with him a bunch of flowers
+from Mrs. Rawson's garden, which were to make patches of pink or red or
+yellow among Miss Alice's pillows, and bring a fresh light into her
+eyes. And sometimes he took a basket of cherries or strawberries for
+Mrs. Yorke. His friends, the Doctor and the Rawsons, began to rally him
+on his new interest in the Springs.
+
+"I see you are takin' a few nubbins for the old cow," said Squire
+Rawson, one afternoon as Gordon started off, at which Gordon blushed as
+red as the cherries he was carrying. It was just what he had been doing.
+
+"Well, that is the way to ketch the calf," said the old farmer,
+jovially; "but I 'low the mammy is used to pretty high feedin'." He had
+seen Mrs. Yorke driving along in much richer attire than usually dazzled
+the eyes of the Ridge neighborhood, and had gauged her with a
+shrewd eye.
+
+Miss Alice Yorke's sprain turned out to be less serious than had been
+expected. She herself had proved a much less refractory patient than her
+mother had ever known her.
+
+It does not take two young people of opposite sexes long to overcome the
+formalities which convention has fixed among their seniors, especially
+when one of them has brought the other down a mountain-side in his arms.
+
+Often, in a sheltered corner of the long verandah, Keith read to Alice
+on balmy afternoons, or in the moonlit evenings sauntered with her
+through the fields of their limited experience, and quoted snatches from
+his chosen favorites, poems that lived in his heart, and fancied her the
+"maid of the downward look and sidelong glance."
+
+Thus, by the time Alice Yorke was able to move about again, she and
+Keith had already reached a footing where they had told each other a
+good deal of their past, and were finding the present very pleasant, and
+one of them, at least, was beginning, when he turned his eyes to the
+future, to catch the glimmer of a very rosy light.
+
+It showed in his appearance, in his face, where a new expression of a
+more definite ambition and a higher resolution was beginning to take
+its place.
+
+Dr. Balsam noted it, and when he met Gordon he began to have a quizzical
+light in his deep-gray eyes. He had, too, a tender tone in his voice
+when he addressed the girl. Perhaps, a vision came to him at times of
+another country lad, well-born like this one, and, like this one, poor,
+wandering on the New England hills with another young girl, primmer,
+perhaps, and less sophisticated than this little maiden, who had come
+from the westward to spend a brief holiday on the banks of the
+Piscataqua, and had come into his life never to depart--of his dreams
+and his hopes; of his struggles to achieve the education which would
+make him worthy of her; and then of the overthrow of all: of darkness
+and exile and wanderings.
+
+When the Doctor sat on his porch of an evening, with his pipe, looking
+out over the sloping hills, sometimes his face grew almost melancholy.
+Had he not been intended for other things than this exile? Abigail
+Brooke had never married, he knew. What might have happened had he gone
+back? And when he next saw Alice Yorke there would be a softer tone in
+his voice, and he would talk a deeper and higher philosophy to her than
+she had ever heard, belittling the gaudy rewards of life, and instilling
+in her mind ideas of something loftier and better and finer than they.
+He even told her once something of the story of his life, and of the
+suffering and sorrow that had been visited upon the victims of a foolish
+pride and a selfish ambition. Though he did not confide to her that it
+was of himself he spoke, the girl's instinct instantly told her that it
+was his own experience that he related, and her interest was
+deeply excited.
+
+"Did she ever marry, Doctor?" she asked eagerly. "Oh, I hope she did
+not. I might forgive her if she did not; but if she married I would
+never forgive her!"
+
+The Doctor's eyes, as they rested on her eager face, had a kindly
+expression in them, and a look of amusement lurked there also.
+
+"No; she never married," he said. "Nor did he."
+
+"Oh, I am glad of that," she exclaimed; and then more softly added, "I
+know he did not."
+
+Dr. Balsam gazed at her calmly. He did not pursue the subject further.
+He thought he had told his story in such a way as to convey the moral
+without disclosing that he spoke of himself. Yet she had discovered it
+instantly. He wondered if she had seen also the moral he intended
+to convey.
+
+Alice Yorke was able to walk now, and many an afternoon Gordon Keith
+invited her to stroll with him on the mountain-side or up the Ridge,
+drawing her farther and farther as her strength returned.
+
+The Spring is a dangerous season for a young man and a pretty girl to be
+thrown closely together for the first time, and the budding woods are a
+perilous pasture for their browsing thoughts. It was not without some
+insight that the ancient poets pictured dryads as inhabitants of the
+woods, and made the tinkling springs and rippling streams the
+abiding-places of their nymphs.
+
+The Spring came with a burst of pink and green. The mountains took on
+delicate shades, and the trees blossomed into vast flowers, feathery and
+fine as lace.
+
+An excursion in the budding woods has been dangerous ever since the day
+when Eve found a sinuous stranger lurking there in gay disguise, and was
+beguiled into tasting the tempting fruit he offered her. It might be an
+interesting inquiry to collect even the most notable instances of those
+who, wandering all innocent and joyous amid the bowers, have found the
+honey of poisonous flowers where they meant only innocence. But the
+reader will, perhaps, recall enough instances in a private and
+unrecorded history to fill the need of illustration. It suffices, then,
+to say that, each afternoon that Gordon Keith wandered with Alice Yorke
+through the leafy woods, he was straying farther in that perilous path
+where the sunlight always sifts down just ahead, but the end is veiled
+in mist, and where sometimes darkness falls.
+
+These strolls had all the charm for him of discovery, for he was always
+finding in her some new trait, and every one was, he thought, an added
+charm, even to her unexpected alternations of ignorance and knowledge,
+her little feminine outbreaks of caprice. One afternoon they had
+strolled farther than usual, as far even as the high pines beyond which
+was the great rock looking to the northeastward. There she had asked him
+to help her up to the top of the rock, but he had refused. He told her
+that she had walked already too far, and he would not permit her
+to climb it.
+
+"Not permit me! Well, I like that!" she said, with a flash of her blue
+eyes; and springing from her seat on the brown carpet, before he could
+interpose, she was climbing up the high rock as nimbly as if she were
+a boy.
+
+He called to her to stop, but she took no heed. He began to entreat her,
+but she made no answer. He was in terror lest she might fall, and
+sprang after her to catch her; but up, up she climbed, with as steady a
+foot and as sure an eye as he could have shown himself, until she
+reached the top, when, looking down on him with dancing eyes, she kissed
+her hand in triumph and then turned away, her cheeks aglow. When he
+reached the top, she was standing on the very edge of the precipice,
+looking far over the long reach of sloping country to the blue line of
+the horizon. Keith almost gasped at her temerity. He pleaded with her
+not to be so venturesome.
+
+"Please stand farther back, I beg you," he said as he reached her side.
+
+"Now, that is better," she said, with a little nod to him, her blue eyes
+full of triumph, and she seated herself quietly on the rock.
+
+Keith began to scold her, but she laughed at him.
+
+He had done it often, she said, and what he could do she could do.
+
+The beauty of the wide landscape sank into both their minds, and after a
+little they both took a graver tone.
+
+"Tell me where your old home is," she said presently, after a long pause
+in which her face had grown thoughtful. "You told me once that you could
+see it from this rock."
+
+Keith pointed to a spot on the far horizon. He did not know that it was
+to see this even more than to brave him that she had climbed to the top
+of the rock.
+
+"Now tell me about it," she said. "Tell me all over what you have told
+me before." And Keith related all he could remember. Touched with her
+sympathy, he told it with more feeling than he had ever shown before.
+When he spoke of the loss of his home, of his mortification, and of his
+father's quiet dignity, she turned her face away to keep him from seeing
+the tears that were in her eyes.
+
+"I can understand your feeling a little," she said presently; "but I did
+not know that any one could have so much feeling for a plantation. I
+suppose it is because it is in the country, with its trees and flowers
+and little streams. We have had three houses since I can remember. The
+one that we have now on Fifth Avenue is four times as large--yes, six
+times as large--and a hundred times as fine as the one I can first
+remember, and yet, somehow, I always think, when I am sad or lonely, of
+the little white house with the tiny rooms in it, with their low
+ceilings and small windows, where I used to go when I was a very little
+girl to see my father's mother. Mamma does not care for it; she was
+brought up in the city; but I think my father loves it just as I do. He
+always says he is going to buy it back, and I am going to make him
+do it."
+
+"I am going to buy back mine some day," said Keith, very slowly.
+
+She glanced at him. His eyes were fastened on the far-off horizon, and
+there was that in his face which she had never seen there before, and
+which made her admire him more than she had ever done.
+
+"I hope you will," she said. She almost hated Ferdy Wickersham for
+having spoken of the place as Keith told her he had spoken.
+
+When Keith reached home that evening he had a wholly new feeling for the
+girl with whom accident had so curiously thrown him. He was really in
+love with her. Hitherto he had allowed himself merely to drift with the
+pleasant tide that had been setting in throughout these last weeks. But
+the phases that she had shown that afternoon, her spirit, her courage,
+her capricious rebelliousness, and, above all, that glimpse into her
+heart which he had obtained as she sat on the rock overlooking the wide
+sweep where he had had his home, and where the civilization to which it
+belonged had had its home, had shown him a new creature, and he plunged
+into love. Life appeared suddenly to open wide her gates and flood him
+with her rosy light.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MR. KEITH IS UNPRACTICAL, AND MRS. YORKE GIVES HIM GOOD ADVICE
+
+The strolls in the budding woods and the glimpses shown her of a spirit
+somewhat different from any she had known were beginning to have their
+influence on Alice. It flattered her and filled her with a certain
+content that the young school-teacher should like her so much; yet,
+knowing herself, it gave her a vague feeling that he was wanting in that
+quality of sound judgment which she recognized in some of her other
+admirers. It rather frightened her to feel that she was on a pedestal;
+and often he soared away from her with his poetry and his fancies, and
+she was afraid that he would discover it and think she was a hypocrite.
+Something that her mother had said remained in her mind.
+
+"He knows so much, mamma," said Alice one day. "Why, he can quote whole
+pages of poetry."
+
+"He is too romantic, my dear, to be practical," said Mrs. Yorke, who
+looked at the young men who approached her daughter with an eye as cool
+as a physician's glass. "He, perhaps, does know more about books than
+any boy of his age I am acquainted with; but poetry is a very poor thing
+to live on; and if he were practical he would not be teaching that
+wretched little school in the wilderness."
+
+"But, mamma, he will rise. You don't know how ambitious he is, and what
+determination he has. They have lost everything. The place that Ferdy
+Wickersham told me about his father owning, with its old pictures and
+all that, was his old home. Old Mr. Keith, since he lost it, has been
+farming it for Mr. Wickersham. Think of that!"
+
+"Just so," said Mrs. Yorke. "He inherits it. They are all unpractical.
+Your father began life poor; but he was practical, and he had the
+ability to succeed."
+
+Alice's face softened. "Dear old dad!" she said; "I must write to him."
+Even as she thought of him she could not but reflect how absorption in
+business had prevented his obtaining the culture of which this young
+school-teacher had given her a glimpse, and had crushed, though it could
+not wholly quench, the kindliness which lived in his big heart.
+
+Though Alice defended Keith, she felt in her heart there was some truth
+in her mother's estimate. He was too romantic. She soon had proof of it.
+
+General Keith came up to the Ridge just then to see Gordon. At least, he
+gave this out as the reason for his visit, and Gordon did not know until
+afterwards that there was another reason for it--that he had been in
+correspondence for some time with Dr. Balsam. He was looking thin; but
+when Gordon spoke of it, he put it by with a smile.
+
+"Oh, I am very well. We need not worry about my troubles. I have but
+two: that old wound, and Old Age; both are incurable."
+
+Gordon was very pleased to have the opportunity to introduce his father
+to Mrs. Yorke and Miss Alice. As he scanned the thin, fine face with its
+expression of calm and its lines of fortitude, he felt that it was a
+good card to play. His resemblance to the man-in-armor that hung in the
+old dining-room had increased.
+
+The General and Miss Alice promptly became great friends. He treated her
+with a certain distinction that pleased her. Mrs. Yorke, too, was both
+pleased and flattered by his gracious manner. She was, however, more
+critical toward him than her daughter was.
+
+General Keith soon discovered Gordon's interest in the young girl. It
+was not difficult to discover, for every moment of his spare time was
+devoted to her in some way. The General observed them with a quiet smile
+in his eyes. Now and then, however, the smile died out as he heard
+Gordon expressing views which were somewhat new to him. One evening they
+were all seated on the verandah together, and Gordon began to speak of
+making a fortune as a high aim. He had heard Mrs. Yorke express the same
+sentiments a few days before.
+
+"My son," said his father, gently, looking at him with grave eyes, "a
+fortune is a great blessing in the hands of the man who knows how to
+spend it. But riches considered as something to possess or to display is
+one of the most despicable and debasing of all the aims that men
+can have."
+
+Mrs. Yorke's eyes opened wide and her face hardened a little. Gordon
+thought of the toil and patience it had cost him to make even his little
+salary, and wealth appeared to him just then a very desirable
+acquisition.
+
+"Why, father," he said, "it opens the world to a man. It gives such
+great opportunities for everything; travel, knowledge, art, science,
+power, the respect and esteem of the world, are obtained by it."
+
+Something like this Mrs. Yorke had said to him, meaning, kindly enough,
+to encourage him in its pursuit.
+
+The old General smiled gravely.
+
+"Opportunity for travel and the acquirement of knowledge wealth
+undoubtedly gives, but happily they are not dependent upon wealth, my
+son. The Columbuses of science, the Galileos, Newtons, Keplers; the
+great benefactors of the world, the great inventors, the great artists,
+the great poets, philosophers, and statesmen have few of them
+been rich."
+
+"He appears to have lived in another world, mamma," said Alice when he
+had left. "He is an old dear. I never knew so unworldly a person."
+
+Mrs. Yorke's chin tilted a little.
+
+"Now, Alice, don't you be silly. He lives in another world now, and
+certainly, of all the men I know, none appears less fitted to cope with
+this world. The only real people to him appear to be those whom he has
+read of. He never tried wealth."
+
+"He used to be rich--very rich. Don't you remember what that lady told
+you?"
+
+"I don't believe it," said Mrs. Yorke, sententiously.
+
+Alice knew that this closed the argument. When her mother in such cases
+said she did not believe a thing, it meant that the door of her mind was
+fast shut and no reason could get into it.
+
+Mrs. Yorke could not but notice that some change had taken place in
+Alice of late. In a way she had undoubtedly improved. She was more
+serious, more thoughtful of Mrs. Yorke herself, less wilful. Yet it was
+not without some misgiving that Mrs. Yorke noted the change.
+
+She suddenly had her eyes opened. Mrs. Nailor, one of her New York
+friends, performed this amiable office. She assigned the possible cause,
+though not directly--Mrs. Nailor rarely did things directly. She was a
+small, purring lady, with a tilt of the head, and an insinuating voice
+of singular clearness, with a question-mark in it. She was of a very
+good family, lived in a big house on Murray Hill, and had as large a
+circle of acquaintance as any one in New York. She prided herself on
+knowing everybody worth knowing, and everything about everybody. She was
+not lacking in amiability; she was, indeed, so amiable that she would
+slander almost any absent friend to please one who was present. She had
+a little grudge against Keith, for she had been struck from the first by
+his bright eyes and good manners; but Keith had been so much engrossed
+by his interest in Alice Yorke that he had been remiss in paying Mrs.
+Nailor that attention which she felt her position required. Mrs. Nailor
+now gave Mrs. Yorke a judicious hint.
+
+"You have such a gift for knowing people?" she said to her, "and your
+daughter is so like you?" She showed her even teeth.
+
+Mrs. Yorke was not quite sure what she meant, and she answered somewhat
+coldly that she was glad that Mrs. Nailor thought so. Mrs. Nailor soon
+indicated her meaning.
+
+"The young schoolmaster--he is a schoolmaster in whom your daughter is
+interested, isn't he? Yes? He appears so well-read? He brought your
+daughter down the mountain the day her horse ran off with her? So
+romantic to make an acquaintance that way--I quite envy you? There is so
+little real romance these days! It is delightful to find it?" She
+sighed, and Mrs. Yorke thought of Daniel Nailor and his little bald head
+and round mouth. "Yes, I quite envy you--and your daughter. Who is he?"
+
+Mrs. Yorke said he was of a very old and distinguished family. She gave
+him a pedigree that would have done honor to a Derby-winner.
+
+"I am so glad," declared Mrs. Nailor. "I knew he must be, of course. I
+am sure you would never encourage such an intimacy unless he were?" She
+smiled herself off, leaving Mrs. Yorke fuming.
+
+"That woman is always sticking pins into people," she said to herself.
+But this pin had stuck fast, and Mrs. Yorke was in quite a panic.
+
+Mrs. Yorke determined to talk to Alice on the first occasion that
+offered itself; but she would not do it too abruptly. All that would be
+needed would be a hint judiciously given. For surely a girl of such
+sound sense as Alice, a girl brought up so wisely, could not for a
+moment think of acting so foolishly. And really Mrs. Yorke felt that she
+herself was very fond of this young man. She might do something for
+him--something that should be of use to him in after life. At first this
+plan took the form in her mind of getting her husband to give him a
+place; but she reflected that this would necessitate bringing him where
+his acquaintance with them might prove inconvenient. She would aid him
+in going to college for another year. This would be a delicate way to
+discharge the obligation under which his kindness had placed her.
+
+Keith, meantime, was happily ignorant of the plot that was forming
+against him. The warm weather was coming, and he knew that before long
+Mrs. Yorke and Alice would be flitting northward. However, he would make
+his hay while the sun shone for him. So one afternoon Keith had borne
+Miss Alice off to his favorite haunt, the high rock in the Ridge woods.
+He was in unusual spirits; for he had escaped from Mrs. Nailor, who of
+late had appeared to be rather lying in wait for him. It was the spot he
+loved best; for the pines behind him seemed to shut out the rest of the
+world, and he felt that here he was in some sort nearer to having Alice
+for his own than anywhere else. It was here that he had caught that
+glimpse of her heart which he felt had revealed her to him.
+
+This afternoon he was talking of love and of himself; for what young man
+who talks of love talks not of himself? She was dressed in white, and a
+single red rose that he had given her was stuck in her dress. He had
+been reading a poem to her. It contained a picture of the goddess of
+love, decked out for "worship without end." The book now lay at his
+side, and he was stretched at her feet.
+
+"If I ever am in love," he said suddenly, "it will be with a girl who
+must fill full the measure of my dreams." He was looking away through
+the pine-trees to the sky far beyond; but the soft light in his face
+came not from that far-off tent of blue. He was thinking vaguely how
+much bluer than the sky were her eyes.
+
+"Yes?" Her tone was tender.
+
+"She must be a beauty, of course." He gazed at her with that in his eyes
+which said, as plainly as words could have said it, "You are
+beautiful."
+
+But she was looking away, wondering to herself who it might be.
+
+"I mean she must have what _I_ call beauty," he added by way of
+explanation. "I don't count mere red and white beauty. Phrony Tripper
+has that." This was not without intention. Alice had spoken of Phrony's
+beauty one day when she saw her at the school.
+
+"But she is very pretty," asserted the girl, "so fresh and such color!"
+
+"Oh, pretty! yes; and color--a wine-sap apple has color. But I am
+speaking of real beauty, the beauty of the rose, the freshness that you
+cannot define, that holds fragrance, a something that you love, that you
+feel even more than you see."
+
+She thought of a school friend of hers, Louise Caldwell, a tall,
+statuesque beauty, with whom another friend, Norman Wentworth, was in
+love, and she wondered if Keith would think her such a beauty as he
+described.
+
+"She must be sweet," he went on, thinking to himself for her benefit. "I
+cannot define that either, but you know what I mean?"
+
+She decided mentally that Louise Caldwell would not fill his measure.
+
+"It is something that only some girls have in common with some
+flowers--violets, for instance."
+
+"Oh, I don't care for sweet girls very much," she said, thinking of
+another schoolmate whom the girls used to call _eau sucré_.
+
+"You do," he said positively. "I am not talking of that kind. It is
+womanliness and gentleness, fragrance, warmth, beauty, everything."
+
+"Oh, yes. That kind?" she said acquiescingly. "Well, go on; you expect
+to find a good deal."
+
+"I do," he said briefly, and sat up. "I expect to find the best."
+
+She glanced at him with new interest. He was very good-looking when he
+was spirited. And his eyes now were full of light.
+
+"Well, beauty and sweetness," she said; "what else? I must know, for I
+may have to help you find her. There don't appear to be many around
+Ridgely, since you have declined to accept the only pretty girl I
+have seen."
+
+"She must be good and true. She must know the truth as--" His eye fell
+at that instant on a humming-bird, a gleaming jewel of changing sapphire
+that, poised on half-invisible wings, floated in a bar of sunlight
+before a sprig of pink honeysuckle. "--As that bird knows the flowers
+where the honey lies."
+
+"Where do you expect to find this paragon?"
+
+As if in answer, the humming-bird suddenly caught sight of the red rose
+in her dress, and, darting to it, thrust its bill deep into the crimson
+heart of the flower. They both gave an exclamation of delighted wonder.
+
+"I have found her," he said firmly, leaning a little toward her, with
+mantling cheeks and close-drawn lips, his glowing eyes on her face. "The
+bird has found her for me."
+
+The bird darted away.
+
+"Ah, it is gone! What will you give her in return?" She turned to him,
+and spoke half mockingly, wishing to get off such delicate ground.
+
+He turned and gazed into her eyes.
+
+"'Worship without end.'" There was that in his face that made her change
+color. She looked away and began to think of her own ideal. She found
+that her idea of the man she loved had been of height of figure and
+breadth of shoulders, a handsome face and fashionable attire. She had
+pictured him as tall and straight, taller than this boy and larger every
+way, with a straight nose, brown eyes, and dark hair. But chiefly she
+had thought of the style of his clothes. She had fancied the neckties he
+should wear, and the pins that should be stuck in them. He must be
+brave, of course, a beautiful dancer, a fine tennis-player. She had once
+thought that black-eyed, handsome young Ferdy Wickersham was as near her
+ideal as any one else she knew. He led germans divinely. But he was
+selfish, and she had never admired him as much as another man, who was
+less showy, but was, she knew, more of a man: Norman Wentworth, a bold
+swimmer, a good horseman, and a leader of their set. It suddenly
+occurred to her now how much more like this man Norman Wentworth was
+than Ferdy Wickersham, and following her thought of the two, she
+suddenly stepped up on a higher level and was conscious of a certain
+elation, much like that she had had the day she had climbed up before
+Gordon Keith on the out-jutting rock and looked far down over the wide
+expanse of forest and field, to where his home had been.
+
+She sat for a little while in deep reflection. Presently she said, quite
+gravely and a little shyly:
+
+"You know, I am not a bit what you think I am. Why, you treat me as if I
+were a superior being. And I am not; I am a very matter-of-fact girl."
+
+He interrupted her with a gesture of dissent, his eyes full of light.
+
+"Nonsense! You don't know me, you don't know men, or you would know that
+any girl is the superior of the best man," he reiterated.
+
+"You don't know girls," she retorted.
+
+"I know one, at least," he said, with a smile that spoke his admiration.
+
+"I am not sure that you do," she persisted, speaking slowly and very
+seriously. She was gazing at him in a curious, reflective way.
+
+"The one I know is good enough for me." He leaned over and shyly took
+her hand and raised it to his lips, then released it. She did not resist
+him, but presently she said tentatively:
+
+"I believe I had rather be treated as I am than as something I am not. I
+like you too much to want to deceive you, and I think you are deceived."
+
+He, of course, protested that he was not deceived. He "knew perfectly
+well," he said. She was not convinced; but she let it go. She did not
+want to quarrel with him for admiring her.
+
+That afternoon, when Alice came in, her manner was so different from
+what it had been of late that her mother could not but observe it. One
+moment she was distraite; the next she was impatient and even irritable;
+then this mood changed, and she was unusually gay; her cheeks glowed and
+her eyes sparkled; but even as she reflected, a change came, and she
+drifted away again into a brown study.
+
+Next day, while Mrs. Yorke was still considering what to do, a card was
+handed her. It was a name written simply on one of the slips of paper
+that were kept on the hotel counter below. Keith of late had not been
+sending up his card; a servant simply announced his name. This, then,
+decided her. It was the most fortunate thing in the world that Alice had
+gone off and was out of the way. It gave Mrs. Yorke the very opportunity
+she desired. If, as she divined, the young man wished to talk to her
+about anything personal, she would speak kindly to him, but so plainly
+that he could never forget it. After all, it would be true kindness to
+him to do so. She had a virtuous feeling as she smoothed her hair
+before a mirror.
+
+He was not in the sitting-room when she came down; so she sought for him
+on one of the long verandahs where they usually sat. He was seated at
+the far end, where he would be more or less secluded, and she marched
+down on him. He was evidently on the watch for her, and as soon as she
+appeared he rose from his seat. She had made up her mind very clearly
+what she would say to him; but as she approached him it was not so easy
+to say as she had fancied it. There was something in his bearing and
+expression that deterred her from using the rather condescending words
+she had formulated. His face was somewhat pale; his mouth was firmly
+set, throwing out the chin in a way to make it quite strong; his eyes
+were anxious, but steady; his form was very erect, and his shoulders
+were very square and straight. He appeared to her older than she had
+considered him. It would not do to patronize this man. After greeting
+her, he handed her a chair solemnly, and the next moment plunged
+straight into his subject. It was so sudden that it almost took her
+breath away; and before she knew it he had, with the blood coming and
+going in his cheeks, declared his love for her daughter, and asked her
+permission to pay her his addresses. After the first gulp or two he had
+lost his embarrassment, and was speaking in a straightforward, manly
+way. The color had come rushing back into his face, and his eyes were
+filled with light. Mrs. Yorke felt that it was necessary to do
+something. So, though she felt some trepidation, she took heart and
+began to answer him. As she proceeded, her courage returned to her, and
+seeing that he was much disturbed, she became quite composed.
+
+She regretted extremely, she said, that she had not foreseen this. It
+was all so unexpected to her that she was quite overwhelmed by it. She
+felt that this was a lie, and she was not sure that he did not know it.
+Of course, it was quite impossible that she could consent to anything
+like what he had proposed.
+
+"Do you mean because she is from the North and I am from the South?" he
+asked earnestly.
+
+"No; of course not. I have Southern blood myself. My grandmother was
+from the South." She smiled at his simplicity.
+
+"Then why?"
+
+This was embarrassing, but she must answer.
+
+"Why, you--we--move in--quite different--spheres, and--ah, it's really
+not to be thought of Mr. Keith," she said, half desperately.
+
+He himself had thought of the different spheres in which they moved, but
+he had surmounted that difficulty. Though her father, as he had learned,
+had begun life as a store-boy, and her mother was not the most learned
+person in the world, Alice Yorke was a lady to her finger-tips, and in
+her own fine person was the incontestable proof of a strain of gentle
+blood somewhere. Those delicate features, fine hands, trim ankles, and
+silken hair told their own story.
+
+So he came near saying, "That does not make any difference"; but he
+restrained himself. He said instead, "I do not know that I
+understand you."
+
+It was very annoying to have to be so plain, but it was, Mrs. Yorke
+felt, quite necessary.
+
+"Why, I mean that my daughter has always moved in the--the
+most--exclusive society; she has had the best advantages, and has a
+right to expect the best that can be given her."
+
+"Do you mean that you think my family is not good enough for your
+daughter?"
+
+There was a tone in his quiet voice that made her glance up at him, and
+a look on his face that made her answer quickly:
+
+"Oh, no; not that, of course. I have no doubt your family is--indeed, I
+have heard it is--ur--. But my daughter has every right to expect the
+best that life can give. She has a right to expect--an--establishment."
+
+"You mean money?" Keith asked, a little hoarsely.
+
+"Why, not in the way in which you put it; but what money stands
+for--comforts, luxuries, position. Now, don't go and distress yourself
+about this. You are nothing but a silly boy. You fancy yourself in love
+with my daughter because she is the only pretty girl about here."
+
+"She is not; but she is the prettiest I know," ejaculated Keith,
+bitterly.
+
+"You think that, and so you fancy you are in love with her."
+
+"It is no fancy; I am," asserted Keith, doggedly. "I would be in love
+with her if she were as ugly as--as she is beautiful."
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't," declared Mrs. Yorke, coolly. "Now, the thing for
+you to do is to forget all about her, as she will in a short time forget
+all about you."
+
+"I know she will, though I hope she will not," groaned the young man. "I
+shall never forget her--never."
+
+His voice and manner showed such unfeigned anguish that the lady could
+not but feel real commiseration for him, especially as he appeared to be
+accepting her view of the case. She glanced at him almost kindly.
+
+"Is there nothing I can do for you? I should like very much to do
+something--something to show my appreciation of what you have done for
+us to make our stay here less dreary than it would have been."
+
+"Thank you. There is nothing," said Keith. "I am going to turn my
+attention now to--getting an establishment." He spoke half
+sarcastically, but Mrs. Yorke did not see it.
+
+"That is right," she said warmly.
+
+"It is not right," declared Keith, with sudden vehemence. "It is all
+wrong. I know it is all wrong."
+
+"What the world thinks is right can't be all wrong." Mrs. Yorke spoke
+decisively.
+
+"When are you going away?" the young man asked suddenly.
+
+"In a few days." She spoke vaguely, but even as she spoke, she
+determined to leave next day.
+
+"I thank you for all your kindness to me," said Keith, standing very
+straight and speaking rather hoarsely.
+
+Mrs. Yorke's heart smote her. If it were not for her daughter's welfare
+she could have liked this boy and befriended him. A vision came to her
+from out of the dim past; a country boy with broad shoulders suddenly
+flashed before her; but she shut it off before it became clear. She
+spoke kindly to Keith, and held out her hand to him with more real
+sincerity than she had felt in a long time.
+
+"You are a good boy," she said, "and I wish I could have answered you
+otherwise, but it would have been simple madness. You will some day know
+that it was kinder to you to make you look nakedly at facts."
+
+"I suppose so," said Keith, politely. "But some day, Mrs. Yorke, you
+shall hear of me. If you do not, remember I shall be dead."
+
+With this bit of tragedy he turned and left her, and Mrs. Yorke stood
+and watched him as he strode down the path, meaning, if he should turn,
+to wave him a friendly adieu, and also watching lest that which she had
+dreaded for a quarter of an hour might happen. It would be dreadful if
+her daughter should meet him now. He did not turn, however, and when at
+last he disappeared, Mrs. Yorke, with a sigh of relief, went up to her
+room and began to write rapidly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MRS. YORKE CUTS THE KNOT
+
+When Alice Yorke came from her jaunt, she had on her face an expression
+of pleasant anticipation. She had been talking to Dr. Balsam, and he had
+said things about Gordon Keith that had made her cheeks tingle. "Of the
+best blood of two continents," he had said of him. "He has the stuff
+that has made England and America." The light of real romance was
+beginning to envelop her.
+
+As she entered the hall she met Mrs. Nailor. Mrs. Nailor smiled at her
+knowingly, much as a cat, could she smile, might smile at a mouse.
+
+"I think your mother is out on the far end of the verandah. I saw her
+there a little while ago talking with your friend, the young
+schoolmaster. What a nice young man he is? Quite uncommon, isn't he?"
+
+Alice gave a little start. "The young schoolmaster" indeed!
+
+"Yes, I suppose so. I don't know." She hated Mrs. Nailor with her quiet,
+cat-like manner and inquisitive ways. She now hated her more than ever,
+for she was conscious that she was blushing and that Mrs. Nailor
+observed it.
+
+"Your mother is very interested in schools? Yes? I think that is nice in
+her? So few persons appreciate education?" Her air was absolute
+innocence.
+
+"I don't know. I believe she is--interested in everything," faltered
+Alice. She wanted to add, "And so you appear to be also."
+
+"So few persons care for education these days," pursued Mrs. Nailor, in
+a little chime. "And that young man is such a nice fellow? Has he a good
+school? I hear you were there? You are interested in schools, too?" She
+nodded like a little Japanese toy-baby.
+
+"I am sure I don't know. Yes; I think he has. Why don't you go?" asked
+the girl at random.
+
+"Oh, I have not been invited." Mrs. Nailor smiled amiably. "Perhaps, you
+will let me go with you sometime?"
+
+Alice escaped, and ran up-stairs, though she was eager to go out on the
+porch. However, it would serve him right to punish him by staying away
+until she was sent for, and she could not go with Mrs. Nailor's
+cat-eyes on her.
+
+She found her mother seated at a table writing busily. Mrs. Yorke only
+glanced up and said, "So you are back? Hope you had a pleasant time?"
+and went on writing.
+
+Alice gazed at her with a startled look in her eyes. She had such a
+serious expression on her face.
+
+"What are you doing?" She tried to speak as indifferently as she could.
+
+"Writing to your father." The pen went on busily.
+
+"What is the matter? Is papa ill? Has anything happened?"
+
+"No; nothing has happened. I am writing to say we shall be home the last
+of the week."
+
+"Going away!"
+
+"Yes; don't you think we have been here long enough? We only expected to
+stay until the last of March, and here it is almost May."
+
+"But what is the matter? Why have you made up your mind so suddenly?
+Mamma, you are so secret! I am sure something is the matter. Is papa not
+well?" She crossed over and stood by her mother.
+
+Mrs. Yorke finished a word and paused a moment, with the end of her
+silver penholder against her teeth.
+
+"Alice," she said reflectively, "I have something I want to say to you,
+and I have a mind to say it now. I think I ought to speak to you
+very frankly."
+
+"Well, for goodness' sake, do, mamma; for I'm dying to know what has
+happened." She seated herself on the side of a chair for support. Her
+face was almost white.
+
+"Alice--"
+
+"Yes, mamma." Her politeness was ominous.
+
+"Alice, I have had a talk with that young man--"
+
+Alice's face flushed suddenly.
+
+"What young man?" she asked, as though the Ridge Springs were thronged
+with young men behind every bush.
+
+"That young man--Mr. Keith," firmly.
+
+"Oh!" said Alice. "With Mr. Keith? Yes, mamma?" Her color was changing
+quickly now.
+
+"Yes, I have had a quite--a very extraordinary conversation with Mr.
+Keith." As Mrs. Yorke drifted again into reflection, Alice was
+compelled to ask:
+
+"What about, mamma?"
+
+"About you."
+
+"About me? What about me?" Her face was belying her assumed innocence.
+
+"Alice, I hope you are not going to behave foolishly. I cannot believe
+for a minute that you would--a girl brought up as you have been--so far
+forget yourself--would allow yourself to become interested in a
+perfectly unknown and ignorant and obscure young man."
+
+"Why, mamma, he is not ignorant; he knows more than any one I ever
+saw,--why, he has read piles of books I never even heard of,--and his
+family is one of the best and oldest in this country. His grandfathers
+or great-grandfathers were both signers of the Decla--"
+
+"I am not talking about that," interrupted Mrs. Yorke, hastily. "I must
+say you appear to have studied his family-tree pretty closely."
+
+"Dr. Balsam told me," interjected Alice.
+
+"Dr. Balsam had very little to talk of. I am talking of his being
+unknown."
+
+"But I believe he will be known some day. You don't know how clever and
+ambitious he is. He told me--"
+
+But Mrs. Yorke had no mind to let Alice dwell on what he had told her.
+He was too good an advocate.
+
+"Stuff! I don't care what he told you! Alice, he is a perfectly unknown
+and untrained young--creature. All young men talk that way. He is
+perfectly gauche and boorish in his manner--"
+
+"Why, mamma, he has beautiful manners!" exclaimed Alice "I heard a lady
+saying the other day he had the manners of a Chesterfield."
+
+"Chester-nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Yorke.
+
+"I think he has, too, mamma."
+
+"I don't agree with you," declared Mrs. Yorke, energetically. "How would
+he appear in New York? Why, he wears great heavy shoes, and his neckties
+are something dreadful."
+
+"His neckties are bad," admitted Alice, sadly.
+
+Mrs. Yorke, having discovered a breach in her adversary's defences, like
+a good general directed her attack against it.
+
+"He dresses horribly; he wears his hair like a--countryman; and his
+manners are as antiquated as his clothes. Think of him at the opera or
+at one of Mrs. Wentworth's receptions! He says 'madam' and 'sir' as if
+he were a servant."
+
+"I got after him about that once," said the girl, reflectively. "I said
+that only servants said that."
+
+"Well, what did he say?"
+
+"Said that that proved that servants sometimes had better manners than
+their masters."
+
+"Well, I must say, I think he was excessively rude!" asserted Mrs.
+Yorke, picking up her fan and beginning to fan rapidly.
+
+"That's what I said; but he said he did not see how it could be rude to
+state a simple and impersonal fact in a perfectly respectful way."
+
+Alice was warming up in defence and swept on.
+
+"He said the new fashion was due to people who were not sure of their
+own position, and were afraid others might think them servile if they
+employed such terms."
+
+"What does he know about fashion?"
+
+"He says fashion is a temporary and shifting thing, sometimes caused by
+accident and sometimes made by tradesmen, but that good manners are the
+same to-day that they were hundreds of years ago, and that though the
+ways in which they are shown change, the basis is always the same, being
+kindness and gentility."
+
+Mrs. Yorke gasped.
+
+"Well, I must say, you seem to have learned your lesson!" she exclaimed.
+
+Alice had been swept on by her memory not only of the words she was
+repeating, but of many conversations and interchanges of thought Gordon
+Keith and she had had during the past weeks, in which he had given her
+new ideas. She began now, in a rather low and unsteady voice, her hands
+tightly clasped, her eyes in her lap:
+
+"Mamma, I believe I like him very much--better than I shall ever--"
+
+"Nonsense, Alice! Now, I will not have any of this nonsense. I bring you
+down here for your health, and you take up with a perfectly obscure
+young countryman about whom you know nothing in the world, and--"
+
+"I know all about him, mamma. I know he is a gentleman. His
+grandfather--"
+
+"You know _nothing_ about him," asserted Mrs. Yorke, rising. "You may be
+married to a man for years and know very little of him. How can you know
+about this boy? You will go back and forget all about him in a week."
+
+"I shall never forget him, mamma," said Alice, in a low tone, thinking
+of the numerous promises she had made to the same effect within the
+past few days.
+
+"Fiddlesticks! How often have you said that? A half-dozen times at
+least. There's Norman and Ferdy Wickersham and--"
+
+"I have not forgotten them," said Alice, a little impressed by her
+mother's argument.
+
+"Of course, you have not. I don't think it's right, Alice, for you to be
+so--susceptible and shallow. At least once every three months I have to
+go through this same thing. There's Ferdy Wickersham--handsome, elegant
+manners, very ri--with fine prospects every way, devoted to you for ever
+so long. I don't care for his mother, but his people are now received
+everywhere. Why--?"
+
+"Mamma, I would not marry Ferdy Wickersham if he were the last man
+in--to save his life--not for ten millions of dollars. And he does not
+care for me."
+
+"Why, he is perfectly devoted to you," insisted Mrs. Yorke.
+
+"Ferdy Wickersham is not perfectly devoted to any one except
+himself--and never will be," asserted Alice, vehemently. "If he ever
+cared for any one it is Louise Caldwell."
+
+Mrs. Yorke shifted her ground.
+
+"There's Norman Wentworth? One of the best--"
+
+"Ah! I don't love Norman. I never could. We are the best of friends, but
+I just like and respect him."
+
+"Respect is a very safe ground to marry on," said Mrs. Yorke,
+decisively. "Some people do not have even that when they marry."
+
+"Then I am sorry for them," said Miss Alice. "But when I marry, I want
+to love. I think it would be a crime to marry a man you did not love.
+God made us with a capacity to form ideals, and if we deliberately fall
+below them--"
+
+Mrs. Yorke burst out laughing.
+
+"Oh, stuff! That boy has filled your head with enough nonsense to last a
+lifetime. I would not be such a parrot. I want to finish my letter now."
+
+Mrs. Yorke concluded her letter, and two mornings later the Yorkes took
+the old two-horse stage that plied between the Springs and the little
+grimy railway-station, ten miles away at the foot of the Ridge, and
+metaphorically shook the dust of Ridgely from their feet, though, from
+their appearance when they reached the railway, it, together with much
+more, must have settled on their shoulders.
+
+The road passed the little frame school-house, and as the stage rattled
+by, the young school-teacher's face changed. He stood up and looked out
+of the window with a curious gaze in his burning eyes. Suddenly his face
+lit up: a little head under a very pretty hat had nodded to him. He
+bowed low, and went back to his seat with a new expression. That bow
+chained him for years. He almost forgave her high-headed mother.
+
+Alice bore away with her a long and tragic letter which she did not
+think it necessary to confide to her mother at this time, in view of the
+fact that the writer declared that in his present condition he felt
+bound to recognize her mother's right to deny his request to see her;
+but that he meant to achieve such success that she would withdraw her
+prohibition, and to return some day and lay at her feet the highest
+honors life could give.
+
+A woman who has discarded a man is, perhaps, nearer loving him just
+afterwards than ever before. Certainly Miss Alice Yorke thought more
+tenderly of Gordon Keith when she found herself being borne away from
+him than she had ever done during the weeks she had known him.
+
+It is said that a broken heart is a most valuable possession for a young
+man. Perhaps, it was so to Keith.
+
+The rest of the session dragged wearily for him. But he worked like
+fury. He would succeed. He would rise. He would show Mrs. Yorke who
+he was.
+
+Mrs. Yorke, having reached home, began at once to lead her daughter back
+to what she esteemed a healthier way of thinking than she had fallen
+into. This opportunity came in the shape of a college commencement with
+a consequent boat-race, and all the gayeties that this entailed.
+
+Mrs. Yorke was, in her way, devoted to her daughter, and had a definite
+and what she deemed an exalted ambition for her. This meant that she
+should be the best-dressed girl in society, should be a belle, and
+finally should make the most brilliant marriage of her set--to wit, the
+wealthiest marriage. She had dreamed at times of a marriage that should
+make her friends wild with envy--of a title, a high title. Alice had
+beauty, style, wealth, and vivacity; she would grace a coronet, and
+mamma would be "Madam, the Countess's mother." But mamma encountered an
+unexpected obstacle.
+
+When Mrs. Yorke, building her air-castles, casually let fall her idea of
+a title for Alice, there was a sudden and unexpected storm from an
+unlooked-for quarter. Dennis Yorke, usually putty in his wife's hands,
+had two or three prejudices that were principles with him. As to these
+he was rock. His daughter was his idol.
+
+For her, from the time she had opened her blue eyes on him and blinked
+at him vaguely, he had toiled and schemed until his hair had turned from
+brown to gray and then had disappeared from his round, strongly set
+head. For the love he bore her he had served longer than Jacob served
+for Rachel, and the time had not appeared long. The suggestion that the
+money he had striven for from youth to age should go to some reprobate
+foreigner, to pay his gambling-debts, nearly threw him into a
+convulsion. His ancestors had been driven from home to starve in the
+wilderness by such creatures. "Before any d----d foreign reprobate should
+have a dollar of his money he would endow a lunatic asylum with it." So
+Mrs. Yorke prudently refrained from pressing this subject any further at
+this time, and built her hopes on securing the next most advantageous
+alliance--a wealthy one. She preferred Norman Wentworth to any of the
+other young men, for he was not only rich, but the Wentworths were an
+old and established house, and Mrs. Wentworth was one of the old
+aristocrats of the State, whose word was law above that of even the
+wealthiest of the new leaders. To secure Norman Wentworth would be
+"almost as good as a title." An intimacy was sedulously cultivated with
+"dear Mrs. Wentworth," and Norman, the "dear boy," was often brought to
+the house.
+
+Perversely, he and Alice did not take to each other in the way Mrs.
+Yorke had hoped. They simply became the best of friends, and Mrs. Yorke
+had the mortification of seeing a tall and statuesque schoolmate of
+Alice's capture Norman, while Alice appeared totally indifferent to him.
+What made it harder to bear was that Mrs. Caldwell, Louise Caldwell's
+mother, a widow with barely enough to live respectably on, was quietly
+walking off with the prize which Mrs. Yorke and a number of other
+mothers were striving to secure, and made no more of it than if it had
+been her right. It all came of her family connections. That was the way
+with those old families. They were so selfishly exclusive and so proud.
+They held themselves superior to every one else and appeared to despise
+wealth. Mrs. Yorke did not believe Mrs. Caldwell really did despise
+wealth, but she admitted that she made a very good show of doing it.
+
+Mrs. Yorke, foreseeing her failure with Norman Wentworth, was fain to
+accept in his place Ferdy Wickersham, who, though certainly not Norman's
+equal in some respects, was his superior in others.
+
+To be sure, Ferdy was said to be a somewhat reckless young fellow, and
+Mr. Yorke did not fancy him; but Mrs. Yorke argued, "Boys will be boys,
+and you know, Mr. Yorke, you have told me you were none too good
+yourself." On this, Dennis Yorke growled that a man was "a fool ever to
+tell his wife anything of the kind, and that, at least, he never was in
+that young Wickersham's class."
+
+All of which Mrs. Yorke put aside, and sacrificed herself unstintedly to
+achieve success for her daughter and compel her to forget the little
+episode of the young Southern schoolmaster, with his tragic air.
+
+Ah, the dreams of the climbers! How silly they are! Golden clouds at the
+top, and just as they are reached, some little Jack comes along and
+chops down the beanstalk, clouds and all.
+
+So, Mrs. Yorke dreamed, and, a trifle anxious over Alice's persistent
+reference to the charms of Spring woods and a Southern climate, after a
+week or two of driving down-town and eager choosing of hats and wearying
+fitting of dresses, started off with the girl on the yacht of Mr.
+Lancaster, a wealthy, dignified, and cultivated friend of her husband's.
+He had always been fond of Alice, and now got up a yacht-party for her
+to see the boat-race.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Keith had thought that the time when he should leave the region where he
+had been immersed so long would be the happiest hour of his life. Yet,
+when the day came, he was conscious of a strange tugging at his heart.
+These people whom he was leaving, and for whom he had in his heart an
+opinion very like contempt on account of their ignorance and narrowness,
+appeared to him a wholly different folk. There was barely one of them
+but had been kind to him. Hard they might appear and petty; but they
+lived close together, and, break through the crust, one was sure to find
+a warm heart and often a soft one.
+
+He began to understand Dr. Balsam's speech: "I have lived in several
+kinds of society, and I like the simplest best. One can get nearer to
+men here. I do not ask gratitude. I get affection."
+
+Keith had given notice that the school would close on a certain day. The
+scholars always dropped off as summer came, to work in the crops; and
+the attendance of late had been slim. This last day he hardly expected
+to have half a dozen pupils. To his surprise, the school-house
+was filled.
+
+Even Jake Dennison, who had been off in the mountains for some little
+time getting out timber, was on hand, large and good-humored, sitting
+beside Phrony Tripper in her pink ribbons, and fanning her hard enough
+to keep a mine fresh. A little later in the day quite a number of the
+fathers and mothers of the children arrived in their rickety vehicles.
+They had come to take leave of the young teacher. There were almost as
+many as were present at the school celebration. Keith was quite
+overcome, and when the hour arrived for closing the school, instead of,
+as he had expected, tying up the half-dozen books he kept in his desk,
+shaking hands with the dozen children eager to be turned loose in the
+delightful pasturage of summer holiday, turning the key in the lock, and
+plodding alone down the dusty road to Squire Rawson's, he now found the
+school-room full, not of school-children only, but of grown people as
+well. He had learned that they expected him to say something, and there
+was nothing for him to do but to make the effort. For an hour, as he sat
+during the last lessons,--which were in the nature of a review,--the
+pages before him had been mere blurred spaces of white, and he had been
+cogitating what he should say. Yet, when he rose, every idea that he had
+tried so faithfully to put into shape fled from his brain.
+
+Dropping all the well-turned phrases which he had been trying to frame,
+he said simply that he had come there two years before with the conceit
+of a young man expecting to teach them a good deal, and that he went
+away feeling that he had taught very little, but that he had learned a
+great deal; he had learned that the kindest people in the world lived in
+that region; he should never forget their kindness and should always
+feel that his best friends were there. A few words more about his hopes
+for the school and his feeling for the people who had been so good to
+him, and he pronounced the school closed. To his surprise, at a wink
+from Squire Rawson, one of the other trustees, who had formerly been
+opposed to Keith, rose, and, addressing the assemblage, began to say
+things about him that pleased him as much as they astonished him.
+
+He said that they, too, had begun with some doubt as to how things would
+work, as one "could never tell what a colt would do till he got the
+harness on him," but this colt had "turned out to be a pretty good
+horse." Mr. Keith, maybe, had taught more than he knew. He had taught
+some folks--this with a cut of his eye over toward where Jake Dennison
+sat big and brown in the placid content of a young giant, fanning
+Euphronia for life--he had "taught some folks that a door had to be
+right strong to keep out a teacher as knowed his business." Anyhow, they
+were satisfied with him, and the trustees had voted to employ him
+another year, but he had declined. He had "business" that would take him
+away. Some thought they knew that business. (At this there was a
+responsive titter throughout the major portion of the room, and Gordon
+Keith was furious with himself for finding that he suddenly turned hot
+and red.) He himself, the speaker said, didn't pretend to know anything
+about it, but he wanted to say that if Mr. Keith didn't find the
+business as profitable as he expected, the trustees had determined to
+hold the place open for him for one year, and had elected a successor
+temporarily to hold it in case he should want to come back.
+
+At this there was a round of approval, as near general applause as that
+stolid folk ever indulged in.
+
+Keith spent the next day in taking leave of his friends.
+
+His last visit that evening was to Dr. Balsam. He had not been to the
+village often in the evening since Mrs. Yorke and her daughter had left
+the place. Now, as he passed up the walk, the summer moonlight was
+falling full on the white front of the little hotel. The slanting
+moonlight fell on the corner of the verandah where he had talked so
+often to Alice Yorke as she lay reclining on her lounge, and where he
+had had that last conversation with Mrs. Yorke, and Keith saw a young
+man leaning over some one enveloped in white, half reclining in an
+arm-chair. He wondered if the same talk were going on that had gone on
+there before that evening when Mrs. Yorke had made him look nakedly
+at Life.
+
+When Keith stated his errand, the Doctor looked almost as grave as he
+could have done had one of his cherished patients refused to respond to
+his most careful treatment.
+
+"One thing I want to say to you," he said presently "You have been
+eating your heart out of late about something, and it is telling on you.
+Give it up. Give that girl up. You will have to sooner or later. They
+will prove too strong for you. Even if you do not, she will not suit
+you; you will not get the woman you are after. She is an attractive
+young girl, but she will not remain so. A few years in fashionable
+society will change her. It is the most corroding life on earth!"
+exclaimed the Doctor, bitterly. "Convention usurps the place of every
+principle, and becomes the only god. She must change. All is Vanity!"
+repeated the Doctor, almost in a revery, his eyes resting on
+Keith's face.
+
+"Well," he said, with a sigh, "if you ever get knocked down and hurt
+badly, come back up here, and I will patch you up if I am living; and if
+not, come back anyhow. The place will heal you provided you don't take
+drugs. God bless you! Good-by." He walked with Keith to the outer edge
+of his little porch and shook hands with him again, and again said,
+"Good-by: God bless you!" When Keith turned at the foot of the hill and
+looked back, he was just reentering his door, his spare, tall frame
+clearly outlined against the light within. Keith somehow felt as if he
+were turning his back on a landmark.
+
+Just as Keith approached the gate on his return home, a figure rose up
+from a fence-corner and stood before him in the starlight.
+
+"Good even'n', Mr. Keith." The voice was Dave Dennison's. Keith greeted
+him wonderingly. What on earth could have brought the boy out at that
+time of the night? "Would you mind jest comin' down this a-way a
+little piece?"
+
+Keith walked back a short distance. Dave was always mysterious when he
+had a communication to make. It was partly a sort of shyness and partly
+a survival of frontier craft.
+
+Dave soon resolved Keith's doubt. "I hear you're a-goin' away and ain't
+comin' back no more?"
+
+"How did you hear that--I mean, that I am not coming back again?" asked
+Keith.
+
+"Well, you're a-sayin' good-by to everybody, same's if they were all
+a-goin' to die. Folks don't do that if they're a-comin' back." He leaned
+forward, and in the semi-darkness Keith was aware that he was
+scrutinizing his face.
+
+"No, I do not expect to come back--to teach school again; but I hope to
+return some day to see my friends."
+
+The boy straightened up.
+
+"Well, I wants to go with you."
+
+"You! Go with me?" Keith exclaimed. Then, for fear the boy might be
+wounded, he said: "Why, Dave, I don't even know where I am going. I have
+not the least idea in the world what I am going to do. I only know I am
+going away, and I am going to succeed."
+
+"That's right. That's all right," agreed the boy. "You're a-goin'
+somewheres, and I want to go with you. You don't know where you're
+a-goin', but you're a-goin'. You know all them outlandish countries like
+you've been a-tellin' us about, and I don't know anything, but I want to
+know, and I'm a-goin' with you. Leastways, I'm a-goin', and I'm a-goin'
+with you if you'll let me."
+
+Keith's reply was anything but reassuring. He gave good reasons against
+Dave's carrying out his plan; but his tone was kind, and the youngster
+took it for encouragement.
+
+"I ain't much account, I know," he pleaded. "I ain't any account in the
+_worl'_," he corrected himself, so that there could be no mistake about
+the matter. "They say at home I used to be some account--some little
+account--before I took to books--before I _sorter_ took to books," he
+corrected again shamefacedly; "but since then I ain't been no manner of
+account. But I think--I kinder think--I could be some account if I
+knowed a little and could go somewheres to be account."
+
+Keith was listening earnestly, and the boy went on:
+
+"When you told us that word about that man Hannibal tellin' his soldiers
+how everything lay t'other side the mountains, I begin to see what you
+meant. I thought before that I knowed a lot; then I found out how durned
+little I did know, and since then I have tried to learn, and I mean to
+learn; and that's the reason I want to go with you. You know and I
+don't, and you're the only one as ever made me want to know."
+
+Keith was conscious of a flush of warm blood about his heart. It was the
+first-fruit of his work.
+
+The boy broke in on his pleasant revery.
+
+"You'll let me go?" he asked. "Cause I'm a-goin' certain sure. I ain't
+a-goin' to stay here in this country no longer. See here." He pulled out
+an old bag and poked it into Keith's hand. "I've got sixteen dollars and
+twenty-three cents there. I made it, and while the other boys were
+spendin' theirn, I saved mine. You can pour it out and count it."
+
+Keith said he would go and see his father about it the next day.
+
+This did not appear to satisfy Dave.
+
+"I'm a-goin' whether he says so or not," he burst forth. "I want to see
+the worl'. Don't nobody keer nothin' about me, an' I want to git out."
+
+"Oh, yes! Why, I care about you," said Keith.
+
+To his surprise, the boy began to whimper.
+
+"Thankee. I'm obliged to you. I--want to go away--where Phrony ner
+nobody--ner anybody won't never see me no more--any more."
+
+The truth dawned on Keith. Little Dave, too, had his troubles, his
+sorrows, his unrequited affections. Keith warmed to the boy.
+
+"Phrony is a lot older than you," he said consolingly.
+
+"No, she ain't; we are just of an age; and if she was I wouldn't keer.
+I'm goin' away."
+
+Keith had to interpose his refusal to take him in such a case. He said,
+however, that if he could obtain his father's consent, as soon as he got
+settled he would send for him. On the basis of this compromise the boy
+went home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GUMBOLT
+
+With the savings of his two years of school-teaching Keith found that he
+had enough, by practising rigid economy, to give himself another year at
+college, and he practised rigid economy.
+
+He worked under the spur of ambition to show Alice Yorke and those who
+surrounded her that he was not a mere country clod.
+
+With his face set steadily in the direction where stood the luminous
+form of the young girl he had met and come to worship amid the
+blossoming woods, he studied to such good purpose that at the end of the
+session he had packed two years' work into one.
+
+Keith had no very definite ideas, when he started out at the end of his
+college year, as to what he should do. He only knew that he had strong
+pinions, and that the world was before him. He wished to bury himself
+from observation until he should secure the success with which he would
+burst forth on an astonished world, overwhelm Mrs. Yorke, and capture
+Alice. His first intention had been to go to the far West; but on
+consideration he abandoned the idea.
+
+Rumors were already abroad that in the great Appalachian mountain-range
+opportunity might be as golden as in that greater range on the other
+side of the continent.
+
+Keith had a sentiment that he would rather succeed in the South than
+elsewhere.
+
+"Only get rifles out and railroads in, and capital will come pouring
+after them," Rhodes had said. "Old Wickersham knows his business."
+
+That was a good while ago, and at last the awakening had begun. Now that
+carpet-bagging was at an end, and affairs were once more settled in that
+section, the wealth of the country was again being talked of in
+the press.
+
+The chief centre of the new life was a day's drive farther in the
+mountains than Eden, the little hamlet which Keith had visited once with
+Dr. Balsam when he attended an old stage-driver, Gilsey by name, and cut
+a bullet out of what he called his "off-leg." This was the veiled
+Golconda. To the original name of Humboldt the picturesque and humorous
+mountaineer had given the name of "Gumbolt."
+
+This was where old Adam Rawson, stirred by the young engineer's
+prophecy, had taken time by the forelock and had bought up the mineral
+rights, and "gotten ahead" of Wickersham & Company.
+
+Times and views change even in the Ridge region, and now, after years of
+delay, Wickersham & Company's railroad was about to be built. It had
+already reached Eden.
+
+Keith, after a few days with his father, stopped at Ridgely to see his
+old friends. The Doctor looked him over with some disapproval.
+
+"As gaunt as a greyhound," he muttered. "My patient not married yet, I
+suppose? Well, she will be. You'd better tear her out of your memory
+before she gets too firmly lodged there."
+
+Keith boldly said he would take the chances.
+
+When old Rawson saw him he, too, remarked on his thinness; but more
+encouragingly.
+
+"Well, 'a lean dog for a long chase,'" he said.
+
+"How are cattle?" inquired Keith.
+
+The old fellow turned his eyes on him with a keen look.
+
+"Cattle's tolerable. I been buyin' a considerable number up toward
+Gumbolt, where you're goin'. I may get you to look after 'em some day,"
+he chuckled.
+
+Gordon wrote to Dave Dennison that he was going to Gumbolt and would
+look out for him. A little later he learned that the boy had already
+gone there.
+
+The means of reaching Gumbolt from Eden, the terminus of the railroad
+which Wickersham & Company were building, was still the stage, a
+survivor of the old-time mountain coach, which had outlasted all the
+manifold chances and changes of fortune.
+
+Happily for Keith, he had been obliged, though it was raining, to take
+the outside seat by the driver, old Tim Gilsey, to whom he recalled
+himself, and by his coolness at "Hellstreak Hill," where the road
+climbed over the shoulder of the mountain along a sheer cliff, and
+suddenly dropped to the river below, a point where old Gilsey was wont
+to display his skill as a driver and try the nerves of passengers, he
+made the old man his friend for life.
+
+When the stage began to ascend the next hill, the old driver actually
+unbent so far as to give an account of a "hold-up" that had occurred at
+that point not long before, "all along of the durned railroad them
+Yankees was bringin' into the country," to which he laid most of the
+evils of the time. "For when you run a stage you know who you got with
+you," declared Mr. Gilsey; "but when you run a railroad you dunno
+who you got."
+
+"Well, tell me about the time you were held up."
+
+"Didn't nobody hold me up," sniffed Mr. Gilsey. "If I had been goin' to
+stop I wouldn't 'a' started. It was a dom fool they put up here when I
+was down with rheumatiz. Since then they let me pick my substitute.
+
+"Well," he said, as a few lights twinkled below them, "there she is.
+Some pretty tough characters there, too. But you ain't goin' to have no
+trouble with 'em. All you got to do is to put the curb on 'em onct."
+
+As Keith looked about him in Gumbolt, the morning after his arrival, he
+found that his new home was only a rude mining-camp, raw and rugged; a
+few rows of frame houses, beginning to be supplanted by hasty brick
+structures, stretched up the hills on the sides of unpaved roads, dusty
+in dry weather and bottomless in wet. Yet it was, for its size, already
+one of the most cosmopolitan places in the country. Of course, the
+population was mainly American, and they were beginning to pour
+in--sharp-eyed men from the towns in black coats, and long-legged,
+quiet-looking and quiet-voiced mountaineers in rusty clothes, who hulked
+along in single file, silent and almost fugitive in the glare of
+daylight. Quiet they were and well-nigh stealthy, with something of the
+movement of other denizens of the forest, unless they were crossed and
+aroused, and then, like those other denizens, they were fierce almost
+beyond belief. A small cavil might make a great quarrel, and pistols
+would flash as quick as light.
+
+The first visit that Keith received was from J. Quincy Plume, the editor
+of the _Gumbolt Whistle_. He had the honor of knowing his distinguished
+father, he said, and had once had the pleasure of being at his old home.
+He had seen Keith's name on the book, and had simply called to offer him
+any services he or his paper could render him. "There are so few
+gentlemen in this ---- hole," he explained, "that I feel that we should
+all stand together." Keith, knowing J. Quincy's history,
+inwardly smiled.
+
+Mr. Plume had aged since he was the speaker of the carpet-bag
+legislature; his black hair had begun to be sprinkled with gray, and had
+receded yet farther back on his high forehead, his hazel eyes were a
+little bleared; and his full lips were less resolute than of old. He had
+evidently seen bad times since he was the facile agent of the Wickersham
+interests. He wore a black suit and a gay necktie which had once been
+gayer, a shabby silk hat, and patent-leather shoes somewhat broken.
+
+His addiction to cards and drink had contributed to Mr. Plume's
+overthrow, and after a disappearance from public view for some time he
+had turned up just as Gumbolt began to be talked of, with a small sheet
+somewhat larger than a pocket-handkerchief, which, in prophetic tribute
+to Gumbolt's future manufactures, he christened the _Gumbolt Whistle_.
+
+Mr. Plume offered to introduce Keith to "the prettiest woman in
+Gumbolt," and, incidentally, to "the best cocktail" also. "Terpsichore
+is a nymph who practises the Terpsichorean art; indeed, I may say,
+presides over a number of the arts, for she has the best faro-bank in
+town, and the only bar where a gentleman can get a drink that will not
+poison a refined stomach. She is, I may say, the leader of
+Gumbolt society."
+
+Keith shook his head; he had come to work, he declared.
+
+"Oh, you need not decline; you will have to know Terpy. I am virtue
+itself; in fact, I am Joseph--nowadays. You know, I belong to the
+cloth?" Keith's expression indicated that he had heard this fact. "But
+even I have yielded to her charms--intellectual, I mean, of course."
+
+Mr. Plume withdrew after having suggested to Keith to make him a small
+temporary loan, or, if more convenient, to lend him the use of his name
+on a little piece of bank-paper "to tide over an accidental and
+unexpected emergency," assuring Keith that he would certainly take it up
+within sixty days.
+
+Unfortunately for Keith, Plume's cordiality had made so much impression
+on him that he was compliant enough to lend him the use of his name, and
+as neither at the expiration of sixty days, nor at any other time, did
+Mr. Plume ever find it convenient to take up his note, Keith found
+himself later under the necessity of paying it himself. This
+circumstance, it is due to Mr. Plume to say, he always deplored, and
+doubtless with sincerity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Women were at a premium in Gumbolt, and Mr. Plume was not the only
+person who hymned the praises of "Terpsichoar," as she was mainly
+called. Keith could not help wondering what sort of a creature she was
+who kept a dance-house and a faro-bank, and yet was spoken of with
+unstinted admiration and something very like respect by the crowd that
+gathered in the "big room of the Windsor." She must be handsome, and
+possibly was a good dancer, but she was no doubt a wild, coarse
+creature, with painted cheeks and dyed hair. The mental picture he
+formed was not one to interfere with the picture he carried in
+his heart.
+
+Next day, as he was making a purchase in a shop, a neat and trim-looking
+young woman, with a fresh complexion and a mouth full of white teeth,
+walked in, and in a pleasant voice said, "Good mornin', all." Keith did
+not associate her at all with Terpsichore, but he was surprised that old
+Tim Gilsey should not have known of her presence in town. He was still
+more surprised when, after having taken a long and perfectly unabashed
+look at him, with no more diffidence in it than if he had been a lump of
+ore she was inspecting, she said:
+
+"You're the fellow that come to town night before last? Uncle Tim was
+tellin' me about you."
+
+"Yes; I got here night before last. Who is Uncle Tim?"
+
+"Uncle Tim Gilsey."
+
+She walked up and extended her hand to him with the most perfect
+friendliness, adding, with a laugh as natural as a child's:
+
+"We'll have to be friends; Uncle Tim says you're a white man, and that's
+more than some he brings over the road these days are."
+
+"Yes, I hope so. You are Mr. Gilsey's nieces I am glad to meet you"
+
+The young woman burst out laughing.
+
+"Lor', _no_. I ain't anybody's niece; but he's my uncle--I've adopted
+_him_. I'm Terpy--Terpsichore, run Terpsichore's Hall," she said by way
+of explanation, as if she thought he might not understand her allusion.
+
+Keith's breath was almost taken away. Why, she was not at all like the
+picture he had formed of her. She was a neat, quiet-looking young woman,
+with a fine figure, slim and straight and supple, a melodious voice, and
+laughing gray eyes.
+
+"You must come and see me. We're to have a blow-out to-night. Come
+around. I'll introduce you to the boys. I've got the finest ball-room in
+town--just finished--and three fiddles. We christen it to-night. Goin'
+to be the biggest thing ever was in Gumbolt."
+
+Keith awoke from his daze.
+
+"Thank you, but I am afraid I'll have to ask you to excuse me," he said.
+
+"Why?" she inquired simply.
+
+"Because I can't come. I am not much of a dancer."
+
+She looked at him first with surprise and then with amusement.
+
+"Are you a Methodist preacher?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Salvation?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I thought, maybe, you were like Tib Drummond, the Methodist, what's
+always a-preachin' ag'in' me." She turned to the storekeeper. "What do
+you think he says? He says he won't come and see me, and he ain't a
+preacher nor Salvation Army neither. But he will, won't he?"
+
+"You bet," said the man, peeping up with a grin from behind a barrel.
+"If he don't, he'll be about the only one in town who don't."
+
+"No," said Keith, pleasantly, but firmly. "I can't go."
+
+"Oh, yes, you will," she laughed. "I'll expect you. By-by"; and she
+walked out of the store with a jaunty air, humming a song about the
+"iligint, bauld McIntyres."
+
+The "blow-out" came off, and was honored with a column in the next issue
+of the Whistle--a column of reeking eulogy. But Keith did not attend,
+though he heard the wheezing of fiddles and the shouting and stamping of
+Terpsichore's guests deep into the night.
+
+Keith was too much engrossed for the next few days in looking about him
+for work and getting himself as comfortably settled as possible to think
+of anything else.
+
+If, however, he forgot the "only decent-looking woman in Gumbolt," she
+did not forget him. The invitation of a sovereign is equivalent to a
+command the world over; and Terpsichore was as much the queen regnant of
+Gumbolt as Her Majesty, Victoria, was Queen of England, or of any other
+country in her wide realm. She was more; she was absolute. She could
+have had any one of a half-dozen men cut the throat of any other man in
+Gumbolt at her bidding.
+
+The mistress of the "Dancing Academy" had not forgotten her boast. The
+institution over which she presided was popular enough almost to justify
+her wager. There were few men of Keith's age in Gumbolt who did not
+attend its sessions and pay their tribute over the green tables that
+stretched along the big, low room.
+
+In fact, Miss Terpsichore was not of that class that forget either
+friends or foes; whatever she was she was frankly and outspokenly. Mr.
+Plume informed Keith that she was "down on him."
+
+"She's got it in for you," he said. "Says she's goin' to drive you out
+of Gumbolt."
+
+"Well, she will not," said Keith, with a flash in his eye.
+
+"She is a good friend and a good foe," said the editor. "Better go and
+offer a pinch of incense to Diana. She is worth cultivating. You ought
+to see her dance."
+
+Keith, however, had made his decision. A girl with eyes like dewy
+violets was his Diana, and to her his incense was offered.
+
+A day or two later Keith was passing down the main street, when he saw
+the young woman crossing over at the corner ahead of him, stepping from
+one stone to another quite daintily. She was holding up her skirt, and
+showed a very neat pair of feet in perfectly fitting boots. At the
+crossing she stopped. As Keith passed her, he glanced at her, and caught
+her eye fastened on him. She did not look away at all, and Keith
+inclined his head in recognition of their former meeting.
+
+"Good morning," she said.
+
+"Good morning." Keith lifted his hat and was passing on.
+
+"Why haven't you been to see me?" she demanded.
+
+Keith pretended not to hear.
+
+"I thought I invited you to come and see me?"
+
+Still, Keith did not answer, but he paused. His head was averted, and he
+was waiting until she ceased speaking to go on.
+
+Suddenly, to his surprise, she bounded in front of him and squared her
+straight figure right before him.
+
+"Did you hear what I said to you?" she demanded tempestuously.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why don't you answer me?" Her gaze was fastened on his face. Her
+cheeks were flushed, her voice was imperative, and her eyes flashed.
+
+"Because I didn't wish to do so," said Keith, calmly.
+
+Suddenly she flamed out and poured at him a torrent of vigorous oaths.
+He was so taken by surprise that he forgot to do anything but wonder,
+and his calmness evidently daunted her.
+
+"Don't you know that when a lady invites you to come to see her, you
+have to do it?"
+
+"I have heard that," said Keith, beginning to look amused.
+
+"You have? Do you mean to say Tam not a lady?"
+
+"Well, from your conversation, I might suppose you were a man," said
+Keith, half laughing.
+
+"I will show you that I am man enough for you. Don't you know I am the
+boss of this town, and that when I tell you to do a thing you have
+to obey me?"
+
+"No; I do not know that," said Keith. "You may be the boss of this town,
+but I don't have to obey you."
+
+"Well, I will show you about it, and ---- quick, too. See if I don't! I
+will run you out of this town, my young man."
+
+"Oh, I don't think you will," said Keith, easily.
+
+"Yes, I will, and quick enough, too. You look out for me."
+
+"Good morning," said Keith, raising his hat.
+
+The loudness of her tone and the vehemence of her manner had arrested
+several passers-by, who now stood looking on with interest.
+
+"What's the matter, Terpy?" asked one of them. "What are you so peppery
+about? Bank busted?"
+
+The young woman explained the matter with more fairness than Keith would
+have supposed.
+
+"Oh, he is just a fool. Let him alone," said the man; whilst another
+added: "He'll come around, darlin'; don't you bother; and if he don't,
+I will."
+
+"---- him! He's got to go. I won't let him now. You know when I say a
+thing it's got to be, and I mean to make him know it, too," asserted the
+young Amazon. "I'll have him driven out of town, and if there ain't any
+one here that's man enough to do it, I'll do it myself." This
+declaration she framed with an imprecation sufficiently strong if an
+oath could make it so.
+
+That evening Tim Gilsey came in to see Keith. He looked rather grave.
+
+"I am sorry you did not drop in, if it was for no more than to git
+supper," he said. "Terpy is a bad one to have against you. She's the
+kindest gal in the world; but she's got a temper, and when a gal's got a
+temper, she's worse'n a fractious leader."
+
+"I don't want her against me; but I'll be hanged if I will be driven
+into going anywhere that I don't want to go," asserted Keith.
+
+"No, I don't say as you should," said the old driver, his eye resting on
+Keith with a look that showed that he liked him none the less for his
+pluck. "But you've got to look out. This ain't back in the settlements,
+and there's a plenty around here as would cut your throat for a wink of
+Terpy's eye. They will give you a shake for it, and if you come out of
+that safe it will be all right. I'll see one or two of the boys and see
+that they don't let 'em double up on you. A horse can't do nothin' long
+if he has got a double load on him, no matter what he is."
+
+Tim strolled out, and, though Keith did not know it for some time, he
+put in a word for him in one or two places which stood him in good stead
+afterwards.
+
+The following day a stranger came up to Keith. He was a thin man between
+youth and middle age, with a long face and a deep voice, and light hair
+that stuck up on his head. His eyes were deep-set and clear; his mouth
+was grave and his chin strong. He wore a rusty black coat and short,
+dark trousers.
+
+"Are you Mr. Keith?" His voice was deep and melancholy.
+
+Keith bowed. He could not decide what the stranger was. The short
+trousers inclined him to the church.
+
+"I am proud to know you, sir. I am Mr. Drummond, the Methodist
+preacher." He gripped Keith's hand.
+
+Keith expressed the pleasure he had in meeting him.
+
+"Yes, sir; I am proud to know you," repeated Mr. Drummond. "I hear you
+have come out on the right side, and have given a righteous reproof to
+that wretched dancing Jezebel who is trying to destroy the souls of the
+young men of this town."
+
+Keith said that he was not aware that he had done anything of the kind.
+As to destroying the young men, he doubted if they could be injured by
+her--certainly not by dancing. In any event, he did not merit
+his praise.
+
+Mr. Drummond shook his head. "Yes, sir. You are the first young man who
+has had the courage to withstand the wiles of that person. She is the
+most abandoned creature in this town; she beguiles the men so that I can
+make no impression on them. Even when I am holding my meetings, I can
+hear the strains of her fiddles and the shouts of the ribald followers
+that throng her den-of-Satan. I have tried to get her to leave, but she
+will not go."
+
+Keith's reply was that he thought she had as much right there as any
+one, and he doubted if there were any way to meet the difficulty.
+
+"I am sorry to hear you say that," said the preacher. "I shall break up
+her sink of iniquity if I have to hold a revival meeting at her very
+door and call down brimstone and fire upon her den of wickedness"
+
+"If you felt so on the subject of dancing, why did you come here?"
+demanded Keith. "It seems to me that dancing is one of the least sins
+of Gumbolt."
+
+The preacher looked at him almost pensively. "I thought it my duty. I
+have encountered ridicule and obloquy; but I do not mind them. I count
+them but dross. Wherever I have found the print of my Lord's shoe in the
+earth, there I have coveted to set my feet also."
+
+Keith bowed. The speech of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth carried its cachet with
+it. The stiff, awkward figure had changed. The preacher's sincerity had
+lent him dignity, and his simple use of a simple tinker's words had
+suddenly uplifted him to a higher plane.
+
+"Do not you think you might go about it in a less uncompromising spirit?
+You might succeed better and do more good," said Keith.
+
+"No, sir; I will make no compromise with the devil--not even to succeed.
+Good-by. I am sorry to find you among the obdurate." As he shook hands,
+his jaw was set fast and his eye was burning. He strode off with the
+step of a soldier advancing in battle.
+
+Keith had not long to wait to test old Gilsey's advice. He was sitting
+in the public room of the Windsor, a few evenings later, among the
+motley crew that thronged that popular resort, who were discoursing of
+many things, from J. Quincy Plume's last editorial on "The New Fanny
+Elssler," to the future of Gumbolt, when Mr. Plume himself entered. His
+appearance was the signal for some humor, for Mr. Plume had long passed
+the time when any one but himself took him seriously.
+
+"Here comes somebody that can tell us the news," called some one. "Come
+in, J. Quincy, and tell us what you know."
+
+"That would take too long," said Mr. Plume, as he edged himself toward
+the stove. "You will find all the news in the _Whistle_ to-morrow."
+
+Just then another new arrival, who had pushed his way in toward the
+stove, said: "I will tell you a piece of news: Bill Bluffy is back."
+
+"Come back, has he?" observed one of the company. "Well, that is more
+interesting to J. Quincy than if the railroad had come. They are hated
+rivals. Since J. Quincy has taken to writing editorials on Terpy, Bill
+says there ain't no show for him. He threatened to kill Terp, I heard."
+
+"Oh, I guess he has got more sense than that, drunk or sober. He had
+better stick to men; shootin' of women ain't popular in most parts, an'
+it ain't likely to get fashionable in Gumbolt, I reckon."
+
+"He is huntin' for somebody," said the newcomer.
+
+"I guess if he is going to get after all of Terpy's ardent admirers, he
+will have his hands pretty full," observed Mr. Plume--a sentiment which
+appeared to meet with general approval.
+
+Just then the door opened a little roughly, and a man entered slowly
+whom Keith knew intuitively to be Mr. Bill Bluffy himself. He was a
+young, brown-bearded man, about Keith's size, but more stockily built,
+his flannel shirt was laced up in front, and had a full, broad collar
+turned over a red necktie with long ends. His slouch-hat was set on the
+back of his head. The gleaming butts of two pistols that peeped out of
+his waistband gave a touch of piquancy to his appearance. His black eyes
+were restless and sparkling with excitement. He wavered slightly in his
+gait, and his speech was just thick enough to confirm what his
+appearance suggested, and what he was careful to declare somewhat
+superfluously, that he was "on a ---- of a spree."
+
+"I am a-huntin' for a ---- furriner 'at I promised to run out of town
+before to-morrow mornin'. Is he in here!" He tried to stand still, but
+finding this difficult, advanced.
+
+A pause fell in the conversation around the stove. Two or three of the
+men, after a civil enough greeting, hitched themselves into a more
+comfortable posture in their chairs, and it was singular, though Keith
+did not recall it until afterwards, that each of them showed by the
+movement a pistol on his right hip.
+
+After a general greeting, which in form was nearer akin to an eternal
+malediction than to anything else, Mr. Bluffy walked to the bar. Resting
+himself against it, he turned, and sweeping his eye over the assemblage,
+ordered every man in the room to walk up and take a drink with him,
+under penalties veiled in too terrific language to be wholly
+intelligible. The violence of his invitation was apparently not quite
+necessary, as every man in the room pulled back his chair promptly and
+moved toward the bar, leaving Keith alone by the stove. Mr. Bluffy had
+ordered drinks, when his casual glance fell on Keith standing quietly
+inside the circle of chairs on the other side of the stove. He pushed
+his way unsteadily through the men clustered at the bar.
+
+"Why in the ---- don't you come up and do what I tell you? Are you
+deaf?"
+
+"No," said Keith, quietly; "but I'll get you to excuse me."
+
+"Excuse ----! You aren't too good to drink with me, are you? If you
+think you are, I'll show you pretty ----d quick you ain't."
+
+Keith flushed.
+
+"Drink with him," said two or three men in an undertone. "Or take a
+cigar," said one, in a friendly aside.
+
+"Thank you, I won't drink," said Keith, yet more gravely, his face
+paling a little, "and I don't care for a cigar."
+
+"Come on, Mr. Keith," called some one.
+
+The name caught the young bully, and he faced Keith more directly.
+
+"Keith?--Keith!" he repeated, fastening his eyes on him with a cold
+glitter in them. "So you're Mr. Keith, are you?"
+
+"That is my name," said Keith, feeling his blood tingling.
+
+"Well, you're the man I'm a-lookin' for. No, you won't drink with me,
+'cause I won't let you, you ---- ---- ----! You are the ---- ---- that
+comes here insultin' a lady?"
+
+"No; I am not," said Keith, keeping his eyes on him.
+
+"You're a liar!" said Mr. Bluffy, adding his usual expletives. "And
+you're the man I've come back here a-huntin' for. I promised to drive
+you out of town to-night if I had to go to hell a-doin' it."
+
+His white-handled pistol was out of his waistband with a movement so
+quick that he had it cocked and Keith was looking down the barrel before
+he took in what had been done. Quickness was Mr. Bluffy's strongest
+card, and he had played it often.
+
+Keith's face paled slightly. He looked steadily over the pistol, not
+three feet from him, at the drunken creature beyond it. His nerves grew
+tense, and every muscle in his frame tightened. He saw the beginning of
+the grooves in the barrel of the pistol and the gray cones of the
+bullets at the side in the cylinder; he saw the cruel, black, drunken
+eyes of the young desperado. It was all in a flash. He had not a chance
+for his life. Yes, he had.
+
+"Let up, Bill," said a voice, coaxingly, as one might to soothe a wild
+beast. "Don't--"
+
+"Drop that pistol!" said another voice, which Keith recognized as Dave
+Dennison's.
+
+The desperado half glanced at the latter as he shot a volley of oaths at
+him. That glance saved Keith. He ducked out of the line of aim and
+sprang upon his assailant at the same time, seizing the pistol as he
+went, and turning it up just as Bluffy pulled the trigger. The ball
+went into the remote corner of the ceiling, and the desperado was
+carried off his feet by Keith's rush.
+
+The only sounds heard in the room were the shuffling of the feet of the
+two wrestlers and the oaths of the enraged Bluffy. Keith had not uttered
+a word. He fought like a bulldog, without noise. His effort was, while
+he still gripped the pistol, to bring his two hands together behind his
+opponent's back. A sudden relaxation of the latter's grip as he made
+another desperate effort to release his pistol favored Keith, and,
+bringing his hands together, he lifted his antagonist from his feet, and
+by a dexterous twist whirled him over his shoulder and dashed him with
+all his might, full length flat on his back, upon the floor. It was an
+old trick learned in his boyish days and practised on the Dennisons, and
+Gordon had by it ended many a contest, but never one more completely
+than this. A buzz of applause came from the bystanders, and more than
+one, with sudden friendliness, called to him to get Bluffy's pistol,
+which had fallen on the floor. But Keith had no need to do so, for just
+then a stoutly built young fellow snatched it up. It was Dave Dennison,
+who had come in just as the row began. He had been following up Bluffy.
+The desperado, however, was too much shaken to have used it immediately,
+and when, still stunned and breathless, he rose to his feet, the crowd
+was too much against him to have allowed him to renew the attack, even
+had he then desired it.
+
+As for Keith, he found himself suddenly the object of universal
+attention, and he might, had he been able to distribute himself, have
+slept in half the shacks in the camp.
+
+The only remark Dave made on the event was characteristic:
+
+"Don't let him git the drop on you again."
+
+The next morning Keith found himself, in some sort, famous. "Tacklin'
+Bill Bluffy without a gun and cleanin' him up," as one of his new
+friends expressed it, was no mean feat, and Keith was not insensible to
+the applause it brought him. He would have enjoyed it more, perhaps, had
+not every man, without exception, who spoke of it given him the same
+advice Dave had given--to look out for Bluffy. To have to kill a man or
+be killed oneself is not the pleasantest introduction to one's new home;
+yet this appeared to Keith the dilemma in which he was placed, and as,
+if either had to die, he devoutly hoped it would not be himself, he
+stuck a pistol in his pocket and walked out the next morning with very
+much the same feeling he supposed he should have if he had been going to
+battle. He was ashamed to find himself much relieved when some one he
+met volunteered the information that Bluffy had left town by light that
+morning. "Couldn't stand the racket. Terpy wouldn't even speak to him.
+But he'll come back. Jest as well tote your gun a little while, till
+somebody else kills him for you." A few mornings later, as Keith was
+going down the street, he met again the "only decent-lookin' gal in
+Gumbolt." It was too late for him to turn off, for when he first caught
+sight of her he saw that she had seen him, and her head went up, and she
+turned her eyes away. He hoped to pass without appearing to know her;
+but just before they met, she cut her eye at him, and though his gaze
+was straight ahead, she said, "Good morning," and he touched his hat as
+he passed. That afternoon he met her again. He was passing on as before,
+without looking at her, but she stopped him. "Good afternoon." She spoke
+rather timidly, and the color that mounted to her face made her very
+handsome. He returned the salutation coldly, and with an uneasy feeling
+that he was about to be made the object of another outpouring of her
+wrath. Her intention, however, was quite different. "I don't want you to
+think I set that man on you; it was somebody else done it." The color
+came and went in her cheeks.
+
+Keith bowed politely, but preserved silence.
+
+"I was mad enough to do it, but I didn't, and them that says I done it
+lies." She flushed, but looked him straight in the face.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Keith, civilly, starting to move on.
+
+"I wish they would let me and my affairs alone," she began.' "They're
+always a-talkin' about me, and I never done 'em no harm. First thing
+they know, I'll give 'em something to talk about."
+
+The suppressed fire was beginning to blaze again, and Keith looked
+somewhat anxiously down the street, wishing he were anywhere except in
+that particular company. To relieve the tension, he said:
+
+"I did not mean to be rude to you the other day. Good morning."
+
+At the kind tone her face changed.
+
+"I knew it. I was riled that mornin' about another thing--somethin' what
+happened the day before, about Bill," she explained. "Bill's bad enough
+when he's in liquor, and I'd have sent him off for good long ago if they
+had let him alone. But they're always a-peckin' and a-diggin' at him.
+They set him on drinkin' and fightin', and not one of 'em is man enough
+to stand up to him."
+
+She gave a little whimper, and then, as if not trusting herself further,
+walked hastily away. Mr. Gilsey said to Gordon soon afterwards:
+
+"Well, you've got one friend in Gumbolt as is a team by herself; you've
+captured Terp. She says you're the only man in Gumbolt as treats her
+like a lady."
+
+Keith was both pleased and relieved.
+
+A week or two after Keith had taken up his abode in Gumbolt, Mr. Gilsey
+was taken down with his old enemy, the rheumatism, and Keith went to
+visit him. He found him in great anxiety lest his removal from the box
+should hasten the arrival of the railway. He unexpectedly gave Keith
+evidence of the highest confidence he could have in any man. He asked
+if he would take the stage until he got well. Gordon readily assented.
+
+So the next morning at daylight Keith found himself sitting in the boot,
+enveloped in old Tim's greatcoat, enthroned in that high seat toward
+which he had looked in his childhood-dreams.
+
+It was hard work and more or less perilous work, but his experience as a
+boy on the plantation and at Squire Rawson's, when he had driven the
+four-horse wagon, stood him in good stead.
+
+Old Tim's illness was more protracted than any one had contemplated,
+and, before the first winter was out, Gordon had a reputation as a
+stage-driver second only to old Gilsey himself.
+
+Stage-driving, however, was not his only occupation, and before the next
+Spring had passed, Keith had become what Mr. Plume called "one of
+Gumbolt's rising young sons." His readiness to lend a hand to any one
+who needed a helper began to tell. Whether it was Mr. Gilsey trying to
+climb with his stiff joints to the boot of his stage, or Squire Rawson's
+cousin, Captain Turley, the sandy-whiskered, sandy-clothed surveyor,
+running his lines through the laurel bushes among the gray débris of the
+crumbled mountain-side; Mr. Quincy Plume trying to evolve new copy from
+a splitting head, or the shouting wagon-drivers thrashing their teams up
+the muddy street, he could and would help any one.
+
+He was so popular that he was nominated to be the town constable, a
+tribute to his victory over Mr. Bluffy.
+
+Terpy and he, too, had become friends, and though Keith stuck to his
+resolution not to visit her "establishment," few days went by that she
+did not pass him on the street or happen along where he was, and always
+with a half-abashed nod and a rising color.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+KEITH DECLINES AN OFFER
+
+With the growth of Gumbolt, Mr. Wickersham and his friends awakened to
+the fact that Squire Rawson was not the simple cattle-dealer he appeared
+to be, but was a man to be reckoned with. He not only held a large
+amount of the most valuable property in the Gap, but had as yet proved
+wholly intractable about disposing of it. Accordingly, the agent of
+Wickersham & Company, Mr. Halbrook, came down to Gumbolt to look into
+the matter. He brought with him a stout, middle-aged Scotchman, named
+Matheson, with keen eyes and a red face, who was represented to be the
+man whom Wickersham & Company intended to make the superintendent of
+their mines as soon as they should be opened.
+
+The railroad not having yet been completed more than a third of the way
+beyond Eden, Mr. Halbrook took the stage to Gumbolt.
+
+Owing to something that Mr. Gilsey had let fall about Keith, Mr.
+Halbrook sent next day for Keith. He wanted him to do a small piece of
+surveying for him. With him was the stout Scotchman, Matheson.
+
+The papers and plats were on a table in his room, and Keith was looking
+at them.
+
+"How long would it take you to do it?" asked Mr. Halbrook. He was a
+short, alert-looking man, with black eyes and a decisive manner. He
+always appeared to be in a hurry.
+
+Keith was so absorbed that he did not answer immediately, and the agent
+repeated the question with a little asperity in his tone.
+
+"I say how long would it take you to run those lines?"
+
+"I don't know," said Keith, doubtfully. "I see a part of the property
+lies on the mountain-side just above and next to Squire Rawson's lands.
+I could let you know to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow! You people down here always want to put things off. That is
+the reason you are so behind the rest of the world. The stage-driver,
+however, told me that you were different, and that is the reason I
+sent for you."
+
+Keith straightened himself. "Dr. Chalmers said when some one praised him
+as better than other Scotchmen, 'I thank you, sir, for no compliment
+paid me at the expense of my countrymen." He half addressed himself to
+the Scotchman.
+
+Matheson turned and looked him over, and as he did so his grim face
+softened a little.
+
+"I know nothing about your doctors," said Mr. Halbrook; "what I want is
+to get this work done. Why can't you let me know to-day what it will
+cost? I have other things to do. I wish to leave to-morrow afternoon."
+
+"Well," said Keith, with a little flush in his face, "I could guess at
+it to-day. I think it will take a very short time. I am familiar with a
+part of this property already, and--"
+
+Mr. Halbrook was a man of quick intellect; moreover, he had many things
+on his mind just then. Among them he had to go and see what sort of a
+trade he could make with this Squire Rawson, who had somehow stumbled
+into the best piece of land in the Gap, and was now holding it in an
+obstinate and unreasonable way.
+
+"Well, I don't want any guessing. I'll tell you what I will do. I will
+pay you so much for the job." He named a sum which was enough to make
+Keith open his eyes. It was more than he had ever received for any one
+piece of work.
+
+"It would be cheaper for you to pay me by the day," Keith began.
+
+"Not much! I know the way you folks work down here. I have seen
+something of it. No day-work for me. I will pay you so many dollars for
+the job. What do you say? You can take it or leave it alone. If you do
+it well, I may have some more work for you." He had no intention of
+being offensive; he was only talking what he would have called
+"business"; but his tone was such that Keith answered him with a flash
+in his eye, his breath coming a little more quickly.
+
+"Very well; I will take it."
+
+Keith took the papers and went out. Within a few minutes he had found
+his notes of the former survey and secured his assistants. His next step
+was to go to Captain Turley and take him into partnership in the work,
+and within an hour he was out on the hills, verifying former lines and
+running such new lines as were necessary. Spurred on by the words of the
+newcomer even more than by the fee promised him, Keith worked with might
+and main, and sat up all night finishing the work. Next day he walked
+into the room where Mr. Halbrook sat, in the company's big new office at
+the head of the street. He had a roll of paper under his arm.
+
+"Good morning, sir." His head was held rather high, and his voice had a
+new tone in it.
+
+Mr. Wickersham's agent looked up, and his face clouded. He was not used
+to being addressed in so independent a tone.
+
+"Good morning. I suppose you have come to tell me how long it will take
+you to finish the job that I gave you, or that the price I named is not
+high enough?"
+
+"No," said Keith, "I have not. I have come to show you that my people
+down here do not always put things off till to-morrow. I have come to
+tell you that I have done the work. Here is your survey." He unrolled
+and spread out before Mr. Halbrook's astonished gaze the plat he had
+made. It was well done, the production of a draughtsman who knew the
+value of neatness and skill. The agent's eyes opened wide.
+
+"Impossible! You could not have done it, or else you--"
+
+"I have done it," said Keith, firmly. "It is correct."
+
+"You had the plat before?" Mr. Halbrook's eyes were fastened on him
+keenly. He was feeling a little sore at what he considered having been
+outwitted by this youngster.
+
+"I had run certain of the lines before," said Keith: "these, as I
+started to tell you yesterday. And now," he said, with a sudden change
+of manner, "I will make you the same proposal I made yesterday. You can
+pay me what you think the work is worth. I will not hold you to your
+bargain of yesterday."
+
+The other sat back in his chair, and looked at him with a different
+expression on his face.
+
+"You must have worked all night?' he said thoughtfully.
+
+"I did," said Keith, "and so did my assistant, but that is nothing. I
+have often done that for less money. Many people sit up all night in
+Gumbolt," he added, with a smile.
+
+"That old stage-driver said you were a worker." Mr. Halbrook's eyes were
+still on him. "Where are you from?"
+
+"Born and bred in the South," said Keith.
+
+"I owe you something of an apology for what I said yesterday. I shall
+have some more work for you, perhaps."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The agent, when he went back to the North, was as good as his word. He
+told his people that there was one man in Gumbolt who would do their
+work promptly.
+
+"And he's straight," he said. "He says he is from the South; but he is a
+new issue."
+
+He further reported that old Rawson, the countryman who owned the land
+in the Gap, either owned or controlled the cream of the coal-beds there.
+"He either knows or has been well advised by somebody who knows the
+value of all the lands about there. And he has about blocked the game. I
+think it's that young Keith, and I advise you to get hold of Keith."
+
+"Who is Keith? What Keith? What is his name?" asked Mr. Wickersham.
+
+"Gordon Keith."
+
+Mr. Wickersham's face brightened. "Oh, that is all right; we can get
+him. We might give him a place?"
+
+Mr. Halbrook nodded.
+
+Mr. Wickersham sat down and wrote a letter to Keith, saying that he
+wished to see him in New York on a matter of business which might
+possibly turn out to his advantage. He also wrote a letter to General
+Keith, suggesting that he might possibly be able to give his son
+employment, and intimating that it was on account of his high regard for
+the General.
+
+That day Keith met Squire Rawson on the street. He was dusty and
+travel-stained.
+
+"I was jest comin' to see you," he said.
+
+They returned to the little room which Keith called his office, where
+the old fellow opened his saddle-bags and took out a package of papers.
+
+"They all thought I was a fool," he chuckled as he laid out deed after
+deed. "While they was a-talkin' I was a-ridin'. They thought I was
+buyin' cattle, and I was, but for every cow I bought I got a calf in the
+shape of the mineral rights to a tract of land. I'd buy a cow and I'd
+offer a man half as much again as she was worth if he'd sell me the
+mineral rights at a fair price, and he'd do it. He never had no use for
+'em, an' I didn't know as I should either; but that young engineer o'
+yourn talked so positive I thought I might as well git 'em inside my
+pasture-fence." He sat back and looked at Keith with quizzical
+complacency.
+
+"Come a man to see me not long ago," he continued; "Mr.
+Halbrook--black-eyed man, with a face white and hard like a tombstone.
+I set up and talked to him nigh all night and filled him plumb full of
+old applejack. That man sized me up for a fool, an' I sized him up for a
+blamed smart Yankee. But I don't know as he got much the better of me."
+
+Keith doubted it too.
+
+"I think it was in and about the most vallyble applejack that I ever
+owned," continued the old landowner, after a pause. "You know, I don't
+mind Yankees as much as I used to--some of 'em. Of course, thar was Dr.
+Balsam; he was a Yankee; but I always thought he was somethin' out of
+the general run, like a piebald horse. That young engineer o' yourn that
+come to my house several years ago, he give me a new idea about
+'em--about some other things, too. He was a very pleasant fellow, an' he
+knowed a good deal, too. It occurred to me 't maybe you might git hold
+of him, an' we might make somethin' out of these lands on our own
+account. Where is he now?"
+
+Keith explained that Mr. Rhodes was somewhere in Europe.
+
+"Well, time enough. He'll come home sometime, an' them lands ain't
+liable to move away. Yes, I likes some Yankees now pretty well; but,
+Lord! I loves to git ahead of a Yankee! They're so kind o' patronizin'
+to you. Well," he said, rising, "I thought I'd come up and talk to you
+about it. Some day I'll git you to look into matters a leetle for me."
+
+The next day Keith received Mr. Wickersham's letter requesting him to
+come to New York. Keith's heart gave a bound.
+
+The image of Alice Yorke flashed into his mind, as it always did when
+any good fortune came to him. Many a night, with drooping eyes and
+flagging energies, he had sat up and worked with renewed strength
+because she sat on the other side of the hot lamp.
+
+It is true that communication between them had been but rare. Mrs. Yorke
+had objected to any correspondence, and he now began to see, though
+dimly, that her objection was natural. But from time to time, on
+anniversaries, he had sent her a book, generally a book of poems with
+marked passages in it, and had received in reply a friendly note from
+the young lady, over which he had pondered, and which he had always
+treasured and filed away with tender care.
+
+Keith took the stage that night for Eden on his way to New York. As they
+drove through the pass in the moonlight he felt as if he were soaring
+into a new life. He was already crossing the mountains beyond which lay
+the Italy of his dreams.
+
+He stopped on his way to see his father. The old gentleman's face glowed
+with pleasure as he looked at Gordon and found how he had developed.
+Life appeared to be reopening for him also in his son.
+
+"I will give you a letter to an old friend of mine, John Templeton. He
+has a church in New York. But it is not one of the fashionable ones; for
+
+     "'Unpractised he to fawn or seek for power
+     By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour:
+     Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
+     More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.'
+
+"You will find him a safe adviser. You will call also and pay my respects
+to Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth."
+
+On his way, owing to a break in the railroad, Keith had to change his
+train at a small town not far from New York. Among the passengers was an
+old lady, simply and quaintly dressed, who had taken the train somewhere
+near Philadelphia. She was travelling quite alone, and appeared to be
+much hampered by her bags and parcels. The sight of an old woman, like
+that of a little girl, always softened Keith's heart. Something always
+awoke in him that made him feel tender. When Keith first observed this
+old lady, the entire company was streaming along the platform in that
+haste which always marks the transfer of passengers from one train to
+another. No one appeared to notice her, and under the weight of her bags
+and bundles she was gradually dropping to the rear of the crowd. As
+Keith, bag in hand, swung past her with the rest, he instinctively
+turned and offered his services to help carry her parcels. She panted
+her thanks, but declined briefly, declaring that she should do
+very well.
+
+"You may be doing very well," Keith said pleasantly, "but you will do
+better if you will let me help you."
+
+"No, thank you." This time more firmly than before. "I am quite used to
+helping myself, and am not old enough for that yet. I prefer to carry my
+own baggage," she added with emphasis.
+
+"It is not the question of age, I hope, that gives me the privilege of
+helping a lady," said Keith. He was already trying to relieve her of her
+largest bag and one or two bundles.
+
+A keen glance from a pair of very bright eyes was shot at him.
+
+"Well, I will let you take that side of that bag and this bundle--no;
+that one. Now, don't run away from me."
+
+"No; I will promise not," said Keith, laughing; and relieved of that
+much of her burden, the old lady stepped out more briskly than she had
+been doing. When they finally reached a car, the seats were nearly all
+filled. There was one, however, beside a young woman at the far end, and
+this Keith offered to the old lady, who, as he stowed her baggage close
+about her, made him count the pieces carefully. Finding the tale
+correct, she thanked him with more cordiality than she had shown before,
+and Keith withdrew to secure a seat for himself. As, however, the car
+was full, he stood up in the rear of the coach, waiting until some
+passengers might alight at a way-station. The first seat that became
+vacant was one immediately behind the old lady, who had now fallen into
+a cheerful conversation with the young woman beside her.
+
+"What do you do when strangers offer to take your bags?" Keith heard her
+asking as he seated himself.
+
+"Why, I don't know; they don't often ask. I never let them do it," said
+the young woman, firmly.
+
+"A wise rule, too. I have heard that that is the way nowadays that they
+rob women travelling alone. I had a young man insist on taking my bag
+back there; but I am very suspicious of these civil young men." She
+leaned over and counted her parcels again. Keith could not help laughing
+to himself. As she sat up she happened to glance around, and he caught
+her eye. He saw her clutch her companion and whisper to her, at which
+the latter glanced over her shoulder and gave him a look that was almost
+a stare. Then the two conferred together, while Keith chuckled with
+amusement. What they were saying, had Keith heard it, would have amused
+him still more than the other.
+
+"There he is now, right behind us," whispered the old lady.
+
+"Why, he doesn't look like a robber."
+
+"They never do. I have heard they never do. They are the most dangerous
+kind. Of course, a robber who looked it would be arrested on sight."
+
+"But he is very good-looking," insisted the younger woman, who had, in
+the meantime, taken a second glance at Keith, who pretended to be
+immersed in a book.
+
+"Well, so much the worse. They are the very worst kind. Never trust a
+good-looking young stranger, my dear. They may be all right in romances,
+but never in life."
+
+As her companion did not altogether appear to take this view, the old
+lady half turned presently, and taking a long look down the other side
+of the car, to disarm Keith of any suspicion that she might be looking
+at him, finally let her eyes rest on his face, quite accidentally, as it
+were. A moment later she was whispering to her companion.
+
+"I am sure he is watching us. I am going to ask you to stick close
+beside me when we get to New York until I find a hackney-coach."
+
+"Have you been to New York often?" asked the girl, smiling.
+
+"I have been there twice in the last thirty years; but I spent several
+winters there when I was a young girl. I suppose it has changed a good
+deal in that time?"
+
+The young lady also supposed that it had changed in that time, and
+wondered why Miss Brooke--the name the other had given--did not come to
+New York oftener.
+
+"You see, it is such an undertaking to go now," said the old lady.
+"Everything goes with such a rush that it takes my breath away. Why,
+three trains a day each way pass near my home now. One of them actually
+rushes by in the most impetuous and disdainful way. When I was young we
+used to go to the station at least an hour before the train was due, and
+had time to take out our knitting and compose our thoughts; but now one
+has to be at the station just as promptly as if one were going to
+church, and if you don't get on the train almost before it has stopped,
+the dreadful thing is gone before you know it. I must say, it is very
+destructive to one's nerves."
+
+Her companion laughed.
+
+"I don't know what you will think when you get to New York."
+
+"Think! I don't expect to think at all. I shall just shut my eyes and
+trust to Providence."
+
+"Your friends will meet you there, I suppose?"
+
+"I wrote them two weeks ago that I should be there to-day, and then my
+cousin wrote me to let her know the train, and I replied, telling her
+what train I expected to take. I would never have come if I had imagined
+we were going to have this trouble."
+
+The girl reassured her by telling her that even if her friends did not
+meet her, she would put her in the way of reaching them safely. And in a
+little while they drew into the station.
+
+Keith's first impression of New York was dazzling to him. The rush, the
+hurry, stirred him and filled him with a sense of power. He felt that
+here was the theatre of action for him.
+
+The offices of Wickersham & Company were in one of the large buildings
+down-town. The whole floor was filled with pens and railed-off places,
+beyond which lay the private offices of the firm. Mr. Wickersham was
+"engaged," and Keith had to wait for an hour or two before he could
+secure an interview with him. When at length he was admitted to Mr.
+Wickersham's inner office, he was received with some cordiality. His
+father was asked after, and a number of questions about Gumbolt were put
+to him. Then Mr. Wickersham came to the point. He had a high regard for
+his father, he said, and having heard that Gordon was living in Gumbolt,
+where they had some interests, it had occurred to him that he might
+possibly be able to give him a position. The salary would not be large
+at first, but if he showed himself capable it might lead to
+something better.
+
+Keith was thrilled, and declared that what he most wanted was work and
+opportunity to show that he was able to work. Mr. Wickersham was sure of
+this, and informed him briefly that it was outdoor work that they had
+for him--"the clearing up of titles and securing of such lands as we may
+wish to obtain," he added.
+
+This was satisfactory to Keith, and he said so.
+
+Mr. Wickersham's shrewd eyes had a gleam of content in them.
+
+"Of course, our interest will be your first consideration?" he said.
+
+"Yes, sir; I should try and make it so."
+
+"For instance," proceeded Mr. Wickersham, "there are certain lands lying
+near our lands, not of any special value; but still you can readily
+understand that as we are running a railroad through the mountains, and
+are expending large sums of money, it is better that we should control
+lands through which our line will pass."
+
+Keith saw this perfectly. "Do you know the names of any of the owners?"
+he inquired. "I am familiar with some of the lands about there."
+
+Mr. Wickersham pondered. Keith was so ingenuous and eager that there
+could be no harm in coming to the point.
+
+"Why, yes; there is a man named Rawson that has some lands or some sort
+of interest in lands that adjoin ours. It might be well for us to
+control those properties."
+
+Keith's countenance fell.
+
+"It happens that I know something of those lands."
+
+"Yes? Well, you might possibly take those properties along with others?"
+
+"I could certainly convey any proposition you wish to make to Mr.
+Rawson, and should be glad to do so," began Keith.
+
+"We should expect you to use your best efforts to secure these and all
+other lands that we wish," interrupted Mr. Wickersham, speaking with
+sudden sharpness. "When we employ a man we expect him to give us all his
+services, and not to be half in our employ and half in that of the man
+we are fighting."
+
+The change in his manner and tone was so great and so unexpected that
+Keith was amazed. He had never been spoken to before quite in this way.
+He, however, repressed his feeling.
+
+"I should certainly render you the best service I could," he said; "but
+you would not expect me to say anything to Squire Rawson that I did not
+believe? He has talked with me about these lands, and he knows their
+value just as well as you do."
+
+Mr. Wickersham looked at him with a cold light in his eyes, which
+suddenly recalled Ferdy to Keith.
+
+"I don't think that you and I will suit each other, young man," he said.
+
+Keith's face flushed; he rose. "I don't think we should, Mr. Wickersham.
+Good morning." And turning, he walked out of the room with his head
+very high.
+
+As he passed out he saw Ferdy. He was giving some directions to a
+clerk, and his tone was one that made Keith glad he was not under him.
+
+"Haven't you any brains at all?" Keith heard him say.
+
+"Yes, but I did not understand you."
+
+"Then you are a fool," said the young man.
+
+Just then Keith caught his eye and spoke to him. Ferdy only nodded
+"Hello!" and went on berating the clerk.
+
+Keith walked about the streets for some time before he could soothe his
+ruffled feelings and regain his composure. How life had changed for him
+in the brief interval since he entered Mr. Wickersham's office! Then his
+heart beat high with hope; life was all brightness to him; Alice Yorke
+was already won. Now in this short space of time his hopes were all
+overthrown. Yet, his instinct told him that if he had to go through the
+interview again he would do just as he had done.
+
+He felt that his chance of seeing Alice would not be so good early in
+the day as it would be later in the afternoon; so he determined to
+deliver first the letter which his father had given him to Dr.
+Templeton.
+
+The old clergyman's church and rectory stood on an ancient street over
+toward the river, from which wealth and fashion had long fled. His
+parish, which had once taken in many of the well-to-do and some of the
+wealthy, now embraced within its confines a section which held only the
+poor. But, like an older and more noted divine, Dr. Templeton could say
+with truth that all the world was his parish; at least, all were his
+parishioners who were needy and desolate.
+
+The rectory was an old-fashioned, substantial house, rusty with age, and
+worn by the stream of poverty that had flowed in and out for many years.
+
+When Keith mounted the steps the door was opened by some one without
+waiting for him to ring the bell, and he found the passages and front
+room fairly filled with a number of persons whose appearance bespoke
+extreme poverty.
+
+The Doctor was "out attending a meeting, but would be back soon," said
+the elderly woman, who opened the door. "Would the gentleman wait?"
+
+Just then the door opened and some one entered hastily. Keith was
+standing with his back to the door; but he knew by the movement of those
+before him, and the lighting up of their faces, that it was the Doctor
+himself, even before the maid said: "Here he is now."
+
+He turned to find an old man of medium size, in a clerical dress quite
+brown with age and weather, but whose linen was spotless. His brow under
+his snow-white hair was lofty and calm; his eyes were clear and kindly;
+his mouth expressed both firmness and gentleness; his whole face was
+benignancy itself.
+
+His eye rested for a moment on Keith as the servant indicated him, and
+then swept about the room; and with little more than a nod to Keith he
+passed him by and entered the waiting-room. Keith, though a little
+miffed at being ignored by him, had time to observe him as he talked to
+his other visitors in turn. He manifestly knew his business, and
+appeared to Keith, from the scraps of conversation he heard, to know
+theirs also. To some he gave encouragement; others he chided; but to all
+he gave sympathy, and as one after another went out their faces
+brightened.
+
+When he was through with them he turned and approached Keith with his
+hands extended.
+
+"You must pardon me for keeping you waiting so long; these poor people
+have nothing but their time, and I always try to teach them the value of
+it by not keeping them waiting."
+
+"Certainly, sir," said Keith, warmed in the glow of his kindly heart. "I
+brought a letter of introduction to you from my father, General Keith."
+
+The smile that this name brought forth made Keith the old man's friend
+for life.
+
+"Oh! You are McDowell Keith's son. I am delighted to see you. Come back
+into my study and tell me all about your father."
+
+When Keith left that study, quaint and old-fashioned as were it and its
+occupant, he felt as though he had been in a rarer atmosphere. He had
+not dreamed that such a man could be found in a great city. He seemed to
+have the heart of a boy, and Keith felt as if he had known him all his
+life. He asked Gordon to return and dine with him, but Gordon had a
+vision of sitting beside Alice Yorke at dinner that evening
+and declined.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+KEITH IN NEW YORK
+
+Keith and Norman Wentworth had, from time to time, kept up a
+correspondence, and from Dr. Templeton's Keith went to call on Norman
+and his mother.
+
+Norman, unfortunately, was now absent in the West on business, but Keith
+saw his mother.
+
+The Wentworth mansion was one of the largest and most dignified houses
+on the fine old square--a big, double mansion. The door, with its large,
+fan-shaped transom and side-windows, reminded Keith somewhat of the hall
+door at Elphinstone, so that he had quite a feeling of old association
+as he tapped with the eagle knocker. The hall was not larger than at
+Elphinstone, but was more solemn, and Keith had never seen such palatial
+drawing-rooms. They stretched back in a long vista. The heavy mahogany
+furniture was covered with the richest brocades; the hangings were of
+heavy crimson damask. Even the walls were covered with rich crimson
+damask-satin. The floor was covered with rugs in the softest colors,
+into which, as Keith followed the solemn servant, his feet sank deep,
+giving him a strange feeling of luxuriousness. A number of fine pictures
+hung on the walls, and richly bound books lay on the shirting tables
+amid pieces of rare bric-à-brac.
+
+This was the impression received from the only glance he had time to
+give the room. The next moment a lady rose from behind a tea-table
+placed in a nook near a window at the far end of the spacious room. As
+Gordon turned toward her she came forward. She gave him a cordial
+hand-shake and gracious words of welcome that at once made Keith feel at
+home. Turning, she started to offer him a chair near her table, but
+Keith had instinctively gone behind her chair and was holding it
+for her.
+
+"It is so long since I have had the chance," he said.
+
+As she smiled up at him her face softened. It was a high-bred face, not
+always as gentle as it was now, but her smile was charming.
+
+"You do not look like the little, wan boy I saw that morning in bed, so
+long ago. Do you remember?"
+
+"I should say I did. I think I should have died that morning but for
+you. I have never forgotten it a moment since." The rising color in his
+cheeks took away the baldness of the speech.
+
+She bowed with the most gracious smile, the color stealing up into her
+cheeks and making her look younger.
+
+"I am not used to such compliments. Young men nowadays do not take the
+trouble to flatter old ladies."
+
+Her face, though faded, still bore the unmistakable stamp of
+distinction. Calm, gray eyes and a strong mouth and chin recalled
+Norman's face. The daintiest of caps rested on her gray hair like a
+crown, and several little ringlets about her ears gave the charm of
+quaintness to the patrician face. Her voice was deep and musical. When
+she first spoke it was gracious rather than cordial; but after the
+inspective look she had given him it softened, and from this time Keith
+felt her warmth.
+
+The easy, cordial, almost confidential manner in which she soon began to
+talk to him made Keith feel as if they had been friends always, and in a
+moment, in response to a question from her, he was giving quite frankly
+his impression of the big city: of its brilliance, its movement, its
+rush, that keyed up the nerves like the sweep of a swift torrent.
+
+"It almost takes my breath away," he said. "I feel as if I were on the
+brink of a torrent and had an irresistible desire to jump into it and
+swim against it."
+
+She looked at the young man in silence for a moment, enjoying his
+sparkling eyes, and then her face grew grave.
+
+"Yes, it is interesting to get the impression made on a fresh young
+mind. But so many are dashed to pieces, it appears to me of late to be a
+maelstrom that engulfs everything in its resistless and terrible sweep.
+Fortune, health, peace, reputation, all are caught and swept away; but
+the worst is its heartlessness--and its emptiness."
+
+She sighed so deeply that the young man wondered what sorrow could touch
+her, intrenched and enthroned in that beautiful mansion, surrounded by
+all that wealth and taste and affection could give. Years afterwards,
+that picture of the old-time gentlewoman in her luxurious home came
+back to him.
+
+Just then a cheery voice was heard calling outside:
+
+"Cousin?--cousin?--Matildy Carroll, where are you?"
+
+It was the voice of an old lady, and yet it had something in it familiar
+to Keith.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth rose, smiling.
+
+"Here I am in the drawing-room," she said, raising her voice the least
+bit. "It is my cousin, a dear old friend and schoolmate," she explained
+to Keith. "Here I am. Come in here." She advanced to the door,
+stretching out her hand to some one who was coming down the stair.
+
+"Oh, dear, this great, grand house will be the death of me yet!"
+exclaimed the other lady, as she slowly descended.
+
+"Why, it is not any bigger than yours," protested Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"It's twice as large, and, besides, I was born in that and learned all
+its ups and downs and passages and corners when I was a child, just as I
+learned the alphabet. But this house! It is as full of devious ways and
+pitfalls as the way in 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and I would never learn it
+any more than I could the multiplication table. Why, that second-floor
+suite you have given me is just like six-times-nine. When you first put
+me in there I walked around to learn my way, and, on my word, I thought
+I should never get back to my own room. I thought I should have to
+sleep in a bath-tub. I escaped from the bath-room only to land in the
+linen-closet. That was rather interesting. Then when I had calculated
+all your sheets and pillow-cases, I got out of that to what I recognized
+as my own room. No! it was the broom-closet--eight-times-seven! That was
+the only familiar thing I saw. I could have hugged those brooms. But, my
+dear, I never saw so many brooms in my life! No wonder you have to have
+all those servants. I suppose some of them are to sweep the other
+servants up. But you really must shut off those apartments and just give
+me one little room to myself; or, now that I have escaped from the
+labyrinth, I shall put on my bonnet and go straight home."
+
+All this was delivered from the bottom step with a most amusing gravity.
+
+"Well, now that you have escaped, come in here," said Mrs. Wentworth,
+laughing. "I want a friend of mine to know you--a young man--"
+
+"A gentleman!"
+
+"Yes; a young gentleman from--"
+
+"My dear!" exclaimed the other lady. "I am not fit to see a young
+gentleman--I haven't on my new cap. I really could not."
+
+"Oh, yes, you can. Come in. I want you to know him, too. He
+is--m--m--m--"
+
+This was too low for Keith to hear. The next second Mrs. Wentworth
+turned and reëntered the room, holding by the hand Keith's old lady of
+the train.
+
+As she laid her eyes on Keith, she stopped with a little shriek, shut
+both eyes tight, and clutched Mrs. Wentworth's arm.
+
+"My dear, it's my robber!"
+
+"It's what?"
+
+"My robber! He's the young man I told you of who was so suspiciously
+civil to me on the train. I can never look him in the face--never!"
+Saying which, she opened her bright eyes and walked straight up to
+Keith, holding out her hand. "Confess that you are a robber and
+save me."
+
+Keith laughed and took her hand.
+
+"I know you took me for one." He turned to Mrs. Wentworth and described
+her making him count her bundles.
+
+"You will admit that gentlemen were much rarer on that train than
+ruffians or those who looked like ruffians?" insisted the old lady,
+gayly. "I came through the car, and not one soul offered me a seat. You
+deserve all the abuse you got for being so hopelessly unfashionable as
+to offer any civility to a poor, lonely, ugly old woman."
+
+"Abby, Mr. Keith does not yet know who you are. Mr. Keith, this is my
+cousin, Miss Brooke."
+
+"Miss Abigail Brooke, spinster," dropping him a quaint little curtsy.
+
+So this was little Lois's old aunt, Dr. Balsam's sweetheart--the girl
+who had made him a wanderer; and she was possibly the St. Abigail of
+whom Alice Yorke used to speak!
+
+The old lady turned to Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"He is losing his manners; see how he is staring. What did I tell you?
+One week in New York is warranted to break any gentleman of
+good manners."
+
+"Oh, not so bad as that," said Mrs. Wentworth. "Now you sit down there
+and get acquainted with each other."
+
+So Keith sat down by Miss Brooke, and she was soon telling him of her
+niece, who, she said, was always talking of him and his father.
+
+"Is she as pretty as she was as a child?" Keith asked.
+
+"Yes--much too pretty; and she knows it, too," smiled the old lady. "I
+have to hold her in with a strong hand, I tell you. She has got her head
+full of boys already."
+
+Other callers began to appear just then. It was Mrs. Wentworth's day,
+and to call on Mrs. Wentworth was in some sort the cachet of good
+society. Many, it was true, called there who were not in "society" at
+all,--serene and self-contained old residents, who held themselves above
+the newly-rich who were beginning to crowd "the avenues" and force
+their way with a golden wedge,--and many who lived in splendid houses on
+the avenue had never been admitted within that dignified portal. They
+now began to drop in, elegantly dressed women and handsomely appointed
+girls. Mrs. Wentworth received them all with that graciousness that was
+her native manner. Miss Brooke, having secured her "new cap," was seated
+at her side, her faded face tinged with rising color, her keen eyes
+taking in the scene with quite as much avidity as Gordon's. Gordon had
+fallen back quite to the edge of the group that encircled the hostess,
+and was watching with eager eyes in the hope that, among the visitors
+who came in in little parties of twos and threes, he might find the face
+for which he had been looking. The name Wickersham presently fell on
+his ear.
+
+"She is to marry Ferdy Wickersham," said a lady near him to another.
+They were looking at a handsome, statuesque girl, with a proud face, who
+had just entered the room with her mother, a tall lady in black with
+strong features and a refined voice, and who were making their way
+through the other guests toward the hostess. Mrs. Wentworth greeted them
+cordially, and signed to the elder lady to take a seat beside her.
+
+"Oh, no; she is flying for higher game than that." They both put up
+their lorgnons and gave her a swift glance.
+
+"You mean--" She nodded over toward Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why, she would not allow him to. She has not a cent in the world. Her
+mother has spent every dollar her husband left her, trying to get
+her off."
+
+"Yes; but she has spent it to good purpose. They are old friends. Mrs.
+Wentworth does not care for money. She has all she needs. She has never
+forgotten that her grandfather was a general in the Revolution, and Mrs.
+Caldwell's grandfather was one also, I believe. She looks down on the
+upper end of Fifth Avenue--the Wickershams and such. Don't you know what
+Mrs. Wentworth's cousin said when she heard that the Wickershams had a
+coat-of-arms? She said, 'Her father must have made it.'"
+
+Something about the placid voice and air of the lady, and the knowledge
+she displayed of the affairs of others, awoke old associations in Keith,
+and turning to take a good look at her, he recognized Mrs. Nailor, the
+inquiring lady with the feline manner and bell-like voice, who used to
+mouse around the verandah at Gates's during Alice Yorke's convalescence.
+
+He went up to her and recalled himself. She apparently had some
+difficulty in remembering him, for at first she gave not the slightest
+evidence of recognition; but after the other lady had moved away she was
+more fortunate in placing him.
+
+"You have known the Wentworths for some time?"
+
+Keith did not know whether this was a statement or an inquiry. She had a
+way of giving a tone of interrogation to her statements. He explained
+that he and Norman Wentworth had been friends as boys.
+
+"A dear fellow, Norman?" smiled Mrs. Nailor. "Quite one of our rising
+young men? He wanted, you know, to give up the most brilliant prospects
+to help his father, who had been failing for some time. Not failing
+financially?" she explained with the interrogation-point again.
+
+"Of course, I don't believe those rumors; I mean in health?"
+
+Keith had so understood her.
+
+"Yes, he has quite gone. Completely shattered?" She sighed deeply. "But
+Norman is said to be wonderfully clever, and has gone in with his father
+into the bank?" she pursued. "The girl over there is to marry him--if
+her mother can arrange it? That tall, stuck-up woman." She indicated
+Mrs. Caldwell, who was sitting near Mrs. Wentworth. "Do you think her
+handsome?"
+
+Keith said he did. He thought she referred to the girl, who looked
+wonderfully handsome in a tailor-made gown under a big white hat.
+
+"Romance is almost dying out?" she sighed. "It is so beautiful to find
+it? Yes?"
+
+Keith agreed with her about its charm, but hoped it was not dying out.
+He thought of one romance he knew.
+
+"You used to be very romantic? Yes?"
+
+Keith could not help blushing.
+
+"Have you seen the Yorkes lately?" she continued. Keith had explained
+that he had just arrived. "You know Alice is a great belle? And so
+pretty, only she knows it too well; but what pretty girl does not? The
+town is divided now as to whether she is going to marry Ferdy Wickersham
+or Mr. Lancaster of Lancaster & Company. He is one of our leading men,
+considerably older than herself, but immensely wealthy and of a
+distinguished family. Ferdy Wickersham was really in love with"--she
+lowered her voice--"that girl over there by Mrs. Wentworth; but she
+preferred Norman Wentworth; at least, her mother did, so Ferdy has gone
+back to Alice? You say you have not been to see her? No? You are going,
+of course? Mrs. Yorke was so fond of you?"
+
+"Which is she going to--I mean, which do people say she prefers?"
+inquired Keith, his voice, in spite of himself, betraying his interest.
+
+"Oh, Ferdy, of course. He is one of the eligibles, so good-looking, and
+immensely rich, too; They say he is really a great financier. Has his
+father's turn? You know he came from a shop?"
+
+Keith admitted his undeniable good looks and knew of his wealth; but he
+was so confounded by the information he had received that he was in
+quite a state of confusion.
+
+Just then a young clergyman crossed the room toward them. He was a stout
+young man, with reddish hair and a reddish face. His plump cheeks, no
+less than his well-filled waistcoat, showed that the Rev. Mr. Rimmon
+was no anchoret.
+
+"Ah, my dear Mrs. Nailor, so glad to see you! How well you look! I
+haven't seen you since that charming evening at Mrs. Creamer's."
+
+"Do you call that charming? What did you think of the dinner?" asked
+Mrs. Nailor, dryly.
+
+He laughed, and, with a glance around, lowered his voice.
+
+"Well, the champagne was execrable after the first round. Didn't you
+notice that? You didn't notice it? Oh, you are too amiable to admit it.
+I am sure you noticed it, for no one in town has such champagne as you."
+
+He licked his lips with reminiscent satisfaction.
+
+"No, I assure you, I am not flattering you. One of my cloth! How dare
+you charge me with it!" he laughed. "I have said as much to Mrs. Yorke.
+You ask her if I haven't."
+
+"How is your uncle's health?" inquired Mrs. Nailor.
+
+The young man glanced at her, and the glance appeared to satisfy him.
+
+"Robust isn't the word for it. He bids fair to rival the patriarchs in
+more than his piety."
+
+Mrs. Nailor smiled. "You don't appear as happy as a dutiful nephew
+might."
+
+"But he is so good--so pious. Why should I wish to withhold him from the
+joys for which he is so ripe?"
+
+Mrs. Nailor laughed.
+
+"You are a sinner," she declared.
+
+"We are all miserable sinners," he replied. "Have you seen the Yorkes
+lately?"
+
+"No; but I'll be bound you have."
+
+"What do you think of the story about old Lancaster?"
+
+"Oh, I think she'll marry him if mamma can arrange it."
+
+"'Children, obey your parents,'" quoted Mr. Rimmon, with a little smirk
+as he sidled away.
+
+"He is one of our rising young clergymen, nephew of the noted Dr.
+Little," explained Mrs. Nailor. "You know of him, of course? A good deal
+better man than his nephew." This under her breath. "He is his uncle's
+assistant and is waiting to step into his shoes. He wants to marry your
+friend, Alice Yorke. He is sure of his uncle's church if flattery can
+secure it."
+
+Just then several ladies passed near them, and Mrs. Nailor, seeing an
+opportunity to impart further knowledge, with a slight nod moved off to
+scatter her information and inquiries, and Keith, having made his adieus
+to Mrs. Wentworth, withdrew. He was not in a happy frame of mind over
+what he had heard.
+
+The next visit that Keith paid required more thought and preparation
+than that to the Wentworth house. He had thought of it, had dreamed of
+it, for years. He was seized with a sort of nervousness when he found
+himself actually on the avenue, in sight of the large brown-stone
+mansion which he knew must be the abode of Miss Alice Yorke.
+
+He never forgot the least detail of his visit, from the shining brass
+rail of the outside steps and the pompous little hard-eyed servant in a
+striped waistcoat and brass buttons, who looked at him insolently as he
+went in, to the same servant as he bowed to him obsequiously as he came
+out. He never forgot Alice Yorke's first appearance in the radiance of
+girlhood, or Mrs. Yorke's affable imperviousness, that baffled
+him utterly.
+
+The footman who opened the door to Keith looked at him with keenness,
+but ended in confusion of mind. He stood, at first, in the middle of the
+doorway and gave him a glance of swift inspection. But when Keith asked
+if the ladies were in he suddenly grew more respectful. The visitor was
+not up to the mark in appointment, but there was that in his air and
+tone which Bower recognized. He would see. Would he be good enough
+to walk in?
+
+When he returned after a few minutes, indifference had given place to
+servility.
+
+Would Mr. Keats please be good enough to walk into the drawing-room?
+Thankee, sir. The ladies would be down in a few moments.
+
+Keith did not know that this change in bearing was due to the pleasure
+expressed above-stairs by a certain young lady who had flatly refused to
+accept her mother's suggestion that they send word they were not
+at home.
+
+Alice Yorke was not in a very contented frame of mind that day. For some
+time she had been trying to make up her mind on a subject of grave
+importance to her, and she had not found it easy to do. Many questions
+confronted her. Curiously, Keith himself had played a part in the
+matter. Strangely enough, she was thinking of him at the very time his
+card was brought up. Mrs. Yorke, who had not on her glasses, handed the
+card to Alice. She gave a little scream at the coincidence.
+
+"Mr. Keith! How strange!"
+
+"What is that?" asked her mother, quickly. Her ears had caught the name.
+
+"Why, it is Mr. Keith. I was just--." She stopped, for Mrs. Yorke's face
+spoke disappointment.
+
+"I do not think we can see him," she began.
+
+"Why, of course, I must see him, mamma. I would not miss seeing him for
+anything in the world. Go down, Bower, and say I will be down directly."
+The servant disappeared.
+
+"Now, Alice," protested her mother, who had already exhausted several
+arguments, such as the inconvenience of the hour, the impoliteness of
+keeping the visitor waiting, as she would have to do to dress, and
+several other such excuses as will occur to mammas who have plans of
+their own for their daughters and unexpectedly receive the card of a
+young man who, by a bare possibility, may in ten minutes upset the work
+of nearly two years--"Now, Alice, I think it very wrong in you to do
+anything to give that young man any idea that you are going to reopen
+that old affair."
+
+Alice protested that she had no idea of doing anything like that. There
+was no "old affair." She did not wish to be rude when he had taken the
+trouble to call--that was all.
+
+"Fudge!" exclaimed Mrs. Yorke. "Trouble to call! Of course, he will take
+the trouble to call. He would call a hundred times if he thought he
+could get--" she caught her daughter's eye and paused--"could get you.
+But you have no right to cause him unhappiness."
+
+"Oh, I guess I couldn't cause him much unhappiness now. I fancy he is
+all over it now," said the girl, lightly. "They all get over it. It's a
+quick fever. It doesn't last, mamma. How many have there been?"
+
+"You know better. Isn't he always sending you books and things? He is
+not like those others. What would Mr. Lancaster say?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Lancaster! He has no right to say anything," pouted the girl,
+her face clouding a little. "Mr. Lancaster will say anything I want him
+to say," she added as she caught sight of her mother's unhappy
+expression. "I wish you would not always be holding him up to me. I like
+him, and he is awfully good to me--much better than I deserve; but I get
+awfully tired of him sometimes: he is so serious. Sometimes I feel like
+breaking loose and just doing things. I do!" She tossed her head and
+stamped her foot with impatience like a spoiled child.
+
+"Well, there is Ferdy?--" began her mother.
+
+The girl turned on her.
+
+"I thought we had an understanding on that subject, mamma. If you ever
+say anything more about my marrying Ferdy, I _will_ do things! I vow
+I will!"
+
+"Why, I thought you professed to like Ferdy, and he is certainly in love
+with you."
+
+"He certainly is not. He is in love with Lou Caldwell as much as he
+could be in love with any one but himself; but if you knew him as well
+as I do you would know he is not in love with any one but Ferdy."
+
+Mrs. Yorke knew when to yield, and how to do it. Her face grew
+melancholy and her voice pathetic as she protested that all she wished
+was her daughter's happiness.
+
+"Then please don't mention that to me again," said the girl.
+
+The next second her daughter was leaning over her, soothing her and
+assuring her of her devotion.
+
+"I want to invite him to dinner, mamma."
+
+Mrs. Yorke actually gasped.
+
+"Nonsense! Why, he would be utterly out of place. This is not Ridgely. I
+do not suppose he ever had on a dress-coat in his life!" Which was true,
+though Keith would not have cared a button about it.
+
+"Well, we can invite him to lunch," said Alice, with a sigh.
+
+But Mrs. Yorke was obdurate. She could not undertake to invite an
+unknown young man to her table. Thus, the want of a dress-suit limited
+Mrs. Yorke's hospitality and served a secondary and more important
+purpose for her.
+
+"I wish papa were here; he would agree with me," sighed the girl.
+
+When the controversy was settled Miss Alice slipped off to gild the
+lily. The care she took in the selection of a toilet, and the tender
+pats and delicate touches she gave as she turned before her
+cheval-glass, might have belied her declaration to her mother, a little
+while before, that she was indifferent to Mr. Keith, and might even have
+given some comfort to the anxious young man in the drawing-room below,
+who, in default of books, was examining the pictures with such interest.
+He had never seen such a sumptuous house.
+
+Meantime, Mrs. Yorke executed a manoeuvre. As soon as Alice disappeared,
+she descended to the drawing-room. But she slipped on an extra diamond
+ring or two. Thus she had a full quarter of an hour's start of
+her daughter.
+
+The greeting between her and the young man was more cordial than might
+have been expected. Mrs. Yorke was surprised to find how Keith had
+developed. He had broadened, and though his face was thin, it had
+undeniable distinction. His manner was so dignified that Mrs. Yorke was
+almost embarrassed.
+
+"Why, how you have changed!" she exclaimed. What she said to herself
+was: "What a bother for this boy to come here now, just when Alice is
+getting her mind settled! But I will get rid of him."
+
+She began to question him as to his plans.
+
+What Keith had said to himself when the step on the stair and the
+rustling gown introduced Mrs. Yorke's portly figure was: "Heavens! it's
+the old lady! I wonder what the old dragon will do, and whether I am not
+to see Her!" He observed her embarrassment as she entered the room, and
+took courage.
+
+The next moment they were fencing across the room, and Keith was girding
+himself like another young St. George.
+
+How was his school coming on? she asked.
+
+He was not teaching any more. He had been to college, and had now taken
+up engineering. It offered such advantages.
+
+She was so surprised. She would have thought teaching the very career
+for him. He seemed to have such a gift for it.
+
+Keith was not sure that this was not a "touch." He quoted Dr. Johnson's
+definition that teaching was the universal refuge of educated indigents.
+"I do not mean to remain an indigent all my life," he added, feeling
+that this was a touch on his part.
+
+Mrs. Yorke pondered a moment.
+
+"But that was not his name. His name was Balsam. I know, because I had
+some trouble getting a bill out of him."
+
+Keith changed his mind about the touch.
+
+Just then there was another rustle on the stair and another step,--this
+time a lighter one,--and the next moment appeared what was to the young
+man a vision.
+
+Keith's face, as he rose to greet her, showed what he thought. For a
+moment, at least, the dragon had disappeared, and he stood in the
+presence only of Alice Yorke.
+
+The girl was, indeed, as she paused for a moment just in the wide
+doorway under its silken hangings,--the minx! how was he to know that
+she knew how effective the position was?--a picture to fill a young
+man's eye and flood his face with light, and even to make an old man's
+eye grow young again. The time that had passed had added to the charm of
+both face and figure; and, arrayed in her daintiest toilet of blue and
+white, Alice Yorke was radiant enough to have smitten a much harder
+heart than that which was at the moment thumping in Keith's breast and
+looking forth from his eager eyes. The pause in the doorway gave just
+time for the picture to be impressed forever in Keith's mind.
+
+Her eyes were sparkling, and her lips parted with a smile of pleased
+surprise.
+
+"How do you do?" She came forward with outstretched arm and a cordial
+greeting.
+
+Mrs. Yorke could not repress a mother's pride at seeing the impression
+that her daughter's appearance had made. The expression on Keith's face,
+however, decided her that she would hazard no more such meetings.
+
+The first words, of course, were of the surprise Alice felt at finding
+him there. "How did you remember us?"
+
+"I was not likely to forget you," said Keith, frankly enough. "I am in
+New York on business, and I thought that before going home I would see
+my friends." This with some pride, as Mrs. Yorke was present.
+
+"Where are you living?"
+
+Keith explained that he was an engineer and lived in Gumbolt.
+
+"Ah, I think that is a splendid profession," declared Miss Alice. "If I
+were a man I would be one. Think of building great bridges across mighty
+rivers, tunnelling great mountains!"
+
+"Maybe even the sea itself," said Mr. Keith, who, so long as Alice's
+eyes were lighting up at the thought of his profession, cared not what
+Mrs. Yorke thought.
+
+"I doubt if engineers would find much to do in New York," put in Mrs.
+Yorke. "I think the West would be a good field--the far West," she
+explained.
+
+"It was so good in you to look us up," Miss Alice said sturdily and,
+perhaps, a little defiantly, for she knew what her mother was thinking.
+
+"If that is being good," said Keith, "my salvation is assured." He
+wanted to say, as he looked at her, "In all the multitude in New York
+there is but one person that I really came to see, and I am repaid," but
+he did not venture so far. In place of it he made a mental calculation
+of the chances of Mrs. Yorke leaving, if only for a moment. A glance at
+her, however, satisfied him that the chance of it was not worth
+considering, and gloom began to settle on him. If there is anything that
+turns a young man's heart to lead and encases it in ice, it is, when he
+has travelled leagues to see a girl, to have mamma plant herself in the
+room and mount guard. Keith knew now that Mrs. Yorke had mounted guard,
+and that no power but Providence would dislodge her. The thought of the
+cool woods of the Ridge came to him like a mirage, torturing him.
+
+He turned to the girl boldly.
+
+"Sha'n't you ever come South again?" he asked. "The humming-birds are
+waiting."
+
+Alice smiled, and her blush made her charming.
+
+Mrs. Yorke answered for her. She did not think the South agreed with
+Alice.
+
+Alice protested that she loved it.
+
+"How is my dear old Doctor? Do you know, he and I have carried on quite
+a correspondence this year?"
+
+Keith did not know. For the first time in his life he envied the Doctor.
+
+"He is your--one of your most devoted admirers. The last time I saw him
+he was talking of you."
+
+"What did he say of me? Do tell me!" with exaggerated eagerness.
+
+Keith smiled, wondering what she would think if she knew.
+
+"Too many things for me to tell."
+
+His gray eyes said the rest.
+
+While they were talking a sound of wheels was heard outside, followed by
+a ring at the door. Keith sat facing the door, and could see the
+gentleman who entered the hail. He was tall and a little gray, with a
+pleasant, self-contained face. He turned toward the drawing-room, taking
+off his gloves as he walked.
+
+"Her father. He is quite distinguished-looking," thought Keith. "I
+wonder if he will come in here? He looks younger than the dragon." He
+was in some trepidation at the idea of meeting Mr. Yorke.
+
+When Keith looked at the ladies again some change had taken place in
+both of them. Their faces wore a different expression: Mrs. Yorke's was
+one of mingled disquietude and relief, and Miss Alice's an expression of
+discontent and confusion. Keith settled himself and waited to be
+presented.
+
+The gentleman came in with a pleased air as his eye rested on the young
+lady.
+
+"There is where she gets her high-bred looks--from her father," thought
+Keith; rising.
+
+The next moment the gentleman was shaking hands warmly with Miss Alice
+and cordially with Mrs. Yorke. And then, after a pause,--a pause in
+which Miss Alice had looked at her mother,--the girl introduced "Mr.
+Lancaster." He turned and spoke to Keith pleasantly.
+
+"Mr. Keith is--an acquaintance we made in the South when we were there
+winter before last," said Mrs. Yorke.
+
+"A friend of ours," said the girl. She turned back to Keith.
+
+"Tell me what Dr. Balsam said."
+
+"Mr. Keith knows the Wentworths--I believe you know the Wentworths very
+well?" Mrs. Yorke addressed Mr. Keith.
+
+"Yes, I have known Norman since we were boys. I have met his mother, but
+I never met his father."
+
+Mrs. Yorke was provoked at the stupidity of denying so advantageous an
+acquaintance. But Mr. Lancaster took more notice of Keith than he had
+done before. His dark eyes had a gleam of amusement in them as he turned
+and looked at the young man. Something in him recalled the past.
+
+"From the South, you say?"
+
+"Yes, sir." He named his State with pride.
+
+"Did I catch your name correctly? Is it Keith?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I used to know a gentleman of that name--General Keith."
+
+"There were several of them," answered the young man, with pride. "My
+father was known as 'General Keith of Elphinstone.'"
+
+"That was he. I captured him. He was desperately wounded, and I had the
+pleasure of having him attended to, and afterwards of getting him
+exchanged. How is he? Is he still living?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mr. Lancaster turned to the ladies. "He was one of the bravest men I
+have known," he said. "I was once a recipient of his gracious
+hospitality. I went South to look into some matters there," he explained
+to the ladies.
+
+The speech brought a gratified look into Keith's eyes. Mrs. Yorke was
+divided between her feeling of relief that Mr. Lancaster should know of
+Keith's social standing and her fear that such praise might affect
+Alice. After a glance at the girl's face the latter predominated.
+
+"Men have no sense at all," she said to herself. Had she known it, the
+speech made the girl feel more kindly toward her older admirer than she
+had ever done before.
+
+Gordon's face was suffused with tenderness, as it always was at any
+mention of his father. He stepped forward.
+
+"May I shake hands with you, sir?" He grasped the hand of the older man.
+"If I can ever be of any service to you--of the least service--I hope
+you will let my father's son repay a part of his debt. You could not do
+me a greater favor." As he stood straight and dignified, grasping the
+older man's hand, he looked more of a man than he had ever done. Mr.
+Lancaster was manifestly pleased.
+
+"I will do so," he said, with a smile.
+
+Mrs. Yorke was in a fidget. "This man will ruin everything," she said to
+herself.
+
+Seeing that his chance of seeing Alice alone was gone, Keith rose and
+took leave with some stateliness. At the last moment Alice boldly asked
+him to take lunch with them next day.
+
+"Thank you," said Keith, "I lunch in Sparta to-morrow. I am going South
+to-night." But his allusion was lost on the ladies.
+
+When Keith came out, a handsome trap was standing at the door, with a
+fine pair of horses and a liveried groom.
+
+And a little later, as Keith was walking up the avenue looking at the
+crowds that thronged it in all the bravery of fine apparel, he saw the
+same pair of high-steppers threading their way proudly among the other
+teams. He suddenly became aware that some one was bowing to him, and
+there was Alice Yorke sitting up beside Mr. Lancaster, bowing to him
+from under a big hat with great white plumes. For one moment he had a
+warm feeling about his heart, and then, as the turnout was swallowed up
+in the crowd, Keith felt a sudden sense of loneliness, and he positively
+hated Mrs. Yorke. A little later he passed Ferdy Wickersham, in a long
+coat and a high hat, walking up the avenue with the girl he had seen at
+Mrs. Wentworth's. He took off his hat as they passed, but apparently
+they did not see him. And once more that overwhelming loneliness swept
+over him.
+
+He did not get over the feeling till he found himself in Dr. Templeton's
+study. He had promised provisionally to go back and take supper with the
+old clergyman, and had only not promised it absolutely because he had
+thought he might be invited to the Yorkes'. He was glad enough now to
+go, and as he received the old gentleman's cordial greeting, he felt his
+heart grow warm again. Here was Sparta, too. This, at least, was
+hospitality. He was introduced to two young clergymen, both earnest
+fellows who were working among the poor. One of them was a
+High-churchman and the other a Presbyterian, and once or twice they
+began to discuss warmly questions as to which they differed; but the old
+Rector appeared to know just how to manage them.
+
+"Come, my boys; no division here," he said, with a smile, "Remember, one
+flag, one union, one Commander. Titus is still before the walls."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE HOLD-UP
+
+Keith returned home that night. He now and then thought of Lancaster
+with a little misgiving. It was apparent that Mrs. Yorke was his friend;
+but, after all, Alice would never think of marrying a gray-haired man.
+She could not do it.
+
+His father's pleasure when he told him of the stand he had taken with
+Mr. Wickersham reassured him.
+
+"You did exactly right, sir; as a gentleman should have done," he said,
+as his face lighted up with pride and affection. "Go back and make your
+own way. Owe no man anything."
+
+Gordon went back to his little office filled with a determination to
+succeed. He had now a double motive: he would win Alice Yorke, and he
+would show Mr. Wickersham who he was. A visit from Squire Rawson not
+long after he returned gave him new hope. The old man chuckled as he
+told him that he had had an indirect offer from Wickersham for his land,
+much larger than he had expected. It had only confirmed him in his
+determination to hold on.
+
+"If it's worth that to him," he said, "it's worth that to me. We'll hold
+on awhile, and let him open a track for us. You look up the lines and
+keep your eye on 'em. Draw me some pictures of the lands. I reckon
+Phrony will have a pretty good patrimony before I'm through." He gave
+Keith a shrewd glance which, however, that young man did not see.
+
+Not long afterwards Gordon received an invitation to Norman's wedding.
+He was to marry Miss Caldwell.
+
+When Gordon read the account of the wedding, with the church "banked
+with flowers," and the bridal couple preceded by choristers, chanting,
+he was as interested as if it had been his brother's marriage. He tried
+to picture Alice Yorke in her bridesmaid's dress, "with the old lace
+draped over it and the rosebuds festooned about her."
+
+He glanced around his little room with grim amusement as he thought of
+the difference it might make to him if he had what Mrs. Yorke had called
+"an establishment." He would yet be Keith of Elphinstone.
+
+One fact related disturbed him. Ferdy Wickersham was one of the ushers,
+and it was stated that he and Miss Yorke made a handsome couple.
+
+Norman had long ago forgotten Ferdy's unfriendly action at college, and
+wishing to bury all animosities and start his new life at peace with the
+whole world, he invited Ferdy to be one of his ushers, and Ferdy, for
+his own reasons, accepted. Ferdy Wickersham was now one of the most
+talked-of young men in New York. He had fulfilled the promise of his
+youth at least in one way, for he was one of the handsomest men in the
+State. Mrs. Wickersham, in whose heart defeat rankled, vowed that she
+would never bow so low as to be an usher at that wedding. But her son
+was of a deeper nature. He declared that he was "abundantly able to
+manage his own affairs."
+
+At the wedding he was one of the gayest of the guests, and he and Miss
+Yorke were, as the newspapers stated, undoubtedly the handsomest couple
+of all the attendants. No one congratulated Mrs. Wentworth with more
+fervid words. To be sure, his eyes sought the bride's with a curious
+expression in them; and when he spoke with her apart a little later,
+there was an air of cynicism about him that remained in her memory. The
+handsomest jewel she received outside of the Wentworth family was from
+him. Its centre was a heart set with diamonds.
+
+For a time Louise Wentworth was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy over
+her good fortune. Her beautiful house, her carriages, her gowns, her
+husband, and all the equipage of her new station filled her heart. She
+almost immediately took a position that none other of the young brides
+had. She became the fashion. In Norman's devotion she might have quite
+forgotten Ferdy Wickersham, had Ferdy been willing that she should do
+so. But Ferdy had no idea of allowing himself to be forgotten. For a
+time he paid quite devoted attention to Alice Yorke; but Miss Alice
+looked on his attentions rather as a joke. She said to him:
+
+"Now, Ferdy, I am perfectly willing to have you send me all the flowers
+in New York, and go with me to the theatre every other night, and offer
+me all the flattery you have left over from Louise; but I am not going
+to let it be thought that I am going to engage myself to you; for I am
+not, and you don't want me."
+
+"I suppose you reserve that for my fortunate rival, Mr. Lancaster?" said
+the young man, insolently.
+
+Alice's eyes flashed. "At least not for you."
+
+So Ferdy gradually and insensibly drifted back to Mrs. Wentworth. For a
+little while he was almost tragic; then he settled down into a state of
+cold cynicism which was not without its effect. He never believed that
+she cared for Norman Wentworth as much as she cared for him. He believed
+that her mother had made the match, and deep in his heart he hated
+Norman with the hate of wounded pride. Moreover, as soon as Mrs.
+Wentworth was beyond him, he began to have a deeper feeling for her than
+he had ever admitted before. He set before himself very definitely just
+what he wanted to do, and he went to work about it with a patience
+worthy of a better aim. He flattered her in many ways which, experience
+had told him, were effective with the feminine heart.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham estimated Mrs. Wentworth's vanity at its true value;
+but he underestimated her uprightness and her pride. She was vain
+enough to hazard wrecking her happiness; but her pride was as great as
+her vanity.
+
+Thus, though Ferdy Wickersham flattered her vanity by his delicate
+attentions, his patient waiting, he found himself, after long service,
+in danger of being balked by her pride. His apparent faithfulness had
+enlisted her interest; but she held him at a distance with a resolution
+which he would not have given her credit for.
+
+Most men, under such circumstances, would have retired and confessed
+defeat; but not so with Ferdy Wickersham. To admit defeat was gall and
+wormwood to him. His love for Louise had given place to a feeling almost
+akin to a desire for revenge. He would show her that he could conquer
+her pride. He would show the world that he could humble Norman
+Wentworth. His position appeared to him impregnable. At the head of a
+great business, the leader of the gayest set in the city, and the
+handsomest and coolest man in town--he was bound to win. So he bided his
+time, and went on paying Mrs. Wentworth little attentions that he felt
+must win her in the end. And soon he fancied that he began to see the
+results of his patience. Old Mr. Wentworth's health had failed rapidly,
+and Norman was so wholly engrossed in business, that he found himself
+unable to keep up with the social life of their set. If, however, Norman
+was too busy to attend all the entertainments, Ferdy was never too busy
+to be on hand, a fact many persons were beginning to note.
+
+Squire Rawson's refusal of the offer for his lands began to cause Mr.
+Aaron Wickersham some uneasiness. He had never dreamed that the old
+countryman would be so intractable. He refused even to set a price on
+them. He "did not want to sell," he said.
+
+Mr. Wickersham conferred with his son. "We have got to get control of
+those lands, Ferdy. We ought to have got them before we started the
+railway. If we wait till we get through, we shall have to pay double.
+The best thing is for you to go down there and get them. You know the
+chief owner and you know that young Keith. You ought to be able to work
+them. We shall have to employ Keith if necessary. Sometimes a very small
+lever will work a big one."
+
+"Oh, I can work them easy enough," said the young man; "but I don't want
+to go down there just now--the weather's cold, and I have a lot of
+engagements and a matter on hand that requires my presence here now."
+
+His father's brow clouded. Matters had not been going well of late. The
+Wentworths had been growing cooler both in business and in social life.
+In the former it had cost him a good deal of money to have the Wentworth
+interest against him; in the latter it had cost Mrs. Wickersham a good
+deal of heart-burning. And Aaron Wickersham attributed it to the fact,
+of which rumors had come to him, that Ferdy was paying young Mrs.
+Wentworth more attention than her husband and his family liked, and they
+took this form of resenting it.
+
+"I do not know what business engagement you can have more important than
+a matter in which we have invested some millions which may be saved by
+prompt attention or lost. What engagements have you?"
+
+"That is my affair," said Ferdy, coolly.
+
+"Your affair! Isn't your affair my affair?" burst out his father.
+
+"Not necessarily. There are several kinds of affairs. I should be sorry
+to think that all of my affairs you had an interest in."
+
+He looked so insolent as he sat back with half-closed eyes and stroked
+his silken, black moustache that his father lost his temper.
+
+"I know nothing about your affairs of one kind," he burst out angrily,
+"and I do not wish to know; but I want to tell you that I think you are
+making an ass of yourself to be hanging around that Wentworth woman,
+having every one talking about you and laughing at you."
+
+The young man's dark face flushed angrily.
+
+"What's that?" he said sharply.
+
+"She is another man's wife. Why don't you let her alone?" pursued the
+father.
+
+"For that very reason," said Ferdy, recovering his composure and his
+insolent air.
+
+"---- it! Let the woman alone," said his father. "Your fooling around
+her has already cost us the backing of Wentworth & Son--and,
+incidentally, two or three hundred thousand."
+
+The younger man looked at the other with a flash of rage. This quickly
+gave way to a colder gleam.
+
+"Really, sir, I could not lower myself to measure a matter of sentiment
+by so vulgar a standard as your ---- money."
+
+His air was so intolerable that the father's patience quite gave way.
+
+"Well, by ----! you'd better lower yourself, or you'll have to stoop
+lower than that. Creamer, Crustback & Company are out with us; the
+Wentworths have pulled out; so have Kestrel and others. Your deals and
+corners have cost me a fortune. I tell you that unless we pull through
+that deal down yonder, and unless we get that railroad to earning
+something, so as to get a basis for rebonding, you'll find yourself
+wishing you had my 'damned money.'"
+
+"Oh, I guess we'll pull it through," said the young man. He rose coolly
+and walked out of the office.
+
+The afternoon he spent with Mrs. Norman. He had to go South, he told
+her, to look after some large interests they had there. He made the
+prospects so dazzling that she laughingly suggested that he had better
+put a little of her money in there for her. She had quite a snug sum
+that the Wentworths had given her.
+
+"Why do not you ask Norman to invest it?" he inquired, with a laugh.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. He says bonds are the proper investment for women."
+
+"He rather underestimates your sex, some of them," said Wickersham. And
+as he watched the color come in her cheeks, he added: "I tell you what I
+will do: I will put in fifty thousand for you on condition that you
+never mention it to a soul."
+
+"I promise," she said half gratefully, and they shook hands on it.
+
+That evening he informed his father that he would go South. "I'll get
+those lands easy enough," he said.
+
+A few days later Ferdy Wickersham got off the train at Ridgely, now
+quite a flourishing little health-resort, and in danger of becoming a
+fashionable one, and that afternoon he drove over to Squire Rawson's.
+
+A number of changes had taken place in the old white-pillared house
+since Ferdy had been an inmate. New furniture of black walnut
+supplanted, at least on the first floor, the old horsehair sofa and
+split-bottomed chairs and pine tables; a new plush sofa and a new piano
+glistened in the parlor; large mirrors with dazzling frames hung on the
+low walls, and a Brussels carpet as shiny as a bed of tulips, and as
+stiff as the stubble of a newly cut hay-field, was on the floor.
+
+But great as were these changes, they were not as great as that which
+had taken place in the young person for whom they had been made.
+
+When Ferdy Wickersham drove up to the door, there was a cry and a scurry
+within, as Phrony Tripper, after a glance out toward the gate, dashed up
+the stairs.
+
+When Miss Euphronia Tripper, after a half-hour or more of careful and
+palpitating work before her mirror, descended the old straight stairway,
+she was a very different person from the round-faced, plump school-girl
+whom Ferdy, as a lad, had flirted with under the apple-trees three or
+four years before. She was quite as different as was the new piano with
+its deep tones from the rattling old instrument that jingled and clanged
+out of tune, or as the cool, self-contained, handsome young man in
+faultless attire was from the slim, uppish boy who used to strum on it.
+It was a very pretty and blushing young country maiden who now entered
+quite accidentally the parlor where sat Mr. Ferdy Wickersham in calm and
+indifferent discourse with her grandfather on the crops, on cattle, and
+on the effect of the new railroad on products and prices.
+
+Several sessions at a boarding-school of some pretension, with ambition
+which had been awakened years before under the apple-trees, had given
+Miss Phrony the full number of accomplishments that are to be gained by
+such means. The years had also changed the round, school-girl plumpness
+into a slim yet strong figure; and as she entered the parlor,--quite
+casually, be it repeated,--with a large basket of flowers held
+carelessly in one hand and a great hat shading her face, the blushes
+that sprang to her cheeks at the wholly unexpected discovery of a
+visitor quite astonished Wickersham.
+
+"By Jove! who would have believed it!" he said to himself.
+
+Within two minutes after she had taken her seat on the sofa near
+Wickersham, that young envoy had conceived a plan which had vaguely
+suggested itself as a possibility during his journey South. Here was an
+ally to his hand; he could not doubt it; and if he failed to win he
+would deserve to lose.
+
+The old squire had no sooner left the room than the visitor laid the
+first lines for his attack.
+
+Why was she surprised to see him? He had large interests in the
+mountains, and could she doubt that if he was within a thousand miles he
+would come by to see her?
+
+The mantling cheeks and dancing eyes showed that this took effect.
+
+"Oh, you came down on business? That was all! I know," she said.
+
+Wickersham looked her in the eyes.
+
+Business was only a convenient excuse. Old Halbrook could have attended
+to the business; but he preferred to come himself. Possibly she could
+guess the reason? He looked handsome and sincere enough as he leant
+over and gazed in her face to have beguiled a wiser person than Phrony.
+
+She, of course, had not the least idea.
+
+Then he must tell her. To do this he found it necessary to sit on the
+sofa close to her. What he told her made her blush very rosy again, and
+stammer a little as she declared her disbelief in all he said, and was
+sure there were the prettiest girls in the world in New York, and that
+he had never thought of her a moment. And no, she would not listen to
+him--she did not believe a word he said; and--yes, of course, she was
+glad to see any old friend; and no, he should not go. He must stay with
+them. They expected him to do so.
+
+So Ferdy sent to Ridgely for his bags, and spent several days at Squire
+Rawson's, and put in the best work he was capable of during that time.
+He even had the satisfaction of seeing Phrony treat coldly and send away
+one or two country bumpkins who rode up in all the bravery of long
+broad-cloth coats and kid gloves.
+
+But if at the end of this time the young man could congratulate himself
+on success in one quarter, he knew that he was balked in the other.
+Phrony Tripper was heels over head in love with him; but her
+grandfather, though easy and pliable enough to all outward seeming, was
+in a land-deal as dull as a ditcher. Wickersham spread out before him
+maps and plats showing that he owned surveys which overlapped those
+under which the old man claimed.
+
+"Don't you see my patents are older than yours?"
+
+"Looks so," said the old man, calmly. "But patents is somethin' like
+folks: they may be too old."
+
+The young man tried another line.
+
+The land was of no special value, he told him; he only wanted to quiet
+their titles, etc. But the squire not only refused to sell an acre at
+the prices offered him, he would place no other price whatever on it.
+
+In fact, he did not want to sell. He had bought the land for mountain
+pasture, and he didn't know about these railroads and mines and such
+like. Phrony would have it after his death, and she could do what she
+wished with it after he was dead and gone.
+
+"He is a fool!" thought Wickersham, and set Phrony to work on him; but
+the old fellow was obdurate. He kissed Phrony for her wheedling, but
+told her that women-folks didn't understand about business. So
+Wickersham had to leave without getting the lands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The influx of strangers was so great now at Gumbolt that there was a
+stream of vehicles running between a point some miles beyond Eden, which
+the railroad had reached, and Gumbolt. Wagons, ambulances, and other
+vehicles of a nondescript character on good days crowded the road,
+filling the mountain pass with the cries and oaths of their drivers and
+the rumbling and rattling of their wheels, and filling Mr. Gilsey's soul
+with disgust. But the vehicle of honor was still "Gilsey's stage." It
+carried the mail and some of the express, had the best team in the
+mountains, and was known as the "reg'lar." On bad nights the road was a
+little less crowded. And it was a bad night that Ferdy Wickersham took
+for his journey to Gumbolt.
+
+Keith had been elected marshal, but had appointed Dave Dennison his
+deputy, and on inclement nights Keith still occasionally relieved Tim
+Gilsey, for in such weather the old man was sometimes too stiff to climb
+up to his box.
+
+"The way to know people," said the old driver to him, "is to travel on
+the road with 'em. There is many a man decent enough to pass for a
+church deacon; git him on the road, and you see he is a hog, and not of
+no improved breed at that. He wants to gobble everything": an
+observation that Keith had some opportunity to verify.
+
+Terpsichore appeared suddenly to have a good deal of business over in
+Eden, and had been on the stage several times of late when Keith was
+driving it, and almost always took the box-seat. This had occurred often
+enough for some of his acquaintances in Gumbolt to rally him about it.
+
+"You will have to look out for Mr. Bluffy again," they said. "He's run
+J. Quincy off the track, and he's still in the ring. He's layin' low;
+but that's the time to watch a mountain cat. He's on your track."
+
+Mr. Plume, who was always very friendly with Keith, declared that it was
+not Bluffy, but Keith, who had run him off the track. "It's a case where
+virtue has had its reward," he said to Keith. "You have overthrown more
+than your enemy, Orlando. You have captured the prize we were all trying
+for. Take the goods the gods provide, and while you live, live. The
+epicurean is the only true philosopher. Come over and have a cocktail?
+No? Do you happen to have a dollar about your old clothes? I have not
+forgotten that I owe you a little account; but you are the only man of
+soul in this--Gehenna except myself, and I'd rather owe you ten dollars
+than any other man living."
+
+Keith's manner more than his words shut up most of his teasers. Nothing
+would shut up J. Quincy Plume.
+
+Keith always treated Terpsichore with all the politeness he would have
+shown to any lady. He knew that she was now his friend, and he had
+conceived a sincere liking for her. She was shy and very quiet when a
+passenger on his stage, ready to do anything he asked, obedient to any
+suggestion he gave her.
+
+It happened that, the night Wickersham chose for his trip to Gumbolt,
+Keith had relieved old Gilsey, and he found her at the Eden end of the
+route among his passengers. She had just arrived from Gumbolt by another
+vehicle and was now going straight back. As Keith came around, the young
+woman was evidently preparing to take the box-seat. He was conscious of
+a feeling of embarrassment, which was not diminished by the fact that
+Jake Dennison, his old pupil, was also going over. Jake as well as Dave
+was now living at Gumbolt. Jake was in all the splendor of a black coat
+and a gilded watch-chain, for he had been down to the Ridge to see Miss
+Euphronia Tripper.
+
+It had been a misty day, and toward evening the mist had changed into a
+drizzle.
+
+Keith said to Terpsichore, with some annoyance:
+
+"You had better go inside. It's going to be a bad night."
+
+A slight change came over her face, and she hesitated. But when he
+insisted, she said quietly, "Very well."
+
+As the passengers were about to take their seats in the coach, a young
+man enveloped in a heavy ulster came hurriedly out of the hotel,
+followed by a servant with several bags in his hands, and pushed hastily
+into the group, who were preparing to enter the coach in a more
+leisurely fashion. His hat partly concealed his face, but something
+about him called up memories to Keith that were not wholly pleasant.
+When he reached the coach door Jake Dennison and another man were just
+on the point of helping in one of the women. The young man squeezed in
+between them.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said.
+
+The two men stood aside at the polite tone, and the other stepped into
+the stage and took the back seat, where he proceeded to make himself
+comfortable in a corner. This, perhaps, might have passed but for the
+presence of the women. Woman at this mountain Eden was at a premium, as
+she was in the first.
+
+Jake Dennison and his friend both asserted promptly that there was no
+trouble about three of the ladies getting back seats, and Jake, putting
+his head in at the door, said briefly:
+
+"Young man, there are several ladies out here. You will have to give up
+that seat."
+
+As there was no response to this, he put his head in again.
+
+"Didn't you hear? I say there are some ladies out here. You will have to
+take another seat."
+
+To this the occupant of the stage replied that he had paid for his seat;
+but there were plenty of other seats that they could have. This was
+repeated on the outside, and thereupon one of the women said she
+supposed they would have to take one of the other seats.
+
+Women do not know the power of surrender. This surrender had no sooner
+been made than every man outside was her champion.
+
+"You will ride on that back seat to Gumbolt to-night, or I'll ride in
+Jim Digger's hearse. I am layin' for him anyhow." The voice was Jake
+Dennison's.
+
+"And I'll ride with him. Stand aside, Jake, and let me git in there.
+I'll yank him out," said his friend.
+
+But Jake was not prepared to yield to any one the honor of "yanking."
+Jake had just been down to Squire Rawson's, and this young man was none
+other than Mr. Ferdy Wickersham. He had been there, too.
+
+Jake had left with vengeance in his heart, and this was his opportunity.
+He was just entering the stage head foremost, when the occupant of the
+coveted seat decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and
+announced that he would give up the seat, thereby saving Keith the
+necessity of intervening, which he was about to do.
+
+The ejected tenant was so disgruntled that he got out of the stage, and,
+without taking any further notice of the occupants, called up to know if
+there was a seat outside.
+
+"Yes. Let me give you a hand," said Gordon, leaning down and helping him
+up. "How are you?"
+
+Wickersham looked at him quickly as he reached the boot.
+
+"Hello! You here?" The rest of his sentence was a malediction on the
+barbarians in the coach below and a general consignment of them all to a
+much warmer place than the boot of the Gumbolt stage.
+
+"What are you doing here?" Wickersham asked.
+
+"I am driving the stage."
+
+"Regularly?" There was something in the tone and look that made Keith
+wish to say no, but he said doggedly:
+
+"I have done it regularly, and was glad to get the opportunity."
+
+He was conscious of a certain change in Wickersham's manner toward him.
+
+As they drove along he asked Wickersham about Norman and his people, but
+the other answered rather curtly.
+
+Norman had married.
+
+"Yes." Keith had heard that. "He married Miss Caldwell, didn't he? She
+was a very pretty girl."
+
+"What do you know about here?" Wickersham asked. His tone struck Keith.
+
+"Oh, I met her once. I suppose they are very much in love with each
+other?"
+
+Wickersham gave a short laugh. "In love with Norman! Women don't fall in
+love with a lump of ice."
+
+"I do not think he is a lump of ice," said Keith, firmly.
+
+Wickersham did not answer at first, then he said sharply:
+
+"Well, she's worth a thousand of him. She married him for his money.
+Certainly not for his brains."
+
+"Norman has brains--as much as any one I know," defended Keith.
+
+"You think so!"
+
+Keith remembered a certain five minutes out behind the stables at
+Elphinstone.
+
+He wanted to ask Wickersham about another girl who was uppermost in his
+thoughts, but something restrained him. He could not bear to hear her
+name on his lips. By a curious coincidence, Wickersham suddenly said:
+"You used to teach at old Rawson's. Did you ever meet a girl named
+Yorke--Alice Yorke? She was down this way once."
+
+Keith said that he had met "Miss Yorke." He had met her at Ridgely
+Springs and also in New York. He was glad that it was dark, and that
+Wickersham could not see his face. "A very pretty girl," he hazarded as
+a leader, now that the subject was broached.
+
+"Yes, rather. Going abroad--title-hunting."
+
+"I don't expect Miss Yorke cares about a title," said Keith, stiffly.
+
+"Mamma does. Failing that, she wants old Lancaster and perquisites."
+
+"Who does? Why, Mr. Lancaster is old enough to be her father!"
+
+"Pile's old, too," said Wickersham, dryly.
+
+"She doesn't care about that either," said Keith, shortly.
+
+"Oh, doesn't she! You know her mother?"
+
+"No; I don't believe she does. Whatever her mother is, she is a fine,
+high-minded girl."
+
+Ferdy gave a laugh which might have meant anything. It made Keith hot
+all over. Keith, fearing to trust himself further, changed the subject
+and asked after the Rawsons, Wickersham having mentioned that he had
+been staying with them.
+
+"Phrony is back at home, I believes She has been off to school. I hear
+she is very much improved?"
+
+"I don't know; I didn't notice her particularly," said Wickersham,
+indifferently.
+
+"She is very pretty. Jake Dennison thinks so," laughed Keith.
+
+"Jake Dennison? Who is he?"
+
+"He's an old scholar of mine. He is inside now on the front seat; one of
+your friends."
+
+"Oh, that's the fellow! I thought I had seen him before. Well, he had
+better try some other stock, I guess. He may find that cornered. She is
+not going to take a clod like that."
+
+Wickersham went off into a train of reflection.
+
+"I say, Keith," he began unexpectedly, "maybe, you can help me about a
+matter, and if so I will make it worth your while."
+
+"About what matter?" asked Keith, wondering.
+
+"Why, about that old dolt Rawson's land. You see, the governor has got
+himself rather concerned. When he got this property up here in the
+mountains and started to build the railroad, some of these people here
+got wind of it. That fool, Rhodes, talked about it too much, and they
+bought up the lands around the old man's property. They think the
+governor has got to buy 'em out. Old Rawson is the head of 'em. The
+governor sent Halbrook down to get it; but Halbrook is a fool, too. He
+let him know he wanted to buy him out, and, of course, he raised. You
+and he used to be very thick. He was talking of you the other night."
+
+"He and I are great friends. I have a great regard for him, and a much
+higher opinion of his sense than you appear to have. He is a very
+shrewd man."
+
+"Shrewd the deuce! He's an old blockhead. He has stumbled into the
+possession of some property which I am ready to pay him a fair price
+for. He took it for a cow-pasture. It isn't worth anything. It would
+only be a convenience to us to have it and prevent a row in the future,
+perhaps. That is the only reason I want it. Besides, his title to it
+ain't worth a ----, anyhow. We have patents that antedate his. You can
+tell him that the land is not worth anything. I will give you a good sum
+if you get him to name a price at, say, fifty per cent. on what he gave
+for it. I know what he gave for it. You can tell him it ain't worth
+anything to him and that his title is faulty."
+
+"No, I could not," said Keith, shortly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I think it is very valuable and his title perfect. And he knows
+it."
+
+Wickersham glanced at him in the dusk.
+
+"It isn't valuable at all," he said after a pause. "I will give you a
+good fee if you will get through a deal for it at any price we may agree
+on. Come!"
+
+"No," said Keith; "not for all the money you own. My advice to you is to
+go to Squire Rawson and either offer to take him in with you to the
+value of his lands, or else make him a direct offer for what those lands
+are really worth. He knows as much about the value of those lands as you
+or Mr. Halbrook or any one else knows. Take my word for it."
+
+"Rats!" ejaculated Wickersham, briefly. "I tell you what," he added
+presently: "if he don't sell us that land he'll never get a cent out of
+it. No one else will ever take it. We have him cornered. We've got the
+land above him, and the water, too, and, what is more, his title is not
+worth a damn!"
+
+"Well, that is his lookout. I expect you will find him able to take care
+of himself."
+
+Wickersham gave a grunt, then he asked Keith suddenly:
+
+"Do you know a man named Plume over there at Gumbolt?"
+
+"Yes," said Keith; "he runs the paper there."
+
+"Yes; that's he. What sort of a man is he?"
+
+Keith gave a brief estimate of Mr. Plume: "You will see him and can
+judge for yourself."
+
+"I always do," said Wickersham, briefly. "Know anybody can work him? The
+governor and he fell out some time ago, but I want to get hold of him."
+
+Keith thought he knew one who might influence Mr. Plume; but he did not
+mention the name or sex.
+
+"Who is that woman inside?" demanded Wickersham. "I mean the young one,
+with the eyes."
+
+"They call her Terpsichore. She keeps the dance-hall."
+
+"Friend of yours?"
+
+"Yes." Keith spoke shortly.
+
+The stage presently began to descend Hellstreak Hill, which Keith
+mentioned as the scene of the robbery which old Tim Gilsey had told him
+of. As it swung down the long descent, with the lights of the lamps
+flashing on the big tree-tops, and with the roar of the rushing water
+below them coming up as it boiled over the rocks, Wickersham conceived a
+higher opinion of Keith than he had had before, and he mentally resolved
+that the next time he came over that road he would make the trip in the
+daytime. They had just crossed the little creek which dashed over the
+rocks toward the river, and had begun to ascend another hill, when
+Wickersham, who had been talking about his drag, was pleased to have
+Keith offer him the reins. He took them with some pride, and Keith
+dived down into the boot. When he sat up again he had a pistol in
+his hand.
+
+"It was just about here that that 'hold-up' occurred."
+
+"Suppose they should try to hold you up now, what would you do?" asked
+Wickersham.
+
+"Oh, I don't think there is any danger now," said Keith. "I have driven
+over here at all hours and in all weathers. We are getting too civilized
+for that now, and most of the express comes over in a special wagon.
+It's only the mail and small packages that come on this stage."
+
+"But if they should?" demanded Wickersham.
+
+"Well, I suppose I'd whip up my horses and cut for it," said Keith.
+
+"I wouldn't," asserted Wickersham. "I'd like to see any man make me run
+when I have a gun in my pocket."
+
+Suddenly, as if in answer to his boast, there was a flash in the road,
+and the report of a pistol under the very noses of the leaders, which
+made them swerve aside with a rattling of the swingle-bars, and twist
+the stage sharply over to the side of the road. At the same instant a
+dark figure was seen in the dim light which the lamp threw on the road,
+close beside one of the horses, and a voice was heard:
+
+"I've got you now, ---- you!"
+
+It was all so sudden that Wickersham had not time to think. It seemed to
+him like a scene in a play rather than a reality. He instinctively
+shortened the reins and pulled up the frightened horses. Keith seized
+the reins with one band and snatched at the whip with the other; but it
+was too late. Wickersham, hardly conscious of what he was doing, was
+clutching the reins with all his might, trying to control the leaders,
+whilst pandemonium broke out inside, cries from the women and oaths
+from the men.
+
+There was another volley of oaths and another flash, and Wickersham felt
+a sharp little burn on the arm next Keith.
+
+"Hold on!" he shouted. "For God's sake, don't shoot! Hold on! Stop the
+horses!"
+
+[Illustration: Sprang over the edge of the road into the thick bushes
+below.]
+
+At the same moment Keith disappeared over the wheel. He had fallen or
+sprung from his seat.
+
+"The ---- coward!" thought Wickersham. "He is running."
+
+The next second there was a report of a pistol close beside the stage,
+and the man in the road at the horses' heads fired again. Another
+report, and Keith dashed forward into the light of the lantern and
+charged straight at the robber, who fired once more, and then, when
+Keith was within ten feet of him, turned and sprang over the edge of the
+road into the thick bushes below. Keith sprang straight after him, and
+the two went crashing through the underbrush, down the steep side of
+the hill.
+
+The inmates of the stage poured out into the road, all talking together,
+and Wickersham, with the aid of Jake Dennison, succeeded in quieting the
+horses. The noise of the flight and the pursuit had now grown more
+distant, but once more several shots were heard, deep down in the woods,
+and then even they ceased.
+
+It had all happened so quickly that the passengers had seen nothing.
+They demanded of Wickersham how many robbers there were. They were
+divided in their opinion as to the probable outcome. The men declared
+that Keith had probably got the robber if he had not been killed himself
+at the last fire.
+
+Terpsichore was in a passion of rage because the men had not jumped out
+instantly to Keith's rescue, and one of them had held her in the stage
+and prevented her from poking her head out to see the fight. In the
+light of the lantern Wickersham observed that she was handsome. He
+watched her with interest. There was something of the tiger in her lithe
+movement. She declared that she was going down into the woods herself to
+find Keith. She was sure he had been killed.
+
+The men protested against this, and Jake Dennison and another man
+started to the rescue, whilst a grizzled, weather-beaten fellow caught
+and held her.
+
+"Why, my darlint, I couldn't let you go down there. Why, you'd ruin your
+new bonnet," he said.
+
+The young woman snatched the bonnet from her head and slung it in his
+face.
+
+"You coward! Do you think I care for a bonnet when the best man in
+Gumbolt may be dying down in them woods?"
+
+With a cuff on the ear as the man burst out laughing and put his hand on
+her to soothe her, she turned and darted over the bank into the woods.
+Fortunately for the rest of her apparel, which must have suffered as
+much as the dishevelled bonnet,--which the grizzled miner had picked up
+and now held in his hand as carefully as if it were one of the birds
+which ornamented it,--some one was heard climbing up through the bushes
+toward the road a little distance ahead.
+
+The men stepped forward and waited, each one with his hand in the
+neighborhood of his belt, whilst the women instinctively fell to the
+rear. The next moment Keith appeared over the edge of the road. As he
+stepped into the light it was seen that his face was bleeding and that
+his left arm hung limp at his side.
+
+The men called to Terpy to come back: that Keith was there. A moment
+later she emerged from the bushes and clambered up the bank.
+
+"Did you get him?" was the first question she asked.
+
+"No." Keith gave the girl a swift glance, and turning quietly, he asked
+one of the men to help him off with his coat. In the light of the lamp
+he had a curious expression on his white face.
+
+"Terpy was that skeered about you, she swore she was goin' down there to
+help you," said the miner who still held the hat.
+
+A box on the ear from the young woman stopped whatever further
+observation he was going to make.
+
+"Shut up. Don't you see he's hurt?" She pushed away the man who was
+helping Keith off with his coat, and took his place.
+
+No one who had seen her as she relieved Keith of the coat and with
+dexterous fingers, which might have been a trained nurse's, cut away the
+bloody shirt-sleeve, would have dreamed that she was the virago who, a
+few moments before, had been raging in the road, swearing like a
+trooper, and cuffing men's ears.
+
+When the sleeve was removed it was found that Keith's arm was broken
+just above the elbow, and the blood was pouring from two small wounds.
+Terpy levied imperiously on the other passengers for handkerchiefs;
+then, not waiting for their contributions, suddenly lifting her skirt,
+whipped off a white petticoat, and tore it into strips. She soon had the
+arm bound up, showing real skill in her surgery. Once she whispered a
+word in his ear--a single name. Keith remained silent, but she read his
+answer, and went on with her work with a grim look on her face. Then
+Keith mounted his box against the remonstrances of every one, and the
+passengers having reëntered the stage, Wickersham drove on into Gumbolt.
+His manner was more respectful to Keith than it had ever been before.
+
+Within a half-hour after their arrival the sheriff and his party, with
+Dave Dennison at the head of the posse, were on their horses, headed for
+the scene of the "hold-up." Dave could have had half of Gumbolt for
+posse had he desired it. They attempted to get some information from
+Keith as to the appearance of the robber; but Keith failed to give any
+description by which one man might have been distinguished from the rest
+of the male sex.
+
+"Could they expect a man to take particular notice of how another looked
+under such circumstances? He looked like a pretty big man."
+
+Wickersham was able to give a more explicit description.
+
+The pursuers returned a little after sunrise next morning without having
+found the robber.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+MRS. YORKE MAKES A MATCH
+
+The next day Keith was able to sit up, though the Doctor refused to let
+him go out of the house. He was alone in his room when a messenger
+announced that a woman wished to see him. When the visitor came up it
+was Terpy. She was in a state of suppressed excitement. Her face was
+white, her eyes glittered. Her voice as she spoke was tremulous
+with emotion.
+
+"They're on to him," she said in a husky voice. "That man that comed
+over on the stage with you give a description of him, this mornin', 't
+made 'em tumble to him after we had throwed 'em off the track. If I ever
+git a show at him! They knows 'twas Bill. That little devil Dennison is
+out ag'in."
+
+"Oh, they won't catch him," said Keith; but as he spoke his face
+changed. "What if he should get drunk and come into town?" he
+asked himself.
+
+"If they git him, they'll hang him," pursued the girl, without heeding
+him. "They're all up. You are so popular.
+
+"Me?" exclaimed Keith, laughing.
+
+"It's so," said the girl, gravely. "That Dave Dennison would kill
+anybody for you, and they're ag'in' Bill, all of 'em."
+
+"Can't you get word to him?" began Keith, and paused. He looked at her
+keenly. "You must keep him out of the way.'
+
+"He's wounded. You got him in the shoulder. He's got to see a doctor.
+The ball's still in there."
+
+"I knew it," said Keith, quietly.
+
+The girl gazed at him a moment, and then looked away.
+
+"That was the reason I have been a-pesterin' you, goin' back'ards and
+for'ards. I hope you will excuse me of it," she said irrelevantly.
+
+Keith sat quite still for a moment, as it all came over him. It was,
+then, him that the man was after, not robbery, and this girl, unable to
+restrain her discarded suitor without pointing suspicion to him, had
+imperilled her life for Keith, when he was conceited enough to more than
+half accept the hints of strangers that she cared for him.
+
+"We must get him away," he said, rising painfully. "Where is he?"
+
+"He's hid in a house down the road. I have flung 'em off the track by
+abusin' of him. They know I am against him, and they think I am after
+you," she said, looking at him with frank eyes; "and I have been lettin'
+'em think it," she added quietly.
+
+Keith almost gasped. Truly this girl was past his comprehension.
+
+"We must get him away," he said.
+
+"How can we do it?" she asked. "They suspicion he's here, and the
+pickets are out. If he warn't hit in the shoulder so bad, he could fight
+his way out. He ain't afraid of none of 'em," she added, with a flash of
+the old pride. "I could go with him and help him; I have done it before;
+but I would have to break up here. He's got to see a doctor."
+
+Keith sat in reflection for a moment.
+
+"Tim Gilsey is going to drive the stage over to Eden to-night. Go down
+and see if the places are all taken."
+
+"I have got a place on it," she said, "on the boot."
+
+As Keith looked at her, she added in explanation:
+
+"I take it regular, so as to have it when I want it."
+
+Under Keith's glance she turned away her eyes.
+
+"I am going to Eden to-night," said Keith.
+
+She looked puzzled.
+
+"If you could get old Tim to stop at that house for five minutes till I
+give Bluffy a letter to Dr. Balsam over at the Springs, I think we might
+arrange it. My clothes will fit him. You will have to see Uncle Tim."
+
+Her countenance lit up.
+
+"You mean you would stop there and let him take your place?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The light of craft that must have been in Delilah's eyes when Samson lay
+at her feet was in her face. She sprang up.
+
+"I will never forgit you, and Bill won't neither. He knows now what a
+hound he has been. When you let him off last night after he had slipped
+on the rock, he says that was enough for him. Before he will ever pull a
+pistol on you ag'in, he says he will blow his own brains out; and he
+will, or I will for him." She looked capable of it as she stood with
+glowing eyes and after a moment held out her hand. She appeared about to
+speak, but reflected and turned away.
+
+When the girl left Keith's room a few moments later, she carried a large
+bundle under her arm, and that night the stage stopped in the darkness
+at a little shanty at the far end of the fast-growing street, and Keith
+descended painfully and went into the house. Whilst the stage waited,
+old Tim attempted to do something to the lamp on that side, and in
+turning it down he put it out. Just then Keith, with his arm in a sling
+and wrapped in a heavy coat, came out, and was helped by old Tim up to
+the seat beside him. The stage arrived somewhat ahead of time at the
+point which the railroad had now reached, and old Tim, without waiting
+for daylight, took the trouble to hire a buggy and send the wounded man
+on, declaring that it was important that he should get to a hospital as
+soon as possible.
+
+Amusements were scarce in Gumbolt, and Ferdy Wickersham had been there
+only a day or two when, under Mr. Plume's guidance, he sought the
+entertainment of Terpsichore's Hall. He had been greatly struck by Terpy
+that night on the road, when she had faced down the men and had
+afterwards bound up Keith's arm. He had heard from Plume rumors of her
+frequent trips over the road and jests of her fancy for Keith. He would
+test it. It would break the monotony and give zest to the pursuit to
+make an inroad on Keith's preserve. When he saw her on the little stage
+he was astonished at her dancing. Why, the girl was an artist! As good a
+figure, as active a tripper, as high a kicker, as dainty a pair of
+ankles as he had seen in a long time, not to mention a keen pair of eyes
+with the devil peeping from them. To his surprise, he found Terpy stony
+to his advances. Her eyes glittered with dislike for him.
+
+He became one of the highest players that had ever entered the gilded
+apartment on Terpsichore's second floor; he ordered more champagne than
+any man in Gumbolt; but for all this he failed to ingratiate himself
+with its presiding genius. Terpsichore still looked at him with level
+eyes in which was a cold gleam, and when she showed her white teeth it
+was generally to emphasize some gibe at him. One evening, after a little
+passage at arms, Wickersham chucked her under the chin and called her
+"Darling." Terpsichore wheeled on him.
+
+"Keep your dirty hands to yourself" she said, with a flash in her eye,
+and gave him such a box on the ear as made his head ring. The men around
+broke into a guffaw.
+
+Wickersham was more than angry; he was enraged. He had heard a score of
+men call her by endearing names. He had also seen some of them get the
+same return that he received; but none so vicious. He sprang to his
+feet, his face flushed. The next second his senses returned, and he saw
+that he must make the best of it.
+
+"You vixen!" he said, with a laugh, and caught the girl by the wrist. "I
+will make you pay for that." As he tried to draw her to him, she
+whipped from her dress a small stiletto which she wore as an ornament,
+and drew it back.
+
+"Let go, or I'll drive it into you," she said, with fire darting from
+her eyes; and Wickersham let go amid the laughter and jeers of those
+about them, who were egging the girl on and calling to her to "give
+it to him."
+
+Wickersham after this tried to make his peace, but without avail. Though
+he did not know it, Terpsichore had in her heart a feeling of hate which
+was relentless. It was his description that had set the sheriff's posse
+on the track of her dissipated lover, and though she had "washed her
+hands of Bill Bluffy," as she said, she could not forgive the man who
+had injured him.
+
+Then Wickersham, having committed one error, committed another. He tried
+to get revenge, and the man who sets out to get revenge on a woman
+starts on a sad journey. At least, it was so with Wickersham.
+
+He attributed the snubbing he had received to the girl's liking for
+Keith, and he began to meditate how he should get even with them. The
+chance presented itself, as he thought, when one night he attended a
+ball at the Windsor. It was a gay occasion, for the Wickershams had
+opened their first mine, and Gumbolt's future was assured. The whole of
+Gumbolt was there--at least, all of those who did not side with Mr.
+Drummond, the Methodist preacher. Terpsichore was there, and Keith, who
+danced with her. She was the handsomest-dressed woman in the throng,
+and, to Wickersham's surprise, she was dressed with some taste, and her
+manners were quiet and subdued.
+
+Toward morning the scene became hilarious, and a call was made for
+Terpsichore to give a Spanish dance. The girl held back, but her
+admirers were in no mood for refusal, and the call became insistent.
+Keith had gone to his room, but Wickersham was still there, and his
+champagne had flowed freely. At length the girl yielded, and, after a
+few words with the host of the Windsor, she stepped forward and began
+to dance.
+
+She danced in such a way that the applause made the brass chandeliers
+ring. Even Wickersham, though he hated her, could not but admire her.
+
+Keith, who had found it useless to try to sleep even in a remote corner
+of the hotel, returned just then, and whether it was that Terpsichore
+caught sight of him as she glanced his way, or that she caught sight of
+Wickersham's hostile face, she faltered and stopped suddenly.
+
+Wickersham thought she had broken down, and, under the influence of the
+champagne, turned with a jeer to Plume.
+
+"She can't dance, Plume," he called across to the editor, who was at
+some little distance in the crowd.
+
+Those nearest to the dancer urged her to continue, but she had heard
+Wickersham's jeer, and she suddenly faced him and, pointing her long,
+bare arm toward him, said: "Put that man out, or I won't go on."
+
+Wickersham gave a laugh. "Go on? You can't go on," he said, trying to
+steady himself on his feet. "You can't dance any more than a cow."
+
+He had never heard before the hum of an angry crowd.
+
+"Throw him out! Fling him out of the window!" were the words he caught.
+
+In a second a score of men were about him, and more than a score were
+rushing in his direction with a sound that brought him quickly to
+his senses.
+
+Fortunately two men with cool heads were near by. With a spring Keith
+and a short, stout young fellow with gray eyes were making their way to
+his side, dragging men back, throwing them aside, expostulating,
+ordering, and, before anything else had happened than the tearing of his
+coat half off of his back, Wickersham found himself with Keith and Dave
+Dennison standing in front of him, defending him against the angry
+revellers.
+
+The determined air of the two officers held the assailants in check
+long enough for them to get their attention, and, after a moment, order
+was restored on condition that Wickersham should "apologize to the lady
+and leave town."
+
+This Wickersham, well sobered by the handling he had received, was
+willing to do, and he was made to walk up and offer a humble apology to
+Terpsichore, who accepted it with but indifferent grace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That winter the railroad reached Gumbolt, and Gumbolt, or New Leeds, as
+it was now called, sprang at once, so to speak, from a chrysalis to a
+full-fledged butterfly with wings unfolding in the sun of prosperity.
+
+Lands that a year or two before might have been had for a song, and
+mineral rights that might have been had for less than a song, were now
+held at fabulous prices.
+
+Keith was sitting at his table, one day, writing, when there was a heavy
+step outside, and Squire Rawson walked in on him.
+
+When all matters of mutual interest had been talked over, the squire
+broached the real object of his visit; at least, he began to approach
+it. He took out his pipe and filled it.
+
+"Well, it's come," he said.
+
+"What has come?"
+
+"The railroad. That young man Rhodes said 'twas comin', and so it's
+done. He was something of a prophet." The old fellow chuckled softly and
+lit his pipe. "That there friend of yours, Mr. Wickersham, is been down
+here ag'in. Kind o' hangs around. What's he up to?"
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"Well, it's pretty hard to tell what Wickersham is up to,--at least, by
+what he says,--especially when you don't tell me what he is doing."
+
+The old man looked pleased. Keith had let him believe that he did not
+know what he was talking of, and had expressed an opinion in which
+he agreed.
+
+"That's what I think. Well, it's about my land up here."
+
+Keith looked relived.
+
+"Has he made you another offer for it?"
+
+"No; he ain't done that, and he won't do it. That's what I tells him. If
+he wants it, let him make me a good offer; but he won't do that. He kind
+o' circles around like a pigeon before he lights, and talks about what I
+paid for it, and a hundred per cent. advance, and all that. I give a
+sight for that land he don't know nothin' about--years of hard work on
+the mountain-side, sweatin' o' days, and layin' out in the cold at
+nights, lookin' up at the stars and wonderin' how I was to git
+along--studin' of folks jest as I studied cattle. That's what I paid for
+that land. He wants me to set him a price, and I won't do that--he might
+give it." He looked shrewdly at Keith. "Ain't I right?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"He wants me to let him have control of it; but I ain't a-goin' to do
+that neither."
+
+"That's certainly right," said Keith, heartily.
+
+"I tell him I'm a-goin' to hold to that for Phrony. Phrony says she
+wants me to sell it to him, too. But women-folks don't know about
+business."
+
+Keith wondered what effect this piece of information had on Wickersham,
+and also what further design the old squire had in mind.
+
+"I think it's about time to do something with that land. If all he says
+is true,--not about _my_ land (he makes out as _my_ land is situate too
+far away ever to be much account--fact is, he don't allow I've got any
+land; he says it's all his anyway), but about other lands--everybody
+else's land but mine,--it might be a good time to look around. I know as
+my land is the best land up here. I holds the key to the situation.
+That's what we used to call it durin' the war.
+
+"Well, there ain't but three ways to git to them coal-lands back up
+yonder in the Gap: one's by way of heaven, and I 'lows there ain't many
+land-speculators goin' by that way; the other is through hell, a way
+they'll know more about hereafter; and the third's through my land."
+
+Keith laughed and waited.
+
+"He seems to be hangin' around Phrony pretty considerable?"
+
+Keith caught the gleam in the old fellow's deep eye, and looked away.
+
+"I can't make it out. Phrony she likes him."
+
+Keith fastened his gaze on something out of the window.
+
+"I don't know him," pursued the squire; "But I don't think--he'd suit
+Phrony. His ways ain't like ours, and--." He lapsed into reflection, and
+Keith, with his eyes still fastened on something outside the window,
+sighed to think of the old man's innocence. That he should imagine that
+Wickersham had any serious idea of marrying the granddaughter of a
+backwoods magistrate! The old squire broke the silence.
+
+"You don't suppose he could be hankerin' after Phrony for her property,
+do you?"
+
+"No, I do not," said Keith, positively, relieved that at last a question
+was put which he could answer directly.
+
+"Because she ain't got any," asserted the squire. "She's got prospects;
+but I'm goin' to remove them. It don't do for a young woman to have too
+much prospects. I'm goin' to sell that land and git it down in cash,
+where I can do what I want with it. And I want you to take charge of
+it for me."
+
+This, then, was the real object of his visit. He wanted Keith to take
+charge of his properties. It was a tempting offer to make Keith. The old
+man had been a shrewd negotiator.
+
+There is no success so sweet as that which comes to a young man.
+
+That night Keith spent out under the stars. Success had come. And its
+other name was Alice Yorke.
+
+The way before Keith still stretched steep enough, but the light was on
+it, the sunshine caught peak after peak high up among the clouds
+themselves, and crowning the highest point, bathed in perpetual
+sunlight, was the image of Alice Yorke.
+
+Alice Yorke had been abroad now for some time; but he had followed her.
+Often when his work was done he had locked his door and shut himself in
+from the turmoil of the bustling, noisy throng outside to dream of
+her--to read and study that he might become worthy of her.
+
+He had just seen by the papers that Alice Yorke had returned.
+
+She had escaped the dangers of a foreign service; but, by the account,
+she was the belle of the season at the watering-place which she was
+honoring with her presence. As he read the account, a little jealousy
+crept into the satisfaction which he had felt as he began. Mr. Lancaster
+was spoken of too pointedly; and there was mention of too many
+yacht-parties and entertainments in which their names appeared together.
+
+In fact, the forces exerted, against Alice Yorke had begun to tell. Her
+mother, overawed by her husband's determination, had reluctantly
+abandoned her dreams of a foreign title with its attendant honors to
+herself, and, of late, had turned all her energies to furthering the
+suit of Mr. Lancaster. It would be a great establishment that he would
+give Alice, and no name in the country stood higher. He was the soul of
+honor, personal and commercial; and in an age when many were endeavoring
+to amass great fortunes and make a dazzling display, he was content to
+live modestly, and was known for his broad-minded philanthropy. What did
+it matter that he was considerably older than Alice? reflected Mrs.
+Yorke. Mrs. Creamer and half the mothers she knew would give their eyes
+to secure him for their daughters; and certainly he had shown that he
+knew how to enter into Alice's feelings.
+
+Even Mr. Yorke had begun to favor Mr. Lancaster after Mrs. Yorke had
+skilfully pointed out that Alice's next most attentive admirer was Ferdy
+Wickersham.
+
+"Why, I thought he was still trying to get that Caldwell girl," said he.
+
+"You know he cannot get her; she is married," replied Mrs. Yorke.
+
+"I guess that would make precious little difference to that young man,
+if she would say the word. I wish he would keep away from here."
+
+"Oh, Ferdy is no worse than some others; you were always unjust to him.
+Most young men sow their wild oats."
+
+No man likes to be charged with injustice by his wife, and Mr. Yorke's
+tone showed that he was no exception to this rule.
+
+"He is worse than most others _I_ know, and the crop of oats he is
+sowing, if he does not look out, he will reap somewhere else besides in
+New York. Alice shall marry whom she pleases, provided it is not that
+young man; but she shall not marry him if she wants to."
+
+"She does not want to marry him," said Mrs. Yorke; "if she had she could
+have done it long ago."
+
+"Not while I lived," said Mr. Yorke, firmly. But from this time Mr.
+Yorke began to acquiesce in his wife's plans touching Mr. Lancaster.
+
+Finally Alice herself began to yield. The influences were very strong,
+and were skilfully exerted. The only man who had ever made any lasting
+impression on her heart was, she felt, out of the question. The young
+school-teacher, with his pride and his scorn of modern ways, had
+influenced her life more than any one else she had ever known, and
+though under her mother's management the feeling had gradually subsided,
+and had been merged into what was merely a cherished recollection,
+Memory, stirred at times by some picture or story of heroism and
+devotion, reminded her that she too might, under other conditions, have
+had a real romance. Still, after two or three years, her life appeared
+to have been made for her by Fate, and she yielded, not recognizing that
+Fate was only a very ambitious and somewhat short-sighted mamma aided by
+the conditions of an artificial state of life known as fashionable
+society.
+
+Keith wrote Alice Yorke a letter congratulating her upon her safe
+return; but a feeling, part shyness, part pride, seized him. He had
+received no acknowledgment of his last letter. Why should he write
+again? He mailed the letter in the waste-basket. Now, however, that
+success had come to him, he wrote her a brief note congratulating her
+upon her return, a stiff little plea for remembrance. He spoke of his
+good fortune: he was the agent for the most valuable lands in that
+region, and the future was beginning to look very bright. Business, he
+said, might take him North before long, and the humming-birds would show
+him the way to the fairest roses. The hope of seeing her shone in every
+line. It reached Alice Yorke in the midst of preparation for
+her marriage.
+
+Alice Yorke sat for some time in meditation over this letter. It brought
+back vividly the time which she had never wholly forgotten. Often, in
+the midst of scenes so gay and rich as to amaze her, she had recalled
+the springtime in the budding woods, with an ardent boy beside her,
+worshipping her with adoring eyes. She had lived close to Nature then,
+and Content once or twice peeped forth at her from its covert with calm
+and gentle eyes. She had known pleasure since then, joy, delight, but
+never content. However, it was too late now. Mr. Lancaster and her
+mother had won the day; she had at last accepted him and an
+establishment. She had accepted her fate or had made it.
+
+She showed the letter to her mother. Mrs. Yorke's face took on an
+inscrutable expression.
+
+"You are not going to answer it, of course?" she said.
+
+"Of course, I am; I am going to write him the nicest letter that I know
+how to write. He is one of the best friends I ever had."
+
+"What will Mr. Lancaster say?"
+
+"Mr. Lancaster quite understands. He is going to be reasonable; that is
+the condition."
+
+This appeared to be satisfactory to Mrs. Yorke, or, at least, she said
+no more.
+
+Alice's letter to Keith was friendly and even kind. She had never
+forgotten him, she said. Some day she hoped to meet him again. Keith
+read this with a pleasant light in his eyes. He turned the page, and his
+face suddenly whitened. She had a piece of news to tell him which might
+surprise him. She was engaged to be married to an old friend of her
+family's, Mr. Lancaster. He had met Mr. Lancaster, she remembered, and
+was sure he would like him, as Mr. Lancaster had liked him so much.
+
+Keith sat long over this letter, his face hard set and very white. She
+was lost to him. He had not known till then how largely he had built his
+life upon the memory of Alice Yorke. Deep down under everything that he
+had striven for had lain the foundation of his hope to win her. It went
+down with a crash. He went to his room, and unlocking his desk, took
+from his drawer a small package of letters and other little mementos of
+the past that had been so sweet. These he put in the fire and, with a
+grim face, watched them blaze and burn to ashes. She was dead to him. He
+reserved nothing.
+
+The newspapers described the Yorke-Lancaster wedding as one of the most
+brilliant affairs of the season. They dwelt particularly on the fortunes
+of both parties, the value of the presents, and the splendor of the
+dresses worn on the occasion. One journal mentioned that Mr. Lancaster
+was considerably older than the bride, and was regarded as one of the
+best, because one of the safest, matches to be found in society.
+
+Keith recalled Mr. Lancaster: dignified, cultivated, and coldly
+gracious. Then he recalled his gray hair, and found some satisfaction in
+it. He recalled, too, Mrs. Yorke's friendliness for him. This, then, was
+what it meant. He wondered to himself how he could have been so blind to
+it. When he came to think of it, Mr. Lancaster came nearer possessing
+what others strove for than any one else he knew. Yet, Youth looks on
+Youth as peculiarly its own, and Keith found it hard to look on Alice
+Yorke's marriage as anything but a sale.
+
+"They talk about the sin of selling negroes," he said; "that is as very
+a sale as ever took place at a slave-auction."
+
+For a time he plunged into the gayest life that Gumbolt offered. He even
+began to visit Terpsichore. But this was not for long. Mr. Plume's
+congratulations were too distasteful to him for him to stomach them; and
+Terpy began to show her partiality too plainly for him to take advantage
+of it. Besides, after all, though Alice Yorke had failed him, it was
+treason to the ideal he had so long carried in his heart. This still
+remained to him.
+
+He went back to his work, resolved to tear from his heart all memory of
+Alice Yorke. She was married and forever beyond his dreams. If he had
+worked before with enthusiasm, he now worked with fury. Mr. Lancaster,
+as wealthy as he was, as completely equipped with all that success could
+give, lacked one thing that Keith possessed: he lacked the promise of
+the Future. Keith would show these Yorkes who he was.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+KEITH VISITS NEW YORK, AND MRS. LANCASTER SEES A GHOST
+
+For the next year or two the tide set in very strong toward the
+mountains, and New Leeds advanced with giant strides. What had been a
+straggling village a year or two before was now a town, and was
+beginning to put on the airs of a city. Brick buildings quite as
+pretentious as the town were springing up where a year before there were
+unsightly frame boxes; the roads where hogs had wallowed in mire not
+wholly of their own kneading were becoming well-paved streets. Out on
+the heights, where had been a forest, were sprinkled sightly dwellings
+in pretty yards. The smoke of panting engines rose where but a few years
+back old Tim Gilsey drew rein over his steaming horses. Pretty girls and
+well-dressed women began to parade the sidewalks where formerly
+Terpsichore's skirts were the only feminine attire seen. And "Gordon
+Keith, civil and mining engineer," with his straight figure and tanned,
+manly face, was not ignored by them. But locked in his heart was the
+memory of the girl he had found in the Spring woods. She was forever
+beyond him; but he still clung to the picture he had enshrined there.
+
+When he saw Dr. Balsam, no reference was made to the verification of the
+latter's prophecy; but the young man knew from the kind tone in the
+older man's voice that he had heard of it. Meantime Keith had not been
+idle. Surveys and plats had been made, and everything done to facilitate
+placing the Rawson properties on the market.
+
+When old man Rawson came to New Leeds now, he made Keith's little office
+his headquarters, and much quaint philosophy Keith learned from him.
+
+"I reckon it's about time to try our cattle in the New York market," he
+said at length to Keith. It was a joke he never gave up. "You go up
+there and look around, and if you have any trouble send for me."
+
+So, taking his surveys and reports and a few letters of introduction
+Keith went to New York.
+
+Only one thought marred Keith's joy: the dearest aim he had so long had
+in view had disappeared. The triumph of standing before Alice Yorke and
+offering her the reward of his endeavor was gone. All he could do was to
+show her what she had lost. This he would do; he would win life's
+highest honors. He grew grim with resolve.
+
+Something of this triumphant feeling showed in his mien and in his face
+as he plunged into the crowded life of the city. From the time he passed
+into the throng that streamed up the long platforms of the station and
+poured into the wide ferry-boats, like grain pouring through a mill, he
+felt the thrill of the life. This was what he had striven for. He would
+take his place here and show what was in him.
+
+He had forgotten how gay the city life was. Every place of public resort
+pleased him: theatres, hotels, beer-gardens; but best of all the
+streets. He took them all in with absolute freedom and delight.
+
+Business was the watchword, the trade-mark. It buzzed everywhere, from
+the Battery to the Park. It thronged the streets, pulsating through the
+outlets and inlets at ferries and railway-stations and crossings, and
+through the great buildings that were already beginning to tower in the
+business sections. It hummed in the chief centres. And through it all
+and beyond it all shone opulence, opulence gilded and gleaming and
+dazzling in its glitter: in the big hotels; in the rich shops; in the
+gaudy theatres; along the fine avenues: a display of wealth to make the
+eyes ache; an exhibition of riches never seen before. It did Keith good
+at first just to stand in the street and watch the pageant as it passed
+like a gilded panorama. Of the inner New York he did not yet know: the
+New York of luxurious homes; of culture and of art; of refinement and
+elegance. The New York that has grown up since, with its vast wealth,
+its brazen glitter, its tides that roll up riches as the sea rolls up
+the sand, was not yet. It was still in its infancy, a chrysalis as yet
+sleeping within its golden cocoon.
+
+Keith had no idea there were so many handsome and stylish young women in
+the world as he now saw. He had forgotten how handsome the American girl
+is in her best appointment. They sailed down the avenue looking as fine
+as young fillies at a show, or streamed through the best shopping
+streets as though not only the shops, but the world belonged to them,
+and it were no longer the meek, but the proud, that inherit the earth.
+
+If in the throngs on the streets there were often marked contrasts,
+Keith was too exhilarated to remark it--at least, at first. If women
+with worn faces and garments unduly thin in the frosty air, carrying
+large bundles in their pinched hands, hurried by as though hungry, not
+only for food, but for time in which to earn food; if sad-eyed men with
+hollow cheeks, sunken chests, and threadbare clothes shambled eagerly
+along, he failed to note them in his first keen enjoyment of the
+pageant. Old clothes meant nothing where he came from; they might be the
+badge of perilous enterprise and well-paid industry, and food and fire
+were at least common to all.
+
+Keith, indeed, moved about almost in a trance, absorbing and enjoying
+the sights. It was Humanity in flood; Life at full tide.
+
+Many a woman and not a few men turned to take a second look at the
+tanned, eager face and straight, supple figure, as, with smiling, yet
+keen eyes, he stalked along with the free, swinging gait caught on the
+mountains, so different from the quick, short steps of the city man.
+Beggars, and some who from their look and apparel might not have been
+beggars, applied to him so often that he said to one of them, a fairly
+well-dressed man with a nose of a slightly red tinge:
+
+"Well, I must have a very benevolent face or a very credulous one!"
+
+"You have," said the man, with brazen frankness, pocketing the
+half-dollar given him on his tale of a picked pocket and a remittance
+that had gone wrong.
+
+Keith laughed and passed on.
+
+Meantime, Keith was making some discoveries. He did not at first call on
+Norman Wentworth. He had a feeling that it might appear as if he were
+using his friendship for a commercial purpose. He presented his business
+letters. His letters, however, failed to have the weight he had
+expected. The persons whom he had met down in New Leeds, during their
+brief visits there, were, somehow, very different when met in New York.
+Some whom he called on were civil enough to him; but as soon as he
+broached his business they froze up. The suggestion that he had
+coal-property to sell sent them down to zero. Their eyes would glint
+with a shrewd light and their faces harden into ice. One or two told him
+plainly that they had no money to embark in "wild-cat schemes."
+
+Mr. Creamer of Creamer, Crustback & Company, Capitalists, a tall,
+broad-shouldered man, with a strongly cut nose and chin and keen, gray
+eyes, that, through long habitude, weighed chances with an infallible
+appraisement, to whom Keith had a letter from an acquaintance, one of
+those casual letters that mean anything or nothing, informed him frankly
+that he had "neither time nor inclination to discuss enterprises,
+ninety-nine out of every hundred of which were frauds, and the hundredth
+generally a failure."
+
+"This is not a fraud," said Keith, hotly, rising. "I do not indorse
+frauds, sir." He began to draw on his gloves. "If I cannot satisfy any
+reasonable man of the fact I state, I am willing to fail. I ought to
+fail." With a bow, he turned to the door.
+
+Something in Keith's assurance went further with the shrewd-eyed
+capitalist than his politeness had done. He shot a swift glance as he
+was retiring toward the door.
+
+"Why didn't Wickersham make money down there?" he demanded, half in
+query, half in denial, gazing keenly over his gold-rimmed glasses. "He
+usually makes money, even if others lose it."
+
+Mr. Creamer had his own reasons for not liking Wickersham.
+
+Keith was standing at the door.
+
+"For two or three reasons. One was that he underestimated the people who
+live down there, and thought he could force them into selling him their
+lands, and so lost the best properties there."
+
+"The lands you have, I suppose?" said the banker, looking again at Keith
+quickly.
+
+"Yes, the lands I have, though you don't believe it," said Keith,
+looking him calmly in the eyes.
+
+The banker was gazing at the young man ironically; but, as he observed
+him, his credulity began to give way.
+
+That stamp of truth which men recognize was written on him unmistakably.
+Mr. Creamer's mind worked quickly.
+
+"By the way, you came from down there. Did you know a young man named
+Rhodes? He was an engineer. Went over the line."
+
+Keith's eyes brightened. "He is one of my best friends. He is in Russia
+now."
+
+Mr. Creamer nodded. "What do you think of him?"
+
+"He is one of the best."
+
+Mr. Creamer nodded. He did not think it necessary to tell Keith that
+Rhodes was paying his addresses to his daughter.
+
+"You write to him," said Keith. "He will tell you just what I have. Tell
+him they are the Rawson lands."
+
+Keith opened the door. "Good morning, sir."
+
+"One moment!" Mr. Creamer leaned back in his chair. "Whom else do you
+know here?" he asked after a second.
+
+Keith reflected a moment.
+
+"I know Mr. Wentworth."
+
+"Norman Wentworth?"
+
+"Yes; I know him very well. He is an old friend of mine."
+
+"Have you been to him?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because my relations with him are entirely personal. We used to be warm
+friends, and I did not wish to use his friendship for me as a ground on
+which to approach him in a commercial enterprise."
+
+Mr. Creamer's countenance expressed more incredulity than he intended to
+show.
+
+"He might feel under obligations to do for me what he would not be
+inclined to do otherwise," Keith explained.
+
+"Oh, I don't think you need have any apprehension on that score," Mr.
+Creamer said, with a glint of amusement in his eyes. "It is a matter of
+business, and I don't think you will find business men here overstepping
+the bounds of prudence from motives of sentiment."
+
+"There is no man whom I would rather have go into it with me; but I
+shall not ask him to do it, for the reason I have given. Good morning."
+
+The banker did not take his eyes from the door until the sound of
+Keith's steps had died away through his outer office. Then he reflected
+for a moment. Presently he touched a bell, and a clerk appeared in
+the door.
+
+"Write a note to Mr. Norman Wentworth and ask him to drop in to see
+me--any time this afternoon."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+When Norman Wentworth called at Mr. Creamer's office he found the
+financier in a good humor. The market had gone well of late, and Mr.
+Creamer's moods were not altogether unlike the mercury. His greeting was
+more cordial than usual. After a brief discussion of recent events, he
+pushed a card across to his visitor and asked casually:
+
+"What do you know about that man?"
+
+"Gordon Keith!" exclaimed the younger man, in surprise. "Is he in New
+York, and I have not seen him! Why, I know all about him. He used to be
+an old friend of mine. We were boys together ever so long ago."
+
+He went on to speak warmly of him.
+
+"Well, that was long ago," said Mr. Creamer, doubtfully. "Many things
+have happened in that time. He has had time to change."
+
+"He must have changed a good deal if he is not straight," declared
+Norman. "I wonder why he has not been to see me?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what he said," began Mr. Creamer.
+
+He gave Keith's explanation.
+
+"Did he say that? Then it's true. You ought to know his father. He is a
+regular old Don Quixote."
+
+"The Don was not particularly practical. He would not have done much
+with coal and iron lands," observed the banker. "What do you know about
+this man's knowledge of such things?"
+
+Norman admitted that on this point he had no information.
+
+"He says he knows Wickersham--your friend," said Mr. Creamer, with a sly
+look at Norman.
+
+"Yes, I expect he does--if any one knows him. He used to know him. What
+does he say of him?"
+
+"Oh, I think he knows him. Well, I am much obliged to you for coming
+around," he said in a tone of dismissal. "You are coming to dine with us
+soon, I believe? The Lancasters are coming, too. And we expect Rhodes
+home. He's due next week."
+
+"One member of your family will be glad to see him," said Norman,
+smiling. "The wedding is to take place in a few weeks, I believe?"
+
+"I hear so," said the father. "Fine young man, Rhodes? Your cousin,
+isn't he? Been very successful?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Once, as Keith passed along down Broadway, just where some of the great
+shops were at that time, before the tide had rolled so far up-town, a
+handsome carriage and pair drew up in front of one of the big shops, and
+a lady stepped from it just behind him. She was a very pretty young
+woman, and richly dressed. A straight back and a well-set head, with a
+perfect toilet, gave her distinction even among the handsomely appointed
+women who thronged the street that sunny morning, and many a woman
+turned and looked at her with approval or envy.
+
+The years, that had wrought Keith from a plain country lad into a man of
+affairs of such standing in New Leeds that a shrewd operator like Rawson
+had selected him for his representative, had also wrought a great change
+in Alice Lancaster. Alice had missed what she had once begun to expect,
+romance and all that it meant; but she had filled with dignity the place
+she had chosen. If Mr. Lancaster's absorption in serious concerns left
+her life more sombre than she had expected, at least she let no one know
+it. Association with a man like Mr. Lancaster had steadied and elevated
+her. His high-mindedness had lifted her above the level of her worldly
+mother and of many of those who constituted the set in which she lived.
+
+He admired her immeasurably. He was constantly impressed by the
+difference between her and her shallow-minded and silly mother, or even
+between her and such a young woman as Mrs. Wentworth, who lived only for
+show and extravagance, and appeared in danger of ruining her husband and
+wrecking his happiness.
+
+It was Mrs. Lancaster who descended from her carriage as Keith passed
+by. Just as she was about to enter the shop, a well-knit figure with
+square shoulders and springy step, swinging down the street, caught her
+eye. She glanced that way and gave an exclamation. The door was being
+held open for her by a blank-faced automaton in a many-buttoned uniform;
+so she passed in, but pausing just inside, she glanced back through the
+window. The next instant she left the shop and gazed down the street
+again. But Keith had turned a corner, and so Alice Lancaster did not
+see him, though she stood on tiptoe to try and distinguish him again in
+the crowd.
+
+"Well, I would have sworn that that was Gordon Keith," she said to
+herself, as she turned away, "if he had not been so broad-shouldered and
+good-looking." And wherever she moved the rest of the day her eyes
+wandered up and down the street.
+
+Once, as she was thus engaged, Ferdy Wickersham came up. He was dressed
+in the tip of the fashion and looked very handsome.
+
+"Who is the happy man?"
+
+The question was so in keeping with her thought that she blushed
+unexpectedly.
+
+"No one."
+
+"Ah, not me, then? But I know it was some one. No woman looks so
+expectant and eager for 'no one.'"
+
+"Do you think I am like you, perambulating streets trying to make
+conquests?" she said, with a smile.
+
+"You do not have to try," he answered lazily. "You do it simply by being
+on the street. I am playing in great luck to-day."
+
+"Have you seen Louise this morning?" she asked.
+
+He looked her full in the face. "I see no one but you when you are
+around."
+
+She laughed lightly.
+
+"Ferdy, you will begin to believe that after a while, if you do not stop
+saying it so often."
+
+"I shall never stop saying it, because it is true," he replied
+imperturbably, turning his dark eyes on her, the lids a little closed.
+
+"You have got so in the habit of saying it that you repeat it like my
+parrot that I taught once, when I was younger and vainer, to say,
+'Pretty Alice.' He says it all the time."
+
+"Sensible bird," said Mr. Wickersham, calmly. "Come and drive me up to
+the Park and let's have a stroll. I know such a beautiful walk. There
+are so many people out to-day. I saw the lady of the 'cat-eyes and
+cat-claws' go by just now, seeking some one whom she can turn again and
+rend." It was the name she had given Mrs. Nailor.
+
+"I do not care who is out. Are you going to the Wentworths' this
+evening?" she asked irrelevantly.
+
+"No; I rarely go there. Will you mention that to Mrs. Nailor? She
+apparently has not that confidence in my word that I could have expected
+in one so truthful as herself."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster laughed.
+
+"Ferdy--" she began, and then paused irresolute. "However--"
+
+"Well, what is it? Say it."
+
+"You ought not to go there so often as you do."
+
+"Why?" His eyes were full of insolence.
+
+"Good-by. Drive home," she said to the coachman, in a tone intentionally
+loud enough for her friend to hear.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham strolled on down the street, and a few minutes later
+was leaning in at the door of Mrs. Wentworth's carriage, talking very
+earnestly to the lady inside.
+
+Mr. Wickersham's attentions to Louise Wentworth had begun to be the talk
+of the town. Young Mrs. Wentworth was not a person to allow herself to
+be shelved. She did not propose that the older lady who bore that name
+should be known by it. She declared she would play second fiddle to no
+one. But she discovered that the old lady who lived in the old mansion
+on Washington Square was "Mrs. Wentworth," and that Mrs. Wentworth
+occupied a position from which she was not to be moved. After a little
+she herself was known as "Mrs. Norman." It was the first time Mrs.
+Norman had ever had command of much money. Her mother had made a good
+appearance and dressed her daughter handsomely, but to carry out her
+plans she had had to stint and scrape to make both ends meet. Mrs.
+Caldwell told one of her friends that her rings knew the way to the
+pawnbroker's so well that if she threw them in the street they would
+roll into his shop.
+
+This struggle Louise had witnessed with that easy indifference which was
+part her nature and part her youth. She had been brought up to believe
+she was a beauty, and she did believe it. Now that she had the chance,
+she determined to make the most of her triumph. She would show people
+that she knew how to spend money; embellishment was the aim of her life,
+and she did show them. Her toilets were the richest; her equipage was
+the handsomest and best appointed. Her entertainments soon were among
+the most splendid in the city.
+
+Those who were accustomed to wealth and to parade wondered both at Mrs.
+Norman's tastes and at her gratification of them.
+
+All the town applauded. They had had no idea that the Wentworths, as
+rich as they knew them to be, had so much money.
+
+"She must have Aladdin's lamp," they said. Only old Mrs. Wentworth
+looked grave and disapproving at the extravagance of her
+daughter-in-law. Still she never said a word of it, and when the
+grandson came she was too overjoyed to complain of anything.
+
+It was only of late that people had begun to whisper of the frequency
+with which Ferdy Wickersham was seen with Mrs. Norman. Certain it was
+that he was with her a great deal.
+
+That evening Alice Lancaster was dining with the Norman Wentworths. She
+was equally good friends with them and with their children, who on their
+part idolized her and considered her to be their especial property. Her
+appearance was always the signal for a romp. Whenever she went to the
+Wentworths' she always paid a visit to the nursery, from which she would
+return breathless and dishevelled, with an expression of mingled
+happiness and pain in her blue eyes. Louise Wentworth knew well why the
+longing look was there, and though usually cold and statuesque, she
+always softened to Alice Lancaster then more than she was wont to do.
+
+"Alice pines for children," she said to Norman, who pinched her cheek
+and, like a man, told her she thought every one as romantic and as
+affectionate as herself. Had Mrs. Nailor heard this speech she would
+have blinked her innocent eyes and have purred with silent thoughts on
+the blindness of men.
+
+This evening Mrs. Lancaster had come down from the nursery, where shouts
+of childish merriment had told of her romps with the ringletted young
+brigand who ruled there, and was sitting quite silent in the deep
+arm-chair in an attitude of profound reflection, her head thrown back,
+her white arms resting languidly on the arms of the chair, her face
+unusually thoughtful, her eyes on the gilded ceiling.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth watched her for a moment silently, and then said:
+
+"You must not let the boy tyrannize over you so."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster's reply was complete:
+
+"I love it; I just love it!"
+
+Presently Mrs. Wentworth spoke again.
+
+"What is the matter with you this evening? You seem quite distraite."
+
+"I saw a ghost to-day." She spoke without moving.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth's face took on more interest.
+
+"What do you mean? Who was it?"
+
+"I mean I saw a ghost; I might say two ghosts, for I saw in imagination
+also the ghost of myself as I was when a girl. I saw the man I was in
+love with when I was seventeen."
+
+"I thought you were in love with Ferdy then?"
+
+"No; never." She spoke with sudden emphasis.
+
+"How interesting! And you congratulated yourself on your escape? We
+always do. I was violently in love with a little hotel clerk, with oily
+hair, a snub-nose, and a waxed black moustache, in the Adirondacks when
+I was that age."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster made no reply to this, and her hostess looked at her
+keenly.
+
+"Where was it? How long before--?" She started to ask, how long before
+she was married, but caught herself. "What did he look like? He must
+have been good-looking, or you would not be so pensive."
+
+"He looked like--a man."
+
+"How old was he--I mean, when he fell in love with you?" said Mrs.
+Wentworth, with a sort of gasp, as she recalled Mr. Lancaster's gray
+hair and elderly appearance.
+
+"Rather young. He was only a few years older than I was; a young--what's
+his name?--Hercules, that brought me down a mountain in his arms the
+second time I ever saw him."
+
+"Alice Lancaster!"
+
+"I had broken my leg--almost I had got a bad fall from a horse and could
+not walk, and he happened to come along."
+
+"Of course. How romantic! Was he a doctor? Did you do it on purpose?"
+Mrs. Lancaster smiled.
+
+"No; a young schoolmaster up in the mountains. He was not handsome--not
+then. But he was fine-looking, eyes that looked straight at you and
+straight through you; the whitest teeth you ever saw; and shoulders! He
+could carry a sack of salt!" At the recollection a faint smile flickered
+about her lips.
+
+"Why didn't you marry him?"
+
+"He had not a cent in the world. He was a poor young school-teacher, but
+of a very distinguished family. However, mamma took fright, and whisked
+me away as if he had been a pestilence."
+
+"Oh, naturally!"
+
+"And he was too much in love with me. But for that I think I should not
+have given him up. I was dreadfully cut up for a little while. And he--"
+She did not finish the sentence.
+
+On this Mrs. Wentworth made no observation, though the expression about
+her mouth changed.
+
+"He made a reputation afterwards. I knew he would. He was bound to
+succeed. I believed in him even then. He had ideals. Why don't men have
+ideals now?"
+
+"Some of them do," asserted Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"Yes; Norman has. I mean unmarried men. I heard he made a fortune, or
+was making one--or something."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"He knew more than any one I ever saw--and made you want to know. All I
+ever read he set me to. And he is awfully good-looking. I had no idea he
+would be so good-looking. But I tell you this: no woman that ever saw
+him ever forgot him."
+
+"Is he married?"
+
+"I don't think so--no. If he had been I should have heard it. He really
+believed in me."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her with interest.
+
+"Where is he staying?"
+
+"I do not know. I saw him through a shop-window."
+
+"What! Did you not speak to him?"
+
+"I did not get a chance. When I came out of the shop he was gone."
+
+"That was sad. It would have been quite romantic, would it not? But,
+perhaps, after all, he did not make his fortune?" Mrs. Wentworth looked
+complacent.
+
+"He did if he set his mind to it," declared Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"How about Ferdy Wickersham?" The least little light of malevolence
+crept into Mrs. Wentworth's eyes.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster gave a shrug of impatience, and pushed a photograph on a
+small table farther away, as if it incommoded her.
+
+"Oh, Ferdy Wickersham! Ferdy Wickersham to that man is a heated room to
+the breath of hills and forests." She spoke with real warmth, and Mrs.
+Wentworth gazed at her curiously for a few seconds.
+
+"Still, I rather fancy for a constancy you'd prefer the heated rooms to
+the coldness of the hills. Your gowns would not look so well in
+the forest."
+
+It was a moment before Mrs. Lancaster's face relaxed.
+
+"I suppose I should," she said slowly, with something very like a sigh.
+"He was the only man I ever knew who made me do what I did not want to
+do and made me wish to be something better than I was," she
+added absently.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her somewhat impatiently, but she went on:
+
+"I was very romantic then; and you should have heard him read the
+'Idylls of the King.' He had the most beautiful voice. He made you live
+in Arthur's court, because he lived there himself."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth burst into laughter, but it was not very merry.
+
+"My dear Alice, you must have been romantic. How old were you, did you
+say?"
+
+"It was three years before I was married," said Mrs. Lancaster, firmly.
+
+Her friend gazed at her with a puzzled expression on her face.
+
+"Oh! Now, my dear Alice, don't let's have any more of this
+sentimentalizing. I never indulge in it; it always gives me a headache.
+One might think you were a school-girl."
+
+At the word a wood in all the bravery of Spring sprang into Alice's
+mind. A young girl was seated on the mossy ground, and outstretched at
+her feet was a young man, fresh-faced and clear-eyed, quoting a poem of
+youth and of love.
+
+"Heaven knows I wish I were," said Mrs. Lancaster, soberly. "I might
+then be something different from what I am!"
+
+"Oh, nonsense! You do nothing of the kind. Here are you, a rich woman,
+young, handsome, with a great establishment; perfectly free, with no one
+to interfere with you in any way. Now, I--"
+
+"That's just it," broke in Mrs. Lancaster, bitterly. "Free! Free from
+what my heart aches for. Free to dress in sables and diamonds and die of
+loneliness." She had sat up, and her eyes were glowing and her color
+flashing in her cheeks in her energy.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth looked at her with a curious expression in her eyes.
+
+"I want what you have, Louise Caldwell. In that big house with only
+ourselves and servants--sometimes I could wish I were dead. I envy every
+woman I see on the street with her children. Yes, I am free--too free! I
+married for respect, and I have it. But--I want devotion, sympathy. You
+have it. You have a husband who adores you, and children to fill your
+heart, cherish it." The light in her eyes was almost fierce as she
+leaned forward, her hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles showed
+white, and a strange look passed for a moment over Mrs.
+Wentworth's face.
+
+"You are enough to give one the blue-devils!" she exclaimed, with
+impatience. "Let's have a liqueur." She touched a bell, but Mrs.
+Lancaster rose.
+
+"No; I will go."
+
+"Oh, yes; just a glass." A servant appeared like an automaton at the
+door.
+
+"What will you have, Alice?" But Mrs. Lancaster was obdurate. She
+declined the invitation, and declared that she must go, as she was going
+to the opera; and the next moment the two ladies were taking leave of
+each other with gracious words and the formal manner that obtains in
+fashionable society, quite as if they had known each other just
+fifteen minutes.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster drove home, leaning very far back in her brougham.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth, too, appeared rather fatigued after her guest departed,
+and sat for fifteen minutes with the social column of a newspaper lying
+in her lap unscanned.
+
+"I thought she and Ferdy liked each other," she said to herself; "but he
+must have told the truth. They cannot have cared for each other. I think
+she must have been in love with that man."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+KEITH MEETS NORMAN
+
+The day after Keith's interview with Mr. Creamer he was walking up-town
+more slowly than was his wont; for gloom was beginning to take the place
+where disappointment had for some time been holding session. His
+experience that day had been more than usually disheartening. These
+people with all their shrewdness appeared to him to be in their way as
+contracted as his mountaineers. They lived to amass wealth, yet went
+like sheep in flocks, and were so blind that they could not recognize a
+great opportunity when it was presented. They were mere machines that
+ground through life as monotonously as the wheels in their factories,
+turning out riches, riches, riches.
+
+This morning Keith had come across an article in a newspaper which, in a
+measure, explained his want of success. It was an article on New Leeds.
+It praised, in florid sentences, the place and the people, gave a
+reasonably true account of the rise of the town, set forth in a veiled
+way a highly colored prospectus of the Wickersham properties, and
+asserted explicitly that all the lands of value had been secured by this
+company, and that such as were now being offered outside were those
+which Wickersham had refused as valueless after a thorough and searching
+examination. The falsity of the statements made Keith boil with rage.
+Mr. J. Quincy Plume immediately flashed into his mind.
+
+As he walked along, the newspaper clutched in his hand, a man brushed
+against him. Keith's mind was far away on Quincy Plume and Ferdy
+Wickersham; but instinctively, as his shoulder touched the
+stranger's, he said:
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+At the words the other turned and glanced at him casually; then stopped,
+turned and caught up with him, so as to take a good look at his face.
+The next second a hand was on Keith's shoulder.
+
+"Why, Gordon Keith!"
+
+Keith glanced up in a maze at the vigorous-looking, well-dressed young
+man who was holding out his gloved hand to him, his blue eyes full of a
+very pleasant light. Keith's mind had been so far away that for a second
+it did not return. Then a light broke over his face. He seized the
+other's hand.
+
+"Norman Wentworth!"
+
+The greeting between the two was so cordial that men hurrying by turned
+to look back at the pleasant faces, and their own set countenances
+softened.
+
+Norman demanded where Keith had just come from and how long he had been
+in town, piling his questions one on the other with eager cordiality.
+
+Keith looked sheepish, and began to explain in a rather shambling
+fashion that he had been there some time and "intended to hunt him up,
+of course"; but he had "been so taken up with business," etc., etc.
+
+"I heard you were here on business. That was the way I came to know you
+were in town," explained Norman, "and I have looked everywhere for you.
+I hope you have been successful?" He was smiling. But Keith was still
+sore from the treatment he had received in one or two offices
+that morning.
+
+"I have not been successful," he said, "and I felt sure that I should
+be. I have discovered that people here are very much like people
+elsewhere; they are very like sheep."
+
+"And very suspicious, timid sheep at that," said Norman "They have
+often gone for wool and got shorn. So every one has to be tested. An
+unknown man has a hard time here. I suppose they would not look into
+your plan?"
+
+"They classed me with 'pedlers, book-agents, and beggars'--I saw the
+signs up; looked as if they thought I was a thief. I am not used to
+being treated like a swindler."
+
+"The same old Keith! You must remember how many swindlers they have to
+deal with, my boy. It is natural that they should require a guarantee--I
+mean an introduction of some kind. You remember what one of them said
+not long ago? 'A man spends one part of his life making a fortune and
+the rest of it trying to keep others from stealing it from him.' You
+ought to have come to me. You must come and dine with me this evening,
+and we will talk it over. Perhaps, I can help you. I want to show you my
+little home, and I have the finest boy in the world."
+
+At the tone of cordial sincerity in his voice, Keith softened. He laid
+his hand on the back of Norman's and closed it tightly.
+
+"I knew I could always count on you, and I meant, of course, to come and
+see you. The reason I have not come before I will explain to you
+sometime. I was feeling a little sore over a matter--sheer lies that
+some one has written." He shook the newspaper in his hand.
+
+"Oh, don't mind that paper," said Norman. "The columns of that paper are
+for hire. They belong at present to an old acquaintance of ours. They do
+_me_ the honor to pay their compliments to my affairs now and then."
+
+Keith walked up the street with a warm feeling about his heart. That
+friendly face and kindly pressure of the hand had cheered him like
+sunshine in a wintry day, and transformed the cold, cheerless city into
+an abode of life and happiness. The crowds that thronged by him once
+more took on interest for him. The faces once more softened into human
+fellowship.
+
+That evening, when Keith arrived at Norman Wentworth's, he found that
+what he had termed his "little house" was, in fact, a very ample and
+commodious mansion on one of the most fashionable avenues in the city.
+Outside there was nothing to distinguish it particularly from the scores
+of other handsome houses that stretched for blocks up and down the
+street with ever-recurrent brown-stone monotony. They were as much alike
+as so many box-stalls in a stable.
+
+"If I had to live in one of these," thought Keith, as he was making his
+way to keep his appointment, "I should have to begin and count my house
+from the corner. No wonder the people are all so much alike!"
+
+Inside, however, the personal taste of the owner counted for much more,
+and when Keith was admitted by the velvety-stepped servant, he found
+himself in a scene of luxury for which nothing that Norman had said had
+prepared him.
+
+A hall, rather contracted, but sumptuous in its furnishings, opened on a
+series of drawing-rooms absolutely splendid with gilt and satin. One
+room, all gold and yellow, led into another all blue satin, and that
+into one where the light filtered through soft-tinted shades on
+tapestries and rugs of deep crimson.
+
+Keith could not help thinking what a fortunate man Norman was, and the
+difference between his friend's situation in this bower of roses, and
+his own in his square, bare little box on the windy mountain-side,
+insensibly flashed over him. This was "an establishment"! How unequally
+Fortune scattered her gifts! Just then, with a soft rustle of silk, the
+portières were parted, and Mrs. Wentworth appeared. She paused for a
+second just under the arch, and the young man wondered if she knew how
+effective she was. She was a vision of lace and loveliness. A figure
+straight and sinuous, above the middle height, which would have been
+quite perfect but for being slightly too full, and which struck one
+before one looked at the face; coloring that was rich to brilliance;
+abundant, beautiful hair with a glint of lustre on it; deep hazel eyes,
+the least bit too close together, and features that were good and only
+just missed being fine Keith had remembered her as beautiful, but as
+Mrs. Wentworth stood beneath the azure portières, her long, bare arms
+outstretched, her lips parted in a half-smile of welcome, she was much
+more striking-looking than Keith's memory had recorded. As he gazed on
+her, the expression on his face testified his admiration.
+
+She came forward with the same gratified smile on her face and greeted
+him with formal words of welcome as Norman's old friend. Her thought
+was, "What a strong-looking man he is! Like a picture I have seen
+somewhere. Why doesn't Ferdy like him?"
+
+As she sank into a soft divan, and with a sudden twist her train fell
+about her feet, making an artistic drapery, Keith experienced a sense of
+delight. He did not dream that Mrs. Wentworth knew much better than he
+precisely the pose to show the curve of her white full throat and round
+arm. The demands of notorious beauty were already beginning to tell on
+her, and even while she spoke gracious words of her husband's friendship
+for him, she from time to time added a touch here and a soft caress
+there with her long white, hands to make the arrangement the more
+complete. It was almost too perfect to be unconscious.
+
+Suddenly Keith heard Norman's voice outside, apparently on the stair,
+calling cheerily "Good-by" to some one, and the next second he came
+hastily into the drawing-room. His hair was rumpled and his necktie a
+trifle awry. As he seized and wrung Keith's hand with unfeigned
+heartiness, Keith was suddenly conscious of a change in everything. This
+was warmth, sincerity, and the beautiful room suddenly became a home.
+Mrs. Wentworth appeared somewhat shocked at his appearance.
+
+"Well, Norman, you are a sight! Just look at your necktie!"
+
+"That ruffian!" he laughed, feeling at his throat and trying to adjust
+the crooked tie.
+
+"What will Mr. Keith think?"
+
+"Oh, pshaw! Keith thinks all right. Keith is one of the men I don't have
+to apologize to. But if I do"--he turned to Keith, smiling--"I'll show
+you the apology. Come along." He seized Keith by the hand and started
+toward the door.
+
+"You are not going to take Mr. Keith up-stairs!" exclaimed his wife.
+"Remember, Mr. Keith may not share your enthusiasm."
+
+"Wait until he sees the apology. Come along, Keith." He drew Keith
+toward the door.
+
+"But, Norman, I don't think--" began Mrs. Wentworth. What she did not
+think was lost to the two men; for Norman, not heeding her, had, with
+the eagerness of a boy, dragged his visitor out of the door and started
+up the stairs, telling him volubly of the treat that was in store for
+him in the perfections of a certain small young gentleman who had been
+responsible for his tardiness in appearing below.
+
+When Norman threw back a silken portière up-stairs and flung open a
+door, the scene that greeted Keith was one that made him agree that
+Norman was fully justified. A yellow-haired boy was rolling on the
+floor, kicking up his little pink legs in all the abandon of his years,
+while a blue-eyed little girl was sitting in a nurse's lap, making
+strenuous efforts to join her brother on the floor.
+
+At sight of his father, the boy, with a whoop, scrambled to his feet,
+and, with outstretched arms and open mouth, showing all his little white
+teeth, made a rush for him, while the young lady suddenly changed her
+efforts to descend, and began to jump up and down in a frantic ecstasy
+of delight.
+
+Norman gathered the boy up, and as soon as he could disentwine his
+little arms from about his neck, turned him toward Keith. The child gave
+the stranger one of those calm, scrutinizing looks that children give,
+and then, his face suddenly breaking into a smile, with a rippling laugh
+of good-comradeship, he sprang into Keith's outstretched arms. That
+gentleman's necktie was in danger of undergoing the same damaging
+process that had incurred Mrs. Norman's criticism, when the youngster
+discovered that lady herself, standing at the door. Scrambling down from
+his perch on Keith's shoulder, the boy, with a shout, rushed toward his
+mother. Mrs. Wentworth, with a little shriek, stopped him and held him
+off from her; she could not permit him to disarrange her toilet; her
+coiffure had cost too much thought; but the pair were evidently on terms
+of good-fellowship, and the light in the mother's eyes even as she
+restrained the boy's attempt at caresses changed her, and gave Keith a
+new insight into her character.
+
+Keith and the hostess returned to the drawing-room before Norman, and
+she was no longer the professional beauty, the cold woman of the world,
+the mere fashionable hostess. The doors were flung open more than once
+as Keith talked warmly of the boy, and within Keith got glimpses of what
+was hidden there, which made him rejoice again that his friend had such
+a treasure. These glimpses of unexpected softness drew him nearer to her
+than he had ever expected to be, and on his part he talked to her with a
+frankness and earnestness which sank deep into her mind, and opened the
+way to a warmer friendship than she usually gave.
+
+"Norman is right," she said to herself. "This is a man."
+
+At the thought a light flashed upon her. It suddenly came to her.
+
+This is "the ghost"! Yet could it be possible? She solved the question
+quickly.
+
+"Mr. Keith, did you ever know Alice Lancaster?"
+
+"Alice Lancaster--?" For a bare second he looked puzzled. "Oh, Miss
+Alice Yorke? Yes, a long time ago." He was conscious that his expression
+had changed. So he added: "I used to know her very well."
+
+"Decidedly, this is the ghost," reflected Mrs. Wentworth to herself, as
+she scanned anew Keith's strong features and sinewy frame. "Alice said
+if a woman had ever seen him, she would not be likely to forget him,
+and I think she was right."
+
+"Why do you ask me?" inquired Keith, who had now quite recovered from
+his little confusion. "Of course, you know her?"
+
+"Yes, very well. We were at school together. She is my best friend,
+almost." She shut her mouth as firmly as though this were the last
+sentence she ever proposed to utter; but her eyes, as they rested on
+Keith's face, had the least twinkle in them. Keith did not know how much
+of their old affair had been told her, but she evidently knew something,
+and it was necessary to show her that he had recovered from it long ago
+and yet retained a friendly feeling for Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"She was an old sweetheart of mine long ago; that is, I used to think
+myself desperately in love with her a hundred years ago or so, before
+she was married--and I was, too," he added.
+
+He gained not the least idea of the impression this made on Mrs.
+Wentworth.
+
+"She was talking to me about you only the other day," she said casually.
+
+Keith again made a feint to open her defence.
+
+"I hope she said kind things about me? I deserve some kindness at her
+hands, for I have only pleasant memories of her."
+
+"I wonder what he means by that?" questioned Mrs. Wentworth to herself,
+and then added:
+
+"Oh, yes; she did. Indeed, she was almost enthusiastic about
+your--friendship." Her eyes scanned his face lightly.
+
+"Has she fulfilled the promise of beauty that she gave as a school-girl?
+I used to think her one of the most beautiful creatures in the world;
+but I don't know that I was capable of judging at that time," he added,
+with a smile, "for I remember I was quite desperate about her for a
+little while." He tried to speak naturally.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth's eyes rested on his face for a moment.
+
+"Why, yes; many think her much handsomer than she ever was. She is one
+of the married beauties, you know." Her eyes just swept Keith's face.
+
+"She was also one of the sweetest girls I ever knew," Keith said, moved
+for some reason to add this tribute.
+
+"Well, I don't know that every one would call her that. Indeed, I am not
+quite sure that I should call her that myself always; but she can be
+sweet. My children adore her, and I think that is always a good sign."
+
+"Undoubtedly. They judge correctly, because directly."
+
+The picture of a young girl in a riding-habit kneeling in the dust with
+a chubby, little, ragged child in her arms flashed before Keith's mental
+vision. And he almost gave a gasp.
+
+"Is she married happily?'" he asked "I hope she is happy."
+
+"Oh, as happy as the day is long," declared Mrs. Wentworth, cheerfully.
+Deep down in her eyes was a wicked twinkle of malice. Her face wore a
+look of content. "He is not altogether indifferent yet," she said to
+herself. And when Keith said firmly that he was very glad to hear it,
+she did him the honor to disbelieve him.
+
+"Of course, you know that Mr. Lancaster is a good deal older than
+Alice?"
+
+Yes, Keith had heard so.
+
+"But a charming man, and immensely rich."
+
+"Yes." Keith began to look grim.
+
+"Aren't you going to see here?" inquired Mrs. Wentworth, finding that
+Keith was not prepared to say any more on the subject.
+
+Keith said he should like to do so very much. He hoped to see her before
+going away; but he could not tell.
+
+"She is married now, and must be so taken up with her new duties that I
+fear she would hardly remember me," he added, with a laugh. "I don't
+think I ever made much impression on her."
+
+"Alice Yorke is not one to forget her friends. Why, she spoke of you
+with real friendship," she said, smiling, thinking to herself, Alice
+likes him, and he is still in love with her. This begins to be
+interesting.
+
+"A woman does not have to give up all her friends when she marries?" she
+added, with her eyes on Keith.
+
+Keith smiled.
+
+"Oh, no; only her lovers, unless they turn into friends."
+
+"Of course, those," said Mrs. Wentworth, who, after a moment's
+reflection, added, "They don't always do that. Do you believe a woman
+ever forgets entirely a man she has really loved?"
+
+"She does if she is happily married and if she is wise."
+
+"But all women are not happily married."
+
+"And, perhaps, all are not wise," said Keith.
+
+Some association of ideas led him to say suddenly:
+
+"Tell me something about Ferdy Wickersham. He was one of your ushers,
+wasn't he?" He was surprised to see Mrs. Wentworth's countenance change.
+Her eyelids closed suddenly as if a glare were turned unexpectedly on
+them, and she caught her breath.
+
+"Yes--I have known him since we were children. Of course, you know he
+was desperately in love with Alice Lancaster?"
+
+Keith said he had heard something of the kind.
+
+"He still likes her."
+
+"She is married," said Keith, decisively.
+
+"Yes."
+
+A moment later Mrs. Wentworth drew a long breath and moistened her lips.
+
+"You knew him at the same time that you first knew Norman, did you not?"
+She was simply figuring for time.
+
+"Yes, I met him first then," said Keith.
+
+"Don't you think Ferdy has changed since he was a boy?" she demanded
+after a moment's reflection.
+
+"How do you mean?" Keith was feeling very uncomfortable, and, to save
+himself an answer, plunged along:
+
+"Of course he has changed." He did not say how, nor did he give Mrs.
+Wentworth time to explain herself. "I will tell you one thing, though,"
+he said earnestly: "he never was worthy to loose the latchet of your
+husband's shoe."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth's face changed again; she glanced down for a second, and
+then said:
+
+"You and Norman have a mutual admiration society."
+
+"We have been friends a long time," said Keith, thoughtfully.
+
+"But even that does not always count for so much. Friendships seem so
+easily broken these days."
+
+"Because there are so few Norman Wentworths. That man is blessed who has
+such a friend," said the young man, earnestly.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth looked at him with a curious light in her eyes, and as
+she gazed her face grew more thoughtful. Then, as Norman reappeared she
+changed the subject abruptly.
+
+After dinner, while they were smoking, Norman made Keith tell him of his
+coal-lands and the business that had brought him to New York. To Keith's
+surprise, he seemed to know something of it already.
+
+"You should have come to me at first," he said. "I might, at least, have
+been able to counteract somewhat the adverse influence that has been
+working against you." His brow clouded a little.
+
+"Wickersham appears to be quite a personage here. I wonder he has not
+been found out," said Keith after a little reverie.
+
+Norman shifted slightly in his chair. "Oh, he is not worth bothering
+about. Give me your lay-out now."
+
+Keith put him in possession of the facts, and he became deeply
+interested. He had, indeed, a dual motive: one of friendship for Keith;
+the other he as yet hardly confessed even to himself.
+
+The next day Keith met Norman by appointment and gave him his papers.
+And a day or two afterwards he met a number of his friends at lunch.
+
+They were capitalists and, if General Keith's old dictum, that gentlemen
+never discussed money at table, was sound, they would scarcely have met
+his requirement; for the talk was almost entirely of money. When they
+rose from the table, Keith, as he afterwards told Norman, felt like a
+squeezed orange. The friendliest man to him was Mr. Yorke, whom Keith
+found to be a jovial, sensible little man with kindly blue eyes and a
+humorous mouth. His chief cross-examiner was a Mr. Kestrel, a
+narrow-faced, parchment-skinned man with a thin white moustache that
+looked as if it had led a starved existence on his bloodless lip.
+
+"Those people down there are opposed to progress," he said, buttoning up
+his pockets in a way he had, as if he were afraid of having them picked.
+"I guess the Wickershams have found that out. I don't see any money
+in it."
+
+"It is strange that Kestrel doesn't see money in this," said Mr. Yorke,
+with a twinkle in his eye; "for he usually sees money in everything. I
+guess there were other reasons than want of progress for the Wickershams
+not paying dividends."
+
+A few days later Norman informed Keith that the money was nearly all
+subscribed; but Keith did not know until afterwards how warmly he had
+indorsed him.
+
+"You said something about sheep the other day; well, a sheep is a
+solitary and unsocial animal to a city-man with money to invest. My
+grandfather's man used to tell me: 'Sheep is kind of gregarious, Mr.
+Norman. Coax the first one through and you can't keep the others out.'
+Even Kestrel is jumping to get in."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+MRS. LANCASTER
+
+Keith had not yet met Mrs. Lancaster. He meant to call on her before
+leaving town; for he would show her that he was successful, and also
+that he had recovered. Also he wanted to see her, and in his heart was a
+lurking hope that she might regret having lost him. A word that Mrs.
+Wentworth had let fall the first evening he dined there had kept him
+from calling before.
+
+A few evenings later Keith was dining with the Norman Wentworths, and
+after dinner Norman said:
+
+"By the way, we are going to a ball to-night. Won't you come along? It
+will really be worth seeing."
+
+Keith, having no engagement, was about to accept, but he was aware that
+Mrs. Wentworth, at her husband's words, had turned and given him a quick
+look of scrutiny, that swept him from the top of his head to the toe
+of his boot.
+
+He had had that swift glance of inspection sweep him up and down many
+times of late, in business offices. The look, however, appeared to
+satisfy his hostess; for after a bare pause she seconded her husband's
+invitation.
+
+That pause had given Keith time to reflect, and he declined to go. But
+Norman, too, had seen the glance his wife had given, and he urged his
+acceptance so warmly and with such real sincerity that finally
+Keith yielded.
+
+"This is not one of _the_ balls," said Norman, laughingly. "It is only
+_a_ ball, one of our subscription dances, so you need have no scruples
+about going along."
+
+Keith looked a little mystified.
+
+"Mrs. Creamer's balls are _the_ balls, my dear fellow. There, in
+general, only the rich and the noble enter--rich in prospect and noble
+in title--"
+
+"Norman, how can you talk so!" exclaimed Mrs. Wentworth, with some
+impatience. "You know better than that. Mrs. Creamer has always been
+particularly kind to us. Why, she asks me to receive with her
+every winter."
+
+But Norman was in a bantering mood. "Am not I rich and you noble?" he
+laughed. "Do you suppose, my dear, that Mrs. Creamer would ask you to
+receive with her if we lived two or three squares off Fifth Avenue? It
+is as hard for a poor man to enter Mrs. Creamer's house as for a camel
+to pass through the needle's eye. Her motions are sidereal and her orbit
+is as regulated as that of a planet."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth protested.
+
+"Why, she has all sorts of people at her house--!"
+
+"Except the unsuccessful. Even planets have a little eccentricity of
+orbit."
+
+An hour or two later Keith found himself in such a scene of radiance as
+he had never witnessed before in all his life. Though, as Norman had
+said, it was not one of the great balls, to be present at it was in some
+sort a proof of one's social position and possibly of one's pecuniary
+condition.
+
+Keith was conscious of that same feeling of novelty and exhilaration
+that had come over him when he first arrived in the city. It came upon
+him when he first stepped from the cool outer air into the warm
+atmosphere of the brilliantly lighted building and stood among the young
+men, all perfectly dressed and appointed, and almost as similar as the
+checks they were receiving from the busy servants in the cloak-room. The
+feeling grew stronger as he mounted the wide marble stairway to the
+broad landing, which was a bower of palms and flowers, with handsome
+women passing in and out like birds in gorgeous plumage, and gay voices
+sounding in his ears. It swept over him like a flood when he entered the
+spacious ball-room and gazed upon the dazzling scene before him.
+
+"This is Aladdin's palace," he declared as he stood looking across the
+large ball-room. "The Arabian Nights have surely come again."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth, immediately after presenting Keith to one or two ladies
+who were receiving, had been met and borne off by Ferdy Wickersham, and
+was in the throng at the far end of the great apartment, and some one
+had stopped Norman on the stairway. So Keith was left for a moment
+standing alone just inside the door. He had a sense of being charmed.
+Later, he tried to account for it. Was it the sight before him? Even
+such perfect harmony of color could hardly have done it. It must be the
+dazzling radiance of youth that almost made his eyes ache with its
+beauty. Perhaps, it was the strain of the band hidden in the gallery
+among those palms. The waltz music that floated down always set him
+swinging back in the land of memory. He stood for a moment quite
+entranced. Then he was suddenly conscious of being lonely. In all the
+throng before him he could not see one soul that he knew. His friends
+were far away.
+
+Suddenly the wheezy strains of the fiddles and the blare of the horns in
+the big dining-room of the old Windsor back in the mountains sounded in
+his ears, and the motley but gay and joyous throng that tramped and
+capered and swung over the rough boards, setting the floor to swinging
+and the room to swaying, swam in a dim mist before his eyes. Girls in
+ribbons so gay that they almost made the eyes ache, faces flushed with
+the excitement and joy of the dance; smiling faces, snowy teeth,
+dishevelled hair, tarlatan dresses, green and pink and white; ringing
+laughter and whoops of real merriment--all passed before his senses.
+
+As he stood looking on the scene of splendor, he felt lost, lonely, and
+for a moment homesick. Here all was formal, stiff repressed; that gayety
+was real, that merriment was sincere. With all their crudeness, those
+people in that condition were all human, hearty, strong, real. He
+wondered if refinement and elegance meant necessarily a suppression of
+all these. There, men came not only to enjoy but to make others enjoy as
+well. No stranger could have stood a moment alone without some one
+stepping to his side and drawing him into a friendly talk. This mood
+soon changed.
+
+Still, standing alone near the door waiting for Norman to appear, Keith
+found entertainment watching the groups, the splendidly dressed women,
+clustered here and there or moving about inspecting or speaking to each
+other. One figure at the far end of the room attracted his eye again and
+again. She was standing with her back partly toward him, but he knew
+that she was a pretty woman as well as a handsome one, though he saw her
+face only in profile, and she was too far off for him to see it very
+well. Her hair was arranged simply; her head was set beautifully on her
+shoulders. She was dressed in black, the bodice covered with spangles
+that with her slightest movement shimmered and reflected the light like
+a coat of flexible mail. A number of men were standing about her, and
+many women, as they passed, held out their hands to her in the way that
+ladies of fashion have. Keith saw Mrs. Wentworth approach her, and a
+very animated conversation appeared to take place between them, and the
+lady in black turned quickly and gazed about the room; then Mrs.
+Wentworth started to move away, but the other caught and held her,
+asking her something eagerly. Mrs. Wentworth must have refused to
+answer, for she followed her a few steps; but Mrs. Wentworth simply
+waved her hand to her and swept away with her escort, laughing back at
+her over her shoulder.
+
+Keith made his way around the room toward Mrs. Wentworth. There was
+something about the young lady in black which reminded him of a girl he
+had once seen standing straight and defiant, yet very charming, in a
+woodland path under arching pine-boughs. Just then, however, a waltz
+struck up and Mrs. Wentworth began to dance, so Keith stood leaning
+against the wall. Presently a member of a group of young men near
+Keith said:
+
+"The Lancaster looks well to-night."
+
+"She does. The old man's at home, Ferdy's on deck."
+
+"Ferdy be dashed! Besides, where is Mrs. Went--?"
+
+"Don't lay any money on that."
+
+"She's all right. Try to say anything to her and you'll find out."
+
+The others laughed; and one of them asked:
+
+"Been trying yourself, Stirling?"
+
+"No. I know better, Minturn."
+
+"Why doesn't she shake Ferdy then?" demanded the other. "He's always
+hanging around when he isn't around the other."
+
+"Oh, they have been friends all their lives. She is not going to give up
+a friend, especially when others are getting down on him. Can't you
+allow anything to friendship?"
+
+"Ferdy's friendship is pretty expensive," said his friend,
+sententiously.
+
+Keith took a glance at the speakers to see if he could by following
+their gaze place Mrs. Lancaster. The one who defended the lady was a
+jolly-looking man with a merry eye and a humorous mouth. The other two
+were as much alike as their neckties, their collars, their shirt-fronts,
+their dress-suits, or their shoes, in which none but a tailor could have
+discovered the least point of difference. Their cheeks were smooth,
+their chins were round, their hair as perfectly parted and brushed as a
+barber's. Keith had an impression that he had seen them just before on
+the other side of the room, talking to the lady in black; but as he
+looked across, he saw the other young men still there, and there were
+yet others elsewhere. At the first glance they nearly all looked alike.
+Just then he became conscious that a couple had stopped close beside
+him. He glanced at them; the lady was the same to whom he had seen Mrs.
+Wentworth speaking at the other end of the room. Her face was turned
+away, and all he saw was an almost perfect figure with shoulders that
+looked dazzling in contrast with her shimmering black gown. A single
+red rose was stuck in her hair. He was waiting to get a look at her
+face, when she turned toward him.
+
+[Illustration: "Why, Mr. Keith!" she exclaimed.]
+
+"Why, Mr. Keith!" she exclaimed, her blue eyes open wide with surprise.
+She held out her hand. "I don't believe you know me?"
+
+"Then you must shut your eyes," said Keith, smiling his pleasure.
+
+"I don't believe I should have known you? Yes, I should; I should have
+known you anywhere."
+
+"Perhaps, I have not changed so much," smiled Keith.
+
+She gave him just the ghost of a glance out of her blue eyes.
+
+"I don't know. Have you been carrying any sacks of salt lately?" She
+assumed a lighter air.
+
+"No; but heavier burdens still."
+
+"Are you married?"
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"No; not so heavy as that--yet."
+
+"So heavy as that _yet_! Oh, you are engaged?"
+
+"No; not engaged either--except engaged in trying to make a lot of
+people who think they know everything understand that there are a few
+things that they don't know."
+
+"That is a difficult task," she said, shaking her head, "if you try it
+in New York."
+
+     "'John P. Robinson, he
+     Says they don't know everything down in Judee,'"
+
+put in the stout young man who had been standing by waiting to speak to
+her.
+
+"But this isn't Judee yet," she laughed, "for I assure you we do know
+everything here, Mr. Keith." She held out her hand to the gentleman who
+had spoken, and after greeting him introduced him to Keith as "Mr.
+Stirling."
+
+"You ought to like each other," she said cordially.
+
+Keith professed his readiness to do so.
+
+"I don't know about that," said Stirling, jovially. "You are too
+friendly to him."
+
+"What are you doing? Where are you staying? How long are you going to be
+in town?" demanded Mrs. Lancaster, turning to Keith.
+
+"Mining.--At the Brunswick.--Only a day or two," said Keith, laughing.
+
+"Mining? Gold-mining?"
+
+"No; not yet."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Down South at a place called New Leeds. It's near the place where I
+used to teach. It's a great city. Why, we think New York is jealous
+of us."
+
+"Oh, I know about that. A friend of mine put a little money down there
+for me. You know him? Ferdy Wickersham?"
+
+"Yes, I know him."
+
+"Most of us know him," observed Mr. Stirling, turning his eyes on Keith.
+
+"Of course, you must know him. Are you in with him? He tells me that
+they own pretty much everything that is good in that region. They are
+about to open a new mine that is to exceed anything ever known. Ferdy
+tells me I am good for I don't know how much. The stock is to be put on
+the exchange in a little while, and I got in on the ground-floor. That's
+what they call it--the lowest floor of all, you know.
+
+"Yes; some people call it the ground-floor," said Keith, wishing to
+change the subject.
+
+"You know there may be a cellar under a ground-floor," observed Mr.
+Stirling, demurely.
+
+Keith looked at him, and their eyes met.
+
+Fortunately, perhaps, for Keith, some one came up just then and claimed
+a dance with Mrs. Lancaster. She moved away, and then turned back.
+
+"I shall see you again?"
+
+"Yes. Why, I hope so-certainly."
+
+She stopped and looked at him.
+
+"When are you going away?"
+
+"Why, I don't exactly know. Very soon. Perhaps, in a day or two."
+
+"Well, won't you come to see us? Here, I will give you my address. Have
+you a card?" She took the pencil he offered her and wrote her number on
+it. "Come some afternoon--about six; Mr. Lancaster is always in then,"
+she said sedately. "I am sure you will like each other." Keith bowed.
+
+She floated off smiling. What she had said to Mrs. Wentworth occurred to
+her.
+
+"Yes; he looks like a man." She became conscious that her companion was
+asking a question.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" he said. "I have asked you three times
+who that man was, and you have not said a word."
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon. Mr. Keith, an old friend of mine," she said, and
+changed the subject.
+
+As to her old friend, he was watching her as she danced, winding in and
+out among the intervening couples. He wondered that he could ever have
+thought that a creature like that could care for him and share his hard
+life. He might as soon have expected a bird-of-paradise to live by
+choice in a coal-bunker.
+
+He strolled about, looking at the handsome women, and presently found
+himself in the conservatory. Turning a clump, of palms, he came on Mrs.
+Wentworth and Mr. Wickersham sitting together talking earnestly. Keith
+was about to go up and speak to Mrs. Wentworth, but her escort said
+something under his breath to her, and she looked away. So Keith
+passed on.
+
+A little later, Keith went over to where Mrs. Lancaster stood. Several
+men were about her, and just after Keith Joined her, another man walked
+up, if any movement so lazy and sauntering could be termed walking.
+
+"I have been wondering why I did not see you," he drawled as he came up.
+
+Keith recognized the voice of Ferdy Wickersham. He turned and faced him;
+but if Mr. Wickersham was aware of his presence, he gave no sign of it.
+His dark eyes were on Mrs. Lancaster. She turned to him.
+
+"Perhaps, Ferdinand, it was because you did not use your eyes. That is
+not ordinarily a fault of yours."
+
+"I never think of my eyes when yours are present," said he, lazily.
+
+"Oh, don't you?" laughed Mrs. Lancaster. "What were you doing a little
+while ago in the conservatory--with--?"
+
+"Nothing. I have not been in the conservatory this evening. You have
+paid some one else a compliment."
+
+"Tell that to some one who does not use her eyes," said Mrs. Lancaster,
+mockingly.
+
+"There are occasions when you must disbelieve the sight of your eyes."
+He was looking her steadily in the face, and Keith saw her expression
+change. She recovered herself.
+
+"Last time I saw you, you vowed you had eyes for none but me, you may
+remember?" she said lightly.
+
+"No. Did I? Life is too awfully short to remember. But it is true. It is
+the present in which I find my pleasure."
+
+Up to this time neither Mrs. Lancaster nor Mr. Wickersham had taken any
+notice of Keith, who stood a little to one side, waiting, with his eyes
+resting on the other young man's face. Mrs. Lancaster now turned.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Keith." She now turned back to Mr. Wickersham. "You know Mr.
+Keith?"
+
+Keith was about to step forward to greet his old acquaintance; but
+Wickersham barely nodded.
+
+"Ah, how do you do? Yes, I know Mr. Keith.--If I can take care of the
+present, I let the past and the future take care of themselves," he
+continued to Mrs. Lancaster. "Come and have a turn. That will make the
+present worth all of the past."
+
+"Ferdy, you are discreet," said one of the other men, with a laugh.
+
+"My dear fellow," said the young man, turning, "I assure you, you don't
+know half my virtues."
+
+"What are your virtues, Ferdy?"
+
+"One is not interfering with others." He turned back to Mrs. Lancaster.
+"Come, have a turn." He took one of his hands from his pocket and
+held it out.
+
+"I am engaged," said Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"Oh, that makes no difference. You are always engaged; come," he said.
+
+"I beg your pardon. It makes a difference in _this_ case," said Keith,
+coming forward. "I believe this is my turn, Mrs. Lancaster?"
+
+Wickersham's glance swept across, but did not rest on him, though it was
+enough for Keith to meet it for a second, and, without looking, the
+young man turned lazily away.
+
+"Shall we find a seat?" Mrs. Lancaster asked as she took Keith's arm.
+
+"Delighted, unless you prefer to dance."
+
+"I did not know that dancing was one of your accomplishments," she said
+as they strolled along.
+
+"Maybe, I have acquired several accomplishments that you do not know of.
+It has been a long time since you knew me," he answered lightly. As they
+turned, his eyes fell on Wickersham. He was standing where they had left
+him, his eyes fastened on them malevolently. As Keith looked he started
+and turned away. Mrs. Lancaster had also seen him.
+
+"What is there between you and Ferdy?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"There must be. Did you ever have a row with him?"
+
+"Yes; but that was long ago."
+
+"I don't know. He has a good memory. He doesn't like you." She spoke
+reflectively.
+
+"Doesn't he?" laughed Keith. "Well, I must try and sustain it as best I
+can."
+
+"And you don't like him? Few men like him. I wonder why that is?"
+
+"And many women?" questioned Keith, as for a moment he recalled Mrs.
+Wentworth's face when he spoke of him.
+
+"Some women," she corrected, with a quick glance at him. She reflected,
+and then went on: "I think it is partly because he is so bold and partly
+that he never appears to know any one else. It is the most insidious
+flattery in the world. I like him because I have known him all my life.
+I know him perfectly."
+
+"Yes?" Keith spoke politely.
+
+She read his thought. "You wonder if I really know him? Yes, I do. But,
+somehow, I cling to those I knew in my girlhood. You don't believe that,
+but I do." She glanced at him and then looked away.
+
+"Yes, I do believe it. Then let's be friends--old friends," said Keith.
+He held out his hand, and when she took it grasped hers firmly.
+
+"Who is here with you to-night?" he asked.
+
+"No one. Mr. Lancaster does not care for balls."
+
+"Won't you give me the pleasure of seeing you home?" She hesitated for a
+moment, and then said:
+
+"I will drop you at your hotel. It is right on my way home."
+
+Just then some one came up and joined the group.
+
+"Ah, my dear Mrs. Lancaster! How well you are looking this evening!"
+
+The full voice, no less than the words, sounded familiar to Keith, and
+turning, he recognized the young clergyman whom he had met at Mrs.
+Wentworth's when he passed through New York some years before. The years
+had plainly used Mr. Rimmon well. He was dressed in an evening suit with
+a clerical waistcoat which showed that his plump frame had taken on an
+extra layer, and a double chin was beginning to rest on his collar.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster smiled as she returned his greeting.
+
+"You are my stand-by, Mr. Rimmon. I always know that, no matter what
+others may say of me, I shall be sure of at least one compliment before
+the evening is over if you are present."
+
+"That is because you always deserve it." He put his head on one side
+like an aldermanic robin. "Ah, if you knew how many compliments I do pay
+you which you never hear! My entire life is a compliment to you,"
+declared Mr. Rimmon.
+
+"Not your entire life, Mr. Rimmon. You are like some other men. You
+confound me with some one else; for I am sure I heard you saying the
+same thing five minutes ago to Louise Wentworth."
+
+"Impossible. Then I must have confounded her with you," sighed Mr.
+Rimmon, with such a look at Mrs. Lancaster out of his languishing eyes
+that she gave him a laughing tap with her fan.
+
+"Go and practise that on a débutante. I am an old married woman,
+remember."
+
+"Ah, me!" sighed the gentleman. "'Marriage and Death and Division make
+barren our lives.'"
+
+"Where does that come from?" asked Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"Ah! from--ah--" began Mr. Rimmon, then catching Keith's eyes resting on
+him with an amused look in them, he turned red.
+
+She addressed Keith. "Mr. Keith, you quoted that to me once; where does
+it come from? From the Bible?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I read it in the newspaper and was so struck by it that I remembered
+it," said Mr. Rimmon.
+
+"I read it in 'Laus Veneris,'" said Keith, dryly, with his eyes on the
+other's face. It pleased him to see it redden.
+
+Keith, as he passed through the rooms, caught sight of an old lady over
+in a corner. He could scarcely believe his senses; it was Miss Abigail.
+She was sitting back against the wall, watching the crowd with eyes as
+sharp as needles. Sometimes her thin lips twitched, and her bright eyes
+snapped with inward amusement. Keith made his way over to her. She was
+so much engaged that he stood beside her a moment without her seeing
+him. Then she turned and glanced at him.
+
+"'A chiel's amang ye takin' notes,'" he said, laughing and holding out
+his hand.
+
+"'An', faith! she'll prent 'em,'" she answered, with a nod. "How are
+you? I am glad to see you. I was just wishing I had somebody to enjoy
+this with me, but not a man. I ought to be gone; and so ought you, young
+man. I started, but I thought if I could get in a corner by myself where
+there were no men I might stay a little while and look at it; for I
+certainly never saw anything like this before, and I don't think I ever
+shall again. I certainly do not think you ought to see it."
+
+Keith laughed, and she continued:
+
+"I knew things had changed since I was a girl; but I didn't know it was
+as bad as this. Why, I don't think it ought to be allowed."
+
+"What?" asked Keith.
+
+"This." She waved her hand to include the dancing throng before them.
+"They tell me all those women dancing around there are married."
+
+"I believe many of them are."
+
+"Why don't those young women have partners?"
+
+"Why, some of them do. I suppose the others are not attractive enough,
+or something."
+
+"Especially _something_," said the old lady. "Where are their husbands?"
+
+"Why, some of them are at home, and some are here."
+
+"Where?" The old lady turned her eyes on a couple that sailed by her,
+the man talking very earnestly to his companion, who was listening
+breathlessly. "Is that her husband?"
+
+"Well, no; that is not, I believe."
+
+"No; I'll be bound it is not. You never saw a married man talking to his
+wife in public in that way--unless they were talking about the last
+month's bills. Why, it is perfectly brazen."
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"Where is her husband?" she demanded, as Mrs. Wentworth floated by, a
+vision of brocaded satin and lace and white shoulders, supported by
+Ferdy Wickersham, who was talking earnestly and looking down into her
+eyes languishingly.
+
+"Oh, her husband is here."
+
+"Well, he had better take her home to her little children. If ever I saw
+a face that I distrusted it is that man's."
+
+"Why, that is Ferdy Wickersham. He is one of the leaders of society. He
+is considered quite an Adonis," observed Keith.
+
+"And I don't think Adonis was a very proper person for a young woman
+with children to be dancing with in attire in which only her husband
+should see her." She shut her lips grimly. "I know him," she added. "I
+know all about them for three generations. One of the misfortunes of age
+is that when a person gets as old as I am she knows so much evil about
+people. I knew that young man's grandfather when he was a worthy
+mechanic. His wife was an uppish hussy who thought herself better than
+her husband, and their daughter was a pretty girl with black eyes and
+rosy cheeks. They sent her off to school, and after the first year or
+two she never came back. She had got above them. Her father told me as
+much. The old man cried about it. He said his wife thought it was all
+right; that his girl had married a smart young fellow who was a clerk in
+a bank; but that if he had a hundred other children he'd never teach
+them any more than to read, write, and figure. And to think that her son
+should be the Adonis dancing with my cousin Everett Wentworth's
+daughter-in-law! Why, my Aunt Wentworth would rise from her grave if
+she knew it!"
+
+"Well, times have changed," said Keith, laughing. "You see they are as
+good as anybody now."
+
+"Not as good as anybody--you mean as rich as anybody."
+
+"That amounts to about the same thing here, doesn't it?"
+
+"I believe it does, here," said the old lady, with a sniff. "Well," she
+said after a pause, "I think I will go back and tell Matilda what I have
+seen. And if you are wise you will come with me, too. This is no place
+for plain, country-bred people like you and me."
+
+Keith, laughing, said he had an engagement, but he would like to have
+the privilege of taking her home, and then he could return.
+
+"With a married woman, I suppose? Yes, I will be bound it is," she added
+as Keith nodded. "You see the danger of evil association. I shall write
+to your father and tell him that the sooner he gets you out of New York
+the better it will be for your morals and your manners. For you are the
+only man, except Norman, who has been so provincial as to take notice of
+an unknown old woman."
+
+So she went chatting merrily down the stairway to her carriage, making
+her observations on whatever she saw with the freshness of a girl.
+
+"Do you think Norman is happy?" she suddenly asked Keith.
+
+"Why--yes; don't you think so? He has everything on earth to make him
+happy," said Keith, with some surprise. But even at the moment it
+flitted across his mind that there was something which he had felt
+rather than observed in Mrs. Wentworth's attitude toward her husband.
+
+"Except that he has married a fool," said the old lady, briefly. "Don't
+you marry a fool, you hear?"
+
+"I believe she is devoted to Norman and to her children," Keith began,
+but Miss Abigail interrupted him.
+
+"And why shouldn't she be? Isn't she his wife? She gives him, perhaps,
+what is left over after her devotion to herself, her house, her frocks,
+her jewels, and--Adonis."
+
+"Oh, I don't believe she cares for him," declared Keith. "It is
+impossible."
+
+"I don't believe she does either, but she cares for herself, and he
+flatters her. The idea of a Norman-Wentworth's wife being flattered by
+the attention of a tinker's grandson!"
+
+When the ball broke up and Mrs. Lancaster's carriage was called, several
+men escorted her to it. Wickersham, who was trying to recover ground
+which something told him he had lost, followed her down the stairway
+with one or two other men, and after she had entered the carriage stood
+leaning in at the door while he made his adieus and peace at the
+same moment.
+
+"You were not always so cruel to me," he said in a low tone.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster laughed genuinely.
+
+"I was never cruel to you, Ferdy; you mistake leniency for harshness."
+
+"No one else would say that to me."
+
+"So much the more pity. You would be a better man if you had the truth
+told you oftener."
+
+"When did you become such an advocate of Truth? Is it this man?"
+
+"What man?"
+
+"Keith. If it is, I want to tell you that he is not what he pretends."
+
+A change came over Mrs. Lancaster's face.
+
+"He is a gentleman," she said coldly.
+
+"Oh, is he? He was a stage-driver."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster drew herself up.
+
+"If he was--" she began. But she stopped suddenly, glanced beyond
+Wickersham, and moved over to the further side of the carriage.
+
+Just then a hand was laid on Wickersham's arm, and a voice behind him
+said:
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+Wickersham knew the voice, and without looking around stood aside for
+the speaker to make his adieus. Keith stepped into the carriage and
+pulled to the door before the footman could close it.
+
+At the sound the impatient horses started off, leaving three men
+standing in the street looking very blank. Stirling was the first to
+speak; he turned to the others in amazement.
+
+"Who is Keith?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh, a fellow from the South somewhere."
+
+"Well, Keith knows his business!" said Mr. Stirling, with a nod of
+genuine admiration.
+
+Wickersham uttered an imprecation and turned back into the house.
+
+Next day Mr. Stirling caught Wickersham in a group of young men at the
+club, and told them the story.
+
+"Look out for Keith," he said. "He gave me a lesson."
+
+Wickersham growled an inaudible reply.
+
+"Who was the lady? Wickersham tries to capture so many prizes, what you
+say gives us no light," said Mr. Minturn, one of the men.
+
+"Oh, no. I'll only tell you it's not the one you think," said the jolly
+bachelor. "But I am going to take lessons of that man Keith. These
+countrymen surprise me sometimes."
+
+"He was a d----d stage-driver," said Wickersham.
+
+"Then you had better take lessons from him, Ferdy," said Stirling. "He
+drives well. He's a veteran."
+
+When Keith reached his room he lit a cigar and flung himself into a
+chair. Somehow, the evening had not left a pleasant impression on his
+mind. Was this the Alice Yorke he had worshipped, revered? Was this the
+woman whom he had canonized throughout these years? Why was she carrying
+on an affair with Ferdy Wickersham? What did he mean by those last words
+at the carriage? She said she knew him. Then she must know what his
+reputation was. Now and then it came to Keith that it was nothing to
+him. Mrs. Lancaster was married, and her affairs could not concern him.
+But they did concern him. They had agreed to be old friends--old
+friends. He would be a true friend to her.
+
+He rose and threw away his half-smoked cigar.
+
+Keith called on Mrs. Lancaster just before he left for the South. Though
+he had no such motive when he put off his visit, he could not have done
+a wiser thing. It was a novel experience for her to invite a man to call
+on her and not have him jump at the proposal, appear promptly next day,
+frock-coat, kid gloves, smooth flattery, and all; and when Keith had not
+appeared on the third day after the ball, it set her to thinking. She
+imagined at first that he must have been called out of town, but Mrs.
+Norman, whom she met, dispelled this idea. Keith had dined with them
+informally the evening before.
+
+"He appeared to be in high spirits," added the lady. "His scheme has
+succeeded, and he is about to go South. Norman took it up and put it
+through for him."
+
+"I know it," said Mrs. Lancaster, demurely.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth's form stiffened slightly; but her manner soon became
+gracious again. "Ferdy says there is nothing in it."
+
+Could he be offended, or afraid--of himself? reflected Mrs. Lancaster.
+Mrs. Wentworth's next observation disposed of this theory also. "You
+ought to hear him talk of you. By the way, I have found out who that
+ghost was."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster threw a mask over her face.
+
+"He says you have more than fulfilled the promise of your girlhood: that
+you are the handsomest woman he has seen in New York, my dear," pursued
+the other, looking down at her own shapely figure. "Of course, I do not
+agree with him, quite," she laughed. "But, then, people will differ."
+
+"Louise Wentworth, vanity is a deadly sin," said the other, smiling,
+"and we are told in the Commandments--I forget which one--to envy
+nothing of our neighbor's."
+
+"He said he wanted to go to see you; that you had kindly invited him,
+and he wished very much to meet Mr. Lancaster," said Mrs.
+Wentworth, blandly.
+
+"Yes, I am sure they will like each other," said Mrs. Lancaster, with
+dignity. "Mamma also is very anxious to see him. She used to know him
+when--when he was a boy, and liked him very much, too, though she would
+not acknowledge it to me then." She laughed softly at some recollection.
+
+"He spoke of your mother most pleasantly," declared Mrs. Wentworth, not
+without Mrs. Lancaster noticing that she was claiming to stand as
+Keith's friend.
+
+"Well, I shall not be at home to-morrow," she began. "I have promised to
+go out to-morrow afternoon."
+
+"Oh, sha'n't you? Why, what a pity! because he said he was going to pay
+his calls to-morrow, as he expected to leave to-morrow night. I think he
+would be very sorry not to see you."
+
+"Oh, well, then, I will stay in. My other engagement is of no
+consequence."
+
+Her friend looked benign.
+
+Recollecting Mrs. Wentworth's expression, Mrs. Lancaster determined that
+she would not be at home the following afternoon. She would show Mrs.
+Wentworth that she could not gauge her so easily as she fancied. But at
+the last moment, after putting on her hat, she changed her mind. She
+remained in, and ended by inviting Keith to dinner that evening, an
+invitation which was so graciously seconded by Mr. Lancaster that Keith,
+finding that he could take a later train, accepted. Mrs. Yorke was at
+the dinner, too, and how gracious she was to Keith! She "could scarcely
+believe he was the same man she had known a few years before." She "had
+heard a great deal of him, and had come around to dinner on purpose to
+meet him." This was true.
+
+"And you have done so well, too, I hear. Your friends are very pleased
+to know of your success," she said graciously.
+
+Keith smilingly admitted that he had had, perhaps, better fortune than
+he deserved; but this Mrs. Yorke amiably would by no means allow.
+
+"Mrs. Wentworth--not Louise--I mean the elder Mrs. Wentworth--was
+speaking of you. You and Norman were great friends when you were boys,
+she tells me. They were great friends of ours, you know, long before
+we met you."
+
+He wondered how much the Wentworths' indorsement counted for in securing
+Mrs. Yorke's invitation. For a good deal, he knew; but as much credit as
+he gave it he was within the mark.
+
+It was only her environment. She could no more escape from that than if
+she were in prison. She gauged every one by what others thought, and she
+possessed no other gauge. Yet there was a certain friendliness, too, in
+Mrs. Yorke. The good lady had softened with the years, and at heart she
+had always liked Keith.
+
+Most of her conversation was of her friends and their position. Alice
+was thinking of going abroad soon to visit some friends on the other
+side, "of a very distinguished family," she told Keith.
+
+When Keith left the Lancaster house that night Alice Lancaster knew that
+he had wholly recovered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+WICKERSHAM AND PHRONY
+
+Keith returned home and soon found himself a much bigger man in New
+Leeds than when he went away. The mine opened on the Rawson property
+began to give from the first large promises of success.
+
+Keith picked up a newspaper one day a little later. It announced in
+large head-lines, as befitted the chronicling of such an event, the
+death of Mr. William Lancaster, capitalist. He had died suddenly in his
+office. His wife, it was stated, was in Europe and had been cabled the
+sad intelligence. There was a sketch of his life and also of that of his
+wife. Their marriage, it was recalled, had been one of the "romances" of
+the season a few years before. He had taken society by surprise by
+carrying off one of the belles of the season, the beautiful Miss Yorke.
+The rest of the notice was taken up in conjectures as to the amount of
+his property and the sums he would be likely to leave to the various
+charitable institutions of which he had always been a liberal patron.
+
+Keith laid the paper down on his knee and went off in a revery. Mr.
+Lancaster was dead! Of all the men he had met in New York he had in some
+ways struck him the most. He had appeared to him the most perfect type
+of a gentleman; self-contained, and inclined to be cold, but a man of
+elegance as well as of brains. He felt that he ought to be sorry Mr.
+Lancaster was dead, and he tried to be sorry for his wife. He started to
+write her a letter of condolence, but stopped at the first line, and
+could get no further. Yet several times a day, for many days, she
+recurred to him, each time giving him a feeling of dissatisfaction,
+until at length he was able to banish her from his mind.
+
+Prosperity is like the tide. It comes, each wave higher and higher,
+until it almost appears that it will never end, and then suddenly it
+seems to ebb a little, comes up again, recedes again, and, before one
+knows it, is passing away as surely as it came.
+
+Just when Keith thought that his tide was in full flood, it began to ebb
+without any apparent cause, and before he was aware of it, the
+prosperity which for the last few years had been setting in so steadily
+in those mountain regions had passed away, and New Leeds and he were
+left stranded upon the rocks.
+
+Rumor came down to New Leeds from the North. The Wickersham enterprises
+were said to be hard hit by some of the failures which had occurred.
+
+A few weeks later Keith heard that Mr. Aaron Wickersham was dead. The
+clerks said that he had had a quarrel with his son the day after the
+panic and had fallen in an apoplectic fit soon afterwards. But then the
+old clerks had been discharged immediately after his death. Young
+Wickersham said he did not want any dead-wood in his offices. Also he
+did not want any dead property. Among his first steps was the sale of
+the old Keith plantation. Gordon, learning that it was for sale, got a
+friend to lend him the money and bought it in, though it would scarcely
+have been known for the same place. The mansion had been stripped of its
+old furniture and pictures soon after General Keith had left there, and
+the plantation had gone down.
+
+Rumor also said that Wickersham's affairs were in a bad way. Certainly
+the new head of the house gave no sign of it. He opened a yet larger
+office and began operations on a more extensive scale. The _Clarion_
+said that his Southern enterprises would be pushed actively, and that
+the stock of the Great Gun Mine would soon be on the New York Exchange.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham suddenly returned to New Leeds, and New Leeds showed
+his presence. Machinery was shipped sufficient to run a dozen mines. He
+not only pushed the old mines, but opened a new one. It was on a slip of
+land that lay between the Rawson property and the stream that ran down
+from the mountain. Some could not understand why he should run the shaft
+there, unless it was that he was bent on cutting the Rawson property off
+from the stream. It was a perilous location for a shaft, and Matheson,
+the superintendent, had protested against it.
+
+Matheson's objections proved to be well founded. The mine was opened so
+near the stream that water broke through into it, as Matheson had
+predicted, and though a strong wall was built, the water still got in,
+and it was difficult to keep it pumped out sufficiently to work. Some of
+the men struck. It was known that Wickersham had nearly come to a
+rupture with the hard-headed Scotchman over it; but Wickersham won.
+Still, the coal did not come. It was asserted that the shafts had failed
+to reach coal. Wickersham laughed and kept on--kept on till coal did
+come. It was heralded abroad. The _Clarion_ devoted columns to the
+success of the "Great Gun Mine" and Wickersham.
+
+Wickersham naturally showed his triumph. He celebrated it in a great
+banquet at the New Windsor, at which speeches were made which likened
+him to Napoleon and several other generals. Mr. Plume declared him
+"greater than Themistocles, for he could play the lute and make a small
+city a great one."
+
+Wickersham himself made a speech, in which he professed his joy that he
+had silenced the tongue of slander and wrested from detraction a victory
+not for himself, but for New Leeds. His enemies and the enemies of New
+Leeds were, he declared, the same. They would soon see his enemies suing
+for aid. He was applauded to the echo. All this and much more was in
+the _Clarion_ next day, with some very pointed satire about
+"rival mines."
+
+Keith, meantime, was busy poring over plats and verifying lines.
+
+The old squire came to town a morning or two later. "I see Mr.
+Wickersham's struck coal at last," he said to Keith, after he had got
+his pipe lit. His face showed that he was brimming with information.
+
+"Yes--_our_ coal." Keith showed him the plats. "He is over our line--I
+do not know just where, but in here somewhere."
+
+The old fellow put on his spectacles and looked long and carefully.
+
+"He says he owns it all; that he'll have us suin' for pardon?"
+
+"Suing for damages."
+
+The old squire gave a chuckle of satisfaction. "He is in and about
+_there_." He pointed with a stout and horny finger.
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"Well, you see, little Dave Dennison--you remember Dave? You taught
+him."
+
+"Perfectly--I mean, I remember him perfectly. He is now in New York."
+
+"Yes. Well, Dave he used to be sweet on Phrony, and he seems to be still
+sweet on her."
+
+Mr. Keith nodded.
+
+"Well, of course, Phrony she's lookin' higher than Dave--but you know
+how women air?"
+
+"I don't know--I know they are strange creatures," said Keith, almost
+with a sigh, as his past with one woman came vividly before him.
+
+"Well, they won't let a man go, noway, not entirely--unless he's in the
+way. So, though Phrony don't keer nothin' in the world about Dave, she
+sort o' kep' him on-an'-off-like till this here young Wickersham come
+down here. You know, I think she and him like each other? He's been to
+see her twicet and is always a--writin' to her?" His voice had an
+inquiry in it; but Keith took no notice of it, and the old man went on.
+
+"Well, since then she's sort of cooled off to Dave--won't have him
+around--and Dave's got sort of sour. Well, he hates Wickersham, and he
+up and told her t'other night 't Wickersham was the biggest rascal in
+New York; that he had 'most broke his father and had put the stock of
+this here new mine on the market, an' that he didn't have coal enough in
+it to fill his hat; that he'd been down in it an' that the coal all come
+out of our mine."
+
+Keith's eyes glistened.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"Well, with that she got so mad with Dave, she wouldn't speak to him;
+and Dave left, swearin' he'd settle Wickersham and show him up, and
+he'll do it if he can."
+
+"Where is he?" asked Keith, in some anxiety. "Tell him not to do
+anything till I see him."
+
+"No; I got hold of him and straightened him out. He told me all about
+it. He was right much cut up. He jest cried about Phrony."
+
+Keith wrote a note to Wickersham. He referred to the current rumors that
+the cutting had run over on their side, suggesting, however, that it
+might have been by inadvertence.
+
+When this letter was received, Wickersham was in conference with his
+superintendent, Mr. Matheson. The interview had been somewhat stormy,
+for the superintendent had just made the very statement that Keith's
+note contained. He was not in a placid frame of mind, for the work was
+going badly; and Mr. Plume was seated in an arm-chair listening to his
+report. He did not like Plume, and had wished to speak privately to
+Wickersham; but Wickersham had told him to go ahead, that Plume was a
+friend of his, and as much interested in the success of the work as
+Matheson was. Plume's satisfaction and nonchalant air vexed the
+Scotchman. Just then Keith's note came, and Wickersham, after reading
+it, tossed it over first to Plume. Plume read it and handed it back
+without the least change of expression. Then Wickersham, after some
+reflection, tossed it to Matheson.
+
+"That's right," he nodded, when he had read it. "We are already over the
+line so far that the men know it."
+
+Wickersham's temper gave way.
+
+"Well, I know it. Do you suppose I am so ignorant as not to know
+anything? But I am not fool enough to give it away. You need not go
+bleating around about it everywhere."
+
+Plume's eye glistened with satisfaction.
+
+The superintendent's brow, which had clouded, grew darker. He had
+already stood much from this young man. He had followed his orders in
+running the mine beyond the lines shown on the plats; but he had
+accepted Wickersham's statement that the lines were wrong, not
+the workings.
+
+"I wush you to understand one thing, Mr. Wickersham," he said. "I came
+here to superintend your mines and to do my work like an honest man; but
+I don't propose to soil my hands with any dirrty dealings, or to engage
+in any violation of the law; for I am a law-abiding, God-fearing man,
+and before I'll do it I'll go."
+
+"Then you can go," said Wickersham, angrily. "Go, and be d----d to you!
+I will show you that I know my own business."
+
+"Then I will go. I do not think you do know it. If you did, you would
+not--"
+
+"Never mind. I want no more advice from you," snarled Wickersham.
+
+"I would like to have a letter saying that the work that has been done
+since you took charge has been under your express orders."
+
+"I'll see you condemned first. I suppose it was by my orders that the
+cutting ran so near to the creek that that work had to be done to keep
+the mine from being flooded?"
+
+"It was, by your _express_ orders."
+
+"I deny it. I suppose it was by my orders that the men were set on to
+strike?"
+
+"You were told of the danger and the probable consequences of your
+insisting."
+
+"Oh, you are always croaking--"
+
+"And I will croak once more," said the discharged official. "You will
+never make that mine pay, for there is no coal there. It is all on the
+other side of the line."
+
+"I won't! Well, I will show you. I, at least, stand a better chance to
+make it pay than I ever did before. I suppose you propose now to go over
+to Keith and tell him all you know about our work. I imagine he would
+like to know it--more than he knows already."
+
+"I am not in the habit of telling the private affairs of my employers,"
+said the man, coldly. "He does not need any information from me. He is
+not a fool. He knows it."
+
+"Oh, he does, does he! Then you told him," asserted Wickersham,
+furiously.
+
+This was more than the Scotchman could bear. He had already stood much,
+and his face might have warned Wickersham. Suddenly it flamed. He took
+one step forward, a long one, and rammed his clinched and hairy fist
+under the young man's nose.
+
+"You lie! And, ---- you! you know you lie. I'm a law-abiding,
+God-fearing man; but if you don't take that back, I will break every
+bone in your face. I've a mind to do it anyhow."
+
+Wickersham rolled back out of his chair as if the knotted fist under his
+nose had driven him. His face was white as he staggered to his feet.
+
+"I didn't mean--I don't say--. What do you mean anyhow?" he stammered.
+
+"Take it back." The foreman advanced slowly.
+
+"Yes--I didn't mean anything. What are you getting so mad about?"
+
+The foreman cut him short with a fierce gesture. "Write me that paper I
+want, and pay me my money."
+
+"Write what--?"
+
+"That the lower shaft and the last drift was cut by your order. Write
+it!" He pointed to the paper on the desk. Wickersham sat down and wrote
+a few lines. His hand trembled.
+
+"Here it is," he said sullenly.
+
+"Now pay me," said the glowering Scotchman.
+
+The money was paid, and Matheson, without a word, turned and walked out.
+
+"D---- him! I wish the mine had fallen in on him," Wickersham growled.
+
+"You are well quit of him," said Mr. Plume, consolingly.
+
+"I'll get even with him yet."
+
+"You have to answer your other friend," observed Mr. Plume.
+
+"I'll answer him." He seized a sheet of paper and began to write,
+annotating it with observations far from complimentary to Keith and
+Matheson. He read the letter to Plume. It was a curt inquiry whether Mr.
+Keith meant to make the charge that he had crossed his line. If so,
+Wickersham & Company knew their remedy and would be glad to know at last
+the source whence these slanderous reports had come.
+
+"That will settle him."
+
+Mr. Plume nodded. "It ought to do it."
+
+Keith's reply to this note was sent that night.
+
+It stated simply that he did make the charge, and if Mr. Wickersham
+wished it, he was prepared to prove it.
+
+Wickersham's face fell. "Matheson's been to him."
+
+"Or some one else," said Mr. Plume. "That Bluffy hates you like poison.
+You've got to do something and do it quick."
+
+Wickersham glanced up at Plume. He met his eye steadily. Wickersham's
+face showed the shadow of a frown; then it passed, leaving his face set
+and a shade paler. He looked at Plume again and licked his lips.
+Plume's eye was still on him.
+
+"What do you know!" he asked Plume.
+
+"Only what others know. They all know it or will soon."
+
+Wickersham's face settled more. He cursed in a low voice and then
+relapsed into reflection.
+
+"Get up a strike," said Plume. "They are ripe for it. Close her down and
+blow her up."
+
+Wickersham's countenance changed, and presently his brow cleared.
+
+"It will serve them right. I'll let them know who owns these mines."
+
+Next morning there was posted a notice of a cut of wages in the
+Wickersham mines. There was a buzz of excitement in New Leeds and anger
+among the mining population. At dinner-time there were meetings and much
+talking. That night again, there were meetings and whiskey and more
+talking,--louder talking,--speeches and resolutions. Next morning a
+committee waited on Mr. Wickersham, who received the men politely but
+coldly. He "thought he knew how to manage his own business. They must be
+aware that he had spent large sums in developing property which had not
+yet begun to pay. When it began to pay he would be happy, etc. If they
+chose to strike, all right. He could get others in their places."
+
+That night there were more meetings. Next day the men did not go to
+work. By evening many of them were drunk. There was talk of violence.
+Bill Bluffy, who was now a miner, was especially savage.
+
+Keith was surprised, a few days later, as he was passing along the
+street, to meet Euphronia Tripper. He spoke to her cordially. She was
+dressed showily and was handsomer than when he saw her last. The color
+mounted her face as he stopped her, and he wondered that Wickersham had
+not thought her pretty. When she blushed she was almost a beauty. He
+asked about her people at home, inquiring in a breath when she came,
+where she was staying, how long she was going to remain, etc.
+
+She answered the first questions glibly enough; but when he inquired as
+to the length of her visit and where she was staying, she appeared
+somewhat confused.
+
+"I have cousins here, the Turleys."
+
+"Oh! You are with Mr. Turley?" Keith felt relieved.
+
+"Ur--no--I am not staying with them. I am with some other friends." Her
+color was coming and going.
+
+"What is their name?"
+
+"Their name? Oh--uh--I don't know their names."
+
+"Don't know their names!"
+
+"No. You see it's a sort of private boarding-house, and they took me
+in."
+
+"Oh, I thought you said they were friends," said Keith.
+
+"Why, yes, they are, but--I have forgotten their names. Don't you
+understand?"
+
+Keith did not understand.
+
+"I only came a few days ago, and I am going right away."
+
+Keith passed on. Euphronia had clearly not changed her nature.
+Insensibly, Keith thought of Ferdy Wickersham. Old Rawson's conversation
+months before recurred to him. He knew that the girl was vain and
+light-headed. He also knew Wickersham.
+
+He mentioned to Mr. Turley having seen the girl in town, and the old
+fellow went immediately and took her out of the little boarding-house
+where she had put up, and brought her to his home.
+
+Keith was not long in doubt as to the connection between her presence
+and Wickersham's.
+
+Several times he had occasion to call at Mr. Turley's. On each occasion
+he found Wickersham there, and it was very apparent that he was not an
+unwelcome visitor.
+
+It was evident to Keith that Wickersham was trying to make an impression
+on the young girl.
+
+That evening so long ago when he had come on her and Wickersham in the
+old squire's orchard came back to him, and the stalwart old countryman,
+with his plain ways, his stout pride, his straight ideas, stood before
+him. He knew his pride in the girl; how close she was to his heart; and
+what a deadly blow it would be to him should anything befall her. He
+knew, moreover, how fiercely he would avenge any injury to her.
+
+He determined to give Wickersham a hint of the danger he was running,
+if, as he believed, he was simply amusing himself with the girl. He and
+Wickersham still kept up relations ostensibly friendly. Wickersham had
+told him he was going back to New York on a certain day; but three days
+later, as Keith was returning late from his mines, he came on Wickersham
+and Phrony in a byway outside of the town. His arm was about her. They
+were so closely engaged that they did not notice him until he was on
+them. Phrony appeared much excited. "Well, I will not go otherwise,"
+Keith heard her say. She turned hastily away as Keith came up, and her
+face was scarlet with confusion, and even Wickersham looked
+disconcerted.
+
+That night Keith waited for Wickersham at the hotel till a late hour,
+and when at length Wickersham came in he met him.
+
+"I thought you were going back to New York?" he said.
+
+"I find it pleasanter here," said the young man, with a significant look
+at him.
+
+"You appear to find it pleasant."
+
+"I always make it pleasant for myself wherever I go, my boy. You are a
+Stoic; I prefer the Epicurean philosophy."
+
+"Yes? And how about others?"
+
+"Oh, I make it pleasant for them too. Didn't it look so to-day?" The
+glance he gave him authorized Keith to go on.
+
+"Did it ever occur to you that you might make it too pleasant for
+them--for a time?"
+
+"Ah! I have thought of that. But that's their lookout."
+
+"Wickersham," said Keith, calmly, "that's a very young girl and a very
+ignorant girl, and, so far as I know, a very innocent one."
+
+"Doubtless you know!" said, the other, insolently.
+
+"Yes, I believe she is. Moreover, she comes of very good and respectable
+people. Her grandfather--"
+
+"My dear boy, I don't care anything about the grandfather! It is only
+the granddaughter I am interesting myself in. She is the only pretty
+girl within a hundred miles of here, unless you except your old friend
+of the dance-hall, and I always interest myself in the prettiest woman
+about me."
+
+"Do you intend to marry her?"
+
+Wickersham laughed, heartily and spontaneously.
+
+"Oh, come now, Keith. Are you going to marry the dance-hall keeper,
+simply because she has white teeth?"
+
+Keith frowned a little.
+
+"Never mind about me. Do you propose to marry her? She, at least, does
+not keep a dance-hall."
+
+"No; I shall leave that for you." His face and tone were insolent, and
+Keith gripped his chair. He felt himself flush. Then his blood surged
+back; but he controlled himself and put by the insolence for the moment.
+
+"Leave me out of the matter. Do you know what you are doing?" His voice
+was a little unsteady.
+
+"I know at least what you are doing: interfering in my business. I know
+how to take care of myself, and I don't need your assistance."
+
+"I was not thinking of you, but of her--"
+
+"That's the difference between us. I was," said Ferdy, coolly. He rolled
+a cigarette.
+
+"Well, you will have need to think of yourself if you wrong that girl,"
+said Keith. "For I tell you now that if anything were to happen to her,
+your life would not be worth a button in these mountains."
+
+"There are other places besides the mountains," observed Wickersham. But
+Keith noticed that he had paled a little and his voice had lost some of
+its assurance.
+
+"I don't believe the world would be big enough to hide you. I know two
+men who would kill you on sight."
+
+"Who is the other one?" asked Wickersham.
+
+"I am not counting myself--yet," said Keith, quietly. "It would not be
+necessary. The old squire and Dave Dennison would take my life if I
+interfered with their rights."
+
+"You are prudent," said Ferdy.
+
+"I am forbearing," said Keith.
+
+Wickersham's tone was as insolent as ever, but as he leaned over and
+reached for a match, Keith observed that his hand shook slightly. And
+the eyes that were levelled at Keith through the smoke of his cigarette
+were unsteady.
+
+Next morning Ferdy Wickersham had a long interview with Plume, and that
+night Mr. Plume had a conference in his private office with a man--a
+secret conference, to judge from the care with which doors were locked,
+blinds pulled down, and voices kept lowered. He was a stout, youngish
+fellow, with a low forehead, lowering eyes, and a sodden face. He might
+once have been good-looking, but drink was written on Mr. William Bluffy
+now in ineffaceable characters. Plume alternately cajoled him and
+hectored him, trying to get his consent to some act which he was
+unwilling to perform.
+
+"I don't see the slightest danger in it," insisted Plume, "and you did
+not use to be afraid. Your nerves must be getting loose."
+
+The other man's eyes rested on him with something like contempt.
+
+"My nerves're all right. I ain't skeered; but I don't want to mix up in
+your ---- business. If a man wants trouble with me, he can get it and he
+knows how to do it. I don't like yer man Wickersham--not a little bit.
+But I don't want to do it that way. I'd like to meet him fair and full
+on the street and settle which was the best man."
+
+Plume began again. "You can't do that way here now. That's broke up. But
+the way I tell you is the real way." He pictured Wickersham's wealth,
+his hardness toward his employés, his being a Yankee, his boast that he
+would injure Keith and shut up his mine.
+
+"What've you got against him?" demanded Mr. Bluffy. "I thought you and
+him was thick as thieves?"
+
+"It's a public benefit I'm after," declared Plume, unblushingly. "I am
+for New Leeds first, last, and all the time."
+
+"You must think you are New Leeds," observed Bluffy.
+
+Plume laughed.
+
+"I've got nothing against him particularly, though he's injured me
+deeply. Hasn't he thrown all the men out of work!" He pushed the bottle
+over toward the other, and he poured out another drink and tossed it
+off. "You needn't be so easy about him. He's been mean enough to you.
+Wasn't it him that gave the description of you that night when you
+stopped the stage?"
+
+Bill Bluffy's face changed, and there was a flash in his eye.
+
+"Who says I done it?"
+
+Plume laughed. "I don't say you did it. You needn't get mad with me. He
+says you did it. Keith said he didn't know what sort of man it was.
+Wickersham described you so that everybody knew you. I reckon if Keith
+had back-stood him you'd have had a harder time than you did."
+
+The cloud had gathered deeper on Bluffy's brow. He took another drink.
+
+"---- him! I'll blow up his ---- mine and him, too!" he growled. "How
+did you say 'twas to be done?"
+
+Plume glanced around at the closed windows and lowered his voice as he
+made certain explanations.
+
+"I'll furnish the dynamite."
+
+"All right. Give me the money."
+
+But Plume demurred.
+
+"Not till it's done. I haven't any doubt about your doing it," he
+explained quickly, seeing a black look in Bluffy's eyes. "But you know
+yourself you're liable to get full, and you mayn't do it as well as you
+otherwise would."
+
+"Oh, if I say I'll do it, I'll do it."
+
+"You needn't be afraid of not getting your money."
+
+"I ain't afraid," said Bluffy, with an oath. "If I don't get it I'll get
+blood." His eyes as they rested on Plume had a sudden gleam in them.
+
+When Wickersham and Plume met that night the latter gave an account of
+his negotiation. "It's all fixed," he said, "but it costs more than I
+expected--a lot more," he said slowly, gauging Wickersham's views by
+his face.
+
+"How much more? I told you my limit."
+
+"We had to do it," said Mr. Plume, without stating the price.
+
+Wickersham swore.
+
+"He won't do it till he gets the cash," pursued Plume. "But I'll be
+responsible for him," he added quickly, noting the change in
+Wickersham's expression.
+
+Again Wickersham swore; and Plume changed the subject.
+
+"How'd you come out?" he asked.
+
+"When--what do you mean?"
+
+Plume jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "With the lady?"
+
+Wickersham sniffed. "All right." He drifted for a moment into
+reflection. "The little fool's got conscientious doubts," he said
+presently, with a half-smile. "Won't go unless--." His eyes rested on
+Plume's with a gauging expression in them.
+
+"Well, why not? That's natural enough. She's been brought up right.
+They're proud as anybody. Her grandfather--"
+
+"You're a fool!" said Wickersham, briefly.
+
+"You can get some one to go through a ceremony for you that would
+satisfy her and wouldn't peach afterwards--"
+
+"What a damned scoundrel you are, Plume!" said Mr. Wickersham, coldly.
+
+Plume's expression was between a smile and a scowl, but the smile was
+less pleasant than the frown.
+
+"Get her to go to New York--When you've got her there you've got her.
+She can't come back. Or I could perform it myself? I've been a
+preacher-am one now," said Plume, without noticing the interruption
+further than by a cold gleam in his eyes.
+
+Wickersham laughed derisively.
+
+"Oh, no, not that. I may be given to my own diversions somewhat
+recklessly, but I'm not so bad as to let you touch any one I--I take an
+interest in."
+
+"As you like," said Plume, curtly. "I just thought it might be a
+convenience to you. I'd help you out. I don't see 't you need be
+so--squeamish. What you're doing ain't so pure an' lofty 't you can set
+up for Marcus Aurelius and St. Anthony at once."
+
+"At least, it's better than it would be if I let you take a hand in it,"
+sneered Wickersham.
+
+The following afternoon Wickersham left New Leeds somewhat
+ostentatiously. A few strikers standing sullenly about the station
+jeered as he passed in. But he took no notice of them. He passed on to
+his train.
+
+A few nights later a tremendous explosion shook the town, rattling the
+windows, awakening people from their beds, and calling the timid and the
+curious into the streets.
+
+It was known next morning that some one had blown up the Great Gun Mine,
+opened at such immense cost. The dam that kept out the water was blown
+up; the machinery had been wrecked, and the mine was completely
+destroyed.
+
+The _Clarion_ denounced it as the deed of the strikers. The strikers
+held a meeting and denounced the charge as a foul slander; but the
+_Clarion_ continued to denounce them as _hostes humani generis_.
+
+It was, however, rumored around that it was not the strikers at all. One
+rumor even declared that it was done by the connivance of the company.
+It was said that Bill Bluffy had boasted of it in his cups, But when Mr.
+Bluffy was asked about it he denied the story in toto. He wasn't such
+a ---- fool as to do such a thing as that, he said. For the rest, he
+cursed Mr. Plume with bell, book, and candle.
+
+A rumor came to Keith one morning a few days later that Phrony Tripper
+had disappeared.
+
+She had left New Leeds more than a week before, as was supposed by her
+relatives, the Turleys, to pay a visit to friends in the adjoining State
+before returning home. To others she had said that she was going to the
+North for a visit, whilst yet others affirmed that she had given another
+destination. However this might be, she had left not long after
+Wickersham had taken his departure, and her leaving was soon coupled
+with his name. One man even declared that he had seen the two together
+in New York.
+
+Another name was connected with the girl's disappearance, though in a
+different way. Terpsichore suggested that Mr. Plume had had something to
+do with it, and that he could give information on the subject if he
+would. Mr. Plume had been away from New Leeds for several days about the
+time of Phrony's departure.
+
+"He did that Wickersham's dirty work for him; that is, what he didn't do
+for himself," declared the young woman.
+
+Plume's statement was that he had been off on private business and had
+met with an accident. The nature of this "accident" was evident in his
+appearance.
+
+Keith was hardly surprised when, a day or two after the rumor of the
+girl's disappearance reached him, a heavy step thumping outside his
+office door announced the arrival of Squire Rawson. When the old man
+opened the door, Keith was shocked to see the change in him. He was
+haggard and worn, but there was that in his face which made Keith feel
+that whoever might be concerned in his granddaughter's disappearance had
+reason to beware of meeting him.
+
+"You have heard the news?" he said, as he sank into the chair which
+Keith offered him.
+
+Keith said that he had heard it, and regretted it more than he could
+express. He had only waited, hoping that it might prove untrue, to
+write to him.
+
+"Yes, she has gone," added the old man, moodily. "She's gone off and
+married without sayin' a word to me or anybody. I didn't think she'd
+'a' done it."
+
+Keith gasped with astonishment. A load appeared to be lifted from him.
+After all, she was married. The next moment this hope was dashed by
+the squire.
+
+"I always thought," said the old man, "that that young fellow was
+hankerin' around her a good deal. I never liked him, because I didn't
+trust him. And I wouldn't 'a' liked him anyway," he added frankly; "and
+I certainly don't like him now. But--." He drifted off into reflection
+for a moment and then came back again--"Women-folks are curious
+creatures. Phrony's mother she appeared to like him, and I suppose we
+will have to make up with him. So I hev come up here to see if I can git
+his address."
+
+Keith's heart sank within him. He knew Ferdy Wickersham too well not to
+know on what a broken reed the old man leaned.
+
+"Some folks was a-hintin'," pursued the old fellow, speaking slowly,
+"as, maybe, that young man hadn't married her; but I knowed better then
+that, because, even if Phrony warn't a good girl,--which she is, though
+she ain't got much sense,--he knowed _me_. They ain't none of 'em ever
+intimated that to _me_," he added explanatorily.
+
+Keith was glad that he had not intimated it. As he looked at the squire,
+he knew how dangerous it would be. His face was settled into a grimness
+which showed how perilous it would be for the man who had deceived
+Phrony, if, as Keith feared, his apprehensions were well founded.
+
+But at that moment both Phrony and Wickersham were far beyond Squire
+Rawson's reach.
+
+The evening after Phrony Tripper left New Leeds, a young woman somewhat
+closely veiled descended from the train in Jersey City. Here she was
+joined on the platform a moment later by a tall man who had boarded the
+train at Washington, and who, but for his spruced appearance, might
+have been taken for Mr. J. Quincy Plume. The young woman having
+intrusted herself to his guidance, he conducted her across the ferry,
+and on the other side they were met by a gentleman, who wore the collar
+of his overcoat turned up. After a meeting more or less formal on one
+side and cordial on the other, the gentleman gave a brief direction to
+Mr. Plume, and, with the lady, entered a carriage which was waiting and
+drove off; Mr. Plume following a moment later in another vehicle.
+
+"Know who that is?" asked one of the ferry officials of another. "That's
+F.C. Wickersham, who has made such a pile of money. They say he owns a
+whole State down South."
+
+"Who is the lady?"
+
+The other laughed. "Don't ask me; you can't keep up with him. They say
+they can't resist him."
+
+An hour or two later, Mr. Plume, who had been waiting for some time in
+the café of a small hotel not very far up-town, was joined by Mr.
+Wickersham, whose countenance showed both irritation and disquietude.
+Plume, who had been consoling himself with the companionship of a
+decanter of rye whiskey, was in a more jovial mood, which further
+irritated the other.
+
+"You say she has balked? Jove! She has got more in her than I thought!"
+
+"She is a fool!" said Wickersham.
+
+Plume shut one eye. "Don't know about that. Madame de Maintenon said:
+'There is nothing so clever as a good woman.' Well, what are you
+going to do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Take a drink," said Mr. Plume, to whom this was a frequent solvent of a
+difficulty.
+
+Wickersham followed his advice, but remained silent.
+
+In fact, Mr. Wickersham, after having laid most careful plans and
+reached the point for which he had striven, found himself, at the very
+moment of victory, in danger of being defeated. He had induced Phrony
+Tripper to come to New York. She was desperately in love with him, and
+would have gone to the ends of the earth for him. But he had promised to
+marry her; it was to marry him that she had come. As strong as was her
+passion for him, and as vain and foolish as she was, she had one
+principle which was stronger than any other feeling--a sense of modesty.
+This had been instilled in her from infancy. Among her people a woman's
+honor was ranked higher than any other feminine virtue. Her love for
+Wickersham but strengthened her resolution, for she believed that,
+unless he married her, his life would not be safe from her relatives.
+Now, after two hours, in which he had used every persuasion, Wickersham,
+to his unbounded astonishment, found himself facing defeat. He had not
+given her credit for so much resolution. Her answer to all his efforts
+to overcome her determination was that, unless he married her
+immediately, she would return home; she would not remain in the hotel a
+single night. "I know they will take me back," she said, weeping.
+
+This was the subject of his conversation, now, with his agent, and he
+was making up his mind what to do, aided by more or less frequent
+applications to the decanter which stood between them.
+
+"What she says is true," declared Plume, his courage stimulated by his
+liberal potations. "You won't be able to go back down there any more.
+There are a half-dozen men I know, would consider it their duty to blow
+your brains out."
+
+Wickersham filled his glass and tossed off a drink. "I am not going down
+there any more, anyhow."
+
+"I suppose not. But I don't believe you would be safe even up here.
+There is that devil, Dennison: he hates you worse than poison."
+
+"Oh--up here--they aren't going to trouble me up here."
+
+"I don't know--if he ever got a show at you--Why don't you let me
+perform the ceremony?" he began persuasively. "She knows I've been a
+preacher. That will satisfy her scruples, and then, if you ever had to
+make it known--? But no one would know then."
+
+Wickersham declined this with a show of virtue. He did not mention that
+he had suggested this to the girl but she had positively refused it. She
+would be married by a regular preacher or she would go home.
+
+"There must be some one in this big town," suggested Plume, "who will do
+such a job privately and keep it quiet? Where is that preacher you were
+talking about once that took flyers with you on the quiet? You can seal
+his mouth. And if the worst comes to the worst, there is Montana; you
+can always get out of it in six weeks with an order of publication. _I_
+did it," said Mr. Plume, quietly, "and never had any trouble about it."
+
+"You did! Well, that's one part of your rascality I didn't know about."
+
+"I guess there are a good many of us have little bits of history that we
+don't talk about much," observed Mr. Plume, calmly. "I wouldn't have
+told you now, but I wanted to help you out of the fix that--"
+
+"That you have helped me get into," said Wickersham, with a sneer.
+
+"There is no trouble about it," Plume went on. "You don't want to marry
+anybody else--now, and meantime it will give you the chance you want of
+controlling old Rawson's interest down there. The old fellow can't live
+long, and Phrony is his only heir. You will have it all your own way.
+You can keep it quiet if you wish, and if you don't, you can acknowledge
+it and bounce your friend Keith. If I had your hand I bet I'd know how
+to play it."
+
+"Well, by ----! I wish you had it," said Wickersham, angrily.
+
+Wickersham had been thinking hard during Plume's statement of the case,
+and what with his argument and an occasional application to the decanter
+of whiskey, he was beginning to yield. Just then a sealed note was
+handed him by a waiter. He tore it open and read:
+
+
+     "I am going home; my heart is broken. Good-by."
+
+                                            "PHRONY."
+
+
+With an oath under his breath, he wrote in pencil on a card: "Wait; I
+will be with you directly."
+
+"Take that to the lady," he said. Scribbling a few lines more on another
+card, he gave Plume some hasty directions and left him.
+
+When, five minutes afterwards, Mr. Plume finished the decanter, and left
+the hotel, his face had a crafty look on it. "This should be worth a
+good deal to you, J. Quincy," he said.
+
+An hour later the Rev. Mr. Rimmon performed in his private office a
+little ceremony, at which, besides himself, were present only the bride
+and groom and a witness who had come to him a half-hour before with a
+scribbled line in pencil requesting his services. If Mr. Rimmon was
+startled when he first read the request, the surprise had passed away.
+The groom, it is true, was, when he appeared, decidedly under the
+influence of liquor, and his insistence that the ceremony was to be kept
+entirely secret had somewhat disturbed Mr. Rimmon for a moment. But he
+remembered Mr. Plume's assurance that the bride was a great heiress in
+the South, and knowing that Ferdy Wickersham was a man who rarely lost
+his head,--a circumstance which the latter testified by handing him a
+roll of greenbacks amounting to exactly one hundred dollars,--and the
+bride being very pretty and shy, and manifestly most eager to be
+married, he gave his word to keep the matter a secret until they should
+authorize him to divulge it.
+
+When the ceremony was over, the bride requested Mr. Rimmon to give her
+her "marriage lines." This Mr. Rimmon promised to do; but as he would
+have to fill out the blanks, which would take a little time, the bride
+and groom, having signed the paper, took their departure without
+waiting for the certificate, leaving Mr. Plume to bring it.
+
+A day or two later a steamship of one of the less popular companies
+sailing to a Continental port had among its passengers a gentleman and a
+lady who, having secured their accommodations at the last moment, did
+not appear on the passenger list.
+
+It happened that they were unknown to any of the other passengers, and
+as they were very exclusive, they made no acquaintances during the
+voyage. If Mrs. Wagram, the name by which the lady was known on board,
+had one regret, it was that Mr. Plume had failed to send her her
+marriage certificate, as he had promised to do. Her husband, however,
+made so light of it that it reassured her, and she was too much taken up
+with her wedding-ring and new diamonds to think that anything else was
+necessary.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+MRS. LANCASTER'S WIDOWHOOD
+
+The first two years of her widowhood Alice Lancaster spent in
+retirement. Even the busy tongue of Mrs. Nailor could find little to
+criticise in the young widow. To be sure, that accomplished critic made
+the most of this little, and disseminated her opinion that Alice's grief
+for Mr. Lancaster could only be remorse for her indifference to him
+during his life. Every one knew, she said, how she had neglected him.
+
+The idea that Alice Lancaster was troubled with regrets was not as
+unfounded as the rest of Mrs. Nailor's ill-natured charge. She was
+attached to her husband, and had always meant to be a good wife to him.
+
+She was as good a wife as her mother and her friends would permit her to
+be. Gossip had not spared some of her best friends. Even as proud a
+woman as young Mrs. Wentworth had not escaped. But Gossip had never yet
+touched the name of Mrs. Lancaster, and Alice did not mean that it
+should. It was not unnatural that she should have accepted the liberty
+which her husband gave her and have gone out more and more, even though
+he could accompany her less and less.
+
+No maelstrom is more unrelenting in its grasp than is that of Society.
+Only those who sink, or are cast aside by its seething waves, escape.
+And before she knew it, Alice Lancaster had found herself drawn into the
+whirlpool.
+
+An attractive proposal had been made to her to go abroad and join some
+friends of hers for a London season a year or two before. Grinnell
+Rhodes had married Miss Creamer, who was fond of European society, and
+they had taken a house in London for the season, which promised to be
+very gay, and had suggested to Mrs. Lancaster to visit them. Mr.
+Lancaster had found himself unable to go. A good many matters of
+importance had been undertaken by him, and he must see them through, he
+said. Moreover, he had not been very well of late, and he had felt that
+he should be rather a drag amid the gayeties of the London season. Alice
+had offered to give up the trip, but he would not hear of it. She must
+go, he said, and he knew who would be the most charming woman in London.
+So, having extracted from him the promise that, when his business
+matters were all arranged, he would join her for a little run on the
+Continent, she had set off for Paris, where "awful beauty puts on all
+its arms," to make her preparations for the campaign.
+
+Mr. Lancaster had not told her of an interview which her mother had had
+with him, in which she had pointed out that Alice's health was suffering
+from her want of gayety and amusement. He was not one to talk
+of himself.
+
+Alice Lancaster was still in Paris when a cable message announced to her
+Mr. Lancaster's death. It was only after his death that she awoke to the
+unselfishness of his life and to the completeness of his devotion
+to her.
+
+His will, after making provision for certain charities with which he had
+been associated in his lifetime, left all his great fortune to her; and
+there was, besides, a sealed letter left for her in which he poured out
+his heart to her. From it she learned that he had suffered greatly and
+had known that he was liable to die at any time. He, however, would not
+send for her to come home, for fear of spoiling her holiday.
+
+"I will not say I have not been lonely," he wrote. "For God knows how
+lonely I have been since you left. The light went with you and will
+return only when you come home. Sometimes I have felt that I could not
+endure it and must send for you or go to you; but the first would have
+been selfishness and the latter a breach of duty. The times have been
+such that I have not felt it right to leave, as so many interests have
+been intrusted to me.... It is possible that I may never see your face
+again. I have made a will which I hope will please you. It will, at
+least, show you that I trust you entirely. I make no restrictions; for I
+wish you greater happiness than I fear I have been able to bring you....
+In business affairs I suggest that you consult with Norman Wentworth,
+who is a man of high integrity and of a conservative mind. Should you
+wish advice as to good charities, I can think of no better adviser than
+Dr. Templeton. He has long been my friend."
+
+In the first excess of her grief and remorse, Alice Lancaster came home
+and threw herself heart and soul into charitable work. As Mr. Lancaster
+had suggested, she consulted Dr. Templeton, the old rector of a small
+and unfashionable church on a side street. Under his guidance she found
+a world as new and as diverse from that in which she had always lived as
+another planet would have been.
+
+She found in some places a life where vice was esteemed more honorable
+than virtue, because it brought more bread. She found things of which
+she had never dreamed: things which appeared incredible after she had
+seen them. These things she found within a half-hour's walk of her
+sumptuous home; within a few blocks of the avenue and streets where
+Wealth and Plenty took their gay pleasure and where riches poured forth
+in a riot of splendid extravagance.
+
+She would have turned back, but for the old clergyman's inspiring
+courage; she would have poured out her wealth indiscriminately, but for
+his wisdom--but for his wisdom and Norman Wentworth's.
+
+"No, my dear," said the old man; "to give lavishly without
+discrimination is to put a premium on beggary and to subject yourself to
+imposture."
+
+This Norman indorsed, and under their direction she soon found ways to
+give of her great means toward charities which were far-reaching and
+enduring. She learned also what happiness comes from knowledge of others
+and knowledge of how to help them.
+
+It was surprising to her friends what a change came over the young
+woman. Her point of view, her manner, her face, her voice changed. Her
+expression, which had once been so proud as to mar somewhat her beauty,
+softened; her manner increased in cordiality and kindness; her voice
+acquired a new and sincerer tone.
+
+Even Mrs. Nailor observed that the enforced retirement appeared to have
+chastened the young widow, though she would not admit that it could be
+for anything than effect.
+
+"Black always was the most bewilderingly becoming thing to her that I
+ever saw. Don't you remember those effects she used to produce with
+black and just a dash of red? Well, she wears black so deep you might
+think it was poor Mr. Lancaster's pall; but I have observed that
+whenever I have seen her there is always something red very close at
+hand. She either sits in a red chair, or there is a red shawl just at
+her back, or a great bunch of red roses at her elbow. I am glad that
+great window has been put up in old Dr. Templeton's church to William
+Lancaster's memory, or I am afraid it would have been but a small one."
+
+Almost the first sign that the storm, which, as related, had struck New
+York would reach New Leeds was the shutting down of the Wickersham
+mines. The _Clarion_ stated that the shutting down was temporary and
+declared that in a very short time, when the men were brought to reason,
+they would be opened again; also that the Great Gun Mine, which had been
+flooded, would again be opened.
+
+The mines belonging to Keith's company did not appear for some time to
+be affected; but the breakers soon began to reach even the point on
+which Keith had stood so securely. The first "roller" that came to him
+was when orders arrived to cut down the force, and cut down also the
+wages of those who were retained. This was done. Letters, growing
+gradually more and more complaining, came from the general office in
+New York.
+
+Fortunately for Keith, Norman ran down at this time and looked over the
+properties again for himself. He did not tell Keith what bitter things
+were being said and that his visit down there was that he might be able
+to base his defence of Keith on facts in his own knowledge.
+
+"What has become of Mrs. Lancaster?" asked Keith, casually. "Is she
+still abroad?"
+
+"No; she came home immediately on hearing the news. You never saw any
+one so changed. She has gone in for charity."
+
+Keith looked a trifle grim.
+
+"If you thought her pretty as a girl, you ought to see her as a widow.
+She is ravishing."
+
+"You are enthusiastic. I see that Wickersham has returned?"
+
+Norman's brow clouded.
+
+"He'd better not come back here," said Keith.
+
+It is a trite saying that misfortunes rarely come singly, and it would
+not be so trite if there were not truth in it. Misfortunes are sometimes
+like blackbirds: they come in flocks.
+
+Keith was on his way from his office in the town to the mines one
+afternoon, when, turning the shoulder of the hill that shut the opening
+of the mine from view, he became aware that something unusual had
+occurred. A crowd was already assembled about the mouth of the mine,
+above the tipple, among them many women; and people were hurrying up
+from all directions.
+
+"What is it?" he demanded of the first person he came to.
+
+"Water. They have struck a pocket or something, and the drift over
+toward the Wickersham line is filling up."
+
+"Is everybody out?" Even as he inquired, Keith knew hey were not.
+
+"No, sir; all drowned."
+
+Keith knew this could not be true. He hurried forward and pushed his way
+into the throng that crowded about the entrance. A gasp of relief went
+up as he appeared.
+
+"Ah! Here's the boss." It was the expression of a vague hope that he
+might be able to do something. They gave way at his voice and stood
+back, many eyes turning on him in helpless appeal. Women, with blankets
+already in hand, were weeping aloud; children hanging to their skirts
+were whimpering in vague recognition of disaster; men were growling and
+swearing deeply.
+
+"Give way. Stand back, every one." The calm voice and tone of command
+had their effect, and as a path was opened through the crowd, Keith
+recognized a number of the men who had been in and had just come out.
+They were all talking to groups about them. One of them gave him the
+first intelligent account of the trouble. They were working near the
+entrance when they heard the cries of men farther in, and the first
+thing they knew there was a rush of water which poured down on them,
+sweeping everything before it.
+
+"It must have been a river," said one, in answer to a question from
+Keith. "It was rising a foot a minute. The lights were all put out, and
+we just managed to get out in time."
+
+According to their estimates, there were about forty men and boys still
+in the mine, most of them in the gallery off from the main drift. Keith
+was running over in his mind the levels. His face was a study, and the
+crowd about him watched him closely, as if to catch any ray of hope that
+he might hold out. As he reflected, his face grew whiter. Down the slant
+from the mine came the roar of the water. It was a desperate chance.
+
+Half turning, he glanced at the white, stricken faces about him.
+
+"It is barely possible some of the men may still be alive. There are two
+elevations. I am going down to see."
+
+At the words, the sound through the crowd hushed suddenly.
+
+"Na, th' ben't one alive," said an old miner, contentiously.
+
+The murmur began again.
+
+"I am going down to see," said Keith. "If one or two men will come with
+me, it will increase the chances of getting to them. If not, I am going
+alone. But I don't want any one who has a family."
+
+A dead silence fell, then three or four young fellows began to push
+their way through the crowd, amid expostulations of some of the women
+and the urging of others.
+
+Some of the women seized them and held on to them.
+
+"There are one or two places where men may have been able to keep their
+heads above water if it has not filled the drift, and that is what I am
+going to see," said Keith, preparing to descend.
+
+"My brother's down there and I'll go," said a young light-haired fellow
+with a pale face. He belonged to the night shift.
+
+"I ain't got any family," said a small, grizzled man. He had a thin
+black band on the sleeve of his rusty, brown coat.
+
+Several others now came forward, amid mingled expostulations and
+encouragement; but Keith took the first two, and they prepared to enter.
+The younger man took off his silver watch, with directions to a friend
+to send it to his sister if he did not come back. The older man said a
+few words to a bystander. They were about a woman's grave on the
+hillside. Keith took off his watch and gave it to one of the men, with a
+few words scribbled on a leaf from a memorandum-book, and the next
+moment the three volunteers, amid a deathly silence, entered the mine.
+
+Long before they reached the end of the ascent to the shaft they could
+hear the water gurgling and lapping against the sides as it whirled
+through the gallery below them. As they reached the water, Keith let
+himself down into it. The water took him to about his waist and
+was rising.
+
+"It has not filled the drift yet," he said, and started ahead. He gave a
+halloo; but there was no sound in answer, only the reverberation of his
+voice. The other men called to him to wait and talk it over. The
+strangeness of the situation appalled them. It might well have awed a
+strong man; but Keith waded on. The older man plunged after him, the
+younger clinging to the cage for a second in a panic. The lights were
+out in a moment. Wading and plunging forward through the water, which
+rose in places to his neck, and feeling his way by the sides of the
+drift, Keith waded forward through the pitch-darkness. He stopped at
+times to halloo; but there was no reply, only the strange hollow sound
+of his own voice as it was thrown back on him, or died almost before
+leaving his throat. He had almost made up his mind that further attempt
+was useless and that he might as well turn back, when he thought he
+heard a faint sound ahead. With another shout he plunged forward again,
+and the next time he called he heard a cry of joy, and he pushed ahead
+again, shouting to them to come to him.
+
+Keith found most of the men huddled together on the first level, in a
+state of panic. Some of them were whimpering and some were praying
+fervently, whilst a few were silent, in a sort of dazed bewilderment.
+All who were working in that part of the mine were there, they said,
+except three men, Bill Bluffy and a man named Hennson and his boy, who
+had been cut off in the far end of the gallery and who must have been
+drowned immediately, they told Keith.
+
+"They may not be," said Keith. "There is one point as high as this. I
+shall go on and see."
+
+The men endeavored to dissuade him. It was "a useless risk of life,"
+they assured him; "the others must have been swept away immediately. The
+water had come so sudden. Besides, the water was rising, and it might
+even now be too late to get out." But Keith was firm, and ordering them
+back in charge of the two men who had come in with him, he pushed on
+alone. He knew that the water was still rising, though, he hoped,
+slowly. He had no voice to shout now, but he prayed with all his might,
+and that soothed and helped him. Presently the water was a little
+shallower. It did not come so high up on him. He knew from this that he
+must be reaching the upper level. Now and then he spoke Bluffy's and
+Hennson's names, lest in the darkness he should pass them.
+
+Presently, as he stopped for a second to take breath, he thought he
+heard another sound besides the gurgling of the water as it swirled
+about the timbers. He listened intently.
+
+It was the boy's voice. "Hold me tight, father. Don't leave me."
+
+Then he heard another voice urging him to go. "You can't do any good
+staying; try it." But Hennson was refusing.
+
+"Hold on. I won't leave you."
+
+"Hennson! Bluffy!" shouted Keith, or tried to shout, for his voice went
+nowhere; but his heart was bounding now, and he plunged on. Presently he
+was near enough to catch their words. The father was praying, and the
+boy was following him.
+
+"'Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven,'" Keith heard him say.
+
+"Hennson!" he cried again.
+
+From the darkness he heard a voice.
+
+"Who is that? Is that any one?"
+
+"It is I,--Mr. Keith,--Hennson. Come quick, all of you; you can get out.
+Cheer up."
+
+A cry of joy went up.
+
+"I can't leave my boy," called the man.
+
+"Bring him on your back," said Keith. "Come on, Bluffy."
+
+"I can't," said Bluffy. "I'm hurt. My leg is broke."
+
+"God have mercy!" cried Keith, and waded on.
+
+After a moment more he was up with the man, feeling for him in the
+darkness, and asking how he was hurt.
+
+They told him that the rush of the water had thrown him against a timber
+and hurt his leg and side.
+
+"Take the boy," said Bluffy, "and go on; leave me here."
+
+The boy began to cry.
+
+"No," said Keith; "I will take you, too: Hennson can take the boy. Can
+you walk at all?"
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+Keith made Hennson take the boy and hold on to him on one side, and
+slipping his arm around the injured man, he lifted him and they started
+back. He had put new courage into them, and the force of the current was
+in their favor. They passed the first high level, where he had found the
+others. When they reached a point where the water was too deep for the
+boy, Keith made the father take him on his shoulder, and they waded on
+through the blackness. The water was now almost up to his chin, and he
+grew so tired under his burden that he began to think they should never
+get out; but he fought against it and kept on, steadying himself against
+the timbers. He knew that if he went down it was the end. Many thoughts
+came to him of the past. He banished them and tried to speak words of
+encouragement, though he could scarcely hear himself.
+
+"Shout," he said hoarsely; and the boy shouted, though it was somewhat
+feeble.
+
+A moment later, he gave a shout of an entirely different kind.
+
+"There is a light!" he cried.
+
+The sound revived Keith's fainting energies, and he tried to muster his
+flagging strength. The boy shouted again, and in response there came
+back, strangely flattened, the shrill cry of a woman. Keith staggered
+forward with Bluffy, at times holding himself up by the side-timbers. He
+was conscious of a light and of voices, but was too exhausted to know
+more. If he could only keep the man and the boy above water until
+assistance came! He summoned his last atom of strength.
+
+"Hold tight to the timbers, Hennson," he cried; "I am going."
+
+The rest was a confused dream. He was conscious for a moment of the
+weight being lifted from him, and he was sinking into the water as if
+into a soft couch. He thought some one clutched him, but he knew
+nothing more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Terpsichore was out on the street when the rumor of the accident reached
+her. Any accident always came home to her, and she was prompt to do what
+she could to help, in any case. But this was Mr. Keith's mine, and rumor
+had it that he was among the lost. Terpsichore was not attired for such
+an emergency; when she went on the streets, she still wore some of her
+old finery, though it was growing less and less of late. She always
+acted quickly. Calling to a barkeeper who had come to his front door on
+hearing the news, to bring her brandy immediately, she dashed into a
+dry-goods store near by and got an armful of blankets, and when the
+clerk, a stranger just engaged in the store, made some question about
+charging them to her, she tore off her jewelled watch and almost flung
+it at the man.
+
+"Take that, idiot! Men are dying," she said. "I have not time to box
+your jaws." And snatching up the blankets, she ran out, stopped a
+passing buggy, and flinging them into it, sprang in herself. With a nod
+of thanks to the barkeeper, who had brought out several bottles of
+brandy, she snatched the reins from the half-dazed driver, and heading
+the horse up the street that led out toward the mine, she lashed him
+into a gallop. She arrived at the scene of the accident just before the
+first men rescued reappeared. She learned of Keith's effort to save
+them. She would have gone into the mine herself had she not been
+restrained. Just then the men came out.
+
+The shouts and cries of joy that greeted so unexpected a deliverance
+drowned everything else for a few moments; but as man after man was met
+and received half dazed into the arms of his family and friends, the
+name of Keith began to be heard on all sides. One voice, however, was
+more imperative than the others; one figure pressed to the front--that
+of the gayly dressed woman who had just been comforting and encouraging
+the weeping women about the mine entrance.
+
+"Where is Mr. Keith?" she demanded of man after man.
+
+The men explained. "He went on to try and find three more men who are
+down there--Bluffy and Hennson and his boy."
+
+"Who went with him?"
+
+"No one. He went alone."
+
+"And you men let him go?"
+
+"We could not help it. He insisted. We tried to make him come with us."
+
+"You cowards!" she cried, tearing off her wrap. "Of course, he insisted,
+for he is a _man_. Had one woman been down there, she would not have let
+him go alone." She sprang over the fencing rope as lightly as a deer,
+and started toward the entrance. A cry broke from the crowd.
+
+"She's going! Stop her! She's crazy! Catch her!"
+
+Several men sprang over the rope and started after her. Hearing them,
+Terpsichore turned. With outstretched arms spread far apart and blazing
+eyes, she faced them.
+
+"If any man tries to stop me, I will kill him on the spot, as God
+lives!" she cried, snatching up a piece of iron bar that lay near by. "I
+am going to find that man, dead or alive. If there is one of you man
+enough to come with me, come on. If not, I will go alone."
+
+"I will go with you!" A tall, sallow-faced man who had just come up
+pushed through the throng and overtook her. "You stay here; I will go."
+It was Tib Drummond, the preacher. He was still panting. The girl hardly
+noticed him. She waved him aside and dashed on.
+
+A dozen men offered to go if she would come back.
+
+"No; I shall go with you," she said; and knowing that every moment was
+precious, and thinking that the only way to pacify her was to make the
+attempt, the men yielded, and a number of them entered the mine with
+her, the lank preacher among them.
+
+They had just reached the bottom when the faint outline of something
+black was seen in the glimmer that their lights threw in the distance.
+Terpy, with a cry, dashed forward, and was just in time to catch Keith
+as he sank beneath the black water.
+
+When the rescuing party with their burdens reached the surface once
+more, the scene was one to revive even a flagging heart; but Keith and
+Bluffy were both too far gone to know anything of it.
+
+The crowd, which up to this time had been buzzing with the excitement of
+the reaction following the first rescue, suddenly hushed down to an awed
+silence as Keith and Bluffy were brought out and were laid limp and
+unconscious on a blanket, which Terpsichore had snatched from a man in
+the front of the others. Many women pressed forward to offer assistance,
+but the girl waved them back.
+
+"A doctor!" she cried, and reaching for a brandy-bottle, she pressed it
+first to Keith's lips. Turning to Drummond, the preacher, who stood
+gaunt and dripping above her, she cried fiercely: "Pray, man; if you
+ever prayed, pray now. Pray, and if you save 'em, I'll leave town. I
+swear before God I will. Tell Him so."
+
+But the preacher needed no urging. Falling on his knees, he prayed as
+possibly he had never prayed before. In a few moments Keith began to
+come to. But Bluffy was still unconscious, and a half-hour later the
+Doctor pronounced him past hope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was some time before Keith was able to rise from his bed, and during
+this period a number of events had taken place affecting him, and, more
+or less, affecting New Leeds. Among these was the sale of Mr. Plume's
+paper to a new rival which had recently been started in the place, and
+the departure of Mr. Plume (to give his own account of the matter) "to
+take a responsible position upon a great metropolitan journal." He was
+not a man, he said, "to waste his divine talents in the attempt to carry
+on his shoulders the blasted fortunes of a 'bursted boom,' when the
+world was pining for the benefit of his ripe experience." Another
+account of the same matter was that rumor had begun to connect Mr.
+Plume's name with the destruction of the Wickersham mine and the
+consequent disaster in the Rawson mine. His paper, with brazen
+effrontery, had declared that the accident in the latter was due to the
+negligence of the management. This was too much for the people of New
+Leeds in their excited condition. Bluffy was dead; but Hennson, the man
+whom Keith had rescued, had stated that they had cut through into a
+shaft when the water broke in on them, and an investigation having been
+begun, not only of this matter, but of the previous explosion in the
+Wickersham mine, Mr. Plume had sold out his paper hastily and shaken the
+dust of New Leeds from his feet.
+
+Keith knew nothing of this until it was all over. He was very ill for a
+time, and but for the ministrations of Dr. Balsam, who came up from
+Ridgely to look after him, and the care of a devoted nurse in the person
+of Terpsichore, this history might have ended then. Terpsichore had,
+immediately after Keith's accident, closed her establishment and devoted
+herself to his care. There were many other offers of similar service,
+for New Leeds was now a considerable town, and Keith might have had a
+fair proportion of the gentler sex to minister to him; but Dr. Balsam,
+to whom Terpsichore had telegraphed immediately after Keith's rescue,
+had, after his first interview with her in the sick-room, decided in
+favor of the young woman.
+
+"She has the true instinct," said the Doctor to himself. "She knows when
+to let well enough alone, and holds her tongue."
+
+Thus, when Keith was able to take notice again, he found himself in good
+hands.
+
+A few days after he was able to get up, Keith received a telegram
+summoning him to New York to meet the officers of the company. As weak
+as he was, he determined to go, and, against the protestations of doctor
+and nurse, he began to make his preparations.
+
+Just before Keith left, a visitor was announced, or rather announced
+himself; for Squire Rawson followed hard upon his knock at the door. His
+heavy boots, he declared, "were enough to let anybody know he was
+around, and give 'em time to stop anything they was ashamed o' doin'."
+
+The squire had come over, as he said, "to hear about things." It was the
+first time he had seen Keith since the accident, though, after he had
+heard of it, he had written and invited Keith to come "and rest up a bit
+at his house."
+
+When the old man learned of the summons that had come to Keith, he relit
+his pipe and puffed a moment in silence.
+
+"Reckon they'll want to know why they ain't been a realizin' of their
+dreams?" he said, with a twinkle in his half-shut eyes. "Ever notice,
+when a man is huntin', if he gits what he aims at, it's himself; but if
+he misses, it's the blamed old gun?"
+
+Keith smiled. He had observed that phenomenon.
+
+"Well, I suspicionate they'll be findin' fault with their gun. I have
+been a-watchin' o' the signs o' the times. If they do, don't you say
+nothin' to them about it; but I'm ready to take back my part of the
+property, and I've got a leetle money I might even increase my
+herd with."
+
+The sum he mentioned made Keith open his eyes.
+
+"When hard times comes," continued the old man, after enjoying Keith's
+surprise, "I had rather have my money in land than in one of these here
+banks. I has seen wild-cat money and Confederate money, and land's land.
+I don't know that it is much of a compliment to say that I has more
+confidence in you than I has in these here men what has come down from
+nobody-knows-where to open a bank on nobody-knows-what."
+
+Keith expressed his appreciation of the compliment, but thought that
+they must have something to bank on.
+
+"Oh, they've got something," admitted the capitalist. "But you know what
+it is. They bank on brass and credulity. That's what I calls it."
+
+The old man's face clouded. "I had been puttin' that by for Phrony," he
+said. "But she didn't want it. _My_ money warn't good enough for her.
+Some day she'll know better."
+
+Keith waited for his humor to pass.
+
+"I won't ever do nothin' for her; but if ever you see her, I'd like you
+to help her out if she needs it," he said huskily.
+
+Keith promised faithfully that he would.
+
+That afternoon Terpy knocked at his door, and came in with that mingled
+shyness and boldness which was characteristic of her.
+
+Keith offered her a chair and began to thank her for having saved his
+life.
+
+"Well, I am always becoming indebted to you anew for saving my life--"
+
+"I didn't come for that," declared the girl. "I didn't save your life. I
+just went down to do what I could to help you. You know how that mine
+got flooded?"
+
+"I do," said Keith.
+
+"They done it to do you," she said; "and they made Bill believe it was
+to hurt Wickersham. Bill's dead now, an' I don't want you to think he
+had anything against you." She began to cry.
+
+All this was new to Keith, and he said so.
+
+"Well, you won't say anything about what I said about Bill. J. Quincy
+made him think 'twas against Wickersham, and he was that drunk he didn't
+know what a fool they was makin' of him.--You are going away?" she
+said suddenly.
+
+"Oh, only for a very little while--I am going off about a little
+business for a short time. I expect to be back very soon."
+
+"Ah! I heard--I am glad to hear that you are coming back." She was
+manifestly embarrassed, and Keith was wondering more and more what she
+wanted of him. "I just wanted to say good-by. I am going away." She was
+fumbling at her wrap. "And to tell you I have changed my business. I'm
+not goin' to keep a dance-house any longer."
+
+"I am glad of that," said Keith, and then stuck fast again.
+
+"I don't think a girl ought to keep a dance-house or a bank?"
+
+"No; I agree with you. What are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know; I thought of trying a milliner. I know right smart about
+hats; but I'd wear all the pretty ones and give all the ugly ones away,"
+she said, with a poor little smile. "And it might interfere with Mrs.
+Gaskins, and she is a widder. So I thought I'd go away. I thought of
+being a nurse--I know a little about that. I used to be about the
+hospital at my old home, and I've had some little experience since." She
+was evidently seeking his advice.
+
+"You saved my life," said Keith. "Dr. Balsam says you are a born nurse."
+
+She put this by without comment, and Keith went on.
+
+"Where was your home?"
+
+"Grofton."
+
+"Grofton? You mean in England? In the West Country?"
+
+She nodded. "Yes. I was the girl the little lady gave the doll to. You
+were there. Don't you remember? I ran away with it. I have it now--a
+part of it. They broke it up; but I saved the body."
+
+Keith's eyes opened wide.
+
+"That Lois Huntington gave it to?"
+
+"Yes. I heard you were going to be married?" she said suddenly.
+
+"I! Married! No! No such good luck for me." His laugh had an unexpected
+tone of bitterness in it. She gave him a searching glance in the dusk,
+and presently began again haltingly.
+
+"I want you to know I am never going back to that any more."
+
+"I am glad to hear it."
+
+"You were the first to set me to thinkin' about it."
+
+"I!"
+
+"Yes; I want to live straight, and I'm goin' to."
+
+"I am sure you are, and I cannot tell you how glad I am," he said
+cordially.
+
+"Yes, thankee." She was looking down, picking shyly at the fringe on her
+wrap. "And I want you to know 'twas you done it. I have had a hard
+life--you don't know how hard--ever since I was a little bit of a
+gal--till I run away from home. And then 'twas harder. And they all
+treated me's if I was just a--a dog, and the worst kind of a dog. So I
+lived like a dog. I learned how to bite, and then they treated me some
+better, because they found I would bite if they fooled with me. And then
+I learned what fools and cowards men were, and I used 'em. I used to
+love to play 'em, and I done it. I used to amuse 'em for money and hold
+'em off. But I knew sometime I'd die like a dog as I lived like one--and
+then you came--." She paused and looked away out of the window, and
+after a gulp went on again: "They preached at me for dancin'. But I
+don't think there's any harm dancin'. And I love it better'n anything
+else in the worl'."
+
+"I do not, either," said Keith.
+
+"You was the only one as treated me as if I was--some'n' I warn't. I
+fought against you and tried to drive you out, but you stuck, and I knew
+then I was beat. I didn't know 'twas you when I--made such a fool of
+myself that time--."
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"Well, I certainly did not know it was you."
+
+"No--I wanted you to know that," she went on gravely, "because--because,
+if I had, I wouldn' 'a' done it--for old times' sake." She felt for her
+handkerchief, and not finding it readily, suddenly caught up the bottom
+of her skirt and wiped her eyes with it as she might have done when a
+little girl.
+
+Keith tried to comfort her with words of assurance, the tone of which
+was at least consoling.
+
+"I always was a fool about crying--an' I was thinkin' about Bill," she
+said brokenly. "Good-by." She wrung his hand, turned, and walked rapidly
+out of the room, leaving Keith with a warm feeling about his heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE DIRECTORS' MEETING
+
+Keith found, on his arrival in New York to meet his directors, that a
+great change had taken place in business circles since his visit there
+when he was getting up his company.
+
+Even Norman, at whose office Keith called immediately on his arrival,
+appeared more depressed than Keith had ever imagined he could be. He
+looked actually care-worn.
+
+As they started off to attend the meeting, Norman warned Keith that the
+meeting might be unpleasant for him, but urged him to keep cool, and not
+mind too much what might be said to him.
+
+"I told you once, you remember, that men are very unreasonable when they
+are losing." He smiled gloomily.
+
+Keith told him of old Rawson's offer.
+
+"You may need it," said Norman.
+
+When Keith and Norman arrived at the office of the company, they found
+the inner office closed. Norman, being a director, entered at once, and
+finally the door opened and "Mr. Keith" was invited in. As he entered, a
+director was showing two men out of the room by a side door, and Keith
+had a glimpse of the back of one of them. The tall, thin figure
+suggested to him Mr. J. Quincy Plume; but he was too well dressed to be
+Mr. Plume, and Keith put the matter from his mind as merely an odd
+resemblance. The other person he did not see.
+
+Keith's greeting was returned, as it struck him, somewhat coldly by
+most of them. Only two of the directors shook hands with him.
+
+It was a meeting which Keith never forgot. He soon found that he had
+need of all of his self-control. He was cross-examined by Mr. Kestrel.
+It was evident that it was believed that he had wasted their money, if
+he had not done worse. The director sat with a newspaper in his lap, to
+which, from time to time, he appeared to refer. From the line of the
+questioning, Keith soon recognized the source of his information.
+
+"You have been misled," Keith said coldly, in reply to a question. "I
+desire to know the authority for your statement."
+
+"I must decline," was the reply. "I think I may say that it is an
+authority which is unimpeachable. You observe that it is one who knows
+what he is speaking of?" He gave a half-glance about him at his
+colleagues.
+
+"A spy?" demanded Keith, coldly, his eye fixed on the other.
+
+"No, sir. A man of position, a man whose sources of knowledge even you
+would not question. Why, this has been charged in the public prints
+without denial!" he added triumphantly.
+
+"It has been charged in one paper," said Keith, "a paper which every one
+knows is for sale and has been bought--by your rival."
+
+"It is based not only on the statement of the person to whom I have
+alluded, but is corroborated by others."
+
+"By what others?" inquired Keith.
+
+"By another," corrected Mr. Kestrel.
+
+"That only proves that there are two men who are liars," said Keith,
+slowly. "I know but two men who I believe would have been guilty of such
+barefaced and brazen falsehoods. Shall I name them?"
+
+"If you choose."
+
+"They are F.C. Wickersham and a hireling of his, Mr. J. Quincy Plume."
+
+There was a stir among the directors. Keith had named both men. It was a
+fortunate shot.
+
+"By Jove! Brought down a bird with each barrel," said Mr. Yorke, who was
+one of the directors, to another in an undertone.
+
+Keith proceeded to give the history of the mine and of its rival mine,
+the Wickersham property.
+
+During the cross-examination Norman sat a silent witness. Beyond a look
+of satisfaction when Keith made his points clearly or countered on his
+antagonist with some unanswerable fact, he had taken no part in the
+colloquy. Up to this time Keith had not referred to him or even looked
+at him, but he glanced at him now, and the expression on his face
+decided Keith.
+
+"Mr. Wentworth, there, knows the facts. He knows F.C. Wickersham as well
+as I do, and he has been on the ground."
+
+There was a look of surprise on the face of nearly every one present.
+How could he dare to say it!
+
+"Oh, I guess we all know him," said one, to relieve the tension.
+
+Norman bowed his assent.
+
+Mr. Kestrel shifted his position.
+
+"Never mind Mr. Wentworth; it's _your_ part in the transaction that we
+are after," he said insolently.
+
+The blood rushed to Keith's face; but a barely perceptible glance from
+Norman helped him to hold himself in check. The director glanced down at
+the newspaper.
+
+"How about that accident in our mine? Some of us have thought that it
+was carelessness on the part of the local management. It has been
+charged that proper inspection would have indicated that the flooding of
+an adjacent mine should have given warning; in fact, had given warning."
+He half glanced around at his associates, and then fastened his eyes
+on Keith.
+
+Keith's eyes met his unflinchingly and held them. He drew in his breath
+with a sudden sound, as a man might who has received a slap full in the
+face. Beyond this, there was no sound. Keith sat for a moment in
+silence. The blow had dazed him. In the tumult of his thought, as it
+returned, it seemed as if the noise of the stricken crowd was once more
+about him, weeping women and moaning men; and he was descending into the
+blackness of death. Once more the roar of that rushing water was in his
+ears; he was once more plunging through the darkness; once more he was
+being borne down into its depths; again he was struggling, gasping,
+floundering toward the light; once more he returned to consciousness, to
+find himself surrounded by eyes full of sympathy--of devotion. The eyes
+changed suddenly. The present came back to him. Hostile eyes were
+about him.
+
+Keith rose from his chair slowly, and slowly turned from his questioner
+toward the others.
+
+"Gentlemen, I have nothing further to say to you. I have the honor to
+resign my position under you."
+
+"Resign!" exclaimed the director who had been badgering him. "Resign
+your position!" He leaned back in his chair and laughed.
+
+Keith turned on him so quickly that he pushed his chair back as if he
+were afraid he might spring across the table on him.
+
+"Yes. Resign!" Keith was leaning forward across the table now, resting
+his weight on one hand. "Anything to terminate our association. I am no
+longer in your employ, Mr. Kestrel." His eyes had suddenly blazed, and
+held Mr. Kestrel's eyes unflinchingly. His voice was calm, but had the
+coldness of a steel blade.
+
+There was a movement among the directors. They shifted uneasily in their
+chairs, and several of them pushed them back. They did not know what
+might happen. Keith was the incarnation of controlled passion. Mr.
+Kestrel seemed to shrink up within himself. Norman broke the silence.
+
+"I do not wonder that Mr. Keith should feel aggrieved," he said, with
+feeling. "I have held off from taking part in this interview up to the
+present, because I promised to do so, and because I felt that Mr. Keith
+was abundantly able to take care of himself; but I think that he has
+been unjustly dealt with and has been roughly handled."
+
+Keith's only answer was a slow wave of the arm in protest toward Norman
+to keep clear of the contest and leave it to him. He was standing quite
+straight now, his eyes still resting upon Mr. Kestrel's face, with a
+certain watchfulness in them, as if he were expecting him to stir again,
+and were ready to spring on him should he do so.
+
+Unheeding him, Norman went on.
+
+"I know that much that he says is true." Keith looked at him quickly,
+his form stiffening. "And I believe that _all_ that he says is true,"
+continued Norman; "and I am unwilling to stand by longer and see this
+method of procedure carried on."
+
+Keith bowed. There flashed across his mind the picture of a boy rushing
+up the hill to his rescue as he stood by a rock-pile on a hillside
+defending himself against overwhelming assailants, and his
+face softened.
+
+"Well, I don't propose to be dictated to as to how I shall conduct my
+own business," put in Mr. Kestrel, in a sneering voice. When the spell
+of Keith's gaze was lifted from him he had recovered.
+
+If Keith heard him now, he gave no sign of it, nor was it needed, for
+Norman turned upon him.
+
+"I think you will do whatever this board directs," he said, with almost
+as much contempt as Keith had shown.
+
+He took up the defence of the management to such good purpose that a
+number of the other directors went over to his side.
+
+They were willing to acquit Mr. Keith of blame, they said, and to show
+their confidence in him. They thought it would be necessary to have some
+one to look after the property and prevent further loss until better
+times should come, and they thought it would be best to get Mr. Keith to
+remain in charge for the present.
+
+During this time Keith had remained motionless and silent, except to bow
+his acknowledgments to Norman. He received their new expression of
+confidence in silence, until the discussion had ceased and the majority
+were on his side. Then he faced Mr. Yorke.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "I am obliged to you for your expression; but it
+comes too late. Nothing on earth could induce me ever again to assume a
+position in which I could be subjected to what I have gone through this
+morning. I will never again have any business association with--" he
+turned and looked at Mr. Kestrel--"Mr. Kestrel, or those who have
+sustained him."
+
+Mr. Kestrel shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, as to that," he laughed, "you need have no trouble. I shall get out
+as soon as I can. I have no more desire to associate with you than you
+have with me. All I want to do is to save what you mis--"
+
+Keith's eyes turned on him quietly.
+
+"--what I was misled into putting into your sink-hole down there. You
+may remember that you told me, when I went in, that you would guarantee
+me all I put in." His voice rose into a sneer.
+
+"Oh, no. None of that, none of that!" interrupted Norman, quickly. "You
+may remember, Mr. Kestrel,--?"
+
+But Keith interrupted him with a wave of his hand.
+
+"I do remember. I have a good memory, Mr. Kestrel."
+
+"That was all done away with," insisted Norman, his arm outstretched
+toward Mr. Kestrel. "You remember that an offer was made you of your
+input and interest, and you declined?"
+
+"I am speaking to _him_," said Mr. Kestrel, not turning his eyes from
+Keith.
+
+"I renew that offer now," said Keith, coldly.
+
+"Then that's all right." Mr. Kestrel sat back in his chair. "I accept
+your proposal, principal and interest."
+
+Protests and murmurs went around the board, but Mr. Kestrel did not heed
+them. Leaning forward, he seized a pen, and drawing a sheet of paper to
+him, began to scribble a memorandum of the terms, which, when finished,
+he pushed across the table to Keith.
+
+Keith took it against Norman's protest, and when he had read it, picked
+up a pen and signed his name firmly.
+
+"Here, witness it," said Mr. Kestrel to his next neighbor. "If any of
+the rest of you want to save your bones, you had better come in."
+
+Several of the directors agreed with him.
+
+Though Norman protested, Keith accepted their proposals, and a paper was
+drawn up which most of those present signed. It provided that a certain
+time should be given Keith in which to raise money to make good his
+offer, and arrangements were made provisionally to wind up the present
+company, and to sell out and transfer its rights to a new organization.
+Some of the directors prudently insisted on reserving the right to
+withdraw their proposals should they change their minds. It may be
+stated, however, that they had no temptation to do so. Times rapidly
+grew worse instead of better.
+
+But Keith had occasion to know how sound was Squire Rawson's judgment
+when, a little later, another of the recurrent waves of depression swept
+over the country, and several banks in New Leeds went down, among them
+the bank in which old Rawson had had his money. The old man came up to
+town to remind Keith of his wisdom.
+
+"Well, what do you think of brass and credulity now?" he demanded.
+
+"Let me know when you begin to prophesy against me," said Keith,
+laughing.
+
+"'Tain't no prophecy. It's jest plain sense. Some folks has it and some
+hasn't. When sense tells you a thing, hold on to it.
+
+"Well, you jest go ahead and git things in shape, and don't bother about
+me. No use bein' in a hurry, neither. I have observed that when times
+gits bad, they generally gits worse. It's sorter like a fever; you've
+got to wait for the crisis and jest kind o' nurse 'em along. But I don't
+reckon that coal is goin' to run away. It has been there some time,
+accordin' to what that young man used to say, and if it was worth what
+they gin for it a few years ago, it's goin' to be worth more a few years
+hence. When a wheel keeps turnin', the bottom's got to come up sometime,
+and if we can stick we'll be there. I think you and I make a pretty good
+team. You let me furnish the ideas and you do the work, and we'll come
+out ahead o' some o' these Yankees yet. Jest hold your horses; keep
+things in good shape, and be ready to start when the horn blows. It's
+goin' to blow sometime."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The clouds that had begun to rest in Norman Wentworth's eyes and the
+lines that had written themselves in his face were not those of business
+alone. Fate had brought him care of a deeper and sadder kind. Though
+Keith did not know it till later, the little rift within the lute, that
+he had felt, but had not understood, that first evening when he dined at
+Norman's house, had widened, and Norman's life was beginning to be
+overcast with the saddest of all clouds. Miss Abigail's keen intuition
+had discovered the flaw. Mrs. Wentworth had fallen a victim to her
+folly. Love of pleasure, love of admiration, love of display, had become
+a part of Mrs. Wentworth's life, and she was beginning to reap the
+fruits of her ambition.
+
+For a time it was mighty amusing to her. To shop all morning, make the
+costliest purchases; to drive on the avenue or in the Park of an
+afternoon with the latest and most stylish turnout, in the handsomest
+toilet; to give the finest dinners; to spend the evening in the most
+expensive box; to cause men to open their eyes with admiration, and to
+make women grave with envy: all this gave her delight for a time--so
+much delight that she could not forego it even for her husband. Norman
+was so occupied of late that he could not go about with her as much as
+he had done. His father's health had failed, and then he had died,
+throwing all the business on Norman.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham had returned home from abroad not long before--alone.
+Rumor had connected his name while abroad with some woman--an unknown
+and very pretty woman had "travelled with him." Ferdy, being rallied by
+his friends about it, shook his head. "Must have been some one else."
+Grinnell Rhodes, who had met him, said she declared herself his wife.
+Ferdy's denial was most conclusive--he simply laughed.
+
+To Mrs. Wentworth he had told a convincing tale. It was a slander.
+Norman was against him, he knew, but she, at least, would believe he had
+been maligned.
+
+Wickersham had waited for such a time in the affairs of Mrs. Wentworth.
+He had watched for it; striven to bring it about in many almost
+imperceptible ways; had tendered her sympathy; had been ready with help
+as she needed it; till he began to believe that he was making some
+impression. It was, of all the games he played, the dearest just now to
+his heart. It had a double zest. It had appeared to the world that
+Norman Wentworth had defeated him. He had always defeated him--first as
+a boy, then at college, and later when he had borne off the prize for
+which Ferdy had really striven. Ferdy would now show who was the real
+victor. If Louise Caldwell had passed him by for Norman Wentworth, he
+would prove that he still possessed her heart.
+
+It was not long, therefore, before society found a delightful topic of
+conversation,--that silken-clad portion of society which usually deals
+with such topics,--the increasing intimacy between Ferdy Wickersham and
+Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+Tales were told of late visits; of strolls in the dusk of evenings on
+unfrequented streets; of little suppers after the opera; of all the
+small things that deviltry can suggest and malignity distort. Wickersham
+cared little for having his name associated with that of any one, and he
+was certainly not going to be more careful for another's name than for
+his own. He had grown more reckless since his return, but it had not
+injured him with his set. It flattered his pride to be credited with
+the conquest of so cold and unapproachable a Diana as Louise Wentworth.
+
+"What was more natural?" said Mrs. Nailor. After all, Ferdy Wickersham
+was her real romance, and she was his, notwithstanding all the
+attentions he had paid Alice Yorke. "Besides," said the amiable lady,
+"though Norman Wentworth undoubtedly lavishes large sums on his wife,
+and gives her the means to gratify her extravagant tastes, I have
+observed that he is seen quite as much with Mrs. Lancaster as with her,
+and any woman of spirit will resent this. You need not tell me that he
+would be so complacent over all that driving and strolling and
+box-giving that Ferdy does for her if he did not find his divertisement
+elsewhere."
+
+Mrs. Nailor even went to the extent of rallying Ferdy on the subject.
+
+"You are a naughty boy. You have no right to go around here making women
+fall in love with you as you do," she said, with that pretended reproof
+which is a real encouragement.
+
+"One might suppose I was like David, who slew his tens of thousands,"
+answered Ferdy. "Which of my victims are you attempting to rescue?"
+
+"You know?"
+
+As Ferdy shook his head, she explained further.
+
+"I don't say that it isn't natural she should find you
+more--more--sympathetic than a man who is engrossed in business when he
+is not engrossed in dangling about a pair of blue eyes; but you ought
+not to do it. Think of her."
+
+"I thought you objected to my thinking of her?" said Mr. Wickersham,
+lightly.
+
+Mrs. Nailor tapped him with her fan to show her displeasure.
+
+"You are so provoking. Why won't you be serious?"
+
+"Serious? I never was more serious in my life. Suppose I tell you I
+think of her all the time?" He looked at her keenly, then broke into a
+laugh as he read her delight in the speech. "Don't you think I am
+competent to attend to my own affairs, even if Louise Caldwell is the
+soft and unsophisticated creature you would make her? I am glad you did
+not feel it necessary to caution me about her husband?" His eyes gave
+a flash.
+
+Mrs. Nailor hastened to put herself right--that is, on the side of the
+one present, for with her the absent was always in the wrong.
+
+Wickersham improved his opportunities with the ability of a veteran.
+Little by little he excited Mrs. Wentworth's jealousy. Norman, he said,
+necessarily saw a great deal of Alice Lancaster, for he was her business
+agent. It was, perhaps, not necessary for him to see her every day, but
+it was natural that he should. The arrow stuck and rankled. And later,
+at an entertainment, when she saw Norman laughing and enjoying himself
+in a group of old friends, among whom was Alice Lancaster, Mrs. Norman
+was on fire with suspicion, and her attitude toward Alice
+Lancaster changed.
+
+So, before Norman was aware of it, he found life completely changed for
+him. As a boatman on a strange shore in the night-time drifts without
+knowing of it, he, in the absorption of his business, drifted away from
+his old relation without marking the process. His wife had her life and
+friends, and he had his. He made at times an effort to recover the old
+relation, but she was too firmly held in the grip of the life she had
+chosen for him to get her back.
+
+His wife complained that he was out of sympathy with her, and he could
+not deny it. She resented this, and charged him with neglecting her. No
+man will stand such a charge, and Norman defended himself hotly.
+
+"I do not think it lies in your mouth to make such a charge," he said,
+with a flash in his eye. "I am nearly always at home when I am not
+necessarily absent. You can hardly say as much. I do not think my worst
+enemy would charge me with that. Even Ferdy Wickersham would not
+say that."
+
+She fired at the name.
+
+"You are always attacking my friends," she declared. "I think they are
+quite as good as yours."
+
+Norman turned away. He looked gloomily out of the window for a moment,
+and then faced his wife again.
+
+"Louise," he said gravely, "if I have been hard and unsympathetic, I
+have not meant to be. Why can't we start all over again? You are more
+than all the rest of the world to me. I will give up whatever you object
+to, and you give up what I object to. That is a good way to begin." His
+eyes had a look of longing in them, but Mrs. Wentworth did not respond.
+
+"You will insist on my giving up my friends," she said.
+
+"Your friends? I do not insist on your giving up any friend on earth.
+Mrs. Nailor and her like are not your friends. They spend their time
+tearing to pieces the characters of others when you are present, and
+your character when you are absent. Wickersham is incapable of being
+a friend."
+
+"You are always so unjust to him," said Mrs. Wentworth, warmly.
+
+"I am not unjust to him. I have known him all my life, and I tell you he
+would sacrifice any one and every one to his pleasure."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth began to defend him warmly, and so the quarrel ended
+worse than it had begun.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+MRS. CREAMER'S BALL
+
+The next few years passed as the experience of old Rawson had led him to
+predict. Fortunes went down; but Fortune's wheel is always turning, and,
+as the old countryman said, "those that could stick would come up on
+top again."
+
+Keith, however, had prospered. He had got the Rawson mine to running
+again, and even in the hardest times had been able to make it pay
+expenses. Other properties had failed and sold out, and had been bought
+in by Keith's supporters, when Wickersham once more appeared in New
+Leeds affairs. It was rumored that Wickersham was going to start again.
+Old Adam Rawson's face grew dark at the rumor. He said to Keith:
+
+"If that young man comes down here, it's him or me. I'm an old man, and
+I ain't got long to live; but I want to live to meet him once. If he's
+got any friends, they'd better tell him not to come." He sat glowering
+and puffing his pipe morosely.
+
+Keith tried to soothe him; but the old fellow had received a wound that
+knew no healing.
+
+"I know all you say, and I'm much obliged to you; but I can't accept it.
+It's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth with me. He has entered
+my home and struck me in the dark. Do you think I done all I have done
+jest for the money I was makin'! No; I wanted revenge. I have set on my
+porch of a night and seen her wanderin' about in them fureign cities,
+all alone, trampin' the streets--trampin', trampin', trampin'; tired,
+and, maybe, sick and hungry, not able to ask them outlandish folks for
+even a piece of bread--her that used to set on my knee and hug me with
+her little arms and call me granddad, and claim all the little calves
+for hers--jest the little ones; and that I've ridden many a mile over
+the mountains for, thinkin' how she was goin' to run out to meet me when
+I got home. And now even my old dog's dead--died after she went away.
+
+"No!" he broke out fiercely. "If he comes back here, it's him or me! By
+the Lord! if he comes back here, I'll pay him the debt I owe him. If
+she's his wife, I'll make her a widow, and if she ain't, I'll
+revenge her."
+
+He mopped the beads of sweat that had broken out on his brow, and
+without a word stalked out of the door.
+
+But Ferdy Wickersham had no idea of returning to New Leeds. He found New
+York quite interesting enough for him about this time.
+
+The breach between Norman and his wife had grown of late.
+
+Gossip divided the honors between them, and some said it was on Ferdy
+Wickersham's account; others declared that it was Mrs. Lancaster who had
+come between them. Yet others said it was a matter of money--that Norman
+had become tired of his wife's extravagance and had refused to stand it
+any longer.
+
+Keith knew vaguely of the trouble between Norman and his wife; but he
+did not know the extent of it, and he studiously kept up his friendly
+relations with her as well as with Norman. His business took him to New
+York from time to time, and he was sensible that the life there was
+growing more and more attractive for him. He was fitting into it too,
+and enjoying it more and more. He was like a strong swimmer who, used to
+battling in heavy waves, grows stronger with the struggle, and finds
+ever new enjoyment and courage in his endeavor. He felt that he was now
+quite a man of the world. He was aware that his point of view had
+changed and (a little) that he had changed. As flattering as was his
+growth in New Leeds, he had a much more infallible evidence of his
+success in the favor with which he was being received in New York.
+
+The favor that Mrs. Lancaster had shown Keith, and, much more, old Mrs.
+Wentworth's friendship, had a marked effect throughout their whole
+circle of acquaintance. That a man had been invited to these houses
+meant that he must be something. There were women who owned large
+houses, wore priceless jewels, cruised in their own yachts, had their
+own villas on ground as valuable as that which fronted the Roman Forum
+in old days, who would almost have licked the marble steps of those
+mansions to be admitted to sit at their dinner-tables and have their
+names appear in the Sunday issues of the newly established society
+journals among the blessed few. So, as soon as it appeared that Gordon
+was not only an acquaintance, but a friend of these critical leaders,
+women who had looked over his head as they drove up the avenue, and had
+just tucked their chins and lowered their eyelids when he had been
+presented, began to give him invitations. Among these was Mrs. Nailor.
+Truly, the world appeared warmer and kinder than Keith had thought.
+
+To be sure, it was at Mrs. Lancaster's that Mrs. Nailor met him, and
+Keith was manifestly on very friendly terms with the pretty widow. Even
+Mrs. Yorke, who was present on the occasion with her "heart," was
+impressively cordial to him. Mrs. Nailor had no idea of being left out.
+She almost gushed with affection, as she made a place beside her on
+a divan.
+
+"You do not come to see all your friends," she said, with her winningest
+smile and her most bird-like voice. "You appear to forget that you have
+other old friends in New York besides Mrs. Lancaster and Mrs. Yorke.
+Alice dear, you must not be selfish and engross all his time. You must
+let him come and see me, at least, sometimes. Yes?" This with a
+peculiarly innocent smile and tone.
+
+Keith declared that he was in New York very rarely, and Mrs. Lancaster,
+with a slightly heightened color, repudiated the idea that she had
+anything to do with his movements.
+
+"Oh, I hear of you here very often," declared Mrs. Nailor, roguishly. "I
+have a little bird that brings me all the news about my friends."
+
+"A little bird, indeed!" said Alice to herself, and to Keith later.
+"I'll be bound she has not. If she had a bird, the old cat would have
+eaten it."
+
+"You are going to the Creamers' ball, of course?" pursued Mrs. Nailor.
+
+No, Keith said: he was not going; he had been in New York only two days,
+and, somehow, his advent had been overlooked. He was always finding
+himself disappointed by discovering that New York was still a larger
+place than New Leeds.
+
+"Oh, but you must go! We must get you an invitation, mustn't we, Alice?"
+Mrs. Nailor was always ready to promise anything, provided she could
+make her engagement in partnership and then slip out and leave the
+performance to her friend.
+
+"Why, yes; there is not the least trouble about getting an invitation.
+Mrs. Nailor can get you one easily."
+
+Keith looked acquiescent.
+
+"No, my dear; you write the note. You know Mrs. Creamer every bit as
+well as I," protested Mrs. Nailor, "and I have already asked for at
+least a dozen. There are Mrs. Wyndham and Lady Stobbs, who were here
+last winter; and that charming Lord Huckster, who was at Newport last
+summer; and I don't know how many more--so you will have to get the
+invitation for Mr. Keith."
+
+Keith, with some amusement, declared that he did not wish any trouble
+taken; he had only said he would go because Mrs. Nailor had appeared to
+desire it so much.
+
+Next morning an invitation reached Keith,--he thought he knew through
+whose intervention,--and he accepted it.
+
+That evening, as Keith, about dusk, was going up the avenue on his way
+home, a young girl passed him, walking very briskly. She paused for a
+moment just ahead of him to give some money to a poor woman who, doubled
+up on the pavement in a black shawl, was grinding out from a wheezy
+little organ a thin, dirge-like strain.
+
+"Good evening. I hope you feel better to-day," Keith heard her say in a
+kind tone, though he lost all of the other's reply except the "God
+bless you."
+
+She was simply dressed in a plain, dark walking-suit, and something
+about her quick, elastic step and slim, trim figure as she sailed along,
+looking neither to the right nor to the left, attracted his attention.
+Her head was set on her shoulders in a way that gave her quite an air,
+and as she passed under a lamp the light showed the flash of a fine
+profile and an unusual face. She carried a parcel in her hand that might
+have been a roll of music, and from the lateness of the hour Keith
+fancied her a shop-girl on her way home, or possibly a music-teacher.
+
+Stirred by the glimpse of the refined face, and even more by the
+carriage of the little head under the dainty hat, Keith quickened his
+pace to obtain another glance at her. He had almost overtaken her when
+she stopped in front of a well-lighted window of a music-store. The
+light that fell on her face revealed to him a face of unusual beauty.
+Something about her graceful pose as, with her dark brows slightly
+knitted, she bent forward and scanned intently the pieces of music
+within, awakened old associations in Keith's mind, and sent him back to
+his boyhood at Elphinstone. And under an impulse, which he could better
+justify to himself than to her, he did a very audacious and improper
+thing. Taking off his hat, he spoke to her. She had been so absorbed
+that for a moment she did not comprehend that it was she he was
+addressing. Then, as it came to her that it was she to whom this
+stranger was speaking, she drew herself up and gave him a look of such
+withering scorn that Keith felt himself shrink. Next second, with her
+head high in the air, she had turned without a word and sped up the
+street, leaving Keith feeling very cheap and subdued.
+
+But that glance from dark eyes flashing with indignation had filled
+Keith with a sensation to which he had long been a stranger. Something
+about the simple dress, the high-bred face with its fine scorn;
+something about the patrician air of mingled horror and contempt, had
+suddenly cleaved through the worldly crust that had been encasing him
+for some time, and reaching his better self, awakened an emotion that he
+had thought gone forever. It was like a lightning-flash in the darkness.
+He knew that she had entered his life. His resolution was taken on the
+instant. He would meet her, and if she were what she looked to be--again
+Elphinstone and his youth swept into his mind. He already was conscious
+of a sense of protection; he felt curiously that he had the right to
+protect her. If he had addressed her, might not others do so? The
+thought made his blood boil. He almost wished that some one would
+attempt it, that he might assert his right to show her what he was, and
+thus retrieve himself in her eyes. Besides, he must know where she
+lived. So he followed her at a respectful distance till she ran up the
+steps of one of the better class of houses and disappeared within. He
+was too far off to be able to tell which house it was that she entered,
+but it was in the same block with Norman Wentworth's house.
+
+Keith walked the avenue that night for a long time, pondering how he
+should find and explain his conduct to the young music-teacher, for a
+music-teacher he had decided she must be. The next evening, too, he
+strolled for an hour on the avenue, scanning from a distance every fair
+passer-by, but he saw nothing of her.
+
+Mrs. Creamer's balls were, as Norman had once said, _the_ balls of the
+season. "Only the rich and the noble were expected."
+
+Mrs. Creamer's house was one of the great, new, brown-stone mansions
+which had been built within the past ten years upon "the avenue." It had
+cost a fortune. Within, it was so sumptuous that a special work has been
+"gotten up," printed, and published by subscription, of its "art
+treasures," furniture, and upholstery.
+
+Into this palatial residence--for flattery could not have called it a
+home--Keith was admitted, along with some hundreds of other guests.
+
+To-night it was filled with, not flowers exactly, but with floral
+decorations; for the roses and orchids were lost in the
+designs--garlands, circles, and banks formed of an infinite number
+of flowers.
+
+Mrs. Creamer, a large, handsome woman with good shoulders, stood just
+inside the great drawing-room. She was gorgeously attired and shone with
+diamonds until the eyes ached with her splendor. Behind her stood Mr.
+Creamer, looking generally mightily bored. Now and then he smiled and
+shook hands with the guests, at times drawing a friend out of the line
+back into the rear for a chat, then relapsing again into indifference
+or gloom.
+
+Keith was presented to Mrs. Creamer. She only nodded to him. Keith moved
+on. He soon discovered that a cordial greeting to a strange guest was no
+part of the convention in that society. One or two acquaintances spoke
+to him, but he was introduced to no one; so he sauntered about and
+entertained himself observing the people. The women were in their best,
+and it was good.
+
+Keith was passing from one room to another when he became aware that a
+man, who was standing quite still in the doorway, was, like himself,
+watching the crowd. His face was turned away; but something about the
+compact figure and firm chin was familiar to him. Keith moved to take a
+look at his face. It was Dave Dennison.
+
+He had a twinkle in his eye as he said: "Didn't expect to see me here?"
+
+"Didn't expect to see myself here," said Keith.
+
+"I'm one of the swells now"; and Dave glanced down at his expensive
+shirt-front and his evening suit with complacency. "Wouldn't Jake give a
+lot to have such a bosom as that? I think I look just as well as some of
+'em?" he queried, with a glance about him.
+
+Keith thought so too. "You are dressed for the part," he said. Keith's
+look of interest inspired him to go on.
+
+"You see, 'tain't like 'tis down with us, where you know everybody, and
+everything about him, to the number of drinks he can carry."
+
+"Well, what do you do here?" asked Keith, who was trying to follow Mr.
+Dennison's calm eye as, from time to time, it swept the rooms, resting
+here and there on a face or following a hand. He was evidently not
+merely a guest.
+
+"Detective."
+
+"A detective!" exclaimed Keith.
+
+Dave nodded. "Yes; watchin' the guests, to see they don't carry off each
+other. It is the new ones that puzzle us for a while," he added. "Now,
+there is a lady acting very mysteriously over there." His eye swept over
+the room and then visited, in that casual way it had, some one in the
+corner across the room. "I don't just seem to make her out. She looks
+all right--but--?"
+
+Keith followed the glance, and the blood rushed to his face and then
+surged back again to his heart, for there, standing against the wall,
+was the young girl whom he had spoken to on the street a few evenings
+before, who had given him so merited a rebuff. She was a
+patrician-looking creature and was standing quite alone, observing the
+scene with keen interest. Her girlish figure was slim; her eyes, under
+straight dark brows, were beautiful; and her mouth was almost perfect.
+Her fresh face expressed unfeigned interest, and though generally grave
+as she glanced about her, she smiled at times, evidently at her
+own thoughts.
+
+"I don't just make her out," repeated Mr. Dennison, softly. "I never saw
+her before, as I remember, and yet--!" He looked at her again.
+
+"Why, I do not see that she is acting at all mysteriously," said Keith.
+"I think she is a music-teacher. She is about the prettiest girl in the
+room. She may be a stranger, like myself, as no one is talking to her."
+
+"Don't no stranger git in here," said Mr. Dennison, decisively. "You see
+how different she is from the others. Most of them don't think about
+anything but themselves. She ain't thinkin' about herself at all; she is
+watchin' others. She may be a reporter--she appears mighty interested
+in clothes."
+
+"A reporter!"
+
+The surprise in Keith's tone amused his old pupil. "Yes, a sassiety
+reporter. They have curious ways here. Why, they pay money to git
+themselves in the paper."
+
+Just then so black a look came into his face for a second that Keith
+turned and followed his glance. It rested on Ferdy Wickersham, who was
+passing at a little distance, with Mrs. Wentworth on his arm.
+
+"There's one I am watchin' on my own account," said the detective. "I'm
+comin' up with him, and some day I'm goin' to light on him." His eye
+gave a flash and then became as calm and cold as usual. Presently he
+spoke again:
+
+"I don't forgit nothin'--'pears like I can't do it." His voice had a new
+subtone in it, which somehow sent Keith's memory back to the past. "I
+don't forgit a kindness, anyway," he said, laying his hand for a second
+on Keith's arm. "Well, see you later, sir." He moved slowly on. Keith
+was glad that patient enemy was not following him.
+
+Keith's inspection of the young girl had inflamed his interest. It was
+an unusual face--high-bred and fine. Humor lurked about the corners of
+her mouth; but resolution also might be read there. And Keith knew how
+those big, dark eyes could flash. And she was manifestly having a good
+time all to herself. She was dressed much more simply than any other
+woman he saw, in a plain muslin dress; but she made a charming picture
+as she stood against the wall, her dark eyes alight with interest. Her
+brown hair was drawn back from a brow of snowy whiteness, and her little
+head was set on her shoulders in a way that recalled to Keith an old
+picture. She would have had an air of distinction in any company. Here
+she shone like a jewel.
+
+Keith's heart went out to her. At sight of her his youth appeared to
+flood over him again. Keith fancied that she looked weary, for every now
+and then she lifted her head and glanced about the rooms as though
+looking for some one. A sense of protection swept over him. He must meet
+her. But how? She did not appear to know any one. Finally he determined
+on a bold expedient. If he succeeded it would give him a chance to
+recover himself as nothing else could; if he failed he could but fail.
+So he made his way over to her. But it was with a beating heart.
+
+"You look tired. Won't you let me get you a chair?" His voice sounded
+strange even to himself.
+
+"No, thank you; I am not tired." She thanked him civilly enough, but
+scarcely looked at him. "But I should like a glass of water."
+
+"It is the only liquid I believe I cannot get you," said Keith. "There
+are three places where water is scarce: the desert, a ball-room, and the
+other place where Dives was."
+
+She drew herself up a little.
+
+"But I will try," he added, and went off. On his return with a glass of
+water, she took it.
+
+As she handed the glass back to him, she glanced at him, and he caught
+her eye. Her head went up, and she flushed to the roots of her
+brown hair.
+
+"Oh!--I beg your pardon! I--I--really--I don't--Thank you very much. I
+am very sorry." She turned away stiffly.
+
+"Why?" said Keith, flushing in spite of himself. "You have done me a
+favor in enabling me to wait on you. May I introduce myself? And then I
+will get some one to do it in person--Mrs. Lancaster or Mrs. Wentworth.
+They will vouch for me."
+
+The girl looked up at him, at first with a hostile expression on her
+face, which changed suddenly to one of wonder.
+
+"Isn't this Gordon Keith?"
+
+Gordon's eyes opened wide. How could she know him?
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You don't know me?" Her eyes were dancing now, and two dimples were
+flitting about her mouth. Keith's memory began to stir. She put her head
+on one side.
+
+"'Lois, if you'll kiss me I'll let you ride my horse,'" she said
+cajolingly.
+
+"Lois Huntington! It can't be!" exclaimed Keith, delighted. "You are
+just so high." Keith measured a height just above his left watch-pocket.
+"And you have long hair down your back."
+
+With a little twist she turned her head and showed him a head of
+beautiful brown hair done up in a Grecian knot just above the nape of a
+shapely little neck.
+
+"--And you have the brightest--"
+
+She dropped her eyes before his, which were looking right into
+them--though not until she had given a little flash from them, perhaps
+to establish their identity.
+
+"--And you used to say I was your sw--"
+
+"Did I?" (this was very demurely said). "How old was I then?"
+
+"How old are you now?"
+
+"Eighteen," with a slight straightening of the slim figure.
+
+"Impossible!" exclaimed Keith, enjoying keenly the picture she made.
+
+"All of it," with a flash of the eyes.
+
+"For me you are just all of seven years old."
+
+"Do you know who I thought you were?" Her face dimpled.
+
+"Yes; a waiter!"
+
+She nodded brightly.
+
+"It was my good manners. The waiters have struck me much this evening,"
+said Keith.
+
+She smiled, and the dimples appeared again.
+
+"That is their business. They are paid for it."
+
+"Oh, I see. Is that the reason others are--what they are? Well, I am
+more than paid. My recompense is--you."
+
+She looked pleased. "You are the first person I have met!--Did you have
+any idea who I was the other evening?" she asked suddenly.
+
+Keith would have given five years of his life to be able to answer yes.
+But he said no. "I only knew you were some one who needed protection,"
+he said, trying to make the best of a bad situation. You are too young
+to be on the street so late."
+
+"So it appeared. I had been out for a walk to see old Dr. Templeton and
+to get a piece of music, and it was later than I thought."
+
+"Whom are you here with?" inquired Keith, to get off of delicate ground.
+"Where are you staying?"
+
+"With my cousin, Mrs. Norman Wentworth. It is my first introduction into
+New York life."
+
+Just then there was a movement toward the supper-room.
+
+Keith suggested that they should go and find Mrs. Norman. Miss
+Huntington said, however, she thought she had better remain where she
+was, as Mrs. Norman had promised to come back.
+
+"I hope she will invite you to join our party," she said naïvely.
+
+"If she does not, I will invite you both to join mine," declared Keith.
+"I have no idea of letting you escape for another dozen years."
+
+Just then, however, Mrs. Norman appeared. She was with Ferdy Wickersham,
+who, on seeing Keith, looked away coldly. She smiled, greatly surprised
+to find Keith there. "Why, where did you two know each other?"
+
+They explained.
+
+"I saw you were pleasantly engaged, so I did not think it necessary to
+hasten back," she said to Lois.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham said something to her in an undertone, and she held out
+her hand to the girl.
+
+"Come, we are to join a party in the supper-room. We shall see you after
+supper, Mr. Keith?"
+
+Keith said he hoped so. He was conscious of a sudden wave of
+disappointment sweeping over him as the three left him. The young girl
+gave him a bright smile.
+
+Later, as he passed by, he saw only Ferdy Wickersham with Mrs. Norman.
+Lois Huntington was at another table, so Keith joined her.
+
+After the supper there was to be a novel kind of entertainment: a sort
+of vaudeville show in which were to figure a palmist, a gentleman set
+down in the programme with its gilt printing as the "Celebrated
+Professor Cheireman"; several singers; a couple of acrobatic performers;
+and a danseuse: "Mlle. Terpsichore."
+
+The name struck Keith with something of sadness. It recalled old
+associations, some of them pleasant, some of them sad. And as he stood
+near Lois Huntington, on the edge of the throng that filled the large
+apartment where the stage had been constructed, during the first three
+or four numbers he was rather more in Gumbolt than in that gay company
+in that brilliant room.
+
+"Professor Cheireman" had shown the wonders of the trained hand and the
+untrained mind in a series of tricks that would certainly be wonderful
+did not so many men perform them. Mlle. de Voix performed hardly less
+wonders with her voice, running up and down the scale like a squirrel
+in a cage, introducing trills into songs where there were none, and
+making the simplest melodies appear as intricate as pieces of opera. The
+Burlystone Brothers jumped over and skipped under each other in a
+marvellous and "absolutely unrivalled manner." And presently the
+danseuse appeared.
+
+Keith was standing against the wall thinking of Terpy and the old hail
+with its paper hangings in Gumbolt, and its benches full of eager,
+jovial spectators, when suddenly there was a roll of applause, and he
+found himself in Gumbolt. From the side on which he stood walked out his
+old friend, Terpy herself. He had not been able to see her until she was
+well out on the stage and was making her bow. The next second she
+began to dance.
+
+After the first greeting given her, a silence fell on the room, the best
+tribute they could pay to her art, her grace, her abandon. Nothing so
+audacious had ever been seen by certainly half the assemblage. Casting
+aside the old tricks of the danseuse, the tipping and pirouetting and
+grimacing for applause, the dancer seemed oblivious of her audience and
+as though she were trying to excel herself. She swayed and swung and
+swept from side to side as though on wings.
+
+Round after round of applause swept over the room. Men were talking in
+undertones to each other; women buzzed behind their fans.
+
+She stopped, panting and flushed with pride, and with a certain scorn in
+her face and mien glanced over the audience. Just as she was poising
+herself for another effort, her eye reached the side of the room where
+Keith stood just beside Miss Huntington. A change passed over her face.
+She nodded, hesitated for a second, and then began again. She failed to
+catch the time of the music and danced out of time. A titter came from
+the rear of the room. She looked in that direction, and Keith did the
+same. Ferdy Wickersham, with a malevolent gleam in his eye, was
+laughing. The dancer flushed deeply, frowned, lost her self-possession,
+and stopped. A laugh of derision sounded at the rear.
+
+"For shame! It is shameful!" said Lois Huntington in a low voice to
+Keith.
+
+"It is. The cowardly scoundrel!" He turned and scowled at Ferdy.
+
+At the sound, Terpy took a step toward the front, and bending forward,
+swept the audience with her flashing eyes.
+
+"Put that man out."
+
+A buzz of astonishment and laughter greeted her outbreak.
+
+"Cackle, you fools!"
+
+She turned to the musicians.
+
+"Play that again and play it right, or I'll wring your necks!"
+
+She began to dance again, and soon danced as she had done at first.
+
+Applause was beginning again; but at the sound she stopped, looked over
+the audience disdainfully, and turning, walked coolly from the stage.
+
+"Who is she?" "Well, did you ever see anything like that!" "Well, I
+never did!" "The insolent creature!" "By Jove! she can dance if she
+chooses!" buzzed over the room.
+
+"Good for her," said Keith, his face full of admiration.
+
+"Did you know her?" asked Miss Huntington.
+
+"Well."
+
+The girl said nothing, but she stiffened and changed color slightly.
+
+"You know her, too," said Keith.
+
+"I! I do not."
+
+"Do you remember once, when you were a tot over in England, giving your
+doll to a little dancing-girl?--When your governess was in such
+a temper?"
+
+Lois nodded.
+
+"That is she. She used to live in New Leeds. She was almost the only
+woman in Gumbolt when I went there. Had a man laughed at her there then,
+he would never have left the room alive. Mr. Wickersham tried it once,
+and came near getting his neck broken for it. He is getting even
+with her now."
+
+As the girl glanced up at him, his face was full of suppressed feeling.
+A pang shot through her.
+
+Just then the entertainment broke up and the guests began to leave. Mrs.
+Wentworth beckoned to Lois. Wickersham was still with her.
+
+"I will not trust myself to go within speaking distance of him now,"
+said Keith; "so I will say good-by, here." He made his adieus somewhat
+hurriedly, and moved off as Mrs. Wentworth approached.
+
+Wickersham, who, so long as Keith remained with Miss Huntington, had
+kept aloof, and was about to say good night to Mrs. Wentworth, had, on
+seeing Keith turn away, followed Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+Every one was still chatting of the episode of the young virago.
+
+"Well, what did you think of your friend's friend?" asked Wickersham of
+Lois.
+
+"Of whom?"
+
+"Of your friend Mr. Keith's young lady. She is an old flame of his," he
+said, turning to Mrs. Wentworth and speaking in an undertone, just loud
+enough for Lois to hear. "They have run her out of New Leeds, and I
+think he is trying to force her on the people here. He has cheek enough
+to do anything; but I think to-night will about settle him."
+
+"I do not know very much about such things; but I think she dances very
+well," said Lois, with heightened color, moved to defend the girl under
+an instinct of opposition to Wickersham.
+
+"So your friend thinks, or thought some time ago," said Wickersham. "My
+dear girl, she can't dance at all. She is simply a disreputable young
+woman, who has been run out of her own town, as she ought to be run out
+of this, as an impostor, if nothing else." He turned to Mrs. Wentworth:
+"A man who brought such a woman to a place like this ought to be kicked
+out of town."
+
+"If you are speaking of Mr. Keith, I don't believe that of him," said
+Lois, coldly.
+
+Wickersham looked at her for a moment. A curious light was in his eyes
+as he said:
+
+"I am not referring to any one. I am simply generalizing." He shrugged
+his shoulders and turned away.
+
+As Mrs. Wentworth and Lois entered their carriage, a gentleman was
+helping some one into a hack just behind Mrs. Wentworth's carriage. The
+light fell on them at the moment that Lois stepped forward, and she
+recognized Mr. Keith and the dancer, Mile. Terpsichore. He was handing
+her in with all the deference that he would have shown the highest lady
+in the land.
+
+Lois Huntington drove home in a maze. Life appeared to have changed
+twice for her in a single evening. Out of that crowd of strangers had
+come one who seemed to be a part of her old life. They had taken each
+other up just where they had parted. The long breach in their lives had
+been bridged. He had seemed the old friend and champion of her
+childhood, who, since her aunt had revived her recollection of him, had
+been a sort of romantic hero in her dreams. Their meeting had been such
+as she had sometimes pictured to herself it would be. She believed him
+finer, higher, than others. Then, suddenly, she had found that the
+vision was but an idol of clay. All that her aunt had said of him had
+been dashed to pieces in a trice.
+
+He was not worthy of her notice. He was not a gentleman. He was what Mr.
+Wickersham had called him. He had boasted to her of his intimacy with a
+common dancing-girl. He had left her to fly to her and escort her home.
+
+As Keith had left the house, Terpsichore had come out of the side
+entrance, and they had met. Keith was just wondering how he could find
+her, and he considered the meeting a fortunate one. She was in a state
+of extreme agitation. It was the first time that she had undertaken to
+dance at such an entertainment. She had refused, but had been
+over-persuaded, and she declared it was all a plot between Wickersham
+and her manager to ruin her. She would be even with them both, if she
+had to take a pistol to right her wrongs.
+
+Keith had little idea that the chief motive of her acceptance had been
+the hope that she might find him among the company. He did what he could
+to soothe her, and having made a promise to call upon her, he bade her
+good-by, happily ignorant of the interpretation which she who had
+suddenly sprung uppermost in his thoughts had, upon Wickersham's
+instigation, put upon his action.
+
+Keith walked home with a feeling to which he had been long a stranger.
+He was somehow happier than he had been in years. A young girl had
+changed the whole entertainment for him--the whole city--almost his
+whole outlook on life. He had not felt this way for years--not since
+Alice Yorke had darkened life for him. Could love be for him again?
+
+The dial appeared to have turned back for him. He felt younger, fresher,
+more hopeful. He walked out into the street and tried to look up at the
+stars. The houses obscured them; they were hardly visible. The city
+streets were no place for stars and sentiment. He would go through the
+park and see them. So he strolled along and turned into a park. The
+gas-lamps shed a yellow glow on the trees, making circles of feeble
+light on the walks, and the shadows lay deep on the ground. Most of the
+benches were vacant; but here and there a waif or a belated homegoer sat
+in drowsy isolation. The stars were too dim even from this
+vantage-ground to afford Keith much satisfaction. His thoughts flew back
+to the mountains and the great blue canopy overhead, spangled with
+stars, and a blue-eyed girl amid pillows whom he used to worship. An
+arid waste of years cut them off from the present, and his thoughts
+came back to a sweet-faced girl with dark eyes, claiming him as her old
+friend. She appeared to be the old ideal rather than the former.
+
+All next day Keith thought of Lois Huntington. He wanted to go and see
+her but he waited until the day after. He would not appear too eager.
+
+He called at Norman's office for the pleasure of talking of her; but
+Norman was still absent. The following afternoon he called at Norman's
+house. The servant said Mrs. Norman was out.
+
+"Miss Huntington?"
+
+"She left this morning."
+
+Keith walked up the street feeling rather blank. That night he started
+for the South. But Lois Huntington was much in his thoughts. He wondered
+if life would open for him again. When a man wonders about this, life
+has already opened.
+
+By the time he reached New Leeds, he had already made up his mind to
+write and ask Miss Abby for an invitation to Brookford, and he wrote his
+father a full account of the girl he had known as a child, over which
+the old General beamed.
+
+He forgave people toward whom he had hard feelings. The world was better
+than he had been accounting it. He even considered more leniently than
+he had done Mrs. Wentworth's allowing Ferdy Wickersham to hang around
+her. It suddenly flashed on him that, perhaps, Ferdy was in love with
+Lois Huntington. Crash! went his kind feelings, his kind thoughts. The
+idea of Ferdy making love to that pure, sweet, innocent creature! It was
+horrible! Her innocence, her charming friendliness, her sweetness, all
+swept over him, and he thrilled with a sense of protection.
+
+Could he have known what Wickersham had done to poison her against him,
+he would have been yet more enraged. As it was, Lois was at that time
+back at her old home; but with how different feelings from those which
+she had had but a few days before! Sometimes she hated Keith, or, at
+least, declared to herself that she hated him; and at others she
+defended him against her own charge. And more and more she truly hated
+Wickersham.
+
+"So you met Mr. Keith?" said her aunt, abruptly, a day or two after her
+return. "How did you like him?"
+
+"I did not like him," said Lois, briefly, closing her lips with a snap,
+as if to keep the blood out of her cheeks.
+
+"What! you did not like him? Girls are strange creatures nowadays. In my
+time, a girl--a girl like you--would have thought him the very pink of a
+man. I suppose you liked that young Wickersham better?" she
+added grimly.
+
+"No, I did not like him either. But I think Mr. Keith is perfectly
+horrid."
+
+"Horrid!" The old lady's black eyes snapped. "Oh, he didn't ask you to
+dance! Well, I think, considering he knew you when you were a child, and
+knew you were my niece, he might--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I danced with him; but he is not very nice. He--ah--Something
+I saw prejudiced me."
+
+Miss Abby was so insistent that she should tell her what had happened
+that she yielded.
+
+"Well, I saw him on the street helping a woman into a carriage."
+
+"A woman? And why shouldn't he help her in? He probably was the only man
+you saw that would do it, if you saw the men I met."
+
+"A dis--reputable woman," said Lois, slowly.
+
+"And, pray, what do you know of disreputable women? Not that there are
+not enough of them to be seen!"
+
+"Some one told me--and she looked it," said Lois, blushing. The old lady
+unexpectedly whipped around and took her part so warmly that Lois
+suddenly found herself defending Gordon. She could not bear that others
+should attack him, though she took frequent occasion to tell herself
+that she hated him. In fact, she hated him so that she wanted to see him
+to show him how severe she would be.
+
+The occasion might have come sooner than she expected; but alas! Fate
+was unkind. Keith was not conscious until he found that Lois Huntington
+had left town how much he had thought of her. Her absence appeared
+suddenly to have emptied the city. By the time he had reached his room
+he had determined to follow her home. That rift of sunshine which had
+entered his life should not be shut out again. He sat down and wrote to
+her: a friendly letter, expressing warmly his pleasure at having met
+her, picturing jocularly his disappointment at having failed to find
+her. He made a single allusion to the Terpsichore episode. He had done
+what he could, he said, to soothe his friend's ruffled feelings; but,
+though he thought he had some influence with her, he could not boast of
+having had much success in this. In the light in which Lois read this
+letter, the allusion to the dancing-girl outweighed all the rest, and
+though her heart had given a leap when she first saw that she had a
+letter from Keith, when she laid it down her feeling had changed. She
+would show him that she was not a mere country chit to be treated as he
+had treated her. His "friend" indeed!
+
+When Keith, to his surprise, received no reply to his letter, he wrote
+again more briefly, asking if his former letter had been received; but
+this shared the fate of the first.
+
+Meantime Lois had gone off to visit a friend. Her mind was not quite as
+easy as it should have been. She felt that if she had it to go over, she
+would do just the same thing; but she began to fancy excuses for Keith.
+She even hunted up the letters he had written her as a boy.
+
+It is probable that Lois's failure to write did more to raise her in
+Keith's estimation and fix her image in his mind than anything else she
+could have done. Keith knew that something untoward had taken place, but
+what it was he could not conceive. At least, however, it proved to him
+that Lois Huntington was different from some of the young women he had
+met of late. So he sat down and wrote to Miss Brooke, saying that he was
+going abroad on a matter of importance, and asking leave to run down and
+spend Sunday with them before he left. Miss Brooke's reply nearly took
+his breath away. She not only refused his request, but intimated that
+there was a good reason why his former letters had not been acknowledged
+and why he would not be received by her.
+
+It was rather incoherent, but it had something to do with "inexplicable
+conduct." On this Keith wrote Miss Brooke, requesting a more explicit
+charge and demanding an opportunity to defend himself. Still he received
+no reply; and, angry that he had written, he took no further steps
+about it.
+
+By the time Lois reached home she had determined to answer his letter.
+She would write him a severe reply.
+
+Miss Abby, however, announced to Lois, the day of her return, that Mr.
+Keith had written asking her permission to come down and see them. The
+blood sprang into Lois's face, and if Miss Abby had had on her
+spectacles at that moment, she must have read the tale it told.
+
+"Oh, he did! And what--?" She gave a swallow to restrain her impatience.
+"What did you say to him, Aunt Abby? Have you answered the letter?" This
+was very demurely said.
+
+"Yes. Of course, I wrote him not to come. I preferred that he should not
+come."
+
+Could she have but seen Lois's face!
+
+"Oh, you did!"
+
+"Yes. I want no hypocrites around me." Her head was up and her cap was
+bristling. "I came very near telling him so, too. I told him that I had
+it from good authority that he had not behaved in altogether the most
+gentlemanly way--consorting openly with a hussy on the street! I think
+he knows whom I referred to."
+
+"But, Aunt Abby, I do not know that she was. I only heard she was,"
+defended Lois.
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Mr. Wickersham."
+
+"Well, _he_ knows," said Miss Abigail, with decision. "Though I think he
+had very little to do to discuss such matters with you."
+
+"But, Aunt Abby, I think you had better have let him come. We could have
+shown him our disapproval in our manner. And possibly he might have some
+explanations?"
+
+"I guess he won't make any mistake about that. The hypocrite! To sit up
+and talk to me as if he were a bishop! I have no doubt he would have
+explanation enough. They always do."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+GENERAL KEITH VISITS STRANGE LANDS
+
+Just then the wheel turned. Interest was awaking in England in American
+enterprises, and, fortunately for Keith, he had friends on that side.
+
+Grinnell Rhodes now lived in England, dancing attendance on his wife,
+the daughter of Mr. Creamer of Creamer, Crustback & Company, who was
+aspiring to be in the fashionable set there.
+
+Matheson, the former agent of the Wickershams, with whom Ferdy had
+quarrelled, had gone back to England, and had acquired a reputation as
+an expert. By one of the fortuitous happenings so hard to account for,
+about this time Keith wrote to Rhodes, and Rhodes consulted Matheson,
+who knew the properties. Ferdy had incurred the Scotchman's implacable
+hate, and the latter was urged on now by a double motive. To Rhodes, who
+was bored to death with the life he was leading, the story told by the
+Wickershams' old superintendent was like a trumpet to a war-horse.
+
+Out of the correspondence with Rhodes grew a suggestion to Keith to come
+over and try to place the Rawson properties with an English syndicate.
+Keith had, moreover, a further reason for going. He had not recovered
+from the blow of Miss Brooke's refusal to let him visit Lois. He knew
+that in some way it was connected with his attention to Terpsichore; he
+knew that there was a misunderstanding, and felt that Wickersham was
+somehow connected with it. But he was too proud to make any further
+attempt to explain it.
+
+Accordingly, armed with the necessary papers and powers, he arranged to
+go to England. He had control of and options on lands which were
+estimated to be worth several millions of dollars at any fair valuation.
+
+Keith had long been trying to persuade his father to accompany him to
+New York on some of his visits; but the old gentleman had never been
+able to make up his mind to do so.
+
+"I have grown too old to travel in strange lands," he said. "I tried to
+get there once, but they stopped me just in sight of a stone fence on
+the farther slope beyond Gettysburg." A faint flash glittered in his
+quiet eyes. "I think I had better restrain my ambition now to migrations
+from the blue bed to the brown, and confine my travels to 'the realms
+of gold'!"
+
+Now, after much urging, as Gordon was about to go abroad to try and
+place the Rawson properties there, the General consented to go to New
+York and see him off. It happened that Gordon was called to New York on
+business a day or two before his father was ready to go. So he exacted a
+promise that he would follow him, and went on ahead. Though General
+Keith would have liked to back out at the last moment, as he had given
+his word, he kept it. He wrote his son that he must not undertake to
+meet him, as he could not tell by what train he should arrive.
+
+"I shall travel slowly," he said, "for I wish to call by and see one or
+two old friends on my way, whom I have not seen for years."
+
+The fact was that he wished to see the child of his friend, General
+Huntington, and determined to avail himself of this opportunity to call
+by and visit her. Gordon's letter about her had opened a new vista
+in life.
+
+The General found Brookford a pleasant village, lying on the eastern
+slope of the Piedmont, and having written to ask permission to call and
+pay his respects, he was graciously received by Miss Abby, and more than
+graciously received by her niece. Miss Lois would probably have met any
+visitor at the train; but she might not have had so palpitating a heart
+and so rich a color in meeting many a young man.
+
+Few things captivate a person more than to be received with real
+cordiality by a friend immediately on alighting at a strange station
+from a train full of strangers. But when the traveller is an old and
+somewhat unsophisticated man, and when the friend is a young and very
+pretty girl, and when, after a single look, she throws her arms around
+his neck and kisses him, the capture is likely to be as complete as any
+that could take place in life. When Lois Huntington, after asking about
+his baggage, and exclaiming because he had sent his trunk on to New York
+and had brought only a valise, as if he were only stopping off between
+trains, finally settled herself down beside the General and took the
+reins of the little vehicle that she had come in, there was, perhaps,
+not a more pleased old gentleman in the world than the one who sat
+beside her.
+
+"How you have grown!" he said, gazing at her with admiration. "Somehow,
+I always thought of you as a little girl--a very pretty little girl."
+
+She thought of what his son had said at their meeting at the ball.
+
+"But you know one must grow some, and it has been eleven years since
+then. Think how long that has been!"
+
+"Eleven years! Does that appear so long to you?" said the old man,
+smiling. "So it is in our youth. Gordon wrote me of his meeting you and
+of how you had changed."
+
+I wonder what he meant by that, said Lois to herself, the color mounting
+to her cheek. "He thought I had changed, did he?" she asked tentatively,
+after a moment, a trace of grimness stealing into her face, where it lay
+like a little cloud in May.
+
+"Yes; he hardly knew you. You see, he did not have the greeting that I
+got."
+
+"I should think not!" exclaimed Lois. "If he had, I don't know what he
+might have thought!" She grew as grave as she could.
+
+"He said you were the sweetest and prettiest girl there, and that all
+the beauty of New York was there, even the beautiful Mrs.--what is her
+name? She was Miss Yorke."
+
+Lois's face relaxed suddenly with an effect of sunshine breaking through
+a cloud.
+
+"Did he say that?" she exclaimed.
+
+"He did, and more. He is a young man of some discernment," observed the
+old fellow, with a chuckle of gratification.
+
+"Oh, but he was only blinding you. He is in love with Mrs. Lancaster."
+
+"Not he."
+
+But Lois protested guilefully that he was.
+
+A little later she asked the General:
+
+"Did you ever hear of any one in New Leeds who was named Terpsichore?"
+
+"Terpsichore? Of course. Every one knows her there. I never saw her
+until she became a nurse, when she was nursing my son. She saved his
+life, you know?"
+
+"Saved his life!" Her face had grown almost grim. "No, I never heard of
+it. Tell me about it."
+
+"Saved his life twice, indeed," said the old General. "She has had a sad
+past, but she is a noble woman." And unheeding Lois's little sniff, he
+told the whole story of Terpsichore, and the brave part she had played.
+Spurred on by his feeling, he told it well, no less than did he the part
+that Keith had played. When he was through, there had been tears in
+Lois's eyes, and her bosom was still heaving.
+
+"Thank you," she said simply, and the rest of the drive was in silence.
+
+When General Keith left Brookford he was almost as much in love with his
+young hostess as his son could have been, and all the rest of his
+journey he was dreaming of what life might become if Gordon and she
+would but take a fancy to each other, and once more return to the old
+place. It would be like turning back the years and reversing the
+consequences of the war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The General, on his arrival in New York, was full of his visit to
+Brookford and of Lois. "There is a girl after my own heart," he declared
+to Gordon, with enthusiasm. "Why don't you go down there and get
+that girl?"
+
+Gordon put the question aside with a somewhat grim look. He was very
+busy, he said. His plans were just ripening, and he had no time to think
+about marrying. Besides, "a green country girl" was not the most
+promising wife. There were many other women who, etc., etc.
+
+"Many other women!" exclaimed the General. "There may be; but I have not
+seen them lately. As to 'a green country girl'--why, they make the best
+wives in the world if you get the right kind. What do you want? One of
+these sophisticated, fashionable, strong-minded women--a woman's-rights
+woman? Heaven forbid! When a gentleman marries, he wants a lady and he
+wants a wife, a woman to love him; a lady to preside over his home, not
+over a woman's meeting."
+
+Gordon quite agreed with him as to the principle; but he did not know
+about the instance cited.
+
+"Why, I thought you had more discernment," said the old gentleman. "She
+is the sweetest creature I have seen in a long time. She has both sense
+and sensibility. If I were forty years younger, I should not be
+suggesting her to you, sir. I should be on my knees to her for myself."
+And the old fellow buttoned his coat, straightened his figure, and
+looked quite spirited and young.
+
+At the club, where Gordon introduced him, his father soon became quite a
+toast. Half the habitués of the "big room" came to know him, and he was
+nearly always surrounded by a group listening to his quaint observations
+of life, his stories of old times, his anecdotes, his quotations from
+Plutarch or from "Dr. Johnson, sir."
+
+An evening or two after his appearance at the club, Norman Wentworth
+came in, and when the first greetings were over, General Keith inquired
+warmly after his wife.
+
+"Pray present my compliments to her. I have never had the honor of
+meeting her, sir, but I have heard of her charms from my son, and I
+promise myself the pleasure of calling upon her as soon as I have called
+on your mother, which I am looking forward to doing this evening."
+
+Norman's countenance changed a little at the unexpected words, for half
+a dozen men were around. When, however, he spoke it was in a very
+natural voice.
+
+"Yes, my mother is expecting you," he said quietly. Mrs. Wentworth also
+would, he said, be very glad to see him. Her day was Thursday, but if
+General Keith thought of calling at any other time, and would be good
+enough to let him know, he thought he could guarantee her being at home.
+He strolled away.
+
+"By Jove! he did it well," said one of the General's other acquaintances
+when Norman was out of ear-shot.
+
+"You know, he and his wife have quarrelled," explained Stirling to the
+astonished General.
+
+"Great Heavens!" The old gentleman looked inexpressibly shocked.
+
+"Yes--Wickersham."
+
+"That scoundrel!"
+
+"Yes; he is the devil with the women."
+
+Next evening, as the General sat with Stirling among a group, sipping
+his toddy, some one approached behind him.
+
+Stirling, who had become a great friend of the General's, greeted the
+newcomer.
+
+"Hello, Ferdy! Come around; let me introduce you to General Keith,
+Gordon Keith's father."
+
+The General, with a pleasant smile on his face, rose from his chair and
+turned to greet the newcomer. As he did so he faced Ferdy Wickersham,
+who bowed coldly. The old gentleman stiffened, put his hand behind his
+back, and with uplifted head looked him full in the eyes for a second,
+and then turned his back on him.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Stirling, for declining to recognize any one
+whom you are good enough to wish to introduce to me, but that man I must
+decline to recognize. He is not a gentleman."
+
+"I doubt if you know one," said Ferdy, with a shrug, as he strolled away
+with affected indifference. But a dozen men had seen the cut.
+
+"I guess you are right enough about that, General," said one of them.
+
+When the General reflected on what he had done, he was overwhelmed with
+remorse. He apologized profusely to Stirling for having committed such
+a solecism.
+
+"I am nothing but an irascible old idiot, sir, and I hope you will
+excuse my constitutional weakness, but I really could not recognize
+that man."
+
+Stirling's inveterate amiability soon set him at ease again.
+
+"It is well for Wickersham to hear the truth now and then," he said. "I
+guess he hears it rarely enough. Most people feed him on lies."
+
+Some others appeared to take the same view of the matter, for the
+General was more popular than ever.
+
+Gordon found a new zest in showing his father about the city. Everything
+astonished him. He saw the world with the eyes of a child. The streets,
+the crowds, the shop-windows, the shimmering stream of carriages that
+rolled up and down the avenue, the elevated railways which had just been
+constructed, all were a marvel to him.
+
+"Where do these people get their wealth?" he asked.
+
+"Some of them get it from rural gentlemen who visit the town," said
+Gordon, laughing.
+
+The old fellow smiled. "I suspect a good many of them get it from us
+countrymen. In fact, at the last we furnish it all. It all comes out of
+the ground."
+
+"It is a pity that we did not hold on to some of it," said Gordon.
+
+The old gentleman glanced at him. "I do not want any of it. My son,
+Agar's standard was the best: 'neither poverty nor riches.' Riches
+cannot make a gentleman."
+
+Keith laughed and called him old-fashioned, but he knew in his heart
+that he was right.
+
+The beggars who accosted him on the street never turned away
+empty-handed. He had it not in his heart to refuse the outstretched
+hand of want.
+
+"Why, that man who pretended that he had a large family and was out of
+work is a fraud," said Gordon. "I'll bet that he has no family and
+never works."
+
+"Well, I didn't give him much," said the old man. "But remember what
+Lamb said: 'Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress.
+It is good to believe him. Give, and under the personate father of a
+family think, if thou pleasest, that thou hast relieved an indigent
+bachelor.'"
+
+A week later Gordon was on his way to England and the General had
+returned home.
+
+It was just after this that the final breach took place between Norman
+Wentworth and his wife. It was decided that for their children's sake
+there should be no open separation; at least, for the present. Norman
+had business which would take him away for a good part of the time, and
+the final separation could be left to the future. Meanwhile, to save
+appearances somewhat, it was arranged that Mrs. Wentworth should ask
+Lois Huntington to come up and spend the winter in New York, partly as
+her companion and partly as governess for the children. This might stop
+the mouths of some persons.
+
+When the proposal first reached Miss Abigail, she rejected it without
+hesitation; she would not hear of it. Curiously enough, Lois suddenly
+appeared violently anxious to go. But following the suggestion came an
+invitation from Norman's mother asking Miss Abigail to pay her a long
+visit. She needed her, she said, and she asked as a favor that she
+would let Lois accept her daughter-in-law's invitation. So Miss Abby
+consented. "The Lawns" was shut up for the winter, and the two ladies
+went up to New York.
+
+As Norman left for the West the very day that Lois was installed, she
+had no knowledge of the condition of affairs in that unhappy household,
+except what Gossip whispered about her. This would have been more than
+enough, but for the fact that the girl stiffened as soon as any one
+approached the subject, and froze even such veterans as Mrs. Nailor.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth was far too proud to refer to it. All Lois knew,
+therefore, was that there was trouble and she was there to help tide it
+over, and she meant, if she could, to make it up. Meanwhile, Mrs.
+Wentworth was very kind, if formal, to her, and the children, delighted
+to get rid of the former governess, whom they insisted in describing as
+an "old cat," were her devoted slaves.
+
+Yet Lois was not as contented as she had fondly expected to be.
+
+She learned soon after her arrival that one object of her visit to New
+York would be futile. She would not see Mr. Keith. He had gone
+abroad.--"In pursuit of Mrs. Lancaster," said Mrs. Nailor; for Lois was
+willing enough to hear all that lady had to say on this subject, and it
+was a good deal. "You know, I believe she is going to marry him. She
+will unless she can get a title."
+
+"I do not believe a title would make any difference to her," said Lois,
+rather sharply, glad to have any sound reason for attacking Mrs. Nailor.
+
+"Oh, don't you believe it! She'd snap one up quick enough if she had the
+chance."
+
+"She has had a plenty of chances," asserted Lois.
+
+"Well, it may serve Mr. Keith a good turn. He looked very low down for a
+while last Spring--just after that big Creamer ball. But he had quite
+perked up this Fall, and, next thing I heard, he had gone over to
+England after Alice Lancaster, who is spending the winter there. It was
+time she went, too, for people were beginning to talk a good deal of the
+way she ran after Norman Wentworth."
+
+"I must go," said Lois, suddenly rising; "I have to take the children
+out."
+
+"Poor dears!" sighed Mrs. Nailor. "I am glad they have some one to look
+after them." Lois's sudden change prevented any further condolence.
+Fortunately, Mrs. Nailor was too much delighted with the opportunity to
+pour her information into quite fresh ears to observe Lois's expression.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The story of the trouble between Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth was soon public
+property. Wickersham's plans appeared to him to be working out
+satisfactorily. Louise Wentworth must, he felt, care for him to
+sacrifice so much for him. In this assumption he let down the barriers
+of prudence which he had hitherto kept up, and, one evening when the
+opportunity offered, he openly declared himself. To his chagrin and
+amazement, she appeared to be shocked and even to resent it.
+
+Yes, she liked him--liked him better than almost any one, she admitted;
+but she did not, she could not, love him. She was married.
+
+Wickersham ridiculed the idea.
+
+Married! Well, what difference did that make? Did not many married women
+love other men than their husbands? Had not her husband gone
+after another?
+
+Her eyes closed suddenly; then her eyelids fluttered.
+
+"Yes; but I am not like that. I have children." She spoke slowly.
+
+"Nonsense," cried Wickersham. "Of course, we love each other and belong
+to each other. Send the children to your husband."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth recoiled in horror. There was that in his manner and look
+which astounded her. "Abandon her children?" How could she? Her whole
+manner changed. "You have misunderstood me."
+
+[Illustration: "Sit down. I want to talk to you."]
+
+Wickersham grew angry.
+
+"Don't be a fool, Louise. You have broken with your husband. Now, don't
+go and throw away happiness for a priest's figment. Get a divorce and
+marry me, if you want to; but at least accept my love."
+
+But he had overshot the mark. He had opened her eyes. Was this the man
+she had taken as her closest friend!--for whom she had quarrelled with
+her husband and defied the world!
+
+Wickersham watched her as her doubt worked its way in her mind. He could
+see the process in her face. He suddenly seized her and drew her to him.
+
+"Here, stop this! Your husband has abandoned you and gone after another
+woman."
+
+She gave a gasp, but made no answer.
+
+She pushed him away from her slowly, and after a moment rose and walked
+from the room as though dazed.
+
+It was so unexpected that Wickersham made no attempt to stop her.
+
+A moment later Lois entered the room. She walked straight up to him.
+Wickersham tried to greet her lightly, but she remained grave.
+
+"Mr. Wickersham, I do not think you--ought to come here--as often as you
+do."
+
+"And, pray, why not?" he demanded.
+
+Her brown eyes looked straight into his and held them steadily.
+
+"Because people talk about it."
+
+"I cannot help people talking. You know what they are," said Wickersham,
+amused.
+
+"You can prevent giving them occasion to talk. You are too good a friend
+of Cousin Louise to cause her unhappiness." The honesty of her words was
+undoubted. It spoke in every tone of her voice and glance of her eyes.
+"She is most unhappy."
+
+Wickersham conceived a new idea. How lovely she was in her soft blue
+dress!
+
+"Very well, I will do what you say There are few things I would not do
+for you." He stepped closer to her and gazed in her eyes. "Sit down. I
+want to talk to you."
+
+"Thank you; I must go now."
+
+Wickersham tried to detain her, but she backed away, her hands down and
+held a little back.
+
+"Good-by."
+
+"Miss Huntington--Lois--" he said; "one moment."
+
+But she opened the door and passed out.
+
+Wickersham walked down the street in a sort of maze.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+KEITH TRIES HIS FORTUNES IN ANOTHER LAND
+
+In fact, as usual, Mrs. Nailor's statement to Lois had some foundation,
+though very little. Mrs. Lancaster had gone abroad, and Keith had
+followed her.
+
+Keith, on his arrival in England, found Rhodes somewhat changed, at
+least in person. Years of high living and ease had rounded him, and he
+had lost something of his old spirit. At times an expression of
+weariness or discontent came into his eyes.
+
+He was as cordial as ever to Keith, and when Keith unfolded his plans he
+entered into them with earnestness.
+
+"You have come at a good time," he said. "They are beginning to think
+that America is all a bonanza."
+
+After talking over the matter, Rhodes invited Keith down to the country.
+
+"We have taken an old place in Warwickshire for the hunting. An old
+friend of yours is down there for a few days,"--his eyes twinkled,--"and
+we have some good fellows there. Think you will like them--some of
+them," he added.
+
+"Who is my friend?" asked Keith.
+
+"Her name was Alice Yorke," he replied, with his eyes on Keith's face.
+
+At the name another face sprang to Keith's mind. The eyes were brown,
+not blue, and the face was the fresh face of a young girl. Yet
+Keith accepted.
+
+Rhodes did not tell him that Mrs. Lancaster had not accepted their
+invitation until after she had heard that he was to be invited. Nor did
+he tell him that she had authorized him to subscribe largely to the
+stock of the new syndicate.
+
+On reaching the station they were met by a rich equipage with two
+liveried servants, and, after a short drive through beautiful country,
+they turned into a fine park, and presently drove up before an imposing
+old country house; for "The Keep" was one of the finest mansions in all
+that region. It was also one of the most expensive. It had broken its
+owners to run it. But this was nothing to Creamer of Creamer, Crustback
+& Company; at least, it was nothing to Mrs. Creamer, or to Mrs. Rhodes,
+who was her daughter. She had plans, and money was nothing to her.
+Rhodes was manifestly pleased at Keith's exclamations of appreciation as
+they drove through the park with its magnificent trees, its coppices and
+coverts, its stretches of emerald sward and roll of gracious hills, and
+drew up at the portal of the mansion. Yet he was inclined to be a little
+apologetic about it, too.
+
+"This is rather too rich for me," he said, between a smile and a sigh.
+"Somehow, I began too late."
+
+It was a noble old hall into which he ushered Keith, the wainscoting
+dark with age, and hung with trophies of many a chase and forgotten
+field. A number of modern easy-chairs and great rich rugs gave it an air
+of comfort, even if they were not altogether harmonious.
+
+Keith did not see Mrs. Rhodes till the company were all assembled in the
+drawing-room for dinner. She was a rather pretty woman, distinctly
+American in face and voice, but in speech more English than any one
+Keith had seen since landing. Her hair and speech were arranged in the
+extreme London fashion. She was "awfully keen on" everything she
+fancied, and found most things English "ripping." She greeted Keith with
+somewhat more formality than he had expected from Grinnell Rhodes's
+wife, and introduced him to Colonel Campbell, a handsome,
+broad-shouldered man, as "an American," which Keith thought rather
+unnecessary, since no one could have been in doubt about it.
+
+Keith found, on his arrival in the drawing-room, that the house was full
+of company, a sort of house-party assembled for the hunting.
+
+Suddenly there was a stir, followed by a hush in the conversation, and
+monocles and lorgnons went up.
+
+"Here she comes," said a man near Keith.
+
+"Who is she?" asked a thin woman with ugly hands, dropping her monocle
+with the air of a man.
+
+"La belle Américaine," replied the man beside her, "a friend of the
+host."
+
+"Oh! Not of the hostess?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I met her last night--"
+
+"Steepleton is ahead--wins in a walk."
+
+"Oh, she's rich? The castle needs a new roof? Will it be in time for
+next season?"
+
+The gentleman said he knew nothing about it.
+
+Keith turned and faced Alice Lancaster.
+
+She was dressed in a black gown that fitted perfectly her straight,
+supple figure, the soft folds clinging close enough to show the gracious
+curves, and falling away behind her in a train that, as she stood with
+her head uplifted, gave her an appearance almost of majesty. Her round
+arms and perfect shoulders were of dazzling whiteness; her abundant
+brown hair was coiled low on her snowy neck, showing the beauty of her
+head; and her single ornament was one rich red rose fastened in her
+bodice with a small diamond clasp. It was the little pin that Keith had
+found in the Ridgely woods and returned to her so long ago; though Keith
+did not recognize it. It was the only jewel about her, and was worn
+simply to hold the rose, as though that were the thing she valued.
+Keith's thoughts sprang to the first time he ever saw her with a red
+rose near her heart--the rose he had given her, which the humming-bird
+had sought as its chalice.
+
+The other ladies were all gowned in satin and velvet of rich colors,
+and were flaming in jewels, and as Mrs. Lancaster stood among them and
+they fell back a little on either side to look at her, they appeared, as
+it were, a setting for her.
+
+After the others were presented, Keith stepped forward to greet her, and
+her face lit up with a light that made it suddenly young.
+
+"I am so glad to see you." She clasped his hand warmly. "It is so good
+to see an old friend from our ain countree."
+
+"I do not need to say I am glad to see you," said Keith, looking her in
+the eyes. "You are my ain countree here."
+
+At that moment the rose fell at her feet. It had slipped somehow from
+the clasp that held it. A half-dozen men sprang forward to pick it up,
+but Keith was ahead of them. He took it up, and, with his eyes looking
+straight into hers, handed it to her.
+
+"It is your emblem; it is what I always think of you as being." The tone
+was too low for any one else to hear; but her mounting color and the
+light in her eyes told that she caught it.
+
+Still looking straight into his eyes without a word, she stuck the rose
+in her bodice just over her heart.
+
+Several women turned their gaze on Keith and scanned him with sudden
+interest, and one of them, addressing her companion, a broad-shouldered
+man with a pleasant, florid face, said in an undertone:
+
+"That is the man you have to look out for, Steepleton."
+
+"A good-looking fellow. Who is he?"
+
+"Somebody, I fancy, or our hostess wouldn't have him here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dinner that evening was a function. Mrs. Rhodes would rather have
+suffered a serious misfortune than fail in any of the social refinements
+of her adopted land. Rhodes had suggested that Keith be placed next to
+Mrs. Lancaster, but Mrs. Rhodes had another plan in mind. She liked
+Alice Lancaster, and she was trying to do by her as she would have been
+done by. She wanted her to make a brilliant match. Lord Steepleton
+appeared designed by Providence for this especial purpose: the
+representative of an old and distinguished house, owner of a
+famous--indeed, of an historic--estate, unhappily encumbered, but not
+too heavily to be relieved by a providential fortune. Hunting was his
+most serious occupation. At present he was engaged in the most serious
+hunt of his career: he was hunting an heiress.
+
+Mrs. Rhodes was his friend, and as his friend she had put him next to
+Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+Ordinarily, Mrs. Lancaster would have been extremely pleased to be
+placed next the lion of the occasion. But this evening she would have
+liked to be near another guest. He was on the other side of the board,
+and appeared to be, in the main, enjoying himself, though now and then
+his eyes strayed across in her direction, and presently, as he caught
+her glance, he lifted his glass and smiled. Her neighbor observed the
+act, and putting up his monocle, looked across the table; then glanced
+at Mrs. Lancaster, and then looked again at Keith more carefully.
+
+"Who is your friend?" he asked.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster smiled, with a pleasant light in her eyes.
+
+"An old friend of mine, Mr. Keith."
+
+"Ah! Fortunate man. Scotchman?"
+
+"No; an American."
+
+"Oh!--You have known him a long time?"
+
+"Since I was a little girl."
+
+"Oh!--What is he?"
+
+"A gentleman."
+
+"Yes." The Englishman took the trouble again to put up his monocle and
+take a fleeting glance across the table. "He looks it," he said. "I
+mean, what does he do? Is he a capitalist like--like our host? Or is he
+just getting to be a capitalist?"
+
+"I hope he is," replied Mrs. Lancaster, with a twinkle in her eyes that
+showed she enjoyed the Englishman's mystification. "He is engaged
+in mining."
+
+She gave a rosy picture of the wealth in the region from which Keith
+came.
+
+"All your men do something, I believe?" said the gentleman.
+
+"All who are worth anything," assented Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"No wonder you are a rich people."
+
+Something about his use of the adjective touched her.
+
+"Our people have a sense of duty, too, and as much courage as any
+others, only they do not make any to-do about it. I have a friend--a
+_gentleman_--who drove a stage-coach through the mountains for a while
+rather than do nothing, and who was held up one night and jumped from
+the stage on the robber, and chased him down the mountains and
+disarmed him."
+
+"Good!" exclaimed the gentleman. "Nervy thing!"
+
+"Rather," said Mrs. Lancaster, with mantling cheeks, stirred by what she
+considered a reflection on her people. And that was not all he did. "He
+had charge of a mine, and one day the mine was flooded while the men
+were at work, and he went in in the darkness and brought the men
+out safe."
+
+"Good!" said the gentleman. "But he had others with him? He did not go
+alone?"
+
+"He started alone, and two men volunteered to go with him. But he sent
+them back with the first group they found, and then, as there were
+others, he waded on by himself to where the others were, and brought
+them out, bringing on his shoulder the man who had attempted his life."
+
+"Fine!" exclaimed the gentleman. "I've been in some tight places myself;
+but I don't know about that. What was his name?"
+
+"Keith."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Her eyes barely glanced his way; but the Earl of Steepleton saw in them
+what he had never been able to bring there.
+
+The Englishman put up his monocle and this time gazed long at Gordon.
+
+"Nervy chap!" he said quietly. "Won't you present me after dinner?"
+
+In his slow mind was dawning an idea that, perhaps, after all, this
+quiet American who had driven his way forward had found a baiting-place
+which he, with all his titles and long pedigrees, could not enter. His
+honest, outspoken admiration had, however, done more to make him a place
+in that guarded fortress than all Mrs. Rhodes's praises had effected.
+
+A little later the guests had all departed or scattered. Those who
+remained were playing cards and appeared settled for a good while.
+
+"Keith, we are out of it. Let's have a game of billiards," said the
+host, who had given his seat to a guest who had just come in after
+saying good night on the stair to one of the ladies.
+
+Keith followed him to the billiard-room, a big apartment finished in
+oak, with several large tables in it, and he and Rhodes began to play.
+The game, however, soon languished, for the two men had much to
+talk about.
+
+"Houghton, you may go," said Rhodes to the servant who attended to the
+table. "I will ring for you when I want you to shut up."
+
+"Thank you, sir"; and he was gone.
+
+"Now tell me all about everything," said Rhodes. "I want to hear
+everything that has happened since I came away--came into exile. I know
+about the property and the town that has grown up just as I knew it
+would. Tell me about the people--old Squire Rawson and Phrony, and
+Wickersham, and Norman and his wife."
+
+Keith told him about them. "Rhodes," he said, as he ended, "you started
+it and you ought to have stayed with it. Old Rawson says you foretold
+it all."
+
+Suddenly Rhodes flung his cue down on the table and straightened up.
+"Keith, this is killing me. Sometimes I think I can't stand it another
+day. I've a mind to chuck up the whole business and cut for it."
+
+Keith gazed at him in amazement. The clouded brow, the burning eyes, the
+drawn mouth, all told how real that explosion was and from what depths
+it came. Keith was quite startled.
+
+"It all seems to me so empty, so unreal, so puerile. I am bored to death
+with it. Do you think this is real?" He waved his arms impatiently about
+him. "It is all a sham and a fraud. I am nothing--nobody. I am a puppet
+on a hired stage, playing to amuse--not myself!--the Lord knows I am
+bored enough by it!--but a lot of people who don't care any more about
+me than I do about them. I can't stand this. D----n it! I don't want to
+make love to any other man's wife any more than I will have any of them
+making love to my wife. I think they are beginning to understand that. I
+showed a little puppy the front door not long ago--an earl, too, or next
+thing to it, an earl's eldest son--for doing what he would no more have
+dared to do in an Englishman's house than he would have tried to burn
+it. After that, I think, they began to see I might be something. Keith,
+do you remember what old Rawson said to us once about marrying?"
+
+Keith had been thinking of it all the evening.
+
+"Keith, I was not born for this; I was born to _do_ something. But for
+giving up I might have been like Stevenson or Eads or your man Maury,
+whom they are all belittling because he did it all himself instead of
+getting others to do it. By George! I hope to live till I build one more
+big bridge or run one more long tunnel. Jove! to stand once more up on
+the big girders, so high that the trees look small below you, and see
+the bridge growing under your eyes where the old croakers had said
+nothing would stand!"
+
+Keith's eyes sparkled, and he reached out his hand; and the other
+grasped it.
+
+When Keith returned home, he was already in sight of victory.
+
+The money had all been subscribed. His own interest in the venture was
+enough to make him rich, and he was to be general superintendent of the
+new company, with Matheson as his manager of the mines. All that was
+needed now was to complete the details of the transfer of the
+properties, perfect his organization, and set to work. This for a time
+required his presence more or less continuously in New York, and he
+opened an office in one of the office buildings down in the city, and
+took an apartment in a pleasant up-town hotel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Keith returned to New York that Autumn, it was no longer as a young
+man with eyes aflame with hope and expectation and face alight with
+enthusiasm. The eager recruit had changed to the veteran. He had had
+experience of a world where men lived and died for the most sordid of
+all rewards--money, mere money.
+
+The fight had left its mark upon him. The mouth had lost something of
+the smile that once lurked about its corners, but had gained in
+strength. The eyes, always direct and steady, had more depth. The
+shoulders had a squarer set, as though they had been braced against
+adversity. Experience of life had sobered him.
+
+Sometimes it had come to him that he might be caught by the current and
+might drift into the same spirit, but self-examination up to this time
+had reassured him. He knew that he had other motives: the trust reposed
+in him by his friends, the responsibility laid upon him, the resolve to
+justify that confidence, were still there, beside his eager desire
+for success.
+
+He called immediately to see Norman. He was surprised to find how much
+he had aged in this short time. His hair was sprinkled with gray. He had
+lost all his lightness. He was distrait and almost morose.
+
+"You men here work too hard," asserted Keith. "You ought to have run
+over to England with me. You'd have learned that men can work and live
+too. I spent some of the most profitable time I was over there in a
+deer forest, which may have been Burnam-wood, as all the trees had
+disappeared-gone somewhere, if not to Dunsinane."
+
+Norman half smiled, but he answered wearily: "I wish I had been anywhere
+else than where I was." He turned away while he was speaking and fumbled
+among the papers on his desk. Keith rose, and Norman rose also.
+
+"I will send you cards to the clubs. I shall not be in town to-night,
+but to-morrow night, or the evening after, suppose you dine with me at
+the University. I'll have two or three fellows to meet you--or, perhaps,
+we'll dine alone. What do you say? We can talk more freely."
+
+Keith said that this was just what he should prefer, and Norman gave him
+a warm handshake and, suddenly seating himself at his desk, dived
+quickly into his papers.
+
+Keith came out mystified. There was something he could not understand.
+He wondered if the trouble of which he had heard had grown.
+
+Next morning, looking over the financial page of a paper, Keith came on
+a paragraph in which Norman's name appeared. He was mentioned as one of
+the directors of a company which the paper declared was among those that
+had disappointed the expectations of investors. There was nothing very
+tangible about the article; but the general tone was critical, and to
+Keith's eye unfriendly.
+
+When, the next afternoon, Keith rang the door-bell at Norman's house,
+and asked if Mrs. Wentworth was at home, the servant who opened the door
+informed him that no one of that name lived there. They used to live
+there, but had moved. Mrs. Wentworth lived somewhere on Fifth Avenue
+near the Park. It was a large new house near such a street, right-hand
+side, second house from the corner.
+
+Keith had a feeling of disappointment. Somehow, he had hoped to hear
+something of Lois Huntington.
+
+Keith, having resolved to devote the afternoon to the call on his
+friend's wife, and partly in the hope of learning where Lois was, kept
+on, and presently found himself in front of a new double house, one of
+the largest on the block. Keith felt reassured.
+
+"Well, this does not look as if Wentworth were altogether broke," he
+thought.
+
+A strange servant opened the door. Mrs. Wentworth was not at home. The
+other lady was in--would the gentleman come in? There was the flutter of
+a dress at the top of the stair.
+
+Keith said no. He would call again. The servant looked puzzled, for the
+lady at the top of the stair had seen Mr. Keith cross the street and had
+just given orders that he should be admitted, as she would see him. Now,
+as Keith walked away, Miss Lois Huntington descended the stair.
+
+"Why didn't you let him in, Hucless?" she demanded.
+
+"I told him you were in, Miss; but he said he would not come in."
+
+Miss Huntington turned and walked slowly back up to her room. Her face
+was very grave; she was pondering deeply.
+
+A little later Lois Huntington put on her hat and went out.
+
+Lois had not found her position at Mrs. Wentworth's the most agreeable
+in the world. Mrs. Wentworth was moody and capricious, and at
+times exacting.
+
+She had little idea how often that quiet girl who took her complaints so
+calmly was tempted to break her vow of silence, answer her upbraidings,
+and return home. But her old friends were dropping away from her. And it
+was on this account and for Norman's sake that Lois put up with her
+capriciousness. She had promised Norman to stay with her, and she
+would do it.
+
+Mrs. Norman's quarrel with Alice Lancaster was a sore trial to Lois.
+Many of her friends treated Lois as if she were a sort of upper servant,
+with a mingled condescension and hauteur. Lois was rather amused at it,
+except when it became too apparent, and then she would show her little
+claws, which were sharp enough. But Mrs. Lancaster had always been
+sweet to her, and Lois had missed her sadly. She no longer came to Mrs.
+Wentworth's. Lois, however, was always urged to come and see her, and an
+intimacy had sprung up between the two. Lois, with her freshness, was
+like a breath of Spring to the society woman, who was a little jaded
+with her experience; and the elder lady, on her part, treated the young
+girl with a warmth that was half maternal, half the cordiality of an
+elder sister. What part Gordon Keith played in this friendship must be
+left to surmise.
+
+It was to Mrs. Lancaster's that Lois now took her way. Her greeting was
+a cordial one, and Lois was soon confiding to her her trouble; how she
+had met an old friend after many years, and then how a contretemps had
+occurred. She told of his writing her, and of her failure to answer his
+letters, and how her aunt had refused to allow him to come to Brookford
+to see them.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster listened with interest.
+
+"My dear, there was nothing in that. Yes, that was just one of Ferdy's
+little lies," she said, in a sort of reverie.
+
+"But it was so wicked in him to tell such falsehoods about a man,"
+exclaimed Lois, her color coming and going, her eyes flashing.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Ferdy does not like Mr. Keith, and he does like you, and he probably
+thought to prevent your liking him."
+
+"I detest him."
+
+The telltale color rushed up into her cheeks as Mrs. Lancaster's eyes
+rested on her, and as it mounted, those blue eyes grew a little more
+searching.
+
+"I can scarcely bear to see him when he comes there," said Lois.
+
+"Has he begun to go there again?" Mrs. Lancaster inquired, in some
+surprise.
+
+"Yes; and he pretends that he is coming to see me!" said the girl, with
+a flash in her eyes. "You know that is not true?"
+
+"Don't you believe him," said the other, gravely. Her eyes, as they
+rested on the girl's face, had a very soft light in them.
+
+"Well, we must make it up," she said presently. "You are going to Mrs.
+Wickersham's?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"Yes; Cousin Louise is going and says I must go. Mr. Wickersham will not
+be there, you know."
+
+"Yes." She drifted off into a reverie.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE DINNER AT MRS. WICKERSHAM'S
+
+Keith quickly discovered that Rumor was busy with Ferdy Wickersham's
+name in other places than gilded drawing-rooms. He had been dropped from
+the board of more than one big corporation in which he had once had a
+potent influence. Knowing men, like Stirling and his club friends, began
+to say that they did not see how he had kept up. But up-town he still
+held on-held on with a steady eye and stony face that showed a nerve
+worthy of a better man. His smile became more constant,--to be sure, It
+was belied by his eyes: that cold gleam was not mirth,--but his voice
+was as insolent as ever.
+
+Several other rumors soon began to float about. One was that he and Mrs.
+Wentworth had fallen out. As to the Cause of this the town was divided.
+One story was that the pretty governess at Mrs. Wentworth's was in some
+way concerned with it.
+
+However this was, the Wickersham house was mortgaged, and Rumor began to
+say even up-town that the Wickersham fortune had melted away.
+
+The news of Keith's success in England had reached home as soon as he
+had. His friends congratulated him, and his acquaintances greeted him
+with a warmth that, a few years before, would have cheered his heart and
+have made him their friend for life. Mrs. Nailor, when she met him,
+almost fell on his neck. She actually called him her "dear boy."
+
+"Oh, I have been hearing about you!" she said archly. "You must come
+and dine with us at once and tell us all about it."
+
+"About what?" inquired Keith.
+
+"About your great successes on the other side. You see, your friends
+keep up with you!"
+
+"They do, indeed, and sometimes get ahead of me," said Keith.
+
+"How would to-morrow suit you? No, not to-morrow--Saturday? No; we are
+going out Saturday. Let me see--we are so crowded with engagements I
+shall have to go home and look at my book. But you must come very soon.
+You have heard the news, of course? Isn't it dreadful?"
+
+"What news?" He knew perfectly what she meant.
+
+"About the Norman-Wentworths getting a divorce? Dreadful, isn't it?
+Perfectly dreadful! But, of course, it was to be expected. Any one could
+see that all along?"
+
+"I could not," said Keith, dryly; "but I do not claim to be any one."
+
+"Which side are you on? Norman's, I suppose?"
+
+"Neither," said Keith.
+
+"You know, Ferdy always was in love with her?" This with a glance to
+obtain Keith's views.
+
+"No; I know nothing about it."
+
+"Yes; always," she nodded oracularly. "Of course, he is making love to
+Alice Lancaster, too, and to the new governess at the Wentworths'."
+
+"Who is that?" asked Keith, moved by some sudden instinct to inquire.
+
+"That pretty country cousin of Norman's, whom they brought there to save
+appearances when Norman first left. Huntington is her name."
+
+Keith suddenly grew hot.
+
+"Yes, Ferdy is making love to her, too. Why, they say that is what they
+have quarrelled about. Louise is insanely jealous, and she is very
+pretty. Yes--you know, Ferdy is like some other men? Just gregarious!
+Yes? But Louise Wentworth was always his _grande passion_. He is just
+amusing himself with the governess, and she, poor little fool, supposes
+she has made a conquest. You know how it is?"
+
+"I really know nothing about it," declared Keith, in a flame.
+
+"Yes; and he was always her _grande passion_? Don't you think so?"
+
+"No, I do not," said Keith, firmly. "I know nothing about it; but I
+believe she and Norman were devoted,--as devoted a couple as I ever
+saw,--and I do not see why people cannot let them alone. I think none
+too well of Ferdy Wickersham, but I don't believe a word against her.
+She may be silly; but she is a hundred times better than some who
+calumniate her."
+
+"Oh, you dear boy! You were always so amiable. It's a pity the world is
+not like you; but it is not."
+
+"It is a pity people do not let others alone and attend to their own
+affairs," remarked Keith, grimly. "I believe more than half the trouble
+is made by the meddlers who go around gossiping."
+
+"Don't they! Why, every one is talking about it. I have not been in a
+drawing-room where it is not being discussed."
+
+"I suppose not," said Mr. Keith.
+
+"And, you know, they say Norman Wentworth has lost a lot of money, too.
+But, then, he has a large account to fall back on. Alice Lancaster has
+a plenty."
+
+"What's that?" Keith's voice had an unpleasant sharpness in it.
+
+"Oh, you know, he is her trustee, and they are great friends. Good-by.
+You must come and dine with us sometime--sometime soon, too."
+
+And Mrs. Nailor floated away, and in the first drawing-room she visited
+told of Keith's return and of his taking the story of Louise Wentworth
+and Ferdy Wickersham very seriously; adding, "And you know, I think he
+is a great admirer of Louise himself--a very great admirer. Of course,
+he would like to marry Alice Lancaster, just as Ferdy would. They all
+want to marry her; but Louise Wentworth is the one that has their
+hearts. She knows how to capture them. You keep your eyes open. You
+ought to have seen the way he looked when I mentioned Ferdy Wickersham
+and her. My dear, a man doesn't look that way unless he feels something
+here." She tapped solemnly the spot where she imagined her heart to be,
+that dry and desiccated organ that had long ceased to know any
+real warmth.
+
+A little time afterwards, Keith, to his great surprise, received an
+invitation to dine at Mrs. Wickersham's. He had never before received an
+invitation to her house, and when he had met her, she had always been
+stiff and repellent toward him. This he had regarded as perfectly
+natural; for he and Ferdy had never been friendly, and of late had not
+even kept up appearances.
+
+He wondered why he should be invited now. Could it be true, as Stirling
+had said, laughing, that now he had the key and would find all doors
+open to him?
+
+Keith had not yet written his reply when he called that evening at Mrs.
+Lancaster's. She asked him if he had received such an invitation. Keith
+said yes, but he did not intend to go. He almost thought it must have
+been sent by mistake.
+
+"Oh, no; now come. Ferdy won't be there, and Mrs. Wickersham wants to be
+friendly with you. You and Ferdy don't get along; but neither do she and
+Ferdy. You know they have fallen out? Poor old thing! She was talking
+about it the other day, and she burst out crying. She said he had been
+her idol."
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"Oh, Ferdy's selfishness."
+
+"He is a brute! Think of a man quarrelling with his mother! Why--!" He
+went into a reverie in which his face grew very soft, while Mrs.
+Lancaster watched him silently. Presently he started. "I have nothing
+against her except a sort of general animosity from boyhood, which I am
+sorry to have."
+
+"Oh, well, then, come. As people grow older they outgrow their
+animosities and wish to make friends."
+
+"You being so old as to have experienced it?" said Keith.
+
+"I am nearly thirty years old," she said. "Isn't it dreadful?"
+
+"Aurora is much older than that," said Keith.
+
+"Ah, Sir Flatterer, I have a mirror." But her eyes filled with a
+pleasant light as Keith said:
+
+"Then it will corroborate what needs no proof."
+
+She knew it was flattery, but she enjoyed it and dimpled.
+
+"Now, you will come? I want you to come." She looked at him with a soft
+glow in her face.
+
+"Yes. On your invitation."
+
+"Alice Lancaster, place one good deed to thy account: 'Blessed are the
+peacemakers,'" said Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+When Keith arrived at Mrs. Wickersham's he found the company assembled
+in her great drawing-room--the usual sort to be found in great
+drawing-rooms of large new chateau-like mansions in a great and
+commercial city.
+
+"Mr. Keats!" called out the prim servant. They always took this poetical
+view of his name.
+
+Mrs. Wickersham greeted him civilly and solemnly. She had aged much
+since Keith saw her last, and had also grown quite deaf. Her face showed
+traces of the desperate struggle she was making to keep up appearances.
+It was apparent that she had not the least idea who he was; but she
+shook hands with him much as she might have done at a funeral had he
+called to pay his respects. Among the late arrivals was Mrs. Wentworth.
+She was the richest-dressed woman in the room, and her jewels were the
+finest, but she had an expression on her face, as she entered, which
+Keith had never seen there. Her head was high, and there was an air of
+defiance about her which challenged the eye at once.
+
+"I don't think I shall speak to her," said a voice near Keith.
+
+"Well, I have known her all my life, and until it becomes a public
+scandal I don't feel authorized to cut her--"
+
+The speaker was Mrs. Nailor, who was in her most charitable mood.
+
+"Oh, of course, I shall speak to her here, but I mean--I certainly shall
+not visit her."
+
+"You know she has quarrelled with her friend, Mrs. Lancaster? About her
+husband." This was behind her fan.
+
+"Oh, yes. She is to be here to-night. Quite brazen, isn't it? We shall
+see how they meet. I met a remarkably pretty girl down in the
+dressing-room," she continued; "one of the guests. She has such pretty
+manners, too. Really, I thought, from her politeness to me in arranging
+my dress, she must be one of the maids until Mrs. Wentworth spoke to
+her. Young girls nowadays are so rude! They take up the mirror the whole
+time, and never think of letting you see yourself. I wonder who she
+can be?"
+
+"Possibly Mrs. Wentworth's companion. I think she is here. She has to
+have some one to do the proprieties, you know?" said Mrs. Nailor.
+
+"I should think it might be as well," assented the other, with a sniff.
+"But she would hardly be here!"
+
+"She is really her governess, a very ill-bred and rude young person,"
+said Mrs. Nailor.
+
+The other sighed.
+
+"Society is getting so democratic now, one might say, so mixed, that
+there is no telling whom one may meet nowadays."
+
+"No, indeed," pursued Mrs. Nailor. "I do not at all approve of
+governesses and such persons being invited out. I think the English way
+much the better. There the governess never dreams of coming to the table
+except to luncheon, and her friends are the housekeeper and the butler."
+
+Keith, wearied of the banalities at his ear, crossed over to where Mrs.
+Wentworth stood a little apart from the other ladies. One or two men
+were talking to her. She was evidently pleased to see him. She talked
+volubly, and with just that pitch in her voice that betrays a subcurrent
+of excitement.
+
+From time to time she glanced about her, appearing to Keith to search
+the faces of the other women. Keith wondered if it were a fancy of his
+that they were holding a little aloof from her. Presently Mrs. Nailor
+came up and spoke to her.
+
+Keith backed away a little, and found himself mixed up with the train of
+a lady behind him, a dainty thing of white muslin.
+
+He apologized in some confusion, and turning, found himself looking into
+Lois Huntington's eyes. For a bare moment he was in a sort of maze. Then
+the expression in her face dispelled it. She held out her hand, and he
+clasped it; and before he had withdrawn his eyes from hers, he knew that
+his peace was made, and Mrs. Wickersham's drawing-room had become
+another place. This, then, was what Alice Lancaster meant when she spoke
+of the peacemakers.
+
+"It does not in the least matter about the dress, I assure you," she
+said in reply to his apology. "My dressmaker, Lois Huntington, can
+repair it so that you will not know it has been torn. It was only a ruse
+of mine to attract your attention." She was trying to speak lightly. "I
+thought you were not going to speak to me at all. It seems to be a way
+you have of treating your old friends--your oldest friends,"
+she laughed.
+
+"Oh, the insolence of youth!" said Keith, wishing to keep away from a
+serious subject. "Let us settle this question of age here and now. I say
+you are seven years old."
+
+"You are a Bourbon," she said; "you neither forget nor learn. Look at
+me. How old do I look?"
+
+"Seven--"
+
+"No. Look."
+
+"I am looking-would I were Argus! You look like--perpetual Youth."
+
+And she did. She was dressed in pure white. Her dark eyes were soft and
+gentle, yet with mischief lurking in them, and her straight brows,
+almost black, added to their lustre. Her dark hair was brushed back from
+her white forehead, and as she turned, Keith noted again, as he had done
+the first time he met her, the fine profile and the beautiful lines of
+her round throat, with the curves below it, as white as snow. "Perpetual
+Youth," he murmured.
+
+"And do you know what you are?" she challenged him.
+
+"Yes; Age."
+
+"No. Flattery. But I am proof. I have learned that men are deceivers
+ever. You positively refused to see me when I had left word with the
+servant that I would see you if you called." She gave him a swift little
+glance to see how he took her charge.
+
+"I did nothing of the kind. I will admit that I should know where you
+are by instinct, as Sir John knew the Prince; but I did not expect you
+to insist on my doing so. How was I to know you were in the city?"
+
+"The servant told you."
+
+"The servant told me?"
+
+As Keith's brow puckered in the effort to unravel the mystery, she
+nodded.
+
+"Um-hum--I heard him. I was at the head of the stair."
+
+Keith tapped his head.
+
+"It's old age--sheer senility."
+
+"'No; I don't want to see the other lady,'" she said, mimicking him so
+exactly that he opened his eyes wide.
+
+"I am staying at Mrs. Wentworth's--Cousin Norman's," she continued, with
+a little change of expression and the least little lift of her head.
+
+Keith's expression, perhaps, changed slightly, too, for she added
+quietly: "Cousin Louise had to have some one with her, and I am teaching
+the children. I am the governess."
+
+"I have always said that children nowadays have all the best things,"
+said Keith, desirous to get off delicate ground. "You know, some one has
+said he never ate a ripe peach in his life: when he was a boy the
+grown-ups had them, and since he grew up the children have them all."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I am very severe, I assure you."
+
+"You look it. I should think you might be Herod himself."
+
+She smiled, and then the smile died out, and she glanced around her.
+
+"I owe you an apology," she said in a lowered voice.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For--mis--for not answering your letters. But I mis--I don't know how
+to say what I wish. Won't you accept it without an explanation?" She
+held out her hand and gave him the least little flitting glance
+of appeal.
+
+"I will," said Keith. "With all my heart."
+
+"Thank you. I have been very unhappy about it." She breathed a little
+sigh of relief, which Keith caught.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster did not arrive until all the other guests had been there
+a little while. But when she entered she had never looked handsomer. As
+soon as she had greeted her hostess, her eyes swept around the room, and
+in their circuit rested for a moment on Keith, who was talking to Lois.
+She gave them a charming smile. The next moment, however, her eyes stole
+that way again, and this time they bore a graver expression. The
+admiration that filled the younger girl's eyes was unbounded and
+unfeigned.
+
+"Don't you think she is the handsomest woman in the room?" she asked,
+with a nod toward Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+Keith was suddenly conscious that he did not wish to commit himself to
+such praise. She was certainly very handsome, he admitted, but there
+were others who would pass muster, too, in a beauty show.
+
+"Oh, but I know you must think so; every one says you do," Lois urged,
+with a swift glance up at him, which, somehow, Keith would have liked
+to avoid.
+
+"Then, I suppose it must be so; for every one knows my innermost
+thoughts. But I think she was more beautiful when she was younger. I do
+not know what it is; but there is something in Society that, after a few
+years, takes away the bloom of ingenuousness and puts in its place just
+the least little shade of unreality."
+
+"I know what you mean; but she is so beautiful that one would never
+notice it. What a power such beauty is! I should be afraid of it." Lois
+was speaking almost to herself, and Keith, as she was deeply absorbed in
+observing Mrs. Lancaster, gazed at her with renewed interest.
+
+"I'd so much rather be loved for myself'," the girl went on earnestly.
+"I think it is one of the compensations that those who want such
+beauty have-"
+
+"Well, it is one of the things which you must always hold merely as a
+conjecture, for you can never know by experience."
+
+She glanced up at him with a smile, half pleased, half reproving.
+
+"Do you think I am the sort that likes flattery? I believe you think we
+are all silly. I thought you were too good a friend of mine to attempt
+that line with me."
+
+Keith declared that all women loved flattery, but protested, of course,
+that he was not flattering her.
+
+"Why should I?" he laughed.
+
+"Oh, just because you think it will please me, and because it is so
+easy. It is so much less trouble. It takes less intellect, and you don't
+think I am worth spending intellect on."
+
+This Keith stoutly denied.
+
+She gave him a fleeting glance out of her brown eyes. "She, however, is
+as good as she is handsome," she said, returning to Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"Yes; she is one of those who 'do good by stealth, and blush to find it
+fame.'"
+
+"There are not a great many like that around here," Lois smiled. "Here
+comes one now?" she added, as Mrs. Nailor moved up to them. She was "so
+glad" to see Miss Huntington out. "You must like your Winter in New
+York?" she said, smiling softly. "You have such opportunities for seeing
+interesting people-like Mr. Keith, here?" She turned her eyes on Keith.
+
+"Oh, yes. I do. I see so many entertaining people," said Lois,
+innocently.
+
+"They are very kind to you?" purred the elder lady.
+
+"Most condescending." Lois turned her eyes toward Keith with a little
+sparkle in them; but as she read his appreciation a smile stole
+into them.
+
+Dinner was solemnly announced, and the couples swept out in that stately
+manner appropriate to solemn occasions, such as marriages, funerals, and
+fashionable dinners.
+
+"Do you know your place?" asked Keith of Lois, to whom he had been
+assigned.
+
+"Don't I? A governess and not know her place! You must help me through."
+
+"Through what?"
+
+"The dinner. You do not understand what a tremendous responsibility you
+have. This is my first dinner."
+
+"I always said dinners were a part of the curse," said Keith, lightly,
+smiling down at her fresh face with sheer content. "I shall confine
+myself hereafter to breakfast and lunch-except when I receive
+invitations to Mrs. Wickersham's." he added.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster was on the other side of Keith; so he found the dinner
+much pleasanter than he had expected. She soon fell to talking of Lois,
+a subject which Keith found very agreeable.
+
+"You know, she is staying with Louise Wentworth? Louise had to have some
+one to stay with her, so she got her to come and teach the children this
+Winter. Louise says she is trying to make something of her."
+
+"From my slight observation, it seems to me as if the Creator has been
+rather successful in that direction already. How does she propose to
+help Him out?"
+
+Mrs. Lancaster bent forward and took a good look at the girl, who at the
+moment was carrying on an animated conversation with Stirling. Her color
+was coming and going, her eyes were sparkling, and her cheek was
+dimpling with fun.
+
+"She looks as if she came out of a country garden, doesn't she?" she
+said.
+
+"Yes, because she has, and has not yet been wired to a stick."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster's eyes grew graver at Keith's speech. Just then the
+conversation became more general. Some one told a story of a man
+travelling with his wife and meeting a former wife, and forgetting which
+one he then had.
+
+"Oh, that reminds me of a story I heard the other day. It was awfully
+good-but just a little wicked," exclaimed Mrs. Nailor.
+
+Keith's smile died out, and there was something very like a cloud
+lowering on his brow. Several others appeared surprised, and Mr. Nailor,
+a small bald-headed man, said across the table: "Hally, don't you tell
+that story." But Mrs. Nailor was not to be controlled.
+
+"Oh, I must tell it! It is not going to hurt any of you. Let me see if
+there is any one here very young and innocent?" She glanced about the
+table. "Oh, yes; there is little Miss Huntington. Miss Huntington, you
+can stop your ears while I tell it."
+
+"Thank you," said Lois, placidly. She leaned a little forward and put
+her fingers in her ears.
+
+A sort of gasp went around the table, and then a shout of laughter, led
+by Stirling. Mrs. Nailor joined in it, but her face was red and her eyes
+were angry. Mrs. Wentworth looked annoyed.
+
+"Good," said Mrs. Lancaster, in an undertone.
+
+"Divine," said Keith, his eyes snapping with satisfaction.
+
+"It was not so bad as that," said Mrs. Nailor, her face very red. "Miss
+Huntington, you can take your hands down now; I sha'n't tell it."
+
+"Thank you," said Lois, and sat quietly back in her chair, with her face
+as placid as a child's.
+
+Mrs. Nailor suddenly changed the conversation to Art. She was looking at
+a painting on the wall behind Keith, and after inspecting it a moment
+through her lorgnon, turned toward the head of the table.
+
+"Where did you get that picture, Mrs. Wickersham? Have I ever seen it
+before?"
+
+The hostess's gaze followed hers.
+
+"That? Oh, we have had it ever so long. It is a portrait of an ancestor
+of mine. It belonged to a relative, a distant relative--another branch,
+you know, in whose family it came down, though we had even more right to
+it, as we were an older branch," she said, gaining courage as she
+went on.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster turned and inspected the picture.
+
+"I, too, almost seem to have seen it before," she said presently, in a
+reflective way.
+
+"My dear, you have not seen it before," declared the hostess,
+positively. "Although we have had it for a good while, it was at our
+place in the country. Brush, the picture-dealer, says it is one of the
+finest 'old masters' in New York, quite in the best style of Sir
+Peter--What's his name?"
+
+"Then I have seen some one so like it--? Who can it be?" said Mrs.
+Lancaster, her mind still working along the lines of reminiscence.
+
+Nearly every one was looking now.
+
+"Why, I know who it is!" said Lois Huntington, who had turned to look at
+it, to Mrs. Lancaster. "It is Mr. Keith." Her clear voice was heard
+distinctly.
+
+"Of course, it is," said Mrs. Lancaster. Others agreed with her.
+
+Keith, too, had turned and looked over his shoulder at the picture
+behind him, and for a moment he seemed in a dream. His father was
+gazing down at him out of the frame. The next moment he came to himself.
+It was the man-in-armor that used to hang in the library at Elphinstone.
+As he turned back, he glanced at Mrs. Lancaster, and her eyes gazed into
+his. The next moment he addressed Mrs. Wickersham and started a new
+subject of conversation.
+
+"That is it," said Mrs. Lancaster to herself. Then turning to her
+hostess, she said: "No, I never saw it before; I was mistaken."
+
+But Lois knew that she herself had seen it before, and remembered where
+it was.
+
+Mrs. Wickersham looked extremely uncomfortable, but Keith's calm
+courtesy set her at ease again.
+
+When the gentlemen, after their cigars, followed the ladies into the
+drawing-room, Keith found Mrs. Lancaster and Lois sitting together, a
+little apart from the others, talking earnestly. He walked over and
+joined them.
+
+They had been talking of the incident of the picture, but stopped as he
+came up.
+
+"Now, Lois," said Mrs. Lancaster, gayly, "I have known Mr. Keith a long
+time, and I give you one standing piece of advice. Don't believe one
+word that he tells you; for he is the most insidious flatterer
+that lives."
+
+"On the contrary," said Keith, bowing and speaking gravely to the
+younger girl, "I assure you that you may believe implicitly every word
+that I tell you. I promise you in the beginning that I shall never tell
+you anything but the truth as long as I live. It shall be my claim upon
+your friendship."
+
+"Thank you," said Lois, lifting her eyes to his face. Her color had
+deepened a little at his earnest manner. "I love a palpable truth."
+
+"You do not get it often in Society," said Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"I promise you that you shall always have it from me," said Keith.
+
+"Thank you," she said again, quite earnestly, looking him calmly in the
+eyes. "Then we shall always be friends."
+
+"Always."
+
+Just then Stirling came up and with a very flattering speech asked Miss
+Huntington to sing.
+
+"I hear you sing like a seraph," he declared.
+
+"I thought they always cried," she said, smiling; then, with a
+half-frightened look across toward her cousin, she sobered and declared
+that she could not.
+
+"I have been meaning to have her take lessons," said Mrs. Wentworth,
+condescendingly, from her seat near by; "but I have not had time to
+attend to it. She will sing very well when she takes lessons." She
+resumed her conversation. Stirling was still pressing Miss Huntington,
+and she was still excusing herself; declaring that she had no one to
+play her accompaniments.
+
+"Please help me," she said in an undertone to Keith. "I used to play
+them myself, but Cousin Louise said I must not do that; that I must
+always stand up to sing."
+
+"Nonsense," said Keith. "You sha'n't sing if you do not wish to do so;
+but let me tell you: there is a deed of record in my State conveying a
+tract of land to a girl from an old gentleman on the expressed
+consideration that she had sung 'Annie Laurie' for him when he asked her
+to do it, without being begged."
+
+She looked at him as if she had not heard, and then glanced at her
+cousin.
+
+"Either sing or don't sing, my dear," said Mrs. Wentworth, with a slight
+frown. "You are keeping every one waiting."
+
+Keith glanced over at her, and was about to say to Lois, "Don't sing";
+but he was too late. Folding her hands before her, and without moving
+from where she stood near the wall, she began to sing "Annie Laurie."
+She had a lovely voice, and she sang as simply and unaffectedly as if
+she had been singing in her own room for her own pleasure.
+
+When she got through, there was a round of applause throughout the
+company. Even Mrs. Wentworth joined in it; but she came over and said:
+
+"That was well done; but next time, my dear, let some one play your
+accompaniment."
+
+"Next time, don't you do any such thing," said Keith, stoutly. "You can
+never sing it so well again if you do. Please accept this from a man who
+would rather have heard you sing that song that way than have heard
+Albani sing in 'Lohengrin.'" He took the rosebud out of his buttonhole
+and gave it to her, looking her straight in the eyes.
+
+"Is this the truth?" she asked, with her gaze quite steady on his face.
+
+"The palpable truth," he said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A MISUNDERSTANDING
+
+Miss Lois Huntington, as she sank back in the corner of her cousin's
+carriage, on their way home, was far away from the rattling New York
+street. Mrs. Wentworth's occasional recurrence to the unfortunate
+incidents of stopping her ears and of singing the song without an
+accompaniment did not ruffle her. She knew she had pleased one man--the
+one she at that moment would rather have pleased than all the rest of
+New York. Her heart was eased of a load that had made it heavy for many
+a day. They were once more friends. Mrs. Wentworth's chiding sounded as
+if it were far away on some alien shore, while Lois floated serenely on
+a tide that appeared to begin away back in her childhood, and was
+bearing her gently, still gently, she knew not whither. If she tried to
+look forward she was lost in a mist that hung like a soft haze over the
+horizon. Might there be a haven yonder in that rosy distance? Or were
+those still the billows of the wide and trackless sea? She did not know
+or care. She would drift and meantime think of him, the old friend who
+had turned the evening for her into a real delight. Was he in love with
+Mrs. Lancaster? she wondered. Every one said he was, and it would not be
+unnatural if he were. It was on her account he had gone to Mrs.
+Wickersham's. She undoubtedly liked him. Many men were after her. If Mr.
+Keith was trying to marry her, as every one said, he must be in love
+with her. He would never marry any one whom he did not love. If he were
+in love with Mrs. Lancaster, would she marry him? Her belief was that
+she would.
+
+At the thought she for one moment had a pang of envy.
+
+Her reverie was broken in on by Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"Why are you so pensive? You have not said a word since we started."
+
+"Why, I do not know. I was just thinking. You know, such a dinner is
+quite an episode with me."
+
+"Did you have a pleasant time? Was Mr. Keith agreeable? I was glad to
+see you had him; for he is a very agreeable man when he chooses, but
+quite moody, and you never know what he is going to say."
+
+"I think that is one of his--of his charms--that you don't know what he
+is going to say. I get so tired of talking to people who say just what
+you know they are going to say--just what some one else has just said
+and what some one else will say to-morrow. It is like reading an
+advertisement."
+
+"Lois, you must not be so unconventional," said Mrs. Wentworth. "I must
+beg you not to repeat such a thing as your performance this evening. I
+don't like it."
+
+"Very well, Cousin Louise, I will not," said the girl, a little stiffly.
+"I shall recognize your wishes; but I must tell you that I do not agree
+with you. I hate conventionality. We all get machine-made. I see not the
+least objection to what I did, except your wishes, of course, and
+neither did Mr. Keith."
+
+"Well, while you are with me, you must conform to my wishes. Mr. Keith
+is not responsible for you. Mr. Keith is like other men--ready to
+flatter a young and unsophisticated girl."
+
+"No; Mr. Keith is not like other men. He does not have to wait and see
+what others think and say before he forms an opinion. I am so tired of
+hearing people say what they think others think. Even Mr. Rimmon, at
+church, says what he thinks his congregation likes--just as when he
+meets them he flatters them and tells them what dear ladies they are,
+and how well they look, and how good their wine is. Why can't people
+think for themselves?"
+
+"Well, on my word, Lois, you appear to be thinking for yourself! And you
+also appear to think very highly of Mr. Keith," said Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"I do. I have known Mr. Keith all my life," said the girl, gravely. "He
+is associated in my mind with all that I loved."
+
+"There, I did not mean to call up sorrowful thoughts," said Mrs.
+Wentworth. "I wanted you to have a good time."
+
+Next day Mr. Keith gave himself the pleasure of calling promptly at Mrs.
+Norman's. He remembered the time when he had waited a day or two before
+calling on Miss Huntington and had found her gone, with its train of
+misunderstandings. So he had no intention of repeating the error. In
+Love as in War, Success attends Celerity.
+
+Miss Huntington was not at home, the servant said in answer to Keith's
+inquiries for the ladies; she had taken the children out to see Madam
+Wentworth. But Mrs. Wentworth would see Mr. Keith.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth was more than usually cordial. She was undoubtedly more
+nervous than she used to be. She soon spoke of Norman, and for a moment
+grew quite excited.
+
+"I know what people say about me," she exclaimed. "I know they say I
+ought to have borne everything and have gone on smiling and pretending I
+was happy even when I had the proof that he was--was--that he no longer
+cared for me, or for my--my happiness. But I could not--I was not
+constituted so. And if I have refused to submit to it I had
+good reason."
+
+"Mrs. Wentworth," said Keith, "will you please tell me what you are
+talking about?"
+
+"You will hear about it soon enough," she said, with a bitter laugh.
+"All you have to do is to call on Mrs. Nailor or Mrs. Any-one-else for
+five minutes."
+
+"If I hear what I understand you to believe, that Norman cares for some
+one else, I shall not believe it."
+
+She laughed bitterly.
+
+"Oh, you and Norman always swore by each other. I guess that you are no
+better than other men."
+
+"We are, at least, better than some other men," said Keith, "and Norman
+is better than most other men."
+
+She simply shrugged her shoulders and drifted into a reverie. It was
+evidently not a pleasant one.
+
+Keith rose to go. And a half-hour later he quite casually called at old
+Mrs. Wentworth's, where he found the children having a romp. Miss
+Huntington looked as sweet as a rose, and Keith thought, or at least
+hoped, she was pleased to see him.
+
+Keith promptly availed himself of Mrs. Wentworth's permission, and was
+soon calling every day or two at her house, and even on those days when
+he did not call he found himself sauntering up the avenue or in the
+Park, watching for the slim, straight, trim little figure he now knew so
+well. He was not in love with Lois. He said this to himself quite
+positively. He only admired her, and had a feeling of protection and
+warm friendship for a young and fatherless girl who had once had every
+promise of a life of ease and joy, and was by the hap of ill fortune
+thrown out on the cold world and into a relation of dependence. He had
+about given up any idea of falling in love. Love, such as he had once
+known it, was not for him. Love for love's sake--love that created a new
+world and peopled it with one woman--was over for him. At least, so
+he said.
+
+And when he had reasoned thus, he would find himself hurrying along the
+avenue or in the Park, straining his eyes to see if he could distinguish
+her among the crowd of walkers and loungers that thronged the sidewalk
+or the foot-path a quarter of a mile away. And if he could not, he was
+conscious of disappointment; and if he did distinguish her, his heart
+would give a bound, and he would go racing along till he was at
+her side.
+
+Oftenest, though, he visited her at Mrs. Wentworth's, where he could
+talk to her without the continual interruption of the children's busy
+tongues, and could get her to sing those old-fashioned songs that,
+somehow, sounded to him sweeter than all the music in the world.
+
+In fact, he went there so often to visit her that he began to neglect
+his other friends. Even Norman he did not see as much of as formerly.
+
+Once, when he was praising her voice to Mrs. Wentworth, she said to him:
+"Yes, I think she would do well in concert. I am urging her to prepare
+herself for that; not at present, of course, for I need her just now
+with the children; but in a year or two the boys will go to school and
+the two girls will require a good French governess, or I may take them
+to France. Then I shall advise her to try concert. Of course, Miss
+Brooke cannot take care of her always. Besides, she is too independent
+to allow her to do it."
+
+Keith was angry in a moment. He had never liked Mrs. Wentworth so
+little. "I shall advise her to do nothing of the kind," he said firmly.
+"Miss Huntington is a lady, and to have her patronized and treated as an
+inferior by a lot of _nouveaux riches_ is more than I could stand."
+
+"I see no chance of her marrying," said Mrs. Wentworth. "She has not a
+cent, and you know men don't marry penniless girls these days."
+
+"Oh, they do if they fall in love. There are a great many men in the
+world and even in New York, besides the small tuft-hunting, money-loving
+parasites that one meets at the so-called swell houses. If those you and
+I know were all, New York would be a very insignificant place. The
+brains and the character and the heart; the makers and leaders, are not
+found at the dinners and balls we are honored with invitations to by
+Mrs. Nailor and her like. Alice Lancaster was saying the other day--"
+
+Mrs. Wentworth froze up.
+
+"Alice Lancaster!" Her eyes flashed. "Do not quote her to me!" Her lips
+choked with the words.
+
+"She is a friend of yours, and a good friend of yours," declared Keith,
+boldly.
+
+"I do not want such friends as that," she said, flaming suddenly. "Who
+do you suppose has come between my husband and me?"
+
+"Not Mrs. Lancaster."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No," said Keith, firmly; "you wrong them both. You have been misled."
+
+She rose and walked up and down the room in an excitement like that of
+an angry lioness.
+
+"You are the only friend that would say that to me."
+
+"Then I am a better friend than others." He went on to defend Mrs.
+Lancaster warmly.
+
+When Keith left he wondered if that outburst meant that she still loved
+Norman.
+
+It is not to be supposed that Mr. Keith's visits to the house of Mrs.
+Wentworth had gone unobserved or unchronicled. That portion of the set
+that knew Mrs. Wentworth best, which is most given to the discussion of
+such important questions as who visits whom too often, and who has
+stopped visiting whom altogether, with the reasons therefor, was soon
+busy over Keith's visits.
+
+They were referred to in the society column of a certain journal
+recently started, known by some as "The Scandal-monger's Own," and some
+kind friend was considerate enough to send Norman Wentworth a
+marked copy.
+
+Some suggested timidly that they had heard that Mr. Keith's visits were
+due to his opinion of the governess; but they were immediately
+suppressed.
+
+Mrs. Nailor expressed the more general opinion when she declared that
+even a débutante would know that men like Ferdy Wickersham and Mr. Keith
+did not fall in love with unknown governesses. That sort of thing would
+do to put in books; but it did not happen in real life. They might
+visit them, but--! After which she proceeded to say as many ill-natured
+things about Miss Lois as she could think of; for the story of Lois's
+stopping her ears had also gotten abroad.
+
+Meantime, Keith pursued his way, happily ignorant of the motives
+attributed to him by some of those who smiled on him and invited him to
+their teas. A half-hour with Lois Huntington was reward enough to him
+for much waiting. To see her eyes brighten and to hear her voice grow
+softer and more musical as she spoke his name; to feel that she was in
+sympathy with him, that she understood him without explanation, that she
+was interested in his work: these were the rewards which lit up life for
+him and sent him to his rooms cheered and refreshed. He knew that she
+had no idea of taking him otherwise than as a friend. She looked on him
+almost as a contemporary of her father. But life was growing very sweet
+for him again.
+
+It was not long before the truth was presented to him.
+
+One of his club friends rallied him on his frequent visits in a certain
+quarter and the conquest which they portended. Keith flushed warmly. He
+had that moment been thinking of Lois Huntington. He had just been to
+see her, and her voice was still in his ears; so, though he thought it
+unusual in Tom Trimmer to refer to the matter, it was not unnatural. He
+attempted to turn the subject lightly by pretending to misunderstand
+him.
+
+"I mean, I hear you have cut Wickersham out. Ferdy thought he had a
+little corner there."
+
+Again Keith reddened. He, too, had sometimes thought that Ferdy was
+beginning to be attentive to Lois Huntington. Others manifestly
+thought so too.
+
+"I don't know that I understand you," he said.
+
+"Don't you?" laughed the other. "Haven't you seen the papers lately?"
+
+Keith chilled instantly.
+
+"Norman Wentworth is my friend," he said quietly.
+
+"So they say is Mrs. Norm--" began Mr. Trimmer, with a laugh.
+
+Before he had quite pronounced the name, Keith leaned forward, his eyes
+levelled right into the other's.
+
+"Don't say that, Trimmer. I want to be friends with you," he said
+earnestly. "Don't you ever couple my name with that lady's. Her husband
+is my friend, and any man that says I am paying her any attention other
+than such as her husband would have me pay her says what is false."
+
+"I know nothing about that," said Tom, half surlily. "I am only giving
+what others say."
+
+"Well, don't you even do that." He rose to his feet, and stood very
+straight. "Do me the favor to say to any one you may hear intimate such
+a lie that I will hold any man responsible who says it."
+
+"Jove!" said Mr. Trimmer, afterwards, to his friend Minturn, "must be
+some fire there. He was as hot as pepper in a minute. Wanted to fight
+any one who mentioned the matter. He'll have his hands full if he fights
+all who are talking about him and Ferdy's old flame. I heard half a
+roomful buzzing about it at Mrs. Nailor's. But it was none of my affair.
+If he wants to fight about another man's wife, let him. It's not the
+best way to stop the scandal."
+
+"You know, I think Ferdy is a little relieved to get out of that," added
+Mr. Minturn. "Ferdy wants money, and big money. He can't expect to get
+money there. They say the chief cause of the trouble was Wentworth would
+not put up money enough for her. He has got his eye on the
+Lancaster-Yorke combine, and he is all devotion to the widow now."
+
+"She won't look at him. She has too much sense. Besides, she likes
+Keith," said Stirling.
+
+As Mr. Trimmer and his friend said, if Keith expected to silence all the
+tongues that were clacking with his name and affairs, he was likely to
+be disappointed. There are some people to whose minds the distribution
+of scandal is as great a delight as the sweetest morsel is to the
+tongue. Besides, there was one person who had a reason for spreading the
+report. Ferdy Wickersham had returned and was doing his best to give it
+circulation.
+
+Norman Wentworth received in his mail, one morning, a thin letter over
+which a frown clouded his brow. The address was in a backhand. He had
+received a letter in the same handwriting not long previously--an
+anonymous letter. It related to his wife and to one whom he had held in
+high esteem. He had torn it up furiously in little bits, and had dashed
+them into the waste-basket as he had dashed the matter from his mind. He
+was near tearing this letter up without reading it; but after a moment
+he opened the envelope. A society notice in a paper the day before had
+contained the name of his wife and that of Mr. Gordon Keith, and this
+was not the only time he had seen the two names together. As his eye
+glanced over the single page of disguised writing, a deeper frown grew
+on his brow. It was only a few lines; but it contained a barbed arrow
+that struck and rankled:
+
+     "When the cat's away
+     The mice will play.
+     If you have cut your wisdom-teeth,
+     You'll know your mouse. His name is ----"
+
+It was signed, "_A True Friend_."
+
+Norman crushed the paper in his band, in a rage for having read it. But
+it was too late. He could not banish it from his mind: so many things
+tallied with it. He had heard that Keith was there a great deal. Why had
+he ceased speaking of it of late?
+
+When Keith next met Norman there was a change in the latter. He was cold
+and almost morose; answered Keith absently, and after a little while
+rose and left him rather curtly.
+
+When this had occurred once or twice Keith determined to see Norman and
+have a full explanation. Accordingly, one day he went to his office.
+Mr. Wentworth was out, but Keith said he would wait for him in his
+private office.
+
+On the table lay a newspaper. Keith picked it up to glance over it. His
+eye fell on a marked passage. It was a notice of a dinner to which he
+had been a few evenings before. Mrs. Wentworth's name was marked with a
+blue pencil, and a line or two below it was his own name
+similarly marked.
+
+Keith felt the hot blood surge into his face, then a grip came about his
+throat. Could this be the cause? Could this be the reason for Norman's
+curtness? Could Norman have this opinion of him? After all these years!
+
+He rose and walked from the office and out into the street. It was a
+blow such as he had not had in years. The friendship of a lifetime
+seemed to have toppled down in a moment.
+
+Keith walked home in deep reflection. That Norman could treat him so was
+impossible except on one theory: that he believed the story which
+concerned him and Mrs. Wentworth. That he could believe such a story
+seemed absolutely impossible. He passed through every phase of regret,
+wounded pride, and anger. Then it came to him clearly enough that if
+Norman were laboring under any such hallucination it was his duty to
+dispel it. He should go to him and clear his mind. The next morning he
+went again to Norman's office. To his sorrow, he learned that he had
+left town the evening before for the West to see about some business
+matters. He would be gone some days. Keith determined to see him as soon
+as he returned.
+
+Keith had little difficulty in assigning the scandalous story to its
+true source, though he did Ferdy Wickersham an injustice in laying the
+whole blame on him.
+
+Meantime, Keith determined that he would not go to Mrs. Wentworth's
+again until after he had seen Norman, even though it deprived him of the
+chance of seeing Lois. It was easier to him, as he was very busy now
+pushing through the final steps of his deal with the English syndicate.
+This he was the more zealous in as his last visit South had shown him
+that old Mr. Rawson was beginning to fail.
+
+"I am just livin' now to hear about Phrony," said the old man, "--and to
+settle with that man," he added, his deep eyes burning under his
+shaggy brows.
+
+Keith had little idea that the old man would ever live to hear of her
+again, and he had told him so as gently as he could.
+
+"Then I shall kill him," said the old man, quietly.
+
+Keith was in his office one morning when his attention was arrested by a
+heavy step outside his door. It had something familiar in it. Then he
+heard his name spoken in a loud voice. Some one was asking for him, and
+the next moment the door opened and Squire Rawson stood on the
+threshold. He looked worn; but his face was serene. Keith's intuition
+told him why he had come; and the old man did not leave it in any doubt.
+His greeting was brief.
+
+He had gotten to New York only that morning, and had already been to
+Wickersham's office; but the office was shut.
+
+"I have come to find her," he said, "and I'll find her, or I'll drag him
+through this town by his neck." He took out a pistol and laid it by him
+on the table.
+
+Keith was aghast. He knew the old man's resolution. His face showed that
+he was not to be moved from it. Keith began to argue with him. They did
+not do things that way in New York, he said. The police would arrest
+him. Or if he should shoot a man he would be tried, and it would go hard
+with him. He had better give up his pistol. "Let me keep it for you,"
+he urged.
+
+The old man took up the pistol and felt for his pocket.
+
+"I'll find her or I'll kill him," he said stolidly. "I have come to do
+one or the other. If I do that, I don't much keer what they do with me.
+But I reckon some of 'em would take the side of a woman what's been
+treated so. Well, I'll go on an' wait for him. How do you find this here
+place?" He took out a piece of paper and, carefully adjusting his
+spectacles, read a number. It was the number of Wickersham's office.
+
+Keith began to argue again; but the other's face was set like a rock. He
+simply put up his pistol carefully. "I'll kill him if I don't find her.
+Well, I reckon somebody will show me the way. Good day." He went out.
+
+The moment his footsteps had died away, Keith seized his hat and dashed
+out.
+
+The bulky figure was going slowly down the street, and Keith saw him
+stop a man and show him his bit of paper. Keith crossed the street and
+hurried on ahead of him. Wickersham's office was only a few blocks away,
+and a minute later Keith rushed into the front office. The clerks hooked
+up in surprise at his haste. Keith demanded of one of them if Mr.
+Wickersham was in. The clerk addressed turned and looked at another man
+nearer the door of the private office, who shook his head warningly. No,
+Mr. Wickersham was not in.
+
+Keith, however, had seen the signal, and he walked boldly up to the door
+of the private office.
+
+"Mr. Wickersham is in, but he is engaged," said the man, rising hastily.
+
+"I must see him immediately," said Keith, and opening the door, walked
+straight in.
+
+Wickersham was sitting at his desk poring over a ledger, and at the
+sudden entrance he looked up, startled. When he saw who it was he sprang
+to his feet, his face changing slightly. Just then one of the clerks
+followed Keith.
+
+As Keith, however, spoke quietly, Wickersham's expression changed, and
+the next second he had recovered his composure and with it his
+insolence.
+
+"To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit?" he demanded, with
+a curl of his lip.
+
+Keith gave a little wave of his arm, as if he would sweep away his
+insolence.
+
+"I have come to warn you that old Adam Rawson is in town hunting you."
+
+Wickersham's self-contained face paled suddenly, and he stepped a little
+back. Then his eye fell on the clerk, who stood just inside the door.
+"What do you want?" he demanded angrily. "---- you! can't you keep out
+when a gentleman wants to see me on private business?"
+
+The clerk hastily withdrew.
+
+"What does he want?" he asked of Keith, with a dry voice.
+
+"He is hunting for you. He wants to find his granddaughter, and he is
+coming after you."
+
+"What the ---- do I know about his granddaughter!" cried Wickersham.
+
+"That is for you to say. He swears that he will kill you unless you
+produce her. He is on his way here now, and I have hurried ahead to
+warn you."
+
+Wickersham's face, already pale, grew as white as death, for he read
+conviction in Keith's tone. With an oath he turned to a bell and
+rang it.
+
+"Ring for a cab for me at once," he said to the clerk who appeared.
+"Have it at my side entrance."
+
+As Keith passed out he heard him say to the clerk:
+
+"Tell any one who calls I have left town. I won't see a soul."
+
+A little later an old man entered Wickersham & Company's office and
+demanded to see F.C. Wickersham.
+
+There was a flurry among the men there, for they all knew that something
+unusual had occurred; and there was that about the massive, grim old
+man, with his fierce eyes, that demanded attention.
+
+On learning that Wickersham was not in, he said he would wait for him
+and started to take a seat.
+
+There was a whispered colloquy between two clerks, and then one of them
+told him that Mr. Wickersham was not in the city. He had been called
+away from town the day before, and would be gone for a month or two.
+Would the visitor leave his name?
+
+"Tell him Adam Rawson has been to see him, and that he will come
+again." He paused a moment, then said slowly: "Tell him I'm huntin' for
+him and I'm goin' to stay here till I find him."
+
+He walked slowly out, followed by the eyes of every man in the office.
+
+The squire spent his time between watching for Wickersham and hunting
+for his granddaughter. He would roam about the streets and inquire for
+her of policemen and strangers, quite as if New York were a small
+village like Ridgely instead of a great hive in which hundreds of
+thousands were swarming, their identity hardly known to any but
+themselves. Most of those to whom he applied treated him as a harmless
+old lunatic. But he was not always so fortunate. One night, when he was
+tired out with tramping the streets, he wandered into one of the parks
+and sat down on a bench, where he finally fell asleep. He was awakened
+by some one feeling in his pocket. He had just been dreaming that Phrony
+had found him and hail sat down beside him and was fondling him, and
+when he first came back to consciousness her name was on his lips. He
+still thought it was she who sat beside him, and he called her by name,
+"Phrony." The girl, a poor, painted, bedizened creature, was quick
+enough to answer to the name.
+
+"I am Phrony; go to sleep again."
+
+The joy of getting back his lost one aroused the old man, and he sat up
+with an exclamation of delight. The next second, at sight of the
+strange, painted face, he recoiled.
+
+"You Phrony?"
+
+"Yes. Don't you know me?" She snuggled closer beside him, and worked
+quietly at his big watch, which somehow had caught in his tight
+vest pocket.
+
+"No, you ain't! Who are you, girl? What are you doin'?"
+
+The young woman put her arms around his neck, and began to talk
+cajolingly. He was "such a dear old fellow," etc., etc. But the old
+man's wit had now returned to him. His disappointment had angered him.
+
+"Get away from me, woman. What are you doin' to me?" he demanded
+roughly.
+
+She still clung to him, using her poor blandishments. But the squire was
+angry. He pushed her off. "Go away from me, I say. What do you want? You
+ought to be ashamed of yourself. You don't know who I am. I am a deacon
+in the church, a trustee of Ridge College, and I have a granddaughter
+who is older than you. If you don't go away, I will tap you with
+my stick."
+
+The girl, having secured his watch, with something between a curse and a
+laugh, went off, calling him "an old drunk fool."
+
+Next moment the squire put his hand in his pocket to take out his watch,
+but it was gone. He felt in his other pockets, but they were empty, too.
+The young woman had clung to him long enough to rob him of everything.
+The squire rose and hurried down the walk, calling lustily after her;
+but it was an officer who answered the call. When the squire told his
+story he simply laughed and told him he was drunk, and threatened, if he
+made any disturbance, to "run him in."
+
+The old countryman flamed out.
+
+"Run who in?" he demanded. "Do you know who I am, young man?"
+
+"No, I don't, and I don't keer a ----."
+
+"Well, I'm Squire Rawson of Ridgely, and I know more law than a hundred
+consarned blue-bellied thief-hiders like you. Whoever says I am drunk is
+a liar. But if I was drunk is that any reason for you to let a thief rob
+me? What is your name? I've a mind to arrest you and run you in myself.
+I've run many a better man in."
+
+It happened that the officer's record was not quite clear enough to
+allow him to take the chance of a contest with so bold an antagonist as
+the squire of Ridgely. He did not know just who he was, or what he might
+be able to do. So he was willing to "break even," and he walked off
+threatning, but leaving the squire master of the field.
+
+The next day the old man applied to Keith, who placed the matter in Dave
+Dennison's hands and persuaded the squire to return home.
+
+Keith was very unhappy over the misunderstanding between Norman and
+himself. He wrote Norman a letter asking an interview as soon as he
+returned. But he received no reply. Then, having heard of his return, he
+went to his office one day to see him.
+
+Yes, Mr. Wentworth was in. Some one was with him, but would Mr. Keith
+walk in? said the clerk, who knew of the friendship between the two. But
+Keith sent in his name.
+
+The clerk came out with a surprised look on his face. Mr. Wentworth was
+"engaged."
+
+Keith went home and wrote a letter, but his letter was returned
+unopened, and on it was the indorsement, "Mr. Norman Wentworth declines
+to hold any communication with Mr. Gordon Keith."
+
+After this, Keith, growing angry, swore that he would take no further
+steps.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+PHRONY TRIPPER AND THE REV. MR. RIMMON
+
+As Keith stepped from his office one afternoon, he thought he heard his
+name called--called somewhat timidly. When, however, he turned and
+glanced around among the hurrying throng that filled the street, he saw
+no one whom he knew. Men and women were bustling along with that
+ceaseless haste that always struck him in New York--haste to go, haste
+to return, haste to hasten: the trade-mark of New York life: the hope of
+outstripping in the race.
+
+A moment later he was conscious of a woman's step close behind him. He
+turned as the woman came up beside him, and faced--Phrony Tripper. She
+was so worn and bedraggled and aged that for a moment he did not
+recognize her. Then, as she spoke, he knew her.
+
+"Why, Phrony!" He held out his hand. She seized it almost hungrily.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Keith! Is it really you? I hardly dared hope it was. I have not
+seen any one I knew for so long--so long!" Her face worked, and she
+began to whimper; but Keith soothed her.
+
+He drew her away from the crowded thoroughfare into a side street.
+
+"You knew--?" she said, and gazed at him with a silent appeal.
+
+"Yes, I knew. He deceived you and deluded you into running away with
+him."
+
+"I thought he loved me, and he did when he married me. I am sure he did.
+But when he met that lady--"
+
+"When he did what?" asked Keith, who could scarcely believe his own
+ears. "Did he marry you? Ferdy Wickersham? Who married you? When? Where
+was it? Who was present?"
+
+"Yes; I would not come until he promised--"
+
+"Yes, I knew he would promise. But did he marry you afterwards? Who was
+present? Have you any witnesses?"
+
+"Yes. Oh, yes. I was married here in New York--one night--about ten
+o'clock--the night we got here. Mr. Plume was our only witness. Mr.
+Plume had a paper the preacher gave him; but he lost it."
+
+"He did! Who married you? Where was it?"
+
+"His name was Rimm--Rimm-something--I cannot remember much; my memory is
+all gone. He was a young man. He married us in his room. Mr. Plume got
+him for me. He offered to marry us himself--said he was a preacher; but
+I wouldn't have him, and said I would go home or kill myself if they
+didn't have a preacher. Then Mr. Plume went and came back, and we all
+got in a carriage and drove a little way, and got out and went into a
+house, and after some talk we were married. I don't know the street. But
+I would know him if I saw him. He was a young, fat man, that smiled and
+stood on his toes." The picture brought up to Keith the fat and
+unctuous Rimmon.
+
+"Well, then you went abroad, and your husband left you over there?"
+
+"Yes; I was in heaven for--for a little while, and then he left me--for
+another woman. I am sure he cared for me, and he did not mean to treat
+me so; but she was rich and so beautiful, and--what was I?" She gave an
+expressive gesture of self-abnegation.
+
+"Poor fool!" said Keith to himself. "Poor girl!" he said aloud.
+
+"I have written; but, maybe, he never got my letter. He would not have
+let me suffer so."
+
+Keith's mouth shut closer.
+
+She went on to tell of Wickersham's leaving her; of her hopes that after
+her child was born he would come back to her. But the child was born and
+died. Then of her despair; of how she had spent everything, and sold
+everything she had to come home.
+
+"I think if I could see him and tell him what I have been through, maybe
+he would--be different. I know he cared for me for a while.--But I can't
+find him," she went on hopelessly. "I don't want to go to him where
+there are others to see me, for I'm not fit to see even if they'd let me
+in--which they wouldn't." (She glanced down at her worn and shabby
+frock.) "I have watched for him 'most all day, but I haven't seen him,
+and the police ordered me away."
+
+"I will find him for you," said Keith, grimly.
+
+"Oh, no! You mustn't--you mustn't say anything to him. It would make
+him--it wouldn't do any good, and he'd never forgive me." She
+coughed deeply.
+
+"Phrony, you must go home," said Keith.
+
+For a second a spasm shot over her face; then a ray of light seemed to
+flit across it, and then it died out.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, I'll never go back there," she said.
+
+"Oh, yes, you will--you must. I will take you back. The mountain air
+will restore you, and--" She was shaking her head, but the look in her
+eyes showed that she was thinking of something far off.
+
+"No--no!"
+
+"I will take you," repeated Keith. "Your grandfather will be--he will be
+all right. He has just been here hunting for you."
+
+The expression on her face was so singular that Keith put his hand on
+her arm. To his horror, she burst into a laugh. It was so unreal that
+men passing glanced at her quickly, and, as they passed on, turned and
+looked back again.
+
+"Well, good-by; I must find my husband," she said, holding out her hand
+nervously and speaking in a hurried manner. "He's got the baby with him.
+Tell 'em at home I'm right well, and the baby is exactly like
+grandmother, but prettier, of course." She laughed again as she turned
+away and started off hastily.
+
+Keith caught up with her.
+
+"But, Phrony--" But she hurried on, shaking her head, and talking to
+herself about finding her baby and about its beauty. Keith kept up with
+her, put his hand in his pocket, and taking out several bills, handed
+them to her.
+
+"Here, you must take this, and tell me where you are staying."
+
+She took the money mechanically.
+
+"Where am I? Oh!--where am I staying? Sixteen Himmelstrasse, third
+floor--yes, that's it. No:--18 Rue Petits Champs, troisième étage. Oh,
+no:--241 Hill Street. I'll show you the baby. I must get it now." And
+she sped away, coughing.
+
+Keith, having watched her till she disappeared, walked on in deep
+reflection, hardly knowing what course to take. Presently his brow
+cleared. He turned and went rapidly back to the great office building
+where Wickersham had his offices on the first floor. He asked for Mr.
+Wickersham. A clerk came forward. Mr. Wickersham was not in town. No, he
+did not know when he would be back.
+
+After a few more questions as to the possible time of his return, Keith
+left his card.
+
+That evening Keith went to the address that Phrony had given him. It was
+a small lodging-house of, perhaps, the tenth rate. The dowdy woman in
+charge remembered a young woman such as he described. She was ill and
+rather crazy and had left several weeks before. She had no idea where
+she had gone. She did not know her name. Sometimes she called herself
+"Miss Tripper," sometimes "Mrs. Wickersham."
+
+Keith took a cab and drove to the detective agency where Dave Dennison
+had his office. Keith told him why he had come, and Dave listened with
+tightened lips and eyes in which the flame burned deeper and deeper.
+
+"I'll find her," he said.
+
+Having set Dennison to work, Keith next directed his steps toward the
+commodious house to which the Rev. William H. Rimmon had succeeded,
+along with the fashionable church and the fashionable congregation which
+his uncle had left.
+
+He was almost sure, from the name she had mentioned, that Mr. Rimmon had
+performed the ceremony. Rimmon had from time to time connected his name
+with matrimonial affairs which reflected little credit on him.
+
+From the time Mr. Rimmon had found his flattery and patience rewarded,
+the pulpit from which Dr. Little had for years delivered a well-weighed,
+if a somewhat dry, spiritual pabulum had changed.
+
+Mr. Rimmon knew his congregation too well to tax their patience with any
+such doctrinal sermons as his uncle had been given to. He treated his
+people instead to pleasant little discourses which were as much like
+Epictetus and Seneca as St. John or St. Paul.
+
+Fifteen minutes was his limit,--eighteen at the outside,--weighed out
+like a ration. Doubtless, Mr. Rimmon had his own idea of doing good. His
+assistants worked hard in back streets and trod the dusty byways,
+succoring the small fry, while he stepped on velvet carpets and cast his
+net for the larger fish.
+
+Was not Dives as well worth saving as Lazarus--and better worth it for
+Rimmon's purposes! And surely he was a more agreeable dinner-companion.
+Besides, nothing was really proved against Dives; and the crumbs from
+his table fed many a Lazarus.
+
+But there were times when the Rev. William H. Rimmon had a vision of
+other things: when the Rev. Mr. Rimmon, with his plump cheeks and plump
+stomach, with his embroidered stoles and fine surplices, his rich
+cassocks and hand-worked slippers, had a vision of another life. He
+remembered the brief period when, thrown with a number of earnest young
+men who had consecrated their lives to the work of their Divine Master,
+he had had aspirations for something essentially different from the life
+he now led. Sometimes, as he would meet some hard-working, threadbare
+brother toiling among the poor, who yet, for all his toil and narrowness
+of means, had in his face that light that comes only from feasting on
+the living bread, he envied him for a moment, and would gladly have
+exchanged for a brief time the "good things" that he had fallen heir to
+for that look of peace. These moments, however, were rare, and were
+generally those that followed some evening of even greater conviviality
+than usual, or some report that the stocks he had gotten Ferdy
+Wickersham to buy for him had unexpectedly gone down, so that he must
+make up his margins. When the margins had been made up and the stocks
+had reacted, Mr. Rimmon was sufficiently well satisfied with his
+own lot.
+
+And of late Mr. Rimmon had determined to settle down. There were those
+who said that Mr. Rimmon's voice took on a peculiarly unctuous tone when
+a certain young widow, as noted for her wealth as for her good looks and
+good nature entered the portals of his church.
+
+Keith now having rung the bell at Mr. Rimmon's pleasant rectory and
+asked if he was at home, the servant said he would see. It is
+astonishing how little servants in the city know of the movements of
+their employers. How much better they must know their characters!
+
+A moment later the servant returned.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Rimmon is in. He will be down directly; will the gentleman
+wait?"
+
+Keith took his seat and inspected the books on the table--a number of
+magazines, a large work on Exegesis, several volumes of poetry, the
+Social Register, and a society journal that contained the gossip and
+scandal of the town.
+
+Presently Mr. Rimmon was heard descending the stair. He had a light
+footfall, extraordinarily light in one so stout; for he had grown
+rounder with the years.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Keith. I believe we have met before. What can I do for you?" He
+held Keith's card in his hand, and was not only civil, but almost
+cordial. But he did not ask Keith to sit down.
+
+Keith said he had come to him hoping to obtain a little information
+which he was seeking for a friend. He was almost certain that Mr. Rimmon
+could give it to him.
+
+"Oh, yes. Well? I shall be very glad, I am sure, if I can be of service
+to you. It is a part of our profession, you know. What is it?"
+
+"Why," said Keith, "it is in regard to a marriage ceremony--a marriage
+that took place in this city three or four years ago, about the middle
+of November three years ago. I think you possibly performed the
+ceremony."
+
+"Yes, yes. What are the names of the contracting parties? You see, I
+solemnize a good many marriage ceremonies. For some reason, a good many
+persons come to me. My church is rather--popular, you see. I hate to
+have 'fashionable' applied to holy things. I cannot tell without
+their names."
+
+"Why, of course," said Keith, struck by the sudden assumption of a
+business manner. "The parties were Ferdinand C. Wickersham and a young
+girl, named Euphronia Tripper."
+
+Keith was not consciously watching Mr. Rimmon, but the change in him was
+so remarkable that it astonished him. His round jaw actually dropped for
+a second. Keith knew instantly that he was the man. His inquiry had
+struck home. The next moment, however, Mr. Rimmon had recovered himself.
+A single glance shot out of his eyes, so keen and suspicious that Keith
+was startled. Then his eyes half closed again, veiling their flash of
+hostility.
+
+"F.C. Wickershaw and Euphronia Trimmer?" he repeated half aloud, shaking
+his head. "No, I don't remember any such names. No, I never united in
+the bonds of matrimony any persons of those names. I am quite positive."
+He spoke decisively.
+
+"No, not Wicker_shaw_--F.C. Wicker_sham_ and Euphronia Tripper. Ferdy
+Wickersham--you know him. And the girl was named Tripper; she might have
+called herself 'Phrony' Tripper."
+
+"My dear sir, I cannot undertake to remember the names of all the
+persons whom I happen to come in contact with in the performance of my
+sacred functions," began Mr. Rimmon. His voice had changed, and a
+certain querulousness had crept into it.
+
+"No, I know that," said Keith, calmly; "but you must at least remember
+whether within four years you performed a marriage ceremony for a man
+whom you know as well as you know Ferdy Wickersham--?"
+
+"Ferdy Wickersham! Why don't you go and ask him?" demanded the other,
+suddenly. "You appear to know him quite as well as I, and certainly Mr.
+Wickersham knows quite as well as I whether or not he is married. I know
+nothing of your reasons for persisting in this investigation. It is
+quite irregular, I assure you. I don't know that ever in the course of
+my life I knew quite such a case. A clergyman performs many functions
+simply as a ministerial official. I should think that the most natural
+way of procedure would be to ask Mr. Wickersham."
+
+"Certainly it might be. But whatever my reason may be, I have come to
+ask you. As a matter of fact, Mr. Wickersham took this young girl away
+from her home. I taught her when she was a school-girl. Her grandfather,
+who brought her up, is a friend of mine. I wish to clear her good name.
+I have reason to think that she was legally married here in New York,
+and that you performed the ceremony, and I came to ask you whether you
+did so or not. It is a simple question. You can at least say whether you
+did so or did not. I assumed that as a minister you would be glad to
+help clear a young woman's good name."
+
+"And I have already answered you," said Mr. Rimmon, who, while Keith was
+speaking, had been forming his reply.
+
+Keith flushed.
+
+"Why, you have not answered me at all. If you have, you can certainly
+have no objection to doing me the favor of repeating it. Will you do me
+the favor to repeat it? Did you or did you not marry Ferdy Wickersham to
+a young girl about three years ago?"
+
+"My dear sir, I have told you that I do not recognize your right to
+interrogate me in this manner. I know nothing about your authority to
+pursue this investigation, and I refuse to continue this conversation
+any longer."
+
+"Then you refuse to give me any information whatever?" Keith was now
+very angry, and, as usual, very quiet, with a certain line about his
+mouth, and his eyes very keen.
+
+"I do most emphatically refuse to give you any information whatever. I
+decline, indeed, to hold any further communication with you," (Keith was
+yet quieter,) "and I may add that I consider your entrance here an
+intrusion and your manner little short of an impertinence." He rose on
+his toes and fell on his heels, with, the motion which Keith had
+remarked the first time he met him.
+
+Keith fastened his eye on him.
+
+"You do?" he said. "You think all that? You consider even my entrance to
+ask you, a minister of the Gospel, a question that any good man would
+have been glad to answer, 'an intrusion'? Now I am going; but before I
+go I wish to tell you one or two things. I have heard reports about you,
+but I did not believe them. I have known men of your cloth, the holiest
+men on earth, saints of God, who devoted their lives to doing good. I
+was brought up to believe that a clergyman must be a good man. I could
+not credit the stories I have heard coupled with your name. I now
+believe them true, or, at least, possible."
+
+Mr. Riminon's face was purple with rage. He stepped forward with
+uplifted hand.
+
+"How dare you, sir!" he began.
+
+"I dare much more," said Keith, quietly.
+
+"You take advantage of my cloth--!"
+
+"Oh, no; I do not. I have one more thing to say to you before I go. I
+wish to tell you that one of the shrewdest detectives in New York is at
+work on this case. I advise you to be careful, for when you fall you
+will fall far. Good day."
+
+He left Mr. Rimmon shaken and white. His indefinite threats had struck
+him more deeply than any direct charge could have done. For Mr. Rimmon
+knew of acts of which Keith could not have dreamed.
+
+When he rose he went to his sideboard, and, taking out a bottle, poured
+out a stiff drink and tossed it off. "I feel badly," he said to himself:
+"I have allowed that--that fellow to excite me, and Dr. Splint said I
+must not get excited. I did pretty well, though; I gave him not the
+least information, and yet I did not tell a falsehood, an actual
+falsehood."
+
+With the composure that the stimulant brought, a thought occurred to
+him. He sat down and wrote a note to Wickersham, and, marking it,
+"Private," sent it by a messenger.
+
+The note read:
+
+"DEAR FERDY: I must see you without an hour's delay on a matter of the
+greatest possible importance. Tripper-business. Your friend K. has
+started investigation; claims to have inside facts. I shall wait at my
+house for reply. If impossible for you to come immediately, I will run
+down to your office.
+
+"Yours, RIMMON."
+
+When Mr. Wickersham received this note, he was in his office. He frowned
+as he glanced at the handwriting. He said to himself:
+
+"He wants more money, I suppose. He is always after money, curse him. He
+must deal in some other office as well as in this." He started to toss
+the note aside, but on second thought he tore it open. For a moment he
+looked puzzled, then a blank expression passed over his face.
+
+He turned to the messenger-boy, who was waiting and chewing gum with the
+stolidity of an automaton.
+
+"Did they tell you to wait for an answer?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+He leant over and scribbled a line and sealed it. "Take that back."
+
+"Yes, sir." The automaton departed, glancing from side to side and
+chewing diligently.
+
+The note read: "Will meet you at club at five."
+
+As the messenger passed up the street, a smallish man who had come
+down-town on the same car with him, and had been reading a newspaper on
+the street for some little time, crossed over and accosted him.
+
+"Can you take a note for me?"
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Up-town. Where are you going?"
+
+The boy showed his note.
+
+"Um--hum! Well, my note will be right on your way." He scribbled a line.
+It read: "Can't be back till eight. Look out for Shepherd. Pay boy 25 if
+delivered before four."
+
+"You drop this at that number before four o'clock and you'll get a
+quarter."
+
+Then he passed on.
+
+That afternoon Keith walked up toward the Park. All day he had been
+trying to find Phrony, and laying plans for her relief when she should
+be found. The avenue was thronged with gay equipages and richly dressed
+women, yet among all his friends in New York there was but one woman to
+whom he could apply in such a case--Alice Lancaster. Old Mrs. Wentworth
+would have been another, but he could not go to her now, since his
+breach with Norman. He knew that there were hundreds of good, kind
+women; they were all about him, but he did not know them. He had chosen
+his friends in another set. The fact that he knew no others to whom he
+could apply struck a sort of chill to his heart. He felt lonely and
+depressed. He determined to go to Dr. Templeton. There, at least, he was
+sure of sympathy.
+
+He turned to go back down-town, and at a little distance caught sight of
+Lois Huntington. Suddenly a light appeared to break in on his gloom.
+Here was a woman to whom he could confide his trouble with the certainty
+of sympathy. As they walked along he told her of Phrony; of her
+elopement; of her being deserted; and of his chance meeting with her and
+her disappearance again. He did not mention Wickersham, for he felt that
+until he had the proof of his marriage he had no right to do so.
+
+"Why, I remember that old, man, Mr. Rawson," said Lois. "It was where my
+father stayed for a while?" Her voice was full of tenderness.
+
+"Yes. It is his granddaughter."
+
+"I remember her kindness to me. We must find her. I will help you." Her
+face was sweet with tender sympathy, her eyes luminous with
+firm resolve.
+
+Keith gazed at her with a warm feeling surging about his heart. Suddenly
+the color deepened in her cheeks; her expression changed; a sudden flame
+seemed to dart into her eyes.
+
+"I wish I knew that man!"
+
+"What would you do?" demanded Keith, smiling at her fierceness.
+
+"I'd make him suffer all his life." She looked the incarnation of
+vengeance.
+
+"Such a man would be hard to make suffer," hazarded Keith.
+
+"Not if I could find him."
+
+Keith soon left her to carry out his determination, and Lois went to see
+Mrs. Lancaster, and told her the story she had heard. It found
+sympathetic ears, and the next day Lois and Mrs. Lancaster were hard at
+work quietly trying to find the unfortunate woman. They went to Dr.
+Templeton; but, unfortunately, the old man was ill in bed.
+
+The next afternoon, Keith caught sight of Lois walking up the street
+with some one; and when he got nearer her it was Wickersham. They were
+so absorbed that Keith passed without either of them seeing him. He
+walked on with more than wonder in his heart. The meeting, however, had
+been wholly accidental on Lois's part.
+
+Wickersham of late had frequently fallen in with Lois when she was out
+walking. And this afternoon he had hardly joined her when she began to
+speak of the subject that had been uppermost in her mind all day. She
+did not mention any names, but told the story just as she had heard it.
+
+Fortunately for Wickersham, she was so much engrossed in her recital
+that she did not observe her companion's face until he had recovered
+himself. He had fallen a little behind her and did not interrupt her
+until he had quite mastered himself. Then he asked quietly:
+
+"Where did you get that story?"
+
+"Mr. Keith told me."
+
+"And he said the man who did that was a 'gentleman'?"
+
+"No, he did not say that; he did not give me the least idea who it was.
+Do you know who it was?"
+
+The question was so unexpected that Wickersham for a moment was
+confounded. Then he saw that she was quite innocent. He almost gasped.
+
+"I? How could I? I have heard that story--that is, something of it. It
+is not as Mr. Keith related it. He has some of the facts wrong. I will
+tell you the true story if you will promise not to say anything
+about it."
+
+Lois promised.
+
+"Well, the truth is that the poor creature was crazy; she took it into
+her head that she was married to some one, and ran away from home to
+try and find him. At one time she said it was a Mr. Wagram; then it was
+a man named Plume, a drunken sot; then I think she for a time fancied it
+was Mr. Keith himself; and"--he glanced at her quickly--"I am not sure
+she did not claim me once. I knew her slightly. Poor thing! she was
+quite insane."
+
+"Poor thing!" sighed Lois, softly. She felt more kindly toward
+Wickersham than she had ever done before.
+
+"I shall do what I can to help you find her," he added.
+
+"Thank you. I hope you may be successful."
+
+"I hope so," said Wickersham, sincerely.
+
+That evening Wickersham called on Mr. Rimmon, and the two were together
+for some time. The meeting was not wholly an amicable one. Wickersham
+demanded something that Mr. Rimmon was unwilling to comply with, though
+the former made him an offer at which his eyes glistened. He had offered
+to carry his stock for him as long as he wanted it carried. Mr. Rimmon
+showed him his register to satisfy him that no entry had been made there
+of the ceremony he had performed that night a few years before; but he
+was unwilling to write him a certificate that he had not performed such
+a ceremony. He was not willing to write a falsehood.
+
+Wickersham grew angry.
+
+"Now look here, Rimmon," he said, "you know perfectly well that I never
+meant to marry that--to marry any one. You know that I was drunk that
+night, and did not know what I was doing, and that what I did was out of
+kindness of heart to quiet the poor little fool."
+
+"But you married her in the presence of a witness," said Mr. Rimmon,
+slowly. "And I gave him her certificate."
+
+"You must have been mistaken. I have the affidavit of the man that he
+signed nothing of the kind. I give you my word of honor as to that.
+Write me the letter I want." He pushed the decanter on the table nearer
+to Rimmon, who poured out a drink and took it slowly. It appeared to
+give him courage, for after a moment he shook his head.
+
+"I cannot."
+
+Wickersham looked at him with level eyes.
+
+"You will do it, or I will sell you out," he said coldly.
+
+"You cannot. You promised to carry that stock for me till I could pay up
+the margins."
+
+"Write me that letter, or I will turn you out of your pulpit. You know
+what will happen if I tell what I know of you."
+
+The other man's face turned white.
+
+"You would not be so base."
+
+Wickersham rose and buttoned up his coat.
+
+"It will be in the papers day after to-morrow."
+
+"Wait," gasped Rimmon. "I will see what I can say." He poured a drink
+out of the decanter, and gulped it down. Then he seized a pen and a
+sheet of paper and began to write. He wrote with care.
+
+"Will this do?" he asked tremulously.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You promise not to use it unless you have to?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And to carry the stock for me till it reacts and lets me out?"
+
+"I will make no more promises."
+
+"But you did promise--," began Mr. Rimmon.
+
+Wickersham put the letter in his pocket, and taking up his hat, walked
+out without a word. But his eyes glinted with a curious light.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+ALICE LANCASTER FINDS PHRONY
+
+Mr. Rimmon was calling at Mrs. Lancaster's a few days after his
+interview with Keith and the day following the interview with
+Wickersham. Mr. Rimmon called at Mrs. Lancaster's quite frequently of
+late. They had known each other a long time, almost ever since Mr.
+Rimmon had been an acolyte at his uncle Dr. Little's church, when the
+stout young man had first discovered the slim, straight figure and
+pretty face, with its blue eyes and rosy mouth, in one of the best pews,
+with a richly dressed lady beside her. He had soon learned that this was
+Miss Alice Yorke, the only daughter of one of the wealthiest men in
+town. Miss Alice was then very devout: just at the age and stage when
+she bent particularly low on all the occasions when such bowing is held
+seemly. And the mind of the young man was not unnaturally affected by
+her devoutness.
+
+Since then Mr. Rimmon had never quite banished her from his mind,
+except, of course, during the brief interval when she had been a wife.
+When she became a widow she resumed her place with renewed power. And of
+late Mr. Rimmon had begun to have hope.
+
+Now Mr. Rimmon was far from easy in his mind. He knew something of
+Keith's attention to Mrs. Lancaster; but it had never occurred to him
+until lately that he might be successful. Wickersham he had feared at
+times; but Wickersham's habits had reassured him. Mrs. Lancaster would
+hardly marry him. Now, however, he had an uneasy feeling that Keith
+might injure him, and he called partly to ascertain how the ground lay,
+and partly to forestall any possible injury Keith might do. To his
+relief, he found Mrs. Lancaster more cordial than usual. The line of
+conversation he adopted was quite spiritual, and he felt elevated by it.
+Mrs. Lancaster also was visibly impressed. Presently she said: "Mr.
+Rimmon, I want you to do me a favor."
+
+"Even to the half of my kingdom," said Mr. Rimmon, bowing with his plump
+hand on his plump bosom.
+
+"It is not so much as that; it is only a little of your time and, maybe,
+a little of your company. I have just heard of a poor young woman here
+who seems to be in quite a desperate way. She has been abandoned by her
+husband, and is now quite ill. The person who told me, one of those good
+women who are always seeking out such cases, tells me that she has
+rarely seen a more pitiable case. The poor thing is absolutely
+destitute. Mrs. King tells me she has seen better days."
+
+For some reason, perhaps, that the circumstances called up not wholly
+pleasant associations, Mr. Rimmon's face fell a little at the picture
+drawn. He did not respond with the alacrity Mrs. Lancaster had expected.
+
+"Of course, I will do it, if you wish it--or I could have some of our
+workers look up the case, and, if the facts warrant it, could apply some
+of our alms to its relief. I should think, however, the woman is rather
+a fit subject for a hospital. Why hasn't she been sent to a hospital,
+I wonder?"
+
+"I don't know. No, that is not exactly what I meant," declared Mrs.
+Lancaster. "I thought I would go myself and that, as Dr. Templeton is
+ill, perhaps you would go with me. She seems to be in great distress of
+mind, and possibly you might be able to comfort her. I have never
+forgotten what an unspeakable comfort your uncle was when we were in
+trouble years ago."
+
+"Oh, of course, I will go with you," said the divine. "There is no
+place, dear lady, where I would not go in such company," he added, his
+head as much on one side as his stout neck would allow, and his eyes as
+languishing as he dared make them.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster, however, did not appear to notice this. Her face did not
+change.
+
+"Very well, then: we will go to-morrow. I will come around and pick you
+up. I will get the address."
+
+So the following morning Mrs. Lancaster's carriage stopped in front of
+the comfortable house which adjoined Mr. Rimmon's church, and after a
+little while that gentleman came down the steps. He was not in a happy
+frame of mind, for stocks had fallen heavily the day before, and he had
+just received a note from Ferdy Wickersham. However, as he settled his
+plump person beside the lady, the Rev. William H. Rimmon was as
+well-satisfied-looking as any man on earth could be. Who can blame him
+if he thought how sweet it would be if he could drive thus always!
+
+The carriage presently stopped at the entrance of a narrow street that
+ran down toward the river. The coachman appeared unwilling to drive down
+so wretched an alley, and waited for further instructions. After a few
+words the clergyman and Mrs. Lancaster got out.
+
+"You wait here, James; we will walk." They made their way down the
+street, through a multitude of curious children with one common
+attribute, dirt, examining the numbers on either side, and commiserating
+the poor creatures who had to live in such squalor.
+
+Presently Mrs. Lancaster stopped.
+
+"This is the number."
+
+It was an old house between two other old houses.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster made some inquiries of a slatternly woman who sat sewing
+just inside the doorway, and the latter said there was such a person as
+she asked for in a room on the fourth floor. She knew nothing about her
+except that she was very sick and mostly out of her head. The
+health-doctor had been to see her, and talked about sending her to
+a hospital.
+
+The three made their way up the narrow stairs and through the dark
+passages, so dark that matches had to be lighted to show them the way.
+Several times Mr. Rimmon protested against Mrs. Lancaster going farther.
+Such holes were abominable; some one ought to be prosecuted for it.
+Finally the woman stopped at a door.
+
+"She's in here." She pushed the door open without knocking, and walked
+in, followed by Mrs. Lancaster and Mr. Rimmon. It was a cupboard hardly
+more than ten feet square, with a little window that looked out on a
+dead-wall not more than an arm's-length away.
+
+A bed, a table made of an old box, and another box which served as a
+stool, constituted most of the furniture, and in the bed, under a ragged
+coverlid, lay the form of the sick woman.
+
+"There's a lady and a priest come to see you," said the guide, not
+unkindly. She turned to Mrs. Lancaster. "I don't know as you can make
+much of her. Sometimes she's right flighty."
+
+The sick woman turned her head a little and looked at them out of her
+sunken eyes.
+
+"Thank you. Won't you be seated?" she said, with a politeness and a
+softness of tone that sounded almost uncanny coming from such a source.
+
+"We heard that you were sick, and have come to see if we could not help
+you," said Mrs. Lancaster, in a tone of sympathy, leaning over the bed.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Rimmon, in his full, rich voice, which made the little
+room resound; "it is our high province to minister to the sick, and
+through the kindness of this dear lady we may be able to remove you to
+more commodious quarters--to some one of the charitable institutions
+which noble people like our friend here have endowed for such persons as
+yourself?"
+
+[Illustration: "It is he! 'Tis he!" she cried.]
+
+Something about the full-toned voice with its rising inflection caught
+the invalid's attention, and she turned her eyes on him with a quick
+glance, and, half raising her head, scanned his face closely.
+
+"Mr. Rimmon, here, may be able to help you in other ways too," Mrs.
+Lancaster again began; but she got no further. The name appeared to
+electrify the woman.
+
+With a shriek she sat up in bed.
+
+"It is he! 'Tis he!" she cried. "You are the very one. You will help me,
+won't you? You will find him and bring him back to me?" She reached out
+her thin arms to him in an agony of supplication.
+
+"I will help you,--I shall be glad to do so,--but whom am I to bring
+back? How can I help you?"
+
+"My husband--Ferdy--Mr. Wickersham. I am the girl you married that night
+to Ferdy Wickersham. Don't you remember? You will bring him back to me?
+I know he would come if he knew."
+
+The effect that her words, and even more her earnestness, produced was
+remarkable. Mrs. Lancaster stood in speechless astonishment.
+
+Mr. Rimmon for a moment turned ashy pale. Then he recovered himself.
+
+"She is quite mad," he said in a low tone to Mrs. Lancaster. "I think we
+had better go. She should be removed to an asylum."
+
+But Mrs. Lancaster could not go. Just then the woman stretched out her
+arms to her.
+
+"You will help me? You are a lady. I loved him so. I gave up all for
+him. He married me. Didn't you marry us, sir? Say you did. Mr. Plume
+lost the paper, but you will give me another, won't you?"
+
+The commiseration in Mr. Rimmon's pale face grew deeper and deeper. He
+rolled his eyes and shook his head sadly.
+
+"Quite mad--quite mad," he said in an undertone. And, indeed, the next
+moment it appeared but too true, for with a laugh the poor creature
+began a babble of her child and its beauty. "Just like its father. Dark
+eyes and brown hair. Won't he be glad to see it when he comes? Have you
+children?" she suddenly asked Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"No." She shook her head.
+
+Then a strange thing happened.
+
+"I am so sorry for you," the poor woman said. And the next second she
+added: "I want to show mine to Alice Yorke. She is the only lady I know
+in New York. I used to know her when I was a young girl, and I used to
+be jealous of her, because I thought Ferdy was in love with her. But he
+was not, never a bit."
+
+"Come away," said Mr. Rimmon to Mrs. Lancaster. "She is crazy and may
+become violent."
+
+But he was too late; the whole truth was dawning on Mrs. Lancaster. A
+faint likeness had come to her, a memory of a far-back time. She ignored
+him, and stepped closer to the bed.
+
+"What is your name?" she asked in a kind voice, bending toward the woman
+and taking her hand.
+
+"Euphronia Tripper; but I am now Mrs. Wickersham. He married us." She
+turned her deep eyes on Mr. Rimmon. At sight of him a change came
+over her face.
+
+"Where is my husband?" she demanded. "I wrote to you to bring him. Won't
+you bring him?"
+
+"Quite mad--quite mad!" repeated Mr. Rimmon, shaking his head solemnly,
+and turning his gaze on Mrs. Lancaster. But he saw his peril. Mrs.
+Lancaster took no notice of him. She began to talk to the woman at the
+door, and gave her a few directions, together with some money. Then she
+advanced once more to the bed.
+
+"I want to make you comfortable. I will send some one to take care of
+you." She shook hands with her softly, pulled down her veil, and then,
+half turning to Mr. Rimmon, said quietly, "I am ready."
+
+As they stepped into the street, Mr. Rimmon observed at a little
+distance a man who had something familiar about him, but the next second
+he passed out of sight.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster walked silently down the dirty street without turning
+her head or speaking to the preacher, who stepped along a little behind
+her, his mind full of misgiving.
+
+Mr. Rimmon, perhaps, did as hard thinking in those few minutes as he had
+ever done during the whole course of his life. It was a serious and
+delicate position. His reputation, his position, perhaps even his
+profession, depended on the result. He must sound his companion and
+placate her at any cost.
+
+"That is one of the saddest spectacles I ever saw," he began.
+
+To this Mrs. Lancaster vouchsafed no reply.
+
+"She is quite mad."
+
+"No wonder!"
+
+"Ah, yes. What do you think of her?"
+
+"That she is Ferdy Wickersham's wife--or ought to be."
+
+"Ah, yes." Here was a gleam of light. "But she is so insane that very
+little reliance should be placed on anything that she says. In such
+instances, you know, women make the most preposterous statements and
+believe them. In her condition, she might just as well have claimed me
+for her husband."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster recognized this, and looked just a little relieved. She
+turned as if about to speak, but shut her lips tightly and walked on to
+the waiting carriage. And during the rest of the return home she
+scarcely uttered a word.
+
+An hour later Ferdy Wickersham was seated in his private office, when
+Mr. Rimmon walked in.
+
+Wickersham greeted him with more courtesy than he usually showed him.
+
+"Well," he said, "what is it?"
+
+"Well, it's come."
+
+Wickersham laughed unmirthfully. "What? You have been found out? Which
+commandment have you been caught violating?"
+
+"No; it's you," said Mr. Rimmon, his eyes on Wickersham, with a gleam of
+retaliation in them. "Your wife has turned up." He was gratified to see
+Wickersham's cold face turn white. It was a sweet revenge.
+
+"My wife! I have no wife." Wickersham looked him steadily in the eyes.
+
+"You had one, and she is in town."
+
+"I have no wife," repeated Wickersham, firmly, not taking his eyes from
+the clergyman's face. What he saw there did not satisfy him. "I have
+your statement."
+
+The other hesitated and reflected.
+
+"I wish you would give me that back. I was in great distress of mind
+when I gave you that."
+
+"You did not give it," said Wickersham. "You sold it." His lip curled.
+
+"I was--what you said you were when it occurred," said Mr. Rimmon. "I
+was not altogether responsible."
+
+"You were sober enough to make me carry a thousand shares of weak stock
+for you till yesterday, when it fell twenty points," said Wickersham.
+"Oh, I guess you were sober enough."
+
+"She is in town," said Rimmon, in a dull voice.
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"I have seen her."
+
+"Where is she?"--indifferently.
+
+"She is ill. She is mad."
+
+Wickersham's face settled a little. His eyes blinked as if a blow had
+been aimed at him nearly. Then he recovered his poise.
+
+"How mad?"
+
+"As mad as a March hare."
+
+"You can attend to it," he said, looking the clergyman full in the face.
+"I don't want her to suffer. There will be some expense. Can you get her
+into a comfortable place for--for a thousand dollars?"
+
+"I will try. The poor creature would be better off," said the other,
+persuading himself. "She cannot last long. She is a very ill woman."
+
+Wickersham either did not hear or pretended not to hear.
+
+"You go ahead and do it. I will send you the money the day after it is
+done," he said. "Money is very tight to-day, almost a panic at
+the board."
+
+"That stock? You will not trouble me about it?"
+
+Wickersham growled something about being very busy, and rose and bowed
+the visitor out. The two men shook hands formally at the door of the
+inner office; but it was a malevolent look that Wickersham shot at the
+other's stout back as he walked out.
+
+As Mr. Rimmon came out of the office he caught sight of the short, stout
+man he had seen in the street to which he had gone with Mrs. Lancaster.
+Suddenly the association of ideas brought to him Keith's threat. He was
+shadowed. A perspiration broke out over him.
+
+Wickersham went back to his private office, and began once more on his
+books. What he saw there was what he began to see on all sides: ruin. He
+sat back in his chair and reflected. His face, which had begun to grow
+thinner of late, as well as harder, settled more and more until it
+looked like gray stone. Presently he rose, and locking his desk
+carefully, left his office.
+
+As he reached the street, a man, who had evidently been waiting for him,
+walked up and spoke to him. He was a tall, thin, shabby man, with a face
+and figure on which drink was written ineffaceably. Wickersham, without
+looking at him, made an angry gesture and hastened his step. The other,
+however, did the same, and at his shoulder began to whine.
+
+"Mr. Wickersham, just a word."
+
+"Get out," said Wickersham, still walking on. "I told you never to speak
+to me again."
+
+"I have a paper that you'd give a million dollars to get hold of."
+
+Wickersham's countenance showed not the least change.
+
+"If you don't keep away from here, I'll hand you over to the police."
+
+"If you'll just give me a dollar I'll swear never to trouble you again.
+I have not had a mouthful to eat to-day. You won't let me starve?"
+
+"Yes, I will. Starve and be ---- to you!" He suddenly stopped and faced
+the other. "Plume, I wouldn't give you a cent if you were actually
+starving. Do you see that policeman? If you don't leave me this minute,
+I'll hand you over to him. And if you ever speak to me again or write to
+me again, or if I find you on the street about here, I'll arrest you and
+send you down for blackmail and stealing. Now do you understand?"
+
+The man turned and silently shuffled away, his face working and a glint
+in his bleared eye.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An evening or two later Dave Dennison reported to Keith that he had
+found Phrony. Dave's face was black with hate, and his voice was tense
+with suppressed feeling.
+
+"How did you find her?" inquired Keith.
+
+"Shadowed the preacher. Knew he and that man had been confabbin'. She's
+clean gone," he added. "They've destroyed her. She didn't know me." His
+face worked, and an ominous fire burned in his eyes.
+
+"We must get her home."
+
+"She can't go. You'd never know her. We'll have to put her in an
+asylum."
+
+Something in his voice made Keith look at him. He met his gaze.
+
+"They're getting ready to do it--that man and the preacher. But I don't
+mean 'em to have anything more to do with her. They've done their worst.
+Now let 'em keep away from her."
+
+Keith nodded his acquiescence.
+
+That evening Keith went to see a doctor he knew, and next day, through
+his intervention, Phrony was removed to the private ward of an asylum,
+where she was made as comfortable as possible.
+
+It was evident that she had not much longer to stay. But God had been
+merciful to her. She babbled of her baby and her happiness at seeing it
+soon. And a small, strongly built man with grave eyes sat by her in the
+ambulance, and told her stories of it with a fertility of invention that
+amazed the doctor who had her in charge.
+
+When Mr. Rimmon's agents called next day to make the preliminary
+arrangements for carrying out his agreement with Wickersham, they found
+the room empty. The woman who had charge of the house had been duly
+"fixed" by Dave, and she told a story sufficiently plausible to pass
+muster. The sick woman had disappeared at night and had gone she did not
+know where. She was afraid she might have made away with herself, as she
+was out of her head. This was verified, and this was the story that went
+back to Mr. Rimmon and finally to Ferdy Wickersham. A little later the
+body of a woman was found in the river, and though there was nothing to
+identify her, it was stated in one of the papers that there was good
+ground for believing that she was the demented woman whose disappearance
+had been reported the week before.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE
+
+One day after Phrony was removed, Keith was sitting in the office he had
+taken in New York, working on the final papers which were to be
+exchanged when his deal should be completed, when there was a tap at the
+door. A knock at the door is almost as individual as a voice. There was
+something about this knock that awakened associations in Keith's mind.
+It was not a woman's tap, yet Terpy and Phrony Tripper both sprang into
+Keith's mind.
+
+Almost at the same moment the door opened slowly, and pausing on the
+threshold stood J. Quincy Plume. But how changed from the Mr. Plume of
+yore, the jovial and jocund manager of the Gumbolt _Whistle_, or the
+florid and flowery editor of the New Leeds _Clarion_!
+
+The apparition in the door was a shabby representation of what J. Quincy
+Plume had been in his palmy days. He bore the last marks of extreme
+dissipation; his eyes were dull, his face bloated, and his hair thin and
+long. His clothes looked as if they had served him by night as well as
+by day for a long time. His shoes were broken, and his hat, once the
+emblem of his station and high spirits, was battered and rusty.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Keith?" he began boldly enough. But his assumption of
+something of his old air of bravado died out under Keith's icy and
+steady gaze, and he stepped only inside of the room, and, taking off his
+hat, waited uneasily.
+
+"What do you want of me?" demanded Keith, leaning back in his chair and
+looking at him coldly.
+
+"Well, I thought I would like to have a little talk with you about a
+matter--"
+
+Keith, without taking his eyes from his face, shook his head slowly.
+
+"About a friend of yours," continued Plume.
+
+Again Keith shook his head very slowly.
+
+"I have a little information that might be of use to you--that you'd
+like to have."
+
+"I don't want it."
+
+"You would if you knew what it was."
+
+"No."
+
+"Yes, you would. It's about Squire Rawson's granddaughter--about her
+marriage to that man Wickersham."
+
+"How much do you want for it?" demanded Keith.
+
+Plume advanced slowly into the room and looked at a chair.
+
+"Don't sit down. How much do you want for it?" repeated Keith.
+
+"Well, you are a rich man now, and--"
+
+"I thought so." Keith rose. "However rich I am, I will not pay you a
+cent." He motioned Plume to the door.
+
+"Oh, well, if that's the way you take it!" Plume drew himself up and
+stalked to the door. Keith reseated himself and again took up his pen.
+
+At the door Plume turned and saw that Keith had put him out of his mind
+and was at work again.
+
+"Yes, Keith, if you knew what information I have--"
+
+Keith sat up suddenly.
+
+"Go out of here!"
+
+"If you'd only listen--"
+
+Keith stood up, with a sudden flame in his eyes.
+
+"Go on, I say. If you do not, I will put you out. It is as much as I can
+do to keep my hands off you. You could not say a word that I would
+believe on any subject."
+
+"I will swear to this."
+
+"Your oath would add nothing to it."
+
+Plume waited, and after a moment's reflection began in a different key.
+
+"Mr. Keith, I did not come here to sell you anything--"
+
+"Yes, you did."
+
+"No, I did not. I did not come--only for that. If I could have sold it,
+I don't say I wouldn't, for I need money--the Lord knows how much I need
+it! I have not a cent in the world to buy me a mouthful to eat--or
+drink. I came to tell you something that only _I_ know--"
+
+"I have told you that I would not believe you on oath," began Keith,
+impatiently.
+
+"But you will, for it is true; and I tell it not out of love for you
+(though I never disliked--I always liked you--would have liked you if
+you'd have let me), but out of hate for that--. That man has treated me
+shamefully--worse than a yellow dog! I've done for that man what I
+wouldn't have done for my brother. You know what I've done for him, Mr.
+Keith, and now when he's got no further use for me, he kicks me out into
+the street and threatens to give me to the police if I come to
+him again."
+
+Keith's expression changed. There was no doubt now that for once Quincy
+Plume was sincere. The hate in his bleared eyes and bloated face was
+unfeigned.
+
+"Give me to the police! I'll give him to the police!" he broke out in a
+sudden flame at Keith's glance of inspection. "He thinks he has been
+very smart in taking from me all the papers. He thinks no one will
+believe me on my mere word, but I've got a paper he don't know of."
+
+His hand went to the breast of his threadbare coat with an angry clutch.
+"I've got the marriage lines of his wife."
+
+One word caught Keith, and his interest awoke.
+
+"What wife?" he asked as indifferently as he could.
+
+"His wife,--his lawful wife,--Squire Rawson's granddaughter, Phrony
+Tripper. I was at the weddin'--I was a witness. He thought he could get
+out of it, and he was half drunk; but he married her."
+
+"Where? When? You were present?"
+
+"Yes. They were married by a preacher named Rimmon, and he gave me her
+certificate, and I swore to her I had lost it: _he_ got me to do it--the
+scoundrel! He wanted me to give it to him; but I swore to him I had lost
+it, too. I thought it would be of use some of these days." A gleam of
+the old craftiness shone in his eyes.
+
+Keith gazed at the man in amazement. His unblushing effrontery staggered
+him.
+
+"Would you mind letting me see that certificate?"
+
+Plume hesitated and licked his ups like a dog held back from a bone.
+Keith noted it.
+
+"I do not want you to think that I will give you any money for it, for I
+will not," he added quietly, his gray eyes on him.
+
+For a moment Plume was so taken aback that his face became a blank.
+Then, whether it was that the very frankness of the speech struck home
+to him or that he wished to secure a fragment of esteem from Keith, he
+recovered himself.
+
+"I don't expect any money for it, Mr. Keith. I don't want any money for
+it. I will not only show you this paper, I will give it to you."
+
+"It is not yours to give," said Keith. "It belongs to Mrs. Wickersham. I
+will see that she gets it if you deliver it to me."
+
+"That's so," ejaculated Plume, as if the thought had never occurred to
+him before. "I want her to have it, but you'd better keep it for her.
+That man will get it away from her. You don't know him as I do. You
+don't know what he'd do on a pinch. I tell you he is a gambler for life.
+I have seen him sit at the board and stake sums that would have made me
+rich for life. Besides," he added, as if he needed some other reason for
+giving it up, "I am afraid if he knew I had it he'd get it from me in
+some way."
+
+He walked forward and handed the paper to Keith, who saw at a glance
+that it was what Plume had declared it to be: a marriage certificate,
+dirty and worn, but still with signatures that appeared to be genuine.
+Keith's eyes flashed with satisfaction as he read the name of the Rev.
+William H. Rimmon and Plume's name, evidently written with the same ink
+at the same time.
+
+"Now," said Keith, looking up from the paper, "I will see that Mrs.
+Wickersham's family is put in possession of this paper."
+
+"Couldn't you lend me a small sum, Mr. Keith," asked Plume, wheedlingly,
+"just for old times' sake? I know I have done you wrong and given you
+good cause to hate me, but it wasn't my fault, an' I've done you a favor
+to-day, anyhow."
+
+Keith looked at him for a second, and put his hand in his pocket.
+
+"I'll pay you back, as sure as I live--" began Plume, cajolingly.
+
+"No, you will not," said Keith, sharply. "You could not if you would,
+and would not if you could, and I would not lend you a cent or have a
+business transaction with you for all the money in New York. I will give
+you this--for the person you have most injured in life. Now, don't thank
+me for it, but go."
+
+Plume took, with glistening eyes and profuse thanks, the bills that were
+handed out to him, and shambled out of the room.
+
+That night Keith, having shown the signatures to a good expert, who
+pronounced them genuine, telegraphed Dr. Balsam to notify Squire Rawson
+that he had the proof of Phrony's marriage. The Doctor went over to see
+the old squire. He mentioned the matter casually, for he knew his man.
+But as well as he knew him, he found himself mistaken in him.
+
+"I know that," he said quietly, "but what I want is to find Phrony." His
+deep eyes glowed for a while and suddenly flamed. "I'm a rich man," he
+broke out, "but I'd give every dollar I ever owned to get her back, and
+to get my hand once on that man."
+
+The deep fire glowed for a while and then grew dull again, and the old
+man sank back into his former grim silence.
+
+The Doctor looked at him commiseratingly. Keith had written him fully of
+Phrony and her condition, and he had decided to say nothing to the old
+grandfather.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+"SNUGGLERS' ROOST"
+
+Wickersham began to renew his visits to Mrs. Wentworth, which he had
+discontinued for a time when he had found himself repulsed. The repulse
+had stimulated his desire to win her; but he had a further motive. Among
+other things, she might ask for an accounting of the money he had had of
+her, and he wanted more money. He must keep up appearances, or others
+might pounce upon him.
+
+When he began again, it was on a new line. He appealed to her sympathy.
+If he had forgotten himself so far as to ask for more than friendship,
+she would, he hoped, forgive him. She could not find a truer friend. He
+would never offend her so again; but he must have her friendship, or he
+might do something desperate.
+
+Fortunately for him, Wickersham had a good advocate at court. Mrs.
+Wentworth was very lonely and unhappy just then, and the plea prevailed.
+She forgave him, and Wickersham again began to be a visitor at
+the house.
+
+But deeper than these lay another motive. While following Mrs. Wentworth
+he had been thrown with Lois Huntington. Her freshness, her beauty, the
+charm of her girlish figure, the unaffected gayety of her spirits,
+attracted him, and he had paused in his other pursuit to captivate her,
+as he might have stepped aside to pluck a flower beside the way. To his
+astonishment, she declined the honor; more, she laughed at him. It
+teased him to find himself balked by a mere country girl, and from this
+moment he looked on her with new eyes. The unexpected revelation of a
+deeper nature than most he had known astonished him. Since their
+interview on the street Lois received him with more friendliness than
+she had hitherto shown him. In fact, the house was a sad one these days,
+and any diversion was welcome. The discontinuance of Keith's visits had
+been so sudden that Lois had felt it all the more. She had no idea of
+the reason, and set it down to the score of his rumored success with
+Mrs. Lancaster. She, too, could play the game of pique, and she did it
+well. She accordingly showed Wickersham more favor than she had ever
+shown him before. While, therefore, he kept up his visits to Mrs.
+Norman, he was playing all the time his other game with her cousin,
+knowing the world well enough to be sure that it would not believe his
+attentions to the latter had any serious object. In this he was not
+mistaken. The buzz that coupled his name with Mrs. Wentworth's was soon
+as loud as ever.
+
+Finally Lois decided to take matters in her own hands. She would appeal
+to Mr. Wickersham himself. He had talked to her of late in a manner
+quite different from the sneering cynicism which he aired when she first
+met him. In fact, no one could hold higher sentiments than he had
+expressed about women or about life. Mr. Keith himself had never held
+loftier ideals than Mr. Wickersham had declared to her. She began to
+think that the tittle-tattle that she got bits of whenever she saw Mrs.
+Nailor or some others was, perhaps, after all, slander, and that Mr.
+Wickersham was not aware of the injury he was doing Mrs. Wentworth. She
+would appeal to his better nature. She lay in wait several times without
+being able to meet him in a way that would not attract attention. At
+length she wrote him a note, asking him to meet her on the street, as
+she wished to speak to him privately.
+
+When Wickersham met her that afternoon at the point she had designated,
+not far from the Park, he had a curious expression on his cold face.
+
+She was dressed in a perfectly simple, dark street costume which fitted
+without a wrinkle her willowy figure, and a big black hat with a single
+large feather shaded her face and lent a shadow to her eyes which gave
+them an added witchery. Wickersham thought he had never known her so
+pretty or so chic. He had not seen as handsome a figure that day, and he
+had sat at the club window and scanned the avenue with an eye for
+fine figures.
+
+She held out her hand in the friendliest way, and looking into his eyes
+quite frankly, said, with the most natural of voices:
+
+"Well, I know you think I have gone crazy, and are consumed with
+curiosity to know what I wanted with you?"
+
+"I don't know about the curiosity," he said, smiling at her. "Suppose we
+call it interest. You don't have to be told now that I shall be only too
+delighted if I am fortunate enough to be of any service to you." He bent
+down and looked so deep into her eyes that she drew a little back.
+
+"The fact is, I am plotting a little treason," she said, with a blush,
+slightly embarrassed.
+
+"By Jove! she is a real beauty," thought Wickersham, noting, with the
+eye of a connoisseur, the white, round throat, the dainty curves of the
+slim figure, and the purity of the oval face, in which the delicate
+color came and went under his gaze.
+
+"Well, if this be treason, I'll make the most of it," he said, with his
+most fascinating smile. "Treasons, stratagems, and spoils are my game."
+
+"But this may be treason partly against yourself?" She gave a
+half-glance up at him to see how he took this.
+
+"I am quite used to this, too, my dear girl, I assure you," he said,
+wondering more and more. She drew back a little at the familiarity.
+
+"Come and let us stroll in the Park," he suggested, and though she
+demurred a little, he pressed her, saying it was quieter there, and she
+would have a better opportunity of showing him how he could help her.
+
+They walked along talking, he dealing in light badinage of a flattering
+kind, which both amused and disturbed her a little, and presently he
+turned into a somewhat secluded alley, where he found a bench sheltered
+and shadowed by the overhanging boughs of a tree.
+
+"Well, here is a good place for confidences." He took her hand and,
+seating himself, drew her down beside him. "I will pretend that you are
+a charming dryad, and I--what shall I be?"
+
+"My friend," she said calmly, and drew her hand away from him.
+
+"_Votre ami? Avec tout mon coeur_. I will be your best friend." He held
+out his hand.
+
+"Then you will do what I ask? You are also a good friend of Mrs.
+Wentworth?"
+
+A little cloud flitted over his face but she did not see it.
+
+"We do not speak of the absent when the present holds all we care for,"
+he said lightly.
+
+She took no notice of this, but went on: "I do not think you would
+wittingly injure any one."
+
+He laughed softly. "Injure any one? Why, of course I would not--I could
+not. My life is spent in making people have a pleasant time--though some
+are wicked enough to malign me."
+
+"Well," she said slowly, "I do not think you ought to come to Cousin
+Louise's so often. You ought not to pay Cousin Louise as much attention
+as you do."
+
+"What!" He threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"You do not know what an injury you are doing her," she continued
+gravely. "You cannot know how people are talking about it?"
+
+"Oh, don't I?" he laughed. Then, as out of the tail of his eye he saw
+her troubled face, he stopped and made his face grave. "And you think I
+am injuring her!" She did notice the covert cynicism.
+
+"I am sure you are--unwittingly. You do not know how unhappy she is."
+
+An expression very like content stole into his dark eyes.
+
+Lois continued:
+
+"She has not been wise. She has been foolish and unyielding and--oh, I
+hate to say anything against her, for she has been very kind to me!--She
+has allowed others to make trouble between her and her husband; but she
+loves him dearly for all that--and--"
+
+"Oh, she does! You think so!" said Wickersham, with an ugly little gleam
+under his half-closed lids and a shrewd glance at Lois.
+
+"Yes. Oh, yes, I am sure of it. I know it. She adores him."
+
+"She does, eh?"
+
+"Yes. She would give the world to undo what she has done and win him
+back."
+
+"She would, eh?" Again that gleam in Wickersham's dark eyes as they
+slanted a glance at the girl's earnest face.
+
+"I think she had no idea till--till lately how people talked about her,
+and it was a great shock to her. She is a very proud woman, you know?"
+
+"Yes," he assented, "quite proud."
+
+"She esteems you--your friendship--and likes you ever so much, and all
+that." She was speaking rapidly now, her sober eyes on Wickersham's face
+with an appealing look in them. "And she doesn't want to do anything
+to--to wound you; but I think you ought not to come so often or see her
+in a way to make people talk--and I thought I'd say so to you." A smile
+that was a plea for sympathy flickered in her eyes.
+
+Wickersham's mind had been busy. This explained the change in Louise
+Wentworth's manner of late--ever since he had made the bold declaration
+of his intention to conquer her. Another idea suggested itself. Could
+the girl be jealous of his attentions to Mrs. Wentworth? He had had
+women play such a part; but none was like this girl. If it was a game
+it was a deep one. He took his line, and when she ended composed his
+voice to a low tone as he leant toward her.
+
+"My dear girl, I have listened to every word you said. I am shocked to
+hear what you tell me. Of course I know people have talked about
+me,--curse them! they always will talk,--but I had no idea it had gone
+so far. As you know, I have always taken Mrs. Wentworth's side in the
+unhappy differences between her and her husband. This has been no
+secret. I cannot help taking the side of the woman in any controversy. I
+have tried to stand her friend, notwithstanding what people said.
+Sometimes I have been able to help her. But--" He paused and took a long
+breath, his eyes on the ground. Then, leaning forward, he gazed into
+her face.
+
+"What would you say if I should tell you that my frequent visits to Mrs.
+Wentworth's house were not to see her--entirely?" He felt his way
+slowly, watching the effect on her. It had no effect. She did not
+understand him.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+He leant over, and taking hold of her wrist with one hand, he put his
+other arm around her. "Lois, can you doubt what I mean?" He threw an
+unexpected passion into his eyes and into his voice,--he had done it
+often with success,--and drew her suddenly to him.
+
+Taken by surprise, she, with a little exclamation, tried to draw away
+from him, but he held her firmly.
+
+"Do you think I went there to see her? Do you give me no credit for
+having eyes--for knowing the prettiest, sweetest, dearest little girl in
+New York? I must have concealed my secret better than I thought. Why,
+Lois, it is you I have been after." His eyes were close to hers and
+looked deep into them.
+
+She gave an exclamation of dismay and tried to rise. "Oh, Mr.
+Wickersham, please let me go!" But he held her fast.
+
+"Why, of course, it is yourself."
+
+"Let me go--please let me go, Mr. Wickersham," she exclaimed as she
+struggled.
+
+"Oh, now don't get so excited," he said, drawing her all the closer to
+him, and holding her all the tighter. "It is not becoming to your
+beautiful eyes. Listen to me, my darling. I am not going to hurt you. I
+love you too much, little girl, and I want your love. Sit down. Listen
+to me." He tried to kiss her, but his lips just touched her face.
+
+"No; I will not listen." She struggled to her feet, flushed and panting,
+but Wickersham rose too.
+
+"I will kiss you, you little fool." He caught her, and clasping her with
+both arms, kissed her twice violently; then, as she gave a little
+scream, released her. "There!" he said. As he did so she straightened
+herself and gave him a ringing box on his ear.
+
+"There!" She faced him with blazing eyes.
+
+Angry, and with his cheek stinging, Wickersham seized her again.
+
+"You little devil!" he growled, and kissed her on her cheek again and
+again.
+
+As he let her go, she faced him. She was now perfectly calm.
+
+"You are not a gentleman," she said in a low, level tone, tears of shame
+standing in her eyes.
+
+For answer he caught her again.
+
+Then the unexpected happened. At that moment Keith turned a clump of
+shrubbery a few paces off, that shut out the alley from the bench which
+Wickersham had selected. For a second he paused, amazed. Then, as he
+took in the situation, a black look came into his face.
+
+The next second he had sprung to where Wickersham stood, and seizing him
+by the collar, jerked him around and slapped him full in the face.
+
+"You hound!" He caught him again, the light of fury in his eyes, the
+primal love of fight that has burned there when men have fought for a
+woman since the days of Adam, and with a fierce oath hurled him spinning
+back across the walk, where he measured his length on the ground.
+
+Then Keith turned to the girl:
+
+"Come; I will see you home."
+
+The noise had attracted the attention of others besides Gordon Keith.
+Just at this juncture a stout policeman turned the curve at a
+double-quick.
+
+As he did so, Wickersham rose and slipped away.
+
+"What th' devil 'rre ye doin'?" the officer demanded in a rich brogue
+before he came to a halt. "I'll stop this racket. I'll run ye ivery wan
+in. I've got ye now, me foine leddy; I've been waitin' for ye for some
+time." He seized Lois by the arm roughly.
+
+"Let her go. Take your hand off that lady, sir. Don't you dare to touch
+her." Keith stepped up to him with his eyes flashing and hand raised.
+
+"And you too. I'll tache you to turn this park into--"
+
+"Take your hand off her, or I'll make you sorry for it."
+
+"Oh, you will!" But at the tone of authority he released Lois.
+
+"What is your name? Give me your number. I'll have you discharged for
+insulting a lady," said Keith.
+
+"Oh, me name's aall right. Me name's Mike Doherty--Sergeant Doherty. I
+guess ye'll find it on the rolls right enough. And as for insultin' a
+leddy, that's what I'm goin' to charrge against ye--that and--"
+
+"Why, Mike Doherty!" exclaimed Keith. "I am Mr. Keith--Gordon Keith."
+
+"Mr. Keith! Gordon Keith!" The big officer leant over and looked at
+Keith in the gathering dusk. "Be jabbers, and so it is! Who's your leddy
+friend?" he asked in a low voice. "Be George, she's a daisy!"
+
+Keith stiffened. The blood rushed to his face, and he started to speak
+sharply. He, however, turned to Lois.
+
+"Miss Huntington, this is an old friend of mine. This is Mike Doherty,
+who used to be the best man on the ship when I ran the blockade as
+a boy."
+
+"The verry same," said Mike.
+
+"He used to teach me boxing," continued Keith.
+
+"I taaught him the left upper-cut," nodded the sergeant.
+
+Keith went on and told the story of his coming on a man who was annoying
+Miss Huntington, but he did not give his name.
+
+"Did ye give him the left upper-cut?" demanded Sergeant Doherty.
+
+"I am not sure that I did not," laughed Keith. "I know he went down over
+there where you saw him lying--and I have ended one or two
+misunderstandings with it very satisfactorily."
+
+"Ah, well, then, I'm glad I taaught ye. I'm glad ye've got such a good
+defender, ma'am. Ye'll pardon what I said when I first coomed up. But I
+was a little over-het. Ye see, this place is kind o' noted
+for--for--This place is called 'Snugglers' Roost.' Nobody comes here
+this time 'thout they'rre a little aff, and we has arders to look
+out for 'em."
+
+"I am glad I had two such defenders," said Lois, innocently.
+
+"I'm always glad to meet Mr. Keith's friends--and his inimies too," said
+the sergeant, taking off his helmet and bowing. "If I can sarve ye any
+time, sind worrd to Precin't XX, and I'll be proud to do it."
+
+As Keith and Lois walked slowly homeward, Lois gave him an account of
+her interview with Wickersham. Only she did not tell him of his kissing
+her the first time. She tried to minimize the insult now, for she did
+not know what Keith might do. He had suddenly grown so quiet.
+
+What she said to Keith, however, was enough to make him very grave. And
+when he left her at Mrs. Wentworth's house the gravity on his face
+deepened to grimness. That Wickersham should have dared to insult this
+young girl as he had done stirred Keith's deepest anger. What Keith did
+was, perhaps, a very foolish thing. He tried to find him, but failing in
+this, he wrote him a note in which he told him what he thought of him,
+and added that if he felt aggrieved he would be glad to send a friend to
+him and arrange to give him any satisfaction which he might desire.
+
+Wickersham, however, had left town. He had gone West on business, and
+would not return for some weeks, the report from his office stated.
+
+On reaching home, Lois went straight to her room and thought over the
+whole matter. It certainly appeared grave enough to her. She determined
+that she would never meet Wickersham again, and, further, that she would
+not remain in the house if she had to do so. Her cheeks burned with
+shame as she thought of him, and then her heart sank at the thought that
+Keith might at that moment be seeking him.
+
+Having reached her decision, she sought Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+As soon as she entered the room, Mrs. Wentworth saw that something
+serious had occurred, and in reply to her question Lois sat down and
+quietly told the story of having met Mr. Wickersham and of his
+attempting to kiss her, though she did not repeat what Wickersham had
+said to her. To her surprise, Mrs. Wentworth burst out laughing.
+
+"On my word, you were so tragic when you came in that I feared something
+terrible had occurred. Why, you silly creature, do you suppose that
+Ferdy meant anything by what he did?"
+
+"He meant to insult me--and you," said Lois, with a lift of her head and
+a flash in her eye.
+
+"Nonsense! He has probably kissed a hundred girls, and will kiss a
+hundred more if they give him the chance to do so."
+
+"I gave him no chance," said Lois, sitting very straight and stiff, and
+with a proud dignity which the other might well have heeded.
+
+"Now, don't be silly," said Mrs. Wentworth, with a little hauteur. "Why
+did you walk in a secluded part of the Park with him?"
+
+"I thought I could help a friend of mine," said Lois.
+
+"Mr. Keith, I suppose!"
+
+"No; _not_ Mr. Keith."
+
+"A woman, perhaps?"
+
+"Yes; a woman." She spoke with a hauteur which Mrs. Wentworth had never
+seen in her.
+
+"Cousin Louise," she said suddenly, after a moment's reflection, "I
+think I ought to say to you that I will never speak to Mr.
+Wickersham again."
+
+The color rushed to Mrs. Wentworth's face, and her eyes gave a flash.
+"You will never do what?" she demanded coldly, looking at her with
+lifted head.
+
+"I will never meet Mr. Wickersham again."
+
+"You appear to have met him once too often already. I think you do not
+know what you are saying or whom you are speaking to."
+
+"I do perfectly," said Lois, looking her full in the eyes.
+
+"I think you had better go to your room," said Mrs. Wentworth, angrily.
+
+The color rose to Lois's face, and her eyes were sparkling. Then the
+color ebbed back again as she restrained herself.
+
+"You mean you wish me to go?" Her voice was calm.
+
+"I do. You have evidently forgotten your place."
+
+"I will go home," she said. She walked slowly to the door. As she
+reached it she turned and faced Mrs. Wentworth. "I wish to thank you for
+all your kindness to me; for you have been very kind to me at times, and
+I wish--" Her voice broke a little, but she recovered herself, and
+walking back to Mrs. Wentworth, held out her hand. "Good-by."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth, without rising, shook hands with her coldly. "Good-by."
+
+Lois turned and walked slowly from the room.
+
+As soon as she had closed the door she rushed up-stairs, and, locking
+herself in, threw herself on the bed and burst out crying. The strain
+had been too great, and the bent bow at last snapped.
+
+An hour or two later there was a knock on her door. Lois opened it, and
+Mrs. Wentworth entered. She appeared rather surprised to find Lois
+packing her trunk.
+
+"Are you really going away?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, Cousin Louise."
+
+"I think I spoke hastily to you. I said one or two things that I regret.
+I had no right to speak to you as I did," said Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"No, I do not think you had," said Lois, gravely; "but I will try and
+never think of it again, but only of your kindness to me."
+
+Suddenly, to her astonishment, Mrs. Wentworth burst out weeping. "You
+are all against me," she exclaimed--"all! You are all so hard on me!"
+
+Lois sprang toward her, her face full of sudden pity. "Why, Cousin
+Louise!"
+
+"You are all deserting me. What shall I do! I am so wretched! I am so
+lonely--so lonely! Oh, I wish I were dead!" sobbed the unhappy woman.
+"Then, maybe, some one might be sorry for me even if they did not
+love me."
+
+Lois slipped her arm around her and drew her to her, as if their ages
+had been reversed. "Don't cry, Cousin Louise. Calm yourself."
+
+Lois drew her down to a sofa, and kneeling beside her, tried to comfort
+her with tender words and assurances of her affection. "There, Cousin
+Louise, I do love you--we all love you. Cousin Norman loves you."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth only sobbed her dissent.
+
+"I will stay. I will not go," said Lois. "If you want me."
+
+The unhappy woman caught her in her arms and thanked her with a humility
+which was new to the girl. And out of the reconciliation came a view of
+her which Lois had never seen, and which hardly any one had seen often.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+TERPY'S LAST DANCE AND WICKERSHAM'S FINAL THROW
+
+Curiously enough, the interview between Mrs. Lancaster and Lois brought
+them closer together than before. The older woman seemed to find a new
+pleasure in the young girl's society, and as often as she could she had
+the girl at her house. Sometimes, too, Keith was of the party. He held
+himself in leash, and hardly dared face the fact that he had once more
+entered on the lane which, beginning among flowers, had proved so thorny
+in the end. Yet more and more he let himself drift into that sweet
+atmosphere whose light was the presence of Lois Huntington.
+
+One evening they all went together to see a vaudeville performance that
+was being much talked about.
+
+Keith had secured a box next the stage. The theatre was crowded.
+Wickersham sat in another box with several women, and Keith was aware
+that he was covertly watching his party. He had never appeared gayer or
+been handsomer.
+
+The last number but one was a dance by a new danseuse, who, it was
+stated in the playbills, had just come over from Russia. According to
+the reports, the Russian court was wild about her, and she had left
+Europe at the personal request of the Czar. However this might be, it
+appeared that she could dance. The theatre was packed nightly, and she
+was the drawing-card.
+
+As the curtain rose, the danseuse made her way to the centre of the
+stage. She had raven-black hair and brows; but even as she stood, there
+was something in the pose that seemed familiar to Keith, and as she
+stepped forward and bowed with a little jerk of her head, and then, with
+a nod to the orchestra, began to dance, Keith recognized Terpy. That
+abandon was her own.
+
+As she swept the boxes with her eyes, they fell on Keith, and she
+started, hesitated, then went on. Next moment she glanced at the box
+again, and as her eye caught Keith's she gave him a glance of
+recognition. She was not to be disconcerted now, however. She had never
+danced so well. And she was greeted with raptures of applause. The crowd
+was wild with delight.
+
+At that moment, from one of the wings, a thin curl of smoke rose and
+floated up alongside a painted tamarind-tree. It might at first have
+been only the smoke of a cigar. Next moment, however, a flick of flame
+stole out and moved up the tree, and a draught of air blew the smoke
+across the stage. There were a few excited whispers, a rush in the
+wings; some one in the gallery shouted "Fire!" and just then a shower of
+sparks from the flaming scenery fell on the stage.
+
+In a second the whole audience was on its feet. In a second more there
+would have been a panic which must have cost many lives. Keith saw the
+danger. "Stay in this box," he said. "The best way out is over the
+stage. I will come for you if necessary." He sprang on the stage, and,
+with a wave of his arm to the audience, shouted: "Down in your seats! It
+is all right."
+
+Those nearest the stage, seeing a man stand between them and the fire,
+had paused, and the hubbub for a moment had ceased. Keith took
+advantage of it.
+
+"This theatre can be emptied in three minutes if you take your time," he
+cried; "but the fire is under control."
+
+Terpy had seized the burning piece of scenery and torn it down, and was
+tearing off the flaming edges with her naked hands. He sprang to Terpy's
+side. Her filmy dress caught fire, but Keith jerked off his coat and
+smothered the flame. Just then the water came, and the fire
+was subdued.
+
+"Strike up that music again," Keith said to the musicians. Then to Terpy
+he said: "Begin dancing. Dance for your life!" The girl obeyed, and, all
+blackened as she was, began to dance again. She danced as she had never
+danced before, and as she danced the people at the rear filed out, while
+most of those in the body of the house stood and watched her. As the
+last spark of flame was extinguished the girl stopped, breathless.
+Thunders of applause broke out, but ceased as Terpy suddenly sank to the
+floor, clutching with her blackened hands at her throat. Keith caught
+her, and lowering her gently, straightened her dress. The next moment a
+woman sprang out of her box and knelt beside him; a woman's arm slipped
+under the dancer's head, and Lois Huntington, on her knees, was
+loosening Terpy's bodice as if she had been a sister.
+
+A doctor came up out of the audience and bent over her, and the curtain
+rang down.
+
+That night Keith and Lois and Mrs. Lancaster all spent in the
+waiting-room of the Emergency Hospital. They knew that Terpy's life was
+ebbing fast. She had swallowed the flame, the doctor said. During the
+night a nurse came and called for Keith. The dying woman wanted to see
+him. When Keith reached her bedside, the doctor, in reply to a look of
+inquiry from him, said: "You can say anything to her; it will not hurt
+her." He turned away, and Keith seated himself beside her. Her face and
+hands were swathed in bandages.
+
+"I want to say good-by," she said feebly. "You don't mind now what I
+said to you that time?" Keith, for answer, stroked the coverlid beside
+her. "I want to go back home--to Gumbolt.--Tell the boys good-by
+for me."
+
+Keith said he would--as well as he could, for he had little voice left.
+
+"I want to see _her_," she said presently.
+
+"Whom?" asked Keith.
+
+"The younger one. The one you looked at all the time. I want to thank
+her for the doll. I ran away."
+
+Lois was sent for, but when she reached the bedside Terpy was too far
+gone to speak so that she could be understood. But she was conscious
+enough to know that Lois was at her side and that it was her voice that
+repeated the Lord's Prayer.
+
+The newspapers the next day rang with her praises, and that night Keith
+went South with her body to lay it on the hillside among her friends,
+and all of old Gumbolt was there to meet her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wickersham, on finding his attempt at explanation to Mrs. Wentworth
+received with coldness, turned his attentions in another direction. It
+was necessary. His affairs had all gone wrong of late. He had seen his
+great fortune disappear under his hands. Men who had not half his
+ability were succeeding where he had failed. Men who once followed him
+now held aloof, and refused to be drawn into his most tempting schemes.
+His enemies were working against him. He would overthrow them yet.
+Norman Wentworth and Gordon Keith especially he hated.
+
+He began to try his fortune with Mrs. Lancaster again. Now, if ever,
+appeared a good time. She was indifferent to every man--unless she cared
+for Keith. He had sometimes thought she might; but he did not believe
+it. Keith, of course, would like to marry her; but Wickersham did not
+believe Keith stood any chance. Though she had refused Wickersham, she
+had never shown any one else any special favor. He would try new tactics
+and bear her off before she knew it. He began with a dash. He was quite
+a different man from what he had been. He even was seen in church,
+turning on Rimmon a sphinx-like face that a little disconcerted that
+eloquent person.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster received him with the serene and unruffled indifference
+with which she received all her admirers, and there were many. She
+treated him, however, with the easy indulgence with which old friends
+are likely to be treated for old times' sake; and Wickersham was
+deceived. Fortune appeared suddenly to smile on him again. Hope sprang
+up once more.
+
+Mrs. Nailor one day met Lois, and informed her that Mr. Wickersham was
+now a rival of Mr. Keith's with Mrs. Lancaster, and, what was more, that
+Norman Wentworth had learned that it was not Wickersham at all, but Mr.
+Keith who had really caused the trouble between Norman and his wife.
+
+Lois was aghast. She denied vehemently that it was true; but Mrs. Nailor
+received her denial with amused indulgence.
+
+"Oh, every one knows it," she said. "Mr. Keith long ago cut Fredy out;
+and Norman knows it."
+
+Lois went home in a maze. This, then, explained why Mr. Keith had
+suddenly stopped coming to the house. When he had met her he had
+appeared as glad as ever to see her, but he had also appeared
+constrained. He had begun to talk of going away. He was almost the only
+man in New York that she could call her friend. To think of New York
+without him made her lonely. He was in love with Mrs. Lancaster, she
+knew--of that she was sure, notwithstanding Mrs. Nailor's statement.
+Could Mrs. Lancaster have treated him badly? She had not even cared for
+her husband, so people said; would she be cruel to Keith?
+
+The more she pondered over it the more unhappy Lois became. Finally it
+appeared to her that her duty was plain. If Mrs. Lancaster had rejected
+Keith for Wickersham, she might set her right. She could, at least, set
+her right as to the story about him and Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+That afternoon she called on Mrs. Lancaster. It was in the Spring, and
+she put on a dainty gown she had just made.
+
+She was received with the sincere cordiality that Alice Lancaster always
+showed her. She was taken up to her boudoir, a nest of blue satin and
+sunshine. And there, of all occupations in the world, Mrs. Lancaster,
+clad in a soft lavender tea-gown, was engaged in mending old clothes.
+"For my orphans," she said, with a laugh and a blush that made her look
+charming.
+
+A photograph of Keith stood on the table in a silver frame. When,
+however, Lois would have brought up the subject of Mr. Keith, his name
+stuck in her throat.
+
+"I have what the children call 'a swap' for you," said the girl,
+smiling.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster smiled acquiescingly as she bit off a thread.
+
+"I heard some one say the other day that you were one of those who 'do
+good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.'"
+
+"Oh, how nice! I am not, at all, you know. Still, it is pleasant to
+deceive people that way. Who said it?"
+
+"Mr. Keith." Lois could not help blushing a little; but she had broken
+the ice.
+
+"And I have one to return to you. I heard some one say that you had 'the
+rare gift of an absolutely direct mind.' That you were like George
+Washington: you couldn't tell a lie--that truth had its home in your
+eyes." Her eyes were twinkling.
+
+"My! Who said that?" asked the girl.
+
+"Mr. Keith."
+
+Lois turned quickly under pretence of picking up something, but she was
+not quick enough to hide her face from her friend. The red that burned
+in her cheeks flamed down and made her throat rosy.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster looked at the young girl. She made a pretty picture as
+she sat leaning forward, the curves of her slim, light-gowned figure
+showing against the background of blue. Her face was pensive, and she
+was evidently thinking deeply.
+
+"What are you puzzling over so?"
+
+At the question the color mounted into her cheeks, and the next second a
+smile lit up her face as she turned her eyes frankly on Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"You would be amused to know. I was wondering how long you had known Mr.
+Keith, and what he was like when he was young."
+
+"When he was young! Do you call him old now? Why, he is only a little
+over thirty."
+
+"Is that all! He always seems much older to me, I do not know why. But
+he has seen so much--done so much. Why, he appears to have had so many
+experiences! I feel as if no matter what might happen, he would know
+just what to do. For instance, that story that Cousin Norman told me
+once of his going down into the flooded mine, and that night at the
+theatre, when there was the fire--why, he just took charge. I felt as if
+he would take charge no matter what might happen."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster at first had smiled at the girl's enthusiasm, but before
+Lois had finished, she had drifted away.
+
+"He would--he would," she repeated, pensively.
+
+"Then that poor girl--what he did for her. I just--" Lois paused,
+seeking for a word--"trust him!"
+
+Mrs. Lancaster smiled.
+
+"You may," she said. "That is exactly the word."
+
+"Tell me, what was he like when--you first knew him?"
+
+"I don't know--why, he was--he was just what he is now--you could have
+trusted him--"
+
+"Why didn't you marry him?" asked Lois, her eyes on the other's face.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster looked at her with almost a gasp.
+
+"Why, Lois! What are you talking about? Who says--?"
+
+"He says so. He said he was desperately in love with you."
+
+"Why, Lois--!" began Mrs. Lancaster, with the color mounting to her
+cheeks. "Well, he has gotten bravely over it," she laughed.
+
+"He has not. He is in love with you now," the young girl said calmly.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster turned and faced her with her mouth open to speak, and
+read the girl's sincerity in her face. "With me!" She clasped her hands
+with a pretty gesture over her bosom. A warm feeling suddenly surged to
+her heart.
+
+The younger woman nodded.
+
+"Yes--and, oh, Mrs. Lancaster, don't treat him badly!" She laid both
+hands on her arm and looked at her earnestly. "He has loved you always,"
+she continued.
+
+"Loved me! Lois, you are dreaming." But as she said it, Alice's heart
+was beating.
+
+"Yes, he was talking to me one evening, and he began to tell me of his
+love for a girl,--a young girl,--and what a part it had played in
+his life--"
+
+"But I was married," put in Mrs. Lancaster, seeking for further proof
+rather than renouncing this.
+
+"Yes, he said she did not care for him; but he had always striven to
+keep her image in his heart--her image as she was when he knew her and
+as he imagined her."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster's face for a moment was a study.
+
+"Do you know whom he is in love with now?" she said presently.
+
+"Yes; with you."
+
+"No--not with me; with you." She put her hand on Lois's cheek
+caressingly, and gazed into her eyes.
+
+The girl's eyes sank into her lap. Her face, which had been growing
+white and pink by turns, suddenly flamed.
+
+"Mrs. Lancaster, I believe I--" she began in low tones. She raised her
+eyes, and they met for a moment Mrs. Lancaster's. Something in their
+depths, some look of sympathy, of almost maternal kindness, struck her,
+passed through to her long-stilled heart. With a little cry she threw
+herself into the other's arms and buried her burning face in her lap.
+
+The expression on the face of the young widow changed. She glanced down
+for a moment at the little head in her lap, then bending down, she
+buried her face in the brown tresses, and drew her form close to
+her heart.
+
+In a moment the young girl was pouring out her soul to her as if she had
+been her daughter.
+
+The expression in Alice Lancaster's eyes was softer than it had been for
+a long time, for it was the light of self-sacrifice that shone in them.
+
+"You have your happiness in your hands," she said tenderly.
+
+Lois looked up with dissent in her eyes.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster shook her head.
+
+"No. He will never be in love with me again."
+
+The girl gave a quick intaking of her breath, her hand clutching at her
+throat.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Lancaster!" She was thinking aloud rather than speaking. "I
+thought that you cared for him."
+
+Alice Lancaster shook her head. She tried to meet frankly the other's
+eyes, but as they gazed deep into hers with an inquiry not to be put
+aside, hers failed and fell.
+
+"No," she said, but it was with a gasp.
+
+Lois's eyes opened wide, and her face changed.
+
+"Oh!" she murmured, as the sense of what she had done swept over her.
+She rose to her feet and, bending down, kissed Mrs. Lancaster tenderly.
+One might have thought she was the elder of the two.
+
+Lois returned home in deep thought. She had surprised Mrs. Lancaster's
+secret, and the end was plain. She allowed herself no delusions. The
+dream that for a moment had shed its radiance on her was broken. Keith
+was in love with Mrs. Lancaster, and Alice loved him. She prayed that
+they might be happy--especially Keith. She was angry with herself that
+she had allowed herself to become so interested in him. She would forget
+him. This was easier said than done. But she could at least avoid seeing
+him. And having made her decision, she held to it firmly. She avoided
+him in every way possible.
+
+The strain, however, had been too much for Lois, and her strength began
+to go. The doctor advised Mrs. Wentworth to send her home. "She is
+breaking down, and you will have her ill on your hands," he said. Lois,
+too, was pining to get away. She felt that she could not stand the city
+another week. And so, one day, she disappeared from town.
+
+When Wickersham met Mrs. Lancaster after her talk with Lois, he was
+conscious of the change in her. The old easy, indulgent attitude was
+gone; and in her eye, instead of the lazy, half-amused smile, was
+something very like scorn. Something had happened, he knew.
+
+His thoughts flew to Keith, Norman, Rimmon, also to several ladies of
+his acquaintance. What had they told her? Could it be the fact that he
+had lost nearly everything--that he had spent Mrs. Wentworth's money?
+That he had written anonymous letters? Whatever it was, he would brave
+it out. He had been in some hard places lately, and had won out by his
+nerve. He assumed an injured and a virtuous air, and no man could do
+it better.
+
+"What has happened? You are so strange to me. Has some one been
+prejudicing you against me? Some one has slandered me," he said, with an
+air of virtue.
+
+"No. No one." Mrs. Lancaster turned her rings with a little
+embarrassment. She was trying to muster the courage to speak plainly to
+him. He gave it to her.
+
+"Oh, yes; some one has. I think I have a right to demand who it is. Is
+it that man Keith?"
+
+"No." She glanced at him with a swift flash in her eye. "Mr. Keith has
+not mentioned your name to me since I came home."
+
+Her tone fired him with jealousy.
+
+"Well, who was it, then? He is not above it. He hates me enough to say
+anything. He has never got over our buying his old place, and has never
+lost an opportunity to malign me since."
+
+She looked him in the face, for the first time, quite steadily.
+
+"Let me tell you, Mr. Keith has never said a word against you to me--and
+that is much more than I can say for you; so you need not be
+maligning him now."
+
+A faint flush stole into Wickersham's face.
+
+"You appear to be championing his cause very warmly."
+
+"Because he is a friend of mine and an honorable gentleman."
+
+He gave a hard, bitter laugh.
+
+"Women are innocent!"
+
+"It is more than men are" she said, fired, as women always are, by a
+fleer at the sex.
+
+"Who has been slandering me?" he demanded, angered suddenly by her
+retort. "I have stood in a relation to you which gives me a right to
+demand the name."
+
+"What relation to me?--Where is your wife?"
+
+His face whitened, and he drew in his breath as if struck a blow,--a
+long breath,--but in a second he had recovered himself, and he burst
+into a laugh.
+
+"So you have heard that old story--and believe it?" he said, with his
+eyes looking straight into hers. As she made no answer, he went on.
+"Now, as you have heard it, I will explain the whole thing to you. I
+have always wanted to do it; but--but--I hardly knew whether it were
+better to do it or leave it alone. I thought if you had heard it you
+would mention it to me--"
+
+"I have done so now," she said coldly.
+
+"I thought our relation--or, as you object to that word, our
+friendship--entitled me to that much from you."
+
+"I never heard it till--till just now," she defended, rather shaken by
+his tone and air of candor.
+
+"When?
+
+"Oh--very recently."
+
+"Won't you tell me who told you?"
+
+"No--o. Go on."
+
+"Well, that woman--that poor girl--her name was--her name is--Phrony
+Tripper--or Trimmer. I think that was her name--she called herself
+Euphronia Tripper." He was trying with puckered brow to recall exactly.
+"I suppose that is the woman you are referring to?" he said suddenly.
+
+"It is. You have not had more than one, have you?"
+
+He laughed, pleased to give the subject a lighter tone.
+
+"Well, this poor creature I used to know in the South when I was a
+boy--when I first went down there, you know? She was the daughter of an
+old farmer at whose house we stayed. I used to talk to her. You know how
+a boy talks to a pretty girl whom he is thrown with in a lonesome old
+country place, far from any amusement." Her eyes showed that she knew,
+and he was satisfied and proceeded.
+
+"But heavens! the idea of being in love with her! Why, she was the
+daughter of a farmer. Well, then I fell in with her afterwards--once or
+twice, to be accurate--when I went down there on business, and she was a
+pretty, vain country girl--"
+
+"I used to know her," assented Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"You did!" His face fell.
+
+"Yes; when I went there to a little Winter resort for my throat--when I
+was seventeen. She used to go to the school taught by Mr. Keith."
+
+"She did? Oh, then you know her name? It was Tripper, wasn't it?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I thought it was. Well, she was quite pretty, you remember; and, as I
+say, I fell in with her again, and having been old friends--" He shifted
+in his seat a little as if embarrassed--"Why--oh, you know how it is. I
+began to talk nonsense to her to pass away the time,--told her she was
+pretty and all that,--and made her a few presents--and--" He paused and
+took a long breath. "I thought she was very queer. The first thing I
+knew, I found she was--out of her mind. Well, I stopped and soon came
+away, and, to my horror, she took it into her head that she was my wife.
+She followed me here. I had to go abroad, and I heard no more of her
+until, not long ago, I heard she had gone completely crazy and was
+hunting me up as her husband. You know how such poor creatures are?" He
+paused, well satisfied with his recital, for first surprise and then a
+certain sympathy took the place of incredulity in Mrs. Lancaster's face.
+
+"She is absolutely mad, poor thing, I understand," he sighed, with
+unmistakable sympathy in his voice.
+
+"Yes," Mrs. Lancaster assented, her thoughts drifting away.
+
+He watched her keenly, and next moment began again.
+
+"I heard she had got hold of Mr. Rimmon's name and declares that he
+married us."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster returned to the present, and he went on:
+
+"I don't know how she got hold of it. I suppose his being the
+fashionable preacher, or his name being in the papers frequently,
+suggested the idea. But if you have any doubt on the subject, ask him."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster looked assent.
+
+"Here--Having heard the story, and thinking it might be as well to stop
+it at once, I wrote to Mr. Rimmon to give me a statement to set the
+matter at rest, and I have it in my pocket." He took from his
+pocket-book a letter and spread it before Mrs. Lancaster. It read:
+
+     "DEAR MR. WICKERSHAM: I am sorry you are being annoyed. I
+     cannot imagine that you should need any such statement as you
+     request. The records of marriages are kept in the proper
+     office here. Any one who will take the trouble to inspect
+     those records will see that I have never made any such
+     report. This should be more than sufficient.
+
+     "I feel sure this will answer your purpose.
+
+          "Yours sincerely,
+
+               "W.H. RIMMON."
+
+"I think that settles the matter," said Wickersham, with his eyes on her
+face.
+
+"It would seem so," said Mrs. Lancaster, gravely.
+
+As she spoke slowly, Wickersham put in one more nail.
+
+"Of course, you know there must be a witness to a marriage," he said.
+"If there be such a witness, let K---- let those who are engaged in
+defaming me produce him."
+
+"No, no," said Mrs. Lancaster, quickly. "Mr. Rimmon's statement--I think
+I owe you an apology for what I said. Of course, it appeared incredible;
+but something occurred--I can't tell you--I don't want to tell you
+what--that shocked me very much, and I suppose I judged too hastily and
+harshly. You must forget what I said, and forgive me for my injustice."
+
+"Certainly I will," he said earnestly.
+
+The revulsion in her belief inclined her to be kinder toward him than
+she had been in a long time.
+
+The change in her manner toward him made Wickersham's heart begin to
+beat. He leant over and took her hand.
+
+"Won't you give me more than justice, Alice?" he began. "If you knew how
+long I have waited--how I have hoped even against hope--how I have
+always loved you--" She was so taken aback by his declaration that for a
+moment she did not find words to reply, and he swept on: "--you would
+not be so cold--so cruel to me. I have always thought you the most
+beautiful--the most charming woman in New York."
+
+She shook her head. "No, you have not."
+
+"I have; I swear I have! Even when I have hung around--around other
+women, I have done so because I saw you were taken up with--some one
+else. I thought I might find some one else to supplant you, but never
+for one moment have I failed to acknowledge your superiority--"
+
+"Oh, no; you have not. How can you dare to tell me that!" she smiled,
+recovering her self-possession.
+
+"I have, Alice, ever since you were a girl--even when you
+were--were--when you were beyond me--I loved you more than ever--I--"
+Her face changed, and she recoiled from him.
+
+"Don't," she said.
+
+"I will." He seized her hand and held it tightly. "I loved you even then
+better than I ever loved in my life--better than your--than any one else
+did." Her face whitened.
+
+"Stop!" she cried. "Not another word. I will not listen. Release my
+hand." She pulled it from him forcibly, and, as he began again, she,
+with a gesture, stopped him.
+
+"No--no--no! It is impossible. I will not listen."
+
+His face changed as he looked into her face. She rose from her seat and
+turned away from him, taking two or three steps up and down, trying to
+regain control of herself.
+
+He waited and watched her, an angry light coming into his eyes. He
+misread her feelings. He had made love to married women before and had
+not been repulsed.
+
+She turned to him now, and with level eyes looked into his.
+
+"You never loved me in your life. I have had men in love with me, and
+know when they are; but you are not one of them."
+
+"I was--I am--" he began, stepping closer to her; but she stopped him.
+
+"Not for a minute," she went on, without heeding him. "And you had no
+right to say that to me."
+
+"What?" he demanded.
+
+"What you said. My husband loved me with all the strength of a noble,
+high-minded man, and notwithstanding the difference in our ages, treated
+me as his equal; and I loved him--yes, loved him devotedly," she said,
+as she saw a spark come into his eyes.
+
+"You love some one else now," he said coolly.
+
+It might have been anger that brought the rush of color to her face. She
+turned and looked him full in the face.
+
+"If I do, it is not you."
+
+The arrow went home. His eyes snapped with anger.
+
+"You took such lofty ground just now that I should hardly have supposed
+the attentions of Mr. Wentworth meant anything so serious. I thought
+that was mere friendship."
+
+This time there was no doubt that the color meant anger.
+
+"What do you mean?" she demanded, looking him once more full in the
+eyes.
+
+"I refer to what the world says, especially as he himself is such a
+model of all the Christian virtues."
+
+"What the world says? What do you mean?" she persisted, never taking her
+eyes from his face.
+
+He simply shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"So I assume Mr. Keith is the fortunate suitor for the remnant of your
+affections: Keith the immaculate--Keith the pure and pious gentleman who
+trades on his affections. I wish you good luck."
+
+At his insolence Mrs. Lancaster's patience suddenly snapped.
+
+"Go," she said, pointing to the door. "Go."
+
+When Wickersham walked out into the street, his face was white and
+drawn, and a strange light was in his eyes. He had played one of his
+last cards, and had played it like a fool. Luck had gone against him,
+and he had lost his head. His heart--that heart that had never known
+remorse and rarely dismay--began to sink. Luck had been going against
+him now for a long time, so long that it had swept away his fortune and
+most of his credit. What was worse to him, he was conscious that he had
+lost his nerve. Where should he turn? Unless luck turned or he could get
+help he would go down. He canvassed the various means of escape. Man
+after man had fallen away from him. Every scheme had failed.
+
+He attributed it all to Norman--to Norman and Keith. Norman had ruined
+him in New York; Keith had blocked him and balked him in the South. But
+one resource remained to him. He would make one more supreme effort.
+Then, if he failed? He thought of a locked drawer in his desk, and a
+black pistol under the papers there. His cheek blanched at the thought,
+but his lips closed tight. He would not survive disgrace. His disgrace
+meant the known loss of his fortune. One thing he would do. Keith had
+escaped him, had succeeded, but Norman he could overthrow. Norman had
+been struck hard; he would now complete his ruin. With this mental tonic
+he straightened up and walked rapidly down the street.
+
+That evening Wickersham was closeted for some time with a man who had of
+late come into especial notice as a strong and merciless
+financier--Mr. Kestrel.
+
+Mr. Kestrel received him at first with a coldness which might have
+repelled a less determined man. He had no delusions about Wickersham;
+but Wickersham knew this, and unfolded to him, with plausible frankness,
+a scheme which had much reason in it. He had at the same time played on
+the older man's foibles with great astuteness, and had awakened one or
+two of his dormant animosities. He knew that Mr. Kestrel had had a
+strong feeling against Norman for several years.
+
+"You are one of the few men who do not have to fall down and worship the
+name of Wentworth," he said.
+
+"Well, I rather think not," said Mr. Kestrel, with a glint in his eyes,
+as he recalled Norman Wentworth's scorn of him at the board-meeting
+years before, when Norman had defended Keith against him.
+
+"--Or this new man, Keith, who is undertaking to teach New York
+finance?"
+
+Mr. Kestrel gave a hard little laugh, which was more like a cough than
+an expression of mirth, but which meant that he was amused.
+
+"Well, neither do I," said Wickersham. "To tell you frankly, I hate them
+both, though there is money, and big money, in this, as you can see for
+yourself from what I have said. This is my real reason for wanting you
+in it. If you jump in and hammer down those things, you will clean them
+out. I have the old patents to all the lands that Keith sold those
+people. They antedate the titles under which Rawson claims. If you can
+break up the deal now, we will go in and recover the lands from Rawson.
+Wentworth is so deep in that he'll never pull through, and his friend
+Keith has staked everything on this one toss."
+
+Old Kestrel's parchment face was inscrutable as he gazed at Wickersham
+and declared that he did not know about that. He did not believe in
+having animosities in business matters, as it marred one's judgment.
+But Wickersham knew enough to be sure that the seed he had planted would
+bear fruit, and that Kestrel would stake something on the chance.
+
+In this he was not deceived. The next day Mr. Kestrel acceded to his
+plan.
+
+For some days after that there appeared in a certain paper a series of
+attacks on various lines of property holdings, that was characterized by
+other papers as a "strong bearish movement." The same paper contained a
+vicious article about the attempt to unload worthless coal-lands on
+gullible Englishmen. Meantime Wickersham, foreseeing failure, acted
+independently.
+
+The attack might not have amounted to a great deal but for one of those
+untimely accidents that sometimes overthrow all calculations. One of the
+keenest and oldest financiers in the city suddenly dropped dead, and a
+stampede started on the Stock Exchange. It was stayed in a little while,
+but meantime a number of men had been hard hit, and among these was
+Norman Wentworth. The papers next day announced the names of those who
+had suffered, and much space was given in one of them to the decline of
+the old firm of Wentworth & Son, whose history was almost contemporary
+with that of New York.
+
+By noon it was extensively rumored that Wentworth & Son would close
+their doors. The firm which had lasted for three generations, and whose
+name had been the synonym for honor and for philanthropy, which had
+stood as the type of the highest that can exist in commerce, would go
+down. Men spoke of it with a regret which did them honor--hard men who
+rarely expressed regret for the losses of another.
+
+It was rumored, too, that Wickersham & Company must assign; but this
+caused little surprise and less regret. Aaron Wickersham had had
+friends, but his son had not succeeded to them.
+
+Keith, having determined to talk to Alice Lancaster about Lois, was
+calling on the former a day or two after her interview with Wickersham.
+She was still somewhat disturbed over it, and showed it in her manner so
+clearly that Keith asked what was the trouble.
+
+It was nothing very much, she said. Only she had broken finally with a
+friend she had known a long time, and such things upset her.
+
+Keith was sympathetic, and suddenly, to his surprise, she broke down and
+began to cry. He had never seen her weep before since she sat, as a
+girl, in the pine-woods and he lent her his handkerchief to dry her
+tears. Something in the association gave him a feeling of unwonted
+tenderness. She had not appeared to him so soft, so feminine, in a long
+time. He essayed to comfort her. He, too, had broken with an old friend,
+the friend of a lifetime, and he would never get over it.
+
+"Mine was such a blow to me," she said, wiping her eyes; "such cruel
+things were said to me. I did not think any one but a woman would have
+said such biting things to a woman."
+
+"It was Ferdy Wickersham, I know," said Keith, his eyes contracting;
+"but what on earth could he have said? What could he have dared to say
+to wound you so?"
+
+"He said all the town was talking about me and Norman." She began to cry
+again. "Norman, dear old Norman, who has been more like a brother to me
+than any one I have ever known, and whom I would give the world to bring
+back happiness to."
+
+"He is a scoundrel!" exclaimed Keith. "I have stood all--more than I
+ever expected to stand from any man living; but if he is attacking
+women"--he was speaking to himself rather than to her--"I will unmask
+him. He is not worth your notice," he said kindly, addressing her again.
+"Women have been his prey ever since I knew him, when he was but a young
+boy." Mrs. Lancaster dried her eyes.
+
+"You refer to the story that he had married that poor girl and abandoned
+her?"
+
+"Yes--partly that. That is the worst thing I know of him."
+
+"But that is not true. However cruel he is, that accusation is
+unfounded. I know that myself."
+
+"How do you know it?" asked Keith, in surprise.
+
+"He told me the whole story: explained the thing to my satisfaction. It
+was a poor crazy girl who claimed that he married her; said Mr. Rimmon
+had performed the ceremony She was crazy. I saw Mr. Rimmon's letter
+denying the whole thing."
+
+"Do you know his handwriting?" inquired Keith, grimly.
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"Well, that of both of them?"
+
+She nodded, and Keith, taking out his pocket-book, opened it and took
+therefrom a slip of paper. "Look at that. I got that a few days ago from
+the witness who was present."
+
+"Why, what is this?" She sprang up in her excitement.
+
+"It is incredible!" she said slowly. "Why, he told me the story with the
+utmost circumstantiality."
+
+"He lied to you," said Keith, grimly. "And Rimmon lied. That is their
+handwriting. I have had it examined by the best expert in New York City.
+I had not intended to use that against him, but only to clear the
+character of that poor young creature whom he deceived and then
+abandoned; but as he is defaming her here, and is at his old trade of
+trying to deceive women, it is time he was shown up in his true colors."
+
+She gave a shudder of horror, and wiped her right hand with her left.
+"Oh, to think that he dared!" She wiped her hand on her handkerchief.
+
+At that moment a servant brought in a card. As Mrs. Lancaster gazed at
+it, her eyes flashed and her lip curled.
+
+"Say that Mrs. Lancaster begs to be excused."
+
+"Yes, madam." The servant hesitated. "I think he heard you talking,
+madam."
+
+"Say that Mrs. Lancaster begs to be excused," she said firmly.
+
+The servant, with a bow, withdrew.
+
+She handed the card to Keith. On it was the name of the Rev. William H.
+Rimmon.
+
+Mr. Rimmon, as he stood in the hall, was in unusually good spirits,
+though slightly perturbed. He had determined to carry through a plan
+that he had long pondered over. He had decided to ask Mrs. Lancaster to
+become Mrs. Rimmon.
+
+As Keith glanced toward the door, he caught Mr. Rimmon's eye. He was
+waiting on the threshold and rubbing his hands with eager expectancy.
+Just then the servant gave him the message. Keith saw his countenance
+fall and his face blanch. He turned, picked up his hat, and slipped out
+of the door, with a step that was almost a slink.
+
+As Mr. Rimmon passed down the street he knew that he had reached a
+crisis in his life. He went to see Wickersham, but that gentleman was in
+no mood for condolences. Everything had gone against him. He was facing
+utter ruin. Rimmon's upbraiding angered him.
+
+"By the way, you are the very man I wanted to see," he said grimly. "I
+want you to sign a note for that twenty thousand I lost by you when you
+insisted on my holding that stock."
+
+Rimmon's jaw fell. "That you held for me? Sign a note! Twenty-six
+thousand!"
+
+"Yes. Don't pretend innocence--not on me. Save that for the pulpit. I
+know you," said the other, with a chilling laugh.
+
+"But you were to carry that. That was a part of our agreement. Why,
+twenty thousand would take everything I have."
+
+"Don't play that on me," said Wickersham, coldly. "It won't work. You
+can make it up when you get your widow."
+
+Rimmon groaned helplessly.
+
+"Come; there is the note. Sign."
+
+Rimmon began to expostulate, and finally refused pointblank to sign.
+Wickersham gazed at him with amusement.
+
+"You sign that, or I will serve suit on you in a half-hour, and we will
+see how the Rev. Mr. Rimmmon stands when my lawyers are through with
+him. You will believe in hell then, sure enough."
+
+"You won't dare do it. Your marriage would come out. Mrs. Lancaster
+would--"
+
+"She knows it," said Wickersham, calmly. And, as Rimmon looked
+sceptical, "I told her myself to spare you the trouble. Sign." He rose
+and touched a bell.
+
+Rimmon, with a groan, signed the paper.
+
+"You must have showed her my letter!"
+
+"Of course, I did."
+
+"But you promised me not to. I am ruined!"
+
+"What have I to do with that? 'See thou to that,'" said Wickersham, with
+a bitter laugh.
+
+Rimmon's face paled at the quotation. He, too, had betrayed his Lord.
+
+"Now go." Wickersham pointed to the door.
+
+Mr. Rimmon went home and tried to write a letter to Mrs. Lancaster, but
+he could not master his thoughts. That pen that usually flowed so glibly
+failed to obey him. He was in darkness. He saw himself dishonored,
+displaced. Wickersham was capable of anything. He did not know where to
+turn. He thought of his brother clergymen. He knew many good men who
+spent their lives helping others. But something deterred him from
+applying to them now. To some he had been indifferent, others he had
+known only socially. Yet others had withdrawn themselves from him more
+and more of late. He had attributed it to their envy or their folly. He
+suddenly thought of old Dr. Templeton. He had always ignored that old
+man as a sort of crack-brained creature who had not been able to keep up
+with the world, and had been left stranded, doing the work that properly
+belonged to the unsuccessful. Curiously enough, he was the one to whom
+the unhappy man now turned. Besides, he was a friend of Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+A half-hour later the Rev. Mr. Rimmon was in Dr. Templeton's simple
+study, and was finding a singular sense of relief in pouring out his
+troubles to the old clergyman. He told him something of his unhappy
+situation--not all, it is true, but enough to enable the other to see
+how grave it was, as much from what he inferred as from what Rimmon
+explained. He even began to hope again. If the Doctor would undertake to
+straighten out the complications he might yet pull through. To his
+dismay, this phase of the matter did not appear to present itself to the
+old man's mind. It was the sin that he had committed that had
+touched him.
+
+"Let us carry it where only we can find relief;" he said. "Let us take
+it to the Throne of Grace, where we can lay all our burdens"; and before
+Rimmon knew it, he was on his knees, praying for him as if he had been a
+very outcast.
+
+When the Rev. Mr. Rimmon came out of the shabby little study, though he
+had not gotten the relief he had sought, he, somehow, felt a little
+comforted, while at the same time he felt humble. He had one of those
+brief intervals of feeling that, perhaps, there was, after all,
+something that that old man had found which he had missed, and he
+determined to find it. But Mr. Rimmon had wandered far out of the way.
+He had had a glimpse of the pearl, but the price was great, and he had
+not been able to pay it all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wickersham discounted the note; but the amount was only a bagatelle to
+him: a bucket-shop had swallowed it within an hour. He had lost his
+instinct. It was only the love of gambling that remained.
+
+Only one chance appeared to remain for him. He had made up with Louise
+Wentworth after a fashion. He must get hold of her in some way. He might
+obtain more money from her. The method he selected was a desperate one;
+but he was a desperate man.
+
+After long pondering, he sat down and wrote her a note, asking her "to
+meet some friends of his, a Count and Countess Torelli, at supper"
+next evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE RUN ON THE BANK
+
+It was the day after the events just recorded that Keith's deal was
+concluded. The attack on him and the attempt made by Wickersham and
+Kestrel to break up his deal had failed, and the deeds and money
+were passed.
+
+Keith was on his way back to his office from his final interview with
+the representative of the syndicate that had bought the properties. He
+was conscious of a curious sensation, partly of exhilaration, partly of
+almost awe, as he walked through the crowded streets, where every one
+was bent on the same quest: gold. At last he had won. He was rich. He
+wondered, as he walked along, if any of the men he shouldered were as
+rich as he. Norman and Ferdy Wickersham recurred to him. Both had been
+much wealthier; but Wickersham, he knew, was in straits, and Norman was
+in some trouble. He was unfeignedly glad about Wickersham; but the
+recollection of Norman clouded his face.
+
+It was with a pang that he recalled Norman's recent conduct to him--a
+pang that one who had always been his friend should have changed so; but
+that was the way of the world. This reflection, however, was not
+consoling.
+
+He reached his office and seated himself at his desk, to take another
+look at his papers. Before he opened them he rose and locked the door,
+and opening a large envelope, spread the papers out on the desk
+before him.
+
+He thought of his father. He must write and tell him of his success.
+Then he thought of his old home. He remembered his resolution to restore
+it and make it what it used to be. But how much he could do with the
+money it would take to fit up the old place in the manner he had
+contemplated! By investing it judiciously he could double it.
+
+Suddenly there was a step outside and a knock at his door, followed by
+voices in the outer office. Keith rose, and putting his papers back in
+his pocket, opened the door. For a second he had a mingled sensation of
+pleasure and surprise. His father stood there, his bag clutched in his
+hand. He looked tired, and had aged some since Keith saw him last; but
+his face wore the old smile that always illumined it when it rested
+on his son.
+
+Keith greeted him warmly and drew him inside. "I was just thinking of
+you, sir."
+
+"You would not come to see me, so I have come to see you. I have heard
+from you so rarely that I was afraid you were sick." His eyes rested
+fondly on Gordon's face.
+
+"No; I have been so busy; that is all. Well, sir, I have won." His eyes
+were sparkling.
+
+The old gentleman's face lit up.
+
+"You have? Found Phrony, have you? I am so glad. It will give old Rawson
+a new lease of life. I saw him after he got back. He has failed a good
+deal lately."
+
+"No, sir. I have found her, too; but I mean I have won out at last."
+
+"Ah, you have won her? I congratulate you. I hope she will make you
+happy."
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"I don't mean that. I mean I have sold my lands at last. I closed this
+morning with the Englishmen, and received the money."
+
+The General smiled.
+
+"Ah, you have, have you? That's very good. I am glad for old Adam
+Rawson's sake."
+
+"I was afraid he would die before the deeds passed," said Keith. "But
+see, here are the drafts to my order." He spread them out. "This one is
+my commission. And I have the same amount of common stock."
+
+His father made no comment on this, but presently said: "You will have
+enough to restore the old place a little."
+
+"How much would it cost to fix up the place as you think it ought to be
+fixed up?"
+
+"Oh, some thousands of dollars. You see, the house is much out of
+repair, and the quarters ought really all to be rebuilt. Old Charlotte's
+house I have kept in repair, and Richard now sleeps in the house, as he
+has gotten so rheumatic. I should think five or six thousand dollars
+might do it."
+
+"I can certainly spare that much," said Keith, laughing.
+
+"How is Norman?" asked the General.
+
+Keith was conscious of a feeling of discontent. His countenance fell.
+
+"Why, I don't know. I don't see much of him these days."
+
+"Ah! I want to go to see him."
+
+"The fact is, we have--er--had--. There has been an unfortunate
+misunderstanding between us. No one regrets it more than I; but I think
+I can say it was not at all my fault, and I have done all and more than
+was required of me."
+
+"Ah, I am very sorry for that. It's a pity--a pity!" said the old
+General. "What was it about?"
+
+"Well, I don't care to talk about it, sir. But I can assure you, I was
+not in the least to blame. It was caused mainly, I believe, by that
+fellow, Wickersham."
+
+"He's a scoundrel!" said the General, with sudden vehemence.
+
+"He is, sir!"
+
+"I will go and see Norman. I see by the papers he is in some trouble."
+
+"I fear he is, sir. His bank has been declining."
+
+"Perhaps you can help him?" His face lit up. "You remember, he once
+wrote you--a long time ago?"
+
+"I remember; I have repaid that," said Keith, quickly. "He has treated
+me very badly." He gave a brief account of the trouble between them.
+
+The old General leant back and looked at his son intently. His face was
+very grave and showed that he was reflecting deeply.
+
+"Gordon," he said presently, "the Devil is standing very close to you. A
+real misunderstanding should always be cleared up. You must go to him."
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" asked his son, in some confusion.
+
+"You are at the parting of the ways. A gentleman cannot hesitate. Such a
+debt never can be paid by a gentleman," he said calmly. "You must help
+him, even if you cannot restore the old place. Elphinstone has gone for
+a debt before." He rose as if there was nothing more to be said. "Well,
+I will go and wait for you at your rooms." He walked out.
+
+Keith sat and reflected. How different he was from his father! How
+different from what he had been years ago! Then he had had an affection
+for the old home and all that it represented. He had worked with the
+idea of winning it back some day. It had been an inspiration to him. But
+now it was wealth that he had begun to seek.
+
+It came to him clearly how much he had changed. The process all lay
+before him. It had grown with his success, and had kept pace with it in
+an almost steady ratio since he had set success before him as a goal. He
+was angry with himself to find that he was thinking now of success
+merely as Wealth. Once he had thought of Honor and Achievement, even of
+Duty. He remembered when he had not hesitated to descend into what
+appeared the very jaws of death, because it seemed to him his duty. He
+wondered if he would do the same now.
+
+He felt that this was a practical view which he was now taking of life.
+He was now a practical man; yes, practical like old Kestrel, said his
+better self. He felt that he was not as much of a gentleman as he used
+to be. He was further from his father; further from what Norman was.
+This again brought Norman to his mind. If the rumors which he had heard
+were true, Norman was now in a tight place.
+
+As his father had said, perhaps he might be able to help him. But why
+should he do it? If Norman had helped him in the past, had he not
+already paid him back? And had not Norman treated him badly of late
+without the least cause--met his advances with a rebuff? No; he would
+show him that he was not to be treated so. He still had a small account
+in Norman's bank, which he had not drawn out because he had not wished
+to let Norman see that he thought enough of his coldness to make any
+change; but he would put his money now into old Creamer's bank. After
+looking at his drafts again, he unlocked his door and went out on
+the street.
+
+There was more commotion on the street than he had seen in some days.
+Men were hurrying at a quicker pace than the rapid gait which was always
+noticeable in that thoroughfare. Groups occasionally formed and, after a
+word or two, dispersed. Newsboys were crying extras and announcing some
+important news in an unintelligible jargon. Messengers were dashing
+about, rushing in and out of the big buildings. Something unusual was
+evidently going on. As Keith, on his way to the bank of which Mr.
+Creamer was president, passed the mouth of the street in which Norman's
+office was situated, he looked down and saw quite a crowd assembled. The
+street was full. He passed on, however, and went into the big building,
+on the first floor of which Creamer's bank had its offices. He walked
+through to the rear of the office, to the door of Mr. Creamer's private
+office, and casually asked the nearest clerk for Mr. Creamer. The young
+man said he was engaged. Keith, however, walked up to the door, and was
+about to knock, when, at a word spoken by his informant, another clerk
+came hastily forward and said that Mr. Creamer was very busily engaged
+and could see no one.
+
+"Well, he will see me," said Keith, feeling suddenly the courage that
+the possession of over a quarter of a million dollars gave, and he
+boldly knocked on the door, and, without waiting to be invited in,
+opened it.
+
+Mr. Creamer was sitting at his desk, and two or three other men, one or
+two of whom Keith had seen before, were seated in front of him in close
+conference. They stared at the intruder.
+
+"Mr. Keith." Mr. Creamer's tone conveyed not the least feeling, gave no
+idea either of welcome or surprise.
+
+"Excuse me for interrupting you for a moment," said Keith. "I want to
+open an account here. I have a draft on London, which I should like to
+deposit and have you collect for me."
+
+The effect was immediate; indeed, one might almost say magical. The
+atmosphere of the room as suddenly changed as if May should be dropped
+into the lap of December. The old banker's face relaxed. He touched a
+bell under the lid of his desk, and at the same moment pushed back
+his chair.
+
+"Gentlemen, let me introduce my friend, Mr. Keith." He presented Keith
+in turn to each of his companions, who greeted him with that degree of
+mingled reserve and civility which is due to a man who has placed a
+paper capable of effecting such a marked change in the hands of the most
+self-contained banker in Bankers' Row.
+
+A tap at the door announced an answer to the bell, and the next moment a
+clerk came in.
+
+"Ask Mr. Penwell to come here," said Mr. Creamer. "Mr. Penwell is the
+head of our foreign department," he added in gracious explanation
+to Keith.
+
+"Mr. Keith, gentlemen, is largely interested in some of those Southern
+mining properties that you have heard me speak of; and has just put
+through a very fine deal with an English syndicate."
+
+The door opened, and a cool-looking, slender man of fifty-odd, with a
+thin gray face, thin gray hair very smoothly brushed, and keen gray
+eyes, entered. He was introduced to Mr. Keith. After Mr. Creamer had
+stated the purpose of Keith's visit and had placed the drafts in Mr.
+Penwell's hands, the latter stated, as an interesting item just off the
+ticker, that he understood Wentworth was in trouble. Some one had just
+come and said that there was a run on his bank.
+
+"Those attacks on him in the newspapers must have hurt him
+considerably," observed one of the visitors.
+
+"Yes, he has been a good deal hurt," said Mr. Creamer. "We are all
+right, Penwell?" He glanced at his subordinate.
+
+Mr. Penwell nodded with deep satisfaction.
+
+"So are we," said one of the visitors. "This is the end of Wentworth &
+Son. He will go down."
+
+"He has been going down for some time. Wife too extravagant."
+
+This appeared to be the general opinion. But Keith scarcely heard the
+speakers. He stood in a maze.
+
+The announcement of Norman's trouble had come to him like a
+thunder-clap. And he was standing now as in a dream. Could it be
+possible that Norman was going to fail? And if he failed, would this be
+all it meant to these men who had known him always?
+
+The vision of an old gentleman sitting in his home, which he had lost,
+came back to him across the years.
+
+"That young man is a gentleman," he heard him say. "It takes a gentleman
+to write such a letter to a friend in misfortune. Write to him and say
+we will never forget his kindness." He heard the same old gentleman say,
+after years of poverty, "You must pay your debt though I give up
+Elphinstone."
+
+Was he not now forgetting Norman's kindness? But was it not too late?
+Could he save him? Would he not simply be throwing away his money to
+offer it to him? Suddenly again, he seemed to hear his father's voice:
+
+"The Devil is standing close behind you. You are at the parting of the
+ways. A gentleman cannot hesitate."
+
+"Mr. Creamer," he said suddenly, "why don't Norman Wentworth's friends
+come to his rescue and help him out of his difficulties?"
+
+The question might have come from the sky, it was so unexpected. It
+evidently caught the others unprepared with an answer. They simply
+smiled vaguely. Mr. Creamer said presently, rubbing his chin:
+
+"Why, I don't suppose they know the extent of his difficulties."
+
+"And I guess he has no collateral to offer?" said another.
+
+"Collateral! No; everything he has is pledged."
+
+"But I mean, why don't they lend him money without collateral, if
+necessary, to tide him over his trouble? He is a man of probity. He has
+lived here all his life. He must have many friends able to help him.
+They know that if he had time to realize on his properties he would
+probably pull through."
+
+With one accord the other occupants of the room turned and looked at
+Keith.
+
+"Did you say you had made a fortune in mining deals?" asked one of the
+gentlemen across the table, gazing at Keith through his gold-rimmed
+glasses with a wintry little smile.
+
+"No, I did not. Whatever was said on that subject Mr. Creamer said."
+
+"Oh! That's so. He did. Well, you are the sort of a man we want about
+here."
+
+This remark was received with some amusement by the others; but Keith
+passed it by, and turned to Mr. Creamer.
+
+"Mr. Creamer, how much money will you give me on this draft? This is
+mine. The other I wish to deposit here."
+
+"Why, I don't know just what the exchange would be. What is the exchange
+on this, Penwell?"
+
+"Will you cash this draft for me?" asked Keith.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well, will you do me a further favor? It might make very little
+difference if I were to make a deposit in Norman's bank; but if you were
+to make such a deposit there, it would probably reassure people, and the
+run might be stopped. I have known of one or two instances."
+
+Mr. Creamer agreed, and the result was a sort of reaction in Norman's
+favor, in sentiment if not in action. It was arranged that Keith should
+go and make a deposit, and that Mr. Creamer should send a man to make a
+further one and offer Wentworth aid.
+
+When Gordon Keith reached the block on which stood Norman's bank, the
+street was already filled with a dense crowd, pushing, growling,
+complaining, swearing, threatening. It was evidently a serious affair,
+and Keith, trying to make his way through the mob, heard many things
+about Norman which he never could have believed it would have been
+possible to hear. The crowd was in an ugly mood, and was growing uglier.
+A number of policemen were trying to keep the people in line so that
+they could take their turn. Keith found it impossible to make his way to
+the front. His explanation that he wished to make a deposit was greeted
+with shouts of derision.
+
+"Stand back there, young man. We've heard that before; you can't work
+that on us. We would all like to make deposits--somewhere else."
+
+"Except them what's already made 'em," some one added, at which there
+was a laugh.
+
+Keith applied to a policeman with hardly more success, until he opened
+the satchel he carried, and mentioned the name of the banker who was to
+follow him. On this the officer called another, and after a hurried word
+the two began to force their way through the crowd, with Keith between
+them. By dint of commanding, pushing, and explaining, they at length
+reached the entrance to the bank, and finally made their way, hot and
+perspiring, to the counter. A clerk was at work at every window counting
+out money as fast as checks were presented.
+
+Just before Keith reached the counter, on glancing through an open door,
+he saw Norman sitting at his desk, white and grim. His burning eyes
+seemed deeper than ever. He glanced up, and Keith thought he caught his
+gaze on him, but he was not sure, for he looked away so quickly. The
+next moment he walked around inside the counter and spoke to a clerk,
+who opened a ledger and gave him a memorandum. Then he came forward and
+spoke to a teller at the receiving-window.
+
+"Do you know that man with the two policemen? That is Mr. Gordon Keith.
+Here is his balance; pay it to him as soon as he reaches the window."
+
+The teller, bending forward, gazed earnestly out of the small grated
+window over the heads of those nearest him. Keith met his gaze, and the
+teller nodded. Norman turned away without looking, and seated himself on
+a chair in the rear of the bank.
+
+When Keith reached the window, the white-faced teller said immediately:
+
+"Your balance, Mr. Keith, is so much; you have a check?" He extended his
+hand to take it.
+
+"No," said Keith; "I have not come to draw out any money. I have come to
+make a deposit."
+
+The teller was so much astonished that he simply ejaculated:
+
+"Sir--?"
+
+"I wish to make a deposit," said Keith, raising his voice a little, and
+speaking with great distinctness.
+
+His voice had the quality of carrying, and a silence settled on the
+crowd,--one of those silences that sometimes fall, even on a mob, when
+the wholly unexpected happens,--so that every word that was spoken was
+heard distinctly.
+
+"Ah--we are not taking deposits to-day," said the astonished teller,
+doubtfully.
+
+Keith smiled.
+
+"Well, I suppose there is no objection to doing so? I have an account in
+this bank, and I wish to add to it. I am not afraid of it."
+
+The teller gazed at him in blank amazement; he evidently thought that
+Keith was a little mad. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but said
+nothing from sheer astonishment.
+
+"I have confidence enough in this bank," pursued Keith, "to put my money
+here, and here I propose to put it, and I am not the only one; there
+will be others here in a little while."
+
+"I shall--really, I shall have to ask Mr. Wentworth," faltered the
+clerk.
+
+"Mr. Wentworth has nothing to do with it," said Keith, positively, and
+to close the discussion, he lifted his satchel through the window, and,
+turning it upside down, emptied before the astonished teller a pile of
+bills which made him gasp. "Enter that to my credit," said Keith.
+
+"How much is it?"
+
+The sum that Keith mentioned made him gasp yet more. It was up in the
+hundreds of thousands.
+
+"There will be more here in a little while." He turned his head and
+glanced toward the door. "Ah, here comes some one now," he said, as he
+recognized one of the men whom he had recently left at the council
+board, who was then pushing his way forward, under the guidance of
+several policemen.
+
+The amount deposited by the banker was much larger than Keith had
+expected, and a few well-timed words to those about him had a marked
+effect upon the depositors. He said their apprehension was simply
+absurd. They, of course, had the right to draw out their money, if they
+wished it, and they would get it, but he advised them to go home and
+wait to do so until the crowd dispersed. The bank was perfectly sound,
+and they could not break it unless they could also break its friends.
+
+A few of the struggling depositors dropped out of line, some of the
+others saying that, as they had waited so long, they guessed they would
+get their money now.
+
+The advice given, perhaps, had an added effect, as at that moment a
+shriek arose from a woman near the door, who declared that her pocket
+had been picked of the money she had just drawn.
+
+The arrival of the new depositors, and the spreading through the crowd
+of the information that they represented several of the strongest banks
+in the city, quieted the apprehensions of the depositors, and a
+considerable number of them abandoned the idea of drawing out their
+money and went off. Though many of them remained, it was evident that
+the dangerous run had subsided. A notice was posted on the front door of
+the bank that the bank would remain open until eight o'clock and would
+be open the following morning at eight, which had something to do with
+allaying the excitement of the depositors.
+
+That afternoon Keith went back to the bank. Though depositors were still
+drawing out their money, the scene outside was very different from that
+which he had witnessed earlier in the day. Keith asked for Mr.
+Wentworth, and was shown to his room. When Keith entered, Norman was
+sitting at his desk figuring busily. Keith closed the door behind him
+and waited. The lines were deep on Norman's face; but the hunted look it
+had borne in the morning had passed away, and grim resolution had taken
+its place. When at length he glanced up, his already white face grew yet
+whiter. The next second a flush sprang to his cheeks; he pushed back his
+chair and rose, and, taking one step forward, stretched out his hand.
+
+"Keith!"
+
+Keith took his hand with a grip that drove the blood from the ends of
+Norman's fingers.
+
+"Norman!"
+
+Norman drew a chair close to his desk, and Keith sat down. Norman sank
+into his, looked down on the floor for a second, then, raising his eyes,
+looked full into Keith's eyes.
+
+"Keith--?" His voice failed him; he glanced away, reached over, and took
+up a paper lying near, and the next instant leant forward, and folding
+his arms on the desk, dropped his head on them, shaken with emotion.
+
+Keith rose from his chair, and bending over him, laid his hand on his
+head, as he might have done to a younger brother.
+
+"Don't, Norman," he said helplessly; "it is all right." He moved his
+hand down Norman's arm with a touch as caressing as if he had been a
+little child, but all he said was: "Don't, Norman; it is all right."
+
+Suddenly Norman sat up.
+
+"It is all wrong!" he said bitterly. "I have been a fool. I had no
+right--. But I was mad! I have wrecked my life. But I was insane. I was
+deceived. I do not know even now how it happened. I ought to have known,
+but--I learned only just now. I can never explain. I ask your
+pardon humbly."
+
+Keith leant forward and laid his hand upon him affectionately.
+
+"There, there! You owe me no apology, and I ask no explanation; it was
+all a great mistake."
+
+"Yes, and all my fault. She was not to blame; it was my folly. I drove
+her to--desperation."
+
+"I want to ask just one thing. Was it Ferdy Wickersham who made you
+believe I had deceived you?" asked Keith, standing straight above him.
+
+"In part--mainly. But I was mad." He drew his hand across his forehead,
+sat back in his chair, and, with eyes averted, sighed deeply. His
+thoughts were evidently far from Keith. Keith's eyes rested on him, and
+his face paled a little with growing resolution.
+
+"One question, Norman. Pardon me for asking it. My only reason is that
+I would give my life, a worthless life you once saved, to see you as you
+once were. I know more than you think I know. You love her still? I know
+you must."
+
+Norman turned his eyes and let them rest on Keith's face. They were
+filled with anguish.
+
+"Better than my life. I adore her."
+
+Keith drew in his breath with a long sigh of relief and of content.
+
+"Oh, I have no hope," Norman went on despairingly. "I gave her every
+right to doubt it. I killed her love. I do not blame her. It was all my
+fault. I know it now, when it is too late."
+
+"It is not too late."
+
+Norman shook his head, without even looking at Keith.
+
+"Too late," he said, speaking to himself.
+
+Keith rose to his feet.
+
+"It is not too late," he declared, with a sudden ring in his voice; "she
+loves you."
+
+Norman shook his head.
+
+"She hates me; I deserve it."
+
+"In her heart she adores you," said Keith, in a tone of conviction.
+
+Norman turned away with a half-bitter laugh.
+
+"You don't know."
+
+"I do know, and you will know it, too. How long shall you be here?"
+
+"I shall spend the night here," said Norman. "I must be ready for
+whatever may happen to-morrow morning.--I have not thanked you yet." He
+extended his hand to Keith. "You stemmed the tide for me to-day. I know
+what it must have cost you. I cannot regret it, and I know you never
+will; and I beg you to believe that, though I go down to-morrow, I shall
+never forget it, and if God spares me, I will repay you."
+
+Keith's eyes rested on him calmly.
+
+"You paid me long ago, Norman. I was paying a debt to-day, or trying to
+pay one, in a small way. It was not I who made that deposit to-day, but
+a better man and a finer gentleman than I can ever hope to be--my
+father. It was he who inspired me to do that; he paid that debt."
+
+From what Keith had heard, he felt that he was justified in going to see
+Mrs. Wentworth. Possibly, it was not too late; possibly, he might be
+able to do something to clear away the misapprehension under which she
+labored, and to make up the trouble between her and Norman. Norman still
+loved her dearly, and Keith believed that she cared for him. Lois
+Huntington always declared that she did, and she could not have
+been deceived.
+
+That she had been foolish Keith knew; that she had been wicked he did
+not believe. She was self-willed, vain, extravagant; but deep under her
+cold exterior burned fires of which she had once or twice given him a
+glimpse; and he believed that her deepest feeling was ever for Norman.
+
+When he reached Mrs. Wentworth's house he was fortunate enough to find
+her at home. He was shown into the drawing-room.
+
+When Mrs. Wentworth entered the room, Keith was conscious of a change in
+her since he had seen her last. She, too, had heard the clangor of the
+evil tongues that had connected their names. She greeted him with
+cordial words, but her manner was constrained, and her expression was
+almost suspicious.
+
+She changed, however, under Keith's imperturbable and unfeigned
+friendliness, and suddenly asked him if he had seen Norman. For the
+first time real interest spoke in her voice and shone in her face. Keith
+said he had seen him.
+
+"I have come to see if I could not help you. Perhaps, I may be able to
+do something to set things right."
+
+"No--it is too late. Things have gone too far. We have just
+drifted--drifted!" She flung up her hands and tossed them apart with a
+gesture of despair. "Drifted!" she repeated. She put her handkerchief to
+her eyes.
+
+Keith watched her in silence for a moment, and then rising, he seated
+himself beside her.
+
+"Come--this is all wrong--all wrong!" He caught her by the wrist and
+firmly took her hand down from her eyes, much as an older brother might
+have done. "I want to talk to you. Perhaps, I can help you--I may have
+been sent here for the purpose--who knows? At least, I want to help you.
+Now tell me." He looked into her face with grave, kind eyes. "You do not
+care for Ferdy Wickersham? That would be impossible."
+
+"No, of course not,--except as a friend,--and Norman liked another
+woman--your friend!" Her eyes flashed a sudden flame.
+
+"Never! never!" repeated Keith, after a pause. "Norman is not that
+sort."
+
+His absolute certainty daunted her.
+
+"He did. I have reason to think--" she began. But Keith put her down.
+
+"Never! I would stake my salvation on it."
+
+"He is going to get a--try to get a divorce. He is willing to blacken my
+name."
+
+"What! Never."
+
+"But you do not know the reasons I have for saying so," she protested.
+"If I could tell you--"
+
+"No, and I do not care. Doubt your own senses rather than believe that.
+Ferdy Wickersham is your authority for that."
+
+"No, he is not--not my only authority. You are all so hard on Ferdy. He
+is a good friend of mine."
+
+"He is not," asserted Keith. "He is your worst enemy--your very worst.
+He is incapable of being a friend."
+
+"What have you against him?" she demanded. "I know you and he don't like
+each other, but--"
+
+"Well, for one thing, he deceived a poor girl, and then abandoned
+her--and--"
+
+"Perhaps, your information is incorrect? You know how easy it is to get
+up a slander, and such women are--not to be believed. They always
+pretend that they have been deceived."
+
+"She was not one of 'such women,'" said Keith, calmly. "She was a
+perfectly respectable woman, and the granddaughter of an old friend
+of mine."
+
+"Well, perhaps, you may have been misinformed?"
+
+"No; I have the evidence that Wickersham married her--and--"
+
+"Oh, come now--that is absurd! Ferdy married! Why, Ferdy never cared
+enough for any one to marry her--unless she had money. He has paid
+attention to a rich woman, but--You must not strain my credulity too
+far. I really thought you had something to show against him. Of course,
+I know he is not a saint,--in fact, very far from it,--but he does not
+pretend to be. But, at least, he is not a hypocrite."
+
+"He is a hypocrite and a scoundrel," declared Keith, firmly. "He is
+married, and his wife is living now. He abandoned her, and she is
+insane. I know her."
+
+"You know her! Ferdy married!" She paused in wonder. His certainty
+carried conviction with it.
+
+"I have his marriage certificate."
+
+"You have?" A sort of amaze passed over her face.
+
+He took out the paper and gave it to her. She gazed at it with staring
+eyes. "That is his hand." She rose with a blank face, and walked to the
+window; then, after a moment, came back and sat down. She had the
+expression of a person lost. "Tell me about it."
+
+Keith told her. He also told her of Norman's losses.
+
+Again that look of amazement crossed her face; her eyes became almost
+blank.
+
+"Norman's fortune impaired! I cannot understand it--_he_ told me--Oh,
+there must be some mistake!" she broke out vehemently. "You are
+deceiving me. No! I don't mean that, of course,--I know you would
+not,--but you have been deceived yourself." Her face was a
+sudden white.
+
+Keith shook his head. "No!"
+
+"Why, look here. He cannot be hard up. He has kept up my allowance and
+met every demand--almost every demand--I have made on him." She was
+grasping at straws.
+
+"And Ferdy Wickersham has spent it in Wall Street."
+
+"What! No, he has not! There, at least, you do him an injustice. What he
+has got from me he has invested securely. I have all the papers--at
+least, some of them."
+
+"How has he invested it?"
+
+"Partly in a mine called the 'Great Gun Mine,' in New Leeds. Partly in
+Colorado.--I can help Norman with it." Her face brightened as the
+thought came to her.
+
+Keith shook his head.
+
+"The Great Gun Mine is a fraud--at least, it is worthless, not worth
+five cents on the dollar of what has been put in it. It was flooded
+years ago. Wickersham has used it as a mask for his gambling operations
+in Wall Street, but has not put a dollar into it for years; and now he
+does not even own it. His creditors have it."
+
+Her face had turned perfectly white.
+
+A look, partly of pity for her, partly of scorn for Wickersham, crossed
+Keith's face. He rose and strode up and down the room in perplexity.
+
+"He is a common thief," he said sternly--"beneath contempt!"
+
+His conviction suddenly extended to her. When he looked at her, she
+showed in her face that she believed him. Her last prop had fallen. The
+calamity had made her quiet.
+
+"What shall I do?" she asked hopelessly.
+
+"You must tell Norman."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Make a clean breast of it."
+
+"You do not know Norman! How can I? He would despise me so! You do not
+know how proud he is. He--!" Words failed her, and she stared at Keith
+helplessly.
+
+"If I do not know Norman, I know no one on earth. Go to him and tell
+him everything. It will be the happiest day of his life--your
+salvation and his."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I know it."
+
+She relapsed into thought, and Keith waited.
+
+"I was to see Fer--Mr. Wickersham to-night," she began presently. "He
+asked me to supper to meet some friends--the Count and Countess
+Torelli."
+
+Keith smiled. A fine scorn came into his eyes.
+
+"Where does he give the dinner? At what hour?"
+
+She named the place--a fashionable restaurant up-town. The time was
+still several hours away.
+
+"You must go to Norman."
+
+She sat in deep reflection.
+
+"It is your only chance--your only hope. Give me authority to act for
+you, and go to him. He needs you."
+
+"If I thought he would forgive me?" she said in a low tone.
+
+"He will. I have just come from him. Write me the authority and go at
+once."
+
+A light appeared to dawn in her face.
+
+She rose suddenly.
+
+"What shall I write?"
+
+"Write simply that I have full authority to act for you--and that you
+have gone to Norman."
+
+She walked into the next room, and seating herself at an escritoire, she
+wrote for a short time. When she handed the paper to Keith it contained
+just what he had requested: a simple statement to F.C. Wickersham that
+Mr. Keith had full authority to represent her and act for her as he
+deemed best.
+
+"Will that do?" she asked.
+
+"I think so," said Keith. "Now go. Norman is waiting."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+RECONCILIATION
+
+For some time after Keith left her Mrs. Wentworth sat absolutely
+motionless, her eyes half closed, her lips drawn tight, in deep
+reflection. Presently she changed her seat and ensconced herself in the
+corner of a divan, leaning her head on her hand; but her expression did
+not change. Her mind was evidently working in the same channel. A tumult
+raged within her breast, but her face was set sphinx-like, inscrutable.
+Just then there was a scurry up-stairs; a boy's voice was
+heard shouting:
+
+"See here, what papa sent us."
+
+There was an answering shout, and then an uproar of childish delight. A
+sudden change swept over her. Light appeared to break upon her.
+Something like courage came into her face, not unmingled with
+tenderness, softening it and dispelling the gloom which had clouded it.
+She rose suddenly and walked with a swift, decisive step out of the room
+and up the richly carpeted stairs. To a maid on the upper floor she said
+hurriedly: "Tell Fenderson to order the brougham--at once," and passed
+into her chamber.
+
+Closing the door, she locked it. She opened a safe built in the wall; a
+package of letters fell out into the room. A spasm almost of loathing
+crossed her face. She picked up the letters and began to tear them up
+with almost violence, throwing the fragments into the grate as though
+they soiled her hands. Going back to the safe, she took out box after
+box of jewelry, opening them to glance in and see that the jewels were
+there. Yes, they were there: a pearl necklace; bracelets which had been
+the wonder of her set, and which her pretended friend and admirer had
+once said were worth as much as her home. She put them all into a bag,
+together with several large envelopes containing papers.
+
+Then she went to a dress-closet, and began to search through it,
+choosing, finally, a simple, dark street dress, by no means one of the
+newest. A gorgeous robe, which had been laid out for her to wear, she
+picked up and flung on the floor with sudden loathing. It was the gown
+she had intended to wear that night.
+
+A tap at the door, and the maid's mild voice announced the carriage; and
+a few minutes later Mrs. Wentworth descended the stairs.
+
+"Tell Mademoiselle Clarisse that Mr. Wentworth will be here this evening
+to see the children."
+
+"Yes, madam." The maid's quiet voice was too well trained to express the
+slightest surprise, but as soon as the outer door had closed on her
+mistress, and she had heard the carriage drive away, she rushed down to
+the lower storey to convey the astounding intelligence, and to gossip
+over it for half an hour before she deemed it necessary to give the
+message to the governess who had succeeded Lois when the latter
+went home.
+
+It was just eight o'clock that evening when the carriage drove up to the
+door of Norman Wentworth's bank, and a lady enveloped in a long wrap,
+her dark veil pulled down over her face, sprang out and ran up the
+steps. The crowd had long ago dispersed, though now and then a few timid
+depositors still made their way into the bank, to be on the safe side.
+
+The intervention of the banks and the loans they had made that afternoon
+had stayed the run and saved the bank from closing; but Norman Wentworth
+knew that if he was not ruined, his bank had received a shock from which
+it would not recover in a long time, and his fortune was crippled, he
+feared, almost beyond repair. The tired clerks looked up as the lady
+entered the bank, and, with glances at the clock, muttered a few words
+to each other about her right to draw money after the closing-hour had
+passed. When, however, she walked past their windows and went straight
+to Mr. Wentworth's door, their interest increased.
+
+Norman, with his books before him, was sitting back in his chair, his
+head leaning back and resting in his clasped hands, deep in thought upon
+the gloom of the present and the perplexities of the future, when there
+was a tap at the door.
+
+With some impatience he called to the person to enter.
+
+The door opened, and Norman could scarcely believe his senses. For a
+second he did not even sit forward. He did not stir; he simply remained
+sitting back in his chair, his face turned to the door, his eyes resting
+on the figure before him in vague amazement. The next second, with a
+half-cry, his wife was on her knees beside him, her arms about him, her
+form shaken with sobs. He sat forward slowly, and his arm rested on her
+shoulders.
+
+"There! don't cry," he said slowly; "it might be worse."
+
+But all she said was:
+
+"Oh, Norman! Norman!"
+
+He tried to raise her, with grave words to calm her; but she resisted,
+and clung to him closer.
+
+"It is not so bad; it might be worse," he repeated.
+
+She rose suddenly to her feet and flung back her veil.
+
+"Can you forgive me? I have come to beg your forgiveness on my knees. I
+have been mad--mad. I was deceived. No! I will not say that--I was
+crazy--a fool! But I loved you always, you only. You will forgive me?
+Say you will."
+
+"There, there! Of course I will--I do. I have been to blame quite as
+much--more than you. I was a fool."
+
+"Oh, no, no! You shall not say that; but you will believe that I loved
+you--you only--always! You will believe this? I was mad."
+
+He raised her up gently, and with earnest words reassured her, blaming
+himself for his harshness and folly.
+
+She suddenly opened her bag and emptied the contents out on his desk.
+
+"There! I have brought you these."
+
+Her husband gazed in silent astonishment.
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"They are for you," she said--"for us. To pay _our_ debts. To help you."
+She pulled off her glove and began to take off her diamond rings.
+
+"They will not go a great way," said Norman, with a smile of indulgence.
+
+"Well, as far as they will go they shall go. Do you think I will keep
+anything I have when you are in trouble--when your good name is at
+stake? The house--everything shall go. It is all my fault. I have been a
+wicked, silly fool; but I did not know--I ought to have known; but I did
+not. I do not see how I could have been so blind and selfish."
+
+"Oh, don't blame yourself. I have not blamed you," said Norman,
+soothingly. "Of course, you did not know. How could you? Women are not
+expected to know about those things."
+
+"Yes, they are," insisted Mrs. Wentworth. "If I had not been such a fool
+I might have seen. It is all plain to me now. Your harassment--my
+folly--it came to me like a stroke of lightning."
+
+Norman's eyes were on her with a strange inquiring look in them.
+
+"How did you hear?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Keith--he came to me and told me."
+
+"I wish he had not done it. I mean, I did not want you troubled. You
+were not to blame. You were deceived."
+
+"Oh, don't say that! I shall never cease to thank him. He tore the veil
+away, and I saw what a heartless, vain, silly fool I have been." Norman
+put his hand on her soothingly. "But I have never forgotten that I was
+your wife, nor ceased to love you," she went on vehemently.
+
+"I believe it."
+
+"I have come to confess everything to you--all my folly--all my
+extravagance--my insane folly. But what I said just now is true: I have
+never forgotten that I was your wife."
+
+Norman, with his arm supporting her, reassured her with comforting
+words, and, sustained by his confidence, she told him of her folly in
+trusting Ferdy Wickersham: of her giving him her money--of everything.
+
+"Can you forgive me?" she asked after her shamefaced recital.
+
+"I will never think of that again," said Norman, "and if I do, it will
+be with gratitude that they have played their part in doing away with
+the one great sorrow of my life and bringing back the happiness of my
+youth, the one great blessing that life holds for me."
+
+"I have come to take you home," she said; "to ask you to come back, if
+you will but forgive me." She spoke humbly.
+
+Norman's face gave answer even before he could master himself to speak.
+He stretched out his hand, and drew her to him. "I am at home now.
+Wherever you are is my home."
+
+When Norman came out of his private office, there was such a change in
+him that the clerks who had remained at the bank thought that he must
+have received some great aid from the lady who had been closeted with
+him so long. He had a few brief words with the cashier, explaining that
+he would be back at the bank before eight o'clock in the morning, and
+saying good night, hurried to the door after Mrs. Wentworth. Handing her
+into the carriage, he ordered the coachman to drive home, and, springing
+in after her, he closed the door behind him, and they drove off.
+
+Keith, meantime, had not been idle. After leaving Mrs. Wentworth, he
+drove straight to a detective agency. Fortunately the chief was in, and
+Keith was ushered into his private office immediately. He was a
+quiet-looking, stout man, with a gray moustache and keen dark eyes. He
+might have been a moderately successful merchant or official, but for
+the calmness of his manner and the low tones of his voice. Keith came
+immediately to the point.
+
+"I have a piece of important work on hand this evening," he said, "of a
+private and delicate nature." The detective's look was acquiescent.
+"Could I get Dennison?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+Keith stated his case. At the mention of Wickersham's name a slight
+change--the very slightest--flickered across the detective's calm face.
+Keith could not tell whether it was mere surprise or whether it was
+gratification.
+
+"Now you see precisely what I wish," he said, as he finished stating the
+case and unfolding his plan. "It may not be necessary for him even to
+appear, but I wish him to be on hand in case I should need his service.
+If Wickersham does not accede to my demand, I shall arrest him for the
+fraud I have mentioned. If he does accede, I wish Dennison to accompany
+him to the boat of the South American Line that sails to-morrow morning,
+and not leave him until the pilot comes off. I do not apprehend that he
+will refuse when he knows the hand that I hold."
+
+"No, he will not. He knows what would happen if proceedings were
+started," said the detective. "Excuse me a moment." He walked out of the
+office, closing the door behind him, and a few minutes later returned
+with David Dennison.
+
+"Mr. Keith, this is Mr. John Dimm. I have explained to him the nature of
+the service you require of him." He looked at Mr. Dimm, who simply
+nodded his acquiescence. "You will take your orders from Mr. Keith,
+should anything arise to change his plans, and act accordingly."
+
+"I know him," said Keith, amused at the cool professional air with which
+his old friend greeted him in the presence of his principal.
+
+Dave simply blinked; but his eyes had a fire in them.
+
+It was arranged that Dennison should precede Keith to the place he had
+mentioned and order a supper there, while Keith should get the ticket at
+the steamship office and then follow him. So when Keith had completed
+his arrangements, he found Dennison at supper at a table near the
+ladies' entrance, a view of which he commanded in a mirror just before
+him. Mr. Dimm's manner had entirely changed. He was a man of the world
+and a host as he handed Keith to his seat.
+
+"A supper for two has been ordered in private dining-room 21, for 9:45,"
+he said in an undertone as the waiter moved off. "They do not know
+whether it is for a gentleman and a lady, or two gentlemen; but I
+suppose it is for a lady, as he has been here a number of times with
+ladies. If you are sure that the lady will not come, you might wait for
+him there. I will remain here until he comes, and follow him up, in case
+you need me."
+
+Keith feared that the waiter might mention his presence.
+
+"Oh, no; he knows us," said Dave, with a faint smile at the bare
+suggestion.
+
+Mr. Dimm called the head-waiter and spoke to him in an undertone. The
+waiter himself showed Keith up to the room, where he found a table
+daintily set with two covers.
+
+The champagne-cooler, filled with ice, was already on the floor beside
+the table. Keith looked at it grimly. The curtains of the window were
+down, and Keith walked over to see on what street the window looked. It
+was a deep embrasure. The shade was drawn down, and he raised it, to
+find that the window faced on a dead-wall. At the moment the door opened
+and he heard Wickersham's voice.
+
+"No one has come yet?"
+
+"No, sir, not as I knows of," stammered the waiter. "I have just come
+on."
+
+"Where is Jacques, the man who usually waits on me?" demanded
+Wickersham, half angrily.
+
+"Jacques est souffrant. Il est très malade."
+
+Wickersham grunted. "Well, take this," he said, "and remember that if
+you serve me properly there will be a good deal more to follow."
+
+The waiter thanked him profusely.
+
+"Now, get down and be on the lookout, and when a lady comes and asks for
+21, show her up immediately. If she asks who is here, tell her two
+gentlemen and a lady. You understand?"
+
+The waiter bowed his assent and retired. Wickersham came in and closed
+the door behind him.
+
+He had just thrown his coat on a chair, laid his hat on the mantelpiece,
+and was twirling his moustache at the mirror above it, when he caught
+sight in the mirror of Keith. Keith had stepped out behind him from the
+recess, and was standing by the table, quietly looking at him. He gave
+an exclamation and turned quickly.
+
+"Hah! What is this? You here! What are you doing here? There is some
+mistake." He glanced at the door.
+
+"No, there is no mistake," said Keith, advancing; "I am waiting for
+you."
+
+"For me! Waiting for me?" he demanded, mystified.
+
+"Yes. Did you not tell the waiter just now a gentleman was here? I
+confess you do not seem very pleased to see me."
+
+"You have read my looks correctly," said Wickersham, who was beginning
+to recover himself, and with it his scornful manner. "You are the last
+person on earth I wish to see--ever. I do not know that I should weep if
+I never had that pleasure again."
+
+Keith bowed.
+
+"I think it probable. You may, hereafter, have even less cause for joy
+at meeting me."
+
+"Impossible," said Wickersham.
+
+Keith put his hand on a chair, and prepared to sit down, motioning
+Wickersham to take the other seat.
+
+"The lady you are waiting for will not be here this evening," he said,
+"and it may be that our interview will be protracted."
+
+Wickersham passed by the last words.
+
+"What lady? Who says I am waiting for a lady?"
+
+"You said so at the door just now. Besides, I say so."
+
+"Oh! You were listening, were you?" he sneered.
+
+"Yes; I heard it."
+
+"How do you know she will not be here? What do you know about it?"
+
+"I know that she will no more be here than the Countess Torelli will,"
+said Keith. He was looking Wickersham full in the face and saw that the
+shot went home.
+
+"What do you want?" demanded Wickersham. "Why are you here? Are you
+after money or a row?"
+
+"I want you--I want you, first, to secure all of Mrs. Wentworth's money
+that you have had, or as much as you can."
+
+Wickersham was so taken aback that his dark face turned almost white,
+but he recovered himself quickly.
+
+"You are a madman, or some one has been deceiving you. You are the
+victim of a delusion."
+
+Keith, with his eyes fastened on him, shook his head.
+
+"Oh, no; I am not."
+
+A look of perplexed innocence came over Wickersham's face.
+
+"Yes, you are," he said, in an almost friendly tone. "You are the victim
+of some hallucination. I give you my word, I do not know even what you
+are talking about. I should say you were engaged in blackmail--" The
+expression in his eyes changed like a flash, but something in Keith's
+eyes, as they met his, caused him to add, "if I did not know that you
+were a man of character. I, too, am a man of character, Mr. Keith. I
+want you to know it." Keith's eyes remained calm and cold as steel.
+Wickersham faltered. "I am a man of means--of large means. I am worth--.
+My balance in bank this moment is--is more than you will ever be worth.
+Now I want to ask you why, in the name of Heaven, should I want anything
+to do with Mrs. Wentworth's money?"
+
+"If you have such a balance in bank," said Keith, "it will simplify my
+mission, for you will doubtless be glad to return Mr. Wentworth's money
+that you have had from Mrs. Wentworth. I happen to know that his money
+will come in very conveniently for Norman just now."
+
+"Oh, you come from Wentworth, do you?" demanded Wickersham.
+
+"No; from Mrs. Wentworth," returned Keith.
+
+"Did she send you?" Wickersham shot at Keith a level glance from under
+his half-closed lids.
+
+"I offered to come. She knows I am here."
+
+"What proof have I of that?"
+
+"My statement."
+
+"And suppose I do not please to accept your statement?"
+
+Keith leant a little toward him over the table.
+
+"You will accept it."
+
+"He must hold a strong hand," thought Wickersham. He shifted his ground
+suddenly. "What, in the name of Heaven, are you driving at, Keith? What
+are you after? Come to the point."
+
+"I will," said Keith, rising. "Let us drop our masks; they are not
+becoming to you, and I am not accustomed to them. I have come for
+several things: one of them is Mrs. Wentworth's money, which you got
+from her under false pretences." He spoke slowly, and his eyes were
+looking in the other's eyes.
+
+Wickersham sprang to his feet.
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" he demanded, with an oath. "I have already told
+you--! I will let no man speak to me in that way."
+
+Keith did not stir. Wickersham paused to get his breath.
+
+"You would not dare to speak so if a lady's name were not involved, and
+you did not know that I cannot act as I would, for fear of
+compromising her."
+
+An expression of contempt swept across Keith's face.
+
+"Sit down," he said. "I will relieve your mind. Mrs. Wentworth is quite
+ready to meet any disclosures that may come. I have her power of
+attorney. She has gone to her husband and told him everything."
+
+Wickersham's face whitened, and he could not repress the look of mingled
+astonishment and fear that stole into his eyes.
+
+"Now, having given you that information," continued Keith, "I say that
+you stole Mrs. Wentworth's money, and I have come to recover it, if
+possible."
+
+Wickersham rose to his feet. With a furious oath he sprang for his
+overcoat, and, snatching it up, began to feel for the pocket.
+
+"I'll blow your brains out."
+
+"No, you will not," said Keith, "and I advise you to make less noise. An
+officer is outside, and I have but to whistle to place you where nothing
+will help you. A warrant is out for your arrest, and I have the proof to
+convict you."
+
+Wickersham, with his coat still held in one hand, and the other in the
+pocket, shot a glance at Keith. He was daunted by his coolness.
+
+"You must think you hold a strong hand," he said. "But I have known them
+to fail."
+
+Keith bowed.
+
+"No doubt. This one will not fail. I have taken pains that it shall not,
+and I have other cards which I have not shown you. Sit down and listen
+to me, and you shall judge for yourself."
+
+With a muttered oath, Wickersham walked back to his seat; but before he
+did so, he slipped quietly into his pocket a pistol which he took from
+his overcoat.
+
+Quickly as the act was done, Keith saw it.
+
+"Don't you think you had better put your pistol back?" he said quietly.
+"An officer is waiting just outside that door, a man that can neither be
+bullied nor bought. Perhaps, you will agree with me when I tell you
+that, though called Dimm, his real name is David Dennison. He has orders
+at the least disturbance to place you under arrest. Judge for yourself
+what chance you will have."
+
+"What do you wish me to do?" asked Wickersham, sullenly.
+
+"I wish you, first, to execute some papers which will secure to Norman
+Wentworth, as far as can possibly be done, the amount of money that you
+have gotten from Mrs. Wentworth under the pretence of investing it for
+her in mines. Mrs. Wentworth's name will not be mentioned in this
+instrument. The money was her husband's, and you knew it, and you knew
+it was impairing his estate to furnish it. Secondly, I require that you
+shall leave the country to-morrow morning. I have arranged for passage
+for you, on a steamer sailing before sunrise."
+
+"Thank you," sneered Wickersham. "Really, you are very kind."
+
+"Thirdly, you will sign a paper which contains only a few of the facts,
+but enough, perhaps, to prevent your returning to this country for some
+years to come."
+
+Wickersham leant across the table and burst out laughing.
+
+"And you really think I will do that? How old do you think I am? Why did
+you not bring me a milk-bottle and a rattle? You do my intellect a great
+deal of honor."
+
+For answer Keith tapped twice on a glass with the back of a knife. The
+next second the door opened, and Dave Dennison entered, impassive, but
+calmly observant, and with a face set like rock.
+
+At sight of him Wickersham's face whitened.
+
+"One moment, Dave," said Keith; "wait outside a moment more."
+
+Dennison bowed and closed the door. The latch clicked, but the knob did
+not settle back.
+
+"I will give you one minute in which to decide," said Keith. He drew
+from his pocket and threw on the table two papers. "There are the
+papers." He took out his watch and waited.
+
+Wickersham picked up the papers mechanically and glanced over them. His
+face settled. Gambler that he was with the fortunes of men and the
+reputations of women, he knew that he had lost. He tried one more
+card--it was a poor one.
+
+"Why are you so hard on me?" he asked, with something like a whine--a
+faint whine--in his voice. "You, who I used to think--whom I have known
+from boyhood, you have always been so hard on me! What did I ever do to
+you that you should have hounded me so?"
+
+Keith's face showed that the charge had reached him, but it failed of
+the effect that Wickersham had hoped for. His lip curled slightly.
+
+"I am not hard on you; I am easy on you--but not for your sake," he
+added vehemently. "You have betrayed every trust reposed in you. You
+have deceived men and betrayed women. No vow has been sacred enough to
+restrain you; no tie strong enough to hold you. Affection, friendship,
+faith, have all been trampled under your feet. You have deliberately
+attempted to destroy the happiness of one of the best friends you have
+ever had; have betrayed his trust and tried to ruin his life. If I
+served you right I would place you beyond the power to injure any one,
+forever. The reason I do not is not on your account, but because I
+played with you when we were boys, and because I do not know how far my
+personal feeling might influence me in carrying out what I still
+recognize as mere justice." He closed his watch. "Your time is up. Do
+you agree?"
+
+"I will sign the papers," said Wickersham, sullenly.
+
+Keith drew out a pen and handed it to him. Wickersham signed the papers
+slowly and deliberately.
+
+"When did you take to writing backhand?" asked Keith.
+
+"I have done it for several years," declared Wickersham. "I had writer's
+cramp once."
+
+The expression on Keith's face was very like a sneer, but he tried to
+suppress it.
+
+"It will do," he said, as he folded the papers and took another envelope
+from his pocket. "This is your ticket for the steamer for Buenos Ayres,
+which sails to-morrow morning at high tide. Dennison will go with you to
+a notary to acknowledge these papers, and then will show you aboard of
+her and will see that you remain aboard until the pilot leaves her.
+To-morrow a warrant will be put in the hands of an officer and an
+application will be made for a receiver for your property."
+
+Wickersham leant back in his chair, with hate speaking from every line
+of his face.
+
+"You will administer on my effects? I suppose you are also going to be
+administrator, _de bonis non_, of the lady in whose behalf you have
+exhibited such sudden interest?"
+
+Keith's face paled and his nostrils dilated for a moment. He leant
+slightly forward and spoke slowly, his burning eyes fastened on
+Wickersham's face.
+
+"Your statement would be equally infamous whether it were true or false.
+You know that it is a lie, and you know that I know it is a lie. I will
+let that suffice. I have nothing further to say to you." He tapped on
+the edge of the glass again, and Dennison walked in. "Dennison," he
+said, "Mr. Wickersham has agreed to my plans. He will go aboard the
+Buenos Ayres boat to-night. You will go with him to the office I spoke
+of, where he will acknowledge these papers; then you will accompany him
+to his home and get whatever clothes he may require, and you will not
+lose sight of him until you come off with the pilot."
+
+Dennison bowed without a word; but his eyes snapped.
+
+"If he makes any attempt to evade, or gives you any cause to think he is
+trying to evade, his agreement, you have your instructions."
+
+Dennison bowed again, silently.
+
+"I now leave you." Keith rose and inclined his head slightly toward
+Wickersham.
+
+As he turned, Wickersham shot at him a Parthian arrow:
+
+"I hope you understand, Mr. Keith, that the obligations I have signed
+are not the only obligations I recognize. I owe you a personal debt,
+and I mean to live to pay it. I shall pay it, somehow."
+
+Keith turned and looked at him steadily.
+
+"I understand perfectly. It is the only kind of debt, as far as I know,
+that you recognize. Your statement has added nothing to what I knew. It
+matters little what you do to me. I have, at least, saved two friends
+from you."
+
+He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him.
+
+As Wickersham pulled on his gloves, he glanced at Dave Dennison. But
+what he saw in his face deterred him from speaking. His eyes were like
+coals of fire.
+
+"I am waiting," he said. "Hurry."
+
+Wickersham walked out in silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following afternoon, when Dave Dennison reported that he had left
+his charge on board the outgoing steamer, bound for a far South American
+port, Keith felt as if the atmosphere had in some sort cleared.
+
+A few days later Phrony's worn spirit found rest. Keith, as he had
+already arranged, telegraphed Dr. Balsam of her death, and the Doctor
+went over and told Squire Rawson, at the same time, that she had been
+found and lost.
+
+The next day Keith and Dave Dennison took back to the South all that
+remained of the poor creature who had left there a few years before in
+such high hopes.
+
+One lady, closely veiled, attended the little service that old Dr.
+Templeton conducted in the chapel of the hospital where Phrony had
+passed away, before the body was taken South. Alice Lancaster had been
+faithful to the end in looking after her.
+
+Phrony was buried in the Rawson lot in the little burying-ground at
+Ridgely, not far from the spot where lay the body of General Huntington.
+As Keith passed this grave he saw that flowers had been laid on it
+recently, but they had withered.
+
+All the Ridge-neighborhood gathered to do honor to Phrony and to
+testify their sympathy for her grandfather. It was an exhibition of
+feeling such as Keith had not seen since he left the country. The old
+man appeared stronger than he had seemed for some time. He took charge
+and gave directions in a clear and steady voice.
+
+When the services were over and the last word had been said, he stepped
+forward and raised his hand.
+
+"I've got her back," he said. "I've got her back where nobody can take
+her from me again. I was mighty harsh on her; but I've done forgive her
+long ago--and I hope she knows it now. I heard once that the man that
+took her away said he didn't marry her. But--". He paused for a moment,
+then went on: "He was a liar. I've got the proof.--But I want you all to
+witness that if I ever meet him, in this world or the next, the Lord do
+so to me, and more also! if I don't kill him!" He paused again, and his
+breathing was the only sound that was heard in the deathly stillness
+that had fallen on the listening crowd.
+
+"--And if any man interferes and balks me in my right," he continued
+slowly, "I'll have his blood. Good-by. I thank you for her." He turned
+back to the grave and began to smooth the sides.
+
+Keith's eyes fell on Dave Dennison, where he stood on the outer edge of
+the crowd. His face was sphinx-like; but his bosom heaved twice, and
+Keith knew that two men waited to meet Wickersham.
+
+As the crowd melted away, whispering among themselves, Keith crossed
+over and laid a rose on General Huntington's grave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE CONSULTATION
+
+Keith had been making up his mind for some time to go to Brookford. New
+York had changed utterly for him since Lois left. The whole world seemed
+to have changed. The day after he reached New York, Keith received a
+letter from Miss Brooke. She wrote that her niece was ill and had asked
+her to write and request him to see Mrs. Lancaster, who would explain
+something to him. She did not say what it was. She added that she wished
+she had never heard of New York. It was a cry of anguish.
+
+Keith's heart sank like lead. For the first time in his life he had a
+presentiment. Lois Huntington would die, and he would never see her
+again. Despair took hold of him. Keith could stand it no longer. He went
+to Brookford.
+
+The Lawns was one of those old-fashioned country places, a few miles
+outside of the town, such as our people of means used to have a few
+generations ago, before they had lost the landholding instinct of their
+English ancestors and gained the herding proclivity of modern life. The
+extensive yard and grounds were filled with shrubbery--lilacs,
+rose-bushes, and evergreens--and shaded by fine old trees, among which
+the birds were singing as Keith drove up the curving road, and over all
+was an air of quietude and peace which filled his heart with tenderness.
+
+"This is the bower she came from," he thought to himself, gazing around.
+"Here is the country garden where the rose grew."
+
+Miss Brooke was unfeignedly surprised to see Keith.
+
+She greeted him most civilly. Lois had long since explained everything
+to her, and she made Keith a more than ample apology for her letter.
+"But you must admit," she said, "that your actions were very
+suspicious.--When a New York man is handing dancing-women to their
+carriages!" A gesture and nod completed the sentence.
+
+"But I am not a New York man," said Keith.
+
+"Oh, you are getting to be a very fair counterfeit," said the old lady,
+half grimly.
+
+Lois was very ill. She had been under a great strain in New York, and
+had finally broken down.
+
+Among other items of interest that Keith gleaned was that Dr. Locaman,
+the resident physician at Brookford, was a suitor of Lois. Keith asked
+leave to send for a friend who was a man of large experience and a
+capital doctor.
+
+"Well, I should be glad to have him sent for. These men here are
+dividing her up into separate pieces, and meantime she is going down the
+hill every day. Send for any one who will treat her as a whole human
+being and get her well."
+
+So Keith telegraphed that day for Dr. Balsam, saying that he wanted him
+badly, and would be under lasting obligations if he would come to
+Brookford at once.
+
+Brookford! The name called up many associations to the old physician. It
+was from Brookford that that young girl with her brown eyes and dark
+hair had walked into his life so long ago. It was from Brookford that
+the decree had come that had doomed him to a life of loneliness and
+exile. A desire seized him to see the place. Abby Brooke had been living
+a few years before. She might be living now.
+
+As the Doctor descended from the cars, he was met by Keith, who told him
+that the patient was the daughter of General Huntington--the little girl
+he had known so long ago.
+
+"I thought, perhaps, it was your widow," said the Doctor.
+
+A little dash of color stole into Keith's grave face, then flickered
+out.
+
+"No." He changed the subject, and went on to say that the other
+physicians had arranged to meet him at the house. Then he gave him a
+little history of the case.
+
+"You are very much interested in her?"
+
+"I have known her a long time, you see. Yes. Her aunt is a friend of
+mine."
+
+"He is in love with her," said the old man to himself. "She has cut the
+widow out."
+
+As they entered the hall, Miss Abby came out of a room. She looked worn
+and ill.
+
+"Ah!" said Keith. "Here she is." He turned to present the Doctor, but
+stopped with his lips half opened. The two stood fronting each, other,
+their amazed eyes on each other's faces, as it were across the space of
+a whole generation.
+
+"Theophilus!"
+
+"Abby!"
+
+This was all. The next moment they were shaking hands as if they had
+parted the week before instead of thirty-odd years ago. "I told you I
+would come if you ever needed me," said the Doctor. "I have come."
+
+"And I never needed you more, and I have needed you often. It was good
+in you to come--for my little girl." Her voice suddenly broke, and she
+turned away, her handkerchief at her eyes.
+
+The Doctor's expression settled into one of deep concern. "There--there.
+Don't distress yourself. We must reserve our powers. We may need them.
+Now, if you will show me to my room for a moment, I would like to get
+myself ready before going in to see your little girl."
+
+Just as the Doctor reappeared, the other doctors came out of the
+sick-room, the local physician, a simple young man, following the city
+specialist with mingled pride and awe. The latter was a silent,
+self-reliant man with a keen eye, thin lips, and a dry, business manner.
+They were presented to the Doctor as Dr. Memberly and Dr. Locaman, and
+looked him over. There was a certain change of manner in each of them:
+the younger man, after a glance, increased perceptibly his show of
+respect toward the city man; the latter treated the Doctor with
+civility, but talked in an ex-cathedra way. He understood the case and
+had no question as to its treatment. As for Dr. Balsam, his manner was
+the same to both, and had not changed a particle. He said not a word
+except to ask questions as to symptoms and the treatment that had been
+followed. The Doctor's face changed during the recital, and when it was
+ended his expression was one of deep thoughtfulness.
+
+The consultation ended, they all went into the sick-room, Dr. Memberly,
+the specialist, first, the young doctor next, and Dr. Balsam last. Dr.
+Memberly addressed the nurse, and Dr. Locaman followed him like his
+shadow, enforcing his words and copying insensibly his manner. Dr.
+Balsam walked over to the bedside, and leaning over, took the patient's
+thin, wan hand.
+
+"My dear, I am Dr. Balsam. Do you remember me?"
+
+She glanced at him, at first languidly, then with more interest, and
+then, as recollection returned to her, with a faint smile.
+
+"Now we must get well."
+
+Again she smiled faintly.
+
+The Doctor drew up a chair, and, without speaking further, began to
+stroke her hand, his eyes resting on her face.
+
+One who had seen the old physician before he entered that house could
+scarcely have known him as the same man who sat by the bed holding the
+hand of the wan figure lying so placid before him. At a distance he
+appeared a plain countryman; on nearer view his eyes and mouth and set
+chin gave him a look of unexpected determination. When he entered a
+sick-room he was like a king coming to his own. He took command and
+fought disease as an arch-enemy. So now.
+
+Dr. Memberly came to the bedside and began to talk in a low,
+professional tone. Lois shut her eyes, but her fingers closed slightly
+on Dr. Balsam's hand.
+
+"The medicine appears to have quieted her somewhat. I have directed the
+nurse to continue it," observed Dr. Memberly.
+
+"Quite so. By all means continue it," assented Dr. Locaman. "She is
+decidedly quieter."
+
+Dr. Balsam's head inclined just enough to show that he heard him, and he
+went on stroking her hand.
+
+"Is there anything you would suggest further than has already been
+done?" inquired the city physician of Dr. Balsam.
+
+"No. I think not."
+
+"I must catch the 4:30 train," said the former to the younger man.
+"Doctor, will you drive me down to the station?"
+
+"Yes, certainly. With pleasure."
+
+"Doctor, you say you are going away to-night?" This from the city
+physician to Dr. Balsam.
+
+"No, sir; I shall stay for a day or two." The fingers of the sleeper
+quite closed on his hand. "I have several old friends here. In fact,
+this little girl is one of them, and I want to get her up."
+
+The look of the other changed, and he cleared his throat with a dry,
+metallic cough.
+
+"You may rest satisfied that everything has been done for the patient
+that science can do," he said stiffly.
+
+"I think so. We won't rest till we get the little girl up," said the
+older doctor. "Now we will take off our coats and work."
+
+Once more the fingers of the sleeper almost clutched his.
+
+When the door closed, Lois turned her head and opened her eyes, and when
+the wheels were heard driving away she looked at the Doctor with a wan
+little smile, which he answered with a twinkle.
+
+"When did you come?" she asked faintly. It was the first sign of
+interest she had shown in anything for days.
+
+"A young friend of mine, Gordon Keith, told me you were sick, and asked
+me to come, and I have just arrived. He brought me up." He watched the
+change in her face.
+
+"I am so much obliged to you. Where is he now?"
+
+"He is here. Now we must get well," he said encouragingly. "And to do
+that we must get a little sleep."
+
+"Very well. You are going to stay with me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Thank you"; and she closed her eyes tranquilly and, after a little,
+fell into a doze.
+
+When the Doctor came out of the sick-room he had done what the other
+physicians had not done and could not do. He had fathomed the case, and,
+understanding the cause, he was able to prescribe the cure.
+
+"With the help of God we will get your little girl well," he said to
+Miss Abby.
+
+"I begin to hope, and I had begun to despair," she said. "It was good of
+you to come."
+
+"I am glad I came, and I will come whenever you want me, Abby," replied
+the old Doctor, simply.
+
+From this time, as he promised, so he performed. He took off his coat,
+and using the means which the city specialist had suggested, he studied
+his patient's case and applied all his powers to the struggle.
+
+The great city doctor recorded the case among his cures; but in his
+treatment he did not reckon the sleepless hours that that country doctor
+had sat by the patient's bedside, the unremitting struggle he had made,
+holding Death at bay, inspiring hope, and holding desperately every
+inch gained.
+
+When the Doctor saw Keith he held out his hand to him. "I am glad you
+sent for me."
+
+"How is she, Doctor? Will she get well?"
+
+"I trust so. She has been under some strain. It is almost as if she had
+had a shock."
+
+Keith's mind sprang back to that evening in the Park, and he cursed
+Wickersham in his heart.
+
+"Possibly she has had some strain on her emotions?"
+
+Keith did not know.
+
+"I understand that there is a young man here who has been in love with
+her for some time, and her aunt thinks she returned the sentiment."
+
+Keith did not know. But the Doctor's words were like a dagger in his
+heart.
+
+Keith went back to work; but he seemed to himself to live in darkness.
+As soon as a gleam of light appeared, it was suddenly quenched. Love was
+not for him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE MISTRESS OF THE LAWNS
+
+Strange to say, the episode in which Keith had figured as the reliever
+of Norman Wentworth's embarrassment had a very different effect upon
+those among whom he had moved, from what he had expected. Keith's part
+in the transaction was well known.
+
+His part, too, in the Wickersham matter was understood by his
+acquaintances. Wickersham had as good as absconded, some said; and there
+were many to tell how long they had prophesied this very thing, and how
+well they had known his villany. Mrs. Nailor was particularly
+vindictive. She had recently put some money in his mining scheme, and
+she could have hanged him. She did the next thing: she damned him. She
+even extended her rage to old Mrs. Wickersham, who, poor lady, had lost
+her home and everything she had in the world through Ferdy.
+
+The Norman-Wentworths, who had moved out of the splendid residence that
+Mrs. Norman's extravagance had formerly demanded, into the old house on
+Washington Square, which was still occupied by old Mrs. Wentworth, were,
+if anything, drawn closer than ever to their real friends; but they were
+distinctly deposed from the position which Mrs. Wentworth had formerly
+occupied in the gay set, who to her had hitherto been New York. They
+were far happier than they had ever been. A new light had come into
+Norman's face, and a softness began to dawn in hers which Keith had
+never seen there before. Around them, too, began to gather friends whom
+Keith had never known of, who had the charm that breeding and kindness
+give, and opened his eyes to a life there of which he had hitherto
+hardly dreamed. Keith, however, to his surprise, when he was in New
+York, found himself more sought after by his former acquaintances than
+ever before. The cause was a simple one. He was believed to be very
+rich. He must have made a large fortune. The mystery in which it was
+involved but added to its magnitude. No man but one of immense wealth
+could have done what Keith did the day he stopped the run on Wentworth &
+Son. Any other supposition was incredible. Moreover, it was now plain
+that in a little while he would marry Mrs. Lancaster, and then he would
+be one of the wealthiest men in New York. He was undoubtedly a coming
+man. Men who, a short time ago, would not have wasted a moment's thought
+on him, now greeted him with cordiality and spoke of him with respect;
+women who, a year or two before, would not have seen him in a ball-room,
+now smiled to him on the street, invited him among their "best
+companies," and treated him with distinguished favor. Mrs. Nailor
+actually pursued him. Even Mr. Kestrel, pale, thin-lipped, and frosty as
+ever in appearance, thawed into something like cordiality when he met
+him, and held out an icy hand as with a wintry smile he congratulated
+him on his success.
+
+"Well, we Yankees used to think we had the monopoly of business ability,
+but we shall have to admit that some of you young fellows at the South
+know your business. You have done what cost the Wickershams some
+millions. If you want any help at any time, come in and talk to me. We
+had a little difference once; but I don't let a little thing like that
+stand in the way with a friend."
+
+Keith felt his jaws lock as he thought of the same man on the other side
+of a long table sneering at him.
+
+"Thank you," said he. "My success has been greatly exaggerated. You'd
+better not count too much on it."
+
+Keith knew that he was considered rich, and it disturbed him. For the
+first time in his life he felt that he was sailing under false colors.
+
+Often the fair face, handsome figure, and cordial, friendly air of Alice
+Lancaster came to him; not so often, it is true, as another, a younger
+and gentler face, but still often enough. He admired her greatly. He
+trusted her. Why should he not try his fortune there, and be happy?
+Alice Lancaster was good enough for him. Yes, that was the trouble. She
+was far too good for him if he addressed her without loving her utterly.
+Other reasons, too, suggested themselves. He began to find himself
+fitting more and more into the city life. He had the chance possibly to
+become rich, richer than ever, and with it to secure a charming
+companion. Why should he not avail himself of it? Amid the glitter and
+gayety of his surroundings in the city, this temptation grew stronger
+and stronger. Miss Abby's sharp speech recurred to him. He was becoming
+"a fair counterfeit" of the men he had once despised. Then came a new
+form of temptation. What power this wealth would give him! How much good
+he could accomplish with it!
+
+When the temptation grew too overpowering he left his office and went
+down into the country. It always did him good to go there. To be there
+was like a plunge in a cool, limpid pool. He had been so long in the
+turmoil and strife of the struggle for success--for wealth; had been so
+wholly surrounded by those who strove as he strove, tearing and
+trampling and rending those who were in their way, that he had almost
+lost sight of the life that lay outside of the dust and din of that
+arena. He had almost forgotten that life held other rewards than riches.
+He had forgotten the calm and tranquil region that stretched beyond the
+moil and anguish of the strife for gain.
+
+Here his father walked with him again, calm, serene, and elevated, his
+thoughts high above all commercial matters, ranging the fields of lofty
+speculation with statesmen, philosophers, and poets, holding up to his
+gaze again lofty ideals; practising, without a thought of reward, the
+very gospel of universal gentleness and kindness.
+
+There his mother, too, moved in spirit once more beside him with her
+angelic smile, breathing the purity of heaven. How far away it seemed
+from that world in which he had been living!--as far as they were from
+the worldlings who made it.
+
+Curiously, when he was in New York he found himself under the allurement
+of Alice Lancaster. When he was in the country he found that he was in
+love with Lois Huntington.
+
+It was this that mystified him and worried him. He believed--that is, he
+almost believed--that Alice Lancaster would marry him. His friends
+thought that she would. Several of them had told him so. Many of them
+acted on this belief. And this had something to do with his retirement.
+As much as he liked Alice Lancaster, as clearly as he felt how but for
+one fact it would have suited that they should marry, one fact changed
+everything: he was not in love with her.
+
+He was in love with a young girl who had never given him a thought
+except as a sort of hereditary friend. Turning from one door at which
+the light of happiness had shone, he had found himself caught at another
+from which a radiance shone that dimmed all other lights. Yet it was
+fast shut. At length he determined to cut the knot. He would put his
+fate to the test.
+
+Two days after he formed this resolve he walked into the hotel at
+Brookford and registered. As he turned, he stood face to face with Mrs.
+Nailor. Mrs. Nailor of late had been all cordiality to him.
+
+"Why, you dear boy, where did you come from?" she asked him in pleased
+surprise. "I thought you were stretched at Mrs. Wentworth's feet in
+the--Where has she been this summer?"
+
+Keith's brow clouded. He remembered when Wickersham was her "dear boy."
+
+"It is a position I am not in the habit of occupying--at least, toward
+ladies who have husbands to occupy it. You are thinking of some one
+else," he added coldly, wishing devoutly that Mrs. Nailor were
+in Halifax.
+
+"Well, I am glad you have come here. You remember, our friendship began
+in the country? Yes? My husband had to go and get sick, and I got really
+frightened about him, and so we determined to come here, where we should
+be perfectly quiet. We got here last Saturday. There is not a man here."
+
+"Isn't there?" asked Keith, wishing there were not a woman either. "How
+long are you going to stay?" he asked absently.
+
+"Oh, perhaps a month. How long shall you be here?"
+
+"Not very long," said Keith.
+
+"I tell you who is here; that little governess of Mrs. Wentworth's she
+was so disagreeable to last winter. She has been very ill. I think it
+was the way she was treated in New York. She was in love with Ferdy
+Wickersham, you know? She lives here, in a lovely old place just outside
+of town, with her old aunt or cousin. I had no idea she had such a nice
+old home. We saw her yesterday. We met her on the street."
+
+"I remember her; I shall go and see her," said Keith, recalling Mrs.
+Nailor's speech at Mrs. Wickersham's dinner, and Lois's revenge.
+
+"I tell you what we will do. She invited us to call, and we will go
+together," said Mrs. Nailor.
+
+Keith paused a moment in reflection, and then said casually:
+
+"When are you going?"
+
+"Oh, this afternoon."
+
+"Very well; I will go."
+
+Mrs. Nailor drove Keith out to The Lawns that afternoon.
+
+In a little while Miss Huntington came in. Keith observed that she was
+dressed as she had been that evening at dinner, in white, but he did
+not dream that it was the result of thought. He did not know with what
+care every touch had been made to reproduce just what he had praised, or
+with what sparkling eyes she had surveyed the slim, dainty figure in the
+old cheval-glass. She greeted Mrs. Nailor civilly and Keith warmly.
+
+"I am very glad to see you. What in the world brought you here to this
+out-of-the-way place?" she said, turning to the latter and giving him
+her cool, soft hand, and looking up at him with unfeigned pleasure, a
+softer and deeper glow coming into her cheek as she gazed into his eyes.
+
+"A sudden fit of insanity," said Keith, taking in the sweet, girlish
+figure in his glance. "I wanted to see some roses that I knew bloomed in
+an old garden about here."
+
+"He, perhaps, thought that, as Brookford is growing so fashionable now,
+he might find a mutual friend of ours here?" Mrs. Nailor said.
+
+"As whom, for instance?" queried Keith, unwilling to commit himself.
+
+"You know, Alice Lancaster has been talking of coming here? Now, don't
+pretend that you don't know. Whom does every one say you are--all in
+pursuit of?"
+
+"I am sure I do not know," said Keith, calmly. "I suppose that you are
+referring to Mrs. Lancaster, but I happened to know that she was not
+here. No; I came to see Miss Huntington." His face wore an expression of
+amusement.
+
+Mrs. Nailor made some smiling reply. She did not see the expression in
+Keith's eyes as they, for a second, caught Lois's glance.
+
+Just then Miss Abigail came in. She had grown whiter since Keith had
+seen her last, and looked older. She greeted Mrs. Nailor graciously, and
+Keith cordially. Miss Lois, for some reason of her own, was plying Mrs.
+Nailor with questions, and Keith fell to talking with Miss Abigail,
+though his eyes were on Lois most of the time.
+
+The old lady was watching her too, and the girl, under the influence of
+the earnest gaze, glanced around and, catching her aunt's eye upon her,
+flashed her a little answering smile full of affection and tenderness,
+and then went on listening intently to Mrs. Nailor; though, had Keith
+read aright the color rising in her cheeks, he might have guessed that
+she was giving at least half her attention to his side of the room,
+where Miss Abigail was talking of her. Keith, however, was just then
+much interested in Miss Abigail's account of Dr. Locaman, who, it
+seemed, was more attentive to Lois than ever.
+
+"I don't know what she will do," she said. "I suppose she will decide
+soon. It is an affair of long standing."
+
+Keith's throat had grown dry.
+
+"I had hoped that my cousin Norman might prove a protector for her; but
+his wife is not a good person. I was mad to let her go there. But she
+would go. She thought she could be of some service. But that woman is
+such a fool!"
+
+"Oh, she is not a bad woman," interrupted Keith.
+
+"I do not know how bad she is," said Miss Abigail. "She is a fool. No
+good woman would ever have allowed such an intimacy as she allowed to
+come between her and her husband; and none but a fool would have
+permitted a man to make her his dupe. She did not even have the excuse
+of a temptation; for she is as cold as a tombstone."
+
+"I assure you that you are mistaken," defended Keith. "I know her, and I
+believe that she has far more depth than you give her credit for--"
+
+"I give her credit for none," said Miss Abigail, decisively. "You men
+are all alike. You think a woman with a pretty face who does not talk
+much is deep, when she is only dull. On my word, I think it is almost
+worse to bring about such a scandal without cause than to give a real
+cause for it. In the latter case there is at least the time-worn excuse
+of woman's frailty."
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"They are all so stupid," asserted Miss Abigail, fiercely. "They are
+giving up their privileges to be--what? I blushed for my sex when I was
+there. They are beginning to mistake civility for servility. I found a
+plenty of old ladies tottering on the edge of the grave, like myself,
+and I found a number of ladies in the shops and in the churches; but in
+that set that you go with--! They all want to be 'women'; next thing
+they'll want to be like men. I sha'n't be surprised to see them come to
+wearing men's clothes and drinking whiskey and smoking tobacco--the
+little fools! As if they thought that a woman who has to curl her hair
+and spend a half-hour over her dress to look decent could ever be on a
+level with a man who can handle a trunk or drive a wagon or add up a
+column of figures, and can wash his face and hands and put on a clean
+collar and look like--a gentleman!"
+
+"Oh, not so bad as that," said Keith.
+
+"Yes; there is no limit to their folly. I know them. I am one myself."
+
+"But you do not want to be a man?"
+
+"No, not now. I am too old and dependent. But I'll let you into a
+secret. I am secretly envious of them. I'd like to be able to put them
+down under my heel and make them--squeal."
+
+Mrs. Nailor turned and spoke to the old lady. She was evidently about to
+take her leave. Keith moved over, and for the first time addressed Miss
+Huntington.
+
+"I want you to show me about these grounds," he said, speaking so that
+both ladies could hear him. He rose, and both walked out of the parlor.
+When Mrs. Nailor came out, Keith and his guide were nowhere to be found,
+so she had to wait; but a half-hour afterwards he and Miss Huntington
+came back from the stables.
+
+As they drove out of the grounds they passed a good-looking young fellow
+just going in. Keith recognized Dr. Locaman.
+
+"That is the young man who is so attentive to your young friend," said
+Mrs. Nailor; "Dr. Locaman. He saved her life and now is going to
+marry her."
+
+It gave Keith a pang.
+
+"I know him. He did not save her life. If anybody did that, it was an
+old country doctor, Dr. Balsam."
+
+"That old man! I thought he was dead years ago."
+
+"Well, he is not. He is very much alive."
+
+A few evenings later Keith found Mrs. Lancaster in the hotel. He had
+just arrived from The Lawns when Mrs. Lancaster came down to dinner. Her
+greeting was perfect. Even Mrs. Nailor was mystified. She had never
+looked handsomer. Her black gown fitted perfectly her trim figure, and a
+single red rose, half-blown, caught in her bodice was her only ornament.
+She possessed the gift of simplicity. She was a beautiful walker, and as
+she moved slowly down the long dining-room as smoothly as a piece of
+perfect machinery, every eye was upon her. She knew that she was being
+generally observed, and the color deepened in her cheeks and added the
+charm of freshness to her beauty.
+
+"By Jove! what a stunning woman!" exclaimed a man at a table near by to
+his wife.
+
+"It is not difficult to be 'a stunning woman' in a Worth gown, my dear,"
+she said sweetly. "May I trouble you for the Worcestershire?"
+
+Keith's attitude toward Mrs. Lancaster puzzled even so old a veteran as
+Mrs. Nailor.
+
+Mrs. Nailor was an adept in the art of inquisition. To know about her
+friends' affairs was one of the objects of her life, and it was not only
+the general facts that she insisted on knowing: she proposed to be
+acquainted with their deepest secrets and the smallest particulars. She
+knew Alice Lancaster's views, or believed she did; but she had never
+ventured to speak on the subject to Gordon Keith. In fact, she stood in
+awe of Keith, and now he had mystified her by his action. Finally, she
+could stand it no longer, and so next evening she opened fire on Keith.
+Having screwed her courage to the sticking-point, she attacked boldly.
+She caught him on the verandah, smoking alone, and watching him closely
+to catch the effect of her attack, said suddenly:
+
+"I want to ask you a question: are you in love with Alice Lancaster?"
+
+Keith turned slowly and looked at her, looked at her so long that she
+began to blush.
+
+"Don't you think, if I am, I had better inform her first?" he said
+quietly.
+
+Mrs. Nailor was staggered; but she was in for it, and she had to fight
+her way through. "I was scared to death, my dear," she said when she
+repeated this part of the conversation, "for I never know just how he is
+going to take anything; but he was so quiet, I went on."
+
+"Well, yes, I think you had," she said; "Alice can take care of herself;
+but I tell you that you have no right to be carrying on with that sweet,
+innocent young girl here. You know what people say of you?"
+
+"No; I do not," said Keith. "I was not aware that I was of sufficient
+importance here for people to say anything, except perhaps a few persons
+who know me."
+
+"They say you have come here to see Miss Huntington?"
+
+"Do they?" asked Keith, so carelessly that Mrs. Nailor was just thinking
+that she must be mistaken, when he added: "Well, will you ask people if
+they ever heard what Andrew Jackson said to Mr. Buchanan once when he
+told him it was time to go and dress to receive Lady Wellesley?"
+
+"What did he say?" asked Mrs. Nailor.
+
+"He said he knew a man in Tennessee who had made a fortune by attending
+to his own business."
+
+Having failed with Keith, Mrs. Nailor, the next afternoon, called on
+Miss Huntington. Lois was in, and her aunt was not well; so Mrs. Nailor
+had a fair field for her research. She decided to test the young girl,
+and she selected the only mode which could have been successful with
+herself. She proposed a surprise. She spoke of Keith and noticed the
+increased interest with which the girl listened. This was promising.
+
+"By the way," she said, "you know the report is that Mr. Keith has at
+last really surrendered?"
+
+"Has he? I am so glad. If ever a man deserved happiness it is he. Who is
+it?"
+
+The entire absence of self-consciousness in Lois's expression and voice
+surprised Mrs. Nailor.
+
+"Mrs. Lancaster," she said, watching for the effect of her answer. "Of
+course, you know he has always been in love with her?"
+
+The girl's expression of unfeigned admiration of Mrs. Lancaster gave
+Mrs. Nailor another surprise. She decided that she had been mistaken in
+suspecting her of caring for Keith.
+
+"He has evidently not proposed yet. If she were a little older I should
+be certain of it," she said to herself as she drove away; "but these
+girls are so secretive one can never tell about them. Even I could not
+look as innocent as that to save my life if I were interested."
+
+That evening Keith called at The Lawns. He did not take with him a
+placid spirit. Mrs. Nailor's shaft had gone home, and it rankled. He
+tried to assure himself that what people were thinking had nothing to do
+with him. But suppose Miss Abigail took this view of the matter? He
+determined to ascertain. One solution of the difficulty lay plain before
+him: he could go away. Another presented itself, but it was
+preposterous. Of all the women he knew Lois Huntington was the least
+affected by him in the way that flatters a man. She liked him, he knew;
+but if he could read women at all, and he thought he could, she liked
+him only as a friend, and had not a particle of sentiment about him. He
+was easy, then, as to the point Mrs. Nailor had raised; but had he the
+right to subject Lois to gossip? This was the main thing that troubled
+him. He was half angry with himself that it kept rising in his mind. He
+determined to find out what her aunt thought of it, and decided that he
+could let that direct his course. This salved his conscience. Once or
+twice the question dimly presented itself whether it were possible that
+Lois could care for him. He banished it resolutely.
+
+When he reached The Lawns, he found that Miss Abigail was sick, so the
+virtuous plan he had formed fell through. He was trying to fancy himself
+sorry; but when Lois came out on the verandah in dainty blue gown which
+fell softly about her girlish figure, and seated herself with
+unconscious grace in the easy-chair he pushed up for her, he knew that
+he was glad to have her all to himself. They fell to talking about
+her aunt.
+
+"I am dreadfully uneasy about her," the girl said. "Once or twice of
+late she has had something like fainting spells, and the last one was
+very alarming. You don't know what she has been to me." She looked up at
+him with a silent appeal for sympathy which made his heart beat. "She is
+the only mother I ever knew, and she is all I have in the world." Her
+voice faltered, and she turned away her head. A tear stole down her
+cheek and dropped in her lap. "I am so glad you like each other. I hear
+you are engaged," she said suddenly.
+
+He was startled; it chimed in so with the thought in his mind at the
+moment.
+
+"No, I am not; but I would like to be."
+
+He came near saying a great deal more; but the girl's eyes were fixed on
+him so innocently that he for a moment hesitated. He felt it would be
+folly, if not sacrilege, to go further.
+
+Just then there was a step on the walk, and the young man Keith had
+seen, Dr. Locaman, came up the steps. He was a handsome man, stout, well
+dressed, and well satisfied.
+
+Keith could have consigned him and all his class to a distant and torrid
+clime.
+
+He came up the steps cheerily and began talking at once. He was so glad
+to see Keith, and had he heard lately from Dr. Balsam?--"such a fine
+type of the old country doctor," etc.
+
+No, Keith said; he had not heard lately. His manner had stiffened at
+the young man's condescension, and he rose to go.
+
+He said casually to Lois, as he shook hands, "How did you hear the piece
+of news you mentioned?"
+
+"Mrs. Nailor told me. You must tell me all about it."
+
+"I will sometime."
+
+"I hope you will be very happy," she said earnestly; "you deserve to
+be." Her eyes were very soft.
+
+"No, I do not," said Keith, almost angrily. "I am not at all what you
+suppose me to be."
+
+"I will not allow you to say such things of yourself," she said,
+smiling. "I will not stand my friends being abused even by themselves."
+
+Keith felt his courage waning. Her beauty, her sincerity, her
+tenderness, her innocence, her sweetness thrilled him. He turned back to
+her abruptly.
+
+"I hope you will always think that of me," he said earnestly. "I promise
+to try to deserve it. Good-by."
+
+"Good-by. Don't forget me." She held out her hand.
+
+Keith took it and held it for a second.
+
+"Never," he said, looking her straight in the eyes. "Good-by"; and with
+a muttered good-by to Dr. Locaman, who stood with wide-open eyes gazing
+at him, he turned and went down the steps.
+
+"I don't like that man," said the young Doctor. This speech sealed his
+fate.
+
+"Don't you? I do," said Lois, half dreamily. Her thoughts were far from
+the young physician at that moment; and when they returned to him, she
+knew that she would never marry him. A half-hour later, he knew it.
+
+The next morning Lois received a note from Keith, saying he had left for
+his home.
+
+When he bade Mrs. Lancaster good-by that evening, she looked as if she
+were really sorry that he was going. She walked with him down the
+verandah toward where his carriage awaited him, and Keith thought she
+had never looked sweeter.
+
+He had never had a confidante,--at least, since he was a college
+boy,--and a little of the old feeling came to him. He lingered a little;
+but just then Mrs. Nailor came out of the door near him. For a moment
+Keith could almost have fancied he was back on the verandah at Gates's.
+Her mousing around had turned back the dial a dozen years.
+
+Just what brought it about, perhaps, no one of the participants in the
+little drama could have told; but from this time the relations between
+the two ladies whom Keith left at the hotel that Summer night somehow
+changed. Not outwardly, for they still sat and talked together; but they
+were both conscious of a difference. They rather fenced with each other
+after that. Mrs. Nailor set it down to a simple cause. Mrs. Lancaster
+was in love with Gordon Keith, and he had not addressed her. Of this she
+was satisfied. Yet she was a little mystified. Mrs. Lancaster hardly
+defined the reason to herself. She simply shut up on the side toward
+Mrs. Nailor, and barred her out. A strange thing was that she and Miss
+Huntington became great friends. They took to riding together, walking
+together, and seeing a great deal of each other, the elder lady spending
+much of her time up at Miss Huntington's home, among the shrubbery and
+flowers of the old place. It was a mystification to Mrs. Nailor, who
+frankly confessed that she could only account for it on the ground that
+Mrs. Lancaster wanted to find out how far matters had gone between Keith
+and Miss Huntington. "That girl is a sly minx," she said. "These
+governesses learn to be deceptive. I would not have her in my house."
+
+If there was a more dissatisfied mortal in the world than Gordon Keith
+that Autumn Keith did not know him. He worked hard, but it did not ease
+his mind. He tried retiring to his old home, as he had done in the
+Summer; but it was even worse than it had been then. Rumor came to him
+that Lois Huntington was engaged. It came through Mrs. Nailor, and he
+could not verify it; but, at least, she was lost to him. He cursed
+himself for a fool.
+
+The picture of Mrs. Lancaster began to come to him oftener and oftener
+as she had appeared to him that night on the verandah--handsome,
+dignified, serene, sympathetic. Why should he not seek release by this
+way? He had always admired, liked her. He felt her sympathy; he
+recognized her charm; he appreciated her--yes, her advantage. Curse it!
+that was the trouble. If he were only in love with her! If she were not
+so manifestly advantageous, then he might think his feeling was more
+than friendship; for she was everything that he admired.
+
+He was just in this frame of mind when a letter came from Rhodes, who
+had come home soon after Keith's visit to him. He had not been very
+well, and they had decided to take a yacht-cruise in Southern waters,
+and would he not come along? He could join them at either Hampton Roads
+or Savannah, and they were going to run over to the Bermudas.
+
+Keith telegraphed that he would join them, and two days later turned his
+face to the South. Twenty-four hours afterwards he was stepping up the
+gangway and being welcomed by as gay a group as ever fluttered
+handkerchiefs to cheer a friend. Among them the first object that had
+caught his eye as he rowed out was the straight, lithe figure of Mrs.
+Lancaster. A man is always ready to think Providence interferes
+specially in his, case, provided the interpretation accords with his own
+views, and this looked to Keith very much as if it were Providence. For
+one thing, it saved him the trouble of thinking further of a matter
+which, the more he thought of it, the more he was perplexed. She came
+forward with the others, and welcomed him with her old frank, cordial
+grasp of the hand and gracious air. When he was comfortably settled, he
+felt a distinct self-content that he had decided to come.
+
+A yacht-cruise is dependent on three things: the yacht itself, the
+company on board, and the weather. Keith had no cause to complain of
+any of these.
+
+The "Virginia Dare" was a beautiful boat, and the weather was
+perfect--just the weather for a cruise in Southern waters. The company
+were all friends of Keith; and Keith found himself sailing in Summer
+seas, with Summer airs breathing about him. Keith was at his best. He
+was richly tanned by exposure, and as hard as a nail from work in the
+open air. Command of men had given him that calm assurance which is the
+mark of the captain. Ambition--ambition to be, not merely to
+possess--was once more calling to him with her inspiring voice, and as
+he hearkened his face grew more and more distinguished. Providence,
+indeed, or Grinnell Rhodes was working his way, and it seemed to him--he
+admitted it with a pang of contempt for himself at the admission--that
+Mrs. Lancaster was at least acquiescent in their hands. Morning after
+morning they sat together in the shadow of the sail, and evening after
+evening together watched the moon with an ever-rounder golden circle
+steal up the cloudless sky. Keith was pleased to find how much
+interested he was becoming. Each day he admired her more and more; and
+each day he found her sweeter than she had been before. Once or twice
+she spoke to him of Lois Huntington, but each time she mentioned her,
+Keith turned the subject. She said that they had expected to have her
+join them; but she could not leave her aunt.
+
+"I hear she is engaged," said Keith.
+
+"Yes, I heard that. I do not believe it. Whom did you hear it from?"
+
+"Mrs. Nailor."
+
+"So did I."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+THE OLD IDEAL
+
+One evening they sat on deck. Alice Lancaster had never appeared so
+sweet. It happened that Mrs. Rhodes had a headache and was down below,
+and Rhodes declared that he had some writing to do. So Mrs. Lancaster
+and Keith had the deck to themselves.
+
+They had been sailing for weeks among emerald isles and through waters
+as blue as heaven. Even the "still-vex'd Bermoothes" had lent them their
+gentlest airs.
+
+They had left the Indies and were now approaching the American shore.
+Their cruise was almost at an end, and possibly a little sadness had
+crept over them both. As she had learned more and more of his life and
+more and more of his character, she had found herself ready to give up
+everything for him if he only gave her what she craved. But one thing
+had made itself plain to Alice: Keith was not in love with her as she
+knew he could be in love. If he were in love, it was with an ideal. And
+her woman's intuition told her that she was not that ideal.
+
+This evening she was unusually pensive. She had never looked lovelier or
+been more gracious and charming, and as Keith thought of the past and of
+the future,--the long past in which they had been friends, the long
+future in which he would live alone,--his thought took the form of
+resolve. Why should they not always be together? She knew that he liked
+her, so he had not much to do to go further. The moon was just above the
+horizon, making a broad golden pathway to them. The soft lapping of the
+waves against the boat seemed to be a lullaby suited to the peacefulness
+of the scene; and the lovely form before him, clad in soft raiment that
+set it off; the fair face and gentle voice, appeared to fill everything
+with graciousness. Keith had more than once, in the past few weeks,
+considered how he would bring the subject up, and what he would say if
+he ever addressed her. He did not, however, go about it in the way he
+had planned. It seemed to him to come up spontaneously. Under the spell
+of the Summer night they had drifted into talking of old times, and they
+both softened as their memory went back to their youth and their
+friendship that had begun among the Southern woods and had lasted so
+many years.
+
+She had spoken of the influence his opinions had had with her.
+
+"Do you know," he said presently, "I think you have exerted more
+influence on my life than any one else I ever knew after I grew up?"
+
+She smiled, and her face was softer than usual.
+
+"I should be very glad to think that, for I think there are few men who
+set out in life with such ideals as you had and afterwards
+realize them."
+
+Keith thought of his father and of how steadily that old man had held to
+his ideals through everything. "I have not realized them," he said
+firmly. "I fear I have lost most of them. I set out in life with high
+ideals, which I got from my father; but, somehow, I seem to have
+changed them."
+
+She shook her head, with a pleasant light in her eyes.
+
+"I do not think you have. Do you remember what you said to me once about
+your ideal?"
+
+He turned and faced her. There was an expression of such softness and
+such sweetness in her face that a kind of anticipatory happiness fell
+on him.
+
+"Yes; and I have always been in love with that ideal," he said gravely.
+
+She said gently: "Yes, I knew it."
+
+"Did you?" asked Keith, in some surprise. "I scarcely knew it myself,
+though I believe I have been for some time."
+
+"Yes?" she said. "I knew that too."
+
+Keith bent over her and took both her hands in his. "I love and want
+love in return--more than I can ever tell you."
+
+A change came over her face, and she drew in her breath suddenly,
+glanced at him for a second, and then looked away, her eyes resting at
+last on the distance where a ship lay, her sails hanging idly in the dim
+haze. It might have been a dream-ship. At Keith's words a picture came
+to her out of the past. A young man was seated on the ground, with a
+fresh-budding bush behind him. Spring was all about them. He was young
+and slender and sun-browned, with deep-burning eyes and close-drawn
+mouth, with the future before him; whatever befell, with the hope and
+the courage to conquer. He had conquered, as he then said he would to
+the young girl seated beside him.
+
+"When I love," he was saying, "she must fill full the measure of my
+dreams. She must uplift me. She must have beauty and sweetness; she must
+choose the truth as that bird chooses the flowers. And to such an one I
+will give worship without end."
+
+Years after, she had come across the phrase again in a poem. And at the
+words the same picture had come to her, and a sudden hunger for love,
+for such love,--the love she had missed in life,--had seized her. But it
+was then too late. She had taken in its place respect and companionship,
+a great establishment and social prominence.
+
+For a moment her mother, sitting calm and calculating in the little room
+at Ridgely, foretelling her future and teaching, with commercial
+exactness, the advantages of such a union, flashed before her; and then
+once more for a moment came the heart-hunger for what she had missed.
+
+Why should she not take the gift thus held out to her? She liked him and
+he liked her. She trusted him. It was the best chance of happiness she
+would ever have. Besides, she could help him. He had powers, and she
+could give him the opportunity to develop them. Love would come. Who
+could tell? Perhaps, the other happiness might yet be hers. Why should
+she throw it away? Would not life bring the old dream yet? Could it
+bring it? Here was this man whom she had known all her life, who filled
+almost the measure of her old dream, at her feet again. But was this
+love? Was this the "worship with out end"? As her heart asked the
+question, and she lifted her eyes to his face, the answer came with it:
+No. He was too cool, too calm. This was but friendship and respect, that
+same "safe foundation" she had tried. This might do for some, but not
+for him. She had seen him, and she knew what he could feel. She had
+caught a glimpse of him that evening when Ferdy Wickersham was so
+attentive to the little Huntington girl. She had seen him that night in
+the theatre when the fire occurred. He was in love; but it was with Lois
+Huntington, and happiness might yet be his.
+
+The next moment Alice's better nature reasserted itself. The picture of
+the young girl sitting with her serious face and her trustful eyes came
+back to her. Lois, moved by her sympathy and friendship, had given her a
+glimpse of her true heart, which she knew she would have died before she
+would have shown another. She had confided in her absolutely. She heard
+the tones of her voice:
+
+"Why, Mrs. Lancaster, I dream of him. He seems to me so real, so true.
+For such a man I could--I could worship him!" Then came the sudden
+lifting of the veil; the straight, confiding, appealing glance, the
+opening of the soul, and the rush to her knees as she appealed for him.
+
+It all passed through Mrs. Lancaster's mind as she looked far away over
+the slumbering sea, while Keith waited for her answer.
+
+When she glanced up at Keith he was leaning over the rail, looking far
+away, his face calm and serious. What was he thinking of? Certainly
+not of her.
+
+"No, you are not--not in love with me," she said firmly.
+
+Keith started, and looked down on her with a changed expression.
+
+She raised her hand with a gesture of protest, rose and stood beside
+him, facing him frankly.
+
+"You are in love, but not with me."
+
+Keith took her hand. She did not take it from him; indeed, she caught
+his hand with a firm clasp.
+
+"Oh, no; you are not," she smiled. "I have had men in love with me--"
+
+"You have had one, I know--" he began.
+
+"Yes, once, a long time ago--and I know the difference. I told you once
+that I was not what you thought me."
+
+"And I told you--" began Keith; but she did not pause.
+
+"I am still less so now. I am not in the least what you think me--or you
+are not what I think you."
+
+"You are just what I think you," began Keith. "You are the most charming
+woman in the world--you are my--" He hesitated as she looked straight
+into his eyes and shook her head.
+
+"What? No, I am not. I am a worldly, world-worn woman. Oh, yes, I am,"
+as dissent spoke in his face. "I know the world and am a part of it and
+depend upon it. Yes, I am. I am not so far gone that I cannot recognize
+and admire what is better, higher, and nobler than the world of which I
+speak; but I am bound to the wheel--Is not that the illustration you
+wrote me once? I thought then it was absurd. I know now how true it is."
+
+"I do not think you are," declared Keith. "If you were, I would claim
+the right to release you--to save you for--yourself and--"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, no. I have become accustomed to my Sybarite's couch of which you
+used to tell me. Would you be willing to give up all you have striven
+for and won--your life--the honors you have won and hope to win?"
+
+"They are nothing--those I have won! Those I hope to win, I would win
+for us both. You should help me. They would be for you, Alice." His eyes
+were deep in hers.
+
+She fetched a long sigh.
+
+"No, no; once, perhaps, I might have--but now it is too late. I chose my
+path and must follow it. You would not like to give up all you--hope
+for--and become like--some we know?"
+
+"God forbid!"
+
+"And I say, 'Amen.' And if you would, I would not be willing to have you
+do it. You are too much to me--I honor you too much," she corrected
+quickly, as she caught the expression in his face. "I could not let you
+sink into a--society man--like--some of those I sit next to and dance
+with and drive with and--enjoy and despise. Do I not know that if you
+loved me you would have convinced me of it in a moment? You have not
+convinced me. You are in love,--as you said just now,--but not with me.
+You are in love with Lois Huntington."
+
+Keith almost staggered. It was so direct and so exactly what his thought
+had been just now. But he said:
+
+"Oh, nonsense! Lois Huntington considers me old enough to be her
+grandfather. Why, she--she is engaged to or in love with Dr. Locaman."
+
+"She is not," said Mrs. Lancaster, firmly, "and she never will be. If
+you go about it right she will marry you." She added calmly: "I hope she
+will, with all my heart."
+
+"Marry me! Lois Huntington! Why--"
+
+"She considers me her grandmother, perhaps; but not you her grandfather.
+She thinks you are much too young for me. She thinks you are the most
+wonderful and the best and most charming man in the world."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!"
+
+"I do not know where she got such an idea--unless you told her so
+yourself," she said, with a smile.
+
+"I would like her to think it," said Keith, smiling; "but I have
+studiously avoided divulging myself in my real and fatal character."
+
+"Then she must have got it from the only other person who knows you in
+your true character."
+
+"And that is--?"
+
+She looked into his eyes with so amused and so friendly a light in her
+own that Keith lifted her hand to his lips.
+
+"I do not deserve such friendship."
+
+"Yes, you do; you taught it to me."
+
+He sat back in his chair, trying to think. But all he could think of was
+how immeasurably he was below both these women.
+
+"Will you forgive me?" he said suddenly, almost miserably. He meant to
+say more, but she rose, and at the moment he heard a step behind him. He
+thought her hand touched his head for a second, and that he heard her
+answer, "Yes"; but he was not sure, for just then Mrs. Rhodes spoke to
+them, and they all three had to pretend that they thought nothing
+unusual had been going on.
+
+They received their mail next day, and were all busy reading letters,
+when Mrs. Rhodes gave an exclamation of surprise.
+
+"Oh, just hear this! Little Miss Huntington's old aunt is dead."
+
+There was an exclamation from every one.
+
+"Yes," she went on reading, with a faint little conventional tone of
+sympathy in her voice; "she died ten days ago--very suddenly, of
+heart-disease."
+
+"Oh, poor little Lois! I am so sorry for her!" It was Alice Lancaster's
+voice.
+
+But Keith did not hear any more. His heart was aching, and he was back
+among the shrubbery of The Lawns. All that he knew was that Rhodes and
+Mrs. Rhodes were expressing sympathy, and that Mrs. Lancaster, who had
+not said a word after the first exclamation, excused herself and left
+the saloon. Keith made up his mind promptly. He went up on deck. Mrs.
+Lancaster was sitting alone far aft in the shadow. Her back was toward
+him, and her hand was to her eyes. He went up to her. She did not look
+up; but Keith felt that she knew it was he.
+
+"You must go to her," she said.
+
+"Yes," said Keith. "I shall. I wish you would come."
+
+"Oh, I wish I could! Poor little thing!" she sighed.
+
+Two days after that Keith walked into the hotel at Brookford. The clerk
+recognized him as he appeared, and greeted him cordially. Something in
+Keith's look or manner, perhaps, recalled his former association with
+the family at The Lawns, for, as Keith signed his name, he said:
+
+"Sad thing, that, up on the hill."
+
+"What?" said Keith, absently.
+
+"The old lady's death and the breaking up of the old place," he said.
+
+"Oh!--yes, it is," said Keith; and then, thinking that he could learn if
+Miss Huntington were there without appearing to do so, except
+casually, he said:
+
+"Who is there now?"
+
+"There is not any one there at all, I believe."
+
+Keith ordered a room, and a half-hour later went out.
+
+Instead of taking a carriage, he walked There had been a change in the
+weather. The snow covered everything, and the grounds looked wintry and
+deserted. The gate was unlocked, but had not been opened lately, and
+Keith had hard work to open it wide enough to let himself through. He
+tramped along through the snow, and turning the curve in the road, was
+in front of the house. It was shut up. Every shutter was closed, as well
+as the door, and a sudden chill struck him. Still he went on; climbed
+the wide, unswept steps, crossed the portico, and rang the bell, and
+finally knocked. The sound made him start. How lonesome it seemed! He
+knocked again, but no one came. Only the snowbirds on the portico
+stopped and looked at him curiously. Finally, he thought he heard some
+one in the snow. He turned as a man came around the house. It was the
+old coachman and factotum. He seemed glad enough to see Keith, and Keith
+was, at least, glad to see him.
+
+"It's a bad business, it is, Mr. Kathe," he said sadly.
+
+"Yes, it is, John. Where is Miss Huntington?"
+
+"Gone, sir," said John, with surprise in his voice that Keith should not
+know.
+
+"Gone where?"
+
+"An' that no one knows," said John.
+
+"What! What do you mean?"
+
+"Just that, sir," said the old fellow. "She went away two days after the
+funeral, an' not a worrd of her since."
+
+"But she's at some relative's?" said Keith, seeking information at the
+same time he gave it.
+
+"No, sir; not a relative in the world she has, except Mr. Wentworth in
+New York, and she has not been there."
+
+Keith learned, in the conversation which followed, that Miss Abigail had
+died very suddenly, and that two days after the funeral Miss Lois had
+had the house shut up, and taking only a small trunk, had left by train
+for New York. They had expected to hear from her, though she had said
+they would not do so for some time; and when no letter had come they had
+sent to New York, but had failed to find her. This all seemed natural
+enough. Lois was abundantly able to take care of herself, and, no doubt,
+desired for the present to be in some place of retirement. Keith
+decided, therefore, that he would simply go to the city and ascertain
+where she was. He thought of going to see Dr. Locaman, but something
+restrained him. The snow was deep, and he was anxious to find Lois; so
+he went straight down to the city that evening. The next day he
+discovered that it was not quite so easy to find one who wished to be
+lost. Norman knew nothing of her.
+
+Norman and his wife were now living with old Mrs. Wentworth, and they
+had all invited her to come to them; but she had declined. Keith was
+much disturbed.
+
+Lois, however, was nearer than Keith dreamed.
+
+Her aunt's death had stricken Lois deeply. She could not bear to go to
+New York. It stood to her only for hardness and isolation.
+
+Just then a letter came from Dr. Balsam. She must come to him, he said.
+He was sick, or he would come for her. An impulse seized her to go to
+him. She would go back to the scenes of her childhood: the memories of
+her father drew her; the memory also of her aunt in some way urged her.
+Dr. Balsam appeared just then nearer to her than any one else. She could
+help him. It seemed a haven of refuge to her.
+
+Twenty-four hours later the old Doctor was sitting in his room. He
+looked worn and old and dispirited. The death of an old friend had left
+a void in his life.
+
+There was a light step outside and a rap at the door.
+
+"It's the servant," thought the Doctor, and called somewhat gruffly,
+"Come in."
+
+When the door opened it was not the servant. For a moment the old man
+scarcely took in who it was. She seemed to be almost a vision. He had
+never thought of Lois in black. She was so like a girl he had known
+long, long ago.
+
+Then she ran forward, and as the old man rose to his feet she threw her
+arms about his neck, and the world suddenly changed for him--changed as
+much as if it had been new-created.
+
+From New York Keith went down to the old plantation to see his father.
+The old gentleman was renewing his youth among his books. He was much
+interested in Keith's account of his yachting-trip. While there Keith
+got word of important business which required his presence in New Leeds
+immediately. Ferdy Wickersham had returned, and had brought suit against
+his company, claiming title to all the lands they had bought from
+Adam Rawson.
+
+On his arrival at New Leeds, Keith learned that Wickersham had been
+there just long enough to institute his suit, the papers in which had
+been already prepared before he came. There was much excitement in the
+place. Wickersham had boasted that he had made a great deal of money in
+South America.
+
+"He claims now," said Keith's informant, Captain Turley, "that he owns
+all of Squire Rawson's lands. He says you knew it was all his when you
+sold it to them Englishmen, and that Mr. Rhodes, the president of the
+company, knew it was his, and he has been defrauded."
+
+"Well, we will see about that," said Keith, grimly.
+
+"That's what old Squire Rawson said. The old man came up as soon as he
+heard he was here; but Wickersham didn't stay but one night. He had
+lighted out."
+
+"What did the squire come for?" inquired Keith, moved by his old
+friend's expression.
+
+"He said he came to kill him. And he'd have done it. If Wickersham's got
+any friends they'd better keep him out of his way." His face testified
+his earnestness.
+
+Keith had a curious feeling. Wickersham's return meant that he was
+desperate. In some way, too, Keith felt that Lois Huntington was
+concerned in his movements. He was glad to think that she was abroad.
+
+But Lois was being drawn again into his life in a way that he little
+knew.
+
+In the seclusion and quietude of Ridgely at that season, Lois soon felt
+as if she had reached, at last, a safe harbor. The care of the old
+Doctor gave her employment, and her mind, after a while, began to
+recover its healthy tone. She knew that the happiness of which she had
+once dreamed would never be hers; but she was sustained by the
+reflection that she had tried to do her duty: she had sacrificed herself
+for others. She spent her time trying to help those about her. She had
+made friends with Squire Rawson, and the old man found much comfort in
+talking to her of Phrony.
+
+Sometimes, in the afternoon, when she was lonely, she climbed the hill
+and looked after the little plot in which lay the grave of her father.
+She remembered her mother but vaguely: as a beautiful vision, blurred by
+the years; but her father was clear in her memory. His smile, his
+cheeriness, his devotion to her remained with her. And the memory of him
+who had been her friend in her childhood came to her sometimes,
+saddening her, till she would arouse herself and by an effort banish him
+from her thoughts.
+
+Often when she went up to the cemetery she would see others there: women
+in black, with a fresher sorrow than hers; and sometimes the squire, who
+was beginning now to grow feeble and shaky with age, would be sitting on
+a bench among the shrubbery beside a grave on which he had placed
+flowers. The grave was Phrony's. Once he spoke to her of Wickersham. He
+had brought a suit against the old man, claiming that he had a title to
+all of the latter's property. The old fellow was greatly stirred up by
+it. He denounced him furiously.
+
+"He has robbed me of her," he said "Let him beware. If he ever comes
+across my path I shall kill him."
+
+So the Winter passed, and Spring was beginning to come. Its harbingers,
+in their livery of red and green, were already showing on the hillsides.
+The redbud was burning on the Southern slopes; the turf was springing,
+fresh and green; dandelions were dappling the grass like golden coins
+sown by a prodigal; violets were beginning to peep from the shelter of
+leaves caught along the fence-rows; and some favored peach-trees were
+blushing into pink.
+
+For some reason the season made Lois sad. Was it that it was Nature's
+season for mating; the season for Youth to burst its restraining bonds
+and blossom into love? She tried to fight the feeling, but it clung to
+her. Dr Balsam, watching her with quickened eyes, grew graver, and
+prescribed a tonic. Once he had spoken to her of Keith, and she had told
+him that he was to marry Mrs. Lancaster. But the old man had made a
+discovery. And he never spoke to her of him again.
+
+Lois, to her surprise and indignation, received one morning a letter
+from Wickersham asking her to make an appointment with him on a matter
+of mutual interest. He wished, he said, to make friends with old Mr.
+Rawson and she could help him. He mentioned Keith and casually spoke of
+his engagement. She took no notice of this letter; but one afternoon
+she was lonelier than usual, and she went up the hill to her father's
+grave. Adam Rawson's horse was tied to the fence, and across the lots
+she saw him among the rose-bushes at Phrony's grave. She sat down and
+gave herself up to reflection. Gradually the whole of her life in New
+York passed before her: its unhappiness; its promise of joy for a
+moment; and then the shutting of it out, as if the windows of her soul
+had been closed.
+
+She heard the gate click, and presently heard a step behind her. As it
+approached she turned and faced Ferdy Wickersham. She seemed to be
+almost in a dream. He had aged somewhat, and his dark face had hardened.
+Otherwise he had not changed. He was still very handsome. She felt as if
+a chill blast had struck her. She caught his eye on her, and knew that
+he had recognized her. As he came up the path toward her, she rose and
+moved away; but he cut across to intercept her, and she heard him
+speak her name.
+
+She took no notice, but walked on.
+
+"Miss Huntington." He stepped in front of her.
+
+Her head went up, and she looked him in the eyes with a scorn in hers
+that stung him. "Move, if you please."
+
+His face flushed, then paled again.
+
+"I heard you were here, and I have come to see you, to talk with you,"
+he began. "I wish to be friends with you."
+
+She waved him aside.
+
+"Let me pass, if you please."
+
+"Not until you have heard what I have to say. You have done me a great
+injustice; but I put that by. I have been robbed by persons you know,
+persons who are no friends of yours, whom I understand you have
+influence with, and you can help to right matters. It will be worth your
+while to do it."
+
+She attempted to pass around him; but he stepped before her.
+
+"You might as well listen; for I have come here to talk to you, and I
+mean to do it. I can show you how important it is for you to aid me--to
+advise your friends to settle. Now, will you listen?"
+
+"No." She looked him straight in the eyes.
+
+"Oh, I guess you will," he sneered. "It concerns your friend, Mr. Keith,
+whom you thought so much of. Your friend Keith has placed himself in a
+very equivocal position. I will have him behind bars before I am done.
+Wait until I have shown that when he got all that money from the English
+people he knew that that land was mine, and that he had run the lines
+falsely on which he got the money."
+
+"Let me pass," said Lois. With her head held high she started again to
+walk by him; but he seized her by the wrist.
+
+"This is not Central Park. You shall hear me."
+
+"Let me go, Mr. Wickersham," she said imperiously. But he held her
+firmly.
+
+At that moment she heard an oath behind her, and a voice exclaimed:
+
+"It is you, at last! And still troubling women!"
+
+Wickersham's countenance suddenly changed. He released her wrist and
+fell back a step, his face blanching. The next second, as she turned
+quickly, old Adam Rawson's bulky figure was before her. He was hurrying
+toward her: the very apotheosis of wrath. His face was purple; his eyes
+blazed; his massive form was erect, and quivering with fury. His heavy
+stick was gripped in his left hand, and with the other he was drawing a
+pistol from his pocket.
+
+"I have waited for you, you dog, and you have come at last!" he cried.
+
+Wickersham, falling back before his advance, was trying, as Lois looked,
+to get out a pistol. His face was as white as death. Lois had no time
+for thought. It was simply instinct. Old Rawson's pistol was already
+levelled. With a cry she threw herself between them; but it was
+too late.
+
+She was only conscious of a roar and blinding smoke in her eyes and of
+something like a hot iron at her side; then, as she sank down, of
+Squire Rawson's stepping over her. Her sacrifice was in vain, for the
+old man was not to be turned from his revenge. As he had sworn, so he
+performed. And the next moment Wickersham, with two bullets in his body,
+had paid to him his long-piled-up debt.
+
+When Lois came to, she was in bed, and Dr. Balsam was leaning over her
+with a white, set face.
+
+"I am all right," she said, with a faint smile. "Was he hurt?"
+
+"Don't talk now," said the Doctor, quietly. "Thank God, you are not hurt
+much."
+
+Keith was sitting in his office in New Leeds alone that afternoon. He
+had just received a telegram from Dave Dennison that Wickersham had left
+New York. Dennison had learned that he was going to Ridgely to try to
+make up with old Rawson. Just then the paper from Ridgely was brought
+in. Keith's eye fell on the head-lines of the first column, and he
+almost fell from his chair as he read the words:
+
+     DOUBLE TRAGEDY--FATAL SHOOTING
+
+     F.C. WICKERSHAM SHOOTS MISS LOIS HUNTINGTON AND IS KILLED BY
+     SQUIRE RAWSON
+
+The account of the shooting was in accordance with the heading, and was
+followed by the story of the Wickersham-Rawson trouble.
+
+Keith snatched out his watch, and the next second was dashing down the
+street on his way to the station. A train was to start for the east in
+five minutes. He caught it as it ran out of the station, and swung
+himself up to the rear platform.
+
+Curiously enough, in his confused thoughts of Lois Huntington and what
+she had meant to him was mingled the constant recollection of old Tim
+Gilsey and his lumbering stage running through the pass.
+
+It was late in the evening when he reached Ridgely; but he hastened at
+once to Dr. Balsam's office. The moon was shining, and it brought back
+to him the evenings on the verandah at Gates's so long ago. But it
+seemed to him that it was Lois Huntington who had been there among the
+pillows; that it was Lois Huntington who had always been there in his
+memory. He wondered if she would be as she was then, as she lay dead.
+And once or twice he wondered if he could be losing his wits; then he
+gripped himself and cleared his mind.
+
+In ten minutes he was in Dr. Balsam's office. The Doctor greeted him
+with more coldness than he had ever shown him. Keith felt his suspicion.
+
+"Where is Lois--Miss Lois Huntington? Is she--?" He could not frame the
+question.
+
+"She is doing very well."
+
+Keith's heart gave a bound of hope. The blood surged back and forth in
+his veins. Life seemed to revive for him.
+
+"Is she alive? Will she live?" he faltered.
+
+"Yes. Who says she will not?" demanded the Doctor, testily.
+
+"The paper--the despatch."
+
+"No thanks to you that she does!" He faced Keith, and suddenly flamed
+out: "I want to tell you that I think you have acted like a
+damned rascal!"
+
+Keith's jaw dropped, and he actually staggered with amazement. "What!
+What do you mean? I do not understand!"
+
+"You are not a bit better than that dog that you turned her over to, who
+got his deserts yesterday."
+
+"But I do not understand!" gasped Keith, white and hot.
+
+"Then I will tell you. You led that innocent girl to believe that you
+were in love with her, and then when she was fool enough to believe you
+and let herself become--interested, you left her to run, like a little
+puppy, after a rich woman."
+
+"Where did you hear this?" asked Keith, still amazed, but recovering
+himself. "What have you heard? Who told you?"
+
+"Not from her." He was blazing with wrath.
+
+"No; but from whom?"
+
+"Never mind. From some one who knew the facts. It is the truth."
+
+"But it is not the truth. I have been in love with Lois Huntington since
+I first met her."
+
+"Then why in the name of heaven did you treat her so?"
+
+"How? I did not tell her so because I heard she was in love with some
+one else--and engaged to him. God knows I have suffered enough over it.
+I would die for her." His expression left no room for doubt as to his
+sincerity.
+
+The old man's face gradually relaxed, and presently something that was
+almost a smile came into his eyes. He held out his hand.
+
+"I owe you an apology. You are a d----d fool!"
+
+"Can I see her?" asked Keith.
+
+"I don't know that you can see anything. But I could, if I were in your
+place. She is on the side verandah at my hospital--where Gates's tavern
+stood. She is not much hurt, though it was a close thing. The ball
+struck a button and glanced around. She is sitting up. I shall bring her
+home as soon as she can be moved."
+
+Keith paused and reflected a moment, then held out his hand.
+
+"Doctor, if I win her will you make our house your home?"
+
+The old man's face softened, and he held out his hand again.
+
+"You will have to come and see me sometimes."
+
+Five minutes later Keith turned up the walk that led to the side
+verandah of the building that Dr. Balsam had put up for his sanatorium
+on the site of Gates's hotel. The moon was slowly sinking toward the
+western mountain-tops, flooding with soft light the valley below, and
+touching to silver the fleecy clouds that, shepherded by the gentle
+wind, wreathed the highest peaks beyond. How well Keith remembered it
+all: the old house with its long verandah; the moonlight flooding it;
+the white figure reclining there; and the boy that talked of his ideal
+of loveliness and love. She was there now; it seemed to him that she had
+been there always, and the rest was merely a dream. He walked up on the
+turf, but strode rapidly. He could not wait. As he mounted the steps, he
+took off his hat.
+
+"Good evening." He spoke as if she must expect him.
+
+She had not heard him before. She was reclining among pillows, and her
+face was turned toward the western sky. Her black dress gave him a pang.
+He had never thought of her in black, except as a little girl. And such
+she almost seemed to him now.
+
+She turned toward him and gave a gasp.
+
+"Mr. Keith!"
+
+"Lois--I have come--" he began, and stopped.
+
+She held out her hand and tried to sit up. Keith took her hand softly,
+as if it were a rose, and closing his firmly over it, fell on one knee
+beside her chair.
+
+"Don't try to sit up," he said gently. "I went to Brookford as soon as I
+heard of it--" he began, and then placed his other hand on hers,
+covering it with his firm grasp.
+
+"I thought you would," she said simply.
+
+Keith lifted her hand and held it against his cheek. He was silent a
+moment. What should he say to her? Not only all other women, but all the
+rest of the world, had disappeared.
+
+"I have come, and I shall not go away again until you go with me."
+
+For answer she hid her face and began to cry softly. Keith knelt with
+her hand to his lips, murmuring his love.
+
+"I am so glad you have come. I don't know what to do," she said
+presently.
+
+"You do not have to know. I know. It is decided. I love you--I have
+always loved you. And no one shall ever come between us. You are
+mine--mine only." He went on pouring out his soul to her.
+
+[Illustration: "Lois--I have come"--he began]
+
+"My old Doctor--?" she began presently, and looked up at him with eyes
+"like stars half-quenched in mists of silver dew."
+
+"He agrees. We will make him live with us."
+
+"Your father-?"
+
+"Him, too. You shall be their daughter."
+
+She gave him her hands.
+
+"Well, on that condition."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first person Keith sought to tell of his new happiness was his
+father. The old gentleman was sitting on the porch at Elphinstone in the
+sun, enjoying the physical sensation of warmth that means so much to
+extreme youth and extreme age. He held a copy of Virgil in his hand, but
+he was not reading; he was repeating passages of it by heart. They
+related to the quiet life. His son heard him saying softly:
+
+     "'O Fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,
+     Agricolas!'"
+
+His mind was possibly far back in the past.
+
+His placid face lit up with the smile that always shone there when his
+son appeared.
+
+"Well, what's the news?" he asked. "I know it must be good."
+
+"It is," smiled Keith. "I am engaged to be married."
+
+The old gentleman's book fell to the floor.
+
+"You don't say so! Ah, that's very good! Very good! I am glad of that;
+every young man ought to marry. There is no happiness like it in this
+world, whatever there may be in the next.
+
+     "'Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati.'
+
+"I will come and see you," he smiled.
+
+"Come and see me!"
+
+"But I am not very much at home in New York," he pursued rather
+wistfully; "it is too noisy for me. I am too old-fashioned for it."
+
+"New York? But I'm not going to live in New York!"
+
+A slight shadow swept over the General's face.
+
+"Well, you must live where she will be happiest," he said thoughtfully.
+"A gentleman owes that to his wife.--Do you think she will be willing to
+live elsewhere?"
+
+"Who do you think it is, sir!"
+
+"Mrs. Lancaster, isn't it?"
+
+"Why, no; it is Lois Huntington. I am engaged to her. She has promised
+to marry me."
+
+"To her!--to Lois Huntington--my little girl!" The old gentleman rose to
+his feet, his face alight with absolute joy. "That is something like it!
+Where is she? When is it to be? I will come and live with you."
+
+"Of course, you must. It is on that condition that she agrees to marry
+me," said Keith, smiling with new happiness at his pleasure.
+
+"'In her tongue is the law of kindness,'" quoted the old gentleman. "God
+bless you both. 'Her price is far above rubies.'" And after a pause he
+added gently: "I hope your mother knows of this. I think she must: she
+seems so close to me to-day."
+
+
+
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+<html>
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Gordon Keith, by Thomas Nelson Page</title>
+<style type="text/css">
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Gordon Keith, by Thomas Nelson Page,
+Illustrated by George Wright</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Gordon Keith</p>
+<p>Author: Thomas Nelson Page</p>
+<p>Release Date: November 17, 2004  [eBook #14068]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GORDON KEITH***</p>
+<br><br><h3>E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Kat Jeter, Charlie Kirschner,<br>
+            and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3><br><br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="cover.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/cover.jpg"><img src=
+"images/cover.jpg" width="55%" alt=""></a></p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<a name="frontispiece.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/frontispiece.jpg"><img src=
+"images/frontispiece.jpg" width="45%" alt=""></a></p>
+<br>
+<h1>GORDON KEITH</h1>
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h3>THOMAS NELSON PAGE</h3>
+<br>
+<h5>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY</h5>
+<h4>GEORGE WRIGHT</h4>
+<h5><i>Published May, 1903</i></h5>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center>TO<br>
+<br>
+A GRANDDAUGHTER<br>
+<br>
+OF ONE LOIS HUNTINGTON</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<center>
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td align="right">CHAPTER</td>
+<td>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_I">GORDON KEITH'S PATRIMONY</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_II">GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN
+OVERSEER</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_III">THE ENGINEER AND THE SQUIRE</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">TWO YOUNG MEN</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_V">THE RIDGE COLLEGE</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">ALICE YORKE</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">MRS. YORKE FINDS A GENTLEMAN</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">MR. KEITH'S IDEALS</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">MR. KEITH IS UNPRACTICAL</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_X">MRS. YORKE CUTS A KNOT</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">GUMBOLT</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">KEITH DECLINES AN OFFER</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">KEITH IN NEW YORK</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">THE HOLD-UP</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">MRS. YORKE MAKES A MATCH</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI</a>.</td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">KEITH VISITS NEW YORK, AND MRS.
+LANCASTER SEES A GHOST</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">KEITH MEETS NORMAN</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">MRS. LANCASTER</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">WICKERSHAM AND PHRONY</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">MRS. LANCASTER'S WIDOWHOOD</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">THE DIRECTORS' MEETING</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">MRS. CREAMER'S BALL</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">GENERAL KEITH VISITS STRANGE
+LANDS</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">KEITH TRIES HIS FORTUNES
+ABROAD</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">THE DINNER AT MRS. WICKERSHAM'S</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">A MISUNDERSTANDING</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">PHRONY TRIPPER AND THE REV. MR.
+RIMMON</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">ALICE LANCASTER FINDS PHRONY</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">XXX.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">"SNUGGLERS' ROOST"</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">XXXI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">TERPY'S LAST DANCE AND WICKERSHAM'S
+FINAL THROW</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">XXXII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">THE RUN ON THE BANK</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">XXXIII.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">RECONCILIATION</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">XXXIV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">THE CONSULTATION</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">XXXV.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">THE MISTRESS OF THE LAWNS</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">XXXVI.</a></td>
+<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXVI">THE OLD IDEAL</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<center>
+<table summary="">
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#frontispiece.jpg">She was the first to break the
+silence (frontispiece)</a>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#p068.jpg">"If you don't go back to your seat I'll
+dash your brains out," said Keith</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#p140.jpg">"Then why don't you answer me?"</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#p204.jpg">Sprang over the edge of the road into the
+thick bushes below</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#p254.jpg">"Why, Mr. Keith!" she exclaimed</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#p356.jpg">"Sit down. I want to talk to you"</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#p422.jpg">"It is he! 'Tis he!" she cried</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><a href="#p546.jpg">"Lois&mdash;I have come&mdash;" he began</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>GORDON KEITH</h1>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<h3><i>INTRODUCTORY</i></h3>
+<h3>GORDON KEITH'S PATRIMONY</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Gordon Keith was the son of a gentleman. And this fact, like the
+cat the honest miller left to his youngest son, was his only
+patrimony. As in that case also, it stood to the possessor in the
+place of a good many other things. It helped him over many rough
+places. He carried it with him as a devoted Romanist wears a sacred
+scapulary next to the heart.</p>
+<p>His father, General McDowell Keith of "Elphinstone," was a
+gentleman of the old kind, a type so old-fashioned that it is
+hardly accepted these days as having existed. He knew the Past and
+lived in it; the Present he did not understand, and the Future he
+did not know. In his latter days, when his son was growing up,
+after war had swept like a vast inundation over the land, burying
+almost everything it had not borne away, General Keith still
+survived, unchanged, unmoved, unmarred, an antique memorial of the
+life of which he was a relic. His one standard was that of a
+gentleman.</p>
+<p>This idea was what the son inherited from the father along with
+some other old-fashioned things which he did not know the value of
+at first, but which he came to understand as he grew older.</p>
+<p>When in after times, in the swift rush of life in a great city,
+amid other scenes and new manners, Gordon Keith looked back to the
+old life on the Keith plantation, it appeared to him as if he had
+lived then in another world.</p>
+<p>Elphinstone was, indeed, a world to itself: a long, rambling
+house, set on a hill, with white-pillared verandahs, closed on the
+side toward the evening sun by green Venetian blinds, and on the
+other side looking away through the lawn trees over wide fields,
+brown with fallow, or green with cattle-dotted pasture-land and
+waving grain, to the dark rim of woods beyond. To the westward "the
+Ridge" made a straight, horizontal line, except on clear days, when
+the mountains still farther away showed a tenderer blue scalloped
+across the sky.</p>
+<p>A stranger passing through the country prior to the war would
+have heard much of Elphinstone, the Keith plantation, but he would
+have seen from the main road (which, except in summer, was
+intolerably bad) only long stretches of rolling fields well tilled,
+and far beyond them a grove on a high hill, where the mansion
+rested in proud seclusion amid its immemorial oaks and elms, with
+what appeared to be a small hamlet lying about its feet. Had he
+turned in at the big-gate and driven a mile or so, he would have
+found that Elphinstone was really a world to itself; almost as much
+cut off from the outer world as the home of the Keiths had been in
+the old country. A number of little blacks would have opened the
+gates for him; several boys would have run to take his horse, and
+he would have found a legion of servants about the house. He would
+have found that the hamlet was composed of extensive stables and
+barns, with shops and houses, within which mechanics were plying
+their trades with the ring of hammers, the clack of looms, and the
+hum of spinning-wheels-all for the plantation; whilst on a lower
+hill farther to the rear were the servants' quarters laid out in
+streets, filled with children.</p>
+<p>Had the visitor asked for shelter, he would have received,
+whatever his condition, a hospitality as gracious as if he had been
+the highest in the land; he would have found culture with
+philosophy and wealth with content, and he would have come away
+charmed with the graciousness of his entertainment. And yet, if
+from any other country or region than the South, he would have
+departed with a feeling of mystification, as though he had been
+drifting in a counter-current and had discovered a part of the
+world sheltered and to some extent secluded from the general
+movement and progress of life.</p>
+<p>This plantation, then, was Gordon's world. The woods that rimmed
+it were his horizon, as they had been that of the Keiths for
+generations; more or less they always affected his horizon. His
+father appeared to the boy to govern the world; he governed the
+most important part of it--the plantation--without ever raising his
+voice. His word had the convincing quality of a law of nature. The
+quiet tones of his voice were irresistible. The calm face, lighting
+up at times with the flash of his gray eyes, was always commanding:
+he looked so like the big picture in the library, of a tall,
+straight man, booted and spurred, and partly in armor, with a steel
+hat over his long curling hair, and a grave face that looked as if
+the sun were on it. It was no wonder, thought the boy, that he was
+given a sword by the State when he came back from the Mexican War;
+no wonder that the Governor had appointed him Senator, a position
+he declined because of his wife's ill health. Gordon's wonder was
+that his father was not made President or Commander-in-Chief of the
+army. It no more occurred to him that any one could withstand his
+father than that the great oak-trees in front of the house, which
+it took his outstretched arms six times to girdle, could fall.</p>
+<p>Yet it came to pass that within a few years an invading army
+marched through the plantation, camped on the lawn, and cut down
+the trees; and Gordon Keith, whilst yet a boy, came to see
+Elphinstone in the hands of strangers, and his father and himself
+thrown out on the world.</p>
+<p>His mother died while Gordon was still a child. Until then she
+had not appeared remarkable to the boy: she was like the
+atmosphere, the sunshine, and the blue, arching sky, all-pervading
+and existing as a matter of course. Yet, as her son remembered her
+in after life, she was the centre of everything, never idle, never
+hurried; every one and everything revolved about her and received
+her light and warmth. She was the refuge in every trouble, and her
+smile was enchanting. It was only after that last time, when the
+little boy stood by his mother's bedside awed and weeping silently
+in the shadow of the great darkness that was settling upon them,
+that he knew how absolutely she had been the centre and breath of
+his life. His father was kneeling beside the bed, with a face as
+white as his mother's, and a look of such mingled agony and
+resignation that Gordon never forgot it. As, because of his
+father's teaching, the son in later life tried to be just to every
+man, so, for his mother's sake, he remembered to be kind to every
+woman.</p>
+<p>In the great upheaval that came just before the war, Major Keith
+stood for the Union, but was defeated. When his State seceded, he
+raised a regiment in the congressional district which he had
+represented for one or two terms. As his duties took him from home
+much of the time, he sent Gordon to the school of the noted Dr.
+Grammer, a man of active mind and also active arm, named by his
+boys, from the latter quality, "Old Hickory."</p>
+<p>Gordon, like some older men, hoped for war with all his soul. A
+great-grandfather an officer of the line in the Revolution, a
+grandfather in the navy of 1812, and his father a major in the
+Mexican War, with a gold-hilted sword presented him by the State,
+gave him a fair pedigree, and he looked forward to being a great
+general himself. He would be Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great
+at least. It was his preference for a career, unless being a
+mountain stage-driver was. He had seen one or two such beings in
+the mountains when he accompanied his father once on a canvass that
+he was making for Congress, enthroned like Jove, in clouds of
+oil-coats and leather, mighty in power and speech; and since then
+his dreams had been blessed at times with lumbering coaches and
+clanking teams.</p>
+<p>One day Gordon was sent for to come home. When he came
+down-stairs next morning his father was standing in the
+drawing-room, dressed in full uniform, though it was not near as
+showy as Gordon had expected it to be, or as dozens of uniforms the
+boy had seen the day before about the railway-stations on his
+journey home, gorgeous with gold lace. He was conscious, however,
+that some change had taken place, and a resemblance to the
+man-in-armor in the picture over the library mantel suddenly struck
+the boy. There was the high look, the same light in the eyes, the
+same gravity about the mouth; and when his father, after taking
+leave of the servants, rode away in his gray uniform, on his bay
+horse "Chevalier," with his sword by his side, to join his men at
+the county-seat, and let Gordon accompany him for the first few
+miles, the boy felt as though he had suddenly been transported to a
+world of which he had read, and were riding behind a knight of old.
+Ah! if there were only a few Roundheads formed at the big-gate, how
+they would scatter them!</p>
+<p>About the third year of the war, Mr. Keith, now a
+brigadier-general, having been so badly wounded that it was
+supposed he could never again be fit for service in the field, was
+sent abroad by his government to represent it in England in a
+semi-confidential, semi-diplomatic position. He had been abroad
+before--quite an unusual occurrence at that time.</p>
+<p>General Keith could not bring himself to leave his boy behind
+him and have the ocean between them, so he took Gordon with
+him.</p>
+<p>After a perilous night in running the blockade, when they were
+fired on and escaped only by sending up rockets and passing as one
+of the blockading squadron, General Keith and Gordon transferred at
+Nassau to their steamer. The vessel touched at Halifax, and among
+the passengers taken on there were an American lady, Mrs.
+Wickersham of New York, and her son Ferdy Wickersham, a handsome,
+black-eyed boy a year or two older than Gordon. As the two lads
+were the only passengers aboard of about their age, they soon
+became as friendly as any other young animals would have become,
+and everything went on balmily until a quarrel arose over a game
+which they were playing on the lower deck. As General Keith had
+told Gordon that he must be very discreet while on board and not
+get into any trouble, the row might have ended in words had not the
+sympathy of the sailors been with Gordon. This angered the other
+boy in the dispute, and he called Gordon a liar. This, according to
+Gordon's code, was a cause of war. He slapped Ferdy in the mouth,
+and the next second they were at it hammer-and-tongs. So long as
+they were on their feet, Ferdy, who knew something of boxing, had
+much the best of it and punished Gordon severely, until the latter,
+diving into him, seized him.</p>
+<p>In wrestling Ferdy was no match for him, for Gordon had wrestled
+with every boy on the plantation, and after a short scuffle he
+lifted Ferdy and flung him flat on his back on the deck, jarring
+the wind out of him. Ferdy refused to make up and went off crying
+to his mother, who from that time filled the ship with her abuse of
+Gordon.</p>
+<p>The victory of the younger boy gave him great prestige among the
+sailors, and Mike Doherty, the bully of the fore-castle, gave him
+boxing lessons during all the rest of the voyage, teaching him the
+mystery of the "side swing" and the "left-hand upper-cut," which
+Mike said was "as good as a belaying-pin."</p>
+<p>"With a good, smooth tongue for the girlls and a good upper-cut
+for thim as treads on your toes, you are aall right," said Mr.
+Doherty; "you're rigged for ivery braize. But, boy, remimber to be
+quick with both, and don't forgit who taaught you."</p>
+<p>Thus, it was that, while Gordon Keith was still a boy of about
+twelve or thirteen, instead of being on the old plantation rimmed
+by the great woods, where his life had hitherto been spent, except
+during the brief period when he had been at Dr. Grammer's school,
+he found himself one summer in a little watering-place on the
+shores of an English lake as blue as a china plate, set amid ranges
+of high green hills, on which nestled pretty white or brown villas
+surrounded by gardens and parks.</p>
+<p>The water was a new element for Gordon. The home of the Keiths
+was in the high country back from the great watercourses, and
+Gordon had never had a pair of oars in his hands, nor did he know
+how to swim; but he meant to learn. The sight of the boats rowed
+about by boys of his own age filled him with envy. And one of them,
+when he first caught sight of it, inspired him with a stronger
+feeling than envy. It was painted white and was gay with blue and
+red stripes around the gunwale. In it sat two boys. One, who sat in
+the stern, was about Gordon's age; the other, a little larger than
+Gordon, was rowing and used the oars like an adept. In the bow was
+a flag, and Gordon was staring at it, when it came to him with a
+rush that it was a "Yankee" flag. He was conscious for half a
+moment that he took some pride in the superiority of the oarsman
+over the boys in the other boats. His next thought was that he had
+a little Confederate flag in his trunk. He had brought it from home
+among his other treasures. He would show his colors and not let the
+Yankee boys have all of the honors. So away he put as hard as his
+legs could carry him. When he got back to the waterside he hired a
+boat from among those lying tied at the stairs, and soon had his
+little flag rigged up, when, taking his seat, he picked up the oars
+and pushed off. It was rather more difficult than it had looked.
+The oars would not go together. However, after a little he was able
+to move slowly, and was quite elated at his success when he found
+himself out on the lake. Just then he heard a shout:</p>
+<p>"Take down that flag!"</p>
+<p>Gordon wished to turn his boat and look around, but could not do
+so. However, one of the oars came out of the water, and as the boat
+veered a little he saw the boys in the white boat with the Union
+flag bearing down on him.</p>
+<p>The oarsman was rowing with strong, swift strokes even while he
+looked over his shoulder, and the boat was shooting along as
+straight as an arrow, with the clear water curling about its prow.
+Gordon wished for a moment that he had not been so daring, but the
+next second his fighting--blood was up, as the other boy called
+imperiously:</p>
+<p>"Strike that flag!"</p>
+<p>Gordon could see his face now, for he was almost on him. It was
+round and sunburnt, and the eyes were blue and clear and flashing
+with excitement. His companion, who was cheering him on, was Ferdy
+Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"Strike that flag, I say," called the oarsman.</p>
+<p>"I won't. Who are you? Strike your own flag."</p>
+<p>"I am Norman Wentworth. That's who I am, and if you don't take
+that flag down I will take it down for you, you little
+nigger-driving rebel."</p>
+<p>Gordon Keith was not a boy to neglect the amenities of the
+occasion.</p>
+<p>"Come and try it then, will you, you nigger-stealing Yankees!"
+he called. "I will fight both of you." And he settled himself for
+defence.</p>
+<p>"Well, I will," cried his assailant. "Drop the tiller, Ferdy,
+and sit tight. I will fight fair." Then to Gordon again: "I have
+given you fair warning, and I will have that flag or sink you."</p>
+<p>Gordon's answer was to drop one oar as useless, seize the other,
+and steadying himself as well as he could, raise it aloft as a
+weapon.</p>
+<p>"I will kill you if you try it," he said between clinched
+teeth.</p>
+<p>However, the boy rowing the other boat was not to be frightened.
+He gave a vigorous stroke of his oars that sent his boat straight
+into the side of Gordon's boat.</p>
+<p>The shock of the two boats coming together pitched Gordon to his
+knees, and came near flinging him into the water; but he was up
+again in a second, and raising his oar, dealt a vicious blow with
+it, not at the boy in the boat, but at the flag in the bow of the
+boat. The unsteadiness of his footing, however, caused him to miss
+his aim, and he only splintered his oar into fragments.</p>
+<p>"Hit him with the oar, Norman," called the boy in the stern.
+"Knock him out of the boat."</p>
+<p>The other boy made no answer, but with a quick turn of his wrist
+twisted his boat out of its direct course and sent it skimming off
+to one side. Then dropping one oar, he caught up the other with
+both hands, and with a rapid, dexterous swing swept a cataract of
+water in Gordon's face, drenching him, blinding him, and filling
+his eyes, mouth, and ears with the unexpected deluge. Gordon gasped
+and sputtered, and before he could recover from this unlooked-for
+flank movement, another turn of the wrist brought the attacking
+boat sharp across his bow, and, with a shout of triumph, Norman
+wrenched the defiant flag out of its socket.</p>
+<p>Gordon had no time for thought. He had time only to act. With a
+cry, half of rage, half of defiance, he sprang up on the point of
+the bow of his boat, and with outstretched arms launched himself at
+the bow of the other, where the captor had flung the flag, to use
+both oars. His boat slipped from under his feet, and he fell short,
+but caught the gunwale of the other, and dragged himself up to it.
+He held just long enough to clutch both flags, and the next second,
+with a faint cheer, he rolled off and sank with a splash in the
+water.</p>
+<p>Norman Wentworth had risen, and with blazing eyes, his oar
+uplifted, was scrambling toward the bow to repel the boarder, when
+the latter disappeared. Norman gazed at the spot with staring eyes.
+The next second he took in what was happening, and, with an
+exclamation of horror, he suddenly dived overboard. When he came to
+the top, he was pulling the other boy up with him.</p>
+<p>Though Norman was a good swimmer, there was a moment of extreme
+danger; for, half unconscious, Gordon pulled him under once. But
+fortunately Norman kept his head, and with a supreme effort
+breaking the drowning boy's hold, he drew him to the top once more.
+Fortunately for both, a man seeing the trouble had brought his boat
+to the spot, and, just as Norman rose to the surface with his
+burden, he reached out and, seizing him, dragged both him and the
+now unconscious Gordon aboard his boat.</p>
+<p>It was some days before Gordon was able to sit up, and meanwhile
+he learned that his assailant and rescuer had been every day to
+make inquiry about him, and his father, Mr. Wentworth, had written
+to Gordon's father and expressed his concern at the accident.</p>
+<p>"It is a strange fate," he wrote, "that should after all these
+years have arrayed us against each other thus, and have brought our
+boys face to face in a foreign land. I hear that your boy behaved
+with the courage which I knew your son would show."</p>
+<p>General Keith, in turn, expressed his gratitude for the
+promptness and efficiency with which the other's son had
+apprehended the danger and met it.</p>
+<p>"My son owes his life to him," he said. "As to the flag, it was
+the fortune of war," and he thought the incident did credit to both
+combatants. He "only wished," he said, "that in every fight over a
+flag there were the same ability to restore to life those who
+defended it."</p>
+<p>Gordon, however, could not participate in this philosophic view
+of his father's. He had lost his flag; he had been defeated in the
+battle. And he owed his life to his victorious enemy.</p>
+<p>He was but a boy, and his defeat was gall and wormwood to him.
+It was but very little sweetened by the knowledge that his victor
+had come to ask after him.</p>
+<p>He was lying in bed one afternoon, lonely and homesick and sad.
+His father was away, and no one had been in to him for, perhaps, an
+hour. The shrill voices of children and the shouts of boys floated
+in at the open window from somewhere afar off. He was not able to
+join them. It depressed him, and he began to pine for the old
+plantation--a habit that followed him through life in the hours of
+depression.</p>
+<p>Suddenly there was a murmur of voices outside the room, and
+after a few moments the door softly opened, and a lady put her head
+in and looked at him. She was a stranger and was dressed in a
+travelling-suit. Gordon gazed at her without moving or uttering a
+sound. She came in and closed the door gently behind her, and then
+walked softly over to the side of the bed and looked down at him
+with kind eyes. She was not exactly pretty, but to Gordon she
+appeared beautiful, and he knew that she was a friend. Suddenly she
+dropped down on her knees beside him and put her arm over him
+caressingly.</p>
+<p>"I am Norman's mother," she said, "and I have come to look after
+you and to take you home with me if they will let me have you." She
+stooped over and kissed him.</p>
+<p>The boy put up his pinched face and kissed her.</p>
+<p>"I will go," he said in his weak voice.</p>
+<p>She kissed him again, and smiled down at him with moist eyes,
+and talked to him in tender tones, stroking his hair and telling
+him of Norman's sorrow for the trouble, of her own unhappiness, and
+of her regret that the doctors would not let him be moved. When she
+left, it was with a promise that she would come back again and see
+him; and Gordon knew that he had a friend in England of his own
+kind, and a truth somehow had slipped into his heart which set at
+odds many opinions which he had thought principles. He had never
+thought to feel kindly toward a Yankee.</p>
+<p>When Gordon was able to be out again, his father wished him to
+go and thank his former foe who had rescued him. But it was too
+hard an ordeal for the boy to face. Even the memory of Mrs.
+Wentworth could not reconcile him to this.</p>
+<p>"You don't know how hard it is, father," he said, with that
+assurance with which boyhood always draws a line between itself and
+the rest of the world. "Did you ever have to ask pardon of one who
+had fought you?"</p>
+<p>General Keith's face wore a singular expression. Suddenly he
+felt a curious sensation in a spot in his right side, and he was
+standing in a dewy glade in a piece of woodland on a Spring
+morning, looking at a slim, serious young man standing very
+straight and still a few paces off, with a pistol gripped in his
+hand, and, queerly enough, his name, too, was Norman Wentworth. But
+he was not thinking of him. He was thinking of a tall girl with
+calm blue eyes, whom he had walked with the day before, and who had
+sent him away dazed and half maddened. Then some one a little to
+one side spoke a few words and began to count, "One, two--" There
+was a simultaneous report of two pistols, two little puffs of
+smoke, and when the smoke had cleared away, the other man with the
+pistol was sinking slowly to the ground, and he himself was
+tottering into the arms of the man nearest him.</p>
+<p>He came back to the present with a gasp.</p>
+<p>"My son," he said gravely, "I once was called on and failed. I
+have regretted it all my life, though happily the consequences were
+not as fatal as I had at one time apprehended. If every generation
+did not improve on the follies and weaknesses of those that have
+gone before, there would be no advance in the world. I want you to
+be wiser and stronger than I."</p>
+<p>Gordon's chance of revenge came sooner than he expected. Not
+long after he got out of doors again he was on his way down to the
+lake, where he was learning to swim, when a number of boys whom he
+passed began to hoot at him. In their midst was Ferdy Wickersham,
+the boy who had crossed the ocean with him. He was setting the
+others on. The cry that came to Gordon was: "Nigger-driver!
+Nigger-driver!" Sometimes Fortune, Chance, or whatever may be the
+deity of fortuitous occurrence, places our weapons right to hand.
+What would David have done had there not been a stony brook between
+him and Goliath that day? Just as Gordon with burning face turned
+to defy his deriders, a pile of small stones lay at his feet. It
+looked like Providence. He could not row a boat, but he could fling
+a stone like young David. In a moment he was sending stones up the
+hill with such rapidity that the group above him were thrown into
+confusion.</p>
+<p>Then Gordon fell into an error of more noted generals. Seizing a
+supply of missiles, he charged straight up the hill. Though the
+group had broken at the sudden assault, by the time he reached the
+hill-top they had rallied, and while he was out of ammunition they
+made a charge on him. Wheeling, he went down the hill like the
+wind, while his pursuers broke after him with shouts of triumph. As
+he reached the stone-pile he turned and made a stand, which brought
+them to a momentary stop. Just then a shout arose below him. Gordon
+turned to see rushing up the hill toward him Norman Wentworth. He
+was picking up stones as he ran. Gordon heard him call out
+something, but he did not wait for his words. Here was his
+arch-enemy, his conqueror, and here, at least, he was his equal.
+Without wasting further time with those above him, Gordon sprang
+toward his new assailant, and steadying himself, hurled his
+heaviest stone. Fortunately, Norman Wentworth had been reared in
+the country and knew how to dodge as well as to throw a stone, or
+his days might have ended then and there.</p>
+<p>"Hold on! don't throw!" he shouted "I am coming to help you,"
+and, without waiting, he sent a stone far over Gordon's head at the
+party on the height above. Gordon, who was poising himself for
+another shot, paused amazed in the midst of his aim, open-mouthed
+and wide-eyed.</p>
+<p>"Come on," cried Norman. "You and I together can lick them. I
+know the way, and we will get above them." So saying, he dashed
+down a side alley, Gordon close at his heels, and, by making a
+turn, they came out a few minutes later on the hill above their
+enemies, who were rejoicing in their easy victory, and, catching
+them unprepared, routed them and scattered them in an instant.</p>
+<p>Ferdy Wickersham, finding himself defeated, promptly surrendered
+and offered to enlist on their side. Norman, however, had no idea
+of letting him off so easy.</p>
+<p>"I am going to take you prisoner, but not until I have given you
+a good kicking. You know better than to take sides against an
+American."</p>
+<p>"He is a rebel," said Ferdy.</p>
+<p>"He is an American," said Norman. And he forthwith proceeded to
+make good his word, and to do it in such honest style that Ferdy,
+after first taking it as a joke, got angry and ran away
+howling.</p>
+<p>Gordon was doubtful as to the wisdom of this severity.</p>
+<p>"He will tell," he said.</p>
+<p>"Let him," said Norman, contemptuously. "He knows what he will
+get if he does. I was at school with him last year, and I am going
+to school with him again. I will teach him to fight with any one
+else against an American!"</p>
+<p>This episode made the two boys closer allies than they would
+have been in a year of peace.</p>
+<p>General Keith, finding his mission fruitless, asked leave to
+return home immediately, so that Gordon saw little more of his
+former foe and new ally.</p>
+<p>A few days before their departure, Gordon, passing along a road,
+came on a group of three persons, two children and a French
+governess with much-frizzled hair, very black eyes, and a small
+waist. One of the children was a very little girl, richly dressed
+in a white frock with a blue sash that almost covered it, with big
+brown eyes and yellow ringlets; the other child was a ragged girl
+several years older, with tangled hair, gray eyes, and the ruddy,
+chubby cheeks so often seen in children of her class. The governess
+was in a state of great excitement, and was talking French so fast
+that it was a wonder any tongue could utter the words. The little
+girl of the fine frock and brown eyes was clutching to her bosom
+with a defiant air a large doll which the governess was trying to
+get from her, while the other child stood by, looking first toward
+one of them and then toward the other, with an expression divided
+between timidity and eagerness. A big picture of a ballet-dancer
+with a gay frock and red shoes in a flaring advertisement on a
+sign-board had something to do with the trouble. Now the girl drew
+nearer to the other child and danced a few steps, holding out her
+hand; now she cast a look over her shoulder down the hill, as if to
+see that her retreat were not cut off.</p>
+<p>"<i>Mais, c'est &agrave; moi</i>--it's <i>my</i> doll. I
+<i>will</i> have it," insisted the little girl, backing away and
+holding it firmly; at which the governess began again almost
+tearing her hair in her desperation, though she ended by giving it
+a pat to see that it was all right.</p>
+<p>The approach of Gordon drew her attention to him.</p>
+<p>"Oh," she exclaimed in desperation, "<i>c'est
+&eacute;pouvantable</i>--it ees terr-e-ble! Dese young ladie weel
+give de doll to dat meeseerable creature!"</p>
+<p>"She is not a 'meeseerable creature'!" insisted the little girl,
+mocking her, her brown eyes flashing. "She danced for me, and I
+will give it to her--I like her."</p>
+<p>"Oh, <i>ciel</i>! What shall I do! Madame weel abuse me--weel
+keel me!"</p>
+<p>"Mamma will not mind; it is <i>my</i> doll. Aunt Abby gave it to
+me. I can get a plenty more, and I will give it to her," insisted
+the little girl again. Then suddenly, gaining more courage, she
+turned quickly, and, before the governess could stop her, thrust
+the doll into the other child's arms.</p>
+<p>"Here, you <i>shall</i> have it."</p>
+<p>The governess, with a cry of rage, made a spring for the child,
+but too late: the grimy little hands had clutched the doll, and
+turning without a word of thanks, the little creature sped down the
+road like a frightened animal, her ragged frock fluttering behind
+her.</p>
+<p>"Why, she did not say 'Thank you'!" exclaimed the child, in a
+disappointed tone, looking ruefully after the retreating
+figure.</p>
+<p>The governess broke out on her vehemently in French, very
+comically mingling her upbraidings of her charge, her abuse of the
+little girl, and her apprehension of "Madame."</p>
+<p>"Never mind; she does not know any better," said Gordon.</p>
+<p>The child's face brightened at this friendly encouragement.</p>
+<p>"She is a nasty little creature! You shall not play with her,"
+cried the governess, angrily.</p>
+<p>"She is not nasty! I like her, and I will play with her,"
+declared the child, defiantly.</p>
+<p>"What is your name?" asked the boy, much amused by such
+sturdiness in so small a tot.</p>
+<p>"Lois Huntington. What is your name?" She looked up at him with
+her big brown eyes.</p>
+<p>"Gordon Keith."</p>
+<p>"How do you do, Gordon Keith?" She held out her hand.</p>
+<p>"How do you do, Lois Huntington?"</p>
+<p>She shook hands with him solemnly.</p>
+<p>A day or two later, as Gordon was passing through one of the
+streets in the lower part of the village, he came upon a
+hurdy-gurdy playing a livelier tune than most of them usually gave.
+A crowd of children had gathered in the street. Among them was a
+little barelegged girl who, inspired by the music, was dancing and
+keeping perfect time as she tripped back and forth, pirouetted and
+swayed on the tips of her bare toes, flirting her little ragged
+frock, and kicking with quite the air of a ballet-dancer. She
+divided the honors with the dismal Savoyard, who ground away at his
+organ, and she brought a flicker of admiration into his bronzed and
+grimy face, for he played for her the same tune over and over,
+encouraging her with nods and bravas. She was enjoying her triumph
+quite as much as any prima donna who ever tripped it on a more
+ambitious stage.</p>
+<p>Gordon recognized in the little dancer the tangled-haired child
+who had run away with the little girl's doll a few days before.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h3>GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN OVERSEER</h3>
+<br>
+<p>When the war closed, though it was not recognized at first, the
+old civilization of the South passed away. Fragments of the
+structure that had once risen so fair and imposing still stood for
+a time, even after the foundations were undermined: a bastion here,
+a tower there; but in time they followed the general overthrow, and
+crumbled gradually to their fall, leaving only ruins and decay.</p>
+<p>For a time it was hoped that the dilapidation might be repaired
+and the old life be lived again. General Keith, like many others,
+though broken and wasted in body, undertook to rebuild with
+borrowed money, but with disastrous results. The conditions were
+all against him.</p>
+<p>Three or four years' effort to repair his fallen fortunes only
+plunged him deeper in debt. General Keith, like most of his
+neighbors and friends, found himself facing the fact that he was
+hopelessly insolvent. As soon as he saw he could not pay his debts
+he stopped spending and notified his creditors.</p>
+<p>"I see nothing ahead of me," he wrote, "but greater ruin. I am
+like a horse in a quicksand: every effort I make but sinks me
+deeper."</p>
+<p>Some of his neighbors took the benefit of the bankrupt-law which
+was passed to give relief. General Keith was urged to do likewise,
+but he declined.</p>
+<p>"Though I cannot pay my debts," he said, "the least I can do is
+to acknowledge that I owe them. I am unwilling to appear, even for
+a short time, to be denying what I know to be a fact."</p>
+<p>He gave up everything that he owned, reserving nothing that
+would bring in money.</p>
+<p>When Elphinstone was sold, it brought less than the debts on it.
+The old plate, with the Keith coat-of-arms on it, from which
+generations of guests had been served, and which old Richard, the
+butler, had saved during the war, went for its weight in silver.
+The library had been pillaged until little of it remained. The old
+Keith pictures, some of them by the best artists, which had been
+boxed and stored elsewhere until after the war, now went to the
+purchaser of the place for less than the price of their frames.
+Among them was the portrait of the man in the steel coat and hat,
+who had the General's face.</p>
+<p>What General Keith felt during this transition no one, perhaps,
+ever knew; certainly his son did not know it, and did not dream of
+it until later in life.</p>
+<p>It was, however, not only in the South that fortunes were lost
+by the war. As vast as was the increase of riches at the North
+among those who stayed at home, it did not extend to those who took
+the field. Among these was a young officer named Huntington, from
+Brookford, a little town on the sunny slope that stretches
+eastwardly from the Alleghanies to the Delaware. Captain
+Huntington, having entered the army on the outbreak of the war,
+like Colonel Keith rose to the rank of general, and, like General
+Keith, received a wound that incapacitated him for service. His
+wife was a Southern woman, and had died abroad, just at the close
+of the war, leaving him a little girl, who was the idol of his
+heart. He was interested in the South, and came South to try and
+recuperate from the effects of his wound and of exposure during the
+war.</p>
+<p>The handsomest place in the neighborhood of Elphinstone was
+"Rosedale," the family-seat of the Berkeleys. Mr. Berkeley had been
+killed in the war, and the plantation went, like Elphinstone and
+most of the other old estates, for debt. And General Huntington
+purchased it.</p>
+<p>As soon as General Keith heard of his arrival in the
+neighborhood, he called on him and invited him to stay at his house
+until Rosedale should be refurnished and made comfortable again.
+The two gentlemen soon became great friends, and though many of the
+neighbors looked askance at the Federal officer and grumbled at his
+possessing the old family-seat of the Berkeleys, the urbanity and
+real kindness of the dignified, soldierly young officer soon made
+his way easier and won him respect if not friendship. When a man
+had been a general at the age of twenty-six, it meant that he was a
+man, and when General Keith pronounced that he was a gentleman, it
+meant that he was a gentleman. Thus reasoned the neighbors.</p>
+<p>His only child was a pretty little girl of five or six years,
+with great brown eyes, yellow curls, and a rosebud face that
+dimpled adorably when she laughed. When Gordon saw her he
+recognized her instantly as the tot who had given her doll to the
+little dancer two years before. Her eyes could not be mistaken. She
+used to drive about in the tiniest of village carts, drawn by the
+most Liliputian of ponies, and Gordon used to call her
+"Cindy,"--short for Cinderella,--which amused and pleased her. She
+in turn called him her sweetheart; tyrannized over him, and finally
+declared that she was going to marry him.</p>
+<p>"Why, you are not going to have a rebel for a sweetheart?" said
+her father.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I am. I am going to make him Union," she declared
+gravely.</p>
+<p>"Well, that is a good way. I fancy that is about the best system
+of Reconstruction that has yet been tried."</p>
+<p>He told the story to General Keith, who rode over very soon
+afterwards to see the child, and thenceforth called her his fairy
+daughter.</p>
+<p>One day she had a tiff with Gordon, and she announced to him
+that she was not going to kiss him any more.</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes, you are," said he, teasing her.</p>
+<p>"I am not." Her eyes flashed. And although he often teased her
+afterwards, and used to draw a circle on his cheek which, he said,
+was her especial reservation, she kept her word, even in spite of
+the temptation which he held out to her to take her to ride if she
+would relent.</p>
+<p>One Spring General Huntington's cough suddenly increased, and he
+began to go downhill so rapidly as to cause much uneasiness to his
+friends. General Keith urged him to go up to a little place on the
+side of the mountains which had been quite a health-resort before
+the war.</p>
+<p>"Ridgely is one of the most salubrious places I know for such
+trouble as yours. And Dr. Theophilus Balsam is one of the best
+doctors in the State. He was my regimental surgeon during the war.
+He is a Northern man who came South before the war. I think he had
+an unfortunate love-affair."</p>
+<p>"There is no place for such trouble as mine," said the younger
+man, gravely. "That bullet went a little too deep." Still, he went
+to Ridgely.</p>
+<p>Under the charge of Dr. Balsam the young officer for a time
+revived, and for a year or two appeared on the way to recovery.
+Then suddenly his old trouble returned, and he went down as if
+shot. The name Huntington had strong association for the old
+physician; for it was a Huntington that Lois Brooke, the younger
+sister of Abigail Brooke, his old sweetheart, had married, and
+Abigail Brooke's refusal to marry him had sent him South. The
+Doctor discovered early in his acquaintance with the young officer
+that he was Abigail Brooke's nephew. He, however, made no reference
+to his former relation to his patient's people.</p>
+<p>Division bitterer than that war in which he had fought lay
+between them, the division that had embittered his life and made
+him an exile from his people. But the little girl with her great,
+serious eyes became the old physician's idol and tyrant, and how he
+worked over her father! Even in those last hours when the end had
+unexpectedly appeared, and General Huntington was making his last
+arrangements with the same courage which had made him a noted
+officer when hardly more than a boy, the Doctor kept his counsel
+almost to the end.</p>
+<p>"How long have I to live, Doctor?" panted the dying man, when he
+rallied somewhat from the attack that had struck him down.</p>
+<p>"Not very long."</p>
+<p>"Then I wish you to send for General Keith. I wish him to take
+my child to my aunt, Miss Abigail Brooke."</p>
+<p>"I will attend to it" said the Doctor.</p>
+<p>"So long as she lives she will take care of her. But she is now
+an old woman, and when she dies, God knows what will become of
+her."</p>
+<p>"I will look after her as long as I live," said the Doctor.</p>
+<p>"Thank you, Doctor." There was a pause. "She is a saint." His
+mind had gone back to his early life. To this Dr. Balsam made no
+reply. "She has had a sad life. She was crossed in love but instead
+of souring, it sweetened her."</p>
+<p>"I was the man," said the Doctor, quietly. "I will look after
+your child."</p>
+<p>"You were! I never knew his name. She never married."</p>
+<p>He gave a few directions, and presently said: "My little girl? I
+wish to see her. It cannot hurt me?"</p>
+<p>"No, it will not hurt you," said the Doctor, quietly.</p>
+<p>The child was brought, and the dying man's eyes lit up as they
+rested on her pink face and brown eyes filled with a vague
+wonder.</p>
+<p>"You must remember papa."</p>
+<p>She stood on tiptoe and, leaning over, kissed him.</p>
+<p>"And you must go to Aunt Abby when I have gone."</p>
+<p>"I will take Gordon Keith with me," said the child.</p>
+<p>The ghost of a smile flickered about the dying man's eyes. Then
+came a fit of coughing, and when it had passed, his head, after a
+few gasps, sank back.</p>
+<p>At a word from the Doctor, an attendant took the child out of
+the room.</p>
+<p>That evening the old Doctor saw that the little girl was put to
+bed, and that night he sat up alone with the body. There were many
+others to relieve him, but he declined them and kept his vigil
+alone.</p>
+<p>What memories were with him; what thoughts attended him through
+those lonely hours, who can tell!</p>
+<p>General Keith went immediately to Ridgely on hearing of General
+Huntington's death. He took Gordon with him, thinking that he would
+help to comfort the little orphaned girl. The boy had no idea how
+well he was to know the watering-place in after years. The child
+fell to his care and clung to him, finally going to sleep in his
+arms. While the arrangements were being made, they moved for a day
+or two over to Squire Rawson's, the leading man of the Ridge
+region, where the squire's granddaughter, a fresh-faced girl of ten
+or twelve years, took care of the little orphan and kept her
+interested.</p>
+<p>The burial, in accordance with a wish expressed by General
+Huntington, took place in a corner of the little burying-ground at
+Ridgely, which lay on a sunny knoll overlooking the long slope to
+the northeastward. The child walked after the bier, holding fast to
+Gordon's hand, while Dr. Balsam and General Keith walked after
+them.</p>
+<p>As soon as General Keith could hear from Miss Brooke he took the
+child to her; but to the last Lois said that she wanted Gordon to
+come with her.</p>
+<p>Soon afterwards it appeared that General Huntington's property
+had nearly all gone. His plantation was sold.</p>
+<p>Several times Lois wrote Gordon quaint little letters scrawled
+in a childish hand, asking about the calves and pigeons and
+chickens that had been her friends. But after a while the letters
+ceased to come.</p>
+<p>When Elphinstone was sold, the purchaser was a certain Mr. Aaron
+Wickersham of New York, the father of Ferdy Wickersham, with whom
+Gordon had had the rock-battle. Mr. Wickersham was a stout and
+good-humored man of fifty, with a head like a billiard-bail, and a
+face that was both shrewd and kindly. He had, during the war, made
+a fortune out of contracts, and was now preparing to increase it in
+the South, where the mountain region, filled with coal and iron,
+lay virgin for the first comer with sufficient courage and
+astuteness to take it. He found the new legislature of the State an
+instrument well fitted to his hands. It could be manipulated.</p>
+<p>The Wickershams had lately moved into a large new house on Fifth
+Avenue, where Fashion was climbing the hill toward the Park in the
+effort to get above Murray Hill, and possibly to look down upon the
+substantial and somewhat prosaic mansions below, whose doors it had
+sometimes been found difficult to enter. Mrs. Wickersham was from
+Brookford, the same town from which the Huntingtons came, and, when
+a young and handsome girl, having social ambitions, had married
+Aaron Wickersham when he was but a clerk in the banking-house of
+Wentworth &amp; Son. And, be it said, she had aided him materially
+in advancing his fortunes. She was a handsome woman, and her social
+ambitions had grown. Ferdy was her only child, and was the joy and
+pride of her heart. Her ambition centred in him. He should be the
+leader of the town, as she felt his beauty and his smartness
+entitled him to be. It was with this aim that she induced her
+husband to build the fine new house on the avenue. She knew the
+value of a large and handsome mansion in a fashionable quarter.
+Aaron Wickersham knew little of fashion; but he knew the power of
+money, and he had absolute confidence in his wife's ability. He
+would furnish the means and leave the rest to her. The house was
+built and furnished by contract, and Mrs. Wickersham took pride in
+the fact that it was much finer than the Wentworth mansion on
+Washington Square, and more expensive than the house of the Yorkes,
+which was one of the big houses on the avenue, and had been the
+talk of the town when it was built ten years before. Will Stirling,
+one of the wags, said that it was a good thing that Mr. Wickersham
+did not take the contract for himself.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham, having spent a considerable sum in planning and
+preparing his Southern enterprise, and having obtained a charter
+from the legislature of the State that gave him power to do almost
+anything he wished, suddenly found himself balked by the fact that
+the people in the mountain region which he wished to reach with his
+road were so bitterly opposed to any such innovation that it
+jeopardized his entire scheme. From the richest man in that
+section, an old cattle-dealer and lumberman named Rawson, to Tim
+Gilsey, who drove the stage from Eden to Gumbolt Gap, they were all
+opposed to any "newfangled" notions, and they regarded everything
+that came from carpet-baggers as "robbery and corruption."</p>
+<p>He learned that "the most influential man down there" was
+General Keith, and that his place was for sale.</p>
+<p>"I can reach him," said Mr. Wickersham, with a gleam in his eye.
+"I will have a rope around his neck that will lead him." So he
+bought the place.</p>
+<p>Fortunately, perhaps, for Mr. Wickersham, he hinted something of
+his intentions to his counsel, a shrewd old lawyer of the State,
+who thought that he could arrange the matter better than Mr.
+Wickersham could.</p>
+<p>"You don't know how to deal with these old fellows," he
+said.</p>
+<p>"I know men," said Mr. Wickersham, "and I know that when I have
+a hold on a man--"</p>
+<p>"You don't know General Keith," said Mr. Bagge. The glint in his
+eye impressed the other and he yielded.</p>
+<p>So Mr. Wickersham bought the Keith plantation and left it to
+Greene Bagge, Esq., to manage the business. Mr. Bagge wrote General
+Keith a diplomatic letter eulogistic of the South and of Mr.
+Wickersham's interest in it, and invited the General to remain on
+the place for the present as its manager.</p>
+<p>General Keith sat for some time over that letter, his face as
+grave as it had ever been in battle. What swept before his mental
+vision who shall know? The history of two hundred years bound the
+Keiths to Elphinstone. They had carved it from the forest and had
+held it against the Indian. From there they had gone to the highest
+office of the State. Love, marriage, death--all the sanctities of
+life--were bound up with it. He talked it over with Gordon.</p>
+<p>Gordon's face fell.</p>
+<p>"Why, father, you will be nothing but an overseer."</p>
+<p>General Keith smiled. Gordon remembered long afterwards, with
+shame for his Speech, how wistful that smile was.</p>
+<p>"Yes; I shall be something more than that. I shall be, at least,
+a faithful one. I wish I could be as successful a one."</p>
+<p>He wrote saying that, as he had failed for himself, he did not
+see how he could succeed for another. But upon receiving a very
+flattering reassurance, he accepted the offer. Thus, the General
+remained as an employ&eacute; on the estate which had been renowned
+for generations as the home of the Keiths. And as agent for the new
+owner he farmed the place with far greater energy and success than
+he had ever shown on his own account. It was a bitter cup for
+Gordon to have his father act as an "overseer"; but if it contained
+any bitterness for General Keith, he never gave the least evidence
+of it, nor betrayed his feeling by the slightest sign.</p>
+<p>When Mr. Wickersham visited his new estate he admitted that Mr.
+Bagge knew better than he how to deal with General Keith.</p>
+<p>When he was met at the station by a tall, gray-haired gentleman
+who looked like something between a general and a churchwarden, he
+was inclined to be shy; but when the gentleman grasped his hand,
+and with a voice of unmistakable sincerity said he had driven out
+himself to meet him, to welcome him among them, he felt at
+home.</p>
+<p>"It is gentlemen like yourself to whom we must look for the
+preservation of our civilization," said General Keith, and
+introduced him personally to every man he met as, "the gentleman
+who has bought my old place--not a 'carpet-bagger,' but a gentleman
+interested in the development of our country, sir."</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham, in fact, was treated with a distinction to which
+he had been a stranger during his former visits South. He liked it.
+He felt quite like a Southern gentleman, and with one or two
+Northerners whom he met held himself a little distantly.</p>
+<p>Once or twice the new owner of Elphinstone came down with
+parties of friends--"to look at the country." They were interested
+in developing it, and had been getting sundry acts passed by the
+legislature with this in view. (General Keith's nose always took a
+slight elevation when the legislature was mentioned.) General Keith
+entertained the visitors precisely as he had done when he was the
+master, and Mr. Wickersham and his guests treated him, in the main,
+as if he were still the master. General Keith sat at the foot of
+the table opposite Mr. Wickersham, and directed the servants, who
+still called him "Master," and obeyed him as such.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham conceived a great regard for General Keith, not
+unmingled with a certain contempt for his inability to avail
+himself of the new conditions. "Fine old fellow," he said to his
+friends. "No more business-sense than a child. If he had he would
+go in with us and make money for himself instead of telling us how
+to make it." He did not know that General Keith would not have
+"gone in" with him in the plan he had carried through that
+legislature to save his life. But he honored the old fellow all the
+more. He had stood up for the General against Mrs. Wickersham, who
+hated all Keiths on Ferdy's account. The old General, who was as
+oblivious of this as a child, was always sending Mrs. Wickersham
+his regards.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps, she might like to come down and see the place?" he
+suggested. "It is not what it used to be, but we can make her
+comfortable." His glance as it swept about him was full of
+affection.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham said he feared that Mrs. Wickersham's health
+would not permit her to come South.</p>
+<p>"This is the very region for her," said the General. "There is a
+fine health-resort in the mountains, a short distance from us. I
+have been there, and it is in charge of an old friend of mine, Dr.
+Balsam, one of the best doctors in the State. He was my regimental
+surgeon. I can recommend him. Bring her down, and let us see what
+we can do for her."</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham thanked him with a smile. Time had been when Mrs.
+Wickersham had been content with small health-resorts. But that
+time was past. He did not tell General Keith that Mrs. Wickersham,
+remembering the fight between her son and Gordon, had consented to
+his buying the place from a not very noble motive, and vowed that
+she would never set her foot on it so long as a Keith remained
+there. He only assured the General that he would convey his
+invitation.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham's real interest, however, lay in the mountains to
+the westward. And General Keith gave him some valuable hints as to
+the deposits lying in the Ridge and the mountains beyond the
+Ridge.</p>
+<p>"I will give you letters to the leading men in that region," he
+said. "The two most influential men up there are Dr. Balsam and
+Squire Rawson. They have, like Abraham and Lot, about divided up
+the country."</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham's eyes glistened. He thanked him, and said that
+he might call on him.</p>
+<p>Once there came near being a clash between Mr. Wickersham and
+General Keith. When Mr. Wickersham mentioned that he had invited a
+number of members of the legislature--"gentlemen interested in the
+development of the resources of the State"--to meet him, the
+General's face changed. There was a little tilting of the nose and
+a slight quivering of the nostrils. A moment later he spoke.</p>
+<p>"I will have everything in readiness for your--f--for your
+guests; but I must ask you to excuse me from meeting them."</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham turned to him in blank amazement.</p>
+<p>"Why, General?"</p>
+<p>The expression on the old gentleman's face answered him. He knew
+that at a word he should lose his agent, and he had use for him. He
+had plans that were far-reaching, and the General could be of great
+service to him.</p>
+<p>When the statesmen arrived, everything on the place was in
+order; they were duly met at the station, and were welcomed at the
+house by the owner. Everything for their entertainment was
+prepared. Even the fresh mint was in the tankard on the old
+sideboard. Only the one who had made these preparations was
+absent.</p>
+<p>Just before the vehicles were to return from the railway,
+General Keith walked into the room where Mr. Wickersham was
+lounging. He was booted and spurred for riding.</p>
+<p>"Everything is in order for your guests, sir. Richard will see
+that they are looked after. These are the keys. Richard knows them
+all, and is entirely reliable. I will ask you to excuse me
+till--for a day or two."</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham had been revolving in his mind what he should say
+to the old gentleman. He had about decided to speak very plainly to
+him on the folly of such narrowness. Something, however, in the
+General's air again deterred him: a thinning of the nostril; an
+unwonted firmness of the mouth. A sudden increase in the
+resemblance to the man-in-armor over the mantel struck him--a
+mingled pride and gravity. It removed him a hundred years from the
+present.</p>
+<p>The keen-eyed capitalist liked the General, and in a way honored
+him greatly. His old-fashioned ideas entertained him. So what he
+said was said kindly. He regretted that the General could not stay;
+he "would have liked him to know his friends."</p>
+<p>"They are not such bad fellows, after all. Why, one of them is a
+preacher," he said jocularly as he walked to the door, "and a very
+bright fellow. J. Quincy Plume is regarded as a man of great
+ability."</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir; I have heard of him. His doctrine is from the 'Wicked
+Bible'; he omits the 'not.' Good morning." And General Keith bowed
+himself out.</p>
+<p>When the guests arrived, Mr. Wickersham admitted to himself that
+they were a strange lot of "assorted statesmen." He was rather
+relieved that the General had not remained. When he looked about
+the table that evening, after the juleps were handed around and the
+champagne had followed, he was still more glad. The set of old
+Richard's head and the tilt of his nose were enough to face. An old
+and pampered hound in the presence of a pack of puppies could not
+have been more disdainful.</p>
+<p>The preacher he had mentioned, Mr. J. Quincy Plume, was one of
+the youngest members of the party and one of the most
+striking--certainly one of the most convivial and least abashed.
+Mr. Plume had, to use his own expression, "plucked a feather from
+many wings, and bathed his glistening pinions in the iridescent
+light of many orbs." He had been "something of a doctor"; then had
+become a preacher--to quote him again, "not exactly of the gospel
+as it was understood by mossbacked theologians, of 'a creed
+outworn,'" but rather the "gospel of the new dispensation, of the
+new brotherhood--the gospel of liberty, equality, fraternity." Now
+he had found his true vocation, that of statesmanship, where he
+could practise what he had preached; could "bask in the light of
+the effulgent sun of progress, and, shod with the sandals of
+Mercury, soar into a higher empyrean than he had yet attained." All
+of which, being translated, meant that Mr. Plume, having failed in
+several professions, was bent now on elevating himself by the votes
+of the ignorant followers whom he was cajoling into taking him as a
+leader.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham had had some dealing with him and had found him
+capable and ready for any job. When he had been in the house an
+hour Mr. Wickersham was delighted with him, and mentally decided to
+secure him for his agent. When he had been there a day Mr.
+Wickersham mentally questioned whether he had not better drop him
+out of his schemes altogether.</p>
+<p>One curious thing was that each guest secretly warned him
+against all the others.</p>
+<p>The prices were much higher than Mr. Wickersham had expected.
+But they were subject to scaling.</p>
+<p>"Well, Richard, what do you think of the gentlemen?" asked Mr.
+Wickersham of the old servant, much amused at his disdain.</p>
+<p>"What gent'mens?"</p>
+<p>"Why, our guests." He used the possessive that the General
+used.</p>
+<p>"Does you call dem 'gent'mens?'" demanded the old servant,
+fixing his eyes on him.</p>
+<p>"Well, no; I don't think I do--all of them."</p>
+<p>"Nor, suh; dee ain't gent'mens; dee's scalawags!" said Richard,
+with contempt. "I been livin' heah 'bout sixty years, I reckon, an'
+I never seen nobody like dem eat at de table an' sleep in de beds
+in dis house befo'."</p>
+<p>When the statesmen were gone and General Keith had returned, old
+Richard gave Mr. Wickersham an exhibition of the manner in which a
+gentleman should be treated.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<h3>THE ENGINEER AND THE SQUIRE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Marius amid the ruins of Carthage is not an inspiring figure to
+us while we are young; it is Marius riding up the Via Sacra at the
+head of his resounding legions that then dazzles us. But as we grow
+older we see how much greater he was when, seated amid the ruins,
+he sent his scornful message to Rome. So, Gordon Keith, when a boy,
+thought being a gentleman a very easy and commonplace thing. He had
+known gentlemen all his life--had been bred among them. It was only
+later on, after he got out into the world, that he saw how fine and
+noble that old man was, sitting unmoved amid the wreck not only of
+his life and fortunes, but of his world.</p>
+<p>General Keith was unable to raise even the small sum necessary
+to send the boy to college, but among the d&eacute;bris of the old
+home still remained the relics of a once choice library, and
+General Keith became himself his son's instructor. It was a very
+irregular system of study, but the boy, without knowing it, was
+browsing in those pastures that remain ever fresh and green. There
+was nothing that related to science in any form.</p>
+<p>"I know no more of science, sir, than an Indian," the General
+used to say. "The only sciences I ever thought I knew were politics
+and war, and I have failed in both."</p>
+<p>He knew very little of the world--at least, of the modern world.
+Once, at table, Gordon was wishing that they had money.</p>
+<p>"My son," said his father, quietly, "there are some things that
+gentlemen never discuss at table. Money is one of them." Such were
+his old-fashioned views.</p>
+<p>It was fortunate for his son, then, that there came to the
+neighborhood about this time a small engineering party, sent down
+by Mr. Wickersham to make a preliminary survey for a railroad line
+up into the Ridge country above General Keith's home. The young
+engineer, Mr. Grinnell Rhodes, brought a letter to General Keith
+from Mr. Wickersham. He had sent his son down with the young man,
+and he asked that the General would look after him a little and
+would render Mr. Rhodes any assistance in his power. The tall young
+engineer, with his clear eyes, pleasant voice, and quick ways,
+immediately ingratiated himself with both General Keith and Gordon.
+The sight of the instruments and, much more, the appearance of the
+young "chief," his knowledge of the world, and his dazzling
+authority as, clad in corduroy and buttoned in high yellow gaiters,
+he day after day strode forth with his little party and ran his
+lines, sending with a wave of his hand his rodmen to right or left
+across deep ravines and over eminences, awakened new ambitions in
+Gordon Keith's soul. The talk of building great bridges, of
+spanning mighty chasms, and of tunnelling mountains inspired the
+boy. What was Newton making his calculations from which to deduce
+his fundamental laws, or Galileo watching the stars from his
+Florentine tower? This young captain was Archimedes and Euclid,
+Newton and Galileo, all in one. He made them live.</p>
+<p>It was a new world for Gordon. He suddenly awoke.</p>
+<p>Both the engineer and Gordon could well have spared one of the
+engineer's assistants. Ferdy Wickersham had fulfilled the promise
+of his boyhood, and would have been very handsome but for an
+expression about the dark eyes which raised a question. He was
+popular with girls, but made few friends among men, and he and Mr.
+Rhodes had already clashed. Rhodes gave some order which Ferdy
+refused to obey. Rhodes turned on him a cold blue eye. "What did
+you say?"</p>
+<p>"I guess this is my father's party; he's paying the freight, and
+I guess I am his son."</p>
+<p>"I guess it's my party, and you'll do what I say or go home,"
+said Mr. Rhodes, coldly. "Your father has no 'son' in this party. I
+have a rodman. Unless you are sick, you do your part of the
+work."</p>
+<p>Ferdy submitted for reasons of his own; but his eyes lowered,
+and he did not forget Mr. Rhodes.</p>
+<p>The two youngsters soon fell out. Ferdy began to give orders
+about the place, quite as if he were the master. The General
+cautioned Gordon not to mind what he said. "He has been spoiled a
+little; but don't mind him. An only child is at a great
+disadvantage." He spoke as if Gordon were one of a dozen
+children.</p>
+<p>But Ferdy Wickersham misunderstood the other's concession. He
+resented the growing intimacy between Rhodes and Gordon. He had
+discovered that Gordon was most sensitive about the old plantation,
+and he used his knowledge. And when Mr. Rhodes interposed it only
+gave the sport of teasing Gordon a new point.</p>
+<p>One morning, when the three were together, Ferdy began, what he
+probably meant for banter, to laugh at Gordon for bragging about
+his plantation.</p>
+<p>"You ought to have heard him, Mr. Rhodes, how he used to blow
+about it."</p>
+<p>"I did not blow about it," said Gordon, flushing.</p>
+<p>Rhodes, without looking up, moved in his seat uneasily.</p>
+<p>"Ferdy, shut up--you bother me. I am working."</p>
+<p>But Ferdy did not heed either this warning or the look on
+Gordon's face. His game had now a double zest: he could sting
+Gordon and worry Rhodes.</p>
+<p>"I don't see why my old man was such a fool as to want such a
+dinged lonesome old place for, anyhow," he said, with a little
+laugh. "I am going to give it away when I get it."</p>
+<p>Gordon's face whitened and flamed again, and his eyes began to
+snap.</p>
+<p>"Then it's the only thing you ever would give away," said Mr.
+Rhodes, pointedly, without raising his eyes from his work.</p>
+<p>Gordon took heart. "Why did you come down here if you feel that
+way about it?"</p>
+<p>"Because my old man offered me five thousand if I'd come. You
+didn't think I'd come to this blanked old place for nothin', did
+you? Not much, sonny."</p>
+<p>"Not if he knew you," Said Mr. Rhodes, looking across at him.
+"If he knew you, he'd know you never did anything for nothing,
+Ferdy."</p>
+<p>Ferdy flushed. "I guess I do it about as often as you do. I
+guess you struck my governor for a pretty big pile."</p>
+<p>Mr. Rhodes's face hardened, and he fixed his eyes on him. "If I
+do, I work for it honestly. I don't make an agreement to work, and
+then play 'old soldier' on him."</p>
+<p>"I guess you would if you didn't have to work."</p>
+<p>"Well, I wouldn't," said Mr. Rhodes, firmly, "and I don't want
+to hear any more about it. If you won't work, then I want you to
+let me work."</p>
+<p>Ferdy growled something under his breath about guessing that Mr.
+Rhodes was "working to get Miss Harriet Creamer and her pile"; but
+if Mr. Rhodes heard him he took no notice of it, and Ferdy turned
+back to the boy.</p>
+<p>Meantime, Gordon had been calculating. Five thousand dollars!
+Why, it was a fortune! It would have relieved his father, and maybe
+have saved the place. In his amazement he almost forgot his anger
+with the boy who could speak of such a sum so lightly.</p>
+<p>Ferdy gave him a keen glance. "What are you so huffy about,
+Keith?" he demanded. "I don't see that it's anything to you what I
+say about the place. You don't own it. I guess a man has a right to
+say what he chooses of his own."</p>
+<p>Gordon wheeled on him with blazing eyes, then turned around and
+walked abruptly away. He could scarcely keep back his tears. The
+other boy watched him nonchalantly, and then turned to Mr. Rhodes,
+who was glowering over his papers. "I'll take him down a point or
+two. He's always blowing about his blamed old place as if he still
+owned it. He's worse than the old man, who is always blowing about
+'before the war' and his grandfather and his old pictures. I can
+buy better ancestors on Broadway for twenty dollars."</p>
+<p>Mr. Rhodes gathered up his papers and rose to his feet.</p>
+<p>"You could not make yourself as good a descendant for a
+million," he said, fastening his eye grimly on Ferdy.</p>
+<p>"Oh, couldn't I? Well, I guess I could. I guess I am about as
+good as he is, or you either."</p>
+<p>"Well, you can leave me out of the case," said Mr. Rhodes,
+sharply. "I will tell you that you are not as good as he, for he
+would never have said to you what you have said to him if your
+positions had been reversed."</p>
+<p>"I don't understand you."</p>
+<p>"I don't expect you do," said Mr. Rhodes. He stalked away. "I
+can't stand that boy. He makes me sick," he said to himself. "If I
+hadn't promised his governor to make him stick, I would shake
+him."</p>
+<p>Ferdy was still smarting under Mr. Rhodes's biting sarcasm when
+the three came together again. He meant to be even with Rhodes, and
+he watched his opportunity.</p>
+<p>Rhodes was a connection of the Wentworths, and had been helped
+at college by Norman's father, which Ferdy knew. One of the
+handsomest girls in their set, Miss Louise Caldwell, was a cousin
+of Rhodes, and Norman was in love with her. Ferdy, who could never
+see any one succeeding without wishing to supplant him, had of late
+begun to fancy himself in love with her also, but Mr. Rhodes, he
+knew, was Norman's friend. He also knew that Norman was Mr.
+Rhodes's friend in a little affair which Mr. Rhodes was having with
+one of the leading belles of the town, Miss Harriet Creamer, the
+daughter of Nicholas Creamer of Creamer, Crustback &amp;
+Company.</p>
+<p>Ferdy had received that day a letter from his mother which
+stated that Louise Caldwell's mother was making a set at Norman for
+her daughter. Ferdy's jealousy was set on edge, and he now began to
+talk about Norman. Rhodes sniffed at the sneering mention of his
+name, and Gordon, whose face still wore a surly look, pricked up
+his ears.</p>
+<p>"You need not always be cracking Norman up," said Wickersham to
+Rhodes. "You would not be if I were to tell you what I know about
+him. He is no better than anybody else."</p>
+<p>"Oh, he is better than some, Ferdy," said Mr. Rhodes. Gordon
+gave an appreciative grunt which drew Ferdy's eyes on him.</p>
+<p>"You think so too, Keith, I suppose?" he said. "Well, you
+needn't. You need not be claiming to be such a friend of his. He is
+not so much of a friend of yours, I can tell you. I have heard him
+say as many mean things about you as any one."</p>
+<p>It was Gordon's opportunity. He had been waiting for one.</p>
+<p>"I don't believe it. I believe it's a lie," he declared, his
+face whitening as he gathered himself together. His eyes, which had
+been burning, had suddenly begun to blaze.</p>
+<p>Mr. Rhodes looked up. He said nothing, but his eyes began to
+sparkle.</p>
+<p>"You're a liar yourself," retorted Wickersham, turning red.</p>
+<p>Gordon reached for him. "Take it back!" At the same moment
+Rhodes sprang and caught him, but not quite in time. The tip of
+Gordon's fingers as he slapped at Ferdy just reached the latter's
+cheek and left a red mark there.</p>
+<p>"Take it back," he said again between his teeth as Rhodes flung
+his arm around him.</p>
+<p>For answer Ferdy landed a straight blow in his face, making his
+nose bleed and his head ring.</p>
+<p>"Take that!"</p>
+<p>Gordon struggled to get free, but in vain. Rhodes with one arm
+swept Wickersham back. With the other he held Gordon in an iron
+grip. "Keep off, or I will let him go," he said.</p>
+<p>The boy ceased writhing, and looked up into the young man's
+face. "You had just as well let me go. I am going to whip him. He
+has told a lie on my friend, who saved my life. And he's hit me.
+Let me go." He began to whimper.</p>
+<p>"Now, look here, boys," said Rhodes; "you have got to stop right
+here and make up. I won't have this fighting."</p>
+<p>"Let him go. I can whip him," said Ferdy, squaring himself, and
+adding an epithet.</p>
+<p>Gordon was standing quite still. "I am going to fight him," he
+said, "and whip him. If he whips me, I am going to fight him again
+until I do whip him."</p>
+<p>Mr. Rhodes's face wore a puzzled expression. He looked down at
+the sturdy face with its steady eyes, tightly gripped mouth, and
+chin which had suddenly grown squarer.</p>
+<p>"If I let you go will you promise not to fight?"</p>
+<p>"I will promise not to fight him here if he will come out behind
+the barn," said Gordon. "But if he don't, I'm going to fight him
+here. I am going to fight him and I am going to whip him."</p>
+<p>Mr. Rhodes considered. "If I go out there with you and let you
+have two rounds, will you make up and agree never to refer to the
+subject again?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"If I whip him," said Gordon.</p>
+<p>"Come along with me. I will let you two boys try each other's
+mettle for two rounds, but, remember, you have got to stop when I
+call time."</p>
+<p>So they came to a secluded spot, where the two boys took off
+their coats.</p>
+<p>"Come, you fellows had better make up now," said Mr. Rhodes,
+standing above them good-humored and kindly.</p>
+<p>"I don't see what we are fighting about," said Ferdy.</p>
+<p>"Take back what you said about Norman," demanded Gordon.</p>
+<p>"There is nothing to take back," declared Ferdy.</p>
+<p>"Then take that!" said Gordon, stepping forward and tapping him
+in the mouth with the back of his hand.</p>
+<p>He had not expected the other boy to be so quick. Before he
+could put himself on guard, Ferdy had fired away, and catching him
+right in the eye, he sent him staggering back. He was up again in a
+second, however, and the next moment was at his opponent like a
+tiger. The rush was as unlooked for on Wickersham's part as
+Wickersham's blow had been by Gordon, and after a moment the
+lessons of Mike Doherty began to tell, and Gordon was ducking his
+head and dodging Wickersham's blows; and he began to drive him
+backward.</p>
+<p>"By Jove! he knows his business," said Rhodes to himself.</p>
+<p>Just then he showed that he knew his business, for, swinging out
+first with his right, he brought in the cut which was Mr. Doherty's
+<i>chef d'oeuvre</i>, and catching Wickersham under the chin, he
+sent him flat on his back on the ground.</p>
+<p>Mr. Rhodes called time and picked him up.</p>
+<p>"Come, now, that's enough," he said.</p>
+<p>Gordon wiped the blood from his face.</p>
+<p>"He has got to take back what he said about Norman, or I have
+another round."</p>
+<p>"You had better take it back, Ferdy. You began it," said the
+umpire.</p>
+<p>"I didn't begin it. It's a lie!"</p>
+<p>"You did," said Mr. Rhodes, coldly. He turned to Gordon. "You
+have one more round."</p>
+<p>"I take it back," growled Ferdy.</p>
+<p>Just then there was a step on the grass, and General Keith stood
+beside them. His face was very grave as he chided the boys for
+fighting; but there was a gleam in his eyes that showed Mr. Rhodes
+and possibly the two combatants that he was not wholly displeased.
+At his instance and Mr. Rhodes's, the two boys shook hands and
+promised not to open the matter again.</p>
+<p>As Wickersham continued to shirk the work of rodman, Rhodes took
+Gordon in his party, instructed him in the use of the instruments,
+and inspired him with enthusiasm for the work, none the less eager
+because he contrasted him with Ferdy. Rhodes knew what General
+Keith's name was worth, and he thought his son being of his party
+would be no hindrance to him.</p>
+<p>The trouble came when he proposed to the General to pay Gordon
+for his work.</p>
+<p>"He is worth no salary at present, sir," said the General. "I
+shall be delighted to have him go with you, and your instruction
+will more than compensate us."</p>
+<p>The matter was finally settled by Rhodes declining positively to
+take Gordon except on his own terms. He needed an axeman and would
+pay him as such. He could not take him at all unless he were under
+his authority.</p>
+<p>Mr. Rhodes was not mistaken. General Keith's name was one to
+conjure with. Squire Rawson was the principal man in all the Ridge
+region, and he had, as Rhodes knew, put himself on record as
+unalterably opposed to a railroad. He was a large, heavy man,
+deep-chested and big-limbed, with grizzled hair and beard, a mouth
+closer drawn than might have been expected in one with his
+surroundings, and eyes that were small and deep-set, but very keen.
+His two-storied white house, with wings and portico, though not
+large, was more pretentious than most of those in the section, and
+his whitewashed buildings, nestled amid the fruit-trees on a green
+hill looking up the valley to the Gap, made quite a settlement. He
+was a man of considerable property and also of great influence, and
+in the Ridge region, as elsewhere, wealth is a basis of position
+and influence. The difference is one of degree. The evidences of
+wealth in the Ridge country were land and cattle, and these Squire
+Rawson had in abundance. He was esteemed the best judge of cattle
+in all that region.</p>
+<p>Consistency is a jewel; but there are regions where Hospitality
+is reckoned before Consistency, and as soon as the old squire
+learned that General Keith's son was with the surveying party, even
+though it was, to use a common phrase, "comin' interferin'" with
+that country, he rode over to their camp and invited Gordon and his
+"friends" to be his guests as long as they should remain in that
+neighborhood.</p>
+<p>"I don't want you to think, young man," he said to Rhodes, "that
+I'm goin' to agree to your dod-rotted road comin' through any land
+of mine, killin' my cattle; but I'll give you a bed and somethin'
+to eat."</p>
+<p>Rhodes felt that he had gained a victory; Gordon was
+doubtful.</p>
+<p>Though the squire never failed to remind the young engineer that
+the latter was a Yankee, and as such the natural and necessary
+enemy of the South, he and Rhodes became great friends, and the
+squire's hospitable roof remained the headquarters of the
+engineering party much longer than there was any necessity for its
+being so.</p>
+<p>The squire's family consisted of his wife, a kindly, bustling
+little old dame, who managed everything and everybody, including
+the squire, with a single exception. This was her granddaughter,
+Euphronia Tripper, a plump and fresh young girl with light hair, a
+fair skin, and bright eyes. The squire laid down the law to those
+about him, but Mrs. Rawson--"Elizy"-laid down the law for him. This
+the old fellow was ready enough to admit. Sometimes he had a
+comical gleam in his deep eyes when he turned them on his guests as
+he rose at her call of "Adam, I want you."</p>
+<p>"Boys, learn to obey promptly," he said; "saves a sight o'
+trouble. It's better in the family 'n a melojeon. It's got to come
+sooner or later, and the sooner the better for you. The difference
+between me and most married men around here is that they lies about
+it, and I don't. I know I belongs to Eliza. She owns me, but then
+she treats me well. I'm sort o' meek when she's around, but then I
+make up for it by bein' so durned independent when I'm away from
+home. Besides, it's a good deal better to be ordered about by
+somebody as keers for you than not to have anybody in the world as
+keers whether you come or stay."</p>
+<p>Besides Mrs. Rawson, there were in the family a widowed
+daughter, Mrs. Tripper, a long, pale, thin woman, with sad eyes,
+who had once been pretty, and her daughter Euphronia, already
+referred to, who, in right of being very pretty, was the old
+squire's idol and was never thwarted in anything. She was, in
+consequence, a spoiled little damsel, self-willed, very vain, and
+as susceptible as a chameleon. The ease with which she could turn
+her family around her finger gave her a certain contempt for them.
+At first she was quite enamoured of the young engineer; but Mr.
+Rhodes was too busy to give any thought to a girl whom he regarded
+as a child, and she turned her glances on Gordon. Gordon also was
+impervious to her charms. He was by no means indifferent to girls;
+several little damsels who attended St. Martin's Church had at one
+time or another been his load-stars for a while; but he was an
+aristocrat at heart, and held himself infinitely above a girl like
+Miss Euphronia.</p>
+<p>Ferdy Wickersham had no such motives for abstaining from a
+flirtation with the young girl as those which restrained Rhodes and
+Keith.</p>
+<p>Euphronia had not at first taken much notice of him. She had
+been inclined to regard Ferdy Wickersham with some disfavor as a
+Yankee; but when the other two failed her, Wickersham fell heir to
+her blandishments. Her indifference to him had piqued him and
+awakened an interest which possibly he might not otherwise have
+felt. He had seen much of the world for a youngster, and could make
+a good show with what he knew. He could play on the piano, and
+though the aged instrument which the old countryman had got at
+second-hand for his granddaughter gave forth sounds which might
+have come from a tinkling cymbal, yet Ferdy played with a certain
+dash and could bring from it tunes which the girl thought very
+fine. The two soon began to be so much together that both Rhodes
+and Keith fell to rallying Ferdy as to his conquest. Ferdy accepted
+it with complacency.</p>
+<p>"I think I shall stay here while you are working up in the
+mountains," he said to his chief as the time drew near for them to
+leave.</p>
+<p>"You will do nothing of the kind. I promised to take you with
+me, and I will take you dead or alive."</p>
+<p>A frown began on the youngster's face, but passed away quickly,
+and in its place came a look of covert complacency.</p>
+<p>"I thought your father had offered you five thousand dollars if
+you would stick it out through, the whole trip?" Keith said.</p>
+<p>Ferdy shut one eye slowly and gazed at Gordon with the
+other.</p>
+<p>"Sickness was barred. I'll tell the old man I've studied. He'd
+never drop on to the game. He is a soft old bird, anyway."</p>
+<p>"Do you mean you are going to lie to him?" asked Gordon.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you are sappy! All fellows lie to their governors,"
+declared Ferdy, easily. "Why, I wouldn't have any fun at all if I
+did not lie. You stay with me a bit, my son, and I'll teach you a
+few useful things."</p>
+<p>"Thank you. I have no doubt you are a capable teacher," sniffed
+Gordon; "but I think I won't trouble you."</p>
+<p>That evening, as Keith was coming from his work, he took a
+cross-cut through the fields and orchard, and under an
+overshadowing tree he came on Ferdy and Euphronia. They were so
+deeply engaged that Keith hastily withdrew and, making a detour,
+passed around the orchard to the house.</p>
+<p>At supper Mrs. Tripper casually inquired of her daughter where
+she had been, a remark which might have escaped Keith's observation
+had not Ferdy Wickersham answered it in some haste.</p>
+<p>"She went after the cows," he said, with a quick look at her,
+"and I went fishing, but I did not catch anything."</p>
+<p>"I thought, Phrony, I saw you in the orchard," said her
+mother.</p>
+<p>Wickersham looked at her quickly again.</p>
+<p>"No, she wasn't in the orchard," he said, "for I was there."</p>
+<p>"No, I wasn't in the orchard this evening," said Euphronia. "I
+went after the cows." She looked down in her plate.</p>
+<p>Keith ate the rest of his supper in silence. He could not tell
+on Ferdy; that would not be "square." He consulted his mentor, his
+chief, who simply laughed at him.</p>
+<p>"Leave 'em alone," he counselled. "I guess she knew how to lie
+before he came. Ferdy has some sense. And we are going to leave for
+the mountains in a little while. I am only waiting to bring the old
+squire around."</p>
+<p>Gordon shook his head.</p>
+<p>"My father says you mistake his hospitality for yielding," he
+said. "You will never get him to consent to your plan."</p>
+<p>Rhodes laughed.</p>
+<p>"Oh, won't I! I have had these old countrymen to deal with
+before. Just give them time and show them the greenbacks. He will
+come around. Wait until I dangle the shekels before him."</p>
+<p>But Mr. Rhodes found that in that provincial field there were
+some things stronger than shekels. And among these were prejudices.
+The more the young engineer talked, the more obstinate appeared the
+old countryman.</p>
+<p>"I raise cattle," he said in final answer to all his
+eloquence.</p>
+<p>"Raise cattle! You can make more by raising coal in one year
+than you can by raising cattle all your life. Why, you have the
+richest mineral country back here almost in the world," said the
+young diplomat, persuasively.</p>
+<p>"And that's the reason I want to keep the railroads out," said
+the squire, puffing quietly. "I don't want the Yankees to come down
+and take it away from us."</p>
+<p>Rhodes laughed. "I'd like to see any one take anything from you.
+They will develop it for you."</p>
+<p>"I never seen anybody develop anything for another man,
+leastways a Yankee," said Squire Rawson, reflectively.</p>
+<p>Just then Ferdy chipped in. He was tired of being left out.</p>
+<p>"My father'll come down here and show you old mossbacks a thing
+or two," he laughed.</p>
+<p>The old man turned his eyes on him slowly. Ferdy was not a
+favorite with him. For one thing, he played on the piano. But there
+were other reasons.</p>
+<p>"Who is your father, son?" The squire drew a long whiff from his
+pipe.</p>
+<p>"Aaron Wickersham of Wickersham &amp; Company, who is setting up
+the chips for this railroad. We are going to run through here and
+make it one of the greatest lines of the country."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you're <i>goin'</i> to run it! From the way you talked I
+thought maybe you <i>had</i> run it. Was a man named Aaron once
+thought he knew more 'bout runnin' a' expedition than his brother
+did. Ever heard what became of him?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Ferdy.</p>
+<p>"Well, he run some of 'em in the ground. He didn't have sense to
+know the difference between a calf and God."</p>
+<p>Ferdy flushed.</p>
+<p>"Well, my old man knows enough to run this railroad. He has run
+bigger things than this."</p>
+<p>"If he knows as much as his son, he knows a lot. He ought to be
+able to run the world." And the squire turned back to Rhodes:</p>
+<p>"What are you goin' to do, my son, when you've done all you say
+you're goin' to do for us? You will be too good to live among them
+Yankees; you will have to come back here, I reckon."</p>
+<p>"No; I'm going to marry and settle down," said Rhodes,
+jestingly. "Maybe I'll come back here sometime just to receive your
+thanks for showing you how benighted you were before I came, and
+for the advice I gave you."</p>
+<p>"He is trying to marry a rich woman," said Ferdy, at which
+Rhodes flushed a little.</p>
+<p>The old man took no notice of the interruption.</p>
+<p>"Well, you must," he said to Rhodes, his eyes resting on him
+benevolently. "You must come back sometime and see me. I love to
+hear a young man talk who knows it all. But you take my advice, my
+son; don't marry no rich man's daughter. They will always think
+they have done you a favor, and they will try to make you think so
+too, even if your wife don't do it. You take warnin' by me. When I
+married, I had just sixteen dollars and my wife she had seventeen,
+and I give you my word I have never heard the last of that one
+dollar from that day to this."</p>
+<p>Rhodes laughed and said he would remember his advice.</p>
+<p>"Sometimes I think," said the old man, "I have mistaken my
+callin'. I was built to give advice to other folks, and instid of
+that they have been givin' me advice all my life. It's in and about
+the only thing I ever had given me, except physic."</p>
+<p>The night before the party left, Ferdy packed his kit with the
+rest; but the next morning he was sick in his bed. His pulse was
+not quick, but he complained of pains in every limb. Dr. Balsam
+came over to see him, but could find nothing serious the matter.
+He, however, advised Rhodes to leave him behind. So, Ferdy stayed
+at Squire Rawson's all the time that the party was in the
+mountains. But he wrote his father that he was studying.</p>
+<p>During the time that Rhodes's party was in the mountains Squire
+Rawson rode about with them examining lands, inspecting coal-beds,
+and adding much to the success of the undertaking.</p>
+<p>He appeared to be interested mainly in hunting up cattle, and
+after he had introduced the engineers and secured the tardy consent
+of the landowners for them to make a survey, he would spend hours
+haggling over a few head of mountain cattle, or riding around
+through the mountains looking for others.</p>
+<p>Many a farmer who met the first advances of the stranger with
+stony opposition yielded amicably enough after old Rawson had spent
+an hour or two looking at his "cattle," or had conversed with him
+and his weather-beaten wife about the "craps" and the
+"child'en."</p>
+<p>"You are a miracle!" declared young Rhodes, with sincere
+admiration. "How do you manage it?"</p>
+<p>The old countryman accepted the compliment with becoming
+modesty.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; ain't no miracle about it. All I know I learned at the
+Ridge College, and from an old uncle of mine, and in the war. He
+used to say, 'Adam, don't be a fool; learn the difference between
+cattle.' Now, before you come, I didn't know nothin' about all them
+fureign countries--they was sort of vague, like the New
+Jerusalem--or about coal. You've told me all about that. I had an
+idea that it was all made jest so,--jest as we find it,--as the
+Bible says 'twas; but you know a lot--more than Moses knowed, and
+he was 'skilled in all the learnin' of the Egyptians.' You haven't
+taken to cattle quite as kindly as I'd 'a' liked, but you know a
+lot about coal. Learn the difference between cattle, my son.
+There's a sight o' difference between 'em."</p>
+<p>Rhodes declared that he would remember his advice, and the two
+parted with mutual esteem.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<h3>TWO YOUNG MEN</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The young engineer, on his return to New York, made a report to
+his employer. He said that the mineral resources were simply
+enormous, and were lying in sight for any one to pick up who knew
+how to deal with the people to whom they belonged. They could be
+had almost for the asking. But he added this statement: that the
+legislative charters would hardly hold, and even if they did, it
+would take an army to maintain what they gave against the will of
+the people. He advised securing the services of Squire Rawson and a
+few other local magnates.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham frowned at this plain speaking, and dashed his
+pen through this part of the report. "I am much obliged to you for
+the report on the minerals. The rest of it is trash. You were not
+paid for your advice on that. When I want law I go to a
+lawyer."</p>
+<p>Mr. Rhodes rose angrily.</p>
+<p>"Well, you have for nothing an opinion that is worth more than
+that of every rascally politician that has sold you his opinion and
+himself, and you will find it out."</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham did find it out. However much was published about
+it, the road was not built for years. The legislative charters,
+gotten through by Mr. J. Quincy Plume and his confr&egrave;res,
+which were to turn that region into a modern Golconda, were swept
+away with the legislatures that created them, and new charters had
+to be obtained.</p>
+<p>Squire Rawson, however, went on buying cattle and, report said,
+mineral rights, and Gordon Keith still followed doggedly the track
+along which Mr. Rhodes had passed, sure that sometime he should
+find him a great man, building bridges and cutting tunnels,
+commanding others and sending them to right or left with a swift
+wave of his arm as of old. Where before Gordon studied as a task,
+he now worked for ambition, and that key unlocked unknown
+treasures.</p>
+<p>Mr. Rhodes fell in with Norman just after his interview with Mr.
+Wickersham. He was still feeling sore over Mr. Wickersham's
+treatment of his report. He had worked hard over it. He attributed
+it in part to Ferdy's complaint of him. He now gave Norman an
+account of his trip, and casually mentioned his meeting Gordon
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"He's a good boy," he said, "a nice kid. He licked Ferdy-a very
+pretty little piece of work. Ferdy had both the weight and the
+reach on him."</p>
+<p>"Licked Ferdy! It's an old grudge, I guess?" said Norman.</p>
+<p>"No. They started in pretty good friends. It was about you."</p>
+<p>"About me?" Norman's face took on new interest.</p>
+<p>"Yes; Ferdy said something, and Keith took it up. He seems
+pretty fond of you. I think he had it in for Ferdy, for Ferdy had
+been bedevilling him about the place. You know old Wickersham owns
+it. Ferdy's strong point is not taste. So I think Gordon was
+feeling a bit sore, and when Ferdy lit into you, Keith slapped
+him."</p>
+<p>Norman was all alert now.</p>
+<p>"Well? Which licked?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, that was all. Keith won at the end of the first round. He'd
+have been fighting now if he had not licked him."</p>
+<p>The rest of the talk was of General Keith and of the hardship of
+his position.</p>
+<p>"They are as poor as death," said Rhodes. He told of his
+surroundings.</p>
+<p>When Norman got home, he went to his mother. Her eye lighted up
+as it rested on the alert, vigorous figure and fresh, manly, eager
+face. She knew he had something on his mind.</p>
+<p>"Mother, I have a plan," he said. "You remember Gordon Keith,
+the boy whose boat I sank over in England--'Keith the rebel'?"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth remembered well. She remembered an older fight
+than that, between a Keith and a Wentworth.</p>
+<p>"Well, I have just heard of him. Rhodes--you remember Rhodes?
+Grinnell Rhodes? Used to be stroke, the greatest stroke ever was.
+Well, Rhodes has been down South and stayed at Keith's father's
+home. He says it's a beautiful old place, and now belongs to Mr.
+Wickersham, Ferdy's father, and the old gentleman, General Keith,
+who used to own it farms it for him. Think of that! It's as if
+father had to be a bookkeeper in the bank! Rhodes says he's a fine
+old fellow, and that Gordon is one of the best. He was down there
+running a railway line for Mr. Wickersham, and took Gordon with
+him. And he says he's the finest sort of a fellow, and wants to go
+to college dreadfully, but hasn't a cent nor any way to get
+anything. Rhodes says it's awful down there. They are so poor."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth smiled. "Well?"</p>
+<p>Norman blushed and stammered a little, as he often did when he
+was embarrassed.</p>
+<p>"Well, you know I have some money of my own, and I thought if
+you don't mind it I'd like to lend him a little. I feel rather
+piggish just spending it right and left for nothing, when a fellow
+like that would give his eyes for the chance to go to college.
+Grinnell Rhodes says that he is ever so fond of me; that Ferdy was
+blowing once and said something against me, and Gordon jumped right
+into him--said I was a friend of his, and that Ferdy should not say
+anything against me in his presence. He knocked Ferdy down. I tell
+you, when a fellow is ready to fight for another years after he has
+seen him, he is a good friend."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth's face showed that she too appreciated such a
+friend.</p>
+<p>"How do you know he needs it, or would accept it if he did?"</p>
+<p>"Why, Rhodes says we have no idea of the poverty down there. He
+says our poorest clerks are rich compared with those people. And
+I'll write him a letter and offer to lend it to him. I'll tell him
+it's mine."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth went over and kissed the boy. The picture rose to
+her mind of a young man fresh from fields where he had won renown,
+honored by his State, with everything that wealth and rank could
+give, laying his honors at the feet of a poor young girl.</p>
+<p>"All right, my son."</p>
+<p>That night Norman sat down and wrote a letter.</p>
+<p>A few days later than this, Gordon Keith received a letter with
+the post-mark "New York." Who was there in New York who could know
+him? Not his young engineer. He knew his hand. He was now abroad.
+As he read the letter he wondered yet more. It was from Norman
+Wentworth. He had met an old friend, he said, who had told him
+about Gordon and about his father's misfortunes. He himself, he
+said, was at college, and he found himself in a position to be able
+to help a friend. He did not know to what extent aid might be of
+service; but he had some means of his own, and he asked that Gordon
+would allow him to make him a loan of whatever might be necessary
+to relieve his father and himself.</p>
+<p>When Gordon finished reading the letter there were tears in his
+eyes.</p>
+<p>He laid the letter in his father's lap, and the old gentleman
+read it through slowly. He sat lost in reflection for a few moments
+and then handed the letter back to Gordon.</p>
+<p>"Write to him and thank him, my son--thank him warmly for both
+of us. I will never forget his kindness. He is a gentleman."</p>
+<p>This was all; but he too showed in his face that that far-off
+shaft of light had reached his heart and rested there.</p>
+<p>The General afterwards meditated deeply as to the wisdom of this
+action. Just then, however, Providence seemed to come to his
+aid.</p>
+<p>Old Adam Rawson, hearing that he was hard up, or moved by some
+kindly impulse, offered to make him a loan. He "happened to have,"
+he wrote, "a little pile lying by that he didn't have any
+particular use for just then, and it had come to him that, maybe,
+the General might be able to use it to advantage. He didn't care
+anything about security or interest."</p>
+<p>The General was perplexed. He did not need it himself, but he
+was glad to borrow enough to send Gordon to college for a year. He
+sent Gordon up to old Rawson's with a letter.</p>
+<p>The old man read the letter and then looked Gordon over; he read
+it and looked him over again, much as if he were appraising a young
+steer.</p>
+<p>"Well, I didn't say I'd lend it to you," he said; "but, maybe,
+I'll do it if 'twill help the General. Investin' in a young man is
+kind of hazardous; it's like puttin' your money in a
+harry-dick--you don't know what he's goin' to be. All you has to go
+on is the frame and your jedgment."</p>
+<p>Fortunately for Keith, the old cattle-dealer had a good opinion
+of his "jedgment." He went on: "But I admit blood counts for
+somethin', and I'm half minded to adventure some on your
+blood."</p>
+<p>Gordon laughed. He would be glad to be tried on any account, he
+said, and would certainly repay the money.</p>
+<p>"Well, I b'lieve you will if you can," said the squire. "And
+that's more than I can say of everybody. I'll invest a leetle money
+in your future, and I want to say this to you, that your future
+will depend on whether you pay it back or not. I never seen a young
+man as didn't pay his debts come to any good in my life, and I
+never seen one as did as didn't. I've seen many a man'd shoot you
+if you dared to question his honor, an' wouldn't pay you a dollar
+if he was lousy with 'em." He took out his wallet, and untying the
+strings carefully, began to count out the greenbacks.</p>
+<p>"I have to carry a pretty good pile to buy calves with," he
+chuckled; "but I reckon you'll be a fair substitute for one or two.
+How much do you want--I mean, how little can you git along
+with?"</p>
+<p>Gordon told him the amount his father had suggested. It was not
+a great sum.</p>
+<p>"That seems a heap of money to put in book-learnin'," said the
+old man, thoughtfully, his eyes fixed on Gordon. "My whole
+edication didn't cost twenty-five dollars. With all that learnin',
+you'd know enough to teach the Ridge College."</p>
+<p>Gordon, who had figured it out, began to give his necessary
+expenses. When he had finished, the old man counted out his bills.
+Gordon said he would give him his note for it, and his father would
+indorse it. The other shook his head.</p>
+<p>"No; I don't want any bond. I'll remember it and you'll remember
+it. I've known too many men think they'd paid a debt when they'd
+given their bond. I don't want you to think that. If you're goin'
+to pay me, you'll do it without a bond, and if you ain't, I ain't
+goin' to sue you; I'm jest goin' to think what a' o'nery cuss you
+are."</p>
+<p>So Gordon returned home, and a few weeks later was delving deep
+into new mysteries.</p>
+<p>Gordon's college life may be passed over. He worked well, for he
+felt that it was necessary to work.</p>
+<p>Looking around when he left college, the only thing that
+appeared in sight for Gordon Keith was to teach school. To be sure,
+the business; "the universal refuge of educated indigents," as his
+father quoted with a smile, was already overcrowded. But Gordon
+heard of a school which up to this time had not been overwhelmed
+with applicants. There was a vacancy at the Ridge College. Finally
+poor Gunn, after holding out as long as he could, had laid down his
+arms, as all soldiers must do sooner or later, and Gordon applied
+for the position. The old squire remembered the straight,
+broad-shouldered boy with his father's eyes and also remembered the
+debt he owed him, and with the vision of a stern-faced man with
+eyes of flame riding quietly at the head of his men across a
+shell-ploughed field, he wrote to Gordon to come.</p>
+<p>"If he's got half of his daddy in him he'll straighten 'em out,"
+he said.</p>
+<p>So, Gordon became a school-teacher.</p>
+<p>"I know no better advice to give you," said General Keith to
+Gordon, on bidding him good-by, "than to tell you to govern
+yourself, and you will be able to govern them. 'He that is slow to
+anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than
+he that taketh a city.'"</p>
+<p>During the years in which Gordon Keith was striving to obtain an
+education as best he might, Ferdy Wickersham had gone to one of the
+first colleges of the land. It was the same college which Norman
+Wentworth was attending. Indeed, Norman's being there was the main
+reason that Ferdy was sent there. Mr. Wickersham wished his son to
+have the best advantages. Mrs. Wickersham desired this too, but she
+also had a further motive. She wished her son to eclipse Norman
+Wentworth. Both were young men of parts, and as both had unlimited
+means at their disposal, neither was obliged to study.</p>
+<p>Norman Wentworth, however, had applied himself to secure one of
+the high class-honors, and as he was universally respected and very
+popular, he was regarded as certain to have it, until an unexpected
+claimant suddenly appeared as a rival.</p>
+<p>Ferdy Wickersham never took the trouble to compete for anything
+until he discovered that some one else valued it. It was a trait he
+had inherited from his mother, who could never see any one
+possessing a thing without coveting it.</p>
+<p>The young man was soon known at college as one of the leaders of
+the gay set. His luxuriously furnished rooms, his expensive suppers
+and his acquaintance with dancing-girls were talked about, and he
+soon had a reputation for being one of the wildest youngsters of
+his class.</p>
+<p>"Your son will spend all the money you can make for him," said
+one of his friends to Mr. Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"Well," said the father, "I hope he will have as much pleasure
+in spending it as I have had in making it, that's all."</p>
+<p>He not only gave Ferdy all the money he suggested a need for,
+but he offered him large bonuses in case he should secure any of
+the honors he had heard of as the prizes of the collegiate
+work.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wickersham was very eager for him to win this particular
+prize. Apart from her natural ambition, she had a special reason.
+The firm of Norman Wentworth &amp; Son was one of the oldest and
+best-known houses in the country. The home of Norman Wentworth was
+known to be one of the most elegant in the city, as it was the most
+exclusive, and both Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth were recognized as
+representatives of the old-time gentry. Mrs. Wickersham might have
+endured the praise of the elegance of the mansion. She had her own
+ideas as to house-furnishing, and the Wentworth mansion was
+furnished in a style too quiet and antiquated to suit her more
+modern tastes. If it was filled with old mahogany and hung with
+damask-satin, Mrs. Wickersham had carved walnut and gorgeous
+hangings. And as to those white marble busts, and those books that
+were everywhere, she much preferred her brilliant figures which she
+"had bought in Europe," and books were "a nuisance about a house."
+They ought to be kept in a library, as she kept hers--in a
+carved-walnut case with glass doors.</p>
+<p>The real cause of Mrs. Wickersham's dislike of Mrs. Wentworth
+lay deeper.</p>
+<p>The elder lady had always been gracious to Mrs. Wickersham when
+they met, as she was gracious to every one, and when a very large
+entertainment was given by her, had invited Mrs. Wickersham to it.
+But Mrs. Wickersham felt that Mrs. Wentworth lived within a charmed
+circle. And Mrs. Wickersham was envious.</p>
+<p>It must be said that Ferdy needed no instigation to supersede
+Norman in any way that did not require too much work. He and Norman
+were very good friends; certainly Norman thought so; but at bottom
+Ferdy was envious of Norman's position and prestige, and deep in
+his heart lurked a long-standing grudge against the older boy, to
+which was added of late a greater one. Norman and he fancied the
+same girl, and Louise Caldwell was beginning to favor Norman.</p>
+<p>Ferdy announced to his father that the class-honor would be won
+if he would give him money enough, and the elder Wickersham,
+delighted, told him to draw on him for all the money he wanted.
+This Ferdy did promptly. He suddenly gave up running away from
+college, applied himself to cultivating the acquaintance of his
+fellow-students, spent his money lavishly in entertainments, and
+for a time it appeared that he might wrest the prize from Norman's
+grasp.</p>
+<p>College boys, however, are a curious folk. The mind of youth is
+virtuous. It is later on in life that it becomes sordid. Ferdy
+wrote his father that he had the prize, and that Norman, his only
+rival, had given up the fight. Mrs. Wickersham openly boasted of
+her son's success and of her motive, and sent him money lavishly.
+Young Wickersham's ambition, however, like that of many another
+man, o'erleaped itself. Wickersham drew about him many companions,
+but they were mainly men of light weight, roisterers and loafers,
+whilst the better class of his fellow-students quickly awoke to a
+true realization of the case. A new element was being introduced
+into college politics. The recognition of danger was enough to set
+the best element in the college to meet it. At the moment when
+Ferdy Wickersham felt himself victor, and abandoned himself to
+fresh pleasures, a new and irresistible force unexpectedly arose
+which changed the fate of the day. Wickersham tried to stem the
+current, but in vain. It was a tidal wave. Ferdy Wickersham faced
+defeat, and he could not stand it. He suddenly abandoned college,
+and went off, it was said, with a coryph&eacute;e. His father and
+mother did not know of it for some time after he had left.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham received the first intimation of it in the shape
+of a draft which came to him from some distant point. When Mrs.
+Wickersham learned of it, she fell into a consuming rage, and then
+took to her bed. The downfall of her hopes and of her ambition had
+come through the person she loved best on earth. Finally she became
+so ill that Mr. Wickersham telegraphed a peremptory order to his
+son to come home, and after a reasonable time the young man
+appeared.</p>
+<p>His mother's joy at meeting him overshadowed everything else
+with her, and the prodigal was received by her with that
+forgiveness which is both the weakness and the strength of a
+mother's heart. The father, however, had been struck as deeply as
+the mother. His ambition, if of a different kind, had been quite as
+great as that of Mrs. Wickersham, and the hard-headed, keen-sighted
+man, who had spent his life fighting his way to the front, often
+with little consideration for the rights of others, felt that one
+of his motives and one of his rewards had perished together.</p>
+<p>The interview that took place in his office between him and his
+son was one which left its visible stamp on the older man, and for
+a time appeared to have had an effect even on the younger, with all
+his insolence and impervious selfishness. When Aaron Wickersham
+unlocked his private door and allowed his son and heir to go out,
+the clerks in the outer office knew by the young man's face, quite
+as well as by the rumbles of thunder which had come through the
+fast-closed door, that the "old man" had been giving the young one
+a piece of his mind.</p>
+<p>At first the younger man had been inclined to rebel; but for
+once in his life he found that he had passed the limit of license,
+and his father, whom he had rather despised as foolishly pliable,
+was unexpectedly his master. He laid before Ferdy, with a power
+which the latter could not but acknowledge, the selfishness and
+brutality of his conduct since he was a boy. He told him of his own
+earlier privations, of his labors, of his ambitions.</p>
+<p>"I have worked my heart out," he said, "for your mother and for
+you. I have never known a moment of rest or of what you call 'fun.'
+I set it before me when your mother promised to marry me that I
+would make her as good as the first lady in the land--that is, in
+New York. She should have as big a house and as fine a carriage and
+as handsome frocks as any one of them--as old Mrs. Wentworth or old
+Mrs. Brooke of Brookford, who were the biggest people I ever knew.
+And I have spent my life for it. I have grown old before my time. I
+have gotten so that things have lost their taste to me; I have done
+things that I never dreamed I would do to accomplish it. I have
+lost the power to sleep working for it, and when you came I thought
+I would have my reward in you. I have not only never stinted you,
+but I have lavished money on you as if I was the richest man in New
+York. I wanted you to have advantages that I never had: as good as
+Norman Wentworth or any one else. I have given you things, and seen
+you throw them away, that I would have crawled on my knees from my
+old home to this office to get when I was a boy. And I thought you
+were going to be my pride and my stay and my reward. And you said
+you were doing it, and your mother and I had staked our hearts on
+you. And all the time you were running away and lying to me and to
+her, and not doing one honest lick of work."</p>
+<p>The young man interrupted him. "That is not so," he said
+surlily.</p>
+<p>His father pulled out a drawer and took from it a letter.
+Spreading it open on his desk, he laid the palm of his open hand on
+it. "Not so? I have got the proof of it here." He looked at the
+young man with level eyes, eyes in which was such a cold gleam that
+Ferdy's gaze fell.</p>
+<p>"I did not expect you to do it for <i>me</i>," Aaron Wickersham
+went on slowly, never taking his eyes from his son's face, "for I
+had discovered that you did not care a button for my wishes; but I
+did think you would do it for your mother. For she thought you were
+a god and worshipped you. She has been talking for ten years of the
+time when she would go to see you come out at the head of your
+class. She was going to Paris to get the clothes to wear if you
+won, and you--" His voice broke--"you won't even graduate! What
+will you think next summer when Mrs. Wentworth is there to see her
+son, and all the other men and women I know who have sons who
+graduate there, and your mother--?" The father's voice broke
+completely, and he looked away. Even Ferdy for a moment seemed
+grave and regretful. Then after a glance at his father he recovered
+his composure.</p>
+<p>"I'm not to blame," he said surlily, "if she did. It was her
+fault."</p>
+<p>Aaron Wickersham turned on him.</p>
+<p>"Stop," he said in a quiet voice. "Not another word. One other
+word, and, by God! I'll box your head off your shoulders. Say what
+you please about me, but not one word against her. I will take you
+from college and put you to sweeping the floor of this office at
+twenty dollars a month, and make you live on your salary, too, or
+starve, if you say one other word."</p>
+<p>Ferdy's face blanched at the implacable anger that blazed in his
+father's eyes, but even more at the coldness of the gleam. It made
+him shiver.</p>
+<p>A little later young Wickersham entered his father's office, and
+though he was not much liked by the older clerks, it soon appeared
+that he had found a congenial occupation and one for which he had a
+natural gift. For the first time in his life he appeared inclined
+to work.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<h3>THE RIDGE COLLEGE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The school over which Gordon had undertaken to preside was not a
+very advanced seminary of learning, and possibly the young teacher
+did not impart to his pupils a great deal of erudition.</p>
+<p>His predecessors in the schoolmaster's chair had been, like
+their patrons, the product of a system hardly less conservative
+than that of the Locrians. Any one who proposed an innovation would
+have done so with a rope about his neck, and woe to him if it
+proved unsuccessful.</p>
+<p>When Gordon reported first to the squire, the old man was
+manifestly pleased.</p>
+<p>"Why, you've growed considerable. I didn't have no idea you'd be
+so big a man." He measured him with satisfaction. "You must be nigh
+as big as your pa."</p>
+<p>"I'm broader across the shoulders, but not so tall," said the
+young man.</p>
+<p>"He is a pretty tall man," said the squire, slowly, with the
+light of reflection in his eye. "You're a-goin' to try the Ridge
+College, are you?" He had a quizzical twinkle in his eye as it
+rested on the younger man's face.</p>
+<p>"I'm going to try it." And Gordon's face lit up. "I don't know
+much, but I'll do the best I can."</p>
+<p>His modesty pleased the other.</p>
+<p>"You know more than Jake Dennison, I reckon, except about
+devilment. I was afred you mightn't be quite up to the place here;
+you was rather young when I seen you last." He measured him as he
+might have done a young bullock.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I fancy I shall be," interrupted the young man, flushing at
+the suggestion.</p>
+<p>"You've got to learn them Dennison boys, and them Dennison boys
+is pretty hard to learn anything. You will need all the grit you've
+got."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'll teach them," asserted Gordon, confidently. The old
+man's eye rested on him.</p>
+<p>"'Tain't <i>teachin'</i> I'm a-talkin' about. It's
+<i>learnin'</i> I'm tellin' you they need. You've got to learn 'em
+a good deal, or they'll learn you. Them Dennison boys is pretty
+slow at learnin'."</p>
+<p>The young man intimated that he thought he was equal to it.</p>
+<p>"Well, we'll see," grunted the old fellow, with something very
+like a twinkle in his deep eyes. "Not as they'll do you any harm
+without you undertake to interfere with them," he drawled. "But
+you're pretty young to manage 'em jest so; you ain't quite big
+enough either, and you're too big to git in through the cat-hole.
+And I allow that you don't stand no particular show after the first
+week or so of gittin' into the house any other way."</p>
+<p>"I'll get in, though, and I won't go in through the cat-hole
+either. I'll promise you that, if you'll sustain me."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I'll sustain you," drawled the squire. "I'll sustain you in
+anything you do, except to pizon 'em with <i>slow</i> pizon, and I
+ain't altogether sure that wouldn' be jest manslaughter."</p>
+<p>"All right." Keith's eyes snapped, and presently, as the outer
+man's gaze rested on him, his snapped also.</p>
+<p>So the compact was struck, and the trustee went on to give
+further information.</p>
+<p>"Your hours will be as usual," said he: "from seven to two and
+fo' to six in summer, and half-past seven to two and three to five
+in winter, and you'll find all the books necessary in the
+book-chist. We had to have 'em locked up to keep 'em away from the
+rats and the dirt-daubers. Some of 'em's right smartly de-faced,
+but I reckon you'll git on with 'em all right."</p>
+<p>"Well, those are pretty long hours," said Gordon. "Seems to me
+they had better be shortened. I shall--"</p>
+<p>"Them's the usual hours," interrupted the old man, positively.
+"I've been trustee now for goin' on twenty-six year, an' th'ain't
+never been any change in 'em. An' I ain't see as they've ever been
+too long--leastways, I never see as the scholars ever learned too
+much in 'em. They ain't no longer than a man has to work in the
+field, and the work's easier."</p>
+<p>Gordon looked at the old man keenly. It was his first battle,
+and it had come on at once, as his father had warned him. The
+struggle was bitter, if brief, but he conquered--conquered himself.
+The old countryman's face had hardened.</p>
+<p>"If you want to give satisfaction you'd better try to learn them
+scholars an' not the trustees," he said dryly. "The Dennison boys
+is hard, but we're harder."</p>
+<p>Gordon looked at him quickly. His eyes were resting on him, and
+had a little twinkle in them.</p>
+<p>"We're a little like the old fellow 'at told the young preacher
+'at he'd better stick to abusin' the sins of Esau and Jacob and
+David and Peter, an' let the sins o' that congregation alone."</p>
+<p>"I'll try and give you satisfaction," said Keith.</p>
+<p>The squire appeared pleased. His face relaxed and his tone
+changed.</p>
+<p>"<i>You</i> won't have no trouble," he said good-humoredly. "Not
+if you're like your father. I told 'em you was his son, an' I'd be
+responsible for you."</p>
+<p>Gordon Keith looked at him with softened eyes. A mention of his
+father always went to his heart.</p>
+<p>"I'll try and give you satisfaction," he said earnestly. "Will
+you do me a favor?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Will you come over to the examination of the school when it
+opens, and then let me try the experiment of running it my way for,
+say, two months, and then come to another examination? Then if I do
+not satisfy you I'll do anything you say; I'll go back to the old
+way."</p>
+<p>"Done," said the trustee, cordially. And so, Gordon Keith won
+another victory, and started the school under favorable
+auspices.</p>
+<p>Adam Rawson asked him to come and live at his house. "You might
+give Phrony a few extra lessons to fit her for a bo'din'-school,"
+he said. "I want her to have the best edvantages."</p>
+<p>Keith soon ingratiated himself further with the old squire. He
+broke his young horses for him, drove his wagon, mended his
+vehicles, and was ready to turn his hand to anything that came up
+about the place.</p>
+<p>As his confidence in the young man grew, the squire let Keith
+into a secret.</p>
+<p>"You mind when you come up here with that young man from the
+North,--that engineer fellow,--what come a-runnin' of a railroad
+a-hellbulgin' through this country, and was a-goin' to carry off
+all the coal from the top of the Alleghanies spang down to
+Torment?" Keith remembered. "Well, he was right persuasive,"
+continued the squire, "and I thought if all that money was a-goin'
+to be made and them railroads had to come, like he said, jest as
+certain as water runnin' down a hill, I might as well git some of
+it. I had a little slipe or two up there before, and havin' a
+little money from my cattle, lumber, and sich, I went in and bought
+a few slipes more, jest to kind of fill in like, and Phrony's
+growin' up, and I'm a-thinkin' it is about time to let the
+railroads come in; so, if you kin git your young man, let him know
+I've kind o' changed my mind."</p>
+<p>Miss Euphronia Tripper had grown up into a plump and pretty
+country girl of fifteen or sixteen, whose rosy cheeks, flaxen hair,
+and blue eyes, as well as the fact that she was the only heiress of
+the old squire, who was one of the "best-fixed" men in all that
+"country," made her quite the belle of the region. She had already
+made a deep impression on both big Jake Dennison and his younger
+brother Dave. Dave was secretly in love with her, but Jake was
+openly so, a condition which he manifested by being as plainly and
+as hopelessly bound in her presence as a bear cub tangled in a net.
+For her benefit he would show feats of strength which might have
+done credit to a boy-Hercules; but let her turn on him the glow of
+her countenance, and he was a hopeless mass of perspiring
+idiocy.</p>
+<p>Keith found her a somewhat difficult pupil to deal with. She was
+much more intent on making an impression on him than on progressing
+in her studies.</p>
+<p>After the first shyness of her intercourse with the young
+teacher had worn off, she began for a while rather to make eyes at
+him, which if Keith ever dreamed of, he never gave the least sign
+of it. She, therefore, soon abandoned the useless campaign, and for
+a time held him in mingled awe and disdain.</p>
+<p>The Ridge College was a simple log-building of a single room,
+with a small porch in front, built of hewn logs and plastered
+inside.</p>
+<p>Gordon Keith, on entering on his new duties, found his position
+much easier than he had been led to expect.</p>
+<p>Whether it was the novelty of the young teacher's quiet manner,
+clear eyes, broad shoulders, and assured bearing, or the idea of
+the examination with which he undertook to begin the session, he
+had a week of surprising quiet. The school filled day after day,
+and even the noted Dennison boys, from Jacob Dennison, the
+strapping six-foot senior, down to Dave, who was the youngest and
+smartest of the three, appeared duly every morning, and treated the
+young teacher with reasonable civility, if with somewhat insolent
+familiarity.</p>
+<p>The day of the examination Squire Rawson attended, solemn and
+pompous with a superfluity of white shirt-front. Brief as was the
+examination, it revealed to Keith an astonishing state of ignorance
+of the simplest things. It was incredible to him that, with so many
+hours of so-called study, so little progress had been made. He
+stated this in plain language, and outlined his plan for shorter
+hours and closer application. A voice from the boys' side muttered
+that the owner did not see anything the matter with the old hours.
+They were good enough for them. Keith turned quickly:</p>
+<p>"What is that?"</p>
+<p>There was no answer.</p>
+<p>"What is that, Dennison?" he demanded. "I thought I heard you
+speak."</p>
+<p>"Wall, if you did, I warn't speakin' to you," said Jacob
+Dennison, surlily.</p>
+<p>"Well, when you speak in school, address yourself to me," said
+Keith. He caught Euphronia Tripper's eyes on him.</p>
+<p>"I mought an' I moughtn't," said Jacob, insolently.</p>
+<p>"I propose to see that you do."</p>
+<p>Jacob's reply was something between a grunt and a sneer, and the
+school rustled with a sound very much like applause.</p>
+<p>Next morning, on his arrival at school, Keith found the door
+fastened on the inside. A titter from within revealed the fact that
+it was no accident, and the guffaw of derision that greeted his
+sharp command that the door should be opened immediately showed
+that the Dennison boys were up to their old tricks.</p>
+<p>"Open the door, Jake Dennison, instantly!" he called.</p>
+<p>The reply was sung through the keyhole:</p>
+<p>"'Ole Molly hyah, what you doin' dyah? Settin' in de cordner,
+smokin' a ciggyah.'"</p>
+<p>It was little Dave's voice, and was followed by a puff of
+tobacco smoke through the keyhole and a burst of laughter led by
+Phrony Tripper.</p>
+<p>An axe was lying at the woodpile near by, and in two minutes the
+door was lying in splinters on the school-house floor, and Keith,
+with a white face and a dangerous tremble in his voice, was calling
+the amazed school to order. He heard the lessons through, and at
+noon, the hour he had named the day before, dismissed all the
+younger scholars. The Dennisons and one or two larger boys he
+ordered to remain. As the scholars filed out, there was a colloquy
+between Jacob Dennison and his younger brother Dave. Dave had the
+brains of the family, and he was whispering to Jake. Keith moved
+his chair and seated himself near the door. There was a brief
+muttered conversation among the Dennisons, and then Jake Dennison
+rose, put on his hat slowly, and, addressing the other boys,
+announced that he didn't know what they were going to do, but he
+was "a-gwine home and git ready to go and see the dance up at
+Gates's."</p>
+<p>He swaggered toward the door, the others following in his
+wake.</p>
+<p>Keith rose from his seat.</p>
+<p>"Go back to your places." He spoke so quietly that his voice
+could scarcely be heard.</p>
+<p>"Go nowhere! You go to h--l!" sneered the big leader,
+contemptuously. "'Tain't no use for you to try to stop me--I kin
+git away with two like you."</p>
+<p>Perhaps, he could have done so, but Keith was too quick for him.
+He seized the split-bottomed chair from which he had risen, and
+whirling it high above his head, brought it crashing down on his
+assailant, laying him flat on the floor. Then, without a second's
+hesitation, he sprang toward the others.</p>
+<p>"Into your seats instantly!" he shouted, as he raised once more
+the damaged, but still formidable, weapon. By an instinct the
+mutineers fell into the nearest seats, and Keith turned back to his
+first opponent, who was just rising from the floor with a dazed
+look on his face. A few drops of blood were trickling down his
+forehead.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="p068.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/p068.jpg"><img src="images/p068.jpg"
+width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"If you don't go back to your seat, I'll dash your brains out,"
+said Keith.</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"If you don't go to your seat instantly, I'll dash your brains
+out," said Keith, looking him full in the eye. He still grasped the
+chair, and as he tightened his grip on it, the crestfallen bully
+sank down on the bench and broke into a whimper about a grown man
+hitting a boy with a chair.</p>
+<p>Suddenly Keith, in the moment of victory, found himself attacked
+in the rear. One of the smaller boys, who had gone out with the
+rest, hearing the fight, had rushed back, and, just as Keith drove
+Jake Dennison to his seat, sprang on him like a little wild-cat.
+Turning, Keith seized and held him.</p>
+<p>"What are you doing, Dave Dennison, confound you?" he demanded
+angrily.</p>
+<p>"I'm one of 'em," blubbered the boy, trying to reach him with
+both fist and foot. "I don't let nobody hit my brother."</p>
+<p>Keith found that he had more trouble in quelling Dave, the
+smallest member of the Dennison tribe, than in conquering the
+bigger brothers.</p>
+<p>"Sit down and behave yourself," he said, shoving him into a seat
+and holding him there. "I'm not going to hit him again if he
+behaves himself."</p>
+<p>Keith, having quieted Dave, looked to see that Jake was not much
+hurt. He took out his handkerchief.</p>
+<p>"Take that and wipe your face with it," he said quietly, and
+taking from his desk his inkstand and some writing-paper, he seated
+himself on a bench near the door and began to write letters. It
+grew late, but the young teacher did not move. He wrote letter
+after letter. It began to grow dark; he simply lit the little lamp
+on his desk, and taking up a book, settled down to read; and when
+at last he rose and announced that the culprits might go home, the
+wheezy strains of the three instruments that composed the band at
+Gates's had long since died out, and Gordon Keith was undisputed
+master of Ridge College.</p>
+<p>His letter to the trustees was delivered that morning, saying
+that if they would sustain his action he would do his best to make
+the school the best in that section; but if not, his resignation
+was in their hands.</p>
+<p>"I guess he is the sort of medicine those youngsters need," said
+Dr. Balsam. "We'd better let it work."</p>
+<p>"I reckon he can ride 'em," said Squire Rawson.</p>
+<p>It was voted to sustain him.</p>
+<p>The fact that a smooth-faced boy, not as heavy as Jake Dennison
+by twenty pounds, had "faced down" and quelled the Dennisons all
+three together, and kept Jake Dennison from going where he wanted
+to go, struck the humor of the trustees, and they stood by their
+teacher almost unanimously, and even voted to pay for a new door,
+which he had offered to pay for himself, as he said he might have
+to chop it down again. Not that there was not some hostility to him
+among those to whom his methods were too novel; but when he began
+to teach his pupils boxing, and showed that with his fists he was
+more than a match for Jake Dennison, the chief opposition to him
+died out; and before the year ended, Jake Dennison, putting into
+practice the art he had learned from his teacher, had thrashed Mr.
+William Bluffy, the cock of another walk high up across the Ridge,
+for ridiculing the "newfangled foolishness" of Ridge College, and
+speaking of its teacher as a "dom-fool furriner." Little Dave
+Dennison, of all those opposed to him, alone held out. He appeared
+to be proof against Keith's utmost efforts to be friends.</p>
+<p>One day, however, Dave Dennison did not come to school. Keith
+learned that he had fallen from a tree and broken his leg--"gettin'
+hawks' eggs for Phrony," Keith's informant reported. Phrony was
+quite scornful about it, but a little perky as well.</p>
+<p>"If a boy was such a fool as to go up a tree when he had been
+told it wouldn't hold him, she could not help it. She did not want
+the eggs, anyhow," she said disdainfully. This was all the reward
+that little Dave got for his devotion and courage.</p>
+<p>That afternoon Keith went over the Ridge to see Dave.</p>
+<p>The Dennison home was a small farm-house back of the Ridge, in
+what was known as a "cove," an opening in the angle between the
+mountains, where was a piece of level or partly level ground on the
+banks of one of the little mountain creeks. When Keith arrived he
+found Mrs. Dennison, a small, angular woman with sharp eyes, a thin
+nose, and thin lips, very stiff and suspicious. She had never
+forgiven Keith for his victory over her boys, and she looked now as
+if she would gladly have set the dogs on him instead of calling
+them off as she did when he strode up the path and the yelping pack
+dashed out at him.</p>
+<p>She "didn' know how Dave was," she said glumly. "The Doctor said
+he was better. She couldn' see no change. Yes, he could go in, she
+s'posed, if he wanted to," she said ungraciously.</p>
+<p>Keith entered. The boy was lying on a big bed, his head resting
+against the frame of the little opening which went for a window,
+through which he was peeping wistfully out at the outside world
+from which he was to be shut off for so many weary weeks. He
+returned Keith's greeting in the half-surly way in which he had
+always received his advances since the day of the row; but when
+Keith sat down on the bed and began to talk to him cheerily of his
+daring in climbing where no one else had ventured to go, he thawed
+out, and presently, when Keith drifted on to other stories of
+daring, he began to be interested, and after a time grew almost
+friendly.</p>
+<p>He was afraid they might have to cut his leg off. His mother,
+who always took a gloomy view of things, had scared him by telling
+him she thought it might have to be done; but Keith was able to
+reassure him. The Doctor had told him that, while the fracture was
+very bad, the leg would be saved.</p>
+<p>"If he had not been as hard as a lightwood knot, that fall would
+have mashed him up," said the Doctor. This compliment Keith
+repeated, and it evidently pleased Dave. The pale face relaxed into
+a smile. Keith told him stories of other boys who had had similar
+accidents and had turned them to good account--of Arkwright and Sir
+William Jones and Commodore Maury, all of whom had laid the
+foundation for their future fame when they were in bed with broken
+legs.</p>
+<p>When Keith came away he left the boy comforted and cheered, and
+even the dismal woman at the door gave him a more civil parting
+than her greeting had been.</p>
+<p>Many an afternoon during the boy's convalescence Keith went over
+the Ridge to see him, taking him story-books, and reading to him
+until he was strong enough to read himself. And when, weeks later,
+the lame boy was able to return to school, Keith had no firmer
+friend in all the Ridge region than Dave Dennison, and Dave had
+made a mental progress which, perhaps, he would not have made in as
+many months at school, for he had received an impulse to know and
+to be something more than he was. He would show Phrony who he
+was.</p>
+<p>It was fine to Gordon to feel that he was earning his own
+living. He was already making his way in the world, and often from
+this first rung of the ladder the young teacher looked far up the
+shining steep to where Fame and Glory beckoned with their radiant
+hands. He would be known. He would build bridges that should
+eclipse Stevenson's. He would be like Warren Hastings, and buy back
+the home of his fathers and be a great gentleman.</p>
+<p>The first pay that he received made him a capitalist. He had no
+idea before of the joy of wealth. He paid it to old Rawson.</p>
+<p>"There is the first return for your investment," he said.</p>
+<p>"I don' know about its bein' the first return," said the squire,
+slowly; "but an investment ain't done till it's all returned." His
+keen eyes were on Keith's face.</p>
+<p>"I know it," said Keith, laughing.</p>
+<p>But for Dr. Balsam, Keith sometimes thought that he must have
+died that first winter, and, in fact, the young man did owe a great
+deal to the tall, slab-sided man, whose clothes hung on him so
+loosely that he appeared in the distance hardly more than a rack to
+support them. As he came nearer he was a simple old countryman with
+a deeply graved face and unkempt air. On nearer view still, you
+found the deep gray eyes both shrewd and kindly; the mouth under
+its gray moustache had fine lines, and at times a lurking smile,
+which yet had in it something grave.</p>
+<p>To Dr. Balsam, Keith owed a great deal more than he himself knew
+at the time. For it is only by looking back that Youth can gauge
+the steps by which it has climbed.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<h3>ALICE YORKE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It is said that in Brazil a small stream which rises under a
+bank in a gentleman's garden, after flowing a little distance,
+encounters a rock and divides into two branches, one of which flows
+northward and empties into the Amazon, whilst the other, turning to
+the southward, pours its waters into the Rio del Plata. A very
+small obstruction caused the divergence and determined the course
+of those two streams. So it is in life.</p>
+<p>One afternoon in the early Spring, Gordon Keith was walking home
+from school, his books under his arm, when, so to speak, he came on
+the stone that turned him from his smooth channel and shaped his
+course in life.</p>
+<p>He was going to break a colt for Squire Rawson that afternoon,
+so he was hurrying; but ever as he strode along down the winding
+road, the witchery of the tender green leaves and the odors of
+Spring filled eyes and nostrils, and called to his spirit with that
+subtle voice which has stirred Youth since Youth's own Spring awoke
+amid the leafy trees. In its call were freedom, and the charm of
+wide spaces, and the unspoken challenge of Youth to the world, and
+haunting vague memories, and whisperings of unuttered love, and all
+that makes Youth Youth.</p>
+<p>Presently Gordon became aware that a little ahead of him, under
+the arching boughs, were two children who were hunting for
+something in the road, and one of them was crying. At the same
+moment there turned the curve beyond them, coming toward him, a
+girl on horseback. He watched her with growing interest as she
+galloped toward him, for he saw that she was young and a stranger.
+Probably she was from "the Springs," as she was riding one of
+Gates's horses and was riding him hard.</p>
+<p>The rider drew in her horse and stopped as she came up to the
+children. Keith heard her ask what was the matter with the little
+one, and the older child's reply that she was crying because she
+had lost her money. "She was goin' to buy candy with it at the
+store, but dropped it."</p>
+<p>The girl sprang from her horse.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you poor little thing! Come here, you dear little kitten.
+I'll give you some money. Won't you hold my horse? He won't hurt
+you." This to the elder child.</p>
+<p>She threw herself on her knees in the road, as regardless of the
+dust as were the children, and drawing the sobbing child close to
+her, took her handkerchief from her pocket and gently wiped its
+little, dirty, smeared face, and began comforting it in soothing
+tones. Keith had come up and stood watching her with quickening
+breath. All he could see under her hat was an oval chin and the
+dainty curve of a pink cheek where it faded into snow, and at the
+back of a small head a knot of brown hair resting on the nape of a
+shapely neck. For the rest, she had a trim figure and wore new
+gloves which fitted perfectly. Keith mentally decided that she must
+be about sixteen or seventeen years old, and, from the glimpse he
+had caught of her, must be pretty. He became conscious suddenly
+that he had on his worst suit of clothes.</p>
+<p>"Good evening," he said, raising his hand to his hat.</p>
+<p>The girl glanced up just as the hat was lifted.</p>
+<p>"How do you do?"</p>
+<p>Their eyes met, and the color surged into Keith's face, and the
+hat came off with quite a flourish.</p>
+<p>Why, she was beautiful! Her eyes were as blue as wet
+violets.</p>
+<p>"I will help you hunt for it," he said half guilefully, half
+kindly. "Where did she drop it?" He did not take his eyes from the
+picture of the slim figure on her knees.</p>
+<p>"She has lost her money, poor little dear! She was on her way to
+the store to buy candy, and lost all her money."</p>
+<p>At this fresh recital of her loss, the little, smeared face
+began to pucker again. But the girl cleared it with a kiss.</p>
+<p>"There, don't cry. I will give you some. How much was it? A
+nickel! A whole nickel!" This with the sweetest smile. "Well, you
+shall have a quarter, and that's four nickels--I mean five."</p>
+<p>"She is not strong on arithmetic," said Keith to himself. "She
+is like Phrony in that."</p>
+<p>She began to feel about her skirt, and her face changed.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I haven't a cent. I have left my purse at the hotel." This
+was to Keith.</p>
+<p>"Let me give it to her." And he also began to feel in his
+pocket, but as he did so his countenance fell. He, too, had not a
+cent.</p>
+<p>"I have left my purse at home, too," he said. "We shall have to
+do like the woman in the Bible, and sweep diligently till we find
+the money she lost."</p>
+<p>"We are a pauper lot," said Alice Yorke, with a little laugh.
+Then, as she glanced into the child's big eyes that were beginning
+to be troubled again, she paused. The next second she drew a small
+bracelet from her wrist, and began to pull at a small gold charm.
+"Here, you shall have this; this is gold."</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't do that," said Keith. "She wouldn't appreciate it,
+and it is a pity to spoil your bracelet."</p>
+<p>She glanced up at him with a little flash in her blue eyes, as a
+vigorous twist broke the little gold piece from its chain.</p>
+<p>"She shall have it. There, see how she is smiling. I have
+enjoyed it, and I am glad to have you have it. Now, you can get
+your candy. Now, kiss me."</p>
+<p>Somehow, the phrase and the tone brought back to Keith a
+hill-top overlooking an English village, and a blue lake below, set
+like a mirror among the green hills. A little girl in white, with
+brown eyes, was handing a doll to another child even more grimy
+than this one. The reminiscence came to him like a picture thrown
+by a magic lantern.</p>
+<p>The child, without taking her eyes from the tiny bit of metal,
+put up her little mouth, and the girl kissed her, only to have the
+kiss wiped off with the chubby, dirty little hand.</p>
+<p>The next moment the two little ones started down the road, their
+heads close together over the bit of yellow gold. Then it was that
+Alice Yorke for the first time took a real look at Keith,--a look
+provoked by the casual glance she had had of him but a moment
+before,--and as she did so the color stole up into her cheeks, as
+she thought of the way in which she had just addressed him. But for
+his plain clothes he looked quite a gentleman. He had a really good
+figure; straight, broad shoulders, and fine eyes.</p>
+<p>"Can you tell me what time it is?" she asked, falteringly. "I
+left my watch at the hotel."</p>
+<p>"I haven't a watch; but I think it must be about four
+o'clock--it was half-past three when I left school, by the school
+clock; I am not sure it was just right."</p>
+<p>"Thank you." She looked at her horse. "I must get back to the
+hotel. Can you--?"</p>
+<p>Keith forestalled her.</p>
+<p>"May I help you up?'</p>
+<p>"Thanks. Do you know how to mount me?"</p>
+<p>"I think so," he said airily, and stepped up close to her, to
+lift her by the elbows to her saddle. She put out a foot clad in a
+very pretty, neat shoe. She evidently expected Keith to let her
+step into his hand. He knew of this mode of helping a lady up, but
+he had never tried it. And, though he stooped and held his hand as
+if quite accustomed to it, he was awkward about it, and did not
+lift her; so she did not get up.</p>
+<p>"I don't think you can do it that way," said the girl.</p>
+<p>"I don't think so either," said Keith. "I must learn it. But I
+know how to do it this way." He caught her by both elbows. "Now
+jump!"</p>
+<p>Taken by surprise she gave a little spring, and he lifted her
+like a feather, and seated her in her saddle.</p>
+<p>As she rode away, he stood aside and lifted his hat with an air
+that surprised her. Also, as she rode away, he remarked that she
+sat her horse very well and had a very straight, slim figure; but
+the picture of her kneeling in the dust, with her arm around the
+little sobbing child, was what he dwelt on.</p>
+<p>Just as she disappeared, a redbird in its gorgeous uniform
+flitted dipping across the road, and, taking his place in a bush,
+began to sing imperiously for his mate.</p>
+<p>"Ah, you lucky rascal," thought Keith, "you don't get caught by
+a pretty girl, in a ragged coat. You have your best clothes on
+every day."</p>
+<p>Next second, as the bird's rich notes rang out, a deeper feeling
+came to him, and a wave of dissatisfaction with his life swept over
+him. He suddenly seemed lonelier than he had been. Then the picture
+of the girl on her knees came back to him, and his heart softened
+toward her. He determined to see her again. Perhaps, Dr. Balsam
+knew her?</p>
+<p>As the young girl rode back to the hotel she had her reward in a
+pleasant sensation. She had done a good deed in helping to console
+a little child, and no kindness ever goes without this reward.
+Besides, she had met a young, strange man, a country boy, it was
+true, and very plainly dressed, but with the manner and tone of a
+gentleman, quite good-looking, and very strong. Strength, mere
+physical strength, appeals to all girls at certain ages, and Miss
+Alice Yorke's thoughts quite softened toward the stranger. Why, he
+as good as picked her up! He must be as strong as Norman Wentworth,
+who stroked his crew. She recalled with approval his good
+shoulders.</p>
+<p>She would ask the old Doctor who he was. He was a pleasant old
+man, and though her mother and Mrs. Nailor, another New York lady,
+did not like the idea of his being the only doctor at the Springs,
+he had been very nice to her. He had seen her sitting on the ground
+the day before and had given her his buggy-robe to sit on, saying,
+with a smile, "You must not sit on the wet ground, or you may fall
+into my hands."</p>
+<p>"I might do worse," she had said. And he had looked at her with
+his deep eyes twinkling.</p>
+<p>"Ah, you young minx! When do you begin flattering? And at what
+age do you let men off?"</p>
+<p>When Miss Alice Yorke arrived at the hotel she found her mother
+and Mrs. Nailor engaged in an animated conversation on the
+porch.</p>
+<p>The girl told of the little child she had found crying in the
+road, and gave a humorous account of the young countryman trying to
+put her on her horse.</p>
+<p>"He was very good-looking, too," she declared gayly. "I think he
+must be studying for the ministry, like Mr. Rimmon, for he quoted
+the Bible."</p>
+<p>Both Mrs. Yorke and Mrs. Nailor thought it rather improper for
+her to be riding alone on the public roads.</p>
+<p>The next day Keith put on his best suit of clothes when he went
+to school, and that afternoon he walked home around the Ridge, as
+he had done the day before, thinking that possibly he might meet
+the girl again, but he was disappointed. The following afternoon he
+determined to go over to the Springs and see if she was still there
+and find out who she was. Accordingly, he left the main road, which
+ran around the base of the Ridge, and took a foot-path which led
+winding up through the woods over the Ridge. It was a path that
+Gordon often chose when he wanted to be alone. The way was steep
+and rocky, and was so little used that often he never met any one
+from the time he plunged into the woods until he emerged from them
+on the other side of the Ridge. In some places the pines were so
+thick that it was always twilight among them; in others they rose
+high and stately in the full majesty of primeval growth, keeping at
+a distance from each other, as though, like another growth, the
+higher they got the more distant they wished to hold all others.
+Trees have so much in common with men, it is no wonder that the
+ancients, who lived closer to both than we do nowadays, fabled that
+minds of men sometimes inhabited their trunks.</p>
+<p>Gordon Keith was in a particularly gloomy frame of mind on this
+day. He had been trying to inspire in his pupils some conception of
+the poetry contained in history. He told them the story of
+Hannibal--his aim, his struggles, his conquest. As he told it the
+written record took life, and he marched and fought and lived with
+the great Carthaginian captain--lived for conquest.</p>
+<p>"Beyond the Alps lies Italy." He had read the tale with lips
+that quivered with feeling, but as he looked up at his little
+audience, he met only listless eyes and dull faces. A big boy was
+preparing a pin to evoke from a smaller neighbor the attention he
+himself was withholding. The neighbor was Dave Dennison. Dave was
+of late actually trying to learn something. Dave was the only boy
+who was listening. A little girl with a lisp was trying in vain to
+divide her attention between the story and an imprisoned fly the
+boy next her was torturing, whilst Phrony was reading a novel on
+the sly. The others were all engaged in any other occupation than
+thinking of Hannibal or listening to the reader.</p>
+<p>Gordon had shut the book in a fit of disappointment and disgust
+and dismissed the school, and now he was trying with very poor
+success to justify himself for his outbreak of impatience. His
+failure spoiled the pleasure he had anticipated in going to the
+Springs to find out who the Madonna of the Dust was.</p>
+<p>At a spot high up on the rocky backbone, one could see for a
+long way between the great brownish-gray trunks, and Gordon turned
+out of the dim path to walk on the thick brown carpet of
+pine-needles. It was a favorite spot with Gordon, and here he read
+Keats and Poe and other poets of melancholy, so dear to a young
+man's heart.</p>
+<p>Beyond the pines at their eastern edge, a great crag jutted
+forth in a sort of shoulder, a vast flying-buttress that supported
+the pine-clad Ridge above--a mighty stone Atlas carrying the hills
+on its shoulder. From this rock one looked out eastward over the
+rolling country below to where, far beyond sloping hills covered
+with forest, it merged into a soft blue that faded away into the
+sky itself. In that misty space lay everything that Gordon Keith
+had known and loved in the past. Off there to the eastward was his
+old home, with its wide fields, its deep memories. There his
+forefathers had lived for generations and had been the leaders,
+making their name always the same with that of gentleman.</p>
+<p>Farther away, beyond that dim line lay the great world, the
+world of which he had had as a boy a single glimpse and which he
+would yet conquer.</p>
+<p>Keith had climbed to the crest of the Ridge and was making his
+way through the great pines to the point where the crag jutted out
+sheer and massive, overlooking the reaches of rolling country
+below, when he lifted his eyes, and just above him, half seated,
+half reclining against a ledge of rock, was the very girl he had
+seen two days before. Her eyes were closed, and her face was so
+white that the thought sprang into Keith's mind that she was dead,
+and his heart leaped into his throat. At the distance of a few
+yards he stopped and scanned her closely. She had on a
+riding-habit; her hat had fallen on her neck; her dark hair,
+loosened, lay about her throat, increasing the deep pallor of her
+face. Keith's pity changed into sorrow. Suddenly, as he leaned
+forward, his heart filled with a vague grief, she opened her
+eyes--as blue as he remembered them, but now misty and dull. She
+did not stir or speak, but gazed at him fixedly for a little space,
+and then the eyes closed again wearily, her head dropped over to
+the side, and she began to sink down.</p>
+<p>Gordon sprang forward to keep her from rolling down the bank. As
+he gently caught and eased her down on the soft carpeting of
+pine-needles, he observed how delicate her features were; the blue
+veins showed clearly on her temples and the side of her throat, and
+her face had that refinement that unconsciousness often gives.</p>
+<p>Gordon knew that the best thing to do was to lower her head and
+unfasten her collar. As he loosened the collar, the whiteness of
+her throat struck him almost dazzlingly. Instinctively he took the
+little crumpled handkerchief that lay on the pine carpet beside
+her, and spread it over her throat reverently. He lifted her limp
+hand gently and felt her little wrist for her pulse.</p>
+<p>Just then her eyelids quivered; her lips moved slightly,
+stopped, moved again with a faint sigh; and then her eyelids opened
+slowly, and again those blue eyes gazed up at him with a vague
+inquiry.</p>
+<p>The next second she appeared to recover consciousness. She drew
+a long, deep breath, as though she were returning from some unknown
+deep, and a faint little color flickered in her cheek.</p>
+<p>"Oh, it's you?" she said, recognizing him. "How do you do? I
+think I must have hurt myself when I fell. I tried to ride my horse
+down the bank, and he slipped and fell with me, and I do not
+remember much after that. He must have run away. I tried to walk,
+but--but I am better now. Could you catch my horse for me?"</p>
+<p>Keith rose and, followed the horse's track for some distance
+along the little path. When he returned, the girl was still seated
+against the rock.</p>
+<p>"Did you see him?" she asked languidly, sitting up.</p>
+<p>"I am afraid that he has gone home. He was galloping. I could
+tell from his tracks."</p>
+<p>"I think I can walk. I must."</p>
+<p>She tried to rise, but, with the pain caused by the effort, the
+blood sprang to her cheek for a second and then fled back to her
+heart, and she sank back, her teeth catching her lip sharply to
+keep down an expression of anguish.</p>
+<p>"I must get back. If my horse should reach, the hotel without
+me, my mother will be dreadfully alarmed. I promised her to be back
+by--"</p>
+<p>Gordon did not hear what the hour was, for she turned away her
+face and began to cry quietly. She tried to brush the tears away
+with her fingers; but one or two slipped past and dropped on her
+dress. With face still averted, she began to feel about her dress
+for her handkerchief; but being unable to find it, she gave it
+up.</p>
+<p>There was something about her crying so quietly that touched the
+young man very curiously. She seemed suddenly much younger, quite
+like a little girl, and he felt like kissing her to comfort her. He
+did the next thing.</p>
+<p>"Don't cry," he said gently. "Here, take mine." He pressed his
+handkerchief on her. He blessed Heaven that it was uncrumpled.</p>
+<p>Now there is something about one's lending another a
+handkerchief that goes far toward breaking down the barriers of
+conventionality and bridges years. Keith in a moment had come to
+feel a friendliness for the girl that he might not have felt in
+years, and he began to soothe her.</p>
+<p>"I don't know what is the matter--with me," she said, as she
+dried her eyes. "I am not--usually so--weak and foolish. I was only
+afraid my mother would think something had happened to me--and she
+has not been very well." She made a brave effort to command
+herself, and sat up very straight. "There. Thank you very much."
+She handed him his handkerchief almost grimly. "Now I am all right.
+But I am afraid I cannot walk. I tried, but--. You will have to go
+and get me a carriage, if you please."</p>
+<p>Keith rose and began to gather up his books and stuff them in
+his pockets.</p>
+<p>"No carriage can get up here; the pines are too thick below, and
+there is no road; but I will carry you down to where a vehicle can
+come, and then get you one."</p>
+<p>She took a glance at his spare figure. "You cannot carry me, you
+are not strong enough I want you to get me a carriage or a wagon,
+please. You can go to the hotel. We are stopping at the
+Springs."</p>
+<p>By this time Gordon had forced the books into his pocket, and he
+squared himself before her.</p>
+<p>"Now," he said, without heeding her protest; and leaning down,
+he slipped his arms under her and lifted her as tenderly and as
+easily as if she had been a little girl.</p>
+<p>As he bore her along, the pain subsided, and she found
+opportunity to take a good look at his face. His profile was
+clean-cut; the mouth was pleasant and curved slightly upward, but,
+under the weight he was carrying, was so close shut as to bring out
+the chin boldly. The cheekbones were rather high; the gray eyes
+were wide open and full of light. And as he advanced, walking with
+easy strides where the path was smooth, picking his way carefully
+where it was rough, the color rose under the deep tan of his
+cheeks.</p>
+<p>She was the first to break the silence. She had been watching
+the rising color in his face, the dilation of his nostrils, and
+feeling the quickening rise and fall of his chest.</p>
+<p>"Put me down now and rest; you are tired."</p>
+<p>"I am not tired." He trudged on. He would show her that if he
+had not been able to mount her on her horse, at least it was not
+from lack of strength.</p>
+<p>"Please put me down; it pains me," she said guilefully. He
+stopped instantly, and selecting a clear place, seated her
+softly.</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon. I was a brute, thinking only of myself."</p>
+<p>He seated himself near her, and stole a glance at her face.
+Their eyes met, and he looked away. He thought her quite
+beautiful.</p>
+<p>To break the silence, she asked, a little tone of politeness
+coming into her voice: "May I inquire what your name is? I am Miss
+Yorke--Miss Alice Yorke," she added, intending to make him feel at
+ease.</p>
+<p>"Gordon Keith is my name. Where are you from?" His manner was
+again perfectly easy.</p>
+<p>"From New York."</p>
+<p>"I thought you were."</p>
+<p>She fancied that a little change came over his face and into his
+manner, and she resented it. She looked down the hill. Without a
+word he rose and started to lift her again. She made a gesture of
+dissent. But before she could object further, he had lifted her
+again, and, with steady eyes bent on the stony path, was picking
+his way down the steep hill.</p>
+<p>"I am dreadfully sorry," he said kindly, as she gave a start
+over a little twinge. "It is the only way to get down. No vehicle
+could get up here at present, unless it were some kind of a flying
+chariot like Elijah's. It is only a little farther now."</p>
+<p>What a pleasant voice he had! Every atom of pride and protection
+in his soul was enlisted.</p>
+<p>When they reached the road, the young lady wanted Gordon to go
+off and procure a vehicle at the hotel. But he said he could not
+leave her alone by the roadside; he would carry her on to a house
+only a little way around the bend.</p>
+<p>"Why, I can carry a sack of salt," he said, with boyish pride,
+standing before her very straight and looking down on her with
+frank eyes.</p>
+<p>Her eyes flashed in dudgeon over the comparison.</p>
+<p>"A girl is very different from a sack of salt."</p>
+<p>"Not always--Lot's wife, for instance. If you keep on looking
+back, you don't know what may happen to you. Come on."</p>
+<p>Just then a vehicle rapidly driven was heard in the distance,
+and the next moment it appeared in sight.</p>
+<p>"There comes mamma now," said the girl, waving to the lady in
+it.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke sprang from the carriage as soon as it drew up. She
+was a handsome woman of middle age and was richly dressed. She was
+now in a panic of motherly solicitude.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Alice, how you have frightened me!" she exclaimed. "You
+were due at the hotel two hours ago, and when your horse came
+without you! You will kill me!" She clapped her hands to her heart
+and panted. "You know my heart is weak!"</p>
+<p>Alice protested her sorrow, and Keith put in a word for her,
+declaring that she had been dreadfully troubled lest the horse
+should frighten her.</p>
+<p>"And well she might be," exclaimed Mrs. Yorke, giving him a bare
+glance and then turning back to her daughter. "Mrs. Nailor was the
+first who heard your horse had come home. She ran and told me. And,
+oh, I was so frightened! She was sure you were killed."</p>
+<p>"You might be sure she would be the first to hear and tell you,"
+said the girl. "Why, mamma, one always sprains one's knee when
+one's horse falls. That is part of the programme. This--gentleman
+happened to come along, and helped me down to the road, and we were
+just discussing whether I should go on farther when you came up.
+Mother, this is Mr. Keith."</p>
+<p>Keith bowed. He was for some reason pleased that she did not say
+anything of the way in which he had brought her down the Ridge.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke turned and thanked him with graciousness, possibly
+with a little condescension. He was conscious that she gave him a
+sweeping glance, and was sorry his shoes were so old. But Mrs.
+Yorke took no further notice of him.</p>
+<p>"Oh, what will your father say! You know he wanted us to go to
+California; but you would come South. After Mr. Wickersham told you
+of his place, nothing else would satisfy you."</p>
+<p>"Oh, papa! You know I can settle him," said the girl.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke began to lament the wretchedness of a region where
+there was no doctor of reputation.</p>
+<p>"There is a very fine surgeon in the village. Dr. Balsam is one
+of the best surgeons anywhere," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I know that old man. No doubt, he is good enough for little
+common ailments," said Mrs. Yorke, "but in a case like this! What
+does he know about surgery?" She turned back to her daughter. "I
+shall telegraph your father to send Dr. Pilbury down at once."</p>
+<p>Keith flushed at her manner.</p>
+<p>"A good many people have to trust their lives to him," he said
+coldly. "And he has had about as much surgical practice as most
+men. He was in the army."</p>
+<p>The girl began again to belittle her injury.</p>
+<p>It was nothing, absolutely nothing, she declared.</p>
+<p>"And besides," she said, "I know the Doctor. I met him the other
+day. He is a dear old man." She ended by addressing Keith.</p>
+<p>"One of the best," said Keith, warmly.</p>
+<p>"Well, we must get you into the vehicle and take you home
+immediately," said her mother. "Can you help put my daughter into
+the carriage?" Mrs. Yorke looked at the driver, a stolid colored
+man, who was surly over having had to drive his horses so hard.</p>
+<p>Before the man could answer, Gordon stepped forward, and,
+stooping, lifted the girl, and quietly put her up into the vehicle.
+She simply smiled and said, "Thank you," quite as if she were
+accustomed to being lifted into carriages by strange young men whom
+she had just met on the roadside.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke's eyes opened wide.</p>
+<p>"How strong you must be!" she exclaimed, with a woman's
+admiration for physical strength.</p>
+<p>Keith bowed, and, with a flush mounting to his cheeks, backed a
+little away.</p>
+<p>"Oh, he has often lifted sacks of salt," said the girl, half
+turning her eyes on Keith with a gleam of satisfaction in them.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke looked at her in astonishment.</p>
+<p>"Why, Alice!" she exclaimed reprovingly under her breath.</p>
+<p>"He told me so himself," asserted the girl, defiantly.</p>
+<p>"I may have to do so again," said Keith, dryly.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke's hand went toward the region of her pocket, but
+uncertainly; for she was not quite sure what he was. His face and
+air belied his shabby dress. A closer look than she had given him
+caused her to stop with a start.</p>
+<p>"Mr.--ah--?" After trying to recall the name, she gave it up. "I
+am very much obliged to you for your kindness to my daughter," she
+began. "I do not know how I can compensate you; but if you will
+come to the hotel sometime to-morrow--any time--perhaps, there is
+something--? Can you come to the hotel to-morrow?" Her tone was
+condescending.</p>
+<p>"Thank you," said Keith, quietly. "I am afraid I cannot go to
+the village to-morrow. I have already been more than compensated in
+being able to render a service to a lady. I have a school, and I
+make it a rule never to go anywhere except Friday evening or
+Saturday." He lifted his hat and backed away.</p>
+<p>As they drove away the girl said, "Thank you" and "Good-by,"
+very sweetly.</p>
+<p>"Who is he, Alice? What is he?" asked her mother.</p>
+<p>"I don't know. Mr. Keith. He is a gentleman."</p>
+<p>As Gordon stood by the roadside and saw the carriage disappear
+in a haze of dust, he was oppressed with a curious sense of
+loneliness. The isolation of his position seemed to strike him all
+on a sudden. That stout, full-voiced woman, with her rich clothes,
+had interposed between him and the rest of his kind. She had
+treated him condescendingly. He would show her some day who he was.
+But her daughter! He went off into a revery.</p>
+<p>He turned, and made his way slowly and musingly in the direction
+of his home.</p>
+<p>A new force had suddenly come into his life, a new land had
+opened before him. One young girl had effected it. His school
+suddenly became a prison. His field was the world.</p>
+<p>As he passed along, scarcely conscious of where he was, he met
+the very man of all others he would rather have met--Dr. Balsam. He
+instantly informed the Doctor of the accident, and suggested that
+he had better hurry on to the Springs.</p>
+<p>"A pretty girl, with blue eyes and brown hair?" inquired the
+Doctor.</p>
+<p>"Yes." The color stole into Gordon's cheeks.</p>
+<p>"With a silly woman for a mother, who is always talking about
+her heart and pats you on the back?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know. Yes, I think so."</p>
+<p>"I know her. Is the limb broken?" he asked with interest.</p>
+<p>"No, I do not think it is; but badly sprained. She fainted from
+the pain, I think."</p>
+<p>"You say it occurred up on the Ridge?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, near the big pines--at the summit."</p>
+<p>"Why, how did she get down? There is no road." He was gazing up
+at the pine-clad spur above them.</p>
+<p>"I helped her down." A little color flushed into his face.</p>
+<p>"Ah! You supported her? She can walk on it?"</p>
+<p>"Ur--no. I brought her down. I had to bring her. She could not
+walk--not a step."</p>
+<p>"Oh! ah! I see. I'll hurry on and see how she is."</p>
+<p>As he rode off he gave a grunt.</p>
+<p>"Humph!" It might have meant any one of several things. Perhaps,
+what it did mean was that "Youth is the same the world over, and
+here is a chance for this boy to make a fool of himself and he will
+probably do it, as I did." As the Doctor jogged on over the rocky
+road, his brow was knit in deep reflection; but his thoughts were
+far away among other pines on the Piscataqua. That boy's face had
+turned the dial back nearly forty years.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<h3>MRS. YORKE FINDS A GENTLEMAN</h3>
+<br>
+<p>When Mrs. Yorke arrived at the hotel, Dr. Balsam was nowhere to
+be found. She was just sending off a messenger to despatch a
+telegram to the nearest city for a surgeon, when she saw the Doctor
+coming up the hill toward the hotel at a rapid pace.</p>
+<p>He tied his horse, and, with his saddle-pockets over his arm,
+came striding up the walk. There was something reassuring in the
+quick, firm step with which he came toward her. She had not given
+him credit for so much energy.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke led the way toward her rooms, giving a somewhat
+highly colored description of the accident, the Doctor following
+without a word, taking off his gloves as he walked. They reached
+the door, and Mrs. Yorke flung it open with a flurry.</p>
+<p>"Here he is at last, my poor child!" she exclaimed.</p>
+<p>The sight of Alice lying on a lounge quite effaced Mrs. Yorke
+from the Doctor's mind. The next second he had taken the girl's
+hand, and holding it with a touch that would not have crumpled a
+butterfly's wings, he was taking a flitting gauge of her pulse.
+Mrs. Yorke continued to talk volubly, but the Doctor took no heed
+of her.</p>
+<p>"A little rest with fixation, madam, is all that is necessary,"
+he said quietly, at length, when he had made an examination. "But
+it must be rest, entire rest of limb and body--and mind," he added
+after a pause. "Will you ask Mrs. Gates to send me a kettle of hot
+water as soon as possible?"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke had never been so completely ignored by any
+physician. She tossed her head, but she went to get the water.</p>
+<p>"So my young man Keith found you and brought you down the
+Ridge?" said the Doctor presently to the girl.</p>
+<p>"Yes; how do you know?" she asked, her blue eyes wide open with
+surprise.</p>
+<p>"Never mind; I may tell you next time I come, if you get well
+quickly," he said smiling.</p>
+<p>"Who is he?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"He is the teacher of the school over the Ridge--what is known
+as the Ridge College," said the Doctor, with a smile.</p>
+<p>Just at this moment Mrs. Yorke bustled in.</p>
+<p>"Alice, I thought the Doctor said you were not to talk."</p>
+<p>The Doctor's face wore an amused expression.</p>
+<p>"Well, just one more question," said the girl to him. "How much
+does a sack of salt weigh?"</p>
+<p>"About two hundred pounds. To be accurate,--"</p>
+<p>"No wonder he said I was light," laughed the girl.</p>
+<p>"Who is a young man named Keith--a school-boy, who lives about
+here?" inquired Mrs. Yorke, suddenly.</p>
+<p>"The Keiths do not live about here," said the Doctor. "Gordon
+Keith, to whom you doubtless refer, is the son of General Keith,
+who lives in an adjoining county below the Ridge. His father was
+our minister during the war--"</p>
+<p>At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the
+appearance of Mrs. Gates with the desired kettle of hot water, and
+the Doctor, stopping in the midst of his sentence, devoted all of
+his attention to his patient.</p>
+<p>The confidence which he displayed and the deftness with which he
+worked impressed Mrs. Yorke so much that when he was through she
+said: "Doctor, I have been wondering how a man like you could be
+content to settle down in this mountain wilderness. I know many
+fashionable physicians in cities who could not have done for Alice
+a bit better than you have done--indeed, nothing like so well--with
+such simple appliances."</p>
+<p>Dr. Balsam's eyes rested on her gravely. "Well, madam, we could
+not all be city doctors. These few sheep in the wilderness need a
+little shepherding when they get sick. You must reflect also that
+if we all went away there would be no one to look after the city
+people when they come to our mountain wilderness; they, at least,
+need good attendance."</p>
+<p>By the time Gordon awoke next morning he had determined that he
+would see his new acquaintance again. He must see her; he would not
+allow her to go out of his life so; she should, at least, know who
+he was, and Mrs. Yorke should know, too.</p>
+<p>That afternoon, impelled by some strange motive, he took the
+path over the Ridge again. It had been a long day and a wearing
+one. He had tried Hannibal once more; but his pupils cared less for
+Hannibal than for the bumble-bees droning in the window-frame. For
+some reason the dull routine of lessons had been duller than usual.
+The scholars had never been so stupid. Again and again the face
+that he had seen rest on his arm the day before came between him
+and his page, and when the eyes opened they were as blue as
+forget-me-nots. He would rouse himself with a start and plunge back
+bravely into the mysteries of physical geography or of compound
+fractions, only to find himself, at the first quiet moment, picking
+his way through the pines with that white face resting against his
+shoulder.</p>
+<p>When school was out he declined the invitation of the boys to
+walk with them, and settled himself in his chair as though he meant
+to prepare the lessons for the next day. After a quarter of an
+hour, spent mostly in revery, he rose, put up his books, closed the
+door, and took the same path he had followed the day before. As he
+neared the spot where he had come on the girl, he almost expected
+to find her propped against the rock as he had found her the
+afternoon before. He was conscious of a distinct shock of
+loneliness that she was not there. The woods had never appeared so
+empty; the soughing of the pines had never sounded so dreary.</p>
+<p>He threw himself down on the thick brown carpet. He had not felt
+so lonely in years. What was he! And what chance did he have! He
+was alone in the wilderness. He had been priding himself on being
+the superior of those around him, and that strange woman had
+treated him with condescension, when he had strained his heart out
+to get her daughter to the road safely and without pain.</p>
+<p>His eyes rested on the level, pale line of the horizon far below
+him. Down there lay all he had ever known and loved. All was
+changed; his home belonged to an alien. He turned his face away. On
+the other side, the distant mountains lay a mighty rampart across
+the sky. He wondered if the Alps could be higher or more beautiful.
+A line he had been explaining the day before to his scholars
+recurred to him: "Beyond those mountains lies Italy."</p>
+<p>Gradually it came to him that he was duller than his scholars.
+Those who were the true leaders of men surmounted difficulties.
+Others had crossed the mountains to find the Italy of their
+ambition. Why should not he? The thought strung him up sharply, and
+before he knew it he was standing upright, his face lifted to the
+sky, his nerves tense, his pulses beating, and his breath coming
+quickly. Beyond that blue rim lay the world. He would conquer and
+achieve honors and fame, and win back his old home, and build up
+again his fortune, and do honor to his name. He seized his books,
+and, with one more look at the heights beyond, turned and strode
+swiftly along the path.</p>
+<p>It was, perhaps, fortunate that the day had been a dull one for
+both Mrs. Yorke and Alice. Alice had been confined to her lounge,
+and after the first anxiety was over Mrs. Yorke had been inclined
+to scold her for her carelessness and the fright she had given her.
+They had not agreed about a number of matters. Alice had been
+talking about her adventure until Mrs. Yorke had begun to criticise
+her rescuer as "a spindling country boy."</p>
+<p>"He was strong enough to bring me down the mountain a mile in
+his arms," declared the girl. "He said it was half a mile, but I am
+sure it was a mile."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke was shocked, and charged Alice with being susceptible
+enough to like all men.</p>
+<p>"All those who are strong and good-looking," protested
+Alice.</p>
+<p>Their little difference had now been made up, and Alice, who had
+been sitting silent, with a look of serious reflection on her face,
+said:</p>
+<p>"Mamma, why don't you invite him over to dinner?"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke gave an exclamation of surprise.</p>
+<p>"Why, Alice, we know nothing about him."</p>
+<p>But the girl was insistent.</p>
+<p>"Why, mamma, I am sure he is a gentleman. Dr. Balsam said he was
+one of the best people about here, and his father was a clergyman.
+Besides, he is very interesting. His father was in the war; I
+believe he was a general."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke pondered a moment, her pen in the air. Her thoughts
+flew to New York and her acquaintances there. Their view was her
+gauge.</p>
+<p>"Well," she said doubtfully, "perhaps, later I will; there is no
+one here whom we know except Mrs. Nailor. I have heard that the
+people are very interesting if you can get at them. I'll invite him
+first to luncheon Saturday, and see how he is."</p>
+<p>It is, doubtless, just as well that none of us has the magic
+mirror which we used to read of in our childhood, which showed what
+any one we wished to know about was doing. It would, no doubt,
+cause many perplexities from which, in our ignorance, we are
+happily free. Had Gordon Keith known the terms on which he was
+invited to take a meal in the presence of Mrs. Yorke, he would have
+been incensed. He had been fuming about her condescension ever
+since he had met her; yet he no sooner received her polite note
+than he was in the best humor possible. He brushed up his well-worn
+clothes, treated himself to a new necktie, which he had been saving
+all the session, and just at the appointed hour presented himself
+with a face so alight with expectancy, and a manner which, while
+entirely modest, was so natural and easy, that Mrs. Yorke was
+astonished. She could scarcely credit the fact that this
+bright-eyed young man, with his fine nose, firm chin, and melodious
+voice, was the same with the dusty, hot-faced, dishevelled-looking
+country boy to whom she had thought of offering money for a
+kindness two days before.</p>
+<p>When Keith first entered the room Alice Yorke was seated in a
+reclining-chair, enveloped in soft white, from which she gave him a
+smiling greeting. For years afterwards, whenever Gordon Keith
+thought of beauty it was of a girl smiling up at him out of a cloud
+of white. It was a charming visit for him, and he reproached
+himself for his hard thoughts about Mrs. Yorke. He aired all of his
+knowledge, and made such a favorable impression on the good lady
+that she became very friendly with him. He did not know that Mrs.
+Yorke's kindness to him was condescension, and her cordiality
+inspired as much by curiosity as courtesy.</p>
+<p>"Dr. Balsam has been telling us about you, Mr. Keith," said Mrs.
+Yorke, with a bow which brought a pleased smile to the young man's
+face.</p>
+<p>"He has? The Doctor has always been good to me. I am afraid he
+has a higher opinion of me than I deserve," he said, with a boy's
+pretended modesty, whilst his eyes strongly belied his words.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke assured him that such could not be the case.</p>
+<p>"Don't you want to know what he said?" asked Miss Alice, with a
+bell-like laugh.</p>
+<p>"Yes; what?" he smiled.</p>
+<p>"He said if you undertook to carry a bag of salt down a
+mountain, or up it either, you would never rest until you got
+there."</p>
+<p>Her eyes twinkled, and Gordon appeared half teased, though he
+was inwardly pleased.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke looked shocked.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Alice, Dr. Balsam did not say that, for I heard him!" she
+exclaimed reprovingly. "Dr. Balsam was very complimentary to you,
+Mr. Keith," she explained seriously. "He said your people were
+among the best families about here." She meant to be gracious; but
+Gordon's face flushed in spite of himself. The condescension was
+too apparent.</p>
+<p>"Your father was a pre--a--a--clergyman?" said Mrs. Yorke, who
+had started to say "preacher," but substituted the other word as
+more complimentary.</p>
+<p>"My father a clergyman! No'm. He is good enough to be one; but
+he was a planter and a--a--soldier," said Gordon.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke looked at her daughter in some mystification. Could
+this be the wrong man?</p>
+<p>"Why, he said he was a clergyman?" she insisted.</p>
+<p>Gordon gazed at the girl in bewilderment.</p>
+<p>"Yes; he said he was a minister," she replied to his unspoken
+inquiry.</p>
+<p>Gordon broke into a laugh.</p>
+<p>"Oh, he was a special envoy to England after he was
+wounded."</p>
+<p>The announcement had a distinct effect upon Mrs. Yorke, who
+instantly became much more cordial to Gordon. She took a closer
+look at him than she had given herself the trouble to take before,
+and discovered, under the sunburn and worn clothes, something more
+than she had formerly observed. The young man's expression had
+changed. A reference to his father always sobered him and kindled a
+light in his eyes. It was the first time Mrs. Yorke had taken in
+what her daughter meant by calling him handsome.</p>
+<p>"Why, he is quite distinguished-looking!" she thought to
+herself. And she reflected what a pity it was that so good-looking
+a young man should have been planted down there in that
+out-of-the-way pocket of the world, and thus lost to society. She
+did not know that the kindling eyes opposite her were burning with
+a resolve that not only Mrs. Yorke, but the world, should know him,
+and that she should recognize his superiority.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<h3>MR. KEITH'S IDEALS</h3>
+<br>
+<p>After this it was astonishing how many excuses Gordon could find
+for visiting the village. He was always wanting to consult a book
+in the Doctor's library, or get something, which, indeed, meant
+that he wanted to get a glimpse of a young girl with violet eyes
+and pink cheeks, stretched out in a lounging-chair, picturesquely
+reclining amid clouds of white pillows. Nearly always he carried
+with him a bunch of flowers from Mrs. Rawson's garden, which were
+to make patches of pink or red or yellow among Miss Alice's
+pillows, and bring a fresh light into her eyes. And sometimes he
+took a basket of cherries or strawberries for Mrs. Yorke. His
+friends, the Doctor and the Rawsons, began to rally him on his new
+interest in the Springs.</p>
+<p>"I see you are takin' a few nubbins for the old cow," said
+Squire Rawson, one afternoon as Gordon started off, at which Gordon
+blushed as red as the cherries he was carrying. It was just what he
+had been doing.</p>
+<p>"Well, that is the way to ketch the calf," said the old farmer,
+jovially; "but I 'low the mammy is used to pretty high feedin'." He
+had seen Mrs. Yorke driving along in much richer attire than
+usually dazzled the eyes of the Ridge neighborhood, and had gauged
+her with a shrewd eye.</p>
+<p>Miss Alice Yorke's sprain turned out to be less serious than had
+been expected. She herself had proved a much less refractory
+patient than her mother had ever known her.</p>
+<p>It does not take two young people of opposite sexes long to
+overcome the formalities which convention has fixed among their
+seniors, especially when one of them has brought the other down a
+mountain-side in his arms.</p>
+<p>Often, in a sheltered corner of the long verandah, Keith read to
+Alice on balmy afternoons, or in the moonlit evenings sauntered
+with her through the fields of their limited experience, and quoted
+snatches from his chosen favorites, poems that lived in his heart,
+and fancied her the "maid of the downward look and sidelong
+glance."</p>
+<p>Thus, by the time Alice Yorke was able to move about again, she
+and Keith had already reached a footing where they had told each
+other a good deal of their past, and were finding the present very
+pleasant, and one of them, at least, was beginning, when he turned
+his eyes to the future, to catch the glimmer of a very rosy
+light.</p>
+<p>It showed in his appearance, in his face, where a new expression
+of a more definite ambition and a higher resolution was beginning
+to take its place.</p>
+<p>Dr. Balsam noted it, and when he met Gordon he began to have a
+quizzical light in his deep-gray eyes. He had, too, a tender tone
+in his voice when he addressed the girl. Perhaps, a vision came to
+him at times of another country lad, well-born like this one, and,
+like this one, poor, wandering on the New England hills with
+another young girl, primmer, perhaps, and less sophisticated than
+this little maiden, who had come from the westward to spend a brief
+holiday on the banks of the Piscataqua, and had come into his life
+never to depart--of his dreams and his hopes; of his struggles to
+achieve the education which would make him worthy of her; and then
+of the overthrow of all: of darkness and exile and wanderings.</p>
+<p>When the Doctor sat on his porch of an evening, with his pipe,
+looking out over the sloping hills, sometimes his face grew almost
+melancholy. Had he not been intended for other things than this
+exile? Abigail Brooke had never married, he knew. What might have
+happened had he gone back? And when he next saw Alice Yorke there
+would be a softer tone in his voice, and he would talk a deeper and
+higher philosophy to her than she had ever heard, belittling the
+gaudy rewards of life, and instilling in her mind ideas of
+something loftier and better and finer than they. He even told her
+once something of the story of his life, and of the suffering and
+sorrow that had been visited upon the victims of a foolish pride
+and a selfish ambition. Though he did not confide to her that it
+was of himself he spoke, the girl's instinct instantly told her
+that it was his own experience that he related, and her interest
+was deeply excited.</p>
+<p>"Did she ever marry, Doctor?" she asked eagerly. "Oh, I hope she
+did not. I might forgive her if she did not; but if she married I
+would never forgive her!"</p>
+<p>The Doctor's eyes, as they rested on her eager face, had a
+kindly expression in them, and a look of amusement lurked there
+also.</p>
+<p>"No; she never married," he said. "Nor did he."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I am glad of that," she exclaimed; and then more softly
+added, "I know he did not."</p>
+<p>Dr. Balsam gazed at her calmly. He did not pursue the subject
+further. He thought he had told his story in such a way as to
+convey the moral without disclosing that he spoke of himself. Yet
+she had discovered it instantly. He wondered if she had seen also
+the moral he intended to convey.</p>
+<p>Alice Yorke was able to walk now, and many an afternoon Gordon
+Keith invited her to stroll with him on the mountain-side or up the
+Ridge, drawing her farther and farther as her strength
+returned.</p>
+<p>The Spring is a dangerous season for a young man and a pretty
+girl to be thrown closely together for the first time, and the
+budding woods are a perilous pasture for their browsing thoughts.
+It was not without some insight that the ancient poets pictured
+dryads as inhabitants of the woods, and made the tinkling springs
+and rippling streams the abiding-places of their nymphs.</p>
+<p>The Spring came with a burst of pink and green. The mountains
+took on delicate shades, and the trees blossomed into vast flowers,
+feathery and fine as lace.</p>
+<p>An excursion in the budding woods has been dangerous ever since
+the day when Eve found a sinuous stranger lurking there in gay
+disguise, and was beguiled into tasting the tempting fruit he
+offered her. It might be an interesting inquiry to collect even the
+most notable instances of those who, wandering all innocent and
+joyous amid the bowers, have found the honey of poisonous flowers
+where they meant only innocence. But the reader will, perhaps,
+recall enough instances in a private and unrecorded history to fill
+the need of illustration. It suffices, then, to say that, each
+afternoon that Gordon Keith wandered with Alice Yorke through the
+leafy woods, he was straying farther in that perilous path where
+the sunlight always sifts down just ahead, but the end is veiled in
+mist, and where sometimes darkness falls.</p>
+<p>These strolls had all the charm for him of discovery, for he was
+always finding in her some new trait, and every one was, he
+thought, an added charm, even to her unexpected alternations of
+ignorance and knowledge, her little feminine outbreaks of caprice.
+One afternoon they had strolled farther than usual, as far even as
+the high pines beyond which was the great rock looking to the
+northeastward. There she had asked him to help her up to the top of
+the rock, but he had refused. He told her that she had walked
+already too far, and he would not permit her to climb it.</p>
+<p>"Not permit me! Well, I like that!" she said, with a flash of
+her blue eyes; and springing from her seat on the brown carpet,
+before he could interpose, she was climbing up the high rock as
+nimbly as if she were a boy.</p>
+<p>He called to her to stop, but she took no heed. He began to
+entreat her, but she made no answer. He was in terror lest she
+might fall, and sprang after her to catch her; but up, up she
+climbed, with as steady a foot and as sure an eye as he could have
+shown himself, until she reached the top, when, looking down on him
+with dancing eyes, she kissed her hand in triumph and then turned
+away, her cheeks aglow. When he reached the top, she was standing
+on the very edge of the precipice, looking far over the long reach
+of sloping country to the blue line of the horizon. Keith almost
+gasped at her temerity. He pleaded with her not to be so
+venturesome.</p>
+<p>"Please stand farther back, I beg you," he said as he reached
+her side.</p>
+<p>"Now, that is better," she said, with a little nod to him, her
+blue eyes full of triumph, and she seated herself quietly on the
+rock.</p>
+<p>Keith began to scold her, but she laughed at him.</p>
+<p>He had done it often, she said, and what he could do she could
+do.</p>
+<p>The beauty of the wide landscape sank into both their minds, and
+after a little they both took a graver tone.</p>
+<p>"Tell me where your old home is," she said presently, after a
+long pause in which her face had grown thoughtful. "You told me
+once that you could see it from this rock."</p>
+<p>Keith pointed to a spot on the far horizon. He did not know that
+it was to see this even more than to brave him that she had climbed
+to the top of the rock.</p>
+<p>"Now tell me about it," she said. "Tell me all over what you
+have told me before." And Keith related all he could remember.
+Touched with her sympathy, he told it with more feeling than he had
+ever shown before. When he spoke of the loss of his home, of his
+mortification, and of his father's quiet dignity, she turned her
+face away to keep him from seeing the tears that were in her
+eyes.</p>
+<p>"I can understand your feeling a little," she said presently;
+"but I did not know that any one could have so much feeling for a
+plantation. I suppose it is because it is in the country, with its
+trees and flowers and little streams. We have had three houses
+since I can remember. The one that we have now on Fifth Avenue is
+four times as large--yes, six times as large--and a hundred times
+as fine as the one I can first remember, and yet, somehow, I always
+think, when I am sad or lonely, of the little white house with the
+tiny rooms in it, with their low ceilings and small windows, where
+I used to go when I was a very little girl to see my father's
+mother. Mamma does not care for it; she was brought up in the city;
+but I think my father loves it just as I do. He always says he is
+going to buy it back, and I am going to make him do it."</p>
+<p>"I am going to buy back mine some day," said Keith, very
+slowly.</p>
+<p>She glanced at him. His eyes were fastened on the far-off
+horizon, and there was that in his face which she had never seen
+there before, and which made her admire him more than she had ever
+done.</p>
+<p>"I hope you will," she said. She almost hated Ferdy Wickersham
+for having spoken of the place as Keith told her he had spoken.</p>
+<p>When Keith reached home that evening he had a wholly new feeling
+for the girl with whom accident had so curiously thrown him. He was
+really in love with her. Hitherto he had allowed himself merely to
+drift with the pleasant tide that had been setting in throughout
+these last weeks. But the phases that she had shown that afternoon,
+her spirit, her courage, her capricious rebelliousness, and, above
+all, that glimpse into her heart which he had obtained as she sat
+on the rock overlooking the wide sweep where he had had his home,
+and where the civilization to which it belonged had had its home,
+had shown him a new creature, and he plunged into love. Life
+appeared suddenly to open wide her gates and flood him with her
+rosy light.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<h3>MR. KEITH IS UNPRACTICAL, AND MRS. YORKE GIVES HIM GOOD
+ADVICE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The strolls in the budding woods and the glimpses shown her of a
+spirit somewhat different from any she had known were beginning to
+have their influence on Alice. It flattered her and filled her with
+a certain content that the young school-teacher should like her so
+much; yet, knowing herself, it gave her a vague feeling that he was
+wanting in that quality of sound judgment which she recognized in
+some of her other admirers. It rather frightened her to feel that
+she was on a pedestal; and often he soared away from her with his
+poetry and his fancies, and she was afraid that he would discover
+it and think she was a hypocrite. Something that her mother had
+said remained in her mind.</p>
+<p>"He knows so much, mamma," said Alice one day. "Why, he can
+quote whole pages of poetry."</p>
+<p>"He is too romantic, my dear, to be practical," said Mrs. Yorke,
+who looked at the young men who approached her daughter with an eye
+as cool as a physician's glass. "He, perhaps, does know more about
+books than any boy of his age I am acquainted with; but poetry is a
+very poor thing to live on; and if he were practical he would not
+be teaching that wretched little school in the wilderness."</p>
+<p>"But, mamma, he will rise. You don't know how ambitious he is,
+and what determination he has. They have lost everything. The place
+that Ferdy Wickersham told me about his father owning, with its old
+pictures and all that, was his old home. Old Mr. Keith, since he
+lost it, has been farming it for Mr. Wickersham. Think of
+that!"</p>
+<p>"Just so," said Mrs. Yorke. "He inherits it. They are all
+unpractical. Your father began life poor; but he was practical, and
+he had the ability to succeed."</p>
+<p>Alice's face softened. "Dear old dad!" she said; "I must write
+to him." Even as she thought of him she could not but reflect how
+absorption in business had prevented his obtaining the culture of
+which this young school-teacher had given her a glimpse, and had
+crushed, though it could not wholly quench, the kindliness which
+lived in his big heart.</p>
+<p>Though Alice defended Keith, she felt in her heart there was
+some truth in her mother's estimate. He was too romantic. She soon
+had proof of it.</p>
+<p>General Keith came up to the Ridge just then to see Gordon. At
+least, he gave this out as the reason for his visit, and Gordon did
+not know until afterwards that there was another reason for
+it--that he had been in correspondence for some time with Dr.
+Balsam. He was looking thin; but when Gordon spoke of it, he put it
+by with a smile.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I am very well. We need not worry about my troubles. I have
+but two: that old wound, and Old Age; both are incurable."</p>
+<p>Gordon was very pleased to have the opportunity to introduce his
+father to Mrs. Yorke and Miss Alice. As he scanned the thin, fine
+face with its expression of calm and its lines of fortitude, he
+felt that it was a good card to play. His resemblance to the
+man-in-armor that hung in the old dining-room had increased.</p>
+<p>The General and Miss Alice promptly became great friends. He
+treated her with a certain distinction that pleased her. Mrs.
+Yorke, too, was both pleased and flattered by his gracious manner.
+She was, however, more critical toward him than her daughter
+was.</p>
+<p>General Keith soon discovered Gordon's interest in the young
+girl. It was not difficult to discover, for every moment of his
+spare time was devoted to her in some way. The General observed
+them with a quiet smile in his eyes. Now and then, however, the
+smile died out as he heard Gordon expressing views which were
+somewhat new to him. One evening they were all seated on the
+verandah together, and Gordon began to speak of making a fortune as
+a high aim. He had heard Mrs. Yorke express the same sentiments a
+few days before.</p>
+<p>"My son," said his father, gently, looking at him with grave
+eyes, "a fortune is a great blessing in the hands of the man who
+knows how to spend it. But riches considered as something to
+possess or to display is one of the most despicable and debasing of
+all the aims that men can have."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke's eyes opened wide and her face hardened a little.
+Gordon thought of the toil and patience it had cost him to make
+even his little salary, and wealth appeared to him just then a very
+desirable acquisition.</p>
+<p>"Why, father," he said, "it opens the world to a man. It gives
+such great opportunities for everything; travel, knowledge, art,
+science, power, the respect and esteem of the world, are obtained
+by it."</p>
+<p>Something like this Mrs. Yorke had said to him, meaning, kindly
+enough, to encourage him in its pursuit.</p>
+<p>The old General smiled gravely.</p>
+<p>"Opportunity for travel and the acquirement of knowledge wealth
+undoubtedly gives, but happily they are not dependent upon wealth,
+my son. The Columbuses of science, the Galileos, Newtons, Keplers;
+the great benefactors of the world, the great inventors, the great
+artists, the great poets, philosophers, and statesmen have few of
+them been rich."</p>
+<p>"He appears to have lived in another world, mamma," said Alice
+when he had left. "He is an old dear. I never knew so unworldly a
+person."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke's chin tilted a little.</p>
+<p>"Now, Alice, don't you be silly. He lives in another world now,
+and certainly, of all the men I know, none appears less fitted to
+cope with this world. The only real people to him appear to be
+those whom he has read of. He never tried wealth."</p>
+<p>"He used to be rich--very rich. Don't you remember what that
+lady told you?"</p>
+<p>"I don't believe it," said Mrs. Yorke, sententiously.</p>
+<p>Alice knew that this closed the argument. When her mother in
+such cases said she did not believe a thing, it meant that the door
+of her mind was fast shut and no reason could get into it.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke could not but notice that some change had taken place
+in Alice of late. In a way she had undoubtedly improved. She was
+more serious, more thoughtful of Mrs. Yorke herself, less wilful.
+Yet it was not without some misgiving that Mrs. Yorke noted the
+change.</p>
+<p>She suddenly had her eyes opened. Mrs. Nailor, one of her New
+York friends, performed this amiable office. She assigned the
+possible cause, though not directly--Mrs. Nailor rarely did things
+directly. She was a small, purring lady, with a tilt of the head,
+and an insinuating voice of singular clearness, with a
+question-mark in it. She was of a very good family, lived in a big
+house on Murray Hill, and had as large a circle of acquaintance as
+any one in New York. She prided herself on knowing everybody worth
+knowing, and everything about everybody. She was not lacking in
+amiability; she was, indeed, so amiable that she would slander
+almost any absent friend to please one who was present. She had a
+little grudge against Keith, for she had been struck from the first
+by his bright eyes and good manners; but Keith had been so much
+engrossed by his interest in Alice Yorke that he had been remiss in
+paying Mrs. Nailor that attention which she felt her position
+required. Mrs. Nailor now gave Mrs. Yorke a judicious hint.</p>
+<p>"You have such a gift for knowing people?" she said to her, "and
+your daughter is so like you?" She showed her even teeth.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke was not quite sure what she meant, and she answered
+somewhat coldly that she was glad that Mrs. Nailor thought so. Mrs.
+Nailor soon indicated her meaning.</p>
+<p>"The young schoolmaster--he is a schoolmaster in whom your
+daughter is interested, isn't he? Yes? He appears so well-read? He
+brought your daughter down the mountain the day her horse ran off
+with her? So romantic to make an acquaintance that way--I quite
+envy you? There is so little real romance these days! It is
+delightful to find it?" She sighed, and Mrs. Yorke thought of
+Daniel Nailor and his little bald head and round mouth. "Yes, I
+quite envy you--and your daughter. Who is he?"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke said he was of a very old and distinguished family.
+She gave him a pedigree that would have done honor to a
+Derby-winner.</p>
+<p>"I am so glad," declared Mrs. Nailor. "I knew he must be, of
+course. I am sure you would never encourage such an intimacy unless
+he were?" She smiled herself off, leaving Mrs. Yorke fuming.</p>
+<p>"That woman is always sticking pins into people," she said to
+herself. But this pin had stuck fast, and Mrs. Yorke was in quite a
+panic.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke determined to talk to Alice on the first occasion
+that offered itself; but she would not do it too abruptly. All that
+would be needed would be a hint judiciously given. For surely a
+girl of such sound sense as Alice, a girl brought up so wisely,
+could not for a moment think of acting so foolishly. And really
+Mrs. Yorke felt that she herself was very fond of this young man.
+She might do something for him--something that should be of use to
+him in after life. At first this plan took the form in her mind of
+getting her husband to give him a place; but she reflected that
+this would necessitate bringing him where his acquaintance with
+them might prove inconvenient. She would aid him in going to
+college for another year. This would be a delicate way to discharge
+the obligation under which his kindness had placed her.</p>
+<p>Keith, meantime, was happily ignorant of the plot that was
+forming against him. The warm weather was coming, and he knew that
+before long Mrs. Yorke and Alice would be flitting northward.
+However, he would make his hay while the sun shone for him. So one
+afternoon Keith had borne Miss Alice off to his favorite haunt, the
+high rock in the Ridge woods. He was in unusual spirits; for he had
+escaped from Mrs. Nailor, who of late had appeared to be rather
+lying in wait for him. It was the spot he loved best; for the pines
+behind him seemed to shut out the rest of the world, and he felt
+that here he was in some sort nearer to having Alice for his own
+than anywhere else. It was here that he had caught that glimpse of
+her heart which he felt had revealed her to him.</p>
+<p>This afternoon he was talking of love and of himself; for what
+young man who talks of love talks not of himself? She was dressed
+in white, and a single red rose that he had given her was stuck in
+her dress. He had been reading a poem to her. It contained a
+picture of the goddess of love, decked out for "worship without
+end." The book now lay at his side, and he was stretched at her
+feet.</p>
+<p>"If I ever am in love," he said suddenly, "it will be with a
+girl who must fill full the measure of my dreams." He was looking
+away through the pine-trees to the sky far beyond; but the soft
+light in his face came not from that far-off tent of blue. He was
+thinking vaguely how much bluer than the sky were her eyes.</p>
+<p>"Yes?" Her tone was tender.</p>
+<p>"She must be a beauty, of course." He gazed at her with that in
+his eyes which said, as plainly as words could have said it, "You
+are beautiful."</p>
+<p>But she was looking away, wondering to herself who it might
+be.</p>
+<p>"I mean she must have what <i>I</i> call beauty," he added by
+way of explanation. "I don't count mere red and white beauty.
+Phrony Tripper has that." This was not without intention. Alice had
+spoken of Phrony's beauty one day when she saw her at the
+school.</p>
+<p>"But she is very pretty," asserted the girl, "so fresh and such
+color!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, pretty! yes; and color--a wine-sap apple has color. But I
+am speaking of real beauty, the beauty of the rose, the freshness
+that you cannot define, that holds fragrance, a something that you
+love, that you feel even more than you see."</p>
+<p>She thought of a school friend of hers, Louise Caldwell, a tall,
+statuesque beauty, with whom another friend, Norman Wentworth, was
+in love, and she wondered if Keith would think her such a beauty as
+he described.</p>
+<p>"She must be sweet," he went on, thinking to himself for her
+benefit. "I cannot define that either, but you know what I
+mean?"</p>
+<p>She decided mentally that Louise Caldwell would not fill his
+measure.</p>
+<p>"It is something that only some girls have in common with some
+flowers--violets, for instance."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I don't care for sweet girls very much," she said, thinking
+of another schoolmate whom the girls used to call <i>eau
+sucr&eacute;</i>.</p>
+<p>"You do," he said positively. "I am not talking of that kind. It
+is womanliness and gentleness, fragrance, warmth, beauty,
+everything."</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes. That kind?" she said acquiescingly. "Well, go on; you
+expect to find a good deal."</p>
+<p>"I do," he said briefly, and sat up. "I expect to find the
+best."</p>
+<p>She glanced at him with new interest. He was very good-looking
+when he was spirited. And his eyes now were full of light.</p>
+<p>"Well, beauty and sweetness," she said; "what else? I must know,
+for I may have to help you find her. There don't appear to be many
+around Ridgely, since you have declined to accept the only pretty
+girl I have seen."</p>
+<p>"She must be good and true. She must know the truth as--" His
+eye fell at that instant on a humming-bird, a gleaming jewel of
+changing sapphire that, poised on half-invisible wings, floated in
+a bar of sunlight before a sprig of pink honeysuckle. "--As that
+bird knows the flowers where the honey lies."</p>
+<p>"Where do you expect to find this paragon?"</p>
+<p>As if in answer, the humming-bird suddenly caught sight of the
+red rose in her dress, and, darting to it, thrust its bill deep
+into the crimson heart of the flower. They both gave an exclamation
+of delighted wonder.</p>
+<p>"I have found her," he said firmly, leaning a little toward her,
+with mantling cheeks and close-drawn lips, his glowing eyes on her
+face. "The bird has found her for me."</p>
+<p>The bird darted away.</p>
+<p>"Ah, it is gone! What will you give her in return?" She turned
+to him, and spoke half mockingly, wishing to get off such delicate
+ground.</p>
+<p>He turned and gazed into her eyes.</p>
+<p>"'Worship without end.'" There was that in his face that made
+her change color. She looked away and began to think of her own
+ideal. She found that her idea of the man she loved had been of
+height of figure and breadth of shoulders, a handsome face and
+fashionable attire. She had pictured him as tall and straight,
+taller than this boy and larger every way, with a straight nose,
+brown eyes, and dark hair. But chiefly she had thought of the style
+of his clothes. She had fancied the neckties he should wear, and
+the pins that should be stuck in them. He must be brave, of course,
+a beautiful dancer, a fine tennis-player. She had once thought that
+black-eyed, handsome young Ferdy Wickersham was as near her ideal
+as any one else she knew. He led germans divinely. But he was
+selfish, and she had never admired him as much as another man, who
+was less showy, but was, she knew, more of a man: Norman Wentworth,
+a bold swimmer, a good horseman, and a leader of their set. It
+suddenly occurred to her now how much more like this man Norman
+Wentworth was than Ferdy Wickersham, and following her thought of
+the two, she suddenly stepped up on a higher level and was
+conscious of a certain elation, much like that she had had the day
+she had climbed up before Gordon Keith on the out-jutting rock and
+looked far down over the wide expanse of forest and field, to where
+his home had been.</p>
+<p>She sat for a little while in deep reflection. Presently she
+said, quite gravely and a little shyly:</p>
+<p>"You know, I am not a bit what you think I am. Why, you treat me
+as if I were a superior being. And I am not; I am a very
+matter-of-fact girl."</p>
+<p>He interrupted her with a gesture of dissent, his eyes full of
+light.</p>
+<p>"Nonsense! You don't know me, you don't know men, or you would
+know that any girl is the superior of the best man," he
+reiterated.</p>
+<p>"You don't know girls," she retorted.</p>
+<p>"I know one, at least," he said, with a smile that spoke his
+admiration.</p>
+<p>"I am not sure that you do," she persisted, speaking slowly and
+very seriously. She was gazing at him in a curious, reflective
+way.</p>
+<p>"The one I know is good enough for me." He leaned over and shyly
+took her hand and raised it to his lips, then released it. She did
+not resist him, but presently she said tentatively:</p>
+<p>"I believe I had rather be treated as I am than as something I
+am not. I like you too much to want to deceive you, and I think you
+are deceived."</p>
+<p>He, of course, protested that he was not deceived. He "knew
+perfectly well," he said. She was not convinced; but she let it go.
+She did not want to quarrel with him for admiring her.</p>
+<p>That afternoon, when Alice came in, her manner was so different
+from what it had been of late that her mother could not but observe
+it. One moment she was distraite; the next she was impatient and
+even irritable; then this mood changed, and she was unusually gay;
+her cheeks glowed and her eyes sparkled; but even as she reflected,
+a change came, and she drifted away again into a brown study.</p>
+<p>Next day, while Mrs. Yorke was still considering what to do, a
+card was handed her. It was a name written simply on one of the
+slips of paper that were kept on the hotel counter below. Keith of
+late had not been sending up his card; a servant simply announced
+his name. This, then, decided her. It was the most fortunate thing
+in the world that Alice had gone off and was out of the way. It
+gave Mrs. Yorke the very opportunity she desired. If, as she
+divined, the young man wished to talk to her about anything
+personal, she would speak kindly to him, but so plainly that he
+could never forget it. After all, it would be true kindness to him
+to do so. She had a virtuous feeling as she smoothed her hair
+before a mirror.</p>
+<p>He was not in the sitting-room when she came down; so she sought
+for him on one of the long verandahs where they usually sat. He was
+seated at the far end, where he would be more or less secluded, and
+she marched down on him. He was evidently on the watch for her, and
+as soon as she appeared he rose from his seat. She had made up her
+mind very clearly what she would say to him; but as she approached
+him it was not so easy to say as she had fancied it. There was
+something in his bearing and expression that deterred her from
+using the rather condescending words she had formulated. His face
+was somewhat pale; his mouth was firmly set, throwing out the chin
+in a way to make it quite strong; his eyes were anxious, but
+steady; his form was very erect, and his shoulders were very square
+and straight. He appeared to her older than she had considered him.
+It would not do to patronize this man. After greeting her, he
+handed her a chair solemnly, and the next moment plunged straight
+into his subject. It was so sudden that it almost took her breath
+away; and before she knew it he had, with the blood coming and
+going in his cheeks, declared his love for her daughter, and asked
+her permission to pay her his addresses. After the first gulp or
+two he had lost his embarrassment, and was speaking in a
+straightforward, manly way. The color had come rushing back into
+his face, and his eyes were filled with light. Mrs. Yorke felt that
+it was necessary to do something. So, though she felt some
+trepidation, she took heart and began to answer him. As she
+proceeded, her courage returned to her, and seeing that he was much
+disturbed, she became quite composed.</p>
+<p>She regretted extremely, she said, that she had not foreseen
+this. It was all so unexpected to her that she was quite
+overwhelmed by it. She felt that this was a lie, and she was not
+sure that he did not know it. Of course, it was quite impossible
+that she could consent to anything like what he had proposed.</p>
+<p>"Do you mean because she is from the North and I am from the
+South?" he asked earnestly.</p>
+<p>"No; of course not. I have Southern blood myself. My grandmother
+was from the South." She smiled at his simplicity.</p>
+<p>"Then why?"</p>
+<p>This was embarrassing, but she must answer.</p>
+<p>"Why, you--we--move in--quite different--spheres, and--ah, it's
+really not to be thought of Mr. Keith," she said, half
+desperately.</p>
+<p>He himself had thought of the different spheres in which they
+moved, but he had surmounted that difficulty. Though her father, as
+he had learned, had begun life as a store-boy, and her mother was
+not the most learned person in the world, Alice Yorke was a lady to
+her finger-tips, and in her own fine person was the incontestable
+proof of a strain of gentle blood somewhere. Those delicate
+features, fine hands, trim ankles, and silken hair told their own
+story.</p>
+<p>So he came near saying, "That does not make any difference"; but
+he restrained himself. He said instead, "I do not know that I
+understand you."</p>
+<p>It was very annoying to have to be so plain, but it was, Mrs.
+Yorke felt, quite necessary.</p>
+<p>"Why, I mean that my daughter has always moved in the--the
+most--exclusive society; she has had the best advantages, and has a
+right to expect the best that can be given her."</p>
+<p>"Do you mean that you think my family is not good enough for
+your daughter?"</p>
+<p>There was a tone in his quiet voice that made her glance up at
+him, and a look on his face that made her answer quickly:</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; not that, of course. I have no doubt your family
+is--indeed, I have heard it is--ur--. But my daughter has every
+right to expect the best that life can give. She has a right to
+expect--an--establishment."</p>
+<p>"You mean money?" Keith asked, a little hoarsely.</p>
+<p>"Why, not in the way in which you put it; but what money stands
+for--comforts, luxuries, position. Now, don't go and distress
+yourself about this. You are nothing but a silly boy. You fancy
+yourself in love with my daughter because she is the only pretty
+girl about here."</p>
+<p>"She is not; but she is the prettiest I know," ejaculated Keith,
+bitterly.</p>
+<p>"You think that, and so you fancy you are in love with her."</p>
+<p>"It is no fancy; I am," asserted Keith, doggedly. "I would be in
+love with her if she were as ugly as--as she is beautiful."</p>
+<p>"Oh, no, you wouldn't," declared Mrs. Yorke, coolly. "Now, the
+thing for you to do is to forget all about her, as she will in a
+short time forget all about you."</p>
+<p>"I know she will, though I hope she will not," groaned the young
+man. "I shall never forget her--never."</p>
+<p>His voice and manner showed such unfeigned anguish that the lady
+could not but feel real commiseration for him, especially as he
+appeared to be accepting her view of the case. She glanced at him
+almost kindly.</p>
+<p>"Is there nothing I can do for you? I should like very much to
+do something--something to show my appreciation of what you have
+done for us to make our stay here less dreary than it would have
+been."</p>
+<p>"Thank you. There is nothing," said Keith. "I am going to turn
+my attention now to--getting an establishment." He spoke half
+sarcastically, but Mrs. Yorke did not see it.</p>
+<p>"That is right," she said warmly.</p>
+<p>"It is not right," declared Keith, with sudden vehemence. "It is
+all wrong. I know it is all wrong."</p>
+<p>"What the world thinks is right can't be all wrong." Mrs. Yorke
+spoke decisively.</p>
+<p>"When are you going away?" the young man asked suddenly.</p>
+<p>"In a few days." She spoke vaguely, but even as she spoke, she
+determined to leave next day.</p>
+<p>"I thank you for all your kindness to me," said Keith, standing
+very straight and speaking rather hoarsely.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke's heart smote her. If it were not for her daughter's
+welfare she could have liked this boy and befriended him. A vision
+came to her from out of the dim past; a country boy with broad
+shoulders suddenly flashed before her; but she shut it off before
+it became clear. She spoke kindly to Keith, and held out her hand
+to him with more real sincerity than she had felt in a long
+time.</p>
+<p>"You are a good boy," she said, "and I wish I could have
+answered you otherwise, but it would have been simple madness. You
+will some day know that it was kinder to you to make you look
+nakedly at facts."</p>
+<p>"I suppose so," said Keith, politely. "But some day, Mrs. Yorke,
+you shall hear of me. If you do not, remember I shall be dead."</p>
+<p>With this bit of tragedy he turned and left her, and Mrs. Yorke
+stood and watched him as he strode down the path, meaning, if he
+should turn, to wave him a friendly adieu, and also watching lest
+that which she had dreaded for a quarter of an hour might happen.
+It would be dreadful if her daughter should meet him now. He did
+not turn, however, and when at last he disappeared, Mrs. Yorke,
+with a sigh of relief, went up to her room and began to write
+rapidly.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<h3>MRS. YORKE CUTS THE KNOT</h3>
+<br>
+<p>When Alice Yorke came from her jaunt, she had on her face an
+expression of pleasant anticipation. She had been talking to Dr.
+Balsam, and he had said things about Gordon Keith that had made her
+cheeks tingle. "Of the best blood of two continents," he had said
+of him. "He has the stuff that has made England and America." The
+light of real romance was beginning to envelop her.</p>
+<p>As she entered the hall she met Mrs. Nailor. Mrs. Nailor smiled
+at her knowingly, much as a cat, could she smile, might smile at a
+mouse.</p>
+<p>"I think your mother is out on the far end of the verandah. I
+saw her there a little while ago talking with your friend, the
+young schoolmaster. What a nice young man he is? Quite uncommon,
+isn't he?"</p>
+<p>Alice gave a little start. "The young schoolmaster" indeed!</p>
+<p>"Yes, I suppose so. I don't know." She hated Mrs. Nailor with
+her quiet, cat-like manner and inquisitive ways. She now hated her
+more than ever, for she was conscious that she was blushing and
+that Mrs. Nailor observed it.</p>
+<p>"Your mother is very interested in schools? Yes? I think that is
+nice in her? So few persons appreciate education?" Her air was
+absolute innocence.</p>
+<p>"I don't know. I believe she is--interested in everything,"
+faltered Alice. She wanted to add, "And so you appear to be
+also."</p>
+<p>"So few persons care for education these days," pursued Mrs.
+Nailor, in a little chime. "And that young man is such a nice
+fellow? Has he a good school? I hear you were there? You are
+interested in schools, too?" She nodded like a little Japanese
+toy-baby.</p>
+<p>"I am sure I don't know. Yes; I think he has. Why don't you go?"
+asked the girl at random.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I have not been invited." Mrs. Nailor smiled amiably.
+"Perhaps, you will let me go with you sometime?"</p>
+<p>Alice escaped, and ran up-stairs, though she was eager to go out
+on the porch. However, it would serve him right to punish him by
+staying away until she was sent for, and she could not go with Mrs.
+Nailor's cat-eyes on her.</p>
+<p>She found her mother seated at a table writing busily. Mrs.
+Yorke only glanced up and said, "So you are back? Hope you had a
+pleasant time?" and went on writing.</p>
+<p>Alice gazed at her with a startled look in her eyes. She had
+such a serious expression on her face.</p>
+<p>"What are you doing?" She tried to speak as indifferently as she
+could.</p>
+<p>"Writing to your father." The pen went on busily.</p>
+<p>"What is the matter? Is papa ill? Has anything happened?"</p>
+<p>"No; nothing has happened. I am writing to say we shall be home
+the last of the week."</p>
+<p>"Going away!"</p>
+<p>"Yes; don't you think we have been here long enough? We only
+expected to stay until the last of March, and here it is almost
+May."</p>
+<p>"But what is the matter? Why have you made up your mind so
+suddenly? Mamma, you are so secret! I am sure something is the
+matter. Is papa not well?" She crossed over and stood by her
+mother.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke finished a word and paused a moment, with the end of
+her silver penholder against her teeth.</p>
+<p>"Alice," she said reflectively, "I have something I want to say
+to you, and I have a mind to say it now. I think I ought to speak
+to you very frankly."</p>
+<p>"Well, for goodness' sake, do, mamma; for I'm dying to know what
+has happened." She seated herself on the side of a chair for
+support. Her face was almost white.</p>
+<p>"Alice--"</p>
+<p>"Yes, mamma." Her politeness was ominous.</p>
+<p>"Alice, I have had a talk with that young man--"</p>
+<p>Alice's face flushed suddenly.</p>
+<p>"What young man?" she asked, as though the Ridge Springs were
+thronged with young men behind every bush.</p>
+<p>"That young man--Mr. Keith," firmly.</p>
+<p>"Oh!" said Alice. "With Mr. Keith? Yes, mamma?" Her color was
+changing quickly now.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I have had a quite--a very extraordinary conversation with
+Mr. Keith." As Mrs. Yorke drifted again into reflection, Alice was
+compelled to ask:</p>
+<p>"What about, mamma?"</p>
+<p>"About you."</p>
+<p>"About me? What about me?" Her face was belying her assumed
+innocence.</p>
+<p>"Alice, I hope you are not going to behave foolishly. I cannot
+believe for a minute that you would--a girl brought up as you have
+been--so far forget yourself--would allow yourself to become
+interested in a perfectly unknown and ignorant and obscure young
+man."</p>
+<p>"Why, mamma, he is not ignorant; he knows more than any one I
+ever saw,--why, he has read piles of books I never even heard
+of,--and his family is one of the best and oldest in this country.
+His grandfathers or great-grandfathers were both signers of the
+Decla--"</p>
+<p>"I am not talking about that," interrupted Mrs. Yorke, hastily.
+"I must say you appear to have studied his family-tree pretty
+closely."</p>
+<p>"Dr. Balsam told me," interjected Alice.</p>
+<p>"Dr. Balsam had very little to talk of. I am talking of his
+being unknown."</p>
+<p>"But I believe he will be known some day. You don't know how
+clever and ambitious he is. He told me--"</p>
+<p>But Mrs. Yorke had no mind to let Alice dwell on what he had
+told her. He was too good an advocate.</p>
+<p>"Stuff! I don't care what he told you! Alice, he is a perfectly
+unknown and untrained young--creature. All young men talk that way.
+He is perfectly gauche and boorish in his manner--"</p>
+<p>"Why, mamma, he has beautiful manners!" exclaimed Alice "I heard
+a lady saying the other day he had the manners of a
+Chesterfield."</p>
+<p>"Chester-nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Yorke.</p>
+<p>"I think he has, too, mamma."</p>
+<p>"I don't agree with you," declared Mrs. Yorke, energetically.
+"How would he appear in New York? Why, he wears great heavy shoes,
+and his neckties are something dreadful."</p>
+<p>"His neckties are bad," admitted Alice, sadly.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke, having discovered a breach in her adversary's
+defences, like a good general directed her attack against it.</p>
+<p>"He dresses horribly; he wears his hair like a--countryman; and
+his manners are as antiquated as his clothes. Think of him at the
+opera or at one of Mrs. Wentworth's receptions! He says 'madam' and
+'sir' as if he were a servant."</p>
+<p>"I got after him about that once," said the girl, reflectively.
+"I said that only servants said that."</p>
+<p>"Well, what did he say?"</p>
+<p>"Said that that proved that servants sometimes had better
+manners than their masters."</p>
+<p>"Well, I must say, I think he was excessively rude!" asserted
+Mrs. Yorke, picking up her fan and beginning to fan rapidly.</p>
+<p>"That's what I said; but he said he did not see how it could be
+rude to state a simple and impersonal fact in a perfectly
+respectful way."</p>
+<p>Alice was warming up in defence and swept on.</p>
+<p>"He said the new fashion was due to people who were not sure of
+their own position, and were afraid others might think them servile
+if they employed such terms."</p>
+<p>"What does he know about fashion?"</p>
+<p>"He says fashion is a temporary and shifting thing, sometimes
+caused by accident and sometimes made by tradesmen, but that good
+manners are the same to-day that they were hundreds of years ago,
+and that though the ways in which they are shown change, the basis
+is always the same, being kindness and gentility."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke gasped.</p>
+<p>"Well, I must say, you seem to have learned your lesson!" she
+exclaimed.</p>
+<p>Alice had been swept on by her memory not only of the words she
+was repeating, but of many conversations and interchanges of
+thought Gordon Keith and she had had during the past weeks, in
+which he had given her new ideas. She began now, in a rather low
+and unsteady voice, her hands tightly clasped, her eyes in her
+lap:</p>
+<p>"Mamma, I believe I like him very much--better than I shall
+ever--"</p>
+<p>"Nonsense, Alice! Now, I will not have any of this nonsense. I
+bring you down here for your health, and you take up with a
+perfectly obscure young countryman about whom you know nothing in
+the world, and--"</p>
+<p>"I know all about him, mamma. I know he is a gentleman. His
+grandfather--"</p>
+<p>"You know <i>nothing</i> about him," asserted Mrs. Yorke,
+rising. "You may be married to a man for years and know very little
+of him. How can you know about this boy? You will go back and
+forget all about him in a week."</p>
+<p>"I shall never forget him, mamma," said Alice, in a low tone,
+thinking of the numerous promises she had made to the same effect
+within the past few days.</p>
+<p>"Fiddlesticks! How often have you said that? A half-dozen times
+at least. There's Norman and Ferdy Wickersham and--"</p>
+<p>"I have not forgotten them," said Alice, a little impressed by
+her mother's argument.</p>
+<p>"Of course, you have not. I don't think it's right, Alice, for
+you to be so--susceptible and shallow. At least once every three
+months I have to go through this same thing. There's Ferdy
+Wickersham--handsome, elegant manners, very ri--with fine prospects
+every way, devoted to you for ever so long. I don't care for his
+mother, but his people are now received everywhere. Why--?"</p>
+<p>"Mamma, I would not marry Ferdy Wickersham if he were the last
+man in--to save his life--not for ten millions of dollars. And he
+does not care for me."</p>
+<p>"Why, he is perfectly devoted to you," insisted Mrs. Yorke.</p>
+<p>"Ferdy Wickersham is not perfectly devoted to any one except
+himself--and never will be," asserted Alice, vehemently. "If he
+ever cared for any one it is Louise Caldwell."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke shifted her ground.</p>
+<p>"There's Norman Wentworth? One of the best--"</p>
+<p>"Ah! I don't love Norman. I never could. We are the best of
+friends, but I just like and respect him."</p>
+<p>"Respect is a very safe ground to marry on," said Mrs. Yorke,
+decisively. "Some people do not have even that when they
+marry."</p>
+<p>"Then I am sorry for them," said Miss Alice. "But when I marry,
+I want to love. I think it would be a crime to marry a man you did
+not love. God made us with a capacity to form ideals, and if we
+deliberately fall below them--"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke burst out laughing.</p>
+<p>"Oh, stuff! That boy has filled your head with enough nonsense
+to last a lifetime. I would not be such a parrot. I want to finish
+my letter now."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke concluded her letter, and two mornings later the
+Yorkes took the old two-horse stage that plied between the Springs
+and the little grimy railway-station, ten miles away at the foot of
+the Ridge, and metaphorically shook the dust of Ridgely from their
+feet, though, from their appearance when they reached the railway,
+it, together with much more, must have settled on their
+shoulders.</p>
+<p>The road passed the little frame school-house, and as the stage
+rattled by, the young school-teacher's face changed. He stood up
+and looked out of the window with a curious gaze in his burning
+eyes. Suddenly his face lit up: a little head under a very pretty
+hat had nodded to him. He bowed low, and went back to his seat with
+a new expression. That bow chained him for years. He almost forgave
+her high-headed mother.</p>
+<p>Alice bore away with her a long and tragic letter which she did
+not think it necessary to confide to her mother at this time, in
+view of the fact that the writer declared that in his present
+condition he felt bound to recognize her mother's right to deny his
+request to see her; but that he meant to achieve such success that
+she would withdraw her prohibition, and to return some day and lay
+at her feet the highest honors life could give.</p>
+<p>A woman who has discarded a man is, perhaps, nearer loving him
+just afterwards than ever before. Certainly Miss Alice Yorke
+thought more tenderly of Gordon Keith when she found herself being
+borne away from him than she had ever done during the weeks she had
+known him.</p>
+<p>It is said that a broken heart is a most valuable possession for
+a young man. Perhaps, it was so to Keith.</p>
+<p>The rest of the session dragged wearily for him. But he worked
+like fury. He would succeed. He would rise. He would show Mrs.
+Yorke who he was.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke, having reached home, began at once to lead her
+daughter back to what she esteemed a healthier way of thinking than
+she had fallen into. This opportunity came in the shape of a
+college commencement with a consequent boat-race, and all the
+gayeties that this entailed.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke was, in her way, devoted to her daughter, and had a
+definite and what she deemed an exalted ambition for her. This
+meant that she should be the best-dressed girl in society, should
+be a belle, and finally should make the most brilliant marriage of
+her set--to wit, the wealthiest marriage. She had dreamed at times
+of a marriage that should make her friends wild with envy--of a
+title, a high title. Alice had beauty, style, wealth, and vivacity;
+she would grace a coronet, and mamma would be "Madam, the
+Countess's mother." But mamma encountered an unexpected
+obstacle.</p>
+<p>When Mrs. Yorke, building her air-castles, casually let fall her
+idea of a title for Alice, there was a sudden and unexpected storm
+from an unlooked-for quarter. Dennis Yorke, usually putty in his
+wife's hands, had two or three prejudices that were principles with
+him. As to these he was rock. His daughter was his idol.</p>
+<p>For her, from the time she had opened her blue eyes on him and
+blinked at him vaguely, he had toiled and schemed until his hair
+had turned from brown to gray and then had disappeared from his
+round, strongly set head. For the love he bore her he had served
+longer than Jacob served for Rachel, and the time had not appeared
+long. The suggestion that the money he had striven for from youth
+to age should go to some reprobate foreigner, to pay his
+gambling-debts, nearly threw him into a convulsion. His ancestors
+had been driven from home to starve in the wilderness by such
+creatures. "Before any d--d foreign reprobate should have a dollar
+of his money he would endow a lunatic asylum with it." So Mrs.
+Yorke prudently refrained from pressing this subject any further at
+this time, and built her hopes on securing the next most
+advantageous alliance--a wealthy one. She preferred Norman
+Wentworth to any of the other young men, for he was not only rich,
+but the Wentworths were an old and established house, and Mrs.
+Wentworth was one of the old aristocrats of the State, whose word
+was law above that of even the wealthiest of the new leaders. To
+secure Norman Wentworth would be "almost as good as a title." An
+intimacy was sedulously cultivated with "dear Mrs. Wentworth," and
+Norman, the "dear boy," was often brought to the house.</p>
+<p>Perversely, he and Alice did not take to each other in the way
+Mrs. Yorke had hoped. They simply became the best of friends, and
+Mrs. Yorke had the mortification of seeing a tall and statuesque
+schoolmate of Alice's capture Norman, while Alice appeared totally
+indifferent to him. What made it harder to bear was that Mrs.
+Caldwell, Louise Caldwell's mother, a widow with barely enough to
+live respectably on, was quietly walking off with the prize which
+Mrs. Yorke and a number of other mothers were striving to secure,
+and made no more of it than if it had been her right. It all came
+of her family connections. That was the way with those old
+families. They were so selfishly exclusive and so proud. They held
+themselves superior to every one else and appeared to despise
+wealth. Mrs. Yorke did not believe Mrs. Caldwell really did despise
+wealth, but she admitted that she made a very good show of doing
+it.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke, foreseeing her failure with Norman Wentworth, was
+fain to accept in his place Ferdy Wickersham, who, though certainly
+not Norman's equal in some respects, was his superior in
+others.</p>
+<p>To be sure, Ferdy was said to be a somewhat reckless young
+fellow, and Mr. Yorke did not fancy him; but Mrs. Yorke argued,
+"Boys will be boys, and you know, Mr. Yorke, you have told me you
+were none too good yourself." On this, Dennis Yorke growled that a
+man was "a fool ever to tell his wife anything of the kind, and
+that, at least, he never was in that young Wickersham's class."</p>
+<p>All of which Mrs. Yorke put aside, and sacrificed herself
+unstintedly to achieve success for her daughter and compel her to
+forget the little episode of the young Southern schoolmaster, with
+his tragic air.</p>
+<p>Ah, the dreams of the climbers! How silly they are! Golden
+clouds at the top, and just as they are reached, some little Jack
+comes along and chops down the beanstalk, clouds and all.</p>
+<p>So, Mrs. Yorke dreamed, and, a trifle anxious over Alice's
+persistent reference to the charms of Spring woods and a Southern
+climate, after a week or two of driving down-town and eager
+choosing of hats and wearying fitting of dresses, started off with
+the girl on the yacht of Mr. Lancaster, a wealthy, dignified, and
+cultivated friend of her husband's. He had always been fond of
+Alice, and now got up a yacht-party for her to see the
+boat-race.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Keith had thought that the time when he should leave the region
+where he had been immersed so long would be the happiest hour of
+his life. Yet, when the day came, he was conscious of a strange
+tugging at his heart. These people whom he was leaving, and for
+whom he had in his heart an opinion very like contempt on account
+of their ignorance and narrowness, appeared to him a wholly
+different folk. There was barely one of them but had been kind to
+him. Hard they might appear and petty; but they lived close
+together, and, break through the crust, one was sure to find a warm
+heart and often a soft one.</p>
+<p>He began to understand Dr. Balsam's speech: "I have lived in
+several kinds of society, and I like the simplest best. One can get
+nearer to men here. I do not ask gratitude. I get affection."</p>
+<p>Keith had given notice that the school would close on a certain
+day. The scholars always dropped off as summer came, to work in the
+crops; and the attendance of late had been slim. This last day he
+hardly expected to have half a dozen pupils. To his surprise, the
+school-house was filled.</p>
+<p>Even Jake Dennison, who had been off in the mountains for some
+little time getting out timber, was on hand, large and
+good-humored, sitting beside Phrony Tripper in her pink ribbons,
+and fanning her hard enough to keep a mine fresh. A little later in
+the day quite a number of the fathers and mothers of the children
+arrived in their rickety vehicles. They had come to take leave of
+the young teacher. There were almost as many as were present at the
+school celebration. Keith was quite overcome, and when the hour
+arrived for closing the school, instead of, as he had expected,
+tying up the half-dozen books he kept in his desk, shaking hands
+with the dozen children eager to be turned loose in the delightful
+pasturage of summer holiday, turning the key in the lock, and
+plodding alone down the dusty road to Squire Rawson's, he now found
+the school-room full, not of school-children only, but of grown
+people as well. He had learned that they expected him to say
+something, and there was nothing for him to do but to make the
+effort. For an hour, as he sat during the last lessons,--which were
+in the nature of a review,--the pages before him had been mere
+blurred spaces of white, and he had been cogitating what he should
+say. Yet, when he rose, every idea that he had tried so faithfully
+to put into shape fled from his brain.</p>
+<p>Dropping all the well-turned phrases which he had been trying to
+frame, he said simply that he had come there two years before with
+the conceit of a young man expecting to teach them a good deal, and
+that he went away feeling that he had taught very little, but that
+he had learned a great deal; he had learned that the kindest people
+in the world lived in that region; he should never forget their
+kindness and should always feel that his best friends were there. A
+few words more about his hopes for the school and his feeling for
+the people who had been so good to him, and he pronounced the
+school closed. To his surprise, at a wink from Squire Rawson, one
+of the other trustees, who had formerly been opposed to Keith,
+rose, and, addressing the assemblage, began to say things about him
+that pleased him as much as they astonished him.</p>
+<p>He said that they, too, had begun with some doubt as to how
+things would work, as one "could never tell what a colt would do
+till he got the harness on him," but this colt had "turned out to
+be a pretty good horse." Mr. Keith, maybe, had taught more than he
+knew. He had taught some folks--this with a cut of his eye over
+toward where Jake Dennison sat big and brown in the placid content
+of a young giant, fanning Euphronia for life--he had "taught some
+folks that a door had to be right strong to keep out a teacher as
+knowed his business." Anyhow, they were satisfied with him, and the
+trustees had voted to employ him another year, but he had declined.
+He had "business" that would take him away. Some thought they knew
+that business. (At this there was a responsive titter throughout
+the major portion of the room, and Gordon Keith was furious with
+himself for finding that he suddenly turned hot and red.) He
+himself, the speaker said, didn't pretend to know anything about
+it, but he wanted to say that if Mr. Keith didn't find the business
+as profitable as he expected, the trustees had determined to hold
+the place open for him for one year, and had elected a successor
+temporarily to hold it in case he should want to come back.</p>
+<p>At this there was a round of approval, as near general applause
+as that stolid folk ever indulged in.</p>
+<p>Keith spent the next day in taking leave of his friends.</p>
+<p>His last visit that evening was to Dr. Balsam. He had not been
+to the village often in the evening since Mrs. Yorke and her
+daughter had left the place. Now, as he passed up the walk, the
+summer moonlight was falling full on the white front of the little
+hotel. The slanting moonlight fell on the corner of the verandah
+where he had talked so often to Alice Yorke as she lay reclining on
+her lounge, and where he had had that last conversation with Mrs.
+Yorke, and Keith saw a young man leaning over some one enveloped in
+white, half reclining in an arm-chair. He wondered if the same talk
+were going on that had gone on there before that evening when Mrs.
+Yorke had made him look nakedly at Life.</p>
+<p>When Keith stated his errand, the Doctor looked almost as grave
+as he could have done had one of his cherished patients refused to
+respond to his most careful treatment.</p>
+<p>"One thing I want to say to you," he said presently "You have
+been eating your heart out of late about something, and it is
+telling on you. Give it up. Give that girl up. You will have to
+sooner or later. They will prove too strong for you. Even if you do
+not, she will not suit you; you will not get the woman you are
+after. She is an attractive young girl, but she will not remain so.
+A few years in fashionable society will change her. It is the most
+corroding life on earth!" exclaimed the Doctor, bitterly.
+"Convention usurps the place of every principle, and becomes the
+only god. She must change. All is Vanity!" repeated the Doctor,
+almost in a revery, his eyes resting on Keith's face.</p>
+<p>"Well," he said, with a sigh, "if you ever get knocked down and
+hurt badly, come back up here, and I will patch you up if I am
+living; and if not, come back anyhow. The place will heal you
+provided you don't take drugs. God bless you! Good-by." He walked
+with Keith to the outer edge of his little porch and shook hands
+with him again, and again said, "Good-by: God bless you!" When
+Keith turned at the foot of the hill and looked back, he was just
+reentering his door, his spare, tall frame clearly outlined against
+the light within. Keith somehow felt as if he were turning his back
+on a landmark.</p>
+<p>Just as Keith approached the gate on his return home, a figure
+rose up from a fence-corner and stood before him in the
+starlight.</p>
+<p>"Good even'n', Mr. Keith." The voice was Dave Dennison's. Keith
+greeted him wonderingly. What on earth could have brought the boy
+out at that time of the night? "Would you mind jest comin' down
+this a-way a little piece?"</p>
+<p>Keith walked back a short distance. Dave was always mysterious
+when he had a communication to make. It was partly a sort of
+shyness and partly a survival of frontier craft.</p>
+<p>Dave soon resolved Keith's doubt. "I hear you're a-goin' away
+and ain't comin' back no more?"</p>
+<p>"How did you hear that--I mean, that I am not coming back
+again?" asked Keith.</p>
+<p>"Well, you're a-sayin' good-by to everybody, same's if they were
+all a-goin' to die. Folks don't do that if they're a-comin' back."
+He leaned forward, and in the semi-darkness Keith was aware that he
+was scrutinizing his face.</p>
+<p>"No, I do not expect to come back--to teach school again; but I
+hope to return some day to see my friends."</p>
+<p>The boy straightened up.</p>
+<p>"Well, I wants to go with you."</p>
+<p>"You! Go with me?" Keith exclaimed. Then, for fear the boy might
+be wounded, he said: "Why, Dave, I don't even know where I am
+going. I have not the least idea in the world what I am going to
+do. I only know I am going away, and I am going to succeed."</p>
+<p>"That's right. That's all right," agreed the boy. "You're
+a-goin' somewheres, and I want to go with you. You don't know where
+you're a-goin', but you're a-goin'. You know all them outlandish
+countries like you've been a-tellin' us about, and I don't know
+anything, but I want to know, and I'm a-goin' with you. Leastways,
+I'm a-goin', and I'm a-goin' with you if you'll let me."</p>
+<p>Keith's reply was anything but reassuring. He gave good reasons
+against Dave's carrying out his plan; but his tone was kind, and
+the youngster took it for encouragement.</p>
+<p>"I ain't much account, I know," he pleaded. "I ain't any account
+in the <i>worl'</i>," he corrected himself, so that there could be
+no mistake about the matter. "They say at home I used to be some
+account--some little account--before I took to books--before I
+<i>sorter</i> took to books," he corrected again shamefacedly; "but
+since then I ain't been no manner of account. But I think--I kinder
+think--I could be some account if I knowed a little and could go
+somewheres to be account."</p>
+<p>Keith was listening earnestly, and the boy went on:</p>
+<p>"When you told us that word about that man Hannibal tellin' his
+soldiers how everything lay t'other side the mountains, I begin to
+see what you meant. I thought before that I knowed a lot; then I
+found out how durned little I did know, and since then I have tried
+to learn, and I mean to learn; and that's the reason I want to go
+with you. You know and I don't, and you're the only one as ever
+made me want to know."</p>
+<p>Keith was conscious of a flush of warm blood about his heart. It
+was the first-fruit of his work.</p>
+<p>The boy broke in on his pleasant revery.</p>
+<p>"You'll let me go?" he asked. "Cause I'm a-goin' certain sure. I
+ain't a-goin' to stay here in this country no longer. See here." He
+pulled out an old bag and poked it into Keith's hand. "I've got
+sixteen dollars and twenty-three cents there. I made it, and while
+the other boys were spendin' theirn, I saved mine. You can pour it
+out and count it."</p>
+<p>Keith said he would go and see his father about it the next
+day.</p>
+<p>This did not appear to satisfy Dave.</p>
+<p>"I'm a-goin' whether he says so or not," he burst forth. "I want
+to see the worl'. Don't nobody keer nothin' about me, an' I want to
+git out."</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes! Why, I care about you," said Keith.</p>
+<p>To his surprise, the boy began to whimper.</p>
+<p>"Thankee. I'm obliged to you. I--want to go away--where Phrony
+ner nobody--ner anybody won't never see me no more--any more."</p>
+<p>The truth dawned on Keith. Little Dave, too, had his troubles,
+his sorrows, his unrequited affections. Keith warmed to the
+boy.</p>
+<p>"Phrony is a lot older than you," he said consolingly.</p>
+<p>"No, she ain't; we are just of an age; and if she was I wouldn't
+keer. I'm goin' away."</p>
+<p>Keith had to interpose his refusal to take him in such a case.
+He said, however, that if he could obtain his father's consent, as
+soon as he got settled he would send for him. On the basis of this
+compromise the boy went home.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<h3>GUMBOLT</h3>
+<br>
+<p>With the savings of his two years of school-teaching Keith found
+that he had enough, by practising rigid economy, to give himself
+another year at college, and he practised rigid economy.</p>
+<p>He worked under the spur of ambition to show Alice Yorke and
+those who surrounded her that he was not a mere country clod.</p>
+<p>With his face set steadily in the direction where stood the
+luminous form of the young girl he had met and come to worship amid
+the blossoming woods, he studied to such good purpose that at the
+end of the session he had packed two years' work into one.</p>
+<p>Keith had no very definite ideas, when he started out at the end
+of his college year, as to what he should do. He only knew that he
+had strong pinions, and that the world was before him. He wished to
+bury himself from observation until he should secure the success
+with which he would burst forth on an astonished world, overwhelm
+Mrs. Yorke, and capture Alice. His first intention had been to go
+to the far West; but on consideration he abandoned the idea.</p>
+<p>Rumors were already abroad that in the great Appalachian
+mountain-range opportunity might be as golden as in that greater
+range on the other side of the continent.</p>
+<p>Keith had a sentiment that he would rather succeed in the South
+than elsewhere.</p>
+<p>"Only get rifles out and railroads in, and capital will come
+pouring after them," Rhodes had said. "Old Wickersham knows his
+business."</p>
+<p>That was a good while ago, and at last the awakening had begun.
+Now that carpet-bagging was at an end, and affairs were once more
+settled in that section, the wealth of the country was again being
+talked of in the press.</p>
+<p>The chief centre of the new life was a day's drive farther in
+the mountains than Eden, the little hamlet which Keith had visited
+once with Dr. Balsam when he attended an old stage-driver, Gilsey
+by name, and cut a bullet out of what he called his "off-leg." This
+was the veiled Golconda. To the original name of Humboldt the
+picturesque and humorous mountaineer had given the name of
+"Gumbolt."</p>
+<p>This was where old Adam Rawson, stirred by the young engineer's
+prophecy, had taken time by the forelock and had bought up the
+mineral rights, and "gotten ahead" of Wickersham &amp; Company.</p>
+<p>Times and views change even in the Ridge region, and now, after
+years of delay, Wickersham &amp; Company's railroad was about to be
+built. It had already reached Eden.</p>
+<p>Keith, after a few days with his father, stopped at Ridgely to
+see his old friends. The Doctor looked him over with some
+disapproval.</p>
+<p>"As gaunt as a greyhound," he muttered. "My patient not married
+yet, I suppose? Well, she will be. You'd better tear her out of
+your memory before she gets too firmly lodged there."</p>
+<p>Keith boldly said he would take the chances.</p>
+<p>When old Rawson saw him he, too, remarked on his thinness; but
+more encouragingly.</p>
+<p>"Well, 'a lean dog for a long chase,'" he said.</p>
+<p>"How are cattle?" inquired Keith.</p>
+<p>The old fellow turned his eyes on him with a keen look.</p>
+<p>"Cattle's tolerable. I been buyin' a considerable number up
+toward Gumbolt, where you're goin'. I may get you to look after 'em
+some day," he chuckled.</p>
+<p>Gordon wrote to Dave Dennison that he was going to Gumbolt and
+would look out for him. A little later he learned that the boy had
+already gone there.</p>
+<p>The means of reaching Gumbolt from Eden, the terminus of the
+railroad which Wickersham &amp; Company were building, was still
+the stage, a survivor of the old-time mountain coach, which had
+outlasted all the manifold chances and changes of fortune.</p>
+<p>Happily for Keith, he had been obliged, though it was raining,
+to take the outside seat by the driver, old Tim Gilsey, to whom he
+recalled himself, and by his coolness at "Hellstreak Hill," where
+the road climbed over the shoulder of the mountain along a sheer
+cliff, and suddenly dropped to the river below, a point where old
+Gilsey was wont to display his skill as a driver and try the nerves
+of passengers, he made the old man his friend for life.</p>
+<p>When the stage began to ascend the next hill, the old driver
+actually unbent so far as to give an account of a "hold-up" that
+had occurred at that point not long before, "all along of the
+durned railroad them Yankees was bringin' into the country," to
+which he laid most of the evils of the time. "For when you run a
+stage you know who you got with you," declared Mr. Gilsey; "but
+when you run a railroad you dunno who you got."</p>
+<p>"Well, tell me about the time you were held up."</p>
+<p>"Didn't nobody hold me up," sniffed Mr. Gilsey. "If I had been
+goin' to stop I wouldn't 'a' started. It was a dom fool they put up
+here when I was down with rheumatiz. Since then they let me pick my
+substitute.</p>
+<p>"Well," he said, as a few lights twinkled below them, "there she
+is. Some pretty tough characters there, too. But you ain't goin' to
+have no trouble with 'em. All you got to do is to put the curb on
+'em onct."</p>
+<p>As Keith looked about him in Gumbolt, the morning after his
+arrival, he found that his new home was only a rude mining-camp,
+raw and rugged; a few rows of frame houses, beginning to be
+supplanted by hasty brick structures, stretched up the hills on the
+sides of unpaved roads, dusty in dry weather and bottomless in wet.
+Yet it was, for its size, already one of the most cosmopolitan
+places in the country. Of course, the population was mainly
+American, and they were beginning to pour in--sharp-eyed men from
+the towns in black coats, and long-legged, quiet-looking and
+quiet-voiced mountaineers in rusty clothes, who hulked along in
+single file, silent and almost fugitive in the glare of daylight.
+Quiet they were and well-nigh stealthy, with something of the
+movement of other denizens of the forest, unless they were crossed
+and aroused, and then, like those other denizens, they were fierce
+almost beyond belief. A small cavil might make a great quarrel, and
+pistols would flash as quick as light.</p>
+<p>The first visit that Keith received was from J. Quincy Plume,
+the editor of the <i>Gumbolt Whistle</i>. He had the honor of
+knowing his distinguished father, he said, and had once had the
+pleasure of being at his old home. He had seen Keith's name on the
+book, and had simply called to offer him any services he or his
+paper could render him. "There are so few gentlemen in this ----
+hole," he explained, "that I feel that we should all stand
+together." Keith, knowing J. Quincy's history, inwardly smiled.</p>
+<p>Mr. Plume had aged since he was the speaker of the carpet-bag
+legislature; his black hair had begun to be sprinkled with gray,
+and had receded yet farther back on his high forehead, his hazel
+eyes were a little bleared; and his full lips were less resolute
+than of old. He had evidently seen bad times since he was the
+facile agent of the Wickersham interests. He wore a black suit and
+a gay necktie which had once been gayer, a shabby silk hat, and
+patent-leather shoes somewhat broken.</p>
+<p>His addiction to cards and drink had contributed to Mr. Plume's
+overthrow, and after a disappearance from public view for some time
+he had turned up just as Gumbolt began to be talked of, with a
+small sheet somewhat larger than a pocket-handkerchief, which, in
+prophetic tribute to Gumbolt's future manufactures, he christened
+the <i>Gumbolt Whistle</i>.</p>
+<p>Mr. Plume offered to introduce Keith to "the prettiest woman in
+Gumbolt," and, incidentally, to "the best cocktail" also.
+"Terpsichore is a nymph who practises the Terpsichorean art;
+indeed, I may say, presides over a number of the arts, for she has
+the best faro-bank in town, and the only bar where a gentleman can
+get a drink that will not poison a refined stomach. She is, I may
+say, the leader of Gumbolt society."</p>
+<p>Keith shook his head; he had come to work, he declared.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you need not decline; you will have to know Terpy. I am
+virtue itself; in fact, I am Joseph--nowadays. You know, I belong
+to the cloth?" Keith's expression indicated that he had heard this
+fact. "But even I have yielded to her charms--intellectual, I mean,
+of course."</p>
+<p>Mr. Plume withdrew after having suggested to Keith to make him a
+small temporary loan, or, if more convenient, to lend him the use
+of his name on a little piece of bank-paper "to tide over an
+accidental and unexpected emergency," assuring Keith that he would
+certainly take it up within sixty days.</p>
+<p>Unfortunately for Keith, Plume's cordiality had made so much
+impression on him that he was compliant enough to lend him the use
+of his name, and as neither at the expiration of sixty days, nor at
+any other time, did Mr. Plume ever find it convenient to take up
+his note, Keith found himself later under the necessity of paying
+it himself. This circumstance, it is due to Mr. Plume to say, he
+always deplored, and doubtless with sincerity.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Women were at a premium in Gumbolt, and Mr. Plume was not the
+only person who hymned the praises of "Terpsichoar," as she was
+mainly called. Keith could not help wondering what sort of a
+creature she was who kept a dance-house and a faro-bank, and yet
+was spoken of with unstinted admiration and something very like
+respect by the crowd that gathered in the "big room of the
+Windsor." She must be handsome, and possibly was a good dancer, but
+she was no doubt a wild, coarse creature, with painted cheeks and
+dyed hair. The mental picture he formed was not one to interfere
+with the picture he carried in his heart.</p>
+<p>Next day, as he was making a purchase in a shop, a neat and
+trim-looking young woman, with a fresh complexion and a mouth full
+of white teeth, walked in, and in a pleasant voice said, "Good
+mornin', all." Keith did not associate her at all with Terpsichore,
+but he was surprised that old Tim Gilsey should not have known of
+her presence in town. He was still more surprised when, after
+having taken a long and perfectly unabashed look at him, with no
+more diffidence in it than if he had been a lump of ore she was
+inspecting, she said:</p>
+<p>"You're the fellow that come to town night before last? Uncle
+Tim was tellin' me about you."</p>
+<p>"Yes; I got here night before last. Who is Uncle Tim?"</p>
+<p>"Uncle Tim Gilsey."</p>
+<p>She walked up and extended her hand to him with the most perfect
+friendliness, adding, with a laugh as natural as a child's:</p>
+<p>"We'll have to be friends; Uncle Tim says you're a white man,
+and that's more than some he brings over the road these days
+are."</p>
+<p>"Yes, I hope so. You are Mr. Gilsey's nieces I am glad to meet
+you"</p>
+<p>The young woman burst out laughing.</p>
+<p>"Lor', <i>no</i>. I ain't anybody's niece; but he's my
+uncle--I've adopted <i>him</i>. I'm Terpy--Terpsichore, run
+Terpsichore's Hall," she said by way of explanation, as if she
+thought he might not understand her allusion.</p>
+<p>Keith's breath was almost taken away. Why, she was not at all
+like the picture he had formed of her. She was a neat,
+quiet-looking young woman, with a fine figure, slim and straight
+and supple, a melodious voice, and laughing gray eyes.</p>
+<p>"You must come and see me. We're to have a blow-out to-night.
+Come around. I'll introduce you to the boys. I've got the finest
+ball-room in town--just finished--and three fiddles. We christen it
+to-night. Goin' to be the biggest thing ever was in Gumbolt."</p>
+<p>Keith awoke from his daze.</p>
+<p>"Thank you, but I am afraid I'll have to ask you to excuse me,"
+he said.</p>
+<p>"Why?" she inquired simply.</p>
+<p>"Because I can't come. I am not much of a dancer."</p>
+<p>She looked at him first with surprise and then with
+amusement.</p>
+<p>"Are you a Methodist preacher?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"Salvation?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"I thought, maybe, you were like Tib Drummond, the Methodist,
+what's always a-preachin' ag'in' me." She turned to the
+storekeeper. "What do you think he says? He says he won't come and
+see me, and he ain't a preacher nor Salvation Army neither. But he
+will, won't he?"</p>
+<p>"You bet," said the man, peeping up with a grin from behind a
+barrel. "If he don't, he'll be about the only one in town who
+don't."</p>
+<p>"No," said Keith, pleasantly, but firmly. "I can't go."</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes, you will," she laughed. "I'll expect you. By-by"; and
+she walked out of the store with a jaunty air, humming a song about
+the "iligint, bauld McIntyres."</p>
+<p>The "blow-out" came off, and was honored with a column in the
+next issue of the Whistle--a column of reeking eulogy. But Keith
+did not attend, though he heard the wheezing of fiddles and the
+shouting and stamping of Terpsichore's guests deep into the
+night.</p>
+<p>Keith was too much engrossed for the next few days in looking
+about him for work and getting himself as comfortably settled as
+possible to think of anything else.</p>
+<p>If, however, he forgot the "only decent-looking woman in
+Gumbolt," she did not forget him. The invitation of a sovereign is
+equivalent to a command the world over; and Terpsichore was as much
+the queen regnant of Gumbolt as Her Majesty, Victoria, was Queen of
+England, or of any other country in her wide realm. She was more;
+she was absolute. She could have had any one of a half-dozen men
+cut the throat of any other man in Gumbolt at her bidding.</p>
+<p>The mistress of the "Dancing Academy" had not forgotten her
+boast. The institution over which she presided was popular enough
+almost to justify her wager. There were few men of Keith's age in
+Gumbolt who did not attend its sessions and pay their tribute over
+the green tables that stretched along the big, low room.</p>
+<p>In fact, Miss Terpsichore was not of that class that forget
+either friends or foes; whatever she was she was frankly and
+outspokenly. Mr. Plume informed Keith that she was "down on
+him."</p>
+<p>"She's got it in for you," he said. "Says she's goin' to drive
+you out of Gumbolt."</p>
+<p>"Well, she will not," said Keith, with a flash in his eye.</p>
+<p>"She is a good friend and a good foe," said the editor. "Better
+go and offer a pinch of incense to Diana. She is worth cultivating.
+You ought to see her dance."</p>
+<p>Keith, however, had made his decision. A girl with eyes like
+dewy violets was his Diana, and to her his incense was offered.</p>
+<p>A day or two later Keith was passing down the main street, when
+he saw the young woman crossing over at the corner ahead of him,
+stepping from one stone to another quite daintily. She was holding
+up her skirt, and showed a very neat pair of feet in perfectly
+fitting boots. At the crossing she stopped. As Keith passed her, he
+glanced at her, and caught her eye fastened on him. She did not
+look away at all, and Keith inclined his head in recognition of
+their former meeting.</p>
+<p>"Good morning," she said.</p>
+<p>"Good morning." Keith lifted his hat and was passing on.</p>
+<p>"Why haven't you been to see me?" she demanded.</p>
+<p>Keith pretended not to hear.</p>
+<p>"I thought I invited you to come and see me?"</p>
+<p>Still, Keith did not answer, but he paused. His head was
+averted, and he was waiting until she ceased speaking to go on.</p>
+<p>Suddenly, to his surprise, she bounded in front of him and
+squared her straight figure right before him.</p>
+<p>"Did you hear what I said to you?" she demanded
+tempestuously.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<br>
+<a name="p140.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/p140.jpg"><img src="images/p140.jpg"
+width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"Then why don't you answer me?"</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"Then why don't you answer me?" Her gaze was fastened on his
+face. Her cheeks were flushed, her voice was imperative, and her
+eyes flashed.</p>
+<p>"Because I didn't wish to do so," said Keith, calmly.</p>
+<p>Suddenly she flamed out and poured at him a torrent of vigorous
+oaths. He was so taken by surprise that he forgot to do anything
+but wonder, and his calmness evidently daunted her.</p>
+<p>"Don't you know that when a lady invites you to come to see her,
+you have to do it?"</p>
+<p>"I have heard that," said Keith, beginning to look amused.</p>
+<p>"You have? Do you mean to say Tam not a lady?"</p>
+<p>"Well, from your conversation, I might suppose you were a man,"
+said Keith, half laughing.</p>
+<p>"I will show you that I am man enough for you. Don't you know I
+am the boss of this town, and that when I tell you to do a thing
+you have to obey me?"</p>
+<p>"No; I do not know that," said Keith. "You may be the boss of
+this town, but I don't have to obey you."</p>
+<p>"Well, I will show you about it, and ---- quick, too. See if I
+don't! I will run you out of this town, my young man."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I don't think you will," said Keith, easily.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I will, and quick enough, too. You look out for me."</p>
+<p>"Good morning," said Keith, raising his hat.</p>
+<p>The loudness of her tone and the vehemence of her manner had
+arrested several passers-by, who now stood looking on with
+interest.</p>
+<p>"What's the matter, Terpy?" asked one of them. "What are you so
+peppery about? Bank busted?"</p>
+<p>The young woman explained the matter with more fairness than
+Keith would have supposed.</p>
+<p>"Oh, he is just a fool. Let him alone," said the man; whilst
+another added: "He'll come around, darlin'; don't you bother; and
+if he don't, I will."</p>
+<p>"---- him! He's got to go. I won't let him now. You know when I
+say a thing it's got to be, and I mean to make him know it, too,"
+asserted the young Amazon. "I'll have him driven out of town, and
+if there ain't any one here that's man enough to do it, I'll do it
+myself." This declaration she framed with an imprecation
+sufficiently strong if an oath could make it so.</p>
+<p>That evening Tim Gilsey came in to see Keith. He looked rather
+grave.</p>
+<p>"I am sorry you did not drop in, if it was for no more than to
+git supper," he said. "Terpy is a bad one to have against you.
+She's the kindest gal in the world; but she's got a temper, and
+when a gal's got a temper, she's worse'n a fractious leader."</p>
+<p>"I don't want her against me; but I'll be hanged if I will be
+driven into going anywhere that I don't want to go," asserted
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"No, I don't say as you should," said the old driver, his eye
+resting on Keith with a look that showed that he liked him none the
+less for his pluck. "But you've got to look out. This ain't back in
+the settlements, and there's a plenty around here as would cut your
+throat for a wink of Terpy's eye. They will give you a shake for
+it, and if you come out of that safe it will be all right. I'll see
+one or two of the boys and see that they don't let 'em double up on
+you. A horse can't do nothin' long if he has got a double load on
+him, no matter what he is."</p>
+<p>Tim strolled out, and, though Keith did not know it for some
+time, he put in a word for him in one or two places which stood him
+in good stead afterwards.</p>
+<p>The following day a stranger came up to Keith. He was a thin man
+between youth and middle age, with a long face and a deep voice,
+and light hair that stuck up on his head. His eyes were deep-set
+and clear; his mouth was grave and his chin strong. He wore a rusty
+black coat and short, dark trousers.</p>
+<p>"Are you Mr. Keith?" His voice was deep and melancholy.</p>
+<p>Keith bowed. He could not decide what the stranger was. The
+short trousers inclined him to the church.</p>
+<p>"I am proud to know you, sir. I am Mr. Drummond, the Methodist
+preacher." He gripped Keith's hand.</p>
+<p>Keith expressed the pleasure he had in meeting him.</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir; I am proud to know you," repeated Mr. Drummond. "I
+hear you have come out on the right side, and have given a
+righteous reproof to that wretched dancing Jezebel who is trying to
+destroy the souls of the young men of this town."</p>
+<p>Keith said that he was not aware that he had done anything of
+the kind. As to destroying the young men, he doubted if they could
+be injured by her--certainly not by dancing. In any event, he did
+not merit his praise.</p>
+<p>Mr. Drummond shook his head. "Yes, sir. You are the first young
+man who has had the courage to withstand the wiles of that person.
+She is the most abandoned creature in this town; she beguiles the
+men so that I can make no impression on them. Even when I am
+holding my meetings, I can hear the strains of her fiddles and the
+shouts of the ribald followers that throng her den-of-Satan. I have
+tried to get her to leave, but she will not go."</p>
+<p>Keith's reply was that he thought she had as much right there as
+any one, and he doubted if there were any way to meet the
+difficulty.</p>
+<p>"I am sorry to hear you say that," said the preacher. "I shall
+break up her sink of iniquity if I have to hold a revival meeting
+at her very door and call down brimstone and fire upon her den of
+wickedness"</p>
+<p>"If you felt so on the subject of dancing, why did you come
+here?" demanded Keith. "It seems to me that dancing is one of the
+least sins of Gumbolt."</p>
+<p>The preacher looked at him almost pensively. "I thought it my
+duty. I have encountered ridicule and obloquy; but I do not mind
+them. I count them but dross. Wherever I have found the print of my
+Lord's shoe in the earth, there I have coveted to set my feet
+also."</p>
+<p>Keith bowed. The speech of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth carried its
+cachet with it. The stiff, awkward figure had changed. The
+preacher's sincerity had lent him dignity, and his simple use of a
+simple tinker's words had suddenly uplifted him to a higher
+plane.</p>
+<p>"Do not you think you might go about it in a less uncompromising
+spirit? You might succeed better and do more good," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"No, sir; I will make no compromise with the devil--not even to
+succeed. Good-by. I am sorry to find you among the obdurate." As he
+shook hands, his jaw was set fast and his eye was burning. He
+strode off with the step of a soldier advancing in battle.</p>
+<p>Keith had not long to wait to test old Gilsey's advice. He was
+sitting in the public room of the Windsor, a few evenings later,
+among the motley crew that thronged that popular resort, who were
+discoursing of many things, from J. Quincy Plume's last editorial
+on "The New Fanny Elssler," to the future of Gumbolt, when Mr.
+Plume himself entered. His appearance was the signal for some
+humor, for Mr. Plume had long passed the time when any one but
+himself took him seriously.</p>
+<p>"Here comes somebody that can tell us the news," called some
+one. "Come in, J. Quincy, and tell us what you know."</p>
+<p>"That would take too long," said Mr. Plume, as he edged himself
+toward the stove. "You will find all the news in the <i>Whistle</i>
+to-morrow."</p>
+<p>Just then another new arrival, who had pushed his way in toward
+the stove, said: "I will tell you a piece of news: Bill Bluffy is
+back."</p>
+<p>"Come back, has he?" observed one of the company. "Well, that is
+more interesting to J. Quincy than if the railroad had come. They
+are hated rivals. Since J. Quincy has taken to writing editorials
+on Terpy, Bill says there ain't no show for him. He threatened to
+kill Terp, I heard."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I guess he has got more sense than that, drunk or sober. He
+had better stick to men; shootin' of women ain't popular in most
+parts, an' it ain't likely to get fashionable in Gumbolt, I
+reckon."</p>
+<p>"He is huntin' for somebody," said the newcomer.</p>
+<p>"I guess if he is going to get after all of Terpy's ardent
+admirers, he will have his hands pretty full," observed Mr.
+Plume--a sentiment which appeared to meet with general
+approval.</p>
+<p>Just then the door opened a little roughly, and a man entered
+slowly whom Keith knew intuitively to be Mr. Bill Bluffy himself.
+He was a young, brown-bearded man, about Keith's size, but more
+stockily built, his flannel shirt was laced up in front, and had a
+full, broad collar turned over a red necktie with long ends. His
+slouch-hat was set on the back of his head. The gleaming butts of
+two pistols that peeped out of his waistband gave a touch of
+piquancy to his appearance. His black eyes were restless and
+sparkling with excitement. He wavered slightly in his gait, and his
+speech was just thick enough to confirm what his appearance
+suggested, and what he was careful to declare somewhat
+superfluously, that he was "on a ---- of a spree."</p>
+<p>"I am a-huntin' for a ---- furriner 'at I promised to run out of
+town before to-morrow mornin'. Is he in here!" He tried to stand
+still, but finding this difficult, advanced.</p>
+<p>A pause fell in the conversation around the stove. Two or three
+of the men, after a civil enough greeting, hitched themselves into
+a more comfortable posture in their chairs, and it was singular,
+though Keith did not recall it until afterwards, that each of them
+showed by the movement a pistol on his right hip.</p>
+<p>After a general greeting, which in form was nearer akin to an
+eternal malediction than to anything else, Mr. Bluffy walked to the
+bar. Resting himself against it, he turned, and sweeping his eye
+over the assemblage, ordered every man in the room to walk up and
+take a drink with him, under penalties veiled in too terrific
+language to be wholly intelligible. The violence of his invitation
+was apparently not quite necessary, as every man in the room pulled
+back his chair promptly and moved toward the bar, leaving Keith
+alone by the stove. Mr. Bluffy had ordered drinks, when his casual
+glance fell on Keith standing quietly inside the circle of chairs
+on the other side of the stove. He pushed his way unsteadily
+through the men clustered at the bar.</p>
+<p>"Why in the ---- don't you come up and do what I tell you? Are
+you deaf?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Keith, quietly; "but I'll get you to excuse me."</p>
+<p>"Excuse ----! You aren't too good to drink with me, are you? If
+you think you are, I'll show you pretty ----d quick you ain't."</p>
+<p>Keith flushed.</p>
+<p>"Drink with him," said two or three men in an undertone. "Or
+take a cigar," said one, in a friendly aside.</p>
+<p>"Thank you, I won't drink," said Keith, yet more gravely, his
+face paling a little, "and I don't care for a cigar."</p>
+<p>"Come on, Mr. Keith," called some one.</p>
+<p>The name caught the young bully, and he faced Keith more
+directly.</p>
+<p>"Keith?--Keith!" he repeated, fastening his eyes on him with a
+cold glitter in them. "So you're Mr. Keith, are you?"</p>
+<p>"That is my name," said Keith, feeling his blood tingling.</p>
+<p>"Well, you're the man I'm a-lookin' for. No, you won't drink
+with me, 'cause I won't let you, you ---- ---- ----! You are the
+---- ---- that comes here insultin' a lady?"</p>
+<p>"No; I am not," said Keith, keeping his eyes on him.</p>
+<p>"You're a liar!" said Mr. Bluffy, adding his usual expletives.
+"And you're the man I've come back here a-huntin' for. I promised
+to drive you out of town to-night if I had to go to hell a-doin'
+it."</p>
+<p>His white-handled pistol was out of his waistband with a
+movement so quick that he had it cocked and Keith was looking down
+the barrel before he took in what had been done. Quickness was Mr.
+Bluffy's strongest card, and he had played it often.</p>
+<p>Keith's face paled slightly. He looked steadily over the pistol,
+not three feet from him, at the drunken creature beyond it. His
+nerves grew tense, and every muscle in his frame tightened. He saw
+the beginning of the grooves in the barrel of the pistol and the
+gray cones of the bullets at the side in the cylinder; he saw the
+cruel, black, drunken eyes of the young desperado. It was all in a
+flash. He had not a chance for his life. Yes, he had.</p>
+<p>"Let up, Bill," said a voice, coaxingly, as one might to soothe
+a wild beast. "Don't--"</p>
+<p>"Drop that pistol!" said another voice, which Keith recognized
+as Dave Dennison's.</p>
+<p>The desperado half glanced at the latter as he shot a volley of
+oaths at him. That glance saved Keith. He ducked out of the line of
+aim and sprang upon his assailant at the same time, seizing the
+pistol as he went, and turning it up just as Bluffy pulled the
+trigger. The ball went into the remote corner of the ceiling, and
+the desperado was carried off his feet by Keith's rush.</p>
+<p>The only sounds heard in the room were the shuffling of the feet
+of the two wrestlers and the oaths of the enraged Bluffy. Keith had
+not uttered a word. He fought like a bulldog, without noise. His
+effort was, while he still gripped the pistol, to bring his two
+hands together behind his opponent's back. A sudden relaxation of
+the latter's grip as he made another desperate effort to release
+his pistol favored Keith, and, bringing his hands together, he
+lifted his antagonist from his feet, and by a dexterous twist
+whirled him over his shoulder and dashed him with all his might,
+full length flat on his back, upon the floor. It was an old trick
+learned in his boyish days and practised on the Dennisons, and
+Gordon had by it ended many a contest, but never one more
+completely than this. A buzz of applause came from the bystanders,
+and more than one, with sudden friendliness, called to him to get
+Bluffy's pistol, which had fallen on the floor. But Keith had no
+need to do so, for just then a stoutly built young fellow snatched
+it up. It was Dave Dennison, who had come in just as the row began.
+He had been following up Bluffy. The desperado, however, was too
+much shaken to have used it immediately, and when, still stunned
+and breathless, he rose to his feet, the crowd was too much against
+him to have allowed him to renew the attack, even had he then
+desired it.</p>
+<p>As for Keith, he found himself suddenly the object of universal
+attention, and he might, had he been able to distribute himself,
+have slept in half the shacks in the camp.</p>
+<p>The only remark Dave made on the event was characteristic:</p>
+<p>"Don't let him git the drop on you again."</p>
+<p>The next morning Keith found himself, in some sort, famous.
+"Tacklin' Bill Bluffy without a gun and cleanin' him up," as one of
+his new friends expressed it, was no mean feat, and Keith was not
+insensible to the applause it brought him. He would have enjoyed it
+more, perhaps, had not every man, without exception, who spoke of
+it given him the same advice Dave had given--to look out for
+Bluffy. To have to kill a man or be killed oneself is not the
+pleasantest introduction to one's new home; yet this appeared to
+Keith the dilemma in which he was placed, and as, if either had to
+die, he devoutly hoped it would not be himself, he stuck a pistol
+in his pocket and walked out the next morning with very much the
+same feeling he supposed he should have if he had been going to
+battle. He was ashamed to find himself much relieved when some one
+he met volunteered the information that Bluffy had left town by
+light that morning. "Couldn't stand the racket. Terpy wouldn't even
+speak to him. But he'll come back. Jest as well tote your gun a
+little while, till somebody else kills him for you." A few mornings
+later, as Keith was going down the street, he met again the "only
+decent-lookin' gal in Gumbolt." It was too late for him to turn
+off, for when he first caught sight of her he saw that she had seen
+him, and her head went up, and she turned her eyes away. He hoped
+to pass without appearing to know her; but just before they met,
+she cut her eye at him, and though his gaze was straight ahead, she
+said, "Good morning," and he touched his hat as he passed. That
+afternoon he met her again. He was passing on as before, without
+looking at her, but she stopped him. "Good afternoon." She spoke
+rather timidly, and the color that mounted to her face made her
+very handsome. He returned the salutation coldly, and with an
+uneasy feeling that he was about to be made the object of another
+outpouring of her wrath. Her intention, however, was quite
+different. "I don't want you to think I set that man on you; it was
+somebody else done it." The color came and went in her cheeks.</p>
+<p>Keith bowed politely, but preserved silence.</p>
+<p>"I was mad enough to do it, but I didn't, and them that says I
+done it lies." She flushed, but looked him straight in the
+face.</p>
+<p>"Oh, that's all right," said Keith, civilly, starting to move
+on.</p>
+<p>"I wish they would let me and my affairs alone," she began.'
+"They're always a-talkin' about me, and I never done 'em no harm.
+First thing they know, I'll give 'em something to talk about."</p>
+<p>The suppressed fire was beginning to blaze again, and Keith
+looked somewhat anxiously down the street, wishing he were anywhere
+except in that particular company. To relieve the tension, he
+said:</p>
+<p>"I did not mean to be rude to you the other day. Good
+morning."</p>
+<p>At the kind tone her face changed.</p>
+<p>"I knew it. I was riled that mornin' about another
+thing--somethin' what happened the day before, about Bill," she
+explained. "Bill's bad enough when he's in liquor, and I'd have
+sent him off for good long ago if they had let him alone. But
+they're always a-peckin' and a-diggin' at him. They set him on
+drinkin' and fightin', and not one of 'em is man enough to stand up
+to him."</p>
+<p>She gave a little whimper, and then, as if not trusting herself
+further, walked hastily away. Mr. Gilsey said to Gordon soon
+afterwards:</p>
+<p>"Well, you've got one friend in Gumbolt as is a team by herself;
+you've captured Terp. She says you're the only man in Gumbolt as
+treats her like a lady."</p>
+<p>Keith was both pleased and relieved.</p>
+<p>A week or two after Keith had taken up his abode in Gumbolt, Mr.
+Gilsey was taken down with his old enemy, the rheumatism, and Keith
+went to visit him. He found him in great anxiety lest his removal
+from the box should hasten the arrival of the railway. He
+unexpectedly gave Keith evidence of the highest confidence he could
+have in any man. He asked if he would take the stage until he got
+well. Gordon readily assented.</p>
+<p>So the next morning at daylight Keith found himself sitting in
+the boot, enveloped in old Tim's greatcoat, enthroned in that high
+seat toward which he had looked in his childhood-dreams.</p>
+<p>It was hard work and more or less perilous work, but his
+experience as a boy on the plantation and at Squire Rawson's, when
+he had driven the four-horse wagon, stood him in good stead.</p>
+<p>Old Tim's illness was more protracted than any one had
+contemplated, and, before the first winter was out, Gordon had a
+reputation as a stage-driver second only to old Gilsey himself.</p>
+<p>Stage-driving, however, was not his only occupation, and before
+the next Spring had passed, Keith had become what Mr. Plume called
+"one of Gumbolt's rising young sons." His readiness to lend a hand
+to any one who needed a helper began to tell. Whether it was Mr.
+Gilsey trying to climb with his stiff joints to the boot of his
+stage, or Squire Rawson's cousin, Captain Turley, the
+sandy-whiskered, sandy-clothed surveyor, running his lines through
+the laurel bushes among the gray d&eacute;bris of the crumbled
+mountain-side; Mr. Quincy Plume trying to evolve new copy from a
+splitting head, or the shouting wagon-drivers thrashing their teams
+up the muddy street, he could and would help any one.</p>
+<p>He was so popular that he was nominated to be the town
+constable, a tribute to his victory over Mr. Bluffy.</p>
+<p>Terpy and he, too, had become friends, and though Keith stuck to
+his resolution not to visit her "establishment," few days went by
+that she did not pass him on the street or happen along where he
+was, and always with a half-abashed nod and a rising color.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<h3>KEITH DECLINES AN OFFER</h3>
+<br>
+<p>With the growth of Gumbolt, Mr. Wickersham and his friends
+awakened to the fact that Squire Rawson was not the simple
+cattle-dealer he appeared to be, but was a man to be reckoned with.
+He not only held a large amount of the most valuable property in
+the Gap, but had as yet proved wholly intractable about disposing
+of it. Accordingly, the agent of Wickersham &amp; Company, Mr.
+Halbrook, came down to Gumbolt to look into the matter. He brought
+with him a stout, middle-aged Scotchman, named Matheson, with keen
+eyes and a red face, who was represented to be the man whom
+Wickersham &amp; Company intended to make the superintendent of
+their mines as soon as they should be opened.</p>
+<p>The railroad not having yet been completed more than a third of
+the way beyond Eden, Mr. Halbrook took the stage to Gumbolt.</p>
+<p>Owing to something that Mr. Gilsey had let fall about Keith, Mr.
+Halbrook sent next day for Keith. He wanted him to do a small piece
+of surveying for him. With him was the stout Scotchman,
+Matheson.</p>
+<p>The papers and plats were on a table in his room, and Keith was
+looking at them.</p>
+<p>"How long would it take you to do it?" asked Mr. Halbrook. He
+was a short, alert-looking man, with black eyes and a decisive
+manner. He always appeared to be in a hurry.</p>
+<p>Keith was so absorbed that he did not answer immediately, and
+the agent repeated the question with a little asperity in his
+tone.</p>
+<p>"I say how long would it take you to run those lines?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know," said Keith, doubtfully. "I see a part of the
+property lies on the mountain-side just above and next to Squire
+Rawson's lands. I could let you know to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"To-morrow! You people down here always want to put things off.
+That is the reason you are so behind the rest of the world. The
+stage-driver, however, told me that you were different, and that is
+the reason I sent for you."</p>
+<p>Keith straightened himself. "Dr. Chalmers said when some one
+praised him as better than other Scotchmen, 'I thank you, sir, for
+no compliment paid me at the expense of my countrymen." He half
+addressed himself to the Scotchman.</p>
+<p>Matheson turned and looked him over, and as he did so his grim
+face softened a little.</p>
+<p>"I know nothing about your doctors," said Mr. Halbrook; "what I
+want is to get this work done. Why can't you let me know to-day
+what it will cost? I have other things to do. I wish to leave
+to-morrow afternoon."</p>
+<p>"Well," said Keith, with a little flush in his face, "I could
+guess at it to-day. I think it will take a very short time. I am
+familiar with a part of this property already, and--"</p>
+<p>Mr. Halbrook was a man of quick intellect; moreover, he had many
+things on his mind just then. Among them he had to go and see what
+sort of a trade he could make with this Squire Rawson, who had
+somehow stumbled into the best piece of land in the Gap, and was
+now holding it in an obstinate and unreasonable way.</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't want any guessing. I'll tell you what I will do.
+I will pay you so much for the job." He named a sum which was
+enough to make Keith open his eyes. It was more than he had ever
+received for any one piece of work.</p>
+<p>"It would be cheaper for you to pay me by the day," Keith
+began.</p>
+<p>"Not much! I know the way you folks work down here. I have seen
+something of it. No day-work for me. I will pay you so many dollars
+for the job. What do you say? You can take it or leave it alone. If
+you do it well, I may have some more work for you." He had no
+intention of being offensive; he was only talking what he would
+have called "business"; but his tone was such that Keith answered
+him with a flash in his eye, his breath coming a little more
+quickly.</p>
+<p>"Very well; I will take it."</p>
+<p>Keith took the papers and went out. Within a few minutes he had
+found his notes of the former survey and secured his assistants.
+His next step was to go to Captain Turley and take him into
+partnership in the work, and within an hour he was out on the
+hills, verifying former lines and running such new lines as were
+necessary. Spurred on by the words of the newcomer even more than
+by the fee promised him, Keith worked with might and main, and sat
+up all night finishing the work. Next day he walked into the room
+where Mr. Halbrook sat, in the company's big new office at the head
+of the street. He had a roll of paper under his arm.</p>
+<p>"Good morning, sir." His head was held rather high, and his
+voice had a new tone in it.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham's agent looked up, and his face clouded. He was
+not used to being addressed in so independent a tone.</p>
+<p>"Good morning. I suppose you have come to tell me how long it
+will take you to finish the job that I gave you, or that the price
+I named is not high enough?"</p>
+<p>"No," said Keith, "I have not. I have come to show you that my
+people down here do not always put things off till to-morrow. I
+have come to tell you that I have done the work. Here is your
+survey." He unrolled and spread out before Mr. Halbrook's
+astonished gaze the plat he had made. It was well done, the
+production of a draughtsman who knew the value of neatness and
+skill. The agent's eyes opened wide.</p>
+<p>"Impossible! You could not have done it, or else you--"</p>
+<p>"I have done it," said Keith, firmly. "It is correct."</p>
+<p>"You had the plat before?" Mr. Halbrook's eyes were fastened on
+him keenly. He was feeling a little sore at what he considered
+having been outwitted by this youngster.</p>
+<p>"I had run certain of the lines before," said Keith: "these, as
+I started to tell you yesterday. And now," he said, with a sudden
+change of manner, "I will make you the same proposal I made
+yesterday. You can pay me what you think the work is worth. I will
+not hold you to your bargain of yesterday."</p>
+<p>The other sat back in his chair, and looked at him with a
+different expression on his face.</p>
+<p>"You must have worked all night?' he said thoughtfully.</p>
+<p>"I did," said Keith, "and so did my assistant, but that is
+nothing. I have often done that for less money. Many people sit up
+all night in Gumbolt," he added, with a smile.</p>
+<p>"That old stage-driver said you were a worker." Mr. Halbrook's
+eyes were still on him. "Where are you from?"</p>
+<p>"Born and bred in the South," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"I owe you something of an apology for what I said yesterday. I
+shall have some more work for you, perhaps."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The agent, when he went back to the North, was as good as his
+word. He told his people that there was one man in Gumbolt who
+would do their work promptly.</p>
+<p>"And he's straight," he said. "He says he is from the South; but
+he is a new issue."</p>
+<p>He further reported that old Rawson, the countryman who owned
+the land in the Gap, either owned or controlled the cream of the
+coal-beds there. "He either knows or has been well advised by
+somebody who knows the value of all the lands about there. And he
+has about blocked the game. I think it's that young Keith, and I
+advise you to get hold of Keith."</p>
+<p>"Who is Keith? What Keith? What is his name?" asked Mr.
+Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"Gordon Keith."</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham's face brightened. "Oh, that is all right; we can
+get him. We might give him a place?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Halbrook nodded.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham sat down and wrote a letter to Keith, saying that
+he wished to see him in New York on a matter of business which
+might possibly turn out to his advantage. He also wrote a letter to
+General Keith, suggesting that he might possibly be able to give
+his son employment, and intimating that it was on account of his
+high regard for the General.</p>
+<p>That day Keith met Squire Rawson on the street. He was dusty and
+travel-stained.</p>
+<p>"I was jest comin' to see you," he said.</p>
+<p>They returned to the little room which Keith called his office,
+where the old fellow opened his saddle-bags and took out a package
+of papers.</p>
+<p>"They all thought I was a fool," he chuckled as he laid out deed
+after deed. "While they was a-talkin' I was a-ridin'. They thought
+I was buyin' cattle, and I was, but for every cow I bought I got a
+calf in the shape of the mineral rights to a tract of land. I'd buy
+a cow and I'd offer a man half as much again as she was worth if
+he'd sell me the mineral rights at a fair price, and he'd do it. He
+never had no use for 'em, an' I didn't know as I should either; but
+that young engineer o' yourn talked so positive I thought I might
+as well git 'em inside my pasture-fence." He sat back and looked at
+Keith with quizzical complacency.</p>
+<p>"Come a man to see me not long ago," he continued; "Mr.
+Halbrook--black-eyed man, with a face white and hard like a
+tombstone. I set up and talked to him nigh all night and filled him
+plumb full of old applejack. That man sized me up for a fool, an' I
+sized him up for a blamed smart Yankee. But I don't know as he got
+much the better of me."</p>
+<p>Keith doubted it too.</p>
+<p>"I think it was in and about the most vallyble applejack that I
+ever owned," continued the old landowner, after a pause. "You know,
+I don't mind Yankees as much as I used to--some of 'em. Of course,
+thar was Dr. Balsam; he was a Yankee; but I always thought he was
+somethin' out of the general run, like a piebald horse. That young
+engineer o' yourn that come to my house several years ago, he give
+me a new idea about 'em--about some other things, too. He was a
+very pleasant fellow, an' he knowed a good deal, too. It occurred
+to me 't maybe you might git hold of him, an' we might make
+somethin' out of these lands on our own account. Where is he
+now?"</p>
+<p>Keith explained that Mr. Rhodes was somewhere in Europe.</p>
+<p>"Well, time enough. He'll come home sometime, an' them lands
+ain't liable to move away. Yes, I likes some Yankees now pretty
+well; but, Lord! I loves to git ahead of a Yankee! They're so kind
+o' patronizin' to you. Well," he said, rising, "I thought I'd come
+up and talk to you about it. Some day I'll git you to look into
+matters a leetle for me."</p>
+<p>The next day Keith received Mr. Wickersham's letter requesting
+him to come to New York. Keith's heart gave a bound.</p>
+<p>The image of Alice Yorke flashed into his mind, as it always did
+when any good fortune came to him. Many a night, with drooping eyes
+and flagging energies, he had sat up and worked with renewed
+strength because she sat on the other side of the hot lamp.</p>
+<p>It is true that communication between them had been but rare.
+Mrs. Yorke had objected to any correspondence, and he now began to
+see, though dimly, that her objection was natural. But from time to
+time, on anniversaries, he had sent her a book, generally a book of
+poems with marked passages in it, and had received in reply a
+friendly note from the young lady, over which he had pondered, and
+which he had always treasured and filed away with tender care.</p>
+<p>Keith took the stage that night for Eden on his way to New York.
+As they drove through the pass in the moonlight he felt as if he
+were soaring into a new life. He was already crossing the mountains
+beyond which lay the Italy of his dreams.</p>
+<p>He stopped on his way to see his father. The old gentleman's
+face glowed with pleasure as he looked at Gordon and found how he
+had developed. Life appeared to be reopening for him also in his
+son.</p>
+<p>"I will give you a letter to an old friend of mine, John
+Templeton. He has a church in New York. But it is not one of the
+fashionable ones; for</p>
+<blockquote>"'Unpractised he to fawn or seek for power<br>
+By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour:<br>
+Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,<br>
+More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.'</blockquote>
+<p>"You will find him a safe adviser. You will call also and pay my
+respects to Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth."</p>
+<p>On his way, owing to a break in the railroad, Keith had to
+change his train at a small town not far from New York. Among the
+passengers was an old lady, simply and quaintly dressed, who had
+taken the train somewhere near Philadelphia. She was travelling
+quite alone, and appeared to be much hampered by her bags and
+parcels. The sight of an old woman, like that of a little girl,
+always softened Keith's heart. Something always awoke in him that
+made him feel tender. When Keith first observed this old lady, the
+entire company was streaming along the platform in that haste which
+always marks the transfer of passengers from one train to another.
+No one appeared to notice her, and under the weight of her bags and
+bundles she was gradually dropping to the rear of the crowd. As
+Keith, bag in hand, swung past her with the rest, he instinctively
+turned and offered his services to help carry her parcels. She
+panted her thanks, but declined briefly, declaring that she should
+do very well.</p>
+<p>"You may be doing very well," Keith said pleasantly, "but you
+will do better if you will let me help you."</p>
+<p>"No, thank you." This time more firmly than before. "I am quite
+used to helping myself, and am not old enough for that yet. I
+prefer to carry my own baggage," she added with emphasis.</p>
+<p>"It is not the question of age, I hope, that gives me the
+privilege of helping a lady," said Keith. He was already trying to
+relieve her of her largest bag and one or two bundles.</p>
+<p>A keen glance from a pair of very bright eyes was shot at
+him.</p>
+<p>"Well, I will let you take that side of that bag and this
+bundle--no; that one. Now, don't run away from me."</p>
+<p>"No; I will promise not," said Keith, laughing; and relieved of
+that much of her burden, the old lady stepped out more briskly than
+she had been doing. When they finally reached a car, the seats were
+nearly all filled. There was one, however, beside a young woman at
+the far end, and this Keith offered to the old lady, who, as he
+stowed her baggage close about her, made him count the pieces
+carefully. Finding the tale correct, she thanked him with more
+cordiality than she had shown before, and Keith withdrew to secure
+a seat for himself. As, however, the car was full, he stood up in
+the rear of the coach, waiting until some passengers might alight
+at a way-station. The first seat that became vacant was one
+immediately behind the old lady, who had now fallen into a cheerful
+conversation with the young woman beside her.</p>
+<p>"What do you do when strangers offer to take your bags?" Keith
+heard her asking as he seated himself.</p>
+<p>"Why, I don't know; they don't often ask. I never let them do
+it," said the young woman, firmly.</p>
+<p>"A wise rule, too. I have heard that that is the way nowadays
+that they rob women travelling alone. I had a young man insist on
+taking my bag back there; but I am very suspicious of these civil
+young men." She leaned over and counted her parcels again. Keith
+could not help laughing to himself. As she sat up she happened to
+glance around, and he caught her eye. He saw her clutch her
+companion and whisper to her, at which the latter glanced over her
+shoulder and gave him a look that was almost a stare. Then the two
+conferred together, while Keith chuckled with amusement. What they
+were saying, had Keith heard it, would have amused him still more
+than the other.</p>
+<p>"There he is now, right behind us," whispered the old lady.</p>
+<p>"Why, he doesn't look like a robber."</p>
+<p>"They never do. I have heard they never do. They are the most
+dangerous kind. Of course, a robber who looked it would be arrested
+on sight."</p>
+<p>"But he is very good-looking," insisted the younger woman, who
+had, in the meantime, taken a second glance at Keith, who pretended
+to be immersed in a book.</p>
+<p>"Well, so much the worse. They are the very worst kind. Never
+trust a good-looking young stranger, my dear. They may be all right
+in romances, but never in life."</p>
+<p>As her companion did not altogether appear to take this view,
+the old lady half turned presently, and taking a long look down the
+other side of the car, to disarm Keith of any suspicion that she
+might be looking at him, finally let her eyes rest on his face,
+quite accidentally, as it were. A moment later she was whispering
+to her companion.</p>
+<p>"I am sure he is watching us. I am going to ask you to stick
+close beside me when we get to New York until I find a
+hackney-coach."</p>
+<p>"Have you been to New York often?" asked the girl, smiling.</p>
+<p>"I have been there twice in the last thirty years; but I spent
+several winters there when I was a young girl. I suppose it has
+changed a good deal in that time?"</p>
+<p>The young lady also supposed that it had changed in that time,
+and wondered why Miss Brooke--the name the other had given--did not
+come to New York oftener.</p>
+<p>"You see, it is such an undertaking to go now," said the old
+lady. "Everything goes with such a rush that it takes my breath
+away. Why, three trains a day each way pass near my home now. One
+of them actually rushes by in the most impetuous and disdainful
+way. When I was young we used to go to the station at least an hour
+before the train was due, and had time to take out our knitting and
+compose our thoughts; but now one has to be at the station just as
+promptly as if one were going to church, and if you don't get on
+the train almost before it has stopped, the dreadful thing is gone
+before you know it. I must say, it is very destructive to one's
+nerves."</p>
+<p>Her companion laughed.</p>
+<p>"I don't know what you will think when you get to New York."</p>
+<p>"Think! I don't expect to think at all. I shall just shut my
+eyes and trust to Providence."</p>
+<p>"Your friends will meet you there, I suppose?"</p>
+<p>"I wrote them two weeks ago that I should be there to-day, and
+then my cousin wrote me to let her know the train, and I replied,
+telling her what train I expected to take. I would never have come
+if I had imagined we were going to have this trouble."</p>
+<p>The girl reassured her by telling her that even if her friends
+did not meet her, she would put her in the way of reaching them
+safely. And in a little while they drew into the station.</p>
+<p>Keith's first impression of New York was dazzling to him. The
+rush, the hurry, stirred him and filled him with a sense of power.
+He felt that here was the theatre of action for him.</p>
+<p>The offices of Wickersham &amp; Company were in one of the large
+buildings down-town. The whole floor was filled with pens and
+railed-off places, beyond which lay the private offices of the
+firm. Mr. Wickersham was "engaged," and Keith had to wait for an
+hour or two before he could secure an interview with him. When at
+length he was admitted to Mr. Wickersham's inner office, he was
+received with some cordiality. His father was asked after, and a
+number of questions about Gumbolt were put to him. Then Mr.
+Wickersham came to the point. He had a high regard for his father,
+he said, and having heard that Gordon was living in Gumbolt, where
+they had some interests, it had occurred to him that he might
+possibly be able to give him a position. The salary would not be
+large at first, but if he showed himself capable it might lead to
+something better.</p>
+<p>Keith was thrilled, and declared that what he most wanted was
+work and opportunity to show that he was able to work. Mr.
+Wickersham was sure of this, and informed him briefly that it was
+outdoor work that they had for him--"the clearing up of titles and
+securing of such lands as we may wish to obtain," he added.</p>
+<p>This was satisfactory to Keith, and he said so.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham's shrewd eyes had a gleam of content in them.</p>
+<p>"Of course, our interest will be your first consideration?" he
+said.</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir; I should try and make it so."</p>
+<p>"For instance," proceeded Mr. Wickersham, "there are certain
+lands lying near our lands, not of any special value; but still you
+can readily understand that as we are running a railroad through
+the mountains, and are expending large sums of money, it is better
+that we should control lands through which our line will pass."</p>
+<p>Keith saw this perfectly. "Do you know the names of any of the
+owners?" he inquired. "I am familiar with some of the lands about
+there."</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham pondered. Keith was so ingenuous and eager that
+there could be no harm in coming to the point.</p>
+<p>"Why, yes; there is a man named Rawson that has some lands or
+some sort of interest in lands that adjoin ours. It might be well
+for us to control those properties."</p>
+<p>Keith's countenance fell.</p>
+<p>"It happens that I know something of those lands."</p>
+<p>"Yes? Well, you might possibly take those properties along with
+others?"</p>
+<p>"I could certainly convey any proposition you wish to make to
+Mr. Rawson, and should be glad to do so," began Keith.</p>
+<p>"We should expect you to use your best efforts to secure these
+and all other lands that we wish," interrupted Mr. Wickersham,
+speaking with sudden sharpness. "When we employ a man we expect him
+to give us all his services, and not to be half in our employ and
+half in that of the man we are fighting."</p>
+<p>The change in his manner and tone was so great and so unexpected
+that Keith was amazed. He had never been spoken to before quite in
+this way. He, however, repressed his feeling.</p>
+<p>"I should certainly render you the best service I could," he
+said; "but you would not expect me to say anything to Squire Rawson
+that I did not believe? He has talked with me about these lands,
+and he knows their value just as well as you do."</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham looked at him with a cold light in his eyes,
+which suddenly recalled Ferdy to Keith.</p>
+<p>"I don't think that you and I will suit each other, young man,"
+he said.</p>
+<p>Keith's face flushed; he rose. "I don't think we should, Mr.
+Wickersham. Good morning." And turning, he walked out of the room
+with his head very high.</p>
+<p>As he passed out he saw Ferdy. He was giving some directions to
+a clerk, and his tone was one that made Keith glad he was not under
+him.</p>
+<p>"Haven't you any brains at all?" Keith heard him say.</p>
+<p>"Yes, but I did not understand you."</p>
+<p>"Then you are a fool," said the young man.</p>
+<p>Just then Keith caught his eye and spoke to him. Ferdy only
+nodded "Hello!" and went on berating the clerk.</p>
+<p>Keith walked about the streets for some time before he could
+soothe his ruffled feelings and regain his composure. How life had
+changed for him in the brief interval since he entered Mr.
+Wickersham's office! Then his heart beat high with hope; life was
+all brightness to him; Alice Yorke was already won. Now in this
+short space of time his hopes were all overthrown. Yet, his
+instinct told him that if he had to go through the interview again
+he would do just as he had done.</p>
+<p>He felt that his chance of seeing Alice would not be so good
+early in the day as it would be later in the afternoon; so he
+determined to deliver first the letter which his father had given
+him to Dr. Templeton.</p>
+<p>The old clergyman's church and rectory stood on an ancient
+street over toward the river, from which wealth and fashion had
+long fled. His parish, which had once taken in many of the
+well-to-do and some of the wealthy, now embraced within its
+confines a section which held only the poor. But, like an older and
+more noted divine, Dr. Templeton could say with truth that all the
+world was his parish; at least, all were his parishioners who were
+needy and desolate.</p>
+<p>The rectory was an old-fashioned, substantial house, rusty with
+age, and worn by the stream of poverty that had flowed in and out
+for many years.</p>
+<p>When Keith mounted the steps the door was opened by some one
+without waiting for him to ring the bell, and he found the passages
+and front room fairly filled with a number of persons whose
+appearance bespoke extreme poverty.</p>
+<p>The Doctor was "out attending a meeting, but would be back
+soon," said the elderly woman, who opened the door. "Would the
+gentleman wait?"</p>
+<p>Just then the door opened and some one entered hastily. Keith
+was standing with his back to the door; but he knew by the movement
+of those before him, and the lighting up of their faces, that it
+was the Doctor himself, even before the maid said: "Here he is
+now."</p>
+<p>He turned to find an old man of medium size, in a clerical dress
+quite brown with age and weather, but whose linen was spotless. His
+brow under his snow-white hair was lofty and calm; his eyes were
+clear and kindly; his mouth expressed both firmness and gentleness;
+his whole face was benignancy itself.</p>
+<p>His eye rested for a moment on Keith as the servant indicated
+him, and then swept about the room; and with little more than a nod
+to Keith he passed him by and entered the waiting-room. Keith,
+though a little miffed at being ignored by him, had time to observe
+him as he talked to his other visitors in turn. He manifestly knew
+his business, and appeared to Keith, from the scraps of
+conversation he heard, to know theirs also. To some he gave
+encouragement; others he chided; but to all he gave sympathy, and
+as one after another went out their faces brightened.</p>
+<p>When he was through with them he turned and approached Keith
+with his hands extended.</p>
+<p>"You must pardon me for keeping you waiting so long; these poor
+people have nothing but their time, and I always try to teach them
+the value of it by not keeping them waiting."</p>
+<p>"Certainly, sir," said Keith, warmed in the glow of his kindly
+heart. "I brought a letter of introduction to you from my father,
+General Keith."</p>
+<p>The smile that this name brought forth made Keith the old man's
+friend for life.</p>
+<p>"Oh! You are McDowell Keith's son. I am delighted to see you.
+Come back into my study and tell me all about your father."</p>
+<p>When Keith left that study, quaint and old-fashioned as were it
+and its occupant, he felt as though he had been in a rarer
+atmosphere. He had not dreamed that such a man could be found in a
+great city. He seemed to have the heart of a boy, and Keith felt as
+if he had known him all his life. He asked Gordon to return and
+dine with him, but Gordon had a vision of sitting beside Alice
+Yorke at dinner that evening and declined.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<h3>KEITH IN NEW YORK</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Keith and Norman Wentworth had, from time to time, kept up a
+correspondence, and from Dr. Templeton's Keith went to call on
+Norman and his mother.</p>
+<p>Norman, unfortunately, was now absent in the West on business,
+but Keith saw his mother.</p>
+<p>The Wentworth mansion was one of the largest and most dignified
+houses on the fine old square--a big, double mansion. The door,
+with its large, fan-shaped transom and side-windows, reminded Keith
+somewhat of the hall door at Elphinstone, so that he had quite a
+feeling of old association as he tapped with the eagle knocker. The
+hall was not larger than at Elphinstone, but was more solemn, and
+Keith had never seen such palatial drawing-rooms. They stretched
+back in a long vista. The heavy mahogany furniture was covered with
+the richest brocades; the hangings were of heavy crimson damask.
+Even the walls were covered with rich crimson damask-satin. The
+floor was covered with rugs in the softest colors, into which, as
+Keith followed the solemn servant, his feet sank deep, giving him a
+strange feeling of luxuriousness. A number of fine pictures hung on
+the walls, and richly bound books lay on the shirting tables amid
+pieces of rare bric-&agrave;-brac.</p>
+<p>This was the impression received from the only glance he had
+time to give the room. The next moment a lady rose from behind a
+tea-table placed in a nook near a window at the far end of the
+spacious room. As Gordon turned toward her she came forward. She
+gave him a cordial hand-shake and gracious words of welcome that at
+once made Keith feel at home. Turning, she started to offer him a
+chair near her table, but Keith had instinctively gone behind her
+chair and was holding it for her.</p>
+<p>"It is so long since I have had the chance," he said.</p>
+<p>As she smiled up at him her face softened. It was a high-bred
+face, not always as gentle as it was now, but her smile was
+charming.</p>
+<p>"You do not look like the little, wan boy I saw that morning in
+bed, so long ago. Do you remember?"</p>
+<p>"I should say I did. I think I should have died that morning but
+for you. I have never forgotten it a moment since." The rising
+color in his cheeks took away the baldness of the speech.</p>
+<p>She bowed with the most gracious smile, the color stealing up
+into her cheeks and making her look younger.</p>
+<p>"I am not used to such compliments. Young men nowadays do not
+take the trouble to flatter old ladies."</p>
+<p>Her face, though faded, still bore the unmistakable stamp of
+distinction. Calm, gray eyes and a strong mouth and chin recalled
+Norman's face. The daintiest of caps rested on her gray hair like a
+crown, and several little ringlets about her ears gave the charm of
+quaintness to the patrician face. Her voice was deep and musical.
+When she first spoke it was gracious rather than cordial; but after
+the inspective look she had given him it softened, and from this
+time Keith felt her warmth.</p>
+<p>The easy, cordial, almost confidential manner in which she soon
+began to talk to him made Keith feel as if they had been friends
+always, and in a moment, in response to a question from her, he was
+giving quite frankly his impression of the big city: of its
+brilliance, its movement, its rush, that keyed up the nerves like
+the sweep of a swift torrent.</p>
+<p>"It almost takes my breath away," he said. "I feel as if I were
+on the brink of a torrent and had an irresistible desire to jump
+into it and swim against it."</p>
+<p>She looked at the young man in silence for a moment, enjoying
+his sparkling eyes, and then her face grew grave.</p>
+<p>"Yes, it is interesting to get the impression made on a fresh
+young mind. But so many are dashed to pieces, it appears to me of
+late to be a maelstrom that engulfs everything in its resistless
+and terrible sweep. Fortune, health, peace, reputation, all are
+caught and swept away; but the worst is its heartlessness--and its
+emptiness."</p>
+<p>She sighed so deeply that the young man wondered what sorrow
+could touch her, intrenched and enthroned in that beautiful
+mansion, surrounded by all that wealth and taste and affection
+could give. Years afterwards, that picture of the old-time
+gentlewoman in her luxurious home came back to him.</p>
+<p>Just then a cheery voice was heard calling outside:</p>
+<p>"Cousin?--cousin?--Matildy Carroll, where are you?"</p>
+<p>It was the voice of an old lady, and yet it had something in it
+familiar to Keith.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth rose, smiling.</p>
+<p>"Here I am in the drawing-room," she said, raising her voice the
+least bit. "It is my cousin, a dear old friend and schoolmate," she
+explained to Keith. "Here I am. Come in here." She advanced to the
+door, stretching out her hand to some one who was coming down the
+stair.</p>
+<p>"Oh, dear, this great, grand house will be the death of me yet!"
+exclaimed the other lady, as she slowly descended.</p>
+<p>"Why, it is not any bigger than yours," protested Mrs.
+Wentworth.</p>
+<p>"It's twice as large, and, besides, I was born in that and
+learned all its ups and downs and passages and corners when I was a
+child, just as I learned the alphabet. But this house! It is as
+full of devious ways and pitfalls as the way in 'Pilgrim's
+Progress,' and I would never learn it any more than I could the
+multiplication table. Why, that second-floor suite you have given
+me is just like six-times-nine. When you first put me in there I
+walked around to learn my way, and, on my word, I thought I should
+never get back to my own room. I thought I should have to sleep in
+a bath-tub. I escaped from the bath-room only to land in the
+linen-closet. That was rather interesting. Then when I had
+calculated all your sheets and pillow-cases, I got out of that to
+what I recognized as my own room. No! it was the
+broom-closet--eight-times-seven! That was the only familiar thing I
+saw. I could have hugged those brooms. But, my dear, I never saw so
+many brooms in my life! No wonder you have to have all those
+servants. I suppose some of them are to sweep the other servants
+up. But you really must shut off those apartments and just give me
+one little room to myself; or, now that I have escaped from the
+labyrinth, I shall put on my bonnet and go straight home."</p>
+<p>All this was delivered from the bottom step with a most amusing
+gravity.</p>
+<p>"Well, now that you have escaped, come in here," said Mrs.
+Wentworth, laughing. "I want a friend of mine to know you--a young
+man--"</p>
+<p>"A gentleman!"</p>
+<p>"Yes; a young gentleman from--"</p>
+<p>"My dear!" exclaimed the other lady. "I am not fit to see a
+young gentleman--I haven't on my new cap. I really could not."</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes, you can. Come in. I want you to know him, too. He
+is--m--m--m--"</p>
+<p>This was too low for Keith to hear. The next second Mrs.
+Wentworth turned and re&euml;ntered the room, holding by the hand
+Keith's old lady of the train.</p>
+<p>As she laid her eyes on Keith, she stopped with a little shriek,
+shut both eyes tight, and clutched Mrs. Wentworth's arm.</p>
+<p>"My dear, it's my robber!"</p>
+<p>"It's what?"</p>
+<p>"My robber! He's the young man I told you of who was so
+suspiciously civil to me on the train. I can never look him in the
+face--never!" Saying which, she opened her bright eyes and walked
+straight up to Keith, holding out her hand. "Confess that you are a
+robber and save me."</p>
+<p>Keith laughed and took her hand.</p>
+<p>"I know you took me for one." He turned to Mrs. Wentworth and
+described her making him count her bundles.</p>
+<p>"You will admit that gentlemen were much rarer on that train
+than ruffians or those who looked like ruffians?" insisted the old
+lady, gayly. "I came through the car, and not one soul offered me a
+seat. You deserve all the abuse you got for being so hopelessly
+unfashionable as to offer any civility to a poor, lonely, ugly old
+woman."</p>
+<p>"Abby, Mr. Keith does not yet know who you are. Mr. Keith, this
+is my cousin, Miss Brooke."</p>
+<p>"Miss Abigail Brooke, spinster," dropping him a quaint little
+curtsy.</p>
+<p>So this was little Lois's old aunt, Dr. Balsam's sweetheart--the
+girl who had made him a wanderer; and she was possibly the St.
+Abigail of whom Alice Yorke used to speak!</p>
+<p>The old lady turned to Mrs. Wentworth.</p>
+<p>"He is losing his manners; see how he is staring. What did I
+tell you? One week in New York is warranted to break any gentleman
+of good manners."</p>
+<p>"Oh, not so bad as that," said Mrs. Wentworth. "Now you sit down
+there and get acquainted with each other."</p>
+<p>So Keith sat down by Miss Brooke, and she was soon telling him
+of her niece, who, she said, was always talking of him and his
+father.</p>
+<p>"Is she as pretty as she was as a child?" Keith asked.</p>
+<p>"Yes--much too pretty; and she knows it, too," smiled the old
+lady. "I have to hold her in with a strong hand, I tell you. She
+has got her head full of boys already."</p>
+<p>Other callers began to appear just then. It was Mrs. Wentworth's
+day, and to call on Mrs. Wentworth was in some sort the cachet of
+good society. Many, it was true, called there who were not in
+"society" at all,--serene and self-contained old residents, who
+held themselves above the newly-rich who were beginning to crowd
+"the avenues" and force their way with a golden wedge,--and many
+who lived in splendid houses on the avenue had never been admitted
+within that dignified portal. They now began to drop in, elegantly
+dressed women and handsomely appointed girls. Mrs. Wentworth
+received them all with that graciousness that was her native
+manner. Miss Brooke, having secured her "new cap," was seated at
+her side, her faded face tinged with rising color, her keen eyes
+taking in the scene with quite as much avidity as Gordon's. Gordon
+had fallen back quite to the edge of the group that encircled the
+hostess, and was watching with eager eyes in the hope that, among
+the visitors who came in in little parties of twos and threes, he
+might find the face for which he had been looking. The name
+Wickersham presently fell on his ear.</p>
+<p>"She is to marry Ferdy Wickersham," said a lady near him to
+another. They were looking at a handsome, statuesque girl, with a
+proud face, who had just entered the room with her mother, a tall
+lady in black with strong features and a refined voice, and who
+were making their way through the other guests toward the hostess.
+Mrs. Wentworth greeted them cordially, and signed to the elder lady
+to take a seat beside her.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; she is flying for higher game than that." They both put
+up their lorgnons and gave her a swift glance.</p>
+<p>"You mean--" She nodded over toward Mrs. Wentworth.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Why, she would not allow him to. She has not a cent in the
+world. Her mother has spent every dollar her husband left her,
+trying to get her off."</p>
+<p>"Yes; but she has spent it to good purpose. They are old
+friends. Mrs. Wentworth does not care for money. She has all she
+needs. She has never forgotten that her grandfather was a general
+in the Revolution, and Mrs. Caldwell's grandfather was one also, I
+believe. She looks down on the upper end of Fifth Avenue--the
+Wickershams and such. Don't you know what Mrs. Wentworth's cousin
+said when she heard that the Wickershams had a coat-of-arms? She
+said, 'Her father must have made it.'"</p>
+<p>Something about the placid voice and air of the lady, and the
+knowledge she displayed of the affairs of others, awoke old
+associations in Keith, and turning to take a good look at her, he
+recognized Mrs. Nailor, the inquiring lady with the feline manner
+and bell-like voice, who used to mouse around the verandah at
+Gates's during Alice Yorke's convalescence.</p>
+<p>He went up to her and recalled himself. She apparently had some
+difficulty in remembering him, for at first she gave not the
+slightest evidence of recognition; but after the other lady had
+moved away she was more fortunate in placing him.</p>
+<p>"You have known the Wentworths for some time?"</p>
+<p>Keith did not know whether this was a statement or an inquiry.
+She had a way of giving a tone of interrogation to her statements.
+He explained that he and Norman Wentworth had been friends as
+boys.</p>
+<p>"A dear fellow, Norman?" smiled Mrs. Nailor. "Quite one of our
+rising young men? He wanted, you know, to give up the most
+brilliant prospects to help his father, who had been failing for
+some time. Not failing financially?" she explained with the
+interrogation-point again.</p>
+<p>"Of course, I don't believe those rumors; I mean in health?"</p>
+<p>Keith had so understood her.</p>
+<p>"Yes, he has quite gone. Completely shattered?" She sighed
+deeply. "But Norman is said to be wonderfully clever, and has gone
+in with his father into the bank?" she pursued. "The girl over
+there is to marry him--if her mother can arrange it? That tall,
+stuck-up woman." She indicated Mrs. Caldwell, who was sitting near
+Mrs. Wentworth. "Do you think her handsome?"</p>
+<p>Keith said he did. He thought she referred to the girl, who
+looked wonderfully handsome in a tailor-made gown under a big white
+hat.</p>
+<p>"Romance is almost dying out?" she sighed. "It is so beautiful
+to find it? Yes?"</p>
+<p>Keith agreed with her about its charm, but hoped it was not
+dying out. He thought of one romance he knew.</p>
+<p>"You used to be very romantic? Yes?"</p>
+<p>Keith could not help blushing.</p>
+<p>"Have you seen the Yorkes lately?" she continued. Keith had
+explained that he had just arrived. "You know Alice is a great
+belle? And so pretty, only she knows it too well; but what pretty
+girl does not? The town is divided now as to whether she is going
+to marry Ferdy Wickersham or Mr. Lancaster of Lancaster &amp;
+Company. He is one of our leading men, considerably older than
+herself, but immensely wealthy and of a distinguished family. Ferdy
+Wickersham was really in love with"--she lowered her voice--"that
+girl over there by Mrs. Wentworth; but she preferred Norman
+Wentworth; at least, her mother did, so Ferdy has gone back to
+Alice? You say you have not been to see her? No? You are going, of
+course? Mrs. Yorke was so fond of you?"</p>
+<p>"Which is she going to--I mean, which do people say she
+prefers?" inquired Keith, his voice, in spite of himself, betraying
+his interest.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Ferdy, of course. He is one of the eligibles, so
+good-looking, and immensely rich, too; They say he is really a
+great financier. Has his father's turn? You know he came from a
+shop?"</p>
+<p>Keith admitted his undeniable good looks and knew of his wealth;
+but he was so confounded by the information he had received that he
+was in quite a state of confusion.</p>
+<p>Just then a young clergyman crossed the room toward them. He was
+a stout young man, with reddish hair and a reddish face. His plump
+cheeks, no less than his well-filled waistcoat, showed that the
+Rev. Mr. Rimmon was no anchoret.</p>
+<p>"Ah, my dear Mrs. Nailor, so glad to see you! How well you look!
+I haven't seen you since that charming evening at Mrs.
+Creamer's."</p>
+<p>"Do you call that charming? What did you think of the dinner?"
+asked Mrs. Nailor, dryly.</p>
+<p>He laughed, and, with a glance around, lowered his voice.</p>
+<p>"Well, the champagne was execrable after the first round. Didn't
+you notice that? You didn't notice it? Oh, you are too amiable to
+admit it. I am sure you noticed it, for no one in town has such
+champagne as you."</p>
+<p>He licked his lips with reminiscent satisfaction.</p>
+<p>"No, I assure you, I am not flattering you. One of my cloth! How
+dare you charge me with it!" he laughed. "I have said as much to
+Mrs. Yorke. You ask her if I haven't."</p>
+<p>"How is your uncle's health?" inquired Mrs. Nailor.</p>
+<p>The young man glanced at her, and the glance appeared to satisfy
+him.</p>
+<p>"Robust isn't the word for it. He bids fair to rival the
+patriarchs in more than his piety."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor smiled. "You don't appear as happy as a dutiful
+nephew might."</p>
+<p>"But he is so good--so pious. Why should I wish to withhold him
+from the joys for which he is so ripe?"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor laughed.</p>
+<p>"You are a sinner," she declared.</p>
+<p>"We are all miserable sinners," he replied. "Have you seen the
+Yorkes lately?"</p>
+<p>"No; but I'll be bound you have."</p>
+<p>"What do you think of the story about old Lancaster?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I think she'll marry him if mamma can arrange it."</p>
+<p>"'Children, obey your parents,'" quoted Mr. Rimmon, with a
+little smirk as he sidled away.</p>
+<p>"He is one of our rising young clergymen, nephew of the noted
+Dr. Little," explained Mrs. Nailor. "You know of him, of course? A
+good deal better man than his nephew." This under her breath. "He
+is his uncle's assistant and is waiting to step into his shoes. He
+wants to marry your friend, Alice Yorke. He is sure of his uncle's
+church if flattery can secure it."</p>
+<p>Just then several ladies passed near them, and Mrs. Nailor,
+seeing an opportunity to impart further knowledge, with a slight
+nod moved off to scatter her information and inquiries, and Keith,
+having made his adieus to Mrs. Wentworth, withdrew. He was not in a
+happy frame of mind over what he had heard.</p>
+<p>The next visit that Keith paid required more thought and
+preparation than that to the Wentworth house. He had thought of it,
+had dreamed of it, for years. He was seized with a sort of
+nervousness when he found himself actually on the avenue, in sight
+of the large brown-stone mansion which he knew must be the abode of
+Miss Alice Yorke.</p>
+<p>He never forgot the least detail of his visit, from the shining
+brass rail of the outside steps and the pompous little hard-eyed
+servant in a striped waistcoat and brass buttons, who looked at him
+insolently as he went in, to the same servant as he bowed to him
+obsequiously as he came out. He never forgot Alice Yorke's first
+appearance in the radiance of girlhood, or Mrs. Yorke's affable
+imperviousness, that baffled him utterly.</p>
+<p>The footman who opened the door to Keith looked at him with
+keenness, but ended in confusion of mind. He stood, at first, in
+the middle of the doorway and gave him a glance of swift
+inspection. But when Keith asked if the ladies were in he suddenly
+grew more respectful. The visitor was not up to the mark in
+appointment, but there was that in his air and tone which Bower
+recognized. He would see. Would he be good enough to walk in?</p>
+<p>When he returned after a few minutes, indifference had given
+place to servility.</p>
+<p>Would Mr. Keats please be good enough to walk into the
+drawing-room? Thankee, sir. The ladies would be down in a few
+moments.</p>
+<p>Keith did not know that this change in bearing was due to the
+pleasure expressed above-stairs by a certain young lady who had
+flatly refused to accept her mother's suggestion that they send
+word they were not at home.</p>
+<p>Alice Yorke was not in a very contented frame of mind that day.
+For some time she had been trying to make up her mind on a subject
+of grave importance to her, and she had not found it easy to do.
+Many questions confronted her. Curiously, Keith himself had played
+a part in the matter. Strangely enough, she was thinking of him at
+the very time his card was brought up. Mrs. Yorke, who had not on
+her glasses, handed the card to Alice. She gave a little scream at
+the coincidence.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith! How strange!"</p>
+<p>"What is that?" asked her mother, quickly. Her ears had caught
+the name.</p>
+<p>"Why, it is Mr. Keith. I was just--." She stopped, for Mrs.
+Yorke's face spoke disappointment.</p>
+<p>"I do not think we can see him," she began.</p>
+<p>"Why, of course, I must see him, mamma. I would not miss seeing
+him for anything in the world. Go down, Bower, and say I will be
+down directly." The servant disappeared.</p>
+<p>"Now, Alice," protested her mother, who had already exhausted
+several arguments, such as the inconvenience of the hour, the
+impoliteness of keeping the visitor waiting, as she would have to
+do to dress, and several other such excuses as will occur to mammas
+who have plans of their own for their daughters and unexpectedly
+receive the card of a young man who, by a bare possibility, may in
+ten minutes upset the work of nearly two years--"Now, Alice, I
+think it very wrong in you to do anything to give that young man
+any idea that you are going to reopen that old affair."</p>
+<p>Alice protested that she had no idea of doing anything like
+that. There was no "old affair." She did not wish to be rude when
+he had taken the trouble to call--that was all.</p>
+<p>"Fudge!" exclaimed Mrs. Yorke. "Trouble to call! Of course, he
+will take the trouble to call. He would call a hundred times if he
+thought he could get--" she caught her daughter's eye and
+paused--"could get you. But you have no right to cause him
+unhappiness."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I guess I couldn't cause him much unhappiness now. I fancy
+he is all over it now," said the girl, lightly. "They all get over
+it. It's a quick fever. It doesn't last, mamma. How many have there
+been?"</p>
+<p>"You know better. Isn't he always sending you books and things?
+He is not like those others. What would Mr. Lancaster say?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Lancaster! He has no right to say anything," pouted the
+girl, her face clouding a little. "Mr. Lancaster will say anything
+I want him to say," she added as she caught sight of her mother's
+unhappy expression. "I wish you would not always be holding him up
+to me. I like him, and he is awfully good to me--much better than I
+deserve; but I get awfully tired of him sometimes: he is so
+serious. Sometimes I feel like breaking loose and just doing
+things. I do!" She tossed her head and stamped her foot with
+impatience like a spoiled child.</p>
+<p>"Well, there is Ferdy?--" began her mother.</p>
+<p>The girl turned on her.</p>
+<p>"I thought we had an understanding on that subject, mamma. If
+you ever say anything more about my marrying Ferdy, I <i>will</i>
+do things! I vow I will!"</p>
+<p>"Why, I thought you professed to like Ferdy, and he is certainly
+in love with you."</p>
+<p>"He certainly is not. He is in love with Lou Caldwell as much as
+he could be in love with any one but himself; but if you knew him
+as well as I do you would know he is not in love with any one but
+Ferdy."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke knew when to yield, and how to do it. Her face grew
+melancholy and her voice pathetic as she protested that all she
+wished was her daughter's happiness.</p>
+<p>"Then please don't mention that to me again," said the girl.</p>
+<p>The next second her daughter was leaning over her, soothing her
+and assuring her of her devotion.</p>
+<p>"I want to invite him to dinner, mamma."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke actually gasped.</p>
+<p>"Nonsense! Why, he would be utterly out of place. This is not
+Ridgely. I do not suppose he ever had on a dress-coat in his life!"
+Which was true, though Keith would not have cared a button about
+it.</p>
+<p>"Well, we can invite him to lunch," said Alice, with a sigh.</p>
+<p>But Mrs. Yorke was obdurate. She could not undertake to invite
+an unknown young man to her table. Thus, the want of a dress-suit
+limited Mrs. Yorke's hospitality and served a secondary and more
+important purpose for her.</p>
+<p>"I wish papa were here; he would agree with me," sighed the
+girl.</p>
+<p>When the controversy was settled Miss Alice slipped off to gild
+the lily. The care she took in the selection of a toilet, and the
+tender pats and delicate touches she gave as she turned before her
+cheval-glass, might have belied her declaration to her mother, a
+little while before, that she was indifferent to Mr. Keith, and
+might even have given some comfort to the anxious young man in the
+drawing-room below, who, in default of books, was examining the
+pictures with such interest. He had never seen such a sumptuous
+house.</p>
+<p>Meantime, Mrs. Yorke executed a manoeuvre. As soon as Alice
+disappeared, she descended to the drawing-room. But she slipped on
+an extra diamond ring or two. Thus she had a full quarter of an
+hour's start of her daughter.</p>
+<p>The greeting between her and the young man was more cordial than
+might have been expected. Mrs. Yorke was surprised to find how
+Keith had developed. He had broadened, and though his face was
+thin, it had undeniable distinction. His manner was so dignified
+that Mrs. Yorke was almost embarrassed.</p>
+<p>"Why, how you have changed!" she exclaimed. What she said to
+herself was: "What a bother for this boy to come here now, just
+when Alice is getting her mind settled! But I will get rid of
+him."</p>
+<p>She began to question him as to his plans.</p>
+<p>What Keith had said to himself when the step on the stair and
+the rustling gown introduced Mrs. Yorke's portly figure was:
+"Heavens! it's the old lady! I wonder what the old dragon will do,
+and whether I am not to see Her!" He observed her embarrassment as
+she entered the room, and took courage.</p>
+<p>The next moment they were fencing across the room, and Keith was
+girding himself like another young St. George.</p>
+<p>How was his school coming on? she asked.</p>
+<p>He was not teaching any more. He had been to college, and had
+now taken up engineering. It offered such advantages.</p>
+<p>She was so surprised. She would have thought teaching the very
+career for him. He seemed to have such a gift for it.</p>
+<p>Keith was not sure that this was not a "touch." He quoted Dr.
+Johnson's definition that teaching was the universal refuge of
+educated indigents. "I do not mean to remain an indigent all my
+life," he added, feeling that this was a touch on his part.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke pondered a moment.</p>
+<p>"But that was not his name. His name was Balsam. I know, because
+I had some trouble getting a bill out of him."</p>
+<p>Keith changed his mind about the touch.</p>
+<p>Just then there was another rustle on the stair and another
+step,--this time a lighter one,--and the next moment appeared what
+was to the young man a vision.</p>
+<p>Keith's face, as he rose to greet her, showed what he thought.
+For a moment, at least, the dragon had disappeared, and he stood in
+the presence only of Alice Yorke.</p>
+<p>The girl was, indeed, as she paused for a moment just in the
+wide doorway under its silken hangings,--the minx! how was he to
+know that she knew how effective the position was?--a picture to
+fill a young man's eye and flood his face with light, and even to
+make an old man's eye grow young again. The time that had passed
+had added to the charm of both face and figure; and, arrayed in her
+daintiest toilet of blue and white, Alice Yorke was radiant enough
+to have smitten a much harder heart than that which was at the
+moment thumping in Keith's breast and looking forth from his eager
+eyes. The pause in the doorway gave just time for the picture to be
+impressed forever in Keith's mind.</p>
+<p>Her eyes were sparkling, and her lips parted with a smile of
+pleased surprise.</p>
+<p>"How do you do?" She came forward with outstretched arm and a
+cordial greeting.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke could not repress a mother's pride at seeing the
+impression that her daughter's appearance had made. The expression
+on Keith's face, however, decided her that she would hazard no more
+such meetings.</p>
+<p>The first words, of course, were of the surprise Alice felt at
+finding him there. "How did you remember us?"</p>
+<p>"I was not likely to forget you," said Keith, frankly enough. "I
+am in New York on business, and I thought that before going home I
+would see my friends." This with some pride, as Mrs. Yorke was
+present.</p>
+<p>"Where are you living?"</p>
+<p>Keith explained that he was an engineer and lived in
+Gumbolt.</p>
+<p>"Ah, I think that is a splendid profession," declared Miss
+Alice. "If I were a man I would be one. Think of building great
+bridges across mighty rivers, tunnelling great mountains!"</p>
+<p>"Maybe even the sea itself," said Mr. Keith, who, so long as
+Alice's eyes were lighting up at the thought of his profession,
+cared not what Mrs. Yorke thought.</p>
+<p>"I doubt if engineers would find much to do in New York," put in
+Mrs. Yorke. "I think the West would be a good field--the far West,"
+she explained.</p>
+<p>"It was so good in you to look us up," Miss Alice said sturdily
+and, perhaps, a little defiantly, for she knew what her mother was
+thinking.</p>
+<p>"If that is being good," said Keith, "my salvation is assured."
+He wanted to say, as he looked at her, "In all the multitude in New
+York there is but one person that I really came to see, and I am
+repaid," but he did not venture so far. In place of it he made a
+mental calculation of the chances of Mrs. Yorke leaving, if only
+for a moment. A glance at her, however, satisfied him that the
+chance of it was not worth considering, and gloom began to settle
+on him. If there is anything that turns a young man's heart to lead
+and encases it in ice, it is, when he has travelled leagues to see
+a girl, to have mamma plant herself in the room and mount guard.
+Keith knew now that Mrs. Yorke had mounted guard, and that no power
+but Providence would dislodge her. The thought of the cool woods of
+the Ridge came to him like a mirage, torturing him.</p>
+<p>He turned to the girl boldly.</p>
+<p>"Sha'n't you ever come South again?" he asked. "The
+humming-birds are waiting."</p>
+<p>Alice smiled, and her blush made her charming.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke answered for her. She did not think the South agreed
+with Alice.</p>
+<p>Alice protested that she loved it.</p>
+<p>"How is my dear old Doctor? Do you know, he and I have carried
+on quite a correspondence this year?"</p>
+<p>Keith did not know. For the first time in his life he envied the
+Doctor.</p>
+<p>"He is your--one of your most devoted admirers. The last time I
+saw him he was talking of you."</p>
+<p>"What did he say of me? Do tell me!" with exaggerated
+eagerness.</p>
+<p>Keith smiled, wondering what she would think if she knew.</p>
+<p>"Too many things for me to tell."</p>
+<p>His gray eyes said the rest.</p>
+<p>While they were talking a sound of wheels was heard outside,
+followed by a ring at the door. Keith sat facing the door, and
+could see the gentleman who entered the hail. He was tall and a
+little gray, with a pleasant, self-contained face. He turned toward
+the drawing-room, taking off his gloves as he walked.</p>
+<p>"Her father. He is quite distinguished-looking," thought Keith.
+"I wonder if he will come in here? He looks younger than the
+dragon." He was in some trepidation at the idea of meeting Mr.
+Yorke.</p>
+<p>When Keith looked at the ladies again some change had taken
+place in both of them. Their faces wore a different expression:
+Mrs. Yorke's was one of mingled disquietude and relief, and Miss
+Alice's an expression of discontent and confusion. Keith settled
+himself and waited to be presented.</p>
+<p>The gentleman came in with a pleased air as his eye rested on
+the young lady.</p>
+<p>"There is where she gets her high-bred looks--from her father,"
+thought Keith; rising.</p>
+<p>The next moment the gentleman was shaking hands warmly with Miss
+Alice and cordially with Mrs. Yorke. And then, after a pause,--a
+pause in which Miss Alice had looked at her mother,--the girl
+introduced "Mr. Lancaster." He turned and spoke to Keith
+pleasantly.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith is--an acquaintance we made in the South when we were
+there winter before last," said Mrs. Yorke.</p>
+<p>"A friend of ours," said the girl. She turned back to Keith.</p>
+<p>"Tell me what Dr. Balsam said."</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith knows the Wentworths--I believe you know the
+Wentworths very well?" Mrs. Yorke addressed Mr. Keith.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I have known Norman since we were boys. I have met his
+mother, but I never met his father."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke was provoked at the stupidity of denying so
+advantageous an acquaintance. But Mr. Lancaster took more notice of
+Keith than he had done before. His dark eyes had a gleam of
+amusement in them as he turned and looked at the young man.
+Something in him recalled the past.</p>
+<p>"From the South, you say?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir." He named his State with pride.</p>
+<p>"Did I catch your name correctly? Is it Keith?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+<p>"I used to know a gentleman of that name--General Keith."</p>
+<p>"There were several of them," answered the young man, with
+pride. "My father was known as 'General Keith of Elphinstone.'"</p>
+<p>"That was he. I captured him. He was desperately wounded, and I
+had the pleasure of having him attended to, and afterwards of
+getting him exchanged. How is he? Is he still living?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+<p>Mr. Lancaster turned to the ladies. "He was one of the bravest
+men I have known," he said. "I was once a recipient of his gracious
+hospitality. I went South to look into some matters there," he
+explained to the ladies.</p>
+<p>The speech brought a gratified look into Keith's eyes. Mrs.
+Yorke was divided between her feeling of relief that Mr. Lancaster
+should know of Keith's social standing and her fear that such
+praise might affect Alice. After a glance at the girl's face the
+latter predominated.</p>
+<p>"Men have no sense at all," she said to herself. Had she known
+it, the speech made the girl feel more kindly toward her older
+admirer than she had ever done before.</p>
+<p>Gordon's face was suffused with tenderness, as it always was at
+any mention of his father. He stepped forward.</p>
+<p>"May I shake hands with you, sir?" He grasped the hand of the
+older man. "If I can ever be of any service to you--of the least
+service--I hope you will let my father's son repay a part of his
+debt. You could not do me a greater favor." As he stood straight
+and dignified, grasping the older man's hand, he looked more of a
+man than he had ever done. Mr. Lancaster was manifestly
+pleased.</p>
+<p>"I will do so," he said, with a smile.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Yorke was in a fidget. "This man will ruin everything," she
+said to herself.</p>
+<p>Seeing that his chance of seeing Alice alone was gone, Keith
+rose and took leave with some stateliness. At the last moment Alice
+boldly asked him to take lunch with them next day.</p>
+<p>"Thank you," said Keith, "I lunch in Sparta to-morrow. I am
+going South to-night." But his allusion was lost on the ladies.</p>
+<p>When Keith came out, a handsome trap was standing at the door,
+with a fine pair of horses and a liveried groom.</p>
+<p>And a little later, as Keith was walking up the avenue looking
+at the crowds that thronged it in all the bravery of fine apparel,
+he saw the same pair of high-steppers threading their way proudly
+among the other teams. He suddenly became aware that some one was
+bowing to him, and there was Alice Yorke sitting up beside Mr.
+Lancaster, bowing to him from under a big hat with great white
+plumes. For one moment he had a warm feeling about his heart, and
+then, as the turnout was swallowed up in the crowd, Keith felt a
+sudden sense of loneliness, and he positively hated Mrs. Yorke. A
+little later he passed Ferdy Wickersham, in a long coat and a high
+hat, walking up the avenue with the girl he had seen at Mrs.
+Wentworth's. He took off his hat as they passed, but apparently
+they did not see him. And once more that overwhelming loneliness
+swept over him.</p>
+<p>He did not get over the feeling till he found himself in Dr.
+Templeton's study. He had promised provisionally to go back and
+take supper with the old clergyman, and had only not promised it
+absolutely because he had thought he might be invited to the
+Yorkes'. He was glad enough now to go, and as he received the old
+gentleman's cordial greeting, he felt his heart grow warm again.
+Here was Sparta, too. This, at least, was hospitality. He was
+introduced to two young clergymen, both earnest fellows who were
+working among the poor. One of them was a High-churchman and the
+other a Presbyterian, and once or twice they began to discuss
+warmly questions as to which they differed; but the old Rector
+appeared to know just how to manage them.</p>
+<p>"Come, my boys; no division here," he said, with a smile,
+"Remember, one flag, one union, one Commander. Titus is still
+before the walls."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<h3>THE HOLD-UP</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Keith returned home that night. He now and then thought of
+Lancaster with a little misgiving. It was apparent that Mrs. Yorke
+was his friend; but, after all, Alice would never think of marrying
+a gray-haired man. She could not do it.</p>
+<p>His father's pleasure when he told him of the stand he had taken
+with Mr. Wickersham reassured him.</p>
+<p>"You did exactly right, sir; as a gentleman should have done,"
+he said, as his face lighted up with pride and affection. "Go back
+and make your own way. Owe no man anything."</p>
+<p>Gordon went back to his little office filled with a
+determination to succeed. He had now a double motive: he would win
+Alice Yorke, and he would show Mr. Wickersham who he was. A visit
+from Squire Rawson not long after he returned gave him new hope.
+The old man chuckled as he told him that he had had an indirect
+offer from Wickersham for his land, much larger than he had
+expected. It had only confirmed him in his determination to hold
+on.</p>
+<p>"If it's worth that to him," he said, "it's worth that to me.
+We'll hold on awhile, and let him open a track for us. You look up
+the lines and keep your eye on 'em. Draw me some pictures of the
+lands. I reckon Phrony will have a pretty good patrimony before I'm
+through." He gave Keith a shrewd glance which, however, that young
+man did not see.</p>
+<p>Not long afterwards Gordon received an invitation to Norman's
+wedding. He was to marry Miss Caldwell.</p>
+<p>When Gordon read the account of the wedding, with the church
+"banked with flowers," and the bridal couple preceded by
+choristers, chanting, he was as interested as if it had been his
+brother's marriage. He tried to picture Alice Yorke in her
+bridesmaid's dress, "with the old lace draped over it and the
+rosebuds festooned about her."</p>
+<p>He glanced around his little room with grim amusement as he
+thought of the difference it might make to him if he had what Mrs.
+Yorke had called "an establishment." He would yet be Keith of
+Elphinstone.</p>
+<p>One fact related disturbed him. Ferdy Wickersham was one of the
+ushers, and it was stated that he and Miss Yorke made a handsome
+couple.</p>
+<p>Norman had long ago forgotten Ferdy's unfriendly action at
+college, and wishing to bury all animosities and start his new life
+at peace with the whole world, he invited Ferdy to be one of his
+ushers, and Ferdy, for his own reasons, accepted. Ferdy Wickersham
+was now one of the most talked-of young men in New York. He had
+fulfilled the promise of his youth at least in one way, for he was
+one of the handsomest men in the State. Mrs. Wickersham, in whose
+heart defeat rankled, vowed that she would never bow so low as to
+be an usher at that wedding. But her son was of a deeper nature. He
+declared that he was "abundantly able to manage his own
+affairs."</p>
+<p>At the wedding he was one of the gayest of the guests, and he
+and Miss Yorke were, as the newspapers stated, undoubtedly the
+handsomest couple of all the attendants. No one congratulated Mrs.
+Wentworth with more fervid words. To be sure, his eyes sought the
+bride's with a curious expression in them; and when he spoke with
+her apart a little later, there was an air of cynicism about him
+that remained in her memory. The handsomest jewel she received
+outside of the Wentworth family was from him. Its centre was a
+heart set with diamonds.</p>
+<p>For a time Louise Wentworth was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy
+over her good fortune. Her beautiful house, her carriages, her
+gowns, her husband, and all the equipage of her new station filled
+her heart. She almost immediately took a position that none other
+of the young brides had. She became the fashion. In Norman's
+devotion she might have quite forgotten Ferdy Wickersham, had Ferdy
+been willing that she should do so. But Ferdy had no idea of
+allowing himself to be forgotten. For a time he paid quite devoted
+attention to Alice Yorke; but Miss Alice looked on his attentions
+rather as a joke. She said to him:</p>
+<p>"Now, Ferdy, I am perfectly willing to have you send me all the
+flowers in New York, and go with me to the theatre every other
+night, and offer me all the flattery you have left over from
+Louise; but I am not going to let it be thought that I am going to
+engage myself to you; for I am not, and you don't want me."</p>
+<p>"I suppose you reserve that for my fortunate rival, Mr.
+Lancaster?" said the young man, insolently.</p>
+<p>Alice's eyes flashed. "At least not for you."</p>
+<p>So Ferdy gradually and insensibly drifted back to Mrs.
+Wentworth. For a little while he was almost tragic; then he settled
+down into a state of cold cynicism which was not without its
+effect. He never believed that she cared for Norman Wentworth as
+much as she cared for him. He believed that her mother had made the
+match, and deep in his heart he hated Norman with the hate of
+wounded pride. Moreover, as soon as Mrs. Wentworth was beyond him,
+he began to have a deeper feeling for her than he had ever admitted
+before. He set before himself very definitely just what he wanted
+to do, and he went to work about it with a patience worthy of a
+better aim. He flattered her in many ways which, experience had
+told him, were effective with the feminine heart.</p>
+<p>Ferdy Wickersham estimated Mrs. Wentworth's vanity at its true
+value; but he underestimated her uprightness and her pride. She was
+vain enough to hazard wrecking her happiness; but her pride was as
+great as her vanity.</p>
+<p>Thus, though Ferdy Wickersham flattered her vanity by his
+delicate attentions, his patient waiting, he found himself, after
+long service, in danger of being balked by her pride. His apparent
+faithfulness had enlisted her interest; but she held him at a
+distance with a resolution which he would not have given her credit
+for.</p>
+<p>Most men, under such circumstances, would have retired and
+confessed defeat; but not so with Ferdy Wickersham. To admit defeat
+was gall and wormwood to him. His love for Louise had given place
+to a feeling almost akin to a desire for revenge. He would show her
+that he could conquer her pride. He would show the world that he
+could humble Norman Wentworth. His position appeared to him
+impregnable. At the head of a great business, the leader of the
+gayest set in the city, and the handsomest and coolest man in
+town--he was bound to win. So he bided his time, and went on paying
+Mrs. Wentworth little attentions that he felt must win her in the
+end. And soon he fancied that he began to see the results of his
+patience. Old Mr. Wentworth's health had failed rapidly, and Norman
+was so wholly engrossed in business, that he found himself unable
+to keep up with the social life of their set. If, however, Norman
+was too busy to attend all the entertainments, Ferdy was never too
+busy to be on hand, a fact many persons were beginning to note.</p>
+<p>Squire Rawson's refusal of the offer for his lands began to
+cause Mr. Aaron Wickersham some uneasiness. He had never dreamed
+that the old countryman would be so intractable. He refused even to
+set a price on them. He "did not want to sell," he said.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham conferred with his son. "We have got to get
+control of those lands, Ferdy. We ought to have got them before we
+started the railway. If we wait till we get through, we shall have
+to pay double. The best thing is for you to go down there and get
+them. You know the chief owner and you know that young Keith. You
+ought to be able to work them. We shall have to employ Keith if
+necessary. Sometimes a very small lever will work a big one."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I can work them easy enough," said the young man; "but I
+don't want to go down there just now--the weather's cold, and I
+have a lot of engagements and a matter on hand that requires my
+presence here now."</p>
+<p>His father's brow clouded. Matters had not been going well of
+late. The Wentworths had been growing cooler both in business and
+in social life. In the former it had cost him a good deal of money
+to have the Wentworth interest against him; in the latter it had
+cost Mrs. Wickersham a good deal of heart-burning. And Aaron
+Wickersham attributed it to the fact, of which rumors had come to
+him, that Ferdy was paying young Mrs. Wentworth more attention than
+her husband and his family liked, and they took this form of
+resenting it.</p>
+<p>"I do not know what business engagement you can have more
+important than a matter in which we have invested some millions
+which may be saved by prompt attention or lost. What engagements
+have you?"</p>
+<p>"That is my affair," said Ferdy, coolly.</p>
+<p>"Your affair! Isn't your affair my affair?" burst out his
+father.</p>
+<p>"Not necessarily. There are several kinds of affairs. I should
+be sorry to think that all of my affairs you had an interest
+in."</p>
+<p>He looked so insolent as he sat back with half-closed eyes and
+stroked his silken, black moustache that his father lost his
+temper.</p>
+<p>"I know nothing about your affairs of one kind," he burst out
+angrily, "and I do not wish to know; but I want to tell you that I
+think you are making an ass of yourself to be hanging around that
+Wentworth woman, having every one talking about you and laughing at
+you."</p>
+<p>The young man's dark face flushed angrily.</p>
+<p>"What's that?" he said sharply.</p>
+<p>"She is another man's wife. Why don't you let her alone?"
+pursued the father.</p>
+<p>"For that very reason," said Ferdy, recovering his composure and
+his insolent air.</p>
+<p>"---- it! Let the woman alone," said his father. "Your fooling
+around her has already cost us the backing of Wentworth &amp;
+Son--and, incidentally, two or three hundred thousand."</p>
+<p>The younger man looked at the other with a flash of rage. This
+quickly gave way to a colder gleam.</p>
+<p>"Really, sir, I could not lower myself to measure a matter of
+sentiment by so vulgar a standard as your ---- money."</p>
+<p>His air was so intolerable that the father's patience quite gave
+way.</p>
+<p>"Well, by ----! you'd better lower yourself, or you'll have to
+stoop lower than that. Creamer, Crustback &amp; Company are out
+with us; the Wentworths have pulled out; so have Kestrel and
+others. Your deals and corners have cost me a fortune. I tell you
+that unless we pull through that deal down yonder, and unless we
+get that railroad to earning something, so as to get a basis for
+rebonding, you'll find yourself wishing you had my 'damned
+money.'"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I guess we'll pull it through," said the young man. He rose
+coolly and walked out of the office.</p>
+<p>The afternoon he spent with Mrs. Norman. He had to go South, he
+told her, to look after some large interests they had there. He
+made the prospects so dazzling that she laughingly suggested that
+he had better put a little of her money in there for her. She had
+quite a snug sum that the Wentworths had given her.</p>
+<p>"Why do not you ask Norman to invest it?" he inquired, with a
+laugh.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. He says bonds are the proper investment for
+women."</p>
+<p>"He rather underestimates your sex, some of them," said
+Wickersham. And as he watched the color come in her cheeks, he
+added: "I tell you what I will do: I will put in fifty thousand for
+you on condition that you never mention it to a soul."</p>
+<p>"I promise," she said half gratefully, and they shook hands on
+it.</p>
+<p>That evening he informed his father that he would go South.
+"I'll get those lands easy enough," he said.</p>
+<p>A few days later Ferdy Wickersham got off the train at Ridgely,
+now quite a flourishing little health-resort, and in danger of
+becoming a fashionable one, and that afternoon he drove over to
+Squire Rawson's.</p>
+<p>A number of changes had taken place in the old white-pillared
+house since Ferdy had been an inmate. New furniture of black walnut
+supplanted, at least on the first floor, the old horsehair sofa and
+split-bottomed chairs and pine tables; a new plush sofa and a new
+piano glistened in the parlor; large mirrors with dazzling frames
+hung on the low walls, and a Brussels carpet as shiny as a bed of
+tulips, and as stiff as the stubble of a newly cut hay-field, was
+on the floor.</p>
+<p>But great as were these changes, they were not as great as that
+which had taken place in the young person for whom they had been
+made.</p>
+<p>When Ferdy Wickersham drove up to the door, there was a cry and
+a scurry within, as Phrony Tripper, after a glance out toward the
+gate, dashed up the stairs.</p>
+<p>When Miss Euphronia Tripper, after a half-hour or more of
+careful and palpitating work before her mirror, descended the old
+straight stairway, she was a very different person from the
+round-faced, plump school-girl whom Ferdy, as a lad, had flirted
+with under the apple-trees three or four years before. She was
+quite as different as was the new piano with its deep tones from
+the rattling old instrument that jingled and clanged out of tune,
+or as the cool, self-contained, handsome young man in faultless
+attire was from the slim, uppish boy who used to strum on it. It
+was a very pretty and blushing young country maiden who now entered
+quite accidentally the parlor where sat Mr. Ferdy Wickersham in
+calm and indifferent discourse with her grandfather on the crops,
+on cattle, and on the effect of the new railroad on products and
+prices.</p>
+<p>Several sessions at a boarding-school of some pretension, with
+ambition which had been awakened years before under the
+apple-trees, had given Miss Phrony the full number of
+accomplishments that are to be gained by such means. The years had
+also changed the round, school-girl plumpness into a slim yet
+strong figure; and as she entered the parlor,--quite casually, be
+it repeated,--with a large basket of flowers held carelessly in one
+hand and a great hat shading her face, the blushes that sprang to
+her cheeks at the wholly unexpected discovery of a visitor quite
+astonished Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"By Jove! who would have believed it!" he said to himself.</p>
+<p>Within two minutes after she had taken her seat on the sofa near
+Wickersham, that young envoy had conceived a plan which had vaguely
+suggested itself as a possibility during his journey South. Here
+was an ally to his hand; he could not doubt it; and if he failed to
+win he would deserve to lose.</p>
+<p>The old squire had no sooner left the room than the visitor laid
+the first lines for his attack.</p>
+<p>Why was she surprised to see him? He had large interests in the
+mountains, and could she doubt that if he was within a thousand
+miles he would come by to see her?</p>
+<p>The mantling cheeks and dancing eyes showed that this took
+effect.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you came down on business? That was all! I know," she
+said.</p>
+<p>Wickersham looked her in the eyes.</p>
+<p>Business was only a convenient excuse. Old Halbrook could have
+attended to the business; but he preferred to come himself.
+Possibly she could guess the reason? He looked handsome and sincere
+enough as he leant over and gazed in her face to have beguiled a
+wiser person than Phrony.</p>
+<p>She, of course, had not the least idea.</p>
+<p>Then he must tell her. To do this he found it necessary to sit
+on the sofa close to her. What he told her made her blush very rosy
+again, and stammer a little as she declared her disbelief in all he
+said, and was sure there were the prettiest girls in the world in
+New York, and that he had never thought of her a moment. And no,
+she would not listen to him--she did not believe a word he said;
+and--yes, of course, she was glad to see any old friend; and no, he
+should not go. He must stay with them. They expected him to do
+so.</p>
+<p>So Ferdy sent to Ridgely for his bags, and spent several days at
+Squire Rawson's, and put in the best work he was capable of during
+that time. He even had the satisfaction of seeing Phrony treat
+coldly and send away one or two country bumpkins who rode up in all
+the bravery of long broad-cloth coats and kid gloves.</p>
+<p>But if at the end of this time the young man could congratulate
+himself on success in one quarter, he knew that he was balked in
+the other. Phrony Tripper was heels over head in love with him; but
+her grandfather, though easy and pliable enough to all outward
+seeming, was in a land-deal as dull as a ditcher. Wickersham spread
+out before him maps and plats showing that he owned surveys which
+overlapped those under which the old man claimed.</p>
+<p>"Don't you see my patents are older than yours?"</p>
+<p>"Looks so," said the old man, calmly. "But patents is somethin'
+like folks: they may be too old."</p>
+<p>The young man tried another line.</p>
+<p>The land was of no special value, he told him; he only wanted to
+quiet their titles, etc. But the squire not only refused to sell an
+acre at the prices offered him, he would place no other price
+whatever on it.</p>
+<p>In fact, he did not want to sell. He had bought the land for
+mountain pasture, and he didn't know about these railroads and
+mines and such like. Phrony would have it after his death, and she
+could do what she wished with it after he was dead and gone.</p>
+<p>"He is a fool!" thought Wickersham, and set Phrony to work on
+him; but the old fellow was obdurate. He kissed Phrony for her
+wheedling, but told her that women-folks didn't understand about
+business. So Wickersham had to leave without getting the lands.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The influx of strangers was so great now at Gumbolt that there
+was a stream of vehicles running between a point some miles beyond
+Eden, which the railroad had reached, and Gumbolt. Wagons,
+ambulances, and other vehicles of a nondescript character on good
+days crowded the road, filling the mountain pass with the cries and
+oaths of their drivers and the rumbling and rattling of their
+wheels, and filling Mr. Gilsey's soul with disgust. But the vehicle
+of honor was still "Gilsey's stage." It carried the mail and some
+of the express, had the best team in the mountains, and was known
+as the "reg'lar." On bad nights the road was a little less crowded.
+And it was a bad night that Ferdy Wickersham took for his journey
+to Gumbolt.</p>
+<p>Keith had been elected marshal, but had appointed Dave Dennison
+his deputy, and on inclement nights Keith still occasionally
+relieved Tim Gilsey, for in such weather the old man was sometimes
+too stiff to climb up to his box.</p>
+<p>"The way to know people," said the old driver to him, "is to
+travel on the road with 'em. There is many a man decent enough to
+pass for a church deacon; git him on the road, and you see he is a
+hog, and not of no improved breed at that. He wants to gobble
+everything": an observation that Keith had some opportunity to
+verify.</p>
+<p>Terpsichore appeared suddenly to have a good deal of business
+over in Eden, and had been on the stage several times of late when
+Keith was driving it, and almost always took the box-seat. This had
+occurred often enough for some of his acquaintances in Gumbolt to
+rally him about it.</p>
+<p>"You will have to look out for Mr. Bluffy again," they said.
+"He's run J. Quincy off the track, and he's still in the ring. He's
+layin' low; but that's the time to watch a mountain cat. He's on
+your track."</p>
+<p>Mr. Plume, who was always very friendly with Keith, declared
+that it was not Bluffy, but Keith, who had run him off the track.
+"It's a case where virtue has had its reward," he said to Keith.
+"You have overthrown more than your enemy, Orlando. You have
+captured the prize we were all trying for. Take the goods the gods
+provide, and while you live, live. The epicurean is the only true
+philosopher. Come over and have a cocktail? No? Do you happen to
+have a dollar about your old clothes? I have not forgotten that I
+owe you a little account; but you are the only man of soul in
+this--Gehenna except myself, and I'd rather owe you ten dollars
+than any other man living."</p>
+<p>Keith's manner more than his words shut up most of his teasers.
+Nothing would shut up J. Quincy Plume.</p>
+<p>Keith always treated Terpsichore with all the politeness he
+would have shown to any lady. He knew that she was now his friend,
+and he had conceived a sincere liking for her. She was shy and very
+quiet when a passenger on his stage, ready to do anything he asked,
+obedient to any suggestion he gave her.</p>
+<p>It happened that, the night Wickersham chose for his trip to
+Gumbolt, Keith had relieved old Gilsey, and he found her at the
+Eden end of the route among his passengers. She had just arrived
+from Gumbolt by another vehicle and was now going straight back. As
+Keith came around, the young woman was evidently preparing to take
+the box-seat. He was conscious of a feeling of embarrassment, which
+was not diminished by the fact that Jake Dennison, his old pupil,
+was also going over. Jake as well as Dave was now living at
+Gumbolt. Jake was in all the splendor of a black coat and a gilded
+watch-chain, for he had been down to the Ridge to see Miss
+Euphronia Tripper.</p>
+<p>It had been a misty day, and toward evening the mist had changed
+into a drizzle.</p>
+<p>Keith said to Terpsichore, with some annoyance:</p>
+<p>"You had better go inside. It's going to be a bad night."</p>
+<p>A slight change came over her face, and she hesitated. But when
+he insisted, she said quietly, "Very well."</p>
+<p>As the passengers were about to take their seats in the coach, a
+young man enveloped in a heavy ulster came hurriedly out of the
+hotel, followed by a servant with several bags in his hands, and
+pushed hastily into the group, who were preparing to enter the
+coach in a more leisurely fashion. His hat partly concealed his
+face, but something about him called up memories to Keith that were
+not wholly pleasant. When he reached the coach door Jake Dennison
+and another man were just on the point of helping in one of the
+women. The young man squeezed in between them.</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon," he said.</p>
+<p>The two men stood aside at the polite tone, and the other
+stepped into the stage and took the back seat, where he proceeded
+to make himself comfortable in a corner. This, perhaps, might have
+passed but for the presence of the women. Woman at this mountain
+Eden was at a premium, as she was in the first.</p>
+<p>Jake Dennison and his friend both asserted promptly that there
+was no trouble about three of the ladies getting back seats, and
+Jake, putting his head in at the door, said briefly:</p>
+<p>"Young man, there are several ladies out here. You will have to
+give up that seat."</p>
+<p>As there was no response to this, he put his head in again.</p>
+<p>"Didn't you hear? I say there are some ladies out here. You will
+have to take another seat."</p>
+<p>To this the occupant of the stage replied that he had paid for
+his seat; but there were plenty of other seats that they could
+have. This was repeated on the outside, and thereupon one of the
+women said she supposed they would have to take one of the other
+seats.</p>
+<p>Women do not know the power of surrender. This surrender had no
+sooner been made than every man outside was her champion.</p>
+<p>"You will ride on that back seat to Gumbolt to-night, or I'll
+ride in Jim Digger's hearse. I am layin' for him anyhow." The voice
+was Jake Dennison's.</p>
+<p>"And I'll ride with him. Stand aside, Jake, and let me git in
+there. I'll yank him out," said his friend.</p>
+<p>But Jake was not prepared to yield to any one the honor of
+"yanking." Jake had just been down to Squire Rawson's, and this
+young man was none other than Mr. Ferdy Wickersham. He had been
+there, too.</p>
+<p>Jake had left with vengeance in his heart, and this was his
+opportunity. He was just entering the stage head foremost, when the
+occupant of the coveted seat decided that discretion was the better
+part of valor, and announced that he would give up the seat,
+thereby saving Keith the necessity of intervening, which he was
+about to do.</p>
+<p>The ejected tenant was so disgruntled that he got out of the
+stage, and, without taking any further notice of the occupants,
+called up to know if there was a seat outside.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Let me give you a hand," said Gordon, leaning down and
+helping him up. "How are you?"</p>
+<p>Wickersham looked at him quickly as he reached the boot.</p>
+<p>"Hello! You here?" The rest of his sentence was a malediction on
+the barbarians in the coach below and a general consignment of them
+all to a much warmer place than the boot of the Gumbolt stage.</p>
+<p>"What are you doing here?" Wickersham asked.</p>
+<p>"I am driving the stage."</p>
+<p>"Regularly?" There was something in the tone and look that made
+Keith wish to say no, but he said doggedly:</p>
+<p>"I have done it regularly, and was glad to get the
+opportunity."</p>
+<p>He was conscious of a certain change in Wickersham's manner
+toward him.</p>
+<p>As they drove along he asked Wickersham about Norman and his
+people, but the other answered rather curtly.</p>
+<p>Norman had married.</p>
+<p>"Yes." Keith had heard that. "He married Miss Caldwell, didn't
+he? She was a very pretty girl."</p>
+<p>"What do you know about here?" Wickersham asked. His tone struck
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I met her once. I suppose they are very much in love with
+each other?"</p>
+<p>Wickersham gave a short laugh. "In love with Norman! Women don't
+fall in love with a lump of ice."</p>
+<p>"I do not think he is a lump of ice," said Keith, firmly.</p>
+<p>Wickersham did not answer at first, then he said sharply:</p>
+<p>"Well, she's worth a thousand of him. She married him for his
+money. Certainly not for his brains."</p>
+<p>"Norman has brains--as much as any one I know," defended
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"You think so!"</p>
+<p>Keith remembered a certain five minutes out behind the stables
+at Elphinstone.</p>
+<p>He wanted to ask Wickersham about another girl who was uppermost
+in his thoughts, but something restrained him. He could not bear to
+hear her name on his lips. By a curious coincidence, Wickersham
+suddenly said: "You used to teach at old Rawson's. Did you ever
+meet a girl named Yorke--Alice Yorke? She was down this way
+once."</p>
+<p>Keith said that he had met "Miss Yorke." He had met her at
+Ridgely Springs and also in New York. He was glad that it was dark,
+and that Wickersham could not see his face. "A very pretty girl,"
+he hazarded as a leader, now that the subject was broached.</p>
+<p>"Yes, rather. Going abroad--title-hunting."</p>
+<p>"I don't expect Miss Yorke cares about a title," said Keith,
+stiffly.</p>
+<p>"Mamma does. Failing that, she wants old Lancaster and
+perquisites."</p>
+<p>"Who does? Why, Mr. Lancaster is old enough to be her
+father!"</p>
+<p>"Pile's old, too," said Wickersham, dryly.</p>
+<p>"She doesn't care about that either," said Keith, shortly.</p>
+<p>"Oh, doesn't she! You know her mother?"</p>
+<p>"No; I don't believe she does. Whatever her mother is, she is a
+fine, high-minded girl."</p>
+<p>Ferdy gave a laugh which might have meant anything. It made
+Keith hot all over. Keith, fearing to trust himself further,
+changed the subject and asked after the Rawsons, Wickersham having
+mentioned that he had been staying with them.</p>
+<p>"Phrony is back at home, I believes She has been off to school.
+I hear she is very much improved?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know; I didn't notice her particularly," said
+Wickersham, indifferently.</p>
+<p>"She is very pretty. Jake Dennison thinks so," laughed
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"Jake Dennison? Who is he?"</p>
+<p>"He's an old scholar of mine. He is inside now on the front
+seat; one of your friends."</p>
+<p>"Oh, that's the fellow! I thought I had seen him before. Well,
+he had better try some other stock, I guess. He may find that
+cornered. She is not going to take a clod like that."</p>
+<p>Wickersham went off into a train of reflection.</p>
+<p>"I say, Keith," he began unexpectedly, "maybe, you can help me
+about a matter, and if so I will make it worth your while."</p>
+<p>"About what matter?" asked Keith, wondering.</p>
+<p>"Why, about that old dolt Rawson's land. You see, the governor
+has got himself rather concerned. When he got this property up here
+in the mountains and started to build the railroad, some of these
+people here got wind of it. That fool, Rhodes, talked about it too
+much, and they bought up the lands around the old man's property.
+They think the governor has got to buy 'em out. Old Rawson is the
+head of 'em. The governor sent Halbrook down to get it; but
+Halbrook is a fool, too. He let him know he wanted to buy him out,
+and, of course, he raised. You and he used to be very thick. He was
+talking of you the other night."</p>
+<p>"He and I are great friends. I have a great regard for him, and
+a much higher opinion of his sense than you appear to have. He is a
+very shrewd man."</p>
+<p>"Shrewd the deuce! He's an old blockhead. He has stumbled into
+the possession of some property which I am ready to pay him a fair
+price for. He took it for a cow-pasture. It isn't worth anything.
+It would only be a convenience to us to have it and prevent a row
+in the future, perhaps. That is the only reason I want it. Besides,
+his title to it ain't worth a ----, anyhow. We have patents that
+antedate his. You can tell him that the land is not worth anything.
+I will give you a good sum if you get him to name a price at, say,
+fifty per cent. on what he gave for it. I know what he gave for it.
+You can tell him it ain't worth anything to him and that his title
+is faulty."</p>
+<p>"No, I could not," said Keith, shortly.</p>
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+<p>"Because I think it is very valuable and his title perfect. And
+he knows it."</p>
+<p>Wickersham glanced at him in the dusk.</p>
+<p>"It isn't valuable at all," he said after a pause. "I will give
+you a good fee if you will get through a deal for it at any price
+we may agree on. Come!"</p>
+<p>"No," said Keith; "not for all the money you own. My advice to
+you is to go to Squire Rawson and either offer to take him in with
+you to the value of his lands, or else make him a direct offer for
+what those lands are really worth. He knows as much about the value
+of those lands as you or Mr. Halbrook or any one else knows. Take
+my word for it."</p>
+<p>"Rats!" ejaculated Wickersham, briefly. "I tell you what," he
+added presently: "if he don't sell us that land he'll never get a
+cent out of it. No one else will ever take it. We have him
+cornered. We've got the land above him, and the water, too, and,
+what is more, his title is not worth a damn!"</p>
+<p>"Well, that is his lookout. I expect you will find him able to
+take care of himself."</p>
+<p>Wickersham gave a grunt, then he asked Keith suddenly:</p>
+<p>"Do you know a man named Plume over there at Gumbolt?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Keith; "he runs the paper there."</p>
+<p>"Yes; that's he. What sort of a man is he?"</p>
+<p>Keith gave a brief estimate of Mr. Plume: "You will see him and
+can judge for yourself."</p>
+<p>"I always do," said Wickersham, briefly. "Know anybody can work
+him? The governor and he fell out some time ago, but I want to get
+hold of him."</p>
+<p>Keith thought he knew one who might influence Mr. Plume; but he
+did not mention the name or sex.</p>
+<p>"Who is that woman inside?" demanded Wickersham. "I mean the
+young one, with the eyes."</p>
+<p>"They call her Terpsichore. She keeps the dance-hall."</p>
+<p>"Friend of yours?"</p>
+<p>"Yes." Keith spoke shortly.</p>
+<p>The stage presently began to descend Hellstreak Hill, which
+Keith mentioned as the scene of the robbery which old Tim Gilsey
+had told him of. As it swung down the long descent, with the lights
+of the lamps flashing on the big tree-tops, and with the roar of
+the rushing water below them coming up as it boiled over the rocks,
+Wickersham conceived a higher opinion of Keith than he had had
+before, and he mentally resolved that the next time he came over
+that road he would make the trip in the daytime. They had just
+crossed the little creek which dashed over the rocks toward the
+river, and had begun to ascend another hill, when Wickersham, who
+had been talking about his drag, was pleased to have Keith offer
+him the reins. He took them with some pride, and Keith dived down
+into the boot. When he sat up again he had a pistol in his
+hand.</p>
+<p>"It was just about here that that 'hold-up' occurred."</p>
+<p>"Suppose they should try to hold you up now, what would you do?"
+asked Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I don't think there is any danger now," said Keith. "I have
+driven over here at all hours and in all weathers. We are getting
+too civilized for that now, and most of the express comes over in a
+special wagon. It's only the mail and small packages that come on
+this stage."</p>
+<p>"But if they should?" demanded Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"Well, I suppose I'd whip up my horses and cut for it," said
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"I wouldn't," asserted Wickersham. "I'd like to see any man make
+me run when I have a gun in my pocket."</p>
+<p>Suddenly, as if in answer to his boast, there was a flash in the
+road, and the report of a pistol under the very noses of the
+leaders, which made them swerve aside with a rattling of the
+swingle-bars, and twist the stage sharply over to the side of the
+road. At the same instant a dark figure was seen in the dim light
+which the lamp threw on the road, close beside one of the horses,
+and a voice was heard:</p>
+<p>"I've got you now, ---- you!"</p>
+<p>It was all so sudden that Wickersham had not time to think. It
+seemed to him like a scene in a play rather than a reality. He
+instinctively shortened the reins and pulled up the frightened
+horses. Keith seized the reins with one band and snatched at the
+whip with the other; but it was too late. Wickersham, hardly
+conscious of what he was doing, was clutching the reins with all
+his might, trying to control the leaders, whilst pandemonium broke
+out inside, cries from the women and oaths from the men.</p>
+<p>There was another volley of oaths and another flash, and
+Wickersham felt a sharp little burn on the arm next Keith.</p>
+<p>"Hold on!" he shouted. "For God's sake, don't shoot! Hold on!
+Stop the horses!"</p>
+<br>
+<a name="p204.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/p204.jpg"><img src="images/p204.jpg"
+width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>Sprang over the edge of the road into the thick bushes
+below.</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>At the same moment Keith disappeared over the wheel. He had
+fallen or sprung from his seat.</p>
+<p>"The ---- coward!" thought Wickersham. "He is running."</p>
+<p>The next second there was a report of a pistol close beside the
+stage, and the man in the road at the horses' heads fired again.
+Another report, and Keith dashed forward into the light of the
+lantern and charged straight at the robber, who fired once more,
+and then, when Keith was within ten feet of him, turned and sprang
+over the edge of the road into the thick bushes below. Keith sprang
+straight after him, and the two went crashing through the
+underbrush, down the steep side of the hill.</p>
+<p>The inmates of the stage poured out into the road, all talking
+together, and Wickersham, with the aid of Jake Dennison, succeeded
+in quieting the horses. The noise of the flight and the pursuit had
+now grown more distant, but once more several shots were heard,
+deep down in the woods, and then even they ceased.</p>
+<p>It had all happened so quickly that the passengers had seen
+nothing. They demanded of Wickersham how many robbers there were.
+They were divided in their opinion as to the probable outcome. The
+men declared that Keith had probably got the robber if he had not
+been killed himself at the last fire.</p>
+<p>Terpsichore was in a passion of rage because the men had not
+jumped out instantly to Keith's rescue, and one of them had held
+her in the stage and prevented her from poking her head out to see
+the fight. In the light of the lantern Wickersham observed that she
+was handsome. He watched her with interest. There was something of
+the tiger in her lithe movement. She declared that she was going
+down into the woods herself to find Keith. She was sure he had been
+killed.</p>
+<p>The men protested against this, and Jake Dennison and another
+man started to the rescue, whilst a grizzled, weather-beaten fellow
+caught and held her.</p>
+<p>"Why, my darlint, I couldn't let you go down there. Why, you'd
+ruin your new bonnet," he said.</p>
+<p>The young woman snatched the bonnet from her head and slung it
+in his face.</p>
+<p>"You coward! Do you think I care for a bonnet when the best man
+in Gumbolt may be dying down in them woods?"</p>
+<p>With a cuff on the ear as the man burst out laughing and put his
+hand on her to soothe her, she turned and darted over the bank into
+the woods. Fortunately for the rest of her apparel, which must have
+suffered as much as the dishevelled bonnet,--which the grizzled
+miner had picked up and now held in his hand as carefully as if it
+were one of the birds which ornamented it,--some one was heard
+climbing up through the bushes toward the road a little distance
+ahead.</p>
+<p>The men stepped forward and waited, each one with his hand in
+the neighborhood of his belt, whilst the women instinctively fell
+to the rear. The next moment Keith appeared over the edge of the
+road. As he stepped into the light it was seen that his face was
+bleeding and that his left arm hung limp at his side.</p>
+<p>The men called to Terpy to come back: that Keith was there. A
+moment later she emerged from the bushes and clambered up the
+bank.</p>
+<p>"Did you get him?" was the first question she asked.</p>
+<p>"No." Keith gave the girl a swift glance, and turning quietly,
+he asked one of the men to help him off with his coat. In the light
+of the lamp he had a curious expression on his white face.</p>
+<p>"Terpy was that skeered about you, she swore she was goin' down
+there to help you," said the miner who still held the hat.</p>
+<p>A box on the ear from the young woman stopped whatever further
+observation he was going to make.</p>
+<p>"Shut up. Don't you see he's hurt?" She pushed away the man who
+was helping Keith off with his coat, and took his place.</p>
+<p>No one who had seen her as she relieved Keith of the coat and
+with dexterous fingers, which might have been a trained nurse's,
+cut away the bloody shirt-sleeve, would have dreamed that she was
+the virago who, a few moments before, had been raging in the road,
+swearing like a trooper, and cuffing men's ears.</p>
+<p>When the sleeve was removed it was found that Keith's arm was
+broken just above the elbow, and the blood was pouring from two
+small wounds. Terpy levied imperiously on the other passengers for
+handkerchiefs; then, not waiting for their contributions, suddenly
+lifting her skirt, whipped off a white petticoat, and tore it into
+strips. She soon had the arm bound up, showing real skill in her
+surgery. Once she whispered a word in his ear--a single name. Keith
+remained silent, but she read his answer, and went on with her work
+with a grim look on her face. Then Keith mounted his box against
+the remonstrances of every one, and the passengers having
+re&euml;ntered the stage, Wickersham drove on into Gumbolt. His
+manner was more respectful to Keith than it had ever been
+before.</p>
+<p>Within a half-hour after their arrival the sheriff and his
+party, with Dave Dennison at the head of the posse, were on their
+horses, headed for the scene of the "hold-up." Dave could have had
+half of Gumbolt for posse had he desired it. They attempted to get
+some information from Keith as to the appearance of the robber; but
+Keith failed to give any description by which one man might have
+been distinguished from the rest of the male sex.</p>
+<p>"Could they expect a man to take particular notice of how
+another looked under such circumstances? He looked like a pretty
+big man."</p>
+<p>Wickersham was able to give a more explicit description.</p>
+<p>The pursuers returned a little after sunrise next morning
+without having found the robber.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<h3>MRS. YORKE MAKES A MATCH</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The next day Keith was able to sit up, though the Doctor refused
+to let him go out of the house. He was alone in his room when a
+messenger announced that a woman wished to see him. When the
+visitor came up it was Terpy. She was in a state of suppressed
+excitement. Her face was white, her eyes glittered. Her voice as
+she spoke was tremulous with emotion.</p>
+<p>"They're on to him," she said in a husky voice. "That man that
+comed over on the stage with you give a description of him, this
+mornin', 't made 'em tumble to him after we had throwed 'em off the
+track. If I ever git a show at him! They knows 'twas Bill. That
+little devil Dennison is out ag'in."</p>
+<p>"Oh, they won't catch him," said Keith; but as he spoke his face
+changed. "What if he should get drunk and come into town?" he asked
+himself.</p>
+<p>"If they git him, they'll hang him," pursued the girl, without
+heeding him. "They're all up. You are so popular.</p>
+<p>"Me?" exclaimed Keith, laughing.</p>
+<p>"It's so," said the girl, gravely. "That Dave Dennison would
+kill anybody for you, and they're ag'in' Bill, all of 'em."</p>
+<p>"Can't you get word to him?" began Keith, and paused. He looked
+at her keenly. "You must keep him out of the way.'</p>
+<p>"He's wounded. You got him in the shoulder. He's got to see a
+doctor. The ball's still in there."</p>
+<p>"I knew it," said Keith, quietly.</p>
+<p>The girl gazed at him a moment, and then looked away.</p>
+<p>"That was the reason I have been a-pesterin' you, goin'
+back'ards and for'ards. I hope you will excuse me of it," she said
+irrelevantly.</p>
+<p>Keith sat quite still for a moment, as it all came over him. It
+was, then, him that the man was after, not robbery, and this girl,
+unable to restrain her discarded suitor without pointing suspicion
+to him, had imperilled her life for Keith, when he was conceited
+enough to more than half accept the hints of strangers that she
+cared for him.</p>
+<p>"We must get him away," he said, rising painfully. "Where is
+he?"</p>
+<p>"He's hid in a house down the road. I have flung 'em off the
+track by abusin' of him. They know I am against him, and they think
+I am after you," she said, looking at him with frank eyes; "and I
+have been lettin' 'em think it," she added quietly.</p>
+<p>Keith almost gasped. Truly this girl was past his
+comprehension.</p>
+<p>"We must get him away," he said.</p>
+<p>"How can we do it?" she asked. "They suspicion he's here, and
+the pickets are out. If he warn't hit in the shoulder so bad, he
+could fight his way out. He ain't afraid of none of 'em," she
+added, with a flash of the old pride. "I could go with him and help
+him; I have done it before; but I would have to break up here. He's
+got to see a doctor."</p>
+<p>Keith sat in reflection for a moment.</p>
+<p>"Tim Gilsey is going to drive the stage over to Eden to-night.
+Go down and see if the places are all taken."</p>
+<p>"I have got a place on it," she said, "on the boot."</p>
+<p>As Keith looked at her, she added in explanation:</p>
+<p>"I take it regular, so as to have it when I want it."</p>
+<p>Under Keith's glance she turned away her eyes.</p>
+<p>"I am going to Eden to-night," said Keith.</p>
+<p>She looked puzzled.</p>
+<p>"If you could get old Tim to stop at that house for five minutes
+till I give Bluffy a letter to Dr. Balsam over at the Springs, I
+think we might arrange it. My clothes will fit him. You will have
+to see Uncle Tim."</p>
+<p>Her countenance lit up.</p>
+<p>"You mean you would stop there and let him take your place?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>The light of craft that must have been in Delilah's eyes when
+Samson lay at her feet was in her face. She sprang up.</p>
+<p>"I will never forgit you, and Bill won't neither. He knows now
+what a hound he has been. When you let him off last night after he
+had slipped on the rock, he says that was enough for him. Before he
+will ever pull a pistol on you ag'in, he says he will blow his own
+brains out; and he will, or I will for him." She looked capable of
+it as she stood with glowing eyes and after a moment held out her
+hand. She appeared about to speak, but reflected and turned
+away.</p>
+<p>When the girl left Keith's room a few moments later, she carried
+a large bundle under her arm, and that night the stage stopped in
+the darkness at a little shanty at the far end of the fast-growing
+street, and Keith descended painfully and went into the house.
+Whilst the stage waited, old Tim attempted to do something to the
+lamp on that side, and in turning it down he put it out. Just then
+Keith, with his arm in a sling and wrapped in a heavy coat, came
+out, and was helped by old Tim up to the seat beside him. The stage
+arrived somewhat ahead of time at the point which the railroad had
+now reached, and old Tim, without waiting for daylight, took the
+trouble to hire a buggy and send the wounded man on, declaring that
+it was important that he should get to a hospital as soon as
+possible.</p>
+<p>Amusements were scarce in Gumbolt, and Ferdy Wickersham had been
+there only a day or two when, under Mr. Plume's guidance, he sought
+the entertainment of Terpsichore's Hall. He had been greatly struck
+by Terpy that night on the road, when she had faced down the men
+and had afterwards bound up Keith's arm. He had heard from Plume
+rumors of her frequent trips over the road and jests of her fancy
+for Keith. He would test it. It would break the monotony and give
+zest to the pursuit to make an inroad on Keith's preserve. When he
+saw her on the little stage he was astonished at her dancing. Why,
+the girl was an artist! As good a figure, as active a tripper, as
+high a kicker, as dainty a pair of ankles as he had seen in a long
+time, not to mention a keen pair of eyes with the devil peeping
+from them. To his surprise, he found Terpy stony to his advances.
+Her eyes glittered with dislike for him.</p>
+<p>He became one of the highest players that had ever entered the
+gilded apartment on Terpsichore's second floor; he ordered more
+champagne than any man in Gumbolt; but for all this he failed to
+ingratiate himself with its presiding genius. Terpsichore still
+looked at him with level eyes in which was a cold gleam, and when
+she showed her white teeth it was generally to emphasize some gibe
+at him. One evening, after a little passage at arms, Wickersham
+chucked her under the chin and called her "Darling." Terpsichore
+wheeled on him.</p>
+<p>"Keep your dirty hands to yourself" she said, with a flash in
+her eye, and gave him such a box on the ear as made his head ring.
+The men around broke into a guffaw.</p>
+<p>Wickersham was more than angry; he was enraged. He had heard a
+score of men call her by endearing names. He had also seen some of
+them get the same return that he received; but none so vicious. He
+sprang to his feet, his face flushed. The next second his senses
+returned, and he saw that he must make the best of it.</p>
+<p>"You vixen!" he said, with a laugh, and caught the girl by the
+wrist. "I will make you pay for that." As he tried to draw her to
+him, she whipped from her dress a small stiletto which she wore as
+an ornament, and drew it back.</p>
+<p>"Let go, or I'll drive it into you," she said, with fire darting
+from her eyes; and Wickersham let go amid the laughter and jeers of
+those about them, who were egging the girl on and calling to her to
+"give it to him."</p>
+<p>Wickersham after this tried to make his peace, but without
+avail. Though he did not know it, Terpsichore had in her heart a
+feeling of hate which was relentless. It was his description that
+had set the sheriff's posse on the track of her dissipated lover,
+and though she had "washed her hands of Bill Bluffy," as she said,
+she could not forgive the man who had injured him.</p>
+<p>Then Wickersham, having committed one error, committed another.
+He tried to get revenge, and the man who sets out to get revenge on
+a woman starts on a sad journey. At least, it was so with
+Wickersham.</p>
+<p>He attributed the snubbing he had received to the girl's liking
+for Keith, and he began to meditate how he should get even with
+them. The chance presented itself, as he thought, when one night he
+attended a ball at the Windsor. It was a gay occasion, for the
+Wickershams had opened their first mine, and Gumbolt's future was
+assured. The whole of Gumbolt was there--at least, all of those who
+did not side with Mr. Drummond, the Methodist preacher. Terpsichore
+was there, and Keith, who danced with her. She was the
+handsomest-dressed woman in the throng, and, to Wickersham's
+surprise, she was dressed with some taste, and her manners were
+quiet and subdued.</p>
+<p>Toward morning the scene became hilarious, and a call was made
+for Terpsichore to give a Spanish dance. The girl held back, but
+her admirers were in no mood for refusal, and the call became
+insistent. Keith had gone to his room, but Wickersham was still
+there, and his champagne had flowed freely. At length the girl
+yielded, and, after a few words with the host of the Windsor, she
+stepped forward and began to dance.</p>
+<p>She danced in such a way that the applause made the brass
+chandeliers ring. Even Wickersham, though he hated her, could not
+but admire her.</p>
+<p>Keith, who had found it useless to try to sleep even in a remote
+corner of the hotel, returned just then, and whether it was that
+Terpsichore caught sight of him as she glanced his way, or that she
+caught sight of Wickersham's hostile face, she faltered and stopped
+suddenly.</p>
+<p>Wickersham thought she had broken down, and, under the influence
+of the champagne, turned with a jeer to Plume.</p>
+<p>"She can't dance, Plume," he called across to the editor, who
+was at some little distance in the crowd.</p>
+<p>Those nearest to the dancer urged her to continue, but she had
+heard Wickersham's jeer, and she suddenly faced him and, pointing
+her long, bare arm toward him, said: "Put that man out, or I won't
+go on."</p>
+<p>Wickersham gave a laugh. "Go on? You can't go on," he said,
+trying to steady himself on his feet. "You can't dance any more
+than a cow."</p>
+<p>He had never heard before the hum of an angry crowd.</p>
+<p>"Throw him out! Fling him out of the window!" were the words he
+caught.</p>
+<p>In a second a score of men were about him, and more than a score
+were rushing in his direction with a sound that brought him quickly
+to his senses.</p>
+<p>Fortunately two men with cool heads were near by. With a spring
+Keith and a short, stout young fellow with gray eyes were making
+their way to his side, dragging men back, throwing them aside,
+expostulating, ordering, and, before anything else had happened
+than the tearing of his coat half off of his back, Wickersham found
+himself with Keith and Dave Dennison standing in front of him,
+defending him against the angry revellers.</p>
+<p>The determined air of the two officers held the assailants in
+check long enough for them to get their attention, and, after a
+moment, order was restored on condition that Wickersham should
+"apologize to the lady and leave town."</p>
+<p>This Wickersham, well sobered by the handling he had received,
+was willing to do, and he was made to walk up and offer a humble
+apology to Terpsichore, who accepted it with but indifferent
+grace.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>That winter the railroad reached Gumbolt, and Gumbolt, or New
+Leeds, as it was now called, sprang at once, so to speak, from a
+chrysalis to a full-fledged butterfly with wings unfolding in the
+sun of prosperity.</p>
+<p>Lands that a year or two before might have been had for a song,
+and mineral rights that might have been had for less than a song,
+were now held at fabulous prices.</p>
+<p>Keith was sitting at his table, one day, writing, when there was
+a heavy step outside, and Squire Rawson walked in on him.</p>
+<p>When all matters of mutual interest had been talked over, the
+squire broached the real object of his visit; at least, he began to
+approach it. He took out his pipe and filled it.</p>
+<p>"Well, it's come," he said.</p>
+<p>"What has come?"</p>
+<p>"The railroad. That young man Rhodes said 'twas comin', and so
+it's done. He was something of a prophet." The old fellow chuckled
+softly and lit his pipe. "That there friend of yours, Mr.
+Wickersham, is been down here ag'in. Kind o' hangs around. What's
+he up to?"</p>
+<p>Keith laughed.</p>
+<p>"Well, it's pretty hard to tell what Wickersham is up to,--at
+least, by what he says,--especially when you don't tell me what he
+is doing."</p>
+<p>The old man looked pleased. Keith had let him believe that he
+did not know what he was talking of, and had expressed an opinion
+in which he agreed.</p>
+<p>"That's what I think. Well, it's about my land up here."</p>
+<p>Keith looked relived.</p>
+<p>"Has he made you another offer for it?"</p>
+<p>"No; he ain't done that, and he won't do it. That's what I tells
+him. If he wants it, let him make me a good offer; but he won't do
+that. He kind o' circles around like a pigeon before he lights, and
+talks about what I paid for it, and a hundred per cent. advance,
+and all that. I give a sight for that land he don't know nothin'
+about--years of hard work on the mountain-side, sweatin' o' days,
+and layin' out in the cold at nights, lookin' up at the stars and
+wonderin' how I was to git along--studin' of folks jest as I
+studied cattle. That's what I paid for that land. He wants me to
+set him a price, and I won't do that--he might give it." He looked
+shrewdly at Keith. "Ain't I right?"</p>
+<p>"I think so."</p>
+<p>"He wants me to let him have control of it; but I ain't a-goin'
+to do that neither."</p>
+<p>"That's certainly right," said Keith, heartily.</p>
+<p>"I tell him I'm a-goin' to hold to that for Phrony. Phrony says
+she wants me to sell it to him, too. But women-folks don't know
+about business."</p>
+<p>Keith wondered what effect this piece of information had on
+Wickersham, and also what further design the old squire had in
+mind.</p>
+<p>"I think it's about time to do something with that land. If all
+he says is true,--not about <i>my</i> land (he makes out as
+<i>my</i> land is situate too far away ever to be much
+account--fact is, he don't allow I've got any land; he says it's
+all his anyway), but about other lands--everybody else's land but
+mine,--it might be a good time to look around. I know as my land is
+the best land up here. I holds the key to the situation. That's
+what we used to call it durin' the war.</p>
+<p>"Well, there ain't but three ways to git to them coal-lands back
+up yonder in the Gap: one's by way of heaven, and I 'lows there
+ain't many land-speculators goin' by that way; the other is through
+hell, a way they'll know more about hereafter; and the third's
+through my land."</p>
+<p>Keith laughed and waited.</p>
+<p>"He seems to be hangin' around Phrony pretty considerable?"</p>
+<p>Keith caught the gleam in the old fellow's deep eye, and looked
+away.</p>
+<p>"I can't make it out. Phrony she likes him."</p>
+<p>Keith fastened his gaze on something out of the window.</p>
+<p>"I don't know him," pursued the squire; "But I don't think--he'd
+suit Phrony. His ways ain't like ours, and--." He lapsed into
+reflection, and Keith, with his eyes still fastened on something
+outside the window, sighed to think of the old man's innocence.
+That he should imagine that Wickersham had any serious idea of
+marrying the granddaughter of a backwoods magistrate! The old
+squire broke the silence.</p>
+<p>"You don't suppose he could be hankerin' after Phrony for her
+property, do you?"</p>
+<p>"No, I do not," said Keith, positively, relieved that at last a
+question was put which he could answer directly.</p>
+<p>"Because she ain't got any," asserted the squire. "She's got
+prospects; but I'm goin' to remove them. It don't do for a young
+woman to have too much prospects. I'm goin' to sell that land and
+git it down in cash, where I can do what I want with it. And I want
+you to take charge of it for me."</p>
+<p>This, then, was the real object of his visit. He wanted Keith to
+take charge of his properties. It was a tempting offer to make
+Keith. The old man had been a shrewd negotiator.</p>
+<p>There is no success so sweet as that which comes to a young
+man.</p>
+<p>That night Keith spent out under the stars. Success had come.
+And its other name was Alice Yorke.</p>
+<p>The way before Keith still stretched steep enough, but the light
+was on it, the sunshine caught peak after peak high up among the
+clouds themselves, and crowning the highest point, bathed in
+perpetual sunlight, was the image of Alice Yorke.</p>
+<p>Alice Yorke had been abroad now for some time; but he had
+followed her. Often when his work was done he had locked his door
+and shut himself in from the turmoil of the bustling, noisy throng
+outside to dream of her--to read and study that he might become
+worthy of her.</p>
+<p>He had just seen by the papers that Alice Yorke had
+returned.</p>
+<p>She had escaped the dangers of a foreign service; but, by the
+account, she was the belle of the season at the watering-place
+which she was honoring with her presence. As he read the account, a
+little jealousy crept into the satisfaction which he had felt as he
+began. Mr. Lancaster was spoken of too pointedly; and there was
+mention of too many yacht-parties and entertainments in which their
+names appeared together.</p>
+<p>In fact, the forces exerted, against Alice Yorke had begun to
+tell. Her mother, overawed by her husband's determination, had
+reluctantly abandoned her dreams of a foreign title with its
+attendant honors to herself, and, of late, had turned all her
+energies to furthering the suit of Mr. Lancaster. It would be a
+great establishment that he would give Alice, and no name in the
+country stood higher. He was the soul of honor, personal and
+commercial; and in an age when many were endeavoring to amass great
+fortunes and make a dazzling display, he was content to live
+modestly, and was known for his broad-minded philanthropy. What did
+it matter that he was considerably older than Alice? reflected Mrs.
+Yorke. Mrs. Creamer and half the mothers she knew would give their
+eyes to secure him for their daughters; and certainly he had shown
+that he knew how to enter into Alice's feelings.</p>
+<p>Even Mr. Yorke had begun to favor Mr. Lancaster after Mrs. Yorke
+had skilfully pointed out that Alice's next most attentive admirer
+was Ferdy Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"Why, I thought he was still trying to get that Caldwell girl,"
+said he.</p>
+<p>"You know he cannot get her; she is married," replied Mrs.
+Yorke.</p>
+<p>"I guess that would make precious little difference to that
+young man, if she would say the word. I wish he would keep away
+from here."</p>
+<p>"Oh, Ferdy is no worse than some others; you were always unjust
+to him. Most young men sow their wild oats."</p>
+<p>No man likes to be charged with injustice by his wife, and Mr.
+Yorke's tone showed that he was no exception to this rule.</p>
+<p>"He is worse than most others <i>I</i> know, and the crop of
+oats he is sowing, if he does not look out, he will reap somewhere
+else besides in New York. Alice shall marry whom she pleases,
+provided it is not that young man; but she shall not marry him if
+she wants to."</p>
+<p>"She does not want to marry him," said Mrs. Yorke; "if she had
+she could have done it long ago."</p>
+<p>"Not while I lived," said Mr. Yorke, firmly. But from this time
+Mr. Yorke began to acquiesce in his wife's plans touching Mr.
+Lancaster.</p>
+<p>Finally Alice herself began to yield. The influences were very
+strong, and were skilfully exerted. The only man who had ever made
+any lasting impression on her heart was, she felt, out of the
+question. The young school-teacher, with his pride and his scorn of
+modern ways, had influenced her life more than any one else she had
+ever known, and though under her mother's management the feeling
+had gradually subsided, and had been merged into what was merely a
+cherished recollection, Memory, stirred at times by some picture or
+story of heroism and devotion, reminded her that she too might,
+under other conditions, have had a real romance. Still, after two
+or three years, her life appeared to have been made for her by
+Fate, and she yielded, not recognizing that Fate was only a very
+ambitious and somewhat short-sighted mamma aided by the conditions
+of an artificial state of life known as fashionable society.</p>
+<p>Keith wrote Alice Yorke a letter congratulating her upon her
+safe return; but a feeling, part shyness, part pride, seized him.
+He had received no acknowledgment of his last letter. Why should he
+write again? He mailed the letter in the waste-basket. Now,
+however, that success had come to him, he wrote her a brief note
+congratulating her upon her return, a stiff little plea for
+remembrance. He spoke of his good fortune: he was the agent for the
+most valuable lands in that region, and the future was beginning to
+look very bright. Business, he said, might take him North before
+long, and the humming-birds would show him the way to the fairest
+roses. The hope of seeing her shone in every line. It reached Alice
+Yorke in the midst of preparation for her marriage.</p>
+<p>Alice Yorke sat for some time in meditation over this letter. It
+brought back vividly the time which she had never wholly forgotten.
+Often, in the midst of scenes so gay and rich as to amaze her, she
+had recalled the springtime in the budding woods, with an ardent
+boy beside her, worshipping her with adoring eyes. She had lived
+close to Nature then, and Content once or twice peeped forth at her
+from its covert with calm and gentle eyes. She had known pleasure
+since then, joy, delight, but never content. However, it was too
+late now. Mr. Lancaster and her mother had won the day; she had at
+last accepted him and an establishment. She had accepted her fate
+or had made it.</p>
+<p>She showed the letter to her mother. Mrs. Yorke's face took on
+an inscrutable expression.</p>
+<p>"You are not going to answer it, of course?" she said.</p>
+<p>"Of course, I am; I am going to write him the nicest letter that
+I know how to write. He is one of the best friends I ever had."</p>
+<p>"What will Mr. Lancaster say?"</p>
+<p>"Mr. Lancaster quite understands. He is going to be reasonable;
+that is the condition."</p>
+<p>This appeared to be satisfactory to Mrs. Yorke, or, at least,
+she said no more.</p>
+<p>Alice's letter to Keith was friendly and even kind. She had
+never forgotten him, she said. Some day she hoped to meet him
+again. Keith read this with a pleasant light in his eyes. He turned
+the page, and his face suddenly whitened. She had a piece of news
+to tell him which might surprise him. She was engaged to be married
+to an old friend of her family's, Mr. Lancaster. He had met Mr.
+Lancaster, she remembered, and was sure he would like him, as Mr.
+Lancaster had liked him so much.</p>
+<p>Keith sat long over this letter, his face hard set and very
+white. She was lost to him. He had not known till then how largely
+he had built his life upon the memory of Alice Yorke. Deep down
+under everything that he had striven for had lain the foundation of
+his hope to win her. It went down with a crash. He went to his
+room, and unlocking his desk, took from his drawer a small package
+of letters and other little mementos of the past that had been so
+sweet. These he put in the fire and, with a grim face, watched them
+blaze and burn to ashes. She was dead to him. He reserved
+nothing.</p>
+<p>The newspapers described the Yorke-Lancaster wedding as one of
+the most brilliant affairs of the season. They dwelt particularly
+on the fortunes of both parties, the value of the presents, and the
+splendor of the dresses worn on the occasion. One journal mentioned
+that Mr. Lancaster was considerably older than the bride, and was
+regarded as one of the best, because one of the safest, matches to
+be found in society.</p>
+<p>Keith recalled Mr. Lancaster: dignified, cultivated, and coldly
+gracious. Then he recalled his gray hair, and found some
+satisfaction in it. He recalled, too, Mrs. Yorke's friendliness for
+him. This, then, was what it meant. He wondered to himself how he
+could have been so blind to it. When he came to think of it, Mr.
+Lancaster came nearer possessing what others strove for than any
+one else he knew. Yet, Youth looks on Youth as peculiarly its own,
+and Keith found it hard to look on Alice Yorke's marriage as
+anything but a sale.</p>
+<p>"They talk about the sin of selling negroes," he said; "that is
+as very a sale as ever took place at a slave-auction."</p>
+<p>For a time he plunged into the gayest life that Gumbolt offered.
+He even began to visit Terpsichore. But this was not for long. Mr.
+Plume's congratulations were too distasteful to him for him to
+stomach them; and Terpy began to show her partiality too plainly
+for him to take advantage of it. Besides, after all, though Alice
+Yorke had failed him, it was treason to the ideal he had so long
+carried in his heart. This still remained to him.</p>
+<p>He went back to his work, resolved to tear from his heart all
+memory of Alice Yorke. She was married and forever beyond his
+dreams. If he had worked before with enthusiasm, he now worked with
+fury. Mr. Lancaster, as wealthy as he was, as completely equipped
+with all that success could give, lacked one thing that Keith
+possessed: he lacked the promise of the Future. Keith would show
+these Yorkes who he was.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<h3>KEITH VISITS NEW YORK, AND MRS. LANCASTER SEES A GHOST</h3>
+<br>
+<p>For the next year or two the tide set in very strong toward the
+mountains, and New Leeds advanced with giant strides. What had been
+a straggling village a year or two before was now a town, and was
+beginning to put on the airs of a city. Brick buildings quite as
+pretentious as the town were springing up where a year before there
+were unsightly frame boxes; the roads where hogs had wallowed in
+mire not wholly of their own kneading were becoming well-paved
+streets. Out on the heights, where had been a forest, were
+sprinkled sightly dwellings in pretty yards. The smoke of panting
+engines rose where but a few years back old Tim Gilsey drew rein
+over his steaming horses. Pretty girls and well-dressed women began
+to parade the sidewalks where formerly Terpsichore's skirts were
+the only feminine attire seen. And "Gordon Keith, civil and mining
+engineer," with his straight figure and tanned, manly face, was not
+ignored by them. But locked in his heart was the memory of the girl
+he had found in the Spring woods. She was forever beyond him; but
+he still clung to the picture he had enshrined there.</p>
+<p>When he saw Dr. Balsam, no reference was made to the
+verification of the latter's prophecy; but the young man knew from
+the kind tone in the older man's voice that he had heard of it.
+Meantime Keith had not been idle. Surveys and plats had been made,
+and everything done to facilitate placing the Rawson properties on
+the market.</p>
+<p>When old man Rawson came to New Leeds now, he made Keith's
+little office his headquarters, and much quaint philosophy Keith
+learned from him.</p>
+<p>"I reckon it's about time to try our cattle in the New York
+market," he said at length to Keith. It was a joke he never gave
+up. "You go up there and look around, and if you have any trouble
+send for me."</p>
+<p>So, taking his surveys and reports and a few letters of
+introduction Keith went to New York.</p>
+<p>Only one thought marred Keith's joy: the dearest aim he had so
+long had in view had disappeared. The triumph of standing before
+Alice Yorke and offering her the reward of his endeavor was gone.
+All he could do was to show her what she had lost. This he would
+do; he would win life's highest honors. He grew grim with
+resolve.</p>
+<p>Something of this triumphant feeling showed in his mien and in
+his face as he plunged into the crowded life of the city. From the
+time he passed into the throng that streamed up the long platforms
+of the station and poured into the wide ferry-boats, like grain
+pouring through a mill, he felt the thrill of the life. This was
+what he had striven for. He would take his place here and show what
+was in him.</p>
+<p>He had forgotten how gay the city life was. Every place of
+public resort pleased him: theatres, hotels, beer-gardens; but best
+of all the streets. He took them all in with absolute freedom and
+delight.</p>
+<p>Business was the watchword, the trade-mark. It buzzed
+everywhere, from the Battery to the Park. It thronged the streets,
+pulsating through the outlets and inlets at ferries and
+railway-stations and crossings, and through the great buildings
+that were already beginning to tower in the business sections. It
+hummed in the chief centres. And through it all and beyond it all
+shone opulence, opulence gilded and gleaming and dazzling in its
+glitter: in the big hotels; in the rich shops; in the gaudy
+theatres; along the fine avenues: a display of wealth to make the
+eyes ache; an exhibition of riches never seen before. It did Keith
+good at first just to stand in the street and watch the pageant as
+it passed like a gilded panorama. Of the inner New York he did not
+yet know: the New York of luxurious homes; of culture and of art;
+of refinement and elegance. The New York that has grown up since,
+with its vast wealth, its brazen glitter, its tides that roll up
+riches as the sea rolls up the sand, was not yet. It was still in
+its infancy, a chrysalis as yet sleeping within its golden
+cocoon.</p>
+<p>Keith had no idea there were so many handsome and stylish young
+women in the world as he now saw. He had forgotten how handsome the
+American girl is in her best appointment. They sailed down the
+avenue looking as fine as young fillies at a show, or streamed
+through the best shopping streets as though not only the shops, but
+the world belonged to them, and it were no longer the meek, but the
+proud, that inherit the earth.</p>
+<p>If in the throngs on the streets there were often marked
+contrasts, Keith was too exhilarated to remark it--at least, at
+first. If women with worn faces and garments unduly thin in the
+frosty air, carrying large bundles in their pinched hands, hurried
+by as though hungry, not only for food, but for time in which to
+earn food; if sad-eyed men with hollow cheeks, sunken chests, and
+threadbare clothes shambled eagerly along, he failed to note them
+in his first keen enjoyment of the pageant. Old clothes meant
+nothing where he came from; they might be the badge of perilous
+enterprise and well-paid industry, and food and fire were at least
+common to all.</p>
+<p>Keith, indeed, moved about almost in a trance, absorbing and
+enjoying the sights. It was Humanity in flood; Life at full
+tide.</p>
+<p>Many a woman and not a few men turned to take a second look at
+the tanned, eager face and straight, supple figure, as, with
+smiling, yet keen eyes, he stalked along with the free, swinging
+gait caught on the mountains, so different from the quick, short
+steps of the city man. Beggars, and some who from their look and
+apparel might not have been beggars, applied to him so often that
+he said to one of them, a fairly well-dressed man with a nose of a
+slightly red tinge:</p>
+<p>"Well, I must have a very benevolent face or a very credulous
+one!"</p>
+<p>"You have," said the man, with brazen frankness, pocketing the
+half-dollar given him on his tale of a picked pocket and a
+remittance that had gone wrong.</p>
+<p>Keith laughed and passed on.</p>
+<p>Meantime, Keith was making some discoveries. He did not at first
+call on Norman Wentworth. He had a feeling that it might appear as
+if he were using his friendship for a commercial purpose. He
+presented his business letters. His letters, however, failed to
+have the weight he had expected. The persons whom he had met down
+in New Leeds, during their brief visits there, were, somehow, very
+different when met in New York. Some whom he called on were civil
+enough to him; but as soon as he broached his business they froze
+up. The suggestion that he had coal-property to sell sent them down
+to zero. Their eyes would glint with a shrewd light and their faces
+harden into ice. One or two told him plainly that they had no money
+to embark in "wild-cat schemes."</p>
+<p>Mr. Creamer of Creamer, Crustback &amp; Company, Capitalists, a
+tall, broad-shouldered man, with a strongly cut nose and chin and
+keen, gray eyes, that, through long habitude, weighed chances with
+an infallible appraisement, to whom Keith had a letter from an
+acquaintance, one of those casual letters that mean anything or
+nothing, informed him frankly that he had "neither time nor
+inclination to discuss enterprises, ninety-nine out of every
+hundred of which were frauds, and the hundredth generally a
+failure."</p>
+<p>"This is not a fraud," said Keith, hotly, rising. "I do not
+indorse frauds, sir." He began to draw on his gloves. "If I cannot
+satisfy any reasonable man of the fact I state, I am willing to
+fail. I ought to fail." With a bow, he turned to the door.</p>
+<p>Something in Keith's assurance went further with the shrewd-eyed
+capitalist than his politeness had done. He shot a swift glance as
+he was retiring toward the door.</p>
+<p>"Why didn't Wickersham make money down there?" he demanded, half
+in query, half in denial, gazing keenly over his gold-rimmed
+glasses. "He usually makes money, even if others lose it."</p>
+<p>Mr. Creamer had his own reasons for not liking Wickersham.</p>
+<p>Keith was standing at the door.</p>
+<p>"For two or three reasons. One was that he underestimated the
+people who live down there, and thought he could force them into
+selling him their lands, and so lost the best properties
+there."</p>
+<p>"The lands you have, I suppose?" said the banker, looking again
+at Keith quickly.</p>
+<p>"Yes, the lands I have, though you don't believe it," said
+Keith, looking him calmly in the eyes.</p>
+<p>The banker was gazing at the young man ironically; but, as he
+observed him, his credulity began to give way.</p>
+<p>That stamp of truth which men recognize was written on him
+unmistakably. Mr. Creamer's mind worked quickly.</p>
+<p>"By the way, you came from down there. Did you know a young man
+named Rhodes? He was an engineer. Went over the line."</p>
+<p>Keith's eyes brightened. "He is one of my best friends. He is in
+Russia now."</p>
+<p>Mr. Creamer nodded. "What do you think of him?"</p>
+<p>"He is one of the best."</p>
+<p>Mr. Creamer nodded. He did not think it necessary to tell Keith
+that Rhodes was paying his addresses to his daughter.</p>
+<p>"You write to him," said Keith. "He will tell you just what I
+have. Tell him they are the Rawson lands."</p>
+<p>Keith opened the door. "Good morning, sir."</p>
+<p>"One moment!" Mr. Creamer leaned back in his chair. "Whom else
+do you know here?" he asked after a second.</p>
+<p>Keith reflected a moment.</p>
+<p>"I know Mr. Wentworth."</p>
+<p>"Norman Wentworth?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; I know him very well. He is an old friend of mine."</p>
+<p>"Have you been to him?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir."</p>
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+<p>"Because my relations with him are entirely personal. We used to
+be warm friends, and I did not wish to use his friendship for me as
+a ground on which to approach him in a commercial enterprise."</p>
+<p>Mr. Creamer's countenance expressed more incredulity than he
+intended to show.</p>
+<p>"He might feel under obligations to do for me what he would not
+be inclined to do otherwise," Keith explained.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I don't think you need have any apprehension on that
+score," Mr. Creamer said, with a glint of amusement in his eyes.
+"It is a matter of business, and I don't think you will find
+business men here overstepping the bounds of prudence from motives
+of sentiment."</p>
+<p>"There is no man whom I would rather have go into it with me;
+but I shall not ask him to do it, for the reason I have given. Good
+morning."</p>
+<p>The banker did not take his eyes from the door until the sound
+of Keith's steps had died away through his outer office. Then he
+reflected for a moment. Presently he touched a bell, and a clerk
+appeared in the door.</p>
+<p>"Write a note to Mr. Norman Wentworth and ask him to drop in to
+see me--any time this afternoon."</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir."</p>
+<p>When Norman Wentworth called at Mr. Creamer's office he found
+the financier in a good humor. The market had gone well of late,
+and Mr. Creamer's moods were not altogether unlike the mercury. His
+greeting was more cordial than usual. After a brief discussion of
+recent events, he pushed a card across to his visitor and asked
+casually:</p>
+<p>"What do you know about that man?"</p>
+<p>"Gordon Keith!" exclaimed the younger man, in surprise. "Is he
+in New York, and I have not seen him! Why, I know all about him. He
+used to be an old friend of mine. We were boys together ever so
+long ago."</p>
+<p>He went on to speak warmly of him.</p>
+<p>"Well, that was long ago," said Mr. Creamer, doubtfully. "Many
+things have happened in that time. He has had time to change."</p>
+<p>"He must have changed a good deal if he is not straight,"
+declared Norman. "I wonder why he has not been to see me?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I'll tell you what he said," began Mr. Creamer.</p>
+<p>He gave Keith's explanation.</p>
+<p>"Did he say that? Then it's true. You ought to know his father.
+He is a regular old Don Quixote."</p>
+<p>"The Don was not particularly practical. He would not have done
+much with coal and iron lands," observed the banker. "What do you
+know about this man's knowledge of such things?"</p>
+<p>Norman admitted that on this point he had no information.</p>
+<p>"He says he knows Wickersham--your friend," said Mr. Creamer,
+with a sly look at Norman.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I expect he does--if any one knows him. He used to know
+him. What does he say of him?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I think he knows him. Well, I am much obliged to you for
+coming around," he said in a tone of dismissal. "You are coming to
+dine with us soon, I believe? The Lancasters are coming, too. And
+we expect Rhodes home. He's due next week."</p>
+<p>"One member of your family will be glad to see him," said
+Norman, smiling. "The wedding is to take place in a few weeks, I
+believe?"</p>
+<p>"I hear so," said the father. "Fine young man, Rhodes? Your
+cousin, isn't he? Been very successful?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>Once, as Keith passed along down Broadway, just where some of
+the great shops were at that time, before the tide had rolled so
+far up-town, a handsome carriage and pair drew up in front of one
+of the big shops, and a lady stepped from it just behind him. She
+was a very pretty young woman, and richly dressed. A straight back
+and a well-set head, with a perfect toilet, gave her distinction
+even among the handsomely appointed women who thronged the street
+that sunny morning, and many a woman turned and looked at her with
+approval or envy.</p>
+<p>The years, that had wrought Keith from a plain country lad into
+a man of affairs of such standing in New Leeds that a shrewd
+operator like Rawson had selected him for his representative, had
+also wrought a great change in Alice Lancaster. Alice had missed
+what she had once begun to expect, romance and all that it meant;
+but she had filled with dignity the place she had chosen. If Mr.
+Lancaster's absorption in serious concerns left her life more
+sombre than she had expected, at least she let no one know it.
+Association with a man like Mr. Lancaster had steadied and elevated
+her. His high-mindedness had lifted her above the level of her
+worldly mother and of many of those who constituted the set in
+which she lived.</p>
+<p>He admired her immeasurably. He was constantly impressed by the
+difference between her and her shallow-minded and silly mother, or
+even between her and such a young woman as Mrs. Wentworth, who
+lived only for show and extravagance, and appeared in danger of
+ruining her husband and wrecking his happiness.</p>
+<p>It was Mrs. Lancaster who descended from her carriage as Keith
+passed by. Just as she was about to enter the shop, a well-knit
+figure with square shoulders and springy step, swinging down the
+street, caught her eye. She glanced that way and gave an
+exclamation. The door was being held open for her by a blank-faced
+automaton in a many-buttoned uniform; so she passed in, but pausing
+just inside, she glanced back through the window. The next instant
+she left the shop and gazed down the street again. But Keith had
+turned a corner, and so Alice Lancaster did not see him, though she
+stood on tiptoe to try and distinguish him again in the crowd.</p>
+<p>"Well, I would have sworn that that was Gordon Keith," she said
+to herself, as she turned away, "if he had not been so
+broad-shouldered and good-looking." And wherever she moved the rest
+of the day her eyes wandered up and down the street.</p>
+<p>Once, as she was thus engaged, Ferdy Wickersham came up. He was
+dressed in the tip of the fashion and looked very handsome.</p>
+<p>"Who is the happy man?"</p>
+<p>The question was so in keeping with her thought that she blushed
+unexpectedly.</p>
+<p>"No one."</p>
+<p>"Ah, not me, then? But I know it was some one. No woman looks so
+expectant and eager for 'no one.'"</p>
+<p>"Do you think I am like you, perambulating streets trying to
+make conquests?" she said, with a smile.</p>
+<p>"You do not have to try," he answered lazily. "You do it simply
+by being on the street. I am playing in great luck to-day."</p>
+<p>"Have you seen Louise this morning?" she asked.</p>
+<p>He looked her full in the face. "I see no one but you when you
+are around."</p>
+<p>She laughed lightly.</p>
+<p>"Ferdy, you will begin to believe that after a while, if you do
+not stop saying it so often."</p>
+<p>"I shall never stop saying it, because it is true," he replied
+imperturbably, turning his dark eyes on her, the lids a little
+closed.</p>
+<p>"You have got so in the habit of saying it that you repeat it
+like my parrot that I taught once, when I was younger and vainer,
+to say, 'Pretty Alice.' He says it all the time."</p>
+<p>"Sensible bird," said Mr. Wickersham, calmly. "Come and drive me
+up to the Park and let's have a stroll. I know such a beautiful
+walk. There are so many people out to-day. I saw the lady of the
+'cat-eyes and cat-claws' go by just now, seeking some one whom she
+can turn again and rend." It was the name she had given Mrs.
+Nailor.</p>
+<p>"I do not care who is out. Are you going to the Wentworths' this
+evening?" she asked irrelevantly.</p>
+<p>"No; I rarely go there. Will you mention that to Mrs. Nailor?
+She apparently has not that confidence in my word that I could have
+expected in one so truthful as herself."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster laughed.</p>
+<p>"Ferdy--" she began, and then paused irresolute. "However--"</p>
+<p>"Well, what is it? Say it."</p>
+<p>"You ought not to go there so often as you do."</p>
+<p>"Why?" His eyes were full of insolence.</p>
+<p>"Good-by. Drive home," she said to the coachman, in a tone
+intentionally loud enough for her friend to hear.</p>
+<p>Ferdy Wickersham strolled on down the street, and a few minutes
+later was leaning in at the door of Mrs. Wentworth's carriage,
+talking very earnestly to the lady inside.</p>
+<p>Mr. Wickersham's attentions to Louise Wentworth had begun to be
+the talk of the town. Young Mrs. Wentworth was not a person to
+allow herself to be shelved. She did not propose that the older
+lady who bore that name should be known by it. She declared she
+would play second fiddle to no one. But she discovered that the old
+lady who lived in the old mansion on Washington Square was "Mrs.
+Wentworth," and that Mrs. Wentworth occupied a position from which
+she was not to be moved. After a little she herself was known as
+"Mrs. Norman." It was the first time Mrs. Norman had ever had
+command of much money. Her mother had made a good appearance and
+dressed her daughter handsomely, but to carry out her plans she had
+had to stint and scrape to make both ends meet. Mrs. Caldwell told
+one of her friends that her rings knew the way to the pawnbroker's
+so well that if she threw them in the street they would roll into
+his shop.</p>
+<p>This struggle Louise had witnessed with that easy indifference
+which was part her nature and part her youth. She had been brought
+up to believe she was a beauty, and she did believe it. Now that
+she had the chance, she determined to make the most of her triumph.
+She would show people that she knew how to spend money;
+embellishment was the aim of her life, and she did show them. Her
+toilets were the richest; her equipage was the handsomest and best
+appointed. Her entertainments soon were among the most splendid in
+the city.</p>
+<p>Those who were accustomed to wealth and to parade wondered both
+at Mrs. Norman's tastes and at her gratification of them.</p>
+<p>All the town applauded. They had had no idea that the
+Wentworths, as rich as they knew them to be, had so much money.</p>
+<p>"She must have Aladdin's lamp," they said. Only old Mrs.
+Wentworth looked grave and disapproving at the extravagance of her
+daughter-in-law. Still she never said a word of it, and when the
+grandson came she was too overjoyed to complain of anything.</p>
+<p>It was only of late that people had begun to whisper of the
+frequency with which Ferdy Wickersham was seen with Mrs. Norman.
+Certain it was that he was with her a great deal.</p>
+<p>That evening Alice Lancaster was dining with the Norman
+Wentworths. She was equally good friends with them and with their
+children, who on their part idolized her and considered her to be
+their especial property. Her appearance was always the signal for a
+romp. Whenever she went to the Wentworths' she always paid a visit
+to the nursery, from which she would return breathless and
+dishevelled, with an expression of mingled happiness and pain in
+her blue eyes. Louise Wentworth knew well why the longing look was
+there, and though usually cold and statuesque, she always softened
+to Alice Lancaster then more than she was wont to do.</p>
+<p>"Alice pines for children," she said to Norman, who pinched her
+cheek and, like a man, told her she thought every one as romantic
+and as affectionate as herself. Had Mrs. Nailor heard this speech
+she would have blinked her innocent eyes and have purred with
+silent thoughts on the blindness of men.</p>
+<p>This evening Mrs. Lancaster had come down from the nursery,
+where shouts of childish merriment had told of her romps with the
+ringletted young brigand who ruled there, and was sitting quite
+silent in the deep arm-chair in an attitude of profound reflection,
+her head thrown back, her white arms resting languidly on the arms
+of the chair, her face unusually thoughtful, her eyes on the gilded
+ceiling.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth watched her for a moment silently, and then
+said:</p>
+<p>"You must not let the boy tyrannize over you so."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster's reply was complete:</p>
+<p>"I love it; I just love it!"</p>
+<p>Presently Mrs. Wentworth spoke again.</p>
+<p>"What is the matter with you this evening? You seem quite
+distraite."</p>
+<p>"I saw a ghost to-day." She spoke without moving.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth's face took on more interest.</p>
+<p>"What do you mean? Who was it?"</p>
+<p>"I mean I saw a ghost; I might say two ghosts, for I saw in
+imagination also the ghost of myself as I was when a girl. I saw
+the man I was in love with when I was seventeen."</p>
+<p>"I thought you were in love with Ferdy then?"</p>
+<p>"No; never." She spoke with sudden emphasis.</p>
+<p>"How interesting! And you congratulated yourself on your escape?
+We always do. I was violently in love with a little hotel clerk,
+with oily hair, a snub-nose, and a waxed black moustache, in the
+Adirondacks when I was that age."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster made no reply to this, and her hostess looked at
+her keenly.</p>
+<p>"Where was it? How long before--?" She started to ask, how long
+before she was married, but caught herself. "What did he look like?
+He must have been good-looking, or you would not be so
+pensive."</p>
+<p>"He looked like--a man."</p>
+<p>"How old was he--I mean, when he fell in love with you?" said
+Mrs. Wentworth, with a sort of gasp, as she recalled Mr.
+Lancaster's gray hair and elderly appearance.</p>
+<p>"Rather young. He was only a few years older than I was; a
+young--what's his name?--Hercules, that brought me down a mountain
+in his arms the second time I ever saw him."</p>
+<p>"Alice Lancaster!"</p>
+<p>"I had broken my leg--almost I had got a bad fall from a horse
+and could not walk, and he happened to come along."</p>
+<p>"Of course. How romantic! Was he a doctor? Did you do it on
+purpose?" Mrs. Lancaster smiled.</p>
+<p>"No; a young schoolmaster up in the mountains. He was not
+handsome--not then. But he was fine-looking, eyes that looked
+straight at you and straight through you; the whitest teeth you
+ever saw; and shoulders! He could carry a sack of salt!" At the
+recollection a faint smile flickered about her lips.</p>
+<p>"Why didn't you marry him?"</p>
+<p>"He had not a cent in the world. He was a poor young
+school-teacher, but of a very distinguished family. However, mamma
+took fright, and whisked me away as if he had been a
+pestilence."</p>
+<p>"Oh, naturally!"</p>
+<p>"And he was too much in love with me. But for that I think I
+should not have given him up. I was dreadfully cut up for a little
+while. And he--" She did not finish the sentence.</p>
+<p>On this Mrs. Wentworth made no observation, though the
+expression about her mouth changed.</p>
+<p>"He made a reputation afterwards. I knew he would. He was bound
+to succeed. I believed in him even then. He had ideals. Why don't
+men have ideals now?"</p>
+<p>"Some of them do," asserted Mrs. Wentworth.</p>
+<p>"Yes; Norman has. I mean unmarried men. I heard he made a
+fortune, or was making one--or something."</p>
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+<p>"He knew more than any one I ever saw--and made you want to
+know. All I ever read he set me to. And he is awfully good-looking.
+I had no idea he would be so good-looking. But I tell you this: no
+woman that ever saw him ever forgot him."</p>
+<p>"Is he married?"</p>
+<p>"I don't think so--no. If he had been I should have heard it. He
+really believed in me."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her with interest.</p>
+<p>"Where is he staying?"</p>
+<p>"I do not know. I saw him through a shop-window."</p>
+<p>"What! Did you not speak to him?"</p>
+<p>"I did not get a chance. When I came out of the shop he was
+gone."</p>
+<p>"That was sad. It would have been quite romantic, would it not?
+But, perhaps, after all, he did not make his fortune?" Mrs.
+Wentworth looked complacent.</p>
+<p>"He did if he set his mind to it," declared Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>"How about Ferdy Wickersham?" The least little light of
+malevolence crept into Mrs. Wentworth's eyes.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster gave a shrug of impatience, and pushed a
+photograph on a small table farther away, as if it incommoded
+her.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Ferdy Wickersham! Ferdy Wickersham to that man is a heated
+room to the breath of hills and forests." She spoke with real
+warmth, and Mrs. Wentworth gazed at her curiously for a few
+seconds.</p>
+<p>"Still, I rather fancy for a constancy you'd prefer the heated
+rooms to the coldness of the hills. Your gowns would not look so
+well in the forest."</p>
+<p>It was a moment before Mrs. Lancaster's face relaxed.</p>
+<p>"I suppose I should," she said slowly, with something very like
+a sigh. "He was the only man I ever knew who made me do what I did
+not want to do and made me wish to be something better than I was,"
+she added absently.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her somewhat impatiently, but she went
+on:</p>
+<p>"I was very romantic then; and you should have heard him read
+the 'Idylls of the King.' He had the most beautiful voice. He made
+you live in Arthur's court, because he lived there himself."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth burst into laughter, but it was not very
+merry.</p>
+<p>"My dear Alice, you must have been romantic. How old were you,
+did you say?"</p>
+<p>"It was three years before I was married," said Mrs. Lancaster,
+firmly.</p>
+<p>Her friend gazed at her with a puzzled expression on her
+face.</p>
+<p>"Oh! Now, my dear Alice, don't let's have any more of this
+sentimentalizing. I never indulge in it; it always gives me a
+headache. One might think you were a school-girl."</p>
+<p>At the word a wood in all the bravery of Spring sprang into
+Alice's mind. A young girl was seated on the mossy ground, and
+outstretched at her feet was a young man, fresh-faced and
+clear-eyed, quoting a poem of youth and of love.</p>
+<p>"Heaven knows I wish I were," said Mrs. Lancaster, soberly. "I
+might then be something different from what I am!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, nonsense! You do nothing of the kind. Here are you, a rich
+woman, young, handsome, with a great establishment; perfectly free,
+with no one to interfere with you in any way. Now, I--"</p>
+<p>"That's just it," broke in Mrs. Lancaster, bitterly. "Free! Free
+from what my heart aches for. Free to dress in sables and diamonds
+and die of loneliness." She had sat up, and her eyes were glowing
+and her color flashing in her cheeks in her energy.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth looked at her with a curious expression in her
+eyes.</p>
+<p>"I want what you have, Louise Caldwell. In that big house with
+only ourselves and servants--sometimes I could wish I were dead. I
+envy every woman I see on the street with her children. Yes, I am
+free--too free! I married for respect, and I have it. But--I want
+devotion, sympathy. You have it. You have a husband who adores you,
+and children to fill your heart, cherish it." The light in her eyes
+was almost fierce as she leaned forward, her hands clasped so
+tightly that the knuckles showed white, and a strange look passed
+for a moment over Mrs. Wentworth's face.</p>
+<p>"You are enough to give one the blue-devils!" she exclaimed,
+with impatience. "Let's have a liqueur." She touched a bell, but
+Mrs. Lancaster rose.</p>
+<p>"No; I will go."</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes; just a glass." A servant appeared like an automaton at
+the door.</p>
+<p>"What will you have, Alice?" But Mrs. Lancaster was obdurate.
+She declined the invitation, and declared that she must go, as she
+was going to the opera; and the next moment the two ladies were
+taking leave of each other with gracious words and the formal
+manner that obtains in fashionable society, quite as if they had
+known each other just fifteen minutes.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster drove home, leaning very far back in her
+brougham.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth, too, appeared rather fatigued after her guest
+departed, and sat for fifteen minutes with the social column of a
+newspaper lying in her lap unscanned.</p>
+<p>"I thought she and Ferdy liked each other," she said to herself;
+"but he must have told the truth. They cannot have cared for each
+other. I think she must have been in love with that man."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<h3>KEITH MEETS NORMAN</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The day after Keith's interview with Mr. Creamer he was walking
+up-town more slowly than was his wont; for gloom was beginning to
+take the place where disappointment had for some time been holding
+session. His experience that day had been more than usually
+disheartening. These people with all their shrewdness appeared to
+him to be in their way as contracted as his mountaineers. They
+lived to amass wealth, yet went like sheep in flocks, and were so
+blind that they could not recognize a great opportunity when it was
+presented. They were mere machines that ground through life as
+monotonously as the wheels in their factories, turning out riches,
+riches, riches.</p>
+<p>This morning Keith had come across an article in a newspaper
+which, in a measure, explained his want of success. It was an
+article on New Leeds. It praised, in florid sentences, the place
+and the people, gave a reasonably true account of the rise of the
+town, set forth in a veiled way a highly colored prospectus of the
+Wickersham properties, and asserted explicitly that all the lands
+of value had been secured by this company, and that such as were
+now being offered outside were those which Wickersham had refused
+as valueless after a thorough and searching examination. The
+falsity of the statements made Keith boil with rage. Mr. J. Quincy
+Plume immediately flashed into his mind.</p>
+<p>As he walked along, the newspaper clutched in his hand, a man
+brushed against him. Keith's mind was far away on Quincy Plume and
+Ferdy Wickersham; but instinctively, as his shoulder touched the
+stranger's, he said:</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon."</p>
+<p>At the words the other turned and glanced at him casually; then
+stopped, turned and caught up with him, so as to take a good look
+at his face. The next second a hand was on Keith's shoulder.</p>
+<p>"Why, Gordon Keith!"</p>
+<p>Keith glanced up in a maze at the vigorous-looking, well-dressed
+young man who was holding out his gloved hand to him, his blue eyes
+full of a very pleasant light. Keith's mind had been so far away
+that for a second it did not return. Then a light broke over his
+face. He seized the other's hand.</p>
+<p>"Norman Wentworth!"</p>
+<p>The greeting between the two was so cordial that men hurrying by
+turned to look back at the pleasant faces, and their own set
+countenances softened.</p>
+<p>Norman demanded where Keith had just come from and how long he
+had been in town, piling his questions one on the other with eager
+cordiality.</p>
+<p>Keith looked sheepish, and began to explain in a rather
+shambling fashion that he had been there some time and "intended to
+hunt him up, of course"; but he had "been so taken up with
+business," etc., etc.</p>
+<p>"I heard you were here on business. That was the way I came to
+know you were in town," explained Norman, "and I have looked
+everywhere for you. I hope you have been successful?" He was
+smiling. But Keith was still sore from the treatment he had
+received in one or two offices that morning.</p>
+<p>"I have not been successful," he said, "and I felt sure that I
+should be. I have discovered that people here are very much like
+people elsewhere; they are very like sheep."</p>
+<p>"And very suspicious, timid sheep at that," said Norman "They
+have often gone for wool and got shorn. So every one has to be
+tested. An unknown man has a hard time here. I suppose they would
+not look into your plan?"</p>
+<p>"They classed me with 'pedlers, book-agents, and beggars'--I saw
+the signs up; looked as if they thought I was a thief. I am not
+used to being treated like a swindler."</p>
+<p>"The same old Keith! You must remember how many swindlers they
+have to deal with, my boy. It is natural that they should require a
+guarantee--I mean an introduction of some kind. You remember what
+one of them said not long ago? 'A man spends one part of his life
+making a fortune and the rest of it trying to keep others from
+stealing it from him.' You ought to have come to me. You must come
+and dine with me this evening, and we will talk it over. Perhaps, I
+can help you. I want to show you my little home, and I have the
+finest boy in the world."</p>
+<p>At the tone of cordial sincerity in his voice, Keith softened.
+He laid his hand on the back of Norman's and closed it tightly.</p>
+<p>"I knew I could always count on you, and I meant, of course, to
+come and see you. The reason I have not come before I will explain
+to you sometime. I was feeling a little sore over a matter--sheer
+lies that some one has written." He shook the newspaper in his
+hand.</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't mind that paper," said Norman. "The columns of that
+paper are for hire. They belong at present to an old acquaintance
+of ours. They do <i>me</i> the honor to pay their compliments to my
+affairs now and then."</p>
+<p>Keith walked up the street with a warm feeling about his heart.
+That friendly face and kindly pressure of the hand had cheered him
+like sunshine in a wintry day, and transformed the cold, cheerless
+city into an abode of life and happiness. The crowds that thronged
+by him once more took on interest for him. The faces once more
+softened into human fellowship.</p>
+<p>That evening, when Keith arrived at Norman Wentworth's, he found
+that what he had termed his "little house" was, in fact, a very
+ample and commodious mansion on one of the most fashionable avenues
+in the city. Outside there was nothing to distinguish it
+particularly from the scores of other handsome houses that
+stretched for blocks up and down the street with ever-recurrent
+brown-stone monotony. They were as much alike as so many box-stalls
+in a stable.</p>
+<p>"If I had to live in one of these," thought Keith, as he was
+making his way to keep his appointment, "I should have to begin and
+count my house from the corner. No wonder the people are all so
+much alike!"</p>
+<p>Inside, however, the personal taste of the owner counted for
+much more, and when Keith was admitted by the velvety-stepped
+servant, he found himself in a scene of luxury for which nothing
+that Norman had said had prepared him.</p>
+<p>A hall, rather contracted, but sumptuous in its furnishings,
+opened on a series of drawing-rooms absolutely splendid with gilt
+and satin. One room, all gold and yellow, led into another all blue
+satin, and that into one where the light filtered through
+soft-tinted shades on tapestries and rugs of deep crimson.</p>
+<p>Keith could not help thinking what a fortunate man Norman was,
+and the difference between his friend's situation in this bower of
+roses, and his own in his square, bare little box on the windy
+mountain-side, insensibly flashed over him. This was "an
+establishment"! How unequally Fortune scattered her gifts! Just
+then, with a soft rustle of silk, the porti&egrave;res were parted,
+and Mrs. Wentworth appeared. She paused for a second just under the
+arch, and the young man wondered if she knew how effective she was.
+She was a vision of lace and loveliness. A figure straight and
+sinuous, above the middle height, which would have been quite
+perfect but for being slightly too full, and which struck one
+before one looked at the face; coloring that was rich to
+brilliance; abundant, beautiful hair with a glint of lustre on it;
+deep hazel eyes, the least bit too close together, and features
+that were good and only just missed being fine Keith had remembered
+her as beautiful, but as Mrs. Wentworth stood beneath the azure
+porti&egrave;res, her long, bare arms outstretched, her lips parted
+in a half-smile of welcome, she was much more striking-looking than
+Keith's memory had recorded. As he gazed on her, the expression on
+his face testified his admiration.</p>
+<p>She came forward with the same gratified smile on her face and
+greeted him with formal words of welcome as Norman's old friend.
+Her thought was, "What a strong-looking man he is! Like a picture I
+have seen somewhere. Why doesn't Ferdy like him?"</p>
+<p>As she sank into a soft divan, and with a sudden twist her train
+fell about her feet, making an artistic drapery, Keith experienced
+a sense of delight. He did not dream that Mrs. Wentworth knew much
+better than he precisely the pose to show the curve of her white
+full throat and round arm. The demands of notorious beauty were
+already beginning to tell on her, and even while she spoke gracious
+words of her husband's friendship for him, she from time to time
+added a touch here and a soft caress there with her long white,
+hands to make the arrangement the more complete. It was almost too
+perfect to be unconscious.</p>
+<p>Suddenly Keith heard Norman's voice outside, apparently on the
+stair, calling cheerily "Good-by" to some one, and the next second
+he came hastily into the drawing-room. His hair was rumpled and his
+necktie a trifle awry. As he seized and wrung Keith's hand with
+unfeigned heartiness, Keith was suddenly conscious of a change in
+everything. This was warmth, sincerity, and the beautiful room
+suddenly became a home. Mrs. Wentworth appeared somewhat shocked at
+his appearance.</p>
+<p>"Well, Norman, you are a sight! Just look at your necktie!"</p>
+<p>"That ruffian!" he laughed, feeling at his throat and trying to
+adjust the crooked tie.</p>
+<p>"What will Mr. Keith think?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, pshaw! Keith thinks all right. Keith is one of the men I
+don't have to apologize to. But if I do"--he turned to Keith,
+smiling--"I'll show you the apology. Come along." He seized Keith
+by the hand and started toward the door.</p>
+<p>"You are not going to take Mr. Keith up-stairs!" exclaimed his
+wife. "Remember, Mr. Keith may not share your enthusiasm."</p>
+<p>"Wait until he sees the apology. Come along, Keith." He drew
+Keith toward the door.</p>
+<p>"But, Norman, I don't think--" began Mrs. Wentworth. What she
+did not think was lost to the two men; for Norman, not heeding her,
+had, with the eagerness of a boy, dragged his visitor out of the
+door and started up the stairs, telling him volubly of the treat
+that was in store for him in the perfections of a certain small
+young gentleman who had been responsible for his tardiness in
+appearing below.</p>
+<p>When Norman threw back a silken porti&egrave;re up-stairs and
+flung open a door, the scene that greeted Keith was one that made
+him agree that Norman was fully justified. A yellow-haired boy was
+rolling on the floor, kicking up his little pink legs in all the
+abandon of his years, while a blue-eyed little girl was sitting in
+a nurse's lap, making strenuous efforts to join her brother on the
+floor.</p>
+<p>At sight of his father, the boy, with a whoop, scrambled to his
+feet, and, with outstretched arms and open mouth, showing all his
+little white teeth, made a rush for him, while the young lady
+suddenly changed her efforts to descend, and began to jump up and
+down in a frantic ecstasy of delight.</p>
+<p>Norman gathered the boy up, and as soon as he could disentwine
+his little arms from about his neck, turned him toward Keith. The
+child gave the stranger one of those calm, scrutinizing looks that
+children give, and then, his face suddenly breaking into a smile,
+with a rippling laugh of good-comradeship, he sprang into Keith's
+outstretched arms. That gentleman's necktie was in danger of
+undergoing the same damaging process that had incurred Mrs.
+Norman's criticism, when the youngster discovered that lady
+herself, standing at the door. Scrambling down from his perch on
+Keith's shoulder, the boy, with a shout, rushed toward his mother.
+Mrs. Wentworth, with a little shriek, stopped him and held him off
+from her; she could not permit him to disarrange her toilet; her
+coiffure had cost too much thought; but the pair were evidently on
+terms of good-fellowship, and the light in the mother's eyes even
+as she restrained the boy's attempt at caresses changed her, and
+gave Keith a new insight into her character.</p>
+<p>Keith and the hostess returned to the drawing-room before
+Norman, and she was no longer the professional beauty, the cold
+woman of the world, the mere fashionable hostess. The doors were
+flung open more than once as Keith talked warmly of the boy, and
+within Keith got glimpses of what was hidden there, which made him
+rejoice again that his friend had such a treasure. These glimpses
+of unexpected softness drew him nearer to her than he had ever
+expected to be, and on his part he talked to her with a frankness
+and earnestness which sank deep into her mind, and opened the way
+to a warmer friendship than she usually gave.</p>
+<p>"Norman is right," she said to herself. "This is a man."</p>
+<p>At the thought a light flashed upon her. It suddenly came to
+her.</p>
+<p>This is "the ghost"! Yet could it be possible? She solved the
+question quickly.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith, did you ever know Alice Lancaster?"</p>
+<p>"Alice Lancaster--?" For a bare second he looked puzzled. "Oh,
+Miss Alice Yorke? Yes, a long time ago." He was conscious that his
+expression had changed. So he added: "I used to know her very
+well."</p>
+<p>"Decidedly, this is the ghost," reflected Mrs. Wentworth to
+herself, as she scanned anew Keith's strong features and sinewy
+frame. "Alice said if a woman had ever seen him, she would not be
+likely to forget him, and I think she was right."</p>
+<p>"Why do you ask me?" inquired Keith, who had now quite recovered
+from his little confusion. "Of course, you know her?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, very well. We were at school together. She is my best
+friend, almost." She shut her mouth as firmly as though this were
+the last sentence she ever proposed to utter; but her eyes, as they
+rested on Keith's face, had the least twinkle in them. Keith did
+not know how much of their old affair had been told her, but she
+evidently knew something, and it was necessary to show her that he
+had recovered from it long ago and yet retained a friendly feeling
+for Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>"She was an old sweetheart of mine long ago; that is, I used to
+think myself desperately in love with her a hundred years ago or
+so, before she was married--and I was, too," he added.</p>
+<p>He gained not the least idea of the impression this made on Mrs.
+Wentworth.</p>
+<p>"She was talking to me about you only the other day," she said
+casually.</p>
+<p>Keith again made a feint to open her defence.</p>
+<p>"I hope she said kind things about me? I deserve some kindness
+at her hands, for I have only pleasant memories of her."</p>
+<p>"I wonder what he means by that?" questioned Mrs. Wentworth to
+herself, and then added:</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes; she did. Indeed, she was almost enthusiastic about
+your--friendship." Her eyes scanned his face lightly.</p>
+<p>"Has she fulfilled the promise of beauty that she gave as a
+school-girl? I used to think her one of the most beautiful
+creatures in the world; but I don't know that I was capable of
+judging at that time," he added, with a smile, "for I remember I
+was quite desperate about her for a little while." He tried to
+speak naturally.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth's eyes rested on his face for a moment.</p>
+<p>"Why, yes; many think her much handsomer than she ever was. She
+is one of the married beauties, you know." Her eyes just swept
+Keith's face.</p>
+<p>"She was also one of the sweetest girls I ever knew," Keith
+said, moved for some reason to add this tribute.</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't know that every one would call her that. Indeed,
+I am not quite sure that I should call her that myself always; but
+she can be sweet. My children adore her, and I think that is always
+a good sign."</p>
+<p>"Undoubtedly. They judge correctly, because directly."</p>
+<p>The picture of a young girl in a riding-habit kneeling in the
+dust with a chubby, little, ragged child in her arms flashed before
+Keith's mental vision. And he almost gave a gasp.</p>
+<p>"Is she married happily?'" he asked "I hope she is happy."</p>
+<p>"Oh, as happy as the day is long," declared Mrs. Wentworth,
+cheerfully. Deep down in her eyes was a wicked twinkle of malice.
+Her face wore a look of content. "He is not altogether indifferent
+yet," she said to herself. And when Keith said firmly that he was
+very glad to hear it, she did him the honor to disbelieve him.</p>
+<p>"Of course, you know that Mr. Lancaster is a good deal older
+than Alice?"</p>
+<p>Yes, Keith had heard so.</p>
+<p>"But a charming man, and immensely rich."</p>
+<p>"Yes." Keith began to look grim.</p>
+<p>"Aren't you going to see here?" inquired Mrs. Wentworth, finding
+that Keith was not prepared to say any more on the subject.</p>
+<p>Keith said he should like to do so very much. He hoped to see
+her before going away; but he could not tell.</p>
+<p>"She is married now, and must be so taken up with her new duties
+that I fear she would hardly remember me," he added, with a laugh.
+"I don't think I ever made much impression on her."</p>
+<p>"Alice Yorke is not one to forget her friends. Why, she spoke of
+you with real friendship," she said, smiling, thinking to herself,
+Alice likes him, and he is still in love with her. This begins to
+be interesting.</p>
+<p>"A woman does not have to give up all her friends when she
+marries?" she added, with her eyes on Keith.</p>
+<p>Keith smiled.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; only her lovers, unless they turn into friends."</p>
+<p>"Of course, those," said Mrs. Wentworth, who, after a moment's
+reflection, added, "They don't always do that. Do you believe a
+woman ever forgets entirely a man she has really loved?"</p>
+<p>"She does if she is happily married and if she is wise."</p>
+<p>"But all women are not happily married."</p>
+<p>"And, perhaps, all are not wise," said Keith.</p>
+<p>Some association of ideas led him to say suddenly:</p>
+<p>"Tell me something about Ferdy Wickersham. He was one of your
+ushers, wasn't he?" He was surprised to see Mrs. Wentworth's
+countenance change. Her eyelids closed suddenly as if a glare were
+turned unexpectedly on them, and she caught her breath.</p>
+<p>"Yes--I have known him since we were children. Of course, you
+know he was desperately in love with Alice Lancaster?"</p>
+<p>Keith said he had heard something of the kind.</p>
+<p>"He still likes her."</p>
+<p>"She is married," said Keith, decisively.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>A moment later Mrs. Wentworth drew a long breath and moistened
+her lips.</p>
+<p>"You knew him at the same time that you first knew Norman, did
+you not?" She was simply figuring for time.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I met him first then," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"Don't you think Ferdy has changed since he was a boy?" she
+demanded after a moment's reflection.</p>
+<p>"How do you mean?" Keith was feeling very uncomfortable, and, to
+save himself an answer, plunged along:</p>
+<p>"Of course he has changed." He did not say how, nor did he give
+Mrs. Wentworth time to explain herself. "I will tell you one thing,
+though," he said earnestly: "he never was worthy to loose the
+latchet of your husband's shoe."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth's face changed again; she glanced down for a
+second, and then said:</p>
+<p>"You and Norman have a mutual admiration society."</p>
+<p>"We have been friends a long time," said Keith,
+thoughtfully.</p>
+<p>"But even that does not always count for so much. Friendships
+seem so easily broken these days."</p>
+<p>"Because there are so few Norman Wentworths. That man is blessed
+who has such a friend," said the young man, earnestly.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth looked at him with a curious light in her eyes,
+and as she gazed her face grew more thoughtful. Then, as Norman
+reappeared she changed the subject abruptly.</p>
+<p>After dinner, while they were smoking, Norman made Keith tell
+him of his coal-lands and the business that had brought him to New
+York. To Keith's surprise, he seemed to know something of it
+already.</p>
+<p>"You should have come to me at first," he said. "I might, at
+least, have been able to counteract somewhat the adverse influence
+that has been working against you." His brow clouded a little.</p>
+<p>"Wickersham appears to be quite a personage here. I wonder he
+has not been found out," said Keith after a little reverie.</p>
+<p>Norman shifted slightly in his chair. "Oh, he is not worth
+bothering about. Give me your lay-out now."</p>
+<p>Keith put him in possession of the facts, and he became deeply
+interested. He had, indeed, a dual motive: one of friendship for
+Keith; the other he as yet hardly confessed even to himself.</p>
+<p>The next day Keith met Norman by appointment and gave him his
+papers. And a day or two afterwards he met a number of his friends
+at lunch.</p>
+<p>They were capitalists and, if General Keith's old dictum, that
+gentlemen never discussed money at table, was sound, they would
+scarcely have met his requirement; for the talk was almost entirely
+of money. When they rose from the table, Keith, as he afterwards
+told Norman, felt like a squeezed orange. The friendliest man to
+him was Mr. Yorke, whom Keith found to be a jovial, sensible little
+man with kindly blue eyes and a humorous mouth. His chief
+cross-examiner was a Mr. Kestrel, a narrow-faced, parchment-skinned
+man with a thin white moustache that looked as if it had led a
+starved existence on his bloodless lip.</p>
+<p>"Those people down there are opposed to progress," he said,
+buttoning up his pockets in a way he had, as if he were afraid of
+having them picked. "I guess the Wickershams have found that out. I
+don't see any money in it."</p>
+<p>"It is strange that Kestrel doesn't see money in this," said Mr.
+Yorke, with a twinkle in his eye; "for he usually sees money in
+everything. I guess there were other reasons than want of progress
+for the Wickershams not paying dividends."</p>
+<p>A few days later Norman informed Keith that the money was nearly
+all subscribed; but Keith did not know until afterwards how warmly
+he had indorsed him.</p>
+<p>"You said something about sheep the other day; well, a sheep is
+a solitary and unsocial animal to a city-man with money to invest.
+My grandfather's man used to tell me: 'Sheep is kind of gregarious,
+Mr. Norman. Coax the first one through and you can't keep the
+others out.' Even Kestrel is jumping to get in."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<h3>MRS. LANCASTER</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Keith had not yet met Mrs. Lancaster. He meant to call on her
+before leaving town; for he would show her that he was successful,
+and also that he had recovered. Also he wanted to see her, and in
+his heart was a lurking hope that she might regret having lost him.
+A word that Mrs. Wentworth had let fall the first evening he dined
+there had kept him from calling before.</p>
+<p>A few evenings later Keith was dining with the Norman
+Wentworths, and after dinner Norman said:</p>
+<p>"By the way, we are going to a ball to-night. Won't you come
+along? It will really be worth seeing."</p>
+<p>Keith, having no engagement, was about to accept, but he was
+aware that Mrs. Wentworth, at her husband's words, had turned and
+given him a quick look of scrutiny, that swept him from the top of
+his head to the toe of his boot.</p>
+<p>He had had that swift glance of inspection sweep him up and down
+many times of late, in business offices. The look, however,
+appeared to satisfy his hostess; for after a bare pause she
+seconded her husband's invitation.</p>
+<p>That pause had given Keith time to reflect, and he declined to
+go. But Norman, too, had seen the glance his wife had given, and he
+urged his acceptance so warmly and with such real sincerity that
+finally Keith yielded.</p>
+<p>"This is not one of <i>the</i> balls," said Norman, laughingly.
+"It is only <i>a</i> ball, one of our subscription dances, so you
+need have no scruples about going along."</p>
+<p>Keith looked a little mystified.</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Creamer's balls are <i>the</i> balls, my dear fellow.
+There, in general, only the rich and the noble enter--rich in
+prospect and noble in title--"</p>
+<p>"Norman, how can you talk so!" exclaimed Mrs. Wentworth, with
+some impatience. "You know better than that. Mrs. Creamer has
+always been particularly kind to us. Why, she asks me to receive
+with her every winter."</p>
+<p>But Norman was in a bantering mood. "Am not I rich and you
+noble?" he laughed. "Do you suppose, my dear, that Mrs. Creamer
+would ask you to receive with her if we lived two or three squares
+off Fifth Avenue? It is as hard for a poor man to enter Mrs.
+Creamer's house as for a camel to pass through the needle's eye.
+Her motions are sidereal and her orbit is as regulated as that of a
+planet."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth protested.</p>
+<p>"Why, she has all sorts of people at her house--!"</p>
+<p>"Except the unsuccessful. Even planets have a little
+eccentricity of orbit."</p>
+<p>An hour or two later Keith found himself in such a scene of
+radiance as he had never witnessed before in all his life. Though,
+as Norman had said, it was not one of the great balls, to be
+present at it was in some sort a proof of one's social position and
+possibly of one's pecuniary condition.</p>
+<p>Keith was conscious of that same feeling of novelty and
+exhilaration that had come over him when he first arrived in the
+city. It came upon him when he first stepped from the cool outer
+air into the warm atmosphere of the brilliantly lighted building
+and stood among the young men, all perfectly dressed and appointed,
+and almost as similar as the checks they were receiving from the
+busy servants in the cloak-room. The feeling grew stronger as he
+mounted the wide marble stairway to the broad landing, which was a
+bower of palms and flowers, with handsome women passing in and out
+like birds in gorgeous plumage, and gay voices sounding in his
+ears. It swept over him like a flood when he entered the spacious
+ball-room and gazed upon the dazzling scene before him.</p>
+<p>"This is Aladdin's palace," he declared as he stood looking
+across the large ball-room. "The Arabian Nights have surely come
+again."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth, immediately after presenting Keith to one or two
+ladies who were receiving, had been met and borne off by Ferdy
+Wickersham, and was in the throng at the far end of the great
+apartment, and some one had stopped Norman on the stairway. So
+Keith was left for a moment standing alone just inside the door. He
+had a sense of being charmed. Later, he tried to account for it.
+Was it the sight before him? Even such perfect harmony of color
+could hardly have done it. It must be the dazzling radiance of
+youth that almost made his eyes ache with its beauty. Perhaps, it
+was the strain of the band hidden in the gallery among those palms.
+The waltz music that floated down always set him swinging back in
+the land of memory. He stood for a moment quite entranced. Then he
+was suddenly conscious of being lonely. In all the throng before
+him he could not see one soul that he knew. His friends were far
+away.</p>
+<p>Suddenly the wheezy strains of the fiddles and the blare of the
+horns in the big dining-room of the old Windsor back in the
+mountains sounded in his ears, and the motley but gay and joyous
+throng that tramped and capered and swung over the rough boards,
+setting the floor to swinging and the room to swaying, swam in a
+dim mist before his eyes. Girls in ribbons so gay that they almost
+made the eyes ache, faces flushed with the excitement and joy of
+the dance; smiling faces, snowy teeth, dishevelled hair, tarlatan
+dresses, green and pink and white; ringing laughter and whoops of
+real merriment--all passed before his senses.</p>
+<p>As he stood looking on the scene of splendor, he felt lost,
+lonely, and for a moment homesick. Here all was formal, stiff
+repressed; that gayety was real, that merriment was sincere. With
+all their crudeness, those people in that condition were all human,
+hearty, strong, real. He wondered if refinement and elegance meant
+necessarily a suppression of all these. There, men came not only to
+enjoy but to make others enjoy as well. No stranger could have
+stood a moment alone without some one stepping to his side and
+drawing him into a friendly talk. This mood soon changed.</p>
+<p>Still, standing alone near the door waiting for Norman to
+appear, Keith found entertainment watching the groups, the
+splendidly dressed women, clustered here and there or moving about
+inspecting or speaking to each other. One figure at the far end of
+the room attracted his eye again and again. She was standing with
+her back partly toward him, but he knew that she was a pretty woman
+as well as a handsome one, though he saw her face only in profile,
+and she was too far off for him to see it very well. Her hair was
+arranged simply; her head was set beautifully on her shoulders. She
+was dressed in black, the bodice covered with spangles that with
+her slightest movement shimmered and reflected the light like a
+coat of flexible mail. A number of men were standing about her, and
+many women, as they passed, held out their hands to her in the way
+that ladies of fashion have. Keith saw Mrs. Wentworth approach her,
+and a very animated conversation appeared to take place between
+them, and the lady in black turned quickly and gazed about the
+room; then Mrs. Wentworth started to move away, but the other
+caught and held her, asking her something eagerly. Mrs. Wentworth
+must have refused to answer, for she followed her a few steps; but
+Mrs. Wentworth simply waved her hand to her and swept away with her
+escort, laughing back at her over her shoulder.</p>
+<p>Keith made his way around the room toward Mrs. Wentworth. There
+was something about the young lady in black which reminded him of a
+girl he had once seen standing straight and defiant, yet very
+charming, in a woodland path under arching pine-boughs. Just then,
+however, a waltz struck up and Mrs. Wentworth began to dance, so
+Keith stood leaning against the wall. Presently a member of a group
+of young men near Keith said:</p>
+<p>"The Lancaster looks well to-night."</p>
+<p>"She does. The old man's at home, Ferdy's on deck."</p>
+<p>"Ferdy be dashed! Besides, where is Mrs. Went--?"</p>
+<p>"Don't lay any money on that."</p>
+<p>"She's all right. Try to say anything to her and you'll find
+out."</p>
+<p>The others laughed; and one of them asked:</p>
+<p>"Been trying yourself, Stirling?"</p>
+<p>"No. I know better, Minturn."</p>
+<p>"Why doesn't she shake Ferdy then?" demanded the other. "He's
+always hanging around when he isn't around the other."</p>
+<p>"Oh, they have been friends all their lives. She is not going to
+give up a friend, especially when others are getting down on him.
+Can't you allow anything to friendship?"</p>
+<p>"Ferdy's friendship is pretty expensive," said his friend,
+sententiously.</p>
+<p>Keith took a glance at the speakers to see if he could by
+following their gaze place Mrs. Lancaster. The one who defended the
+lady was a jolly-looking man with a merry eye and a humorous mouth.
+The other two were as much alike as their neckties, their collars,
+their shirt-fronts, their dress-suits, or their shoes, in which
+none but a tailor could have discovered the least point of
+difference. Their cheeks were smooth, their chins were round, their
+hair as perfectly parted and brushed as a barber's. Keith had an
+impression that he had seen them just before on the other side of
+the room, talking to the lady in black; but as he looked across, he
+saw the other young men still there, and there were yet others
+elsewhere. At the first glance they nearly all looked alike. Just
+then he became conscious that a couple had stopped close beside
+him. He glanced at them; the lady was the same to whom he had seen
+Mrs. Wentworth speaking at the other end of the room. Her face was
+turned away, and all he saw was an almost perfect figure with
+shoulders that looked dazzling in contrast with her shimmering
+black gown. A single red rose was stuck in her hair. He was waiting
+to get a look at her face, when she turned toward him.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="p254.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/p254.jpg"><img src="images/p254.jpg"
+width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"Why, Mr. Keith!" she exclaimed.</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"Why, Mr. Keith!" she exclaimed, her blue eyes open wide with
+surprise. She held out her hand. "I don't believe you know me?"</p>
+<p>"Then you must shut your eyes," said Keith, smiling his
+pleasure.</p>
+<p>"I don't believe I should have known you? Yes, I should; I
+should have known you anywhere."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps, I have not changed so much," smiled Keith.</p>
+<p>She gave him just the ghost of a glance out of her blue
+eyes.</p>
+<p>"I don't know. Have you been carrying any sacks of salt lately?"
+She assumed a lighter air.</p>
+<p>"No; but heavier burdens still."</p>
+<p>"Are you married?"</p>
+<p>Keith laughed.</p>
+<p>"No; not so heavy as that--yet."</p>
+<p>"So heavy as that <i>yet</i>! Oh, you are engaged?"</p>
+<p>"No; not engaged either--except engaged in trying to make a lot
+of people who think they know everything understand that there are
+a few things that they don't know."</p>
+<p>"That is a difficult task," she said, shaking her head, "if you
+try it in New York."</p>
+<blockquote>"'John P. Robinson, he<br>
+Says they don't know everything down in Judee,'"</blockquote>
+<p>put in the stout young man who had been standing by waiting to
+speak to her.</p>
+<p>"But this isn't Judee yet," she laughed, "for I assure you we do
+know everything here, Mr. Keith." She held out her hand to the
+gentleman who had spoken, and after greeting him introduced him to
+Keith as "Mr. Stirling."</p>
+<p>"You ought to like each other," she said cordially.</p>
+<p>Keith professed his readiness to do so.</p>
+<p>"I don't know about that," said Stirling, jovially. "You are too
+friendly to him."</p>
+<p>"What are you doing? Where are you staying? How long are you
+going to be in town?" demanded Mrs. Lancaster, turning to
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"Mining.--At the Brunswick.--Only a day or two," said Keith,
+laughing.</p>
+<p>"Mining? Gold-mining?"</p>
+<p>"No; not yet."</p>
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+<p>"Down South at a place called New Leeds. It's near the place
+where I used to teach. It's a great city. Why, we think New York is
+jealous of us."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I know about that. A friend of mine put a little money down
+there for me. You know him? Ferdy Wickersham?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I know him."</p>
+<p>"Most of us know him," observed Mr. Stirling, turning his eyes
+on Keith.</p>
+<p>"Of course, you must know him. Are you in with him? He tells me
+that they own pretty much everything that is good in that region.
+They are about to open a new mine that is to exceed anything ever
+known. Ferdy tells me I am good for I don't know how much. The
+stock is to be put on the exchange in a little while, and I got in
+on the ground-floor. That's what they call it--the lowest floor of
+all, you know.</p>
+<p>"Yes; some people call it the ground-floor," said Keith, wishing
+to change the subject.</p>
+<p>"You know there may be a cellar under a ground-floor," observed
+Mr. Stirling, demurely.</p>
+<p>Keith looked at him, and their eyes met.</p>
+<p>Fortunately, perhaps, for Keith, some one came up just then and
+claimed a dance with Mrs. Lancaster. She moved away, and then
+turned back.</p>
+<p>"I shall see you again?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. Why, I hope so-certainly."</p>
+<p>She stopped and looked at him.</p>
+<p>"When are you going away?"</p>
+<p>"Why, I don't exactly know. Very soon. Perhaps, in a day or
+two."</p>
+<p>"Well, won't you come to see us? Here, I will give you my
+address. Have you a card?" She took the pencil he offered her and
+wrote her number on it. "Come some afternoon--about six; Mr.
+Lancaster is always in then," she said sedately. "I am sure you
+will like each other." Keith bowed.</p>
+<p>She floated off smiling. What she had said to Mrs. Wentworth
+occurred to her.</p>
+<p>"Yes; he looks like a man." She became conscious that her
+companion was asking a question.</p>
+<p>"What is the matter with you?" he said. "I have asked you three
+times who that man was, and you have not said a word."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I beg your pardon. Mr. Keith, an old friend of mine," she
+said, and changed the subject.</p>
+<p>As to her old friend, he was watching her as she danced, winding
+in and out among the intervening couples. He wondered that he could
+ever have thought that a creature like that could care for him and
+share his hard life. He might as soon have expected a
+bird-of-paradise to live by choice in a coal-bunker.</p>
+<p>He strolled about, looking at the handsome women, and presently
+found himself in the conservatory. Turning a clump, of palms, he
+came on Mrs. Wentworth and Mr. Wickersham sitting together talking
+earnestly. Keith was about to go up and speak to Mrs. Wentworth,
+but her escort said something under his breath to her, and she
+looked away. So Keith passed on.</p>
+<p>A little later, Keith went over to where Mrs. Lancaster stood.
+Several men were about her, and just after Keith Joined her,
+another man walked up, if any movement so lazy and sauntering could
+be termed walking.</p>
+<p>"I have been wondering why I did not see you," he drawled as he
+came up.</p>
+<p>Keith recognized the voice of Ferdy Wickersham. He turned and
+faced him; but if Mr. Wickersham was aware of his presence, he gave
+no sign of it. His dark eyes were on Mrs. Lancaster. She turned to
+him.</p>
+<p>"Perhaps, Ferdinand, it was because you did not use your eyes.
+That is not ordinarily a fault of yours."</p>
+<p>"I never think of my eyes when yours are present," said he,
+lazily.</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't you?" laughed Mrs. Lancaster. "What were you doing a
+little while ago in the conservatory--with--?"</p>
+<p>"Nothing. I have not been in the conservatory this evening. You
+have paid some one else a compliment."</p>
+<p>"Tell that to some one who does not use her eyes," said Mrs.
+Lancaster, mockingly.</p>
+<p>"There are occasions when you must disbelieve the sight of your
+eyes." He was looking her steadily in the face, and Keith saw her
+expression change. She recovered herself.</p>
+<p>"Last time I saw you, you vowed you had eyes for none but me,
+you may remember?" she said lightly.</p>
+<p>"No. Did I? Life is too awfully short to remember. But it is
+true. It is the present in which I find my pleasure."</p>
+<p>Up to this time neither Mrs. Lancaster nor Mr. Wickersham had
+taken any notice of Keith, who stood a little to one side, waiting,
+with his eyes resting on the other young man's face. Mrs. Lancaster
+now turned.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Keith." She now turned back to Mr. Wickersham. "You
+know Mr. Keith?"</p>
+<p>Keith was about to step forward to greet his old acquaintance;
+but Wickersham barely nodded.</p>
+<p>"Ah, how do you do? Yes, I know Mr. Keith.--If I can take care
+of the present, I let the past and the future take care of
+themselves," he continued to Mrs. Lancaster. "Come and have a turn.
+That will make the present worth all of the past."</p>
+<p>"Ferdy, you are discreet," said one of the other men, with a
+laugh.</p>
+<p>"My dear fellow," said the young man, turning, "I assure you,
+you don't know half my virtues."</p>
+<p>"What are your virtues, Ferdy?"</p>
+<p>"One is not interfering with others." He turned back to Mrs.
+Lancaster. "Come, have a turn." He took one of his hands from his
+pocket and held it out.</p>
+<p>"I am engaged," said Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>"Oh, that makes no difference. You are always engaged; come," he
+said.</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon. It makes a difference in <i>this</i> case,"
+said Keith, coming forward. "I believe this is my turn, Mrs.
+Lancaster?"</p>
+<p>Wickersham's glance swept across, but did not rest on him,
+though it was enough for Keith to meet it for a second, and,
+without looking, the young man turned lazily away.</p>
+<p>"Shall we find a seat?" Mrs. Lancaster asked as she took Keith's
+arm.</p>
+<p>"Delighted, unless you prefer to dance."</p>
+<p>"I did not know that dancing was one of your accomplishments,"
+she said as they strolled along.</p>
+<p>"Maybe, I have acquired several accomplishments that you do not
+know of. It has been a long time since you knew me," he answered
+lightly. As they turned, his eyes fell on Wickersham. He was
+standing where they had left him, his eyes fastened on them
+malevolently. As Keith looked he started and turned away. Mrs.
+Lancaster had also seen him.</p>
+<p>"What is there between you and Ferdy?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+<p>"There must be. Did you ever have a row with him?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; but that was long ago."</p>
+<p>"I don't know. He has a good memory. He doesn't like you." She
+spoke reflectively.</p>
+<p>"Doesn't he?" laughed Keith. "Well, I must try and sustain it as
+best I can."</p>
+<p>"And you don't like him? Few men like him. I wonder why that
+is?"</p>
+<p>"And many women?" questioned Keith, as for a moment he recalled
+Mrs. Wentworth's face when he spoke of him.</p>
+<p>"Some women," she corrected, with a quick glance at him. She
+reflected, and then went on: "I think it is partly because he is so
+bold and partly that he never appears to know any one else. It is
+the most insidious flattery in the world. I like him because I have
+known him all my life. I know him perfectly."</p>
+<p>"Yes?" Keith spoke politely.</p>
+<p>She read his thought. "You wonder if I really know him? Yes, I
+do. But, somehow, I cling to those I knew in my girlhood. You don't
+believe that, but I do." She glanced at him and then looked
+away.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I do believe it. Then let's be friends--old friends," said
+Keith. He held out his hand, and when she took it grasped hers
+firmly.</p>
+<p>"Who is here with you to-night?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"No one. Mr. Lancaster does not care for balls."</p>
+<p>"Won't you give me the pleasure of seeing you home?" She
+hesitated for a moment, and then said:</p>
+<p>"I will drop you at your hotel. It is right on my way home."</p>
+<p>Just then some one came up and joined the group.</p>
+<p>"Ah, my dear Mrs. Lancaster! How well you are looking this
+evening!"</p>
+<p>The full voice, no less than the words, sounded familiar to
+Keith, and turning, he recognized the young clergyman whom he had
+met at Mrs. Wentworth's when he passed through New York some years
+before. The years had plainly used Mr. Rimmon well. He was dressed
+in an evening suit with a clerical waistcoat which showed that his
+plump frame had taken on an extra layer, and a double chin was
+beginning to rest on his collar.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster smiled as she returned his greeting.</p>
+<p>"You are my stand-by, Mr. Rimmon. I always know that, no matter
+what others may say of me, I shall be sure of at least one
+compliment before the evening is over if you are present."</p>
+<p>"That is because you always deserve it." He put his head on one
+side like an aldermanic robin. "Ah, if you knew how many
+compliments I do pay you which you never hear! My entire life is a
+compliment to you," declared Mr. Rimmon.</p>
+<p>"Not your entire life, Mr. Rimmon. You are like some other men.
+You confound me with some one else; for I am sure I heard you
+saying the same thing five minutes ago to Louise Wentworth."</p>
+<p>"Impossible. Then I must have confounded her with you," sighed
+Mr. Rimmon, with such a look at Mrs. Lancaster out of his
+languishing eyes that she gave him a laughing tap with her fan.</p>
+<p>"Go and practise that on a d&eacute;butante. I am an old married
+woman, remember."</p>
+<p>"Ah, me!" sighed the gentleman. "'Marriage and Death and
+Division make barren our lives.'"</p>
+<p>"Where does that come from?" asked Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>"Ah! from--ah--" began Mr. Rimmon, then catching Keith's eyes
+resting on him with an amused look in them, he turned red.</p>
+<p>She addressed Keith. "Mr. Keith, you quoted that to me once;
+where does it come from? From the Bible?"</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"I read it in the newspaper and was so struck by it that I
+remembered it," said Mr. Rimmon.</p>
+<p>"I read it in 'Laus Veneris,'" said Keith, dryly, with his eyes
+on the other's face. It pleased him to see it redden.</p>
+<p>Keith, as he passed through the rooms, caught sight of an old
+lady over in a corner. He could scarcely believe his senses; it was
+Miss Abigail. She was sitting back against the wall, watching the
+crowd with eyes as sharp as needles. Sometimes her thin lips
+twitched, and her bright eyes snapped with inward amusement. Keith
+made his way over to her. She was so much engaged that he stood
+beside her a moment without her seeing him. Then she turned and
+glanced at him.</p>
+<p>"'A chiel's amang ye takin' notes,'" he said, laughing and
+holding out his hand.</p>
+<p>"'An', faith! she'll prent 'em,'" she answered, with a nod. "How
+are you? I am glad to see you. I was just wishing I had somebody to
+enjoy this with me, but not a man. I ought to be gone; and so ought
+you, young man. I started, but I thought if I could get in a corner
+by myself where there were no men I might stay a little while and
+look at it; for I certainly never saw anything like this before,
+and I don't think I ever shall again. I certainly do not think you
+ought to see it."</p>
+<p>Keith laughed, and she continued:</p>
+<p>"I knew things had changed since I was a girl; but I didn't know
+it was as bad as this. Why, I don't think it ought to be
+allowed."</p>
+<p>"What?" asked Keith.</p>
+<p>"This." She waved her hand to include the dancing throng before
+them. "They tell me all those women dancing around there are
+married."</p>
+<p>"I believe many of them are."</p>
+<p>"Why don't those young women have partners?"</p>
+<p>"Why, some of them do. I suppose the others are not attractive
+enough, or something."</p>
+<p>"Especially <i>something</i>," said the old lady. "Where are
+their husbands?"</p>
+<p>"Why, some of them are at home, and some are here."</p>
+<p>"Where?" The old lady turned her eyes on a couple that sailed by
+her, the man talking very earnestly to his companion, who was
+listening breathlessly. "Is that her husband?"</p>
+<p>"Well, no; that is not, I believe."</p>
+<p>"No; I'll be bound it is not. You never saw a married man
+talking to his wife in public in that way--unless they were talking
+about the last month's bills. Why, it is perfectly brazen."</p>
+<p>Keith laughed.</p>
+<p>"Where is her husband?" she demanded, as Mrs. Wentworth floated
+by, a vision of brocaded satin and lace and white shoulders,
+supported by Ferdy Wickersham, who was talking earnestly and
+looking down into her eyes languishingly.</p>
+<p>"Oh, her husband is here."</p>
+<p>"Well, he had better take her home to her little children. If
+ever I saw a face that I distrusted it is that man's."</p>
+<p>"Why, that is Ferdy Wickersham. He is one of the leaders of
+society. He is considered quite an Adonis," observed Keith.</p>
+<p>"And I don't think Adonis was a very proper person for a young
+woman with children to be dancing with in attire in which only her
+husband should see her." She shut her lips grimly. "I know him,"
+she added. "I know all about them for three generations. One of the
+misfortunes of age is that when a person gets as old as I am she
+knows so much evil about people. I knew that young man's
+grandfather when he was a worthy mechanic. His wife was an uppish
+hussy who thought herself better than her husband, and their
+daughter was a pretty girl with black eyes and rosy cheeks. They
+sent her off to school, and after the first year or two she never
+came back. She had got above them. Her father told me as much. The
+old man cried about it. He said his wife thought it was all right;
+that his girl had married a smart young fellow who was a clerk in a
+bank; but that if he had a hundred other children he'd never teach
+them any more than to read, write, and figure. And to think that
+her son should be the Adonis dancing with my cousin Everett
+Wentworth's daughter-in-law! Why, my Aunt Wentworth would rise from
+her grave if she knew it!"</p>
+<p>"Well, times have changed," said Keith, laughing. "You see they
+are as good as anybody now."</p>
+<p>"Not as good as anybody--you mean as rich as anybody."</p>
+<p>"That amounts to about the same thing here, doesn't it?"</p>
+<p>"I believe it does, here," said the old lady, with a sniff.
+"Well," she said after a pause, "I think I will go back and tell
+Matilda what I have seen. And if you are wise you will come with
+me, too. This is no place for plain, country-bred people like you
+and me."</p>
+<p>Keith, laughing, said he had an engagement, but he would like to
+have the privilege of taking her home, and then he could
+return.</p>
+<p>"With a married woman, I suppose? Yes, I will be bound it is,"
+she added as Keith nodded. "You see the danger of evil association.
+I shall write to your father and tell him that the sooner he gets
+you out of New York the better it will be for your morals and your
+manners. For you are the only man, except Norman, who has been so
+provincial as to take notice of an unknown old woman."</p>
+<p>So she went chatting merrily down the stairway to her carriage,
+making her observations on whatever she saw with the freshness of a
+girl.</p>
+<p>"Do you think Norman is happy?" she suddenly asked Keith.</p>
+<p>"Why--yes; don't you think so? He has everything on earth to
+make him happy," said Keith, with some surprise. But even at the
+moment it flitted across his mind that there was something which he
+had felt rather than observed in Mrs. Wentworth's attitude toward
+her husband.</p>
+<p>"Except that he has married a fool," said the old lady, briefly.
+"Don't you marry a fool, you hear?"</p>
+<p>"I believe she is devoted to Norman and to her children," Keith
+began, but Miss Abigail interrupted him.</p>
+<p>"And why shouldn't she be? Isn't she his wife? She gives him,
+perhaps, what is left over after her devotion to herself, her
+house, her frocks, her jewels, and--Adonis."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I don't believe she cares for him," declared Keith. "It is
+impossible."</p>
+<p>"I don't believe she does either, but she cares for herself, and
+he flatters her. The idea of a Norman-Wentworth's wife being
+flattered by the attention of a tinker's grandson!"</p>
+<p>When the ball broke up and Mrs. Lancaster's carriage was called,
+several men escorted her to it. Wickersham, who was trying to
+recover ground which something told him he had lost, followed her
+down the stairway with one or two other men, and after she had
+entered the carriage stood leaning in at the door while he made his
+adieus and peace at the same moment.</p>
+<p>"You were not always so cruel to me," he said in a low tone.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster laughed genuinely.</p>
+<p>"I was never cruel to you, Ferdy; you mistake leniency for
+harshness."</p>
+<p>"No one else would say that to me."</p>
+<p>"So much the more pity. You would be a better man if you had the
+truth told you oftener."</p>
+<p>"When did you become such an advocate of Truth? Is it this
+man?"</p>
+<p>"What man?"</p>
+<p>"Keith. If it is, I want to tell you that he is not what he
+pretends."</p>
+<p>A change came over Mrs. Lancaster's face.</p>
+<p>"He is a gentleman," she said coldly.</p>
+<p>"Oh, is he? He was a stage-driver."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster drew herself up.</p>
+<p>"If he was--" she began. But she stopped suddenly, glanced
+beyond Wickersham, and moved over to the further side of the
+carriage.</p>
+<p>Just then a hand was laid on Wickersham's arm, and a voice
+behind him said:</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon."</p>
+<p>Wickersham knew the voice, and without looking around stood
+aside for the speaker to make his adieus. Keith stepped into the
+carriage and pulled to the door before the footman could close
+it.</p>
+<p>At the sound the impatient horses started off, leaving three men
+standing in the street looking very blank. Stirling was the first
+to speak; he turned to the others in amazement.</p>
+<p>"Who is Keith?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>"Oh, a fellow from the South somewhere."</p>
+<p>"Well, Keith knows his business!" said Mr. Stirling, with a nod
+of genuine admiration.</p>
+<p>Wickersham uttered an imprecation and turned back into the
+house.</p>
+<p>Next day Mr. Stirling caught Wickersham in a group of young men
+at the club, and told them the story.</p>
+<p>"Look out for Keith," he said. "He gave me a lesson."</p>
+<p>Wickersham growled an inaudible reply.</p>
+<p>"Who was the lady? Wickersham tries to capture so many prizes,
+what you say gives us no light," said Mr. Minturn, one of the
+men.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no. I'll only tell you it's not the one you think," said
+the jolly bachelor. "But I am going to take lessons of that man
+Keith. These countrymen surprise me sometimes."</p>
+<p>"He was a d----d stage-driver," said Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"Then you had better take lessons from him, Ferdy," said
+Stirling. "He drives well. He's a veteran."</p>
+<p>When Keith reached his room he lit a cigar and flung himself
+into a chair. Somehow, the evening had not left a pleasant
+impression on his mind. Was this the Alice Yorke he had worshipped,
+revered? Was this the woman whom he had canonized throughout these
+years? Why was she carrying on an affair with Ferdy Wickersham?
+What did he mean by those last words at the carriage? She said she
+knew him. Then she must know what his reputation was. Now and then
+it came to Keith that it was nothing to him. Mrs. Lancaster was
+married, and her affairs could not concern him. But they did
+concern him. They had agreed to be old friends--old friends. He
+would be a true friend to her.</p>
+<p>He rose and threw away his half-smoked cigar.</p>
+<p>Keith called on Mrs. Lancaster just before he left for the
+South. Though he had no such motive when he put off his visit, he
+could not have done a wiser thing. It was a novel experience for
+her to invite a man to call on her and not have him jump at the
+proposal, appear promptly next day, frock-coat, kid gloves, smooth
+flattery, and all; and when Keith had not appeared on the third day
+after the ball, it set her to thinking. She imagined at first that
+he must have been called out of town, but Mrs. Norman, whom she
+met, dispelled this idea. Keith had dined with them informally the
+evening before.</p>
+<p>"He appeared to be in high spirits," added the lady. "His scheme
+has succeeded, and he is about to go South. Norman took it up and
+put it through for him."</p>
+<p>"I know it," said Mrs. Lancaster, demurely.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth's form stiffened slightly; but her manner soon
+became gracious again. "Ferdy says there is nothing in it."</p>
+<p>Could he be offended, or afraid--of himself? reflected Mrs.
+Lancaster. Mrs. Wentworth's next observation disposed of this
+theory also. "You ought to hear him talk of you. By the way, I have
+found out who that ghost was."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster threw a mask over her face.</p>
+<p>"He says you have more than fulfilled the promise of your
+girlhood: that you are the handsomest woman he has seen in New
+York, my dear," pursued the other, looking down at her own shapely
+figure. "Of course, I do not agree with him, quite," she laughed.
+"But, then, people will differ."</p>
+<p>"Louise Wentworth, vanity is a deadly sin," said the other,
+smiling, "and we are told in the Commandments--I forget which
+one--to envy nothing of our neighbor's."</p>
+<p>"He said he wanted to go to see you; that you had kindly invited
+him, and he wished very much to meet Mr. Lancaster," said Mrs.
+Wentworth, blandly.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I am sure they will like each other," said Mrs. Lancaster,
+with dignity. "Mamma also is very anxious to see him. She used to
+know him when--when he was a boy, and liked him very much, too,
+though she would not acknowledge it to me then." She laughed softly
+at some recollection.</p>
+<p>"He spoke of your mother most pleasantly," declared Mrs.
+Wentworth, not without Mrs. Lancaster noticing that she was
+claiming to stand as Keith's friend.</p>
+<p>"Well, I shall not be at home to-morrow," she began. "I have
+promised to go out to-morrow afternoon."</p>
+<p>"Oh, sha'n't you? Why, what a pity! because he said he was going
+to pay his calls to-morrow, as he expected to leave to-morrow
+night. I think he would be very sorry not to see you."</p>
+<p>"Oh, well, then, I will stay in. My other engagement is of no
+consequence."</p>
+<p>Her friend looked benign.</p>
+<p>Recollecting Mrs. Wentworth's expression, Mrs. Lancaster
+determined that she would not be at home the following afternoon.
+She would show Mrs. Wentworth that she could not gauge her so
+easily as she fancied. But at the last moment, after putting on her
+hat, she changed her mind. She remained in, and ended by inviting
+Keith to dinner that evening, an invitation which was so graciously
+seconded by Mr. Lancaster that Keith, finding that he could take a
+later train, accepted. Mrs. Yorke was at the dinner, too, and how
+gracious she was to Keith! She "could scarcely believe he was the
+same man she had known a few years before." She "had heard a great
+deal of him, and had come around to dinner on purpose to meet him."
+This was true.</p>
+<p>"And you have done so well, too, I hear. Your friends are very
+pleased to know of your success," she said graciously.</p>
+<p>Keith smilingly admitted that he had had, perhaps, better
+fortune than he deserved; but this Mrs. Yorke amiably would by no
+means allow.</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Wentworth--not Louise--I mean the elder Mrs.
+Wentworth--was speaking of you. You and Norman were great friends
+when you were boys, she tells me. They were great friends of ours,
+you know, long before we met you."</p>
+<p>He wondered how much the Wentworths' indorsement counted for in
+securing Mrs. Yorke's invitation. For a good deal, he knew; but as
+much credit as he gave it he was within the mark.</p>
+<p>It was only her environment. She could no more escape from that
+than if she were in prison. She gauged every one by what others
+thought, and she possessed no other gauge. Yet there was a certain
+friendliness, too, in Mrs. Yorke. The good lady had softened with
+the years, and at heart she had always liked Keith.</p>
+<p>Most of her conversation was of her friends and their position.
+Alice was thinking of going abroad soon to visit some friends on
+the other side, "of a very distinguished family," she told
+Keith.</p>
+<p>When Keith left the Lancaster house that night Alice Lancaster
+knew that he had wholly recovered.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<h3>WICKERSHAM AND PHRONY</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Keith returned home and soon found himself a much bigger man in
+New Leeds than when he went away. The mine opened on the Rawson
+property began to give from the first large promises of
+success.</p>
+<p>Keith picked up a newspaper one day a little later. It announced
+in large head-lines, as befitted the chronicling of such an event,
+the death of Mr. William Lancaster, capitalist. He had died
+suddenly in his office. His wife, it was stated, was in Europe and
+had been cabled the sad intelligence. There was a sketch of his
+life and also of that of his wife. Their marriage, it was recalled,
+had been one of the "romances" of the season a few years before. He
+had taken society by surprise by carrying off one of the belles of
+the season, the beautiful Miss Yorke. The rest of the notice was
+taken up in conjectures as to the amount of his property and the
+sums he would be likely to leave to the various charitable
+institutions of which he had always been a liberal patron.</p>
+<p>Keith laid the paper down on his knee and went off in a revery.
+Mr. Lancaster was dead! Of all the men he had met in New York he
+had in some ways struck him the most. He had appeared to him the
+most perfect type of a gentleman; self-contained, and inclined to
+be cold, but a man of elegance as well as of brains. He felt that
+he ought to be sorry Mr. Lancaster was dead, and he tried to be
+sorry for his wife. He started to write her a letter of condolence,
+but stopped at the first line, and could get no further. Yet
+several times a day, for many days, she recurred to him, each time
+giving him a feeling of dissatisfaction, until at length he was
+able to banish her from his mind.</p>
+<p>Prosperity is like the tide. It comes, each wave higher and
+higher, until it almost appears that it will never end, and then
+suddenly it seems to ebb a little, comes up again, recedes again,
+and, before one knows it, is passing away as surely as it came.</p>
+<p>Just when Keith thought that his tide was in full flood, it
+began to ebb without any apparent cause, and before he was aware of
+it, the prosperity which for the last few years had been setting in
+so steadily in those mountain regions had passed away, and New
+Leeds and he were left stranded upon the rocks.</p>
+<p>Rumor came down to New Leeds from the North. The Wickersham
+enterprises were said to be hard hit by some of the failures which
+had occurred.</p>
+<p>A few weeks later Keith heard that Mr. Aaron Wickersham was
+dead. The clerks said that he had had a quarrel with his son the
+day after the panic and had fallen in an apoplectic fit soon
+afterwards. But then the old clerks had been discharged immediately
+after his death. Young Wickersham said he did not want any
+dead-wood in his offices. Also he did not want any dead property.
+Among his first steps was the sale of the old Keith plantation.
+Gordon, learning that it was for sale, got a friend to lend him the
+money and bought it in, though it would scarcely have been known
+for the same place. The mansion had been stripped of its old
+furniture and pictures soon after General Keith had left there, and
+the plantation had gone down.</p>
+<p>Rumor also said that Wickersham's affairs were in a bad way.
+Certainly the new head of the house gave no sign of it. He opened a
+yet larger office and began operations on a more extensive scale.
+The <i>Clarion</i> said that his Southern enterprises would be
+pushed actively, and that the stock of the Great Gun Mine would
+soon be on the New York Exchange.</p>
+<p>Ferdy Wickersham suddenly returned to New Leeds, and New Leeds
+showed his presence. Machinery was shipped sufficient to run a
+dozen mines. He not only pushed the old mines, but opened a new
+one. It was on a slip of land that lay between the Rawson property
+and the stream that ran down from the mountain. Some could not
+understand why he should run the shaft there, unless it was that he
+was bent on cutting the Rawson property off from the stream. It was
+a perilous location for a shaft, and Matheson, the superintendent,
+had protested against it.</p>
+<p>Matheson's objections proved to be well founded. The mine was
+opened so near the stream that water broke through into it, as
+Matheson had predicted, and though a strong wall was built, the
+water still got in, and it was difficult to keep it pumped out
+sufficiently to work. Some of the men struck. It was known that
+Wickersham had nearly come to a rupture with the hard-headed
+Scotchman over it; but Wickersham won. Still, the coal did not
+come. It was asserted that the shafts had failed to reach coal.
+Wickersham laughed and kept on--kept on till coal did come. It was
+heralded abroad. The <i>Clarion</i> devoted columns to the success
+of the "Great Gun Mine" and Wickersham.</p>
+<p>Wickersham naturally showed his triumph. He celebrated it in a
+great banquet at the New Windsor, at which speeches were made which
+likened him to Napoleon and several other generals. Mr. Plume
+declared him "greater than Themistocles, for he could play the lute
+and make a small city a great one."</p>
+<p>Wickersham himself made a speech, in which he professed his joy
+that he had silenced the tongue of slander and wrested from
+detraction a victory not for himself, but for New Leeds. His
+enemies and the enemies of New Leeds were, he declared, the same.
+They would soon see his enemies suing for aid. He was applauded to
+the echo. All this and much more was in the <i>Clarion</i> next
+day, with some very pointed satire about "rival mines."</p>
+<p>Keith, meantime, was busy poring over plats and verifying
+lines.</p>
+<p>The old squire came to town a morning or two later. "I see Mr.
+Wickersham's struck coal at last," he said to Keith, after he had
+got his pipe lit. His face showed that he was brimming with
+information.</p>
+<p>"Yes--<i>our</i> coal." Keith showed him the plats. "He is over
+our line--I do not know just where, but in here somewhere."</p>
+<p>The old fellow put on his spectacles and looked long and
+carefully.</p>
+<p>"He says he owns it all; that he'll have us suin' for
+pardon?"</p>
+<p>"Suing for damages."</p>
+<p>The old squire gave a chuckle of satisfaction. "He is in and
+about <i>there</i>." He pointed with a stout and horny finger.</p>
+<p>"How did you know?"</p>
+<p>"Well, you see, little Dave Dennison--you remember Dave? You
+taught him."</p>
+<p>"Perfectly--I mean, I remember him perfectly. He is now in New
+York."</p>
+<p>"Yes. Well, Dave he used to be sweet on Phrony, and he seems to
+be still sweet on her."</p>
+<p>Mr. Keith nodded.</p>
+<p>"Well, of course, Phrony she's lookin' higher than Dave--but you
+know how women air?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know--I know they are strange creatures," said Keith,
+almost with a sigh, as his past with one woman came vividly before
+him.</p>
+<p>"Well, they won't let a man go, noway, not entirely--unless he's
+in the way. So, though Phrony don't keer nothin' in the world about
+Dave, she sort o' kep' him on-an'-off-like till this here young
+Wickersham come down here. You know, I think she and him like each
+other? He's been to see her twicet and is always a--writin' to
+her?" His voice had an inquiry in it; but Keith took no notice of
+it, and the old man went on.</p>
+<p>"Well, since then she's sort of cooled off to Dave--won't have
+him around--and Dave's got sort of sour. Well, he hates Wickersham,
+and he up and told her t'other night 't Wickersham was the biggest
+rascal in New York; that he had 'most broke his father and had put
+the stock of this here new mine on the market, an' that he didn't
+have coal enough in it to fill his hat; that he'd been down in it
+an' that the coal all come out of our mine."</p>
+<p>Keith's eyes glistened.</p>
+<p>"Exactly."</p>
+<p>"Well, with that she got so mad with Dave, she wouldn't speak to
+him; and Dave left, swearin' he'd settle Wickersham and show him
+up, and he'll do it if he can."</p>
+<p>"Where is he?" asked Keith, in some anxiety. "Tell him not to do
+anything till I see him."</p>
+<p>"No; I got hold of him and straightened him out. He told me all
+about it. He was right much cut up. He jest cried about
+Phrony."</p>
+<p>Keith wrote a note to Wickersham. He referred to the current
+rumors that the cutting had run over on their side, suggesting,
+however, that it might have been by inadvertence.</p>
+<p>When this letter was received, Wickersham was in conference with
+his superintendent, Mr. Matheson. The interview had been somewhat
+stormy, for the superintendent had just made the very statement
+that Keith's note contained. He was not in a placid frame of mind,
+for the work was going badly; and Mr. Plume was seated in an
+arm-chair listening to his report. He did not like Plume, and had
+wished to speak privately to Wickersham; but Wickersham had told
+him to go ahead, that Plume was a friend of his, and as much
+interested in the success of the work as Matheson was. Plume's
+satisfaction and nonchalant air vexed the Scotchman. Just then
+Keith's note came, and Wickersham, after reading it, tossed it over
+first to Plume. Plume read it and handed it back without the least
+change of expression. Then Wickersham, after some reflection,
+tossed it to Matheson.</p>
+<p>"That's right," he nodded, when he had read it. "We are already
+over the line so far that the men know it."</p>
+<p>Wickersham's temper gave way.</p>
+<p>"Well, I know it. Do you suppose I am so ignorant as not to know
+anything? But I am not fool enough to give it away. You need not go
+bleating around about it everywhere."</p>
+<p>Plume's eye glistened with satisfaction.</p>
+<p>The superintendent's brow, which had clouded, grew darker. He
+had already stood much from this young man. He had followed his
+orders in running the mine beyond the lines shown on the plats; but
+he had accepted Wickersham's statement that the lines were wrong,
+not the workings.</p>
+<p>"I wush you to understand one thing, Mr. Wickersham," he said.
+"I came here to superintend your mines and to do my work like an
+honest man; but I don't propose to soil my hands with any dirrty
+dealings, or to engage in any violation of the law; for I am a
+law-abiding, God-fearing man, and before I'll do it I'll go."</p>
+<p>"Then you can go," said Wickersham, angrily. "Go, and be d----d
+to you! I will show you that I know my own business."</p>
+<p>"Then I will go. I do not think you do know it. If you did, you
+would not--"</p>
+<p>"Never mind. I want no more advice from you," snarled
+Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"I would like to have a letter saying that the work that has
+been done since you took charge has been under your express
+orders."</p>
+<p>"I'll see you condemned first. I suppose it was by my orders
+that the cutting ran so near to the creek that that work had to be
+done to keep the mine from being flooded?"</p>
+<p>"It was, by your <i>express</i> orders."</p>
+<p>"I deny it. I suppose it was by my orders that the men were set
+on to strike?"</p>
+<p>"You were told of the danger and the probable consequences of
+your insisting."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you are always croaking--"</p>
+<p>"And I will croak once more," said the discharged official. "You
+will never make that mine pay, for there is no coal there. It is
+all on the other side of the line."</p>
+<p>"I won't! Well, I will show you. I, at least, stand a better
+chance to make it pay than I ever did before. I suppose you propose
+now to go over to Keith and tell him all you know about our work. I
+imagine he would like to know it--more than he knows already."</p>
+<p>"I am not in the habit of telling the private affairs of my
+employers," said the man, coldly. "He does not need any information
+from me. He is not a fool. He knows it."</p>
+<p>"Oh, he does, does he! Then you told him," asserted Wickersham,
+furiously.</p>
+<p>This was more than the Scotchman could bear. He had already
+stood much, and his face might have warned Wickersham. Suddenly it
+flamed. He took one step forward, a long one, and rammed his
+clinched and hairy fist under the young man's nose.</p>
+<p>"You lie! And, ---- you! you know you lie. I'm a law-abiding,
+God-fearing man; but if you don't take that back, I will break
+every bone in your face. I've a mind to do it anyhow."</p>
+<p>Wickersham rolled back out of his chair as if the knotted fist
+under his nose had driven him. His face was white as he staggered
+to his feet.</p>
+<p>"I didn't mean--I don't say--. What do you mean anyhow?" he
+stammered.</p>
+<p>"Take it back." The foreman advanced slowly.</p>
+<p>"Yes--I didn't mean anything. What are you getting so mad
+about?"</p>
+<p>The foreman cut him short with a fierce gesture. "Write me that
+paper I want, and pay me my money."</p>
+<p>"Write what--?"</p>
+<p>"That the lower shaft and the last drift was cut by your order.
+Write it!" He pointed to the paper on the desk. Wickersham sat down
+and wrote a few lines. His hand trembled.</p>
+<p>"Here it is," he said sullenly.</p>
+<p>"Now pay me," said the glowering Scotchman.</p>
+<p>The money was paid, and Matheson, without a word, turned and
+walked out.</p>
+<p>"D--- him! I wish the mine had fallen in on him," Wickersham
+growled.</p>
+<p>"You are well quit of him," said Mr. Plume, consolingly.</p>
+<p>"I'll get even with him yet."</p>
+<p>"You have to answer your other friend," observed Mr. Plume.</p>
+<p>"I'll answer him." He seized a sheet of paper and began to
+write, annotating it with observations far from complimentary to
+Keith and Matheson. He read the letter to Plume. It was a curt
+inquiry whether Mr. Keith meant to make the charge that he had
+crossed his line. If so, Wickersham &amp; Company knew their remedy
+and would be glad to know at last the source whence these
+slanderous reports had come.</p>
+<p>"That will settle him."</p>
+<p>Mr. Plume nodded. "It ought to do it."</p>
+<p>Keith's reply to this note was sent that night.</p>
+<p>It stated simply that he did make the charge, and if Mr.
+Wickersham wished it, he was prepared to prove it.</p>
+<p>Wickersham's face fell. "Matheson's been to him."</p>
+<p>"Or some one else," said Mr. Plume. "That Bluffy hates you like
+poison. You've got to do something and do it quick."</p>
+<p>Wickersham glanced up at Plume. He met his eye steadily.
+Wickersham's face showed the shadow of a frown; then it passed,
+leaving his face set and a shade paler. He looked at Plume again
+and licked his lips. Plume's eye was still on him.</p>
+<p>"What do you know!" he asked Plume.</p>
+<p>"Only what others know. They all know it or will soon."</p>
+<p>Wickersham's face settled more. He cursed in a low voice and
+then relapsed into reflection.</p>
+<p>"Get up a strike," said Plume. "They are ripe for it. Close her
+down and blow her up."</p>
+<p>Wickersham's countenance changed, and presently his brow
+cleared.</p>
+<p>"It will serve them right. I'll let them know who owns these
+mines."</p>
+<p>Next morning there was posted a notice of a cut of wages in the
+Wickersham mines. There was a buzz of excitement in New Leeds and
+anger among the mining population. At dinner-time there were
+meetings and much talking. That night again, there were meetings
+and whiskey and more talking,--louder talking,--speeches and
+resolutions. Next morning a committee waited on Mr. Wickersham, who
+received the men politely but coldly. He "thought he knew how to
+manage his own business. They must be aware that he had spent large
+sums in developing property which had not yet begun to pay. When it
+began to pay he would be happy, etc. If they chose to strike, all
+right. He could get others in their places."</p>
+<p>That night there were more meetings. Next day the men did not go
+to work. By evening many of them were drunk. There was talk of
+violence. Bill Bluffy, who was now a miner, was especially
+savage.</p>
+<p>Keith was surprised, a few days later, as he was passing along
+the street, to meet Euphronia Tripper. He spoke to her cordially.
+She was dressed showily and was handsomer than when he saw her
+last. The color mounted her face as he stopped her, and he wondered
+that Wickersham had not thought her pretty. When she blushed she
+was almost a beauty. He asked about her people at home, inquiring
+in a breath when she came, where she was staying, how long she was
+going to remain, etc.</p>
+<p>She answered the first questions glibly enough; but when he
+inquired as to the length of her visit and where she was staying,
+she appeared somewhat confused.</p>
+<p>"I have cousins here, the Turleys."</p>
+<p>"Oh! You are with Mr. Turley?" Keith felt relieved.</p>
+<p>"Ur--no--I am not staying with them. I am with some other
+friends." Her color was coming and going.</p>
+<p>"What is their name?"</p>
+<p>"Their name? Oh--uh--I don't know their names."</p>
+<p>"Don't know their names!"</p>
+<p>"No. You see it's a sort of private boarding-house, and they
+took me in."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I thought you said they were friends," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"Why, yes, they are, but--I have forgotten their names. Don't
+you understand?"</p>
+<p>Keith did not understand.</p>
+<p>"I only came a few days ago, and I am going right away."</p>
+<p>Keith passed on. Euphronia had clearly not changed her nature.
+Insensibly, Keith thought of Ferdy Wickersham. Old Rawson's
+conversation months before recurred to him. He knew that the girl
+was vain and light-headed. He also knew Wickersham.</p>
+<p>He mentioned to Mr. Turley having seen the girl in town, and the
+old fellow went immediately and took her out of the little
+boarding-house where she had put up, and brought her to his
+home.</p>
+<p>Keith was not long in doubt as to the connection between her
+presence and Wickersham's.</p>
+<p>Several times he had occasion to call at Mr. Turley's. On each
+occasion he found Wickersham there, and it was very apparent that
+he was not an unwelcome visitor.</p>
+<p>It was evident to Keith that Wickersham was trying to make an
+impression on the young girl.</p>
+<p>That evening so long ago when he had come on her and Wickersham
+in the old squire's orchard came back to him, and the stalwart old
+countryman, with his plain ways, his stout pride, his straight
+ideas, stood before him. He knew his pride in the girl; how close
+she was to his heart; and what a deadly blow it would be to him
+should anything befall her. He knew, moreover, how fiercely he
+would avenge any injury to her.</p>
+<p>He determined to give Wickersham a hint of the danger he was
+running, if, as he believed, he was simply amusing himself with the
+girl. He and Wickersham still kept up relations ostensibly
+friendly. Wickersham had told him he was going back to New York on
+a certain day; but three days later, as Keith was returning late
+from his mines, he came on Wickersham and Phrony in a byway outside
+of the town. His arm was about her. They were so closely engaged
+that they did not notice him until he was on them. Phrony appeared
+much excited. "Well, I will not go otherwise," Keith heard her say.
+She turned hastily away as Keith came up, and her face was scarlet
+with confusion, and even Wickersham looked disconcerted.</p>
+<p>That night Keith waited for Wickersham at the hotel till a late
+hour, and when at length Wickersham came in he met him.</p>
+<p>"I thought you were going back to New York?" he said.</p>
+<p>"I find it pleasanter here," said the young man, with a
+significant look at him.</p>
+<p>"You appear to find it pleasant."</p>
+<p>"I always make it pleasant for myself wherever I go, my boy. You
+are a Stoic; I prefer the Epicurean philosophy."</p>
+<p>"Yes? And how about others?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I make it pleasant for them too. Didn't it look so to-day?"
+The glance he gave him authorized Keith to go on.</p>
+<p>"Did it ever occur to you that you might make it too pleasant
+for them--for a time?"</p>
+<p>"Ah! I have thought of that. But that's their lookout."</p>
+<p>"Wickersham," said Keith, calmly, "that's a very young girl and
+a very ignorant girl, and, so far as I know, a very innocent
+one."</p>
+<p>"Doubtless you know!" said, the other, insolently.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I believe she is. Moreover, she comes of very good and
+respectable people. Her grandfather--"</p>
+<p>"My dear boy, I don't care anything about the grandfather! It is
+only the granddaughter I am interesting myself in. She is the only
+pretty girl within a hundred miles of here, unless you except your
+old friend of the dance-hall, and I always interest myself in the
+prettiest woman about me."</p>
+<p>"Do you intend to marry her?"</p>
+<p>Wickersham laughed, heartily and spontaneously.</p>
+<p>"Oh, come now, Keith. Are you going to marry the dance-hall
+keeper, simply because she has white teeth?"</p>
+<p>Keith frowned a little.</p>
+<p>"Never mind about me. Do you propose to marry her? She, at
+least, does not keep a dance-hall."</p>
+<p>"No; I shall leave that for you." His face and tone were
+insolent, and Keith gripped his chair. He felt himself flush. Then
+his blood surged back; but he controlled himself and put by the
+insolence for the moment.</p>
+<p>"Leave me out of the matter. Do you know what you are doing?"
+His voice was a little unsteady.</p>
+<p>"I know at least what you are doing: interfering in my business.
+I know how to take care of myself, and I don't need your
+assistance."</p>
+<p>"I was not thinking of you, but of her--"</p>
+<p>"That's the difference between us. I was," said Ferdy, coolly.
+He rolled a cigarette.</p>
+<p>"Well, you will have need to think of yourself if you wrong that
+girl," said Keith. "For I tell you now that if anything were to
+happen to her, your life would not be worth a button in these
+mountains."</p>
+<p>"There are other places besides the mountains," observed
+Wickersham. But Keith noticed that he had paled a little and his
+voice had lost some of its assurance.</p>
+<p>"I don't believe the world would be big enough to hide you. I
+know two men who would kill you on sight."</p>
+<p>"Who is the other one?" asked Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"I am not counting myself--yet," said Keith, quietly. "It would
+not be necessary. The old squire and Dave Dennison would take my
+life if I interfered with their rights."</p>
+<p>"You are prudent," said Ferdy.</p>
+<p>"I am forbearing," said Keith.</p>
+<p>Wickersham's tone was as insolent as ever, but as he leaned over
+and reached for a match, Keith observed that his hand shook
+slightly. And the eyes that were levelled at Keith through the
+smoke of his cigarette were unsteady.</p>
+<p>Next morning Ferdy Wickersham had a long interview with Plume,
+and that night Mr. Plume had a conference in his private office
+with a man--a secret conference, to judge from the care with which
+doors were locked, blinds pulled down, and voices kept lowered. He
+was a stout, youngish fellow, with a low forehead, lowering eyes,
+and a sodden face. He might once have been good-looking, but drink
+was written on Mr. William Bluffy now in ineffaceable characters.
+Plume alternately cajoled him and hectored him, trying to get his
+consent to some act which he was unwilling to perform.</p>
+<p>"I don't see the slightest danger in it," insisted Plume, "and
+you did not use to be afraid. Your nerves must be getting
+loose."</p>
+<p>The other man's eyes rested on him with something like
+contempt.</p>
+<p>"My nerves're all right. I ain't skeered; but I don't want to
+mix up in your ---- business. If a man wants trouble with me, he
+can get it and he knows how to do it. I don't like yer man
+Wickersham--not a little bit. But I don't want to do it that way.
+I'd like to meet him fair and full on the street and settle which
+was the best man."</p>
+<p>Plume began again. "You can't do that way here now. That's broke
+up. But the way I tell you is the real way." He pictured
+Wickersham's wealth, his hardness toward his employ&eacute;s, his
+being a Yankee, his boast that he would injure Keith and shut up
+his mine.</p>
+<p>"What've you got against him?" demanded Mr. Bluffy. "I thought
+you and him was thick as thieves?"</p>
+<p>"It's a public benefit I'm after," declared Plume, unblushingly.
+"I am for New Leeds first, last, and all the time."</p>
+<p>"You must think you are New Leeds," observed Bluffy.</p>
+<p>Plume laughed.</p>
+<p>"I've got nothing against him particularly, though he's injured
+me deeply. Hasn't he thrown all the men out of work!" He pushed the
+bottle over toward the other, and he poured out another drink and
+tossed it off. "You needn't be so easy about him. He's been mean
+enough to you. Wasn't it him that gave the description of you that
+night when you stopped the stage?"</p>
+<p>Bill Bluffy's face changed, and there was a flash in his
+eye.</p>
+<p>"Who says I done it?"</p>
+<p>Plume laughed. "I don't say you did it. You needn't get mad with
+me. He says you did it. Keith said he didn't know what sort of man
+it was. Wickersham described you so that everybody knew you. I
+reckon if Keith had back-stood him you'd have had a harder time
+than you did."</p>
+<p>The cloud had gathered deeper on Bluffy's brow. He took another
+drink.</p>
+<p>"---- him! I'll blow up his ---- mine and him, too!" he growled.
+"How did you say 'twas to be done?"</p>
+<p>Plume glanced around at the closed windows and lowered his voice
+as he made certain explanations.</p>
+<p>"I'll furnish the dynamite."</p>
+<p>"All right. Give me the money."</p>
+<p>But Plume demurred.</p>
+<p>"Not till it's done. I haven't any doubt about your doing it,"
+he explained quickly, seeing a black look in Bluffy's eyes. "But
+you know yourself you're liable to get full, and you mayn't do it
+as well as you otherwise would."</p>
+<p>"Oh, if I say I'll do it, I'll do it."</p>
+<p>"You needn't be afraid of not getting your money."</p>
+<p>"I ain't afraid," said Bluffy, with an oath. "If I don't get it
+I'll get blood." His eyes as they rested on Plume had a sudden
+gleam in them.</p>
+<p>When Wickersham and Plume met that night the latter gave an
+account of his negotiation. "It's all fixed," he said, "but it
+costs more than I expected--a lot more," he said slowly, gauging
+Wickersham's views by his face.</p>
+<p>"How much more? I told you my limit."</p>
+<p>"We had to do it," said Mr. Plume, without stating the
+price.</p>
+<p>Wickersham swore.</p>
+<p>"He won't do it till he gets the cash," pursued Plume. "But I'll
+be responsible for him," he added quickly, noting the change in
+Wickersham's expression.</p>
+<p>Again Wickersham swore; and Plume changed the subject.</p>
+<p>"How'd you come out?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"When--what do you mean?"</p>
+<p>Plume jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "With the lady?"</p>
+<p>Wickersham sniffed. "All right." He drifted for a moment into
+reflection. "The little fool's got conscientious doubts," he said
+presently, with a half-smile. "Won't go unless--." His eyes rested
+on Plume's with a gauging expression in them.</p>
+<p>"Well, why not? That's natural enough. She's been brought up
+right. They're proud as anybody. Her grandfather--"</p>
+<p>"You're a fool!" said Wickersham, briefly.</p>
+<p>"You can get some one to go through a ceremony for you that
+would satisfy her and wouldn't peach afterwards--"</p>
+<p>"What a damned scoundrel you are, Plume!" said Mr. Wickersham,
+coldly.</p>
+<p>Plume's expression was between a smile and a scowl, but the
+smile was less pleasant than the frown.</p>
+<p>"Get her to go to New York--When you've got her there you've got
+her. She can't come back. Or I could perform it myself? I've been a
+preacher-am one now," said Plume, without noticing the interruption
+further than by a cold gleam in his eyes.</p>
+<p>Wickersham laughed derisively.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no, not that. I may be given to my own diversions somewhat
+recklessly, but I'm not so bad as to let you touch any one I--I
+take an interest in."</p>
+<p>"As you like," said Plume, curtly. "I just thought it might be a
+convenience to you. I'd help you out. I don't see 't you need be
+so--squeamish. What you're doing ain't so pure an' lofty 't you can
+set up for Marcus Aurelius and St. Anthony at once."</p>
+<p>"At least, it's better than it would be if I let you take a hand
+in it," sneered Wickersham.</p>
+<p>The following afternoon Wickersham left New Leeds somewhat
+ostentatiously. A few strikers standing sullenly about the station
+jeered as he passed in. But he took no notice of them. He passed on
+to his train.</p>
+<p>A few nights later a tremendous explosion shook the town,
+rattling the windows, awakening people from their beds, and calling
+the timid and the curious into the streets.</p>
+<p>It was known next morning that some one had blown up the Great
+Gun Mine, opened at such immense cost. The dam that kept out the
+water was blown up; the machinery had been wrecked, and the mine
+was completely destroyed.</p>
+<p>The <i>Clarion</i> denounced it as the deed of the strikers. The
+strikers held a meeting and denounced the charge as a foul slander;
+but the <i>Clarion</i> continued to denounce them as <i>hostes
+humani generis</i>.</p>
+<p>It was, however, rumored around that it was not the strikers at
+all. One rumor even declared that it was done by the connivance of
+the company. It was said that Bill Bluffy had boasted of it in his
+cups, But when Mr. Bluffy was asked about it he denied the story in
+toto. He wasn't such a ---- fool as to do such a thing as that, he
+said. For the rest, he cursed Mr. Plume with bell, book, and
+candle.</p>
+<p>A rumor came to Keith one morning a few days later that Phrony
+Tripper had disappeared.</p>
+<p>She had left New Leeds more than a week before, as was supposed
+by her relatives, the Turleys, to pay a visit to friends in the
+adjoining State before returning home. To others she had said that
+she was going to the North for a visit, whilst yet others affirmed
+that she had given another destination. However this might be, she
+had left not long after Wickersham had taken his departure, and her
+leaving was soon coupled with his name. One man even declared that
+he had seen the two together in New York.</p>
+<p>Another name was connected with the girl's disappearance, though
+in a different way. Terpsichore suggested that Mr. Plume had had
+something to do with it, and that he could give information on the
+subject if he would. Mr. Plume had been away from New Leeds for
+several days about the time of Phrony's departure.</p>
+<p>"He did that Wickersham's dirty work for him; that is, what he
+didn't do for himself," declared the young woman.</p>
+<p>Plume's statement was that he had been off on private business
+and had met with an accident. The nature of this "accident" was
+evident in his appearance.</p>
+<p>Keith was hardly surprised when, a day or two after the rumor of
+the girl's disappearance reached him, a heavy step thumping outside
+his office door announced the arrival of Squire Rawson. When the
+old man opened the door, Keith was shocked to see the change in
+him. He was haggard and worn, but there was that in his face which
+made Keith feel that whoever might be concerned in his
+granddaughter's disappearance had reason to beware of meeting
+him.</p>
+<p>"You have heard the news?" he said, as he sank into the chair
+which Keith offered him.</p>
+<p>Keith said that he had heard it, and regretted it more than he
+could express. He had only waited, hoping that it might prove
+untrue, to write to him.</p>
+<p>"Yes, she has gone," added the old man, moodily. "She's gone off
+and married without sayin' a word to me or anybody. I didn't think
+she'd 'a' done it."</p>
+<p>Keith gasped with astonishment. A load appeared to be lifted
+from him. After all, she was married. The next moment this hope was
+dashed by the squire.</p>
+<p>"I always thought," said the old man, "that that young fellow
+was hankerin' around her a good deal. I never liked him, because I
+didn't trust him. And I wouldn't 'a' liked him anyway," he added
+frankly; "and I certainly don't like him now. But--." He drifted
+off into reflection for a moment and then came back
+again--"Women-folks are curious creatures. Phrony's mother she
+appeared to like him, and I suppose we will have to make up with
+him. So I hev come up here to see if I can git his address."</p>
+<p>Keith's heart sank within him. He knew Ferdy Wickersham too well
+not to know on what a broken reed the old man leaned.</p>
+<p>"Some folks was a-hintin'," pursued the old fellow, speaking
+slowly, "as, maybe, that young man hadn't married her; but I knowed
+better then that, because, even if Phrony warn't a good
+girl,--which she is, though she ain't got much sense,--he knowed
+<i>me</i>. They ain't none of 'em ever intimated that to
+<i>me</i>," he added explanatorily.</p>
+<p>Keith was glad that he had not intimated it. As he looked at the
+squire, he knew how dangerous it would be. His face was settled
+into a grimness which showed how perilous it would be for the man
+who had deceived Phrony, if, as Keith feared, his apprehensions
+were well founded.</p>
+<p>But at that moment both Phrony and Wickersham were far beyond
+Squire Rawson's reach.</p>
+<p>The evening after Phrony Tripper left New Leeds, a young woman
+somewhat closely veiled descended from the train in Jersey City.
+Here she was joined on the platform a moment later by a tall man
+who had boarded the train at Washington, and who, but for his
+spruced appearance, might have been taken for Mr. J. Quincy Plume.
+The young woman having intrusted herself to his guidance, he
+conducted her across the ferry, and on the other side they were met
+by a gentleman, who wore the collar of his overcoat turned up.
+After a meeting more or less formal on one side and cordial on the
+other, the gentleman gave a brief direction to Mr. Plume, and, with
+the lady, entered a carriage which was waiting and drove off; Mr.
+Plume following a moment later in another vehicle.</p>
+<p>"Know who that is?" asked one of the ferry officials of another.
+"That's F.C. Wickersham, who has made such a pile of money. They
+say he owns a whole State down South."</p>
+<p>"Who is the lady?"</p>
+<p>The other laughed. "Don't ask me; you can't keep up with him.
+They say they can't resist him."</p>
+<p>An hour or two later, Mr. Plume, who had been waiting for some
+time in the caf&eacute; of a small hotel not very far up-town, was
+joined by Mr. Wickersham, whose countenance showed both irritation
+and disquietude. Plume, who had been consoling himself with the
+companionship of a decanter of rye whiskey, was in a more jovial
+mood, which further irritated the other.</p>
+<p>"You say she has balked? Jove! She has got more in her than I
+thought!"</p>
+<p>"She is a fool!" said Wickersham.</p>
+<p>Plume shut one eye. "Don't know about that. Madame de Maintenon
+said: 'There is nothing so clever as a good woman.' Well, what are
+you going to do?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+<p>"Take a drink," said Mr. Plume, to whom this was a frequent
+solvent of a difficulty.</p>
+<p>Wickersham followed his advice, but remained silent.</p>
+<p>In fact, Mr. Wickersham, after having laid most careful plans
+and reached the point for which he had striven, found himself, at
+the very moment of victory, in danger of being defeated. He had
+induced Phrony Tripper to come to New York. She was desperately in
+love with him, and would have gone to the ends of the earth for
+him. But he had promised to marry her; it was to marry him that she
+had come. As strong as was her passion for him, and as vain and
+foolish as she was, she had one principle which was stronger than
+any other feeling--a sense of modesty. This had been instilled in
+her from infancy. Among her people a woman's honor was ranked
+higher than any other feminine virtue. Her love for Wickersham but
+strengthened her resolution, for she believed that, unless he
+married her, his life would not be safe from her relatives. Now,
+after two hours, in which he had used every persuasion, Wickersham,
+to his unbounded astonishment, found himself facing defeat. He had
+not given her credit for so much resolution. Her answer to all his
+efforts to overcome her determination was that, unless he married
+her immediately, she would return home; she would not remain in the
+hotel a single night. "I know they will take me back," she said,
+weeping.</p>
+<p>This was the subject of his conversation, now, with his agent,
+and he was making up his mind what to do, aided by more or less
+frequent applications to the decanter which stood between them.</p>
+<p>"What she says is true," declared Plume, his courage stimulated
+by his liberal potations. "You won't be able to go back down there
+any more. There are a half-dozen men I know, would consider it
+their duty to blow your brains out."</p>
+<p>Wickersham filled his glass and tossed off a drink. "I am not
+going down there any more, anyhow."</p>
+<p>"I suppose not. But I don't believe you would be safe even up
+here. There is that devil, Dennison: he hates you worse than
+poison."</p>
+<p>"Oh--up here--they aren't going to trouble me up here."</p>
+<p>"I don't know--if he ever got a show at you--Why don't you let
+me perform the ceremony?" he began persuasively. "She knows I've
+been a preacher. That will satisfy her scruples, and then, if you
+ever had to make it known--? But no one would know then."</p>
+<p>Wickersham declined this with a show of virtue. He did not
+mention that he had suggested this to the girl but she had
+positively refused it. She would be married by a regular preacher
+or she would go home.</p>
+<p>"There must be some one in this big town," suggested Plume, "who
+will do such a job privately and keep it quiet? Where is that
+preacher you were talking about once that took flyers with you on
+the quiet? You can seal his mouth. And if the worst comes to the
+worst, there is Montana; you can always get out of it in six weeks
+with an order of publication. <i>I</i> did it," said Mr. Plume,
+quietly, "and never had any trouble about it."</p>
+<p>"You did! Well, that's one part of your rascality I didn't know
+about."</p>
+<p>"I guess there are a good many of us have little bits of history
+that we don't talk about much," observed Mr. Plume, calmly. "I
+wouldn't have told you now, but I wanted to help you out of the fix
+that--"</p>
+<p>"That you have helped me get into," said Wickersham, with a
+sneer.</p>
+<p>"There is no trouble about it," Plume went on. "You don't want
+to marry anybody else--now, and meantime it will give you the
+chance you want of controlling old Rawson's interest down there.
+The old fellow can't live long, and Phrony is his only heir. You
+will have it all your own way. You can keep it quiet if you wish,
+and if you don't, you can acknowledge it and bounce your friend
+Keith. If I had your hand I bet I'd know how to play it."</p>
+<p>"Well, by ----! I wish you had it," said Wickersham,
+angrily.</p>
+<p>Wickersham had been thinking hard during Plume's statement of
+the case, and what with his argument and an occasional application
+to the decanter of whiskey, he was beginning to yield. Just then a
+sealed note was handed him by a waiter. He tore it open and
+read:</p>
+<blockquote>"I am going home; my heart is broken. Good-by."<br>
+<blockquote>"PHRONY."</blockquote>
+</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>With an oath under his breath, he wrote in pencil on a card:
+"Wait; I will be with you directly."</p>
+<p>"Take that to the lady," he said. Scribbling a few lines more on
+another card, he gave Plume some hasty directions and left him.</p>
+<p>When, five minutes afterwards, Mr. Plume finished the decanter,
+and left the hotel, his face had a crafty look on it. "This should
+be worth a good deal to you, J. Quincy," he said.</p>
+<p>An hour later the Rev. Mr. Rimmon performed in his private
+office a little ceremony, at which, besides himself, were present
+only the bride and groom and a witness who had come to him a
+half-hour before with a scribbled line in pencil requesting his
+services. If Mr. Rimmon was startled when he first read the
+request, the surprise had passed away. The groom, it is true, was,
+when he appeared, decidedly under the influence of liquor, and his
+insistence that the ceremony was to be kept entirely secret had
+somewhat disturbed Mr. Rimmon for a moment. But he remembered Mr.
+Plume's assurance that the bride was a great heiress in the South,
+and knowing that Ferdy Wickersham was a man who rarely lost his
+head,--a circumstance which the latter testified by handing him a
+roll of greenbacks amounting to exactly one hundred dollars,--and
+the bride being very pretty and shy, and manifestly most eager to
+be married, he gave his word to keep the matter a secret until they
+should authorize him to divulge it.</p>
+<p>When the ceremony was over, the bride requested Mr. Rimmon to
+give her her "marriage lines." This Mr. Rimmon promised to do; but
+as he would have to fill out the blanks, which would take a little
+time, the bride and groom, having signed the paper, took their
+departure without waiting for the certificate, leaving Mr. Plume to
+bring it.</p>
+<p>A day or two later a steamship of one of the less popular
+companies sailing to a Continental port had among its passengers a
+gentleman and a lady who, having secured their accommodations at
+the last moment, did not appear on the passenger list.</p>
+<p>It happened that they were unknown to any of the other
+passengers, and as they were very exclusive, they made no
+acquaintances during the voyage. If Mrs. Wagram, the name by which
+the lady was known on board, had one regret, it was that Mr. Plume
+had failed to send her her marriage certificate, as he had promised
+to do. Her husband, however, made so light of it that it reassured
+her, and she was too much taken up with her wedding-ring and new
+diamonds to think that anything else was necessary.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<h3>MRS. LANCASTER'S WIDOWHOOD</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The first two years of her widowhood Alice Lancaster spent in
+retirement. Even the busy tongue of Mrs. Nailor could find little
+to criticise in the young widow. To be sure, that accomplished
+critic made the most of this little, and disseminated her opinion
+that Alice's grief for Mr. Lancaster could only be remorse for her
+indifference to him during his life. Every one knew, she said, how
+she had neglected him.</p>
+<p>The idea that Alice Lancaster was troubled with regrets was not
+as unfounded as the rest of Mrs. Nailor's ill-natured charge. She
+was attached to her husband, and had always meant to be a good wife
+to him.</p>
+<p>She was as good a wife as her mother and her friends would
+permit her to be. Gossip had not spared some of her best friends.
+Even as proud a woman as young Mrs. Wentworth had not escaped. But
+Gossip had never yet touched the name of Mrs. Lancaster, and Alice
+did not mean that it should. It was not unnatural that she should
+have accepted the liberty which her husband gave her and have gone
+out more and more, even though he could accompany her less and
+less.</p>
+<p>No maelstrom is more unrelenting in its grasp than is that of
+Society. Only those who sink, or are cast aside by its seething
+waves, escape. And before she knew it, Alice Lancaster had found
+herself drawn into the whirlpool.</p>
+<p>An attractive proposal had been made to her to go abroad and
+join some friends of hers for a London season a year or two before.
+Grinnell Rhodes had married Miss Creamer, who was fond of European
+society, and they had taken a house in London for the season, which
+promised to be very gay, and had suggested to Mrs. Lancaster to
+visit them. Mr. Lancaster had found himself unable to go. A good
+many matters of importance had been undertaken by him, and he must
+see them through, he said. Moreover, he had not been very well of
+late, and he had felt that he should be rather a drag amid the
+gayeties of the London season. Alice had offered to give up the
+trip, but he would not hear of it. She must go, he said, and he
+knew who would be the most charming woman in London. So, having
+extracted from him the promise that, when his business matters were
+all arranged, he would join her for a little run on the Continent,
+she had set off for Paris, where "awful beauty puts on all its
+arms," to make her preparations for the campaign.</p>
+<p>Mr. Lancaster had not told her of an interview which her mother
+had had with him, in which she had pointed out that Alice's health
+was suffering from her want of gayety and amusement. He was not one
+to talk of himself.</p>
+<p>Alice Lancaster was still in Paris when a cable message
+announced to her Mr. Lancaster's death. It was only after his death
+that she awoke to the unselfishness of his life and to the
+completeness of his devotion to her.</p>
+<p>His will, after making provision for certain charities with
+which he had been associated in his lifetime, left all his great
+fortune to her; and there was, besides, a sealed letter left for
+her in which he poured out his heart to her. From it she learned
+that he had suffered greatly and had known that he was liable to
+die at any time. He, however, would not send for her to come home,
+for fear of spoiling her holiday.</p>
+<p>"I will not say I have not been lonely," he wrote. "For God
+knows how lonely I have been since you left. The light went with
+you and will return only when you come home. Sometimes I have felt
+that I could not endure it and must send for you or go to you; but
+the first would have been selfishness and the latter a breach of
+duty. The times have been such that I have not felt it right to
+leave, as so many interests have been intrusted to me.... It is
+possible that I may never see your face again. I have made a will
+which I hope will please you. It will, at least, show you that I
+trust you entirely. I make no restrictions; for I wish you greater
+happiness than I fear I have been able to bring you.... In business
+affairs I suggest that you consult with Norman Wentworth, who is a
+man of high integrity and of a conservative mind. Should you wish
+advice as to good charities, I can think of no better adviser than
+Dr. Templeton. He has long been my friend."</p>
+<p>In the first excess of her grief and remorse, Alice Lancaster
+came home and threw herself heart and soul into charitable work. As
+Mr. Lancaster had suggested, she consulted Dr. Templeton, the old
+rector of a small and unfashionable church on a side street. Under
+his guidance she found a world as new and as diverse from that in
+which she had always lived as another planet would have been.</p>
+<p>She found in some places a life where vice was esteemed more
+honorable than virtue, because it brought more bread. She found
+things of which she had never dreamed: things which appeared
+incredible after she had seen them. These things she found within a
+half-hour's walk of her sumptuous home; within a few blocks of the
+avenue and streets where Wealth and Plenty took their gay pleasure
+and where riches poured forth in a riot of splendid
+extravagance.</p>
+<p>She would have turned back, but for the old clergyman's
+inspiring courage; she would have poured out her wealth
+indiscriminately, but for his wisdom--but for his wisdom and Norman
+Wentworth's.</p>
+<p>"No, my dear," said the old man; "to give lavishly without
+discrimination is to put a premium on beggary and to subject
+yourself to imposture."</p>
+<p>This Norman indorsed, and under their direction she soon found
+ways to give of her great means toward charities which were
+far-reaching and enduring. She learned also what happiness comes
+from knowledge of others and knowledge of how to help them.</p>
+<p>It was surprising to her friends what a change came over the
+young woman. Her point of view, her manner, her face, her voice
+changed. Her expression, which had once been so proud as to mar
+somewhat her beauty, softened; her manner increased in cordiality
+and kindness; her voice acquired a new and sincerer tone.</p>
+<p>Even Mrs. Nailor observed that the enforced retirement appeared
+to have chastened the young widow, though she would not admit that
+it could be for anything than effect.</p>
+<p>"Black always was the most bewilderingly becoming thing to her
+that I ever saw. Don't you remember those effects she used to
+produce with black and just a dash of red? Well, she wears black so
+deep you might think it was poor Mr. Lancaster's pall; but I have
+observed that whenever I have seen her there is always something
+red very close at hand. She either sits in a red chair, or there is
+a red shawl just at her back, or a great bunch of red roses at her
+elbow. I am glad that great window has been put up in old Dr.
+Templeton's church to William Lancaster's memory, or I am afraid it
+would have been but a small one."</p>
+<p>Almost the first sign that the storm, which, as related, had
+struck New York would reach New Leeds was the shutting down of the
+Wickersham mines. The <i>Clarion</i> stated that the shutting down
+was temporary and declared that in a very short time, when the men
+were brought to reason, they would be opened again; also that the
+Great Gun Mine, which had been flooded, would again be opened.</p>
+<p>The mines belonging to Keith's company did not appear for some
+time to be affected; but the breakers soon began to reach even the
+point on which Keith had stood so securely. The first "roller" that
+came to him was when orders arrived to cut down the force, and cut
+down also the wages of those who were retained. This was done.
+Letters, growing gradually more and more complaining, came from the
+general office in New York.</p>
+<p>Fortunately for Keith, Norman ran down at this time and looked
+over the properties again for himself. He did not tell Keith what
+bitter things were being said and that his visit down there was
+that he might be able to base his defence of Keith on facts in his
+own knowledge.</p>
+<p>"What has become of Mrs. Lancaster?" asked Keith, casually. "Is
+she still abroad?"</p>
+<p>"No; she came home immediately on hearing the news. You never
+saw any one so changed. She has gone in for charity."</p>
+<p>Keith looked a trifle grim.</p>
+<p>"If you thought her pretty as a girl, you ought to see her as a
+widow. She is ravishing."</p>
+<p>"You are enthusiastic. I see that Wickersham has returned?"</p>
+<p>Norman's brow clouded.</p>
+<p>"He'd better not come back here," said Keith.</p>
+<p>It is a trite saying that misfortunes rarely come singly, and it
+would not be so trite if there were not truth in it. Misfortunes
+are sometimes like blackbirds: they come in flocks.</p>
+<p>Keith was on his way from his office in the town to the mines
+one afternoon, when, turning the shoulder of the hill that shut the
+opening of the mine from view, he became aware that something
+unusual had occurred. A crowd was already assembled about the mouth
+of the mine, above the tipple, among them many women; and people
+were hurrying up from all directions.</p>
+<p>"What is it?" he demanded of the first person he came to.</p>
+<p>"Water. They have struck a pocket or something, and the drift
+over toward the Wickersham line is filling up."</p>
+<p>"Is everybody out?" Even as he inquired, Keith knew hey were
+not.</p>
+<p>"No, sir; all drowned."</p>
+<p>Keith knew this could not be true. He hurried forward and pushed
+his way into the throng that crowded about the entrance. A gasp of
+relief went up as he appeared.</p>
+<p>"Ah! Here's the boss." It was the expression of a vague hope
+that he might be able to do something. They gave way at his voice
+and stood back, many eyes turning on him in helpless appeal. Women,
+with blankets already in hand, were weeping aloud; children hanging
+to their skirts were whimpering in vague recognition of disaster;
+men were growling and swearing deeply.</p>
+<p>"Give way. Stand back, every one." The calm voice and tone of
+command had their effect, and as a path was opened through the
+crowd, Keith recognized a number of the men who had been in and had
+just come out. They were all talking to groups about them. One of
+them gave him the first intelligent account of the trouble. They
+were working near the entrance when they heard the cries of men
+farther in, and the first thing they knew there was a rush of water
+which poured down on them, sweeping everything before it.</p>
+<p>"It must have been a river," said one, in answer to a question
+from Keith. "It was rising a foot a minute. The lights were all put
+out, and we just managed to get out in time."</p>
+<p>According to their estimates, there were about forty men and
+boys still in the mine, most of them in the gallery off from the
+main drift. Keith was running over in his mind the levels. His face
+was a study, and the crowd about him watched him closely, as if to
+catch any ray of hope that he might hold out. As he reflected, his
+face grew whiter. Down the slant from the mine came the roar of the
+water. It was a desperate chance.</p>
+<p>Half turning, he glanced at the white, stricken faces about
+him.</p>
+<p>"It is barely possible some of the men may still be alive. There
+are two elevations. I am going down to see."</p>
+<p>At the words, the sound through the crowd hushed suddenly.</p>
+<p>"Na, th' ben't one alive," said an old miner, contentiously.</p>
+<p>The murmur began again.</p>
+<p>"I am going down to see," said Keith. "If one or two men will
+come with me, it will increase the chances of getting to them. If
+not, I am going alone. But I don't want any one who has a
+family."</p>
+<p>A dead silence fell, then three or four young fellows began to
+push their way through the crowd, amid expostulations of some of
+the women and the urging of others.</p>
+<p>Some of the women seized them and held on to them.</p>
+<p>"There are one or two places where men may have been able to
+keep their heads above water if it has not filled the drift, and
+that is what I am going to see," said Keith, preparing to
+descend.</p>
+<p>"My brother's down there and I'll go," said a young light-haired
+fellow with a pale face. He belonged to the night shift.</p>
+<p>"I ain't got any family," said a small, grizzled man. He had a
+thin black band on the sleeve of his rusty, brown coat.</p>
+<p>Several others now came forward, amid mingled expostulations and
+encouragement; but Keith took the first two, and they prepared to
+enter. The younger man took off his silver watch, with directions
+to a friend to send it to his sister if he did not come back. The
+older man said a few words to a bystander. They were about a
+woman's grave on the hillside. Keith took off his watch and gave it
+to one of the men, with a few words scribbled on a leaf from a
+memorandum-book, and the next moment the three volunteers, amid a
+deathly silence, entered the mine.</p>
+<p>Long before they reached the end of the ascent to the shaft they
+could hear the water gurgling and lapping against the sides as it
+whirled through the gallery below them. As they reached the water,
+Keith let himself down into it. The water took him to about his
+waist and was rising.</p>
+<p>"It has not filled the drift yet," he said, and started ahead.
+He gave a halloo; but there was no sound in answer, only the
+reverberation of his voice. The other men called to him to wait and
+talk it over. The strangeness of the situation appalled them. It
+might well have awed a strong man; but Keith waded on. The older
+man plunged after him, the younger clinging to the cage for a
+second in a panic. The lights were out in a moment. Wading and
+plunging forward through the water, which rose in places to his
+neck, and feeling his way by the sides of the drift, Keith waded
+forward through the pitch-darkness. He stopped at times to halloo;
+but there was no reply, only the strange hollow sound of his own
+voice as it was thrown back on him, or died almost before leaving
+his throat. He had almost made up his mind that further attempt was
+useless and that he might as well turn back, when he thought he
+heard a faint sound ahead. With another shout he plunged forward
+again, and the next time he called he heard a cry of joy, and he
+pushed ahead again, shouting to them to come to him.</p>
+<p>Keith found most of the men huddled together on the first level,
+in a state of panic. Some of them were whimpering and some were
+praying fervently, whilst a few were silent, in a sort of dazed
+bewilderment. All who were working in that part of the mine were
+there, they said, except three men, Bill Bluffy and a man named
+Hennson and his boy, who had been cut off in the far end of the
+gallery and who must have been drowned immediately, they told
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"They may not be," said Keith. "There is one point as high as
+this. I shall go on and see."</p>
+<p>The men endeavored to dissuade him. It was "a useless risk of
+life," they assured him; "the others must have been swept away
+immediately. The water had come so sudden. Besides, the water was
+rising, and it might even now be too late to get out." But Keith
+was firm, and ordering them back in charge of the two men who had
+come in with him, he pushed on alone. He knew that the water was
+still rising, though, he hoped, slowly. He had no voice to shout
+now, but he prayed with all his might, and that soothed and helped
+him. Presently the water was a little shallower. It did not come so
+high up on him. He knew from this that he must be reaching the
+upper level. Now and then he spoke Bluffy's and Hennson's names,
+lest in the darkness he should pass them.</p>
+<p>Presently, as he stopped for a second to take breath, he thought
+he heard another sound besides the gurgling of the water as it
+swirled about the timbers. He listened intently.</p>
+<p>It was the boy's voice. "Hold me tight, father. Don't leave
+me."</p>
+<p>Then he heard another voice urging him to go. "You can't do any
+good staying; try it." But Hennson was refusing.</p>
+<p>"Hold on. I won't leave you."</p>
+<p>"Hennson! Bluffy!" shouted Keith, or tried to shout, for his
+voice went nowhere; but his heart was bounding now, and he plunged
+on. Presently he was near enough to catch their words. The father
+was praying, and the boy was following him.</p>
+<p>"'Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven,'" Keith heard
+him say.</p>
+<p>"Hennson!" he cried again.</p>
+<p>From the darkness he heard a voice.</p>
+<p>"Who is that? Is that any one?"</p>
+<p>"It is I,--Mr. Keith,--Hennson. Come quick, all of you; you can
+get out. Cheer up."</p>
+<p>A cry of joy went up.</p>
+<p>"I can't leave my boy," called the man.</p>
+<p>"Bring him on your back," said Keith. "Come on, Bluffy."</p>
+<p>"I can't," said Bluffy. "I'm hurt. My leg is broke."</p>
+<p>"God have mercy!" cried Keith, and waded on.</p>
+<p>After a moment more he was up with the man, feeling for him in
+the darkness, and asking how he was hurt.</p>
+<p>They told him that the rush of the water had thrown him against
+a timber and hurt his leg and side.</p>
+<p>"Take the boy," said Bluffy, "and go on; leave me here."</p>
+<p>The boy began to cry.</p>
+<p>"No," said Keith; "I will take you, too: Hennson can take the
+boy. Can you walk at all?"</p>
+<p>"I don't think so."</p>
+<p>Keith made Hennson take the boy and hold on to him on one side,
+and slipping his arm around the injured man, he lifted him and they
+started back. He had put new courage into them, and the force of
+the current was in their favor. They passed the first high level,
+where he had found the others. When they reached a point where the
+water was too deep for the boy, Keith made the father take him on
+his shoulder, and they waded on through the blackness. The water
+was now almost up to his chin, and he grew so tired under his
+burden that he began to think they should never get out; but he
+fought against it and kept on, steadying himself against the
+timbers. He knew that if he went down it was the end. Many thoughts
+came to him of the past. He banished them and tried to speak words
+of encouragement, though he could scarcely hear himself.</p>
+<p>"Shout," he said hoarsely; and the boy shouted, though it was
+somewhat feeble.</p>
+<p>A moment later, he gave a shout of an entirely different
+kind.</p>
+<p>"There is a light!" he cried.</p>
+<p>The sound revived Keith's fainting energies, and he tried to
+muster his flagging strength. The boy shouted again, and in
+response there came back, strangely flattened, the shrill cry of a
+woman. Keith staggered forward with Bluffy, at times holding
+himself up by the side-timbers. He was conscious of a light and of
+voices, but was too exhausted to know more. If he could only keep
+the man and the boy above water until assistance came! He summoned
+his last atom of strength.</p>
+<p>"Hold tight to the timbers, Hennson," he cried; "I am
+going."</p>
+<p>The rest was a confused dream. He was conscious for a moment of
+the weight being lifted from him, and he was sinking into the water
+as if into a soft couch. He thought some one clutched him, but he
+knew nothing more.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Terpsichore was out on the street when the rumor of the accident
+reached her. Any accident always came home to her, and she was
+prompt to do what she could to help, in any case. But this was Mr.
+Keith's mine, and rumor had it that he was among the lost.
+Terpsichore was not attired for such an emergency; when she went on
+the streets, she still wore some of her old finery, though it was
+growing less and less of late. She always acted quickly. Calling to
+a barkeeper who had come to his front door on hearing the news, to
+bring her brandy immediately, she dashed into a dry-goods store
+near by and got an armful of blankets, and when the clerk, a
+stranger just engaged in the store, made some question about
+charging them to her, she tore off her jewelled watch and almost
+flung it at the man.</p>
+<p>"Take that, idiot! Men are dying," she said. "I have not time to
+box your jaws." And snatching up the blankets, she ran out, stopped
+a passing buggy, and flinging them into it, sprang in herself. With
+a nod of thanks to the barkeeper, who had brought out several
+bottles of brandy, she snatched the reins from the half-dazed
+driver, and heading the horse up the street that led out toward the
+mine, she lashed him into a gallop. She arrived at the scene of the
+accident just before the first men rescued reappeared. She learned
+of Keith's effort to save them. She would have gone into the mine
+herself had she not been restrained. Just then the men came
+out.</p>
+<p>The shouts and cries of joy that greeted so unexpected a
+deliverance drowned everything else for a few moments; but as man
+after man was met and received half dazed into the arms of his
+family and friends, the name of Keith began to be heard on all
+sides. One voice, however, was more imperative than the others; one
+figure pressed to the front--that of the gayly dressed woman who
+had just been comforting and encouraging the weeping women about
+the mine entrance.</p>
+<p>"Where is Mr. Keith?" she demanded of man after man.</p>
+<p>The men explained. "He went on to try and find three more men
+who are down there--Bluffy and Hennson and his boy."</p>
+<p>"Who went with him?"</p>
+<p>"No one. He went alone."</p>
+<p>"And you men let him go?"</p>
+<p>"We could not help it. He insisted. We tried to make him come
+with us."</p>
+<p>"You cowards!" she cried, tearing off her wrap. "Of course, he
+insisted, for he is a <i>man</i>. Had one woman been down there,
+she would not have let him go alone." She sprang over the fencing
+rope as lightly as a deer, and started toward the entrance. A cry
+broke from the crowd.</p>
+<p>"She's going! Stop her! She's crazy! Catch her!"</p>
+<p>Several men sprang over the rope and started after her. Hearing
+them, Terpsichore turned. With outstretched arms spread far apart
+and blazing eyes, she faced them.</p>
+<p>"If any man tries to stop me, I will kill him on the spot, as
+God lives!" she cried, snatching up a piece of iron bar that lay
+near by. "I am going to find that man, dead or alive. If there is
+one of you man enough to come with me, come on. If not, I will go
+alone."</p>
+<p>"I will go with you!" A tall, sallow-faced man who had just come
+up pushed through the throng and overtook her. "You stay here; I
+will go." It was Tib Drummond, the preacher. He was still panting.
+The girl hardly noticed him. She waved him aside and dashed on.</p>
+<p>A dozen men offered to go if she would come back.</p>
+<p>"No; I shall go with you," she said; and knowing that every
+moment was precious, and thinking that the only way to pacify her
+was to make the attempt, the men yielded, and a number of them
+entered the mine with her, the lank preacher among them.</p>
+<p>They had just reached the bottom when the faint outline of
+something black was seen in the glimmer that their lights threw in
+the distance. Terpy, with a cry, dashed forward, and was just in
+time to catch Keith as he sank beneath the black water.</p>
+<p>When the rescuing party with their burdens reached the surface
+once more, the scene was one to revive even a flagging heart; but
+Keith and Bluffy were both too far gone to know anything of it.</p>
+<p>The crowd, which up to this time had been buzzing with the
+excitement of the reaction following the first rescue, suddenly
+hushed down to an awed silence as Keith and Bluffy were brought out
+and were laid limp and unconscious on a blanket, which Terpsichore
+had snatched from a man in the front of the others. Many women
+pressed forward to offer assistance, but the girl waved them
+back.</p>
+<p>"A doctor!" she cried, and reaching for a brandy-bottle, she
+pressed it first to Keith's lips. Turning to Drummond, the
+preacher, who stood gaunt and dripping above her, she cried
+fiercely: "Pray, man; if you ever prayed, pray now. Pray, and if
+you save 'em, I'll leave town. I swear before God I will. Tell Him
+so."</p>
+<p>But the preacher needed no urging. Falling on his knees, he
+prayed as possibly he had never prayed before. In a few moments
+Keith began to come to. But Bluffy was still unconscious, and a
+half-hour later the Doctor pronounced him past hope.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>It was some time before Keith was able to rise from his bed, and
+during this period a number of events had taken place affecting
+him, and, more or less, affecting New Leeds. Among these was the
+sale of Mr. Plume's paper to a new rival which had recently been
+started in the place, and the departure of Mr. Plume (to give his
+own account of the matter) "to take a responsible position upon a
+great metropolitan journal." He was not a man, he said, "to waste
+his divine talents in the attempt to carry on his shoulders the
+blasted fortunes of a 'bursted boom,' when the world was pining for
+the benefit of his ripe experience." Another account of the same
+matter was that rumor had begun to connect Mr. Plume's name with
+the destruction of the Wickersham mine and the consequent disaster
+in the Rawson mine. His paper, with brazen effrontery, had declared
+that the accident in the latter was due to the negligence of the
+management. This was too much for the people of New Leeds in their
+excited condition. Bluffy was dead; but Hennson, the man whom Keith
+had rescued, had stated that they had cut through into a shaft when
+the water broke in on them, and an investigation having been begun,
+not only of this matter, but of the previous explosion in the
+Wickersham mine, Mr. Plume had sold out his paper hastily and
+shaken the dust of New Leeds from his feet.</p>
+<p>Keith knew nothing of this until it was all over. He was very
+ill for a time, and but for the ministrations of Dr. Balsam, who
+came up from Ridgely to look after him, and the care of a devoted
+nurse in the person of Terpsichore, this history might have ended
+then. Terpsichore had, immediately after Keith's accident, closed
+her establishment and devoted herself to his care. There were many
+other offers of similar service, for New Leeds was now a
+considerable town, and Keith might have had a fair proportion of
+the gentler sex to minister to him; but Dr. Balsam, to whom
+Terpsichore had telegraphed immediately after Keith's rescue, had,
+after his first interview with her in the sick-room, decided in
+favor of the young woman.</p>
+<p>"She has the true instinct," said the Doctor to himself. "She
+knows when to let well enough alone, and holds her tongue."</p>
+<p>Thus, when Keith was able to take notice again, he found himself
+in good hands.</p>
+<p>A few days after he was able to get up, Keith received a
+telegram summoning him to New York to meet the officers of the
+company. As weak as he was, he determined to go, and, against the
+protestations of doctor and nurse, he began to make his
+preparations.</p>
+<p>Just before Keith left, a visitor was announced, or rather
+announced himself; for Squire Rawson followed hard upon his knock
+at the door. His heavy boots, he declared, "were enough to let
+anybody know he was around, and give 'em time to stop anything they
+was ashamed o' doin'."</p>
+<p>The squire had come over, as he said, "to hear about things." It
+was the first time he had seen Keith since the accident, though,
+after he had heard of it, he had written and invited Keith to come
+"and rest up a bit at his house."</p>
+<p>When the old man learned of the summons that had come to Keith,
+he relit his pipe and puffed a moment in silence.</p>
+<p>"Reckon they'll want to know why they ain't been a realizin' of
+their dreams?" he said, with a twinkle in his half-shut eyes. "Ever
+notice, when a man is huntin', if he gits what he aims at, it's
+himself; but if he misses, it's the blamed old gun?"</p>
+<p>Keith smiled. He had observed that phenomenon.</p>
+<p>"Well, I suspicionate they'll be findin' fault with their gun. I
+have been a-watchin' o' the signs o' the times. If they do, don't
+you say nothin' to them about it; but I'm ready to take back my
+part of the property, and I've got a leetle money I might even
+increase my herd with."</p>
+<p>The sum he mentioned made Keith open his eyes.</p>
+<p>"When hard times comes," continued the old man, after enjoying
+Keith's surprise, "I had rather have my money in land than in one
+of these here banks. I has seen wild-cat money and Confederate
+money, and land's land. I don't know that it is much of a
+compliment to say that I has more confidence in you than I has in
+these here men what has come down from nobody-knows-where to open a
+bank on nobody-knows-what."</p>
+<p>Keith expressed his appreciation of the compliment, but thought
+that they must have something to bank on.</p>
+<p>"Oh, they've got something," admitted the capitalist. "But you
+know what it is. They bank on brass and credulity. That's what I
+calls it."</p>
+<p>The old man's face clouded. "I had been puttin' that by for
+Phrony," he said. "But she didn't want it. <i>My</i> money warn't
+good enough for her. Some day she'll know better."</p>
+<p>Keith waited for his humor to pass.</p>
+<p>"I won't ever do nothin' for her; but if ever you see her, I'd
+like you to help her out if she needs it," he said huskily.</p>
+<p>Keith promised faithfully that he would.</p>
+<p>That afternoon Terpy knocked at his door, and came in with that
+mingled shyness and boldness which was characteristic of her.</p>
+<p>Keith offered her a chair and began to thank her for having
+saved his life.</p>
+<p>"Well, I am always becoming indebted to you anew for saving my
+life--"</p>
+<p>"I didn't come for that," declared the girl. "I didn't save your
+life. I just went down to do what I could to help you. You know how
+that mine got flooded?"</p>
+<p>"I do," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"They done it to do you," she said; "and they made Bill believe
+it was to hurt Wickersham. Bill's dead now, an' I don't want you to
+think he had anything against you." She began to cry.</p>
+<p>All this was new to Keith, and he said so.</p>
+<p>"Well, you won't say anything about what I said about Bill. J.
+Quincy made him think 'twas against Wickersham, and he was that
+drunk he didn't know what a fool they was makin' of him.--You are
+going away?" she said suddenly.</p>
+<p>"Oh, only for a very little while--I am going off about a little
+business for a short time. I expect to be back very soon."</p>
+<p>"Ah! I heard--I am glad to hear that you are coming back." She
+was manifestly embarrassed, and Keith was wondering more and more
+what she wanted of him. "I just wanted to say good-by. I am going
+away." She was fumbling at her wrap. "And to tell you I have
+changed my business. I'm not goin' to keep a dance-house any
+longer."</p>
+<p>"I am glad of that," said Keith, and then stuck fast again.</p>
+<p>"I don't think a girl ought to keep a dance-house or a
+bank?"</p>
+<p>"No; I agree with you. What are you going to do?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know; I thought of trying a milliner. I know right
+smart about hats; but I'd wear all the pretty ones and give all the
+ugly ones away," she said, with a poor little smile. "And it might
+interfere with Mrs. Gaskins, and she is a widder. So I thought I'd
+go away. I thought of being a nurse--I know a little about that. I
+used to be about the hospital at my old home, and I've had some
+little experience since." She was evidently seeking his advice.</p>
+<p>"You saved my life," said Keith. "Dr. Balsam says you are a born
+nurse."</p>
+<p>She put this by without comment, and Keith went on.</p>
+<p>"Where was your home?"</p>
+<p>"Grofton."</p>
+<p>"Grofton? You mean in England? In the West Country?"</p>
+<p>She nodded. "Yes. I was the girl the little lady gave the doll
+to. You were there. Don't you remember? I ran away with it. I have
+it now--a part of it. They broke it up; but I saved the body."</p>
+<p>Keith's eyes opened wide.</p>
+<p>"That Lois Huntington gave it to?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. I heard you were going to be married?" she said
+suddenly.</p>
+<p>"I! Married! No! No such good luck for me." His laugh had an
+unexpected tone of bitterness in it. She gave him a searching
+glance in the dusk, and presently began again haltingly.</p>
+<p>"I want you to know I am never going back to that any more."</p>
+<p>"I am glad to hear it."</p>
+<p>"You were the first to set me to thinkin' about it."</p>
+<p>"I!"</p>
+<p>"Yes; I want to live straight, and I'm goin' to."</p>
+<p>"I am sure you are, and I cannot tell you how glad I am," he
+said cordially.</p>
+<p>"Yes, thankee." She was looking down, picking shyly at the
+fringe on her wrap. "And I want you to know 'twas you done it. I
+have had a hard life--you don't know how hard--ever since I was a
+little bit of a gal--till I run away from home. And then 'twas
+harder. And they all treated me's if I was just a--a dog, and the
+worst kind of a dog. So I lived like a dog. I learned how to bite,
+and then they treated me some better, because they found I would
+bite if they fooled with me. And then I learned what fools and
+cowards men were, and I used 'em. I used to love to play 'em, and I
+done it. I used to amuse 'em for money and hold 'em off. But I knew
+sometime I'd die like a dog as I lived like one--and then you
+came--." She paused and looked away out of the window, and after a
+gulp went on again: "They preached at me for dancin'. But I don't
+think there's any harm dancin'. And I love it better'n anything
+else in the worl'."</p>
+<p>"I do not, either," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"You was the only one as treated me as if I was--some'n' I
+warn't. I fought against you and tried to drive you out, but you
+stuck, and I knew then I was beat. I didn't know 'twas you when
+I--made such a fool of myself that time--."</p>
+<p>Keith laughed.</p>
+<p>"Well, I certainly did not know it was you."</p>
+<p>"No--I wanted you to know that," she went on gravely,
+"because--because, if I had, I wouldn' 'a' done it--for old times'
+sake." She felt for her handkerchief, and not finding it readily,
+suddenly caught up the bottom of her skirt and wiped her eyes with
+it as she might have done when a little girl.</p>
+<p>Keith tried to comfort her with words of assurance, the tone of
+which was at least consoling.</p>
+<p>"I always was a fool about crying--an' I was thinkin' about
+Bill," she said brokenly. "Good-by." She wrung his hand, turned,
+and walked rapidly out of the room, leaving Keith with a warm
+feeling about his heart.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<h3>THE DIRECTORS' MEETING</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Keith found, on his arrival in New York to meet his directors,
+that a great change had taken place in business circles since his
+visit there when he was getting up his company.</p>
+<p>Even Norman, at whose office Keith called immediately on his
+arrival, appeared more depressed than Keith had ever imagined he
+could be. He looked actually care-worn.</p>
+<p>As they started off to attend the meeting, Norman warned Keith
+that the meeting might be unpleasant for him, but urged him to keep
+cool, and not mind too much what might be said to him.</p>
+<p>"I told you once, you remember, that men are very unreasonable
+when they are losing." He smiled gloomily.</p>
+<p>Keith told him of old Rawson's offer.</p>
+<p>"You may need it," said Norman.</p>
+<p>When Keith and Norman arrived at the office of the company, they
+found the inner office closed. Norman, being a director, entered at
+once, and finally the door opened and "Mr. Keith" was invited in.
+As he entered, a director was showing two men out of the room by a
+side door, and Keith had a glimpse of the back of one of them. The
+tall, thin figure suggested to him Mr. J. Quincy Plume; but he was
+too well dressed to be Mr. Plume, and Keith put the matter from his
+mind as merely an odd resemblance. The other person he did not
+see.</p>
+<p>Keith's greeting was returned, as it struck him, somewhat coldly
+by most of them. Only two of the directors shook hands with
+him.</p>
+<p>It was a meeting which Keith never forgot. He soon found that he
+had need of all of his self-control. He was cross-examined by Mr.
+Kestrel. It was evident that it was believed that he had wasted
+their money, if he had not done worse. The director sat with a
+newspaper in his lap, to which, from time to time, he appeared to
+refer. From the line of the questioning, Keith soon recognized the
+source of his information.</p>
+<p>"You have been misled," Keith said coldly, in reply to a
+question. "I desire to know the authority for your statement."</p>
+<p>"I must decline," was the reply. "I think I may say that it is
+an authority which is unimpeachable. You observe that it is one who
+knows what he is speaking of?" He gave a half-glance about him at
+his colleagues.</p>
+<p>"A spy?" demanded Keith, coldly, his eye fixed on the other.</p>
+<p>"No, sir. A man of position, a man whose sources of knowledge
+even you would not question. Why, this has been charged in the
+public prints without denial!" he added triumphantly.</p>
+<p>"It has been charged in one paper," said Keith, "a paper which
+every one knows is for sale and has been bought--by your
+rival."</p>
+<p>"It is based not only on the statement of the person to whom I
+have alluded, but is corroborated by others."</p>
+<p>"By what others?" inquired Keith.</p>
+<p>"By another," corrected Mr. Kestrel.</p>
+<p>"That only proves that there are two men who are liars," said
+Keith, slowly. "I know but two men who I believe would have been
+guilty of such barefaced and brazen falsehoods. Shall I name
+them?"</p>
+<p>"If you choose."</p>
+<p>"They are F.C. Wickersham and a hireling of his, Mr. J. Quincy
+Plume."</p>
+<p>There was a stir among the directors. Keith had named both men.
+It was a fortunate shot.</p>
+<p>"By Jove! Brought down a bird with each barrel," said Mr. Yorke,
+who was one of the directors, to another in an undertone.</p>
+<p>Keith proceeded to give the history of the mine and of its rival
+mine, the Wickersham property.</p>
+<p>During the cross-examination Norman sat a silent witness. Beyond
+a look of satisfaction when Keith made his points clearly or
+countered on his antagonist with some unanswerable fact, he had
+taken no part in the colloquy. Up to this time Keith had not
+referred to him or even looked at him, but he glanced at him now,
+and the expression on his face decided Keith.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Wentworth, there, knows the facts. He knows F.C. Wickersham
+as well as I do, and he has been on the ground."</p>
+<p>There was a look of surprise on the face of nearly every one
+present. How could he dare to say it!</p>
+<p>"Oh, I guess we all know him," said one, to relieve the
+tension.</p>
+<p>Norman bowed his assent.</p>
+<p>Mr. Kestrel shifted his position.</p>
+<p>"Never mind Mr. Wentworth; it's <i>your</i> part in the
+transaction that we are after," he said insolently.</p>
+<p>The blood rushed to Keith's face; but a barely perceptible
+glance from Norman helped him to hold himself in check. The
+director glanced down at the newspaper.</p>
+<p>"How about that accident in our mine? Some of us have thought
+that it was carelessness on the part of the local management. It
+has been charged that proper inspection would have indicated that
+the flooding of an adjacent mine should have given warning; in
+fact, had given warning." He half glanced around at his associates,
+and then fastened his eyes on Keith.</p>
+<p>Keith's eyes met his unflinchingly and held them. He drew in his
+breath with a sudden sound, as a man might who has received a slap
+full in the face. Beyond this, there was no sound. Keith sat for a
+moment in silence. The blow had dazed him. In the tumult of his
+thought, as it returned, it seemed as if the noise of the stricken
+crowd was once more about him, weeping women and moaning men; and
+he was descending into the blackness of death. Once more the roar
+of that rushing water was in his ears; he was once more plunging
+through the darkness; once more he was being borne down into its
+depths; again he was struggling, gasping, floundering toward the
+light; once more he returned to consciousness, to find himself
+surrounded by eyes full of sympathy--of devotion. The eyes changed
+suddenly. The present came back to him. Hostile eyes were about
+him.</p>
+<p>Keith rose from his chair slowly, and slowly turned from his
+questioner toward the others.</p>
+<p>"Gentlemen, I have nothing further to say to you. I have the
+honor to resign my position under you."</p>
+<p>"Resign!" exclaimed the director who had been badgering him.
+"Resign your position!" He leaned back in his chair and
+laughed.</p>
+<p>Keith turned on him so quickly that he pushed his chair back as
+if he were afraid he might spring across the table on him.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Resign!" Keith was leaning forward across the table now,
+resting his weight on one hand. "Anything to terminate our
+association. I am no longer in your employ, Mr. Kestrel." His eyes
+had suddenly blazed, and held Mr. Kestrel's eyes unflinchingly. His
+voice was calm, but had the coldness of a steel blade.</p>
+<p>There was a movement among the directors. They shifted uneasily
+in their chairs, and several of them pushed them back. They did not
+know what might happen. Keith was the incarnation of controlled
+passion. Mr. Kestrel seemed to shrink up within himself. Norman
+broke the silence.</p>
+<p>"I do not wonder that Mr. Keith should feel aggrieved," he said,
+with feeling. "I have held off from taking part in this interview
+up to the present, because I promised to do so, and because I felt
+that Mr. Keith was abundantly able to take care of himself; but I
+think that he has been unjustly dealt with and has been roughly
+handled."</p>
+<p>Keith's only answer was a slow wave of the arm in protest toward
+Norman to keep clear of the contest and leave it to him. He was
+standing quite straight now, his eyes still resting upon Mr.
+Kestrel's face, with a certain watchfulness in them, as if he were
+expecting him to stir again, and were ready to spring on him should
+he do so.</p>
+<p>Unheeding him, Norman went on.</p>
+<p>"I know that much that he says is true." Keith looked at him
+quickly, his form stiffening. "And I believe that <i>all</i> that
+he says is true," continued Norman; "and I am unwilling to stand by
+longer and see this method of procedure carried on."</p>
+<p>Keith bowed. There flashed across his mind the picture of a boy
+rushing up the hill to his rescue as he stood by a rock-pile on a
+hillside defending himself against overwhelming assailants, and his
+face softened.</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't propose to be dictated to as to how I shall
+conduct my own business," put in Mr. Kestrel, in a sneering voice.
+When the spell of Keith's gaze was lifted from him he had
+recovered.</p>
+<p>If Keith heard him now, he gave no sign of it, nor was it
+needed, for Norman turned upon him.</p>
+<p>"I think you will do whatever this board directs," he said, with
+almost as much contempt as Keith had shown.</p>
+<p>He took up the defence of the management to such good purpose
+that a number of the other directors went over to his side.</p>
+<p>They were willing to acquit Mr. Keith of blame, they said, and
+to show their confidence in him. They thought it would be necessary
+to have some one to look after the property and prevent further
+loss until better times should come, and they thought it would be
+best to get Mr. Keith to remain in charge for the present.</p>
+<p>During this time Keith had remained motionless and silent,
+except to bow his acknowledgments to Norman. He received their new
+expression of confidence in silence, until the discussion had
+ceased and the majority were on his side. Then he faced Mr.
+Yorke.</p>
+<p>"Gentlemen," he said, "I am obliged to you for your expression;
+but it comes too late. Nothing on earth could induce me ever again
+to assume a position in which I could be subjected to what I have
+gone through this morning. I will never again have any business
+association with--" he turned and looked at Mr. Kestrel--"Mr.
+Kestrel, or those who have sustained him."</p>
+<p>Mr. Kestrel shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+<p>"Oh, as to that," he laughed, "you need have no trouble. I shall
+get out as soon as I can. I have no more desire to associate with
+you than you have with me. All I want to do is to save what you
+mis--"</p>
+<p>Keith's eyes turned on him quietly.</p>
+<p>"--what I was misled into putting into your sink-hole down
+there. You may remember that you told me, when I went in, that you
+would guarantee me all I put in." His voice rose into a sneer.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no. None of that, none of that!" interrupted Norman,
+quickly. "You may remember, Mr. Kestrel,--?"</p>
+<p>But Keith interrupted him with a wave of his hand.</p>
+<p>"I do remember. I have a good memory, Mr. Kestrel."</p>
+<p>"That was all done away with," insisted Norman, his arm
+outstretched toward Mr. Kestrel. "You remember that an offer was
+made you of your input and interest, and you declined?"</p>
+<p>"I am speaking to <i>him</i>," said Mr. Kestrel, not turning his
+eyes from Keith.</p>
+<p>"I renew that offer now," said Keith, coldly.</p>
+<p>"Then that's all right." Mr. Kestrel sat back in his chair. "I
+accept your proposal, principal and interest."</p>
+<p>Protests and murmurs went around the board, but Mr. Kestrel did
+not heed them. Leaning forward, he seized a pen, and drawing a
+sheet of paper to him, began to scribble a memorandum of the terms,
+which, when finished, he pushed across the table to Keith.</p>
+<p>Keith took it against Norman's protest, and when he had read it,
+picked up a pen and signed his name firmly.</p>
+<p>"Here, witness it," said Mr. Kestrel to his next neighbor. "If
+any of the rest of you want to save your bones, you had better come
+in."</p>
+<p>Several of the directors agreed with him.</p>
+<p>Though Norman protested, Keith accepted their proposals, and a
+paper was drawn up which most of those present signed. It provided
+that a certain time should be given Keith in which to raise money
+to make good his offer, and arrangements were made provisionally to
+wind up the present company, and to sell out and transfer its
+rights to a new organization. Some of the directors prudently
+insisted on reserving the right to withdraw their proposals should
+they change their minds. It may be stated, however, that they had
+no temptation to do so. Times rapidly grew worse instead of
+better.</p>
+<p>But Keith had occasion to know how sound was Squire Rawson's
+judgment when, a little later, another of the recurrent waves of
+depression swept over the country, and several banks in New Leeds
+went down, among them the bank in which old Rawson had had his
+money. The old man came up to town to remind Keith of his
+wisdom.</p>
+<p>"Well, what do you think of brass and credulity now?" he
+demanded.</p>
+<p>"Let me know when you begin to prophesy against me," said Keith,
+laughing.</p>
+<p>"'Tain't no prophecy. It's jest plain sense. Some folks has it
+and some hasn't. When sense tells you a thing, hold on to it.</p>
+<p>"Well, you jest go ahead and git things in shape, and don't
+bother about me. No use bein' in a hurry, neither. I have observed
+that when times gits bad, they generally gits worse. It's sorter
+like a fever; you've got to wait for the crisis and jest kind o'
+nurse 'em along. But I don't reckon that coal is goin' to run away.
+It has been there some time, accordin' to what that young man used
+to say, and if it was worth what they gin for it a few years ago,
+it's goin' to be worth more a few years hence. When a wheel keeps
+turnin', the bottom's got to come up sometime, and if we can stick
+we'll be there. I think you and I make a pretty good team. You let
+me furnish the ideas and you do the work, and we'll come out ahead
+o' some o' these Yankees yet. Jest hold your horses; keep things in
+good shape, and be ready to start when the horn blows. It's goin'
+to blow sometime."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The clouds that had begun to rest in Norman Wentworth's eyes and
+the lines that had written themselves in his face were not those of
+business alone. Fate had brought him care of a deeper and sadder
+kind. Though Keith did not know it till later, the little rift
+within the lute, that he had felt, but had not understood, that
+first evening when he dined at Norman's house, had widened, and
+Norman's life was beginning to be overcast with the saddest of all
+clouds. Miss Abigail's keen intuition had discovered the flaw. Mrs.
+Wentworth had fallen a victim to her folly. Love of pleasure, love
+of admiration, love of display, had become a part of Mrs.
+Wentworth's life, and she was beginning to reap the fruits of her
+ambition.</p>
+<p>For a time it was mighty amusing to her. To shop all morning,
+make the costliest purchases; to drive on the avenue or in the Park
+of an afternoon with the latest and most stylish turnout, in the
+handsomest toilet; to give the finest dinners; to spend the evening
+in the most expensive box; to cause men to open their eyes with
+admiration, and to make women grave with envy: all this gave her
+delight for a time--so much delight that she could not forego it
+even for her husband. Norman was so occupied of late that he could
+not go about with her as much as he had done. His father's health
+had failed, and then he had died, throwing all the business on
+Norman.</p>
+<p>Ferdy Wickersham had returned home from abroad not long
+before--alone. Rumor had connected his name while abroad with some
+woman--an unknown and very pretty woman had "travelled with him."
+Ferdy, being rallied by his friends about it, shook his head. "Must
+have been some one else." Grinnell Rhodes, who had met him, said
+she declared herself his wife. Ferdy's denial was most
+conclusive--he simply laughed.</p>
+<p>To Mrs. Wentworth he had told a convincing tale. It was a
+slander. Norman was against him, he knew, but she, at least, would
+believe he had been maligned.</p>
+<p>Wickersham had waited for such a time in the affairs of Mrs.
+Wentworth. He had watched for it; striven to bring it about in many
+almost imperceptible ways; had tendered her sympathy; had been
+ready with help as she needed it; till he began to believe that he
+was making some impression. It was, of all the games he played, the
+dearest just now to his heart. It had a double zest. It had
+appeared to the world that Norman Wentworth had defeated him. He
+had always defeated him--first as a boy, then at college, and later
+when he had borne off the prize for which Ferdy had really striven.
+Ferdy would now show who was the real victor. If Louise Caldwell
+had passed him by for Norman Wentworth, he would prove that he
+still possessed her heart.</p>
+<p>It was not long, therefore, before society found a delightful
+topic of conversation,--that silken-clad portion of society which
+usually deals with such topics,--the increasing intimacy between
+Ferdy Wickersham and Mrs. Wentworth.</p>
+<p>Tales were told of late visits; of strolls in the dusk of
+evenings on unfrequented streets; of little suppers after the
+opera; of all the small things that deviltry can suggest and
+malignity distort. Wickersham cared little for having his name
+associated with that of any one, and he was certainly not going to
+be more careful for another's name than for his own. He had grown
+more reckless since his return, but it had not injured him with his
+set. It flattered his pride to be credited with the conquest of so
+cold and unapproachable a Diana as Louise Wentworth.</p>
+<p>"What was more natural?" said Mrs. Nailor. After all, Ferdy
+Wickersham was her real romance, and she was his, notwithstanding
+all the attentions he had paid Alice Yorke. "Besides," said the
+amiable lady, "though Norman Wentworth undoubtedly lavishes large
+sums on his wife, and gives her the means to gratify her
+extravagant tastes, I have observed that he is seen quite as much
+with Mrs. Lancaster as with her, and any woman of spirit will
+resent this. You need not tell me that he would be so complacent
+over all that driving and strolling and box-giving that Ferdy does
+for her if he did not find his divertisement elsewhere."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor even went to the extent of rallying Ferdy on the
+subject.</p>
+<p>"You are a naughty boy. You have no right to go around here
+making women fall in love with you as you do," she said, with that
+pretended reproof which is a real encouragement.</p>
+<p>"One might suppose I was like David, who slew his tens of
+thousands," answered Ferdy. "Which of my victims are you attempting
+to rescue?"</p>
+<p>"You know?"</p>
+<p>As Ferdy shook his head, she explained further.</p>
+<p>"I don't say that it isn't natural she should find you
+more--more--sympathetic than a man who is engrossed in business
+when he is not engrossed in dangling about a pair of blue eyes; but
+you ought not to do it. Think of her."</p>
+<p>"I thought you objected to my thinking of her?" said Mr.
+Wickersham, lightly.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor tapped him with her fan to show her displeasure.</p>
+<p>"You are so provoking. Why won't you be serious?"</p>
+<p>"Serious? I never was more serious in my life. Suppose I tell
+you I think of her all the time?" He looked at her keenly, then
+broke into a laugh as he read her delight in the speech. "Don't you
+think I am competent to attend to my own affairs, even if Louise
+Caldwell is the soft and unsophisticated creature you would make
+her? I am glad you did not feel it necessary to caution me about
+her husband?" His eyes gave a flash.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor hastened to put herself right--that is, on the side
+of the one present, for with her the absent was always in the
+wrong.</p>
+<p>Wickersham improved his opportunities with the ability of a
+veteran. Little by little he excited Mrs. Wentworth's jealousy.
+Norman, he said, necessarily saw a great deal of Alice Lancaster,
+for he was her business agent. It was, perhaps, not necessary for
+him to see her every day, but it was natural that he should. The
+arrow stuck and rankled. And later, at an entertainment, when she
+saw Norman laughing and enjoying himself in a group of old friends,
+among whom was Alice Lancaster, Mrs. Norman was on fire with
+suspicion, and her attitude toward Alice Lancaster changed.</p>
+<p>So, before Norman was aware of it, he found life completely
+changed for him. As a boatman on a strange shore in the night-time
+drifts without knowing of it, he, in the absorption of his
+business, drifted away from his old relation without marking the
+process. His wife had her life and friends, and he had his. He made
+at times an effort to recover the old relation, but she was too
+firmly held in the grip of the life she had chosen for him to get
+her back.</p>
+<p>His wife complained that he was out of sympathy with her, and he
+could not deny it. She resented this, and charged him with
+neglecting her. No man will stand such a charge, and Norman
+defended himself hotly.</p>
+<p>"I do not think it lies in your mouth to make such a charge," he
+said, with a flash in his eye. "I am nearly always at home when I
+am not necessarily absent. You can hardly say as much. I do not
+think my worst enemy would charge me with that. Even Ferdy
+Wickersham would not say that."</p>
+<p>She fired at the name.</p>
+<p>"You are always attacking my friends," she declared. "I think
+they are quite as good as yours."</p>
+<p>Norman turned away. He looked gloomily out of the window for a
+moment, and then faced his wife again.</p>
+<p>"Louise," he said gravely, "if I have been hard and
+unsympathetic, I have not meant to be. Why can't we start all over
+again? You are more than all the rest of the world to me. I will
+give up whatever you object to, and you give up what I object to.
+That is a good way to begin." His eyes had a look of longing in
+them, but Mrs. Wentworth did not respond.</p>
+<p>"You will insist on my giving up my friends," she said.</p>
+<p>"Your friends? I do not insist on your giving up any friend on
+earth. Mrs. Nailor and her like are not your friends. They spend
+their time tearing to pieces the characters of others when you are
+present, and your character when you are absent. Wickersham is
+incapable of being a friend."</p>
+<p>"You are always so unjust to him," said Mrs. Wentworth,
+warmly.</p>
+<p>"I am not unjust to him. I have known him all my life, and I
+tell you he would sacrifice any one and every one to his
+pleasure."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth began to defend him warmly, and so the quarrel
+ended worse than it had begun.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+<h3>MRS. CREAMER'S BALL</h3>
+<br>
+<p>The next few years passed as the experience of old Rawson had
+led him to predict. Fortunes went down; but Fortune's wheel is
+always turning, and, as the old countryman said, "those that could
+stick would come up on top again."</p>
+<p>Keith, however, had prospered. He had got the Rawson mine to
+running again, and even in the hardest times had been able to make
+it pay expenses. Other properties had failed and sold out, and had
+been bought in by Keith's supporters, when Wickersham once more
+appeared in New Leeds affairs. It was rumored that Wickersham was
+going to start again. Old Adam Rawson's face grew dark at the
+rumor. He said to Keith:</p>
+<p>"If that young man comes down here, it's him or me. I'm an old
+man, and I ain't got long to live; but I want to live to meet him
+once. If he's got any friends, they'd better tell him not to come."
+He sat glowering and puffing his pipe morosely.</p>
+<p>Keith tried to soothe him; but the old fellow had received a
+wound that knew no healing.</p>
+<p>"I know all you say, and I'm much obliged to you; but I can't
+accept it. It's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth with me.
+He has entered my home and struck me in the dark. Do you think I
+done all I have done jest for the money I was makin'! No; I wanted
+revenge. I have set on my porch of a night and seen her wanderin'
+about in them fureign cities, all alone, trampin' the
+streets--trampin', trampin', trampin'; tired, and, maybe, sick and
+hungry, not able to ask them outlandish folks for even a piece of
+bread--her that used to set on my knee and hug me with her little
+arms and call me granddad, and claim all the little calves for
+hers--jest the little ones; and that I've ridden many a mile over
+the mountains for, thinkin' how she was goin' to run out to meet me
+when I got home. And now even my old dog's dead--died after she
+went away.</p>
+<p>"No!" he broke out fiercely. "If he comes back here, it's him or
+me! By the Lord! if he comes back here, I'll pay him the debt I owe
+him. If she's his wife, I'll make her a widow, and if she ain't,
+I'll revenge her."</p>
+<p>He mopped the beads of sweat that had broken out on his brow,
+and without a word stalked out of the door.</p>
+<p>But Ferdy Wickersham had no idea of returning to New Leeds. He
+found New York quite interesting enough for him about this
+time.</p>
+<p>The breach between Norman and his wife had grown of late.</p>
+<p>Gossip divided the honors between them, and some said it was on
+Ferdy Wickersham's account; others declared that it was Mrs.
+Lancaster who had come between them. Yet others said it was a
+matter of money--that Norman had become tired of his wife's
+extravagance and had refused to stand it any longer.</p>
+<p>Keith knew vaguely of the trouble between Norman and his wife;
+but he did not know the extent of it, and he studiously kept up his
+friendly relations with her as well as with Norman. His business
+took him to New York from time to time, and he was sensible that
+the life there was growing more and more attractive for him. He was
+fitting into it too, and enjoying it more and more. He was like a
+strong swimmer who, used to battling in heavy waves, grows stronger
+with the struggle, and finds ever new enjoyment and courage in his
+endeavor. He felt that he was now quite a man of the world. He was
+aware that his point of view had changed and (a little) that he had
+changed. As flattering as was his growth in New Leeds, he had a
+much more infallible evidence of his success in the favor with
+which he was being received in New York.</p>
+<p>The favor that Mrs. Lancaster had shown Keith, and, much more,
+old Mrs. Wentworth's friendship, had a marked effect throughout
+their whole circle of acquaintance. That a man had been invited to
+these houses meant that he must be something. There were women who
+owned large houses, wore priceless jewels, cruised in their own
+yachts, had their own villas on ground as valuable as that which
+fronted the Roman Forum in old days, who would almost have licked
+the marble steps of those mansions to be admitted to sit at their
+dinner-tables and have their names appear in the Sunday issues of
+the newly established society journals among the blessed few. So,
+as soon as it appeared that Gordon was not only an acquaintance,
+but a friend of these critical leaders, women who had looked over
+his head as they drove up the avenue, and had just tucked their
+chins and lowered their eyelids when he had been presented, began
+to give him invitations. Among these was Mrs. Nailor. Truly, the
+world appeared warmer and kinder than Keith had thought.</p>
+<p>To be sure, it was at Mrs. Lancaster's that Mrs. Nailor met him,
+and Keith was manifestly on very friendly terms with the pretty
+widow. Even Mrs. Yorke, who was present on the occasion with her
+"heart," was impressively cordial to him. Mrs. Nailor had no idea
+of being left out. She almost gushed with affection, as she made a
+place beside her on a divan.</p>
+<p>"You do not come to see all your friends," she said, with her
+winningest smile and her most bird-like voice. "You appear to
+forget that you have other old friends in New York besides Mrs.
+Lancaster and Mrs. Yorke. Alice dear, you must not be selfish and
+engross all his time. You must let him come and see me, at least,
+sometimes. Yes?" This with a peculiarly innocent smile and
+tone.</p>
+<p>Keith declared that he was in New York very rarely, and Mrs.
+Lancaster, with a slightly heightened color, repudiated the idea
+that she had anything to do with his movements.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I hear of you here very often," declared Mrs. Nailor,
+roguishly. "I have a little bird that brings me all the news about
+my friends."</p>
+<p>"A little bird, indeed!" said Alice to herself, and to Keith
+later. "I'll be bound she has not. If she had a bird, the old cat
+would have eaten it."</p>
+<p>"You are going to the Creamers' ball, of course?" pursued Mrs.
+Nailor.</p>
+<p>No, Keith said: he was not going; he had been in New York only
+two days, and, somehow, his advent had been overlooked. He was
+always finding himself disappointed by discovering that New York
+was still a larger place than New Leeds.</p>
+<p>"Oh, but you must go! We must get you an invitation, mustn't we,
+Alice?" Mrs. Nailor was always ready to promise anything, provided
+she could make her engagement in partnership and then slip out and
+leave the performance to her friend.</p>
+<p>"Why, yes; there is not the least trouble about getting an
+invitation. Mrs. Nailor can get you one easily."</p>
+<p>Keith looked acquiescent.</p>
+<p>"No, my dear; you write the note. You know Mrs. Creamer every
+bit as well as I," protested Mrs. Nailor, "and I have already asked
+for at least a dozen. There are Mrs. Wyndham and Lady Stobbs, who
+were here last winter; and that charming Lord Huckster, who was at
+Newport last summer; and I don't know how many more--so you will
+have to get the invitation for Mr. Keith."</p>
+<p>Keith, with some amusement, declared that he did not wish any
+trouble taken; he had only said he would go because Mrs. Nailor had
+appeared to desire it so much.</p>
+<p>Next morning an invitation reached Keith,--he thought he knew
+through whose intervention,--and he accepted it.</p>
+<p>That evening, as Keith, about dusk, was going up the avenue on
+his way home, a young girl passed him, walking very briskly. She
+paused for a moment just ahead of him to give some money to a poor
+woman who, doubled up on the pavement in a black shawl, was
+grinding out from a wheezy little organ a thin, dirge-like
+strain.</p>
+<p>"Good evening. I hope you feel better to-day," Keith heard her
+say in a kind tone, though he lost all of the other's reply except
+the "God bless you."</p>
+<p>She was simply dressed in a plain, dark walking-suit, and
+something about her quick, elastic step and slim, trim figure as
+she sailed along, looking neither to the right nor to the left,
+attracted his attention. Her head was set on her shoulders in a way
+that gave her quite an air, and as she passed under a lamp the
+light showed the flash of a fine profile and an unusual face. She
+carried a parcel in her hand that might have been a roll of music,
+and from the lateness of the hour Keith fancied her a shop-girl on
+her way home, or possibly a music-teacher.</p>
+<p>Stirred by the glimpse of the refined face, and even more by the
+carriage of the little head under the dainty hat, Keith quickened
+his pace to obtain another glance at her. He had almost overtaken
+her when she stopped in front of a well-lighted window of a
+music-store. The light that fell on her face revealed to him a face
+of unusual beauty. Something about her graceful pose as, with her
+dark brows slightly knitted, she bent forward and scanned intently
+the pieces of music within, awakened old associations in Keith's
+mind, and sent him back to his boyhood at Elphinstone. And under an
+impulse, which he could better justify to himself than to her, he
+did a very audacious and improper thing. Taking off his hat, he
+spoke to her. She had been so absorbed that for a moment she did
+not comprehend that it was she he was addressing. Then, as it came
+to her that it was she to whom this stranger was speaking, she drew
+herself up and gave him a look of such withering scorn that Keith
+felt himself shrink. Next second, with her head high in the air,
+she had turned without a word and sped up the street, leaving Keith
+feeling very cheap and subdued.</p>
+<p>But that glance from dark eyes flashing with indignation had
+filled Keith with a sensation to which he had long been a stranger.
+Something about the simple dress, the high-bred face with its fine
+scorn; something about the patrician air of mingled horror and
+contempt, had suddenly cleaved through the worldly crust that had
+been encasing him for some time, and reaching his better self,
+awakened an emotion that he had thought gone forever. It was like a
+lightning-flash in the darkness. He knew that she had entered his
+life. His resolution was taken on the instant. He would meet her,
+and if she were what she looked to be--again Elphinstone and his
+youth swept into his mind. He already was conscious of a sense of
+protection; he felt curiously that he had the right to protect her.
+If he had addressed her, might not others do so? The thought made
+his blood boil. He almost wished that some one would attempt it,
+that he might assert his right to show her what he was, and thus
+retrieve himself in her eyes. Besides, he must know where she
+lived. So he followed her at a respectful distance till she ran up
+the steps of one of the better class of houses and disappeared
+within. He was too far off to be able to tell which house it was
+that she entered, but it was in the same block with Norman
+Wentworth's house.</p>
+<p>Keith walked the avenue that night for a long time, pondering
+how he should find and explain his conduct to the young
+music-teacher, for a music-teacher he had decided she must be. The
+next evening, too, he strolled for an hour on the avenue, scanning
+from a distance every fair passer-by, but he saw nothing of
+her.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Creamer's balls were, as Norman had once said, <i>the</i>
+balls of the season. "Only the rich and the noble were
+expected."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Creamer's house was one of the great, new, brown-stone
+mansions which had been built within the past ten years upon "the
+avenue." It had cost a fortune. Within, it was so sumptuous that a
+special work has been "gotten up," printed, and published by
+subscription, of its "art treasures," furniture, and
+upholstery.</p>
+<p>Into this palatial residence--for flattery could not have called
+it a home--Keith was admitted, along with some hundreds of other
+guests.</p>
+<p>To-night it was filled with, not flowers exactly, but with
+floral decorations; for the roses and orchids were lost in the
+designs--garlands, circles, and banks formed of an infinite number
+of flowers.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Creamer, a large, handsome woman with good shoulders, stood
+just inside the great drawing-room. She was gorgeously attired and
+shone with diamonds until the eyes ached with her splendor. Behind
+her stood Mr. Creamer, looking generally mightily bored. Now and
+then he smiled and shook hands with the guests, at times drawing a
+friend out of the line back into the rear for a chat, then
+relapsing again into indifference or gloom.</p>
+<p>Keith was presented to Mrs. Creamer. She only nodded to him.
+Keith moved on. He soon discovered that a cordial greeting to a
+strange guest was no part of the convention in that society. One or
+two acquaintances spoke to him, but he was introduced to no one; so
+he sauntered about and entertained himself observing the people.
+The women were in their best, and it was good.</p>
+<p>Keith was passing from one room to another when he became aware
+that a man, who was standing quite still in the doorway, was, like
+himself, watching the crowd. His face was turned away; but
+something about the compact figure and firm chin was familiar to
+him. Keith moved to take a look at his face. It was Dave
+Dennison.</p>
+<p>He had a twinkle in his eye as he said: "Didn't expect to see me
+here?"</p>
+<p>"Didn't expect to see myself here," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"I'm one of the swells now"; and Dave glanced down at his
+expensive shirt-front and his evening suit with complacency.
+"Wouldn't Jake give a lot to have such a bosom as that? I think I
+look just as well as some of 'em?" he queried, with a glance about
+him.</p>
+<p>Keith thought so too. "You are dressed for the part," he said.
+Keith's look of interest inspired him to go on.</p>
+<p>"You see, 'tain't like 'tis down with us, where you know
+everybody, and everything about him, to the number of drinks he can
+carry."</p>
+<p>"Well, what do you do here?" asked Keith, who was trying to
+follow Mr. Dennison's calm eye as, from time to time, it swept the
+rooms, resting here and there on a face or following a hand. He was
+evidently not merely a guest.</p>
+<p>"Detective."</p>
+<p>"A detective!" exclaimed Keith.</p>
+<p>Dave nodded. "Yes; watchin' the guests, to see they don't carry
+off each other. It is the new ones that puzzle us for a while," he
+added. "Now, there is a lady acting very mysteriously over there."
+His eye swept over the room and then visited, in that casual way it
+had, some one in the corner across the room. "I don't just seem to
+make her out. She looks all right--but--?"</p>
+<p>Keith followed the glance, and the blood rushed to his face and
+then surged back again to his heart, for there, standing against
+the wall, was the young girl whom he had spoken to on the street a
+few evenings before, who had given him so merited a rebuff. She was
+a patrician-looking creature and was standing quite alone,
+observing the scene with keen interest. Her girlish figure was
+slim; her eyes, under straight dark brows, were beautiful; and her
+mouth was almost perfect. Her fresh face expressed unfeigned
+interest, and though generally grave as she glanced about her, she
+smiled at times, evidently at her own thoughts.</p>
+<p>"I don't just make her out," repeated Mr. Dennison, softly. "I
+never saw her before, as I remember, and yet--!" He looked at her
+again.</p>
+<p>"Why, I do not see that she is acting at all mysteriously," said
+Keith. "I think she is a music-teacher. She is about the prettiest
+girl in the room. She may be a stranger, like myself, as no one is
+talking to her."</p>
+<p>"Don't no stranger git in here," said Mr. Dennison, decisively.
+"You see how different she is from the others. Most of them don't
+think about anything but themselves. She ain't thinkin' about
+herself at all; she is watchin' others. She may be a reporter--she
+appears mighty interested in clothes."</p>
+<p>"A reporter!"</p>
+<p>The surprise in Keith's tone amused his old pupil. "Yes, a
+sassiety reporter. They have curious ways here. Why, they pay money
+to git themselves in the paper."</p>
+<p>Just then so black a look came into his face for a second that
+Keith turned and followed his glance. It rested on Ferdy
+Wickersham, who was passing at a little distance, with Mrs.
+Wentworth on his arm.</p>
+<p>"There's one I am watchin' on my own account," said the
+detective. "I'm comin' up with him, and some day I'm goin' to light
+on him." His eye gave a flash and then became as calm and cold as
+usual. Presently he spoke again:</p>
+<p>"I don't forgit nothin'--'pears like I can't do it." His voice
+had a new subtone in it, which somehow sent Keith's memory back to
+the past. "I don't forgit a kindness, anyway," he said, laying his
+hand for a second on Keith's arm. "Well, see you later, sir." He
+moved slowly on. Keith was glad that patient enemy was not
+following him.</p>
+<p>Keith's inspection of the young girl had inflamed his interest.
+It was an unusual face--high-bred and fine. Humor lurked about the
+corners of her mouth; but resolution also might be read there. And
+Keith knew how those big, dark eyes could flash. And she was
+manifestly having a good time all to herself. She was dressed much
+more simply than any other woman he saw, in a plain muslin dress;
+but she made a charming picture as she stood against the wall, her
+dark eyes alight with interest. Her brown hair was drawn back from
+a brow of snowy whiteness, and her little head was set on her
+shoulders in a way that recalled to Keith an old picture. She would
+have had an air of distinction in any company. Here she shone like
+a jewel.</p>
+<p>Keith's heart went out to her. At sight of her his youth
+appeared to flood over him again. Keith fancied that she looked
+weary, for every now and then she lifted her head and glanced about
+the rooms as though looking for some one. A sense of protection
+swept over him. He must meet her. But how? She did not appear to
+know any one. Finally he determined on a bold expedient. If he
+succeeded it would give him a chance to recover himself as nothing
+else could; if he failed he could but fail. So he made his way over
+to her. But it was with a beating heart.</p>
+<p>"You look tired. Won't you let me get you a chair?" His voice
+sounded strange even to himself.</p>
+<p>"No, thank you; I am not tired." She thanked him civilly enough,
+but scarcely looked at him. "But I should like a glass of
+water."</p>
+<p>"It is the only liquid I believe I cannot get you," said Keith.
+"There are three places where water is scarce: the desert, a
+ball-room, and the other place where Dives was."</p>
+<p>She drew herself up a little.</p>
+<p>"But I will try," he added, and went off. On his return with a
+glass of water, she took it.</p>
+<p>As she handed the glass back to him, she glanced at him, and he
+caught her eye. Her head went up, and she flushed to the roots of
+her brown hair.</p>
+<p>"Oh!--I beg your pardon! I--I--really--I don't--Thank you very
+much. I am very sorry." She turned away stiffly.</p>
+<p>"Why?" said Keith, flushing in spite of himself. "You have done
+me a favor in enabling me to wait on you. May I introduce myself?
+And then I will get some one to do it in person--Mrs. Lancaster or
+Mrs. Wentworth. They will vouch for me."</p>
+<p>The girl looked up at him, at first with a hostile expression on
+her face, which changed suddenly to one of wonder.</p>
+<p>"Isn't this Gordon Keith?"</p>
+<p>Gordon's eyes opened wide. How could she know him?</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"You don't know me?" Her eyes were dancing now, and two dimples
+were flitting about her mouth. Keith's memory began to stir. She
+put her head on one side.</p>
+<p>"'Lois, if you'll kiss me I'll let you ride my horse,'" she said
+cajolingly.</p>
+<p>"Lois Huntington! It can't be!" exclaimed Keith, delighted. "You
+are just so high." Keith measured a height just above his left
+watch-pocket. "And you have long hair down your back."</p>
+<p>With a little twist she turned her head and showed him a head of
+beautiful brown hair done up in a Grecian knot just above the nape
+of a shapely little neck.</p>
+<p>"--And you have the brightest--"</p>
+<p>She dropped her eyes before his, which were looking right into
+them--though not until she had given a little flash from them,
+perhaps to establish their identity.</p>
+<p>"--And you used to say I was your sw--"</p>
+<p>"Did I?" (this was very demurely said). "How old was I
+then?"</p>
+<p>"How old are you now?"</p>
+<p>"Eighteen," with a slight straightening of the slim figure.</p>
+<p>"Impossible!" exclaimed Keith, enjoying keenly the picture she
+made.</p>
+<p>"All of it," with a flash of the eyes.</p>
+<p>"For me you are just all of seven years old."</p>
+<p>"Do you know who I thought you were?" Her face dimpled.</p>
+<p>"Yes; a waiter!"</p>
+<p>She nodded brightly.</p>
+<p>"It was my good manners. The waiters have struck me much this
+evening," said Keith.</p>
+<p>She smiled, and the dimples appeared again.</p>
+<p>"That is their business. They are paid for it."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I see. Is that the reason others are--what they are? Well,
+I am more than paid. My recompense is--you."</p>
+<p>She looked pleased. "You are the first person I have met!--Did
+you have any idea who I was the other evening?" she asked
+suddenly.</p>
+<p>Keith would have given five years of his life to be able to
+answer yes. But he said no. "I only knew you were some one who
+needed protection," he said, trying to make the best of a bad
+situation. You are too young to be on the street so late."</p>
+<p>"So it appeared. I had been out for a walk to see old Dr.
+Templeton and to get a piece of music, and it was later than I
+thought."</p>
+<p>"Whom are you here with?" inquired Keith, to get off of delicate
+ground. "Where are you staying?"</p>
+<p>"With my cousin, Mrs. Norman Wentworth. It is my first
+introduction into New York life."</p>
+<p>Just then there was a movement toward the supper-room.</p>
+<p>Keith suggested that they should go and find Mrs. Norman. Miss
+Huntington said, however, she thought she had better remain where
+she was, as Mrs. Norman had promised to come back.</p>
+<p>"I hope she will invite you to join our party," she said
+na&iuml;vely.</p>
+<p>"If she does not, I will invite you both to join mine," declared
+Keith. "I have no idea of letting you escape for another dozen
+years."</p>
+<p>Just then, however, Mrs. Norman appeared. She was with Ferdy
+Wickersham, who, on seeing Keith, looked away coldly. She smiled,
+greatly surprised to find Keith there. "Why, where did you two know
+each other?"</p>
+<p>They explained.</p>
+<p>"I saw you were pleasantly engaged, so I did not think it
+necessary to hasten back," she said to Lois.</p>
+<p>Ferdy Wickersham said something to her in an undertone, and she
+held out her hand to the girl.</p>
+<p>"Come, we are to join a party in the supper-room. We shall see
+you after supper, Mr. Keith?"</p>
+<p>Keith said he hoped so. He was conscious of a sudden wave of
+disappointment sweeping over him as the three left him. The young
+girl gave him a bright smile.</p>
+<p>Later, as he passed by, he saw only Ferdy Wickersham with Mrs.
+Norman. Lois Huntington was at another table, so Keith joined
+her.</p>
+<p>After the supper there was to be a novel kind of entertainment:
+a sort of vaudeville show in which were to figure a palmist, a
+gentleman set down in the programme with its gilt printing as the
+"Celebrated Professor Cheireman"; several singers; a couple of
+acrobatic performers; and a danseuse: "Mlle. Terpsichore."</p>
+<p>The name struck Keith with something of sadness. It recalled old
+associations, some of them pleasant, some of them sad. And as he
+stood near Lois Huntington, on the edge of the throng that filled
+the large apartment where the stage had been constructed, during
+the first three or four numbers he was rather more in Gumbolt than
+in that gay company in that brilliant room.</p>
+<p>"Professor Cheireman" had shown the wonders of the trained hand
+and the untrained mind in a series of tricks that would certainly
+be wonderful did not so many men perform them. Mlle. de Voix
+performed hardly less wonders with her voice, running up and down
+the scale like a squirrel in a cage, introducing trills into songs
+where there were none, and making the simplest melodies appear as
+intricate as pieces of opera. The Burlystone Brothers jumped over
+and skipped under each other in a marvellous and "absolutely
+unrivalled manner." And presently the danseuse appeared.</p>
+<p>Keith was standing against the wall thinking of Terpy and the
+old hail with its paper hangings in Gumbolt, and its benches full
+of eager, jovial spectators, when suddenly there was a roll of
+applause, and he found himself in Gumbolt. From the side on which
+he stood walked out his old friend, Terpy herself. He had not been
+able to see her until she was well out on the stage and was making
+her bow. The next second she began to dance.</p>
+<p>After the first greeting given her, a silence fell on the room,
+the best tribute they could pay to her art, her grace, her abandon.
+Nothing so audacious had ever been seen by certainly half the
+assemblage. Casting aside the old tricks of the danseuse, the
+tipping and pirouetting and grimacing for applause, the dancer
+seemed oblivious of her audience and as though she were trying to
+excel herself. She swayed and swung and swept from side to side as
+though on wings.</p>
+<p>Round after round of applause swept over the room. Men were
+talking in undertones to each other; women buzzed behind their
+fans.</p>
+<p>She stopped, panting and flushed with pride, and with a certain
+scorn in her face and mien glanced over the audience. Just as she
+was poising herself for another effort, her eye reached the side of
+the room where Keith stood just beside Miss Huntington. A change
+passed over her face. She nodded, hesitated for a second, and then
+began again. She failed to catch the time of the music and danced
+out of time. A titter came from the rear of the room. She looked in
+that direction, and Keith did the same. Ferdy Wickersham, with a
+malevolent gleam in his eye, was laughing. The dancer flushed
+deeply, frowned, lost her self-possession, and stopped. A laugh of
+derision sounded at the rear.</p>
+<p>"For shame! It is shameful!" said Lois Huntington in a low voice
+to Keith.</p>
+<p>"It is. The cowardly scoundrel!" He turned and scowled at
+Ferdy.</p>
+<p>At the sound, Terpy took a step toward the front, and bending
+forward, swept the audience with her flashing eyes.</p>
+<p>"Put that man out."</p>
+<p>A buzz of astonishment and laughter greeted her outbreak.</p>
+<p>"Cackle, you fools!"</p>
+<p>She turned to the musicians.</p>
+<p>"Play that again and play it right, or I'll wring your
+necks!"</p>
+<p>She began to dance again, and soon danced as she had done at
+first.</p>
+<p>Applause was beginning again; but at the sound she stopped,
+looked over the audience disdainfully, and turning, walked coolly
+from the stage.</p>
+<p>"Who is she?" "Well, did you ever see anything like that!"
+"Well, I never did!" "The insolent creature!" "By Jove! she can
+dance if she chooses!" buzzed over the room.</p>
+<p>"Good for her," said Keith, his face full of admiration.</p>
+<p>"Did you know her?" asked Miss Huntington.</p>
+<p>"Well."</p>
+<p>The girl said nothing, but she stiffened and changed color
+slightly.</p>
+<p>"You know her, too," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"I! I do not."</p>
+<p>"Do you remember once, when you were a tot over in England,
+giving your doll to a little dancing-girl?--When your governess was
+in such a temper?"</p>
+<p>Lois nodded.</p>
+<p>"That is she. She used to live in New Leeds. She was almost the
+only woman in Gumbolt when I went there. Had a man laughed at her
+there then, he would never have left the room alive. Mr. Wickersham
+tried it once, and came near getting his neck broken for it. He is
+getting even with her now."</p>
+<p>As the girl glanced up at him, his face was full of suppressed
+feeling. A pang shot through her.</p>
+<p>Just then the entertainment broke up and the guests began to
+leave. Mrs. Wentworth beckoned to Lois. Wickersham was still with
+her.</p>
+<p>"I will not trust myself to go within speaking distance of him
+now," said Keith; "so I will say good-by, here." He made his adieus
+somewhat hurriedly, and moved off as Mrs. Wentworth approached.</p>
+<p>Wickersham, who, so long as Keith remained with Miss Huntington,
+had kept aloof, and was about to say good night to Mrs. Wentworth,
+had, on seeing Keith turn away, followed Mrs. Wentworth.</p>
+<p>Every one was still chatting of the episode of the young
+virago.</p>
+<p>"Well, what did you think of your friend's friend?" asked
+Wickersham of Lois.</p>
+<p>"Of whom?"</p>
+<p>"Of your friend Mr. Keith's young lady. She is an old flame of
+his," he said, turning to Mrs. Wentworth and speaking in an
+undertone, just loud enough for Lois to hear. "They have run her
+out of New Leeds, and I think he is trying to force her on the
+people here. He has cheek enough to do anything; but I think
+to-night will about settle him."</p>
+<p>"I do not know very much about such things; but I think she
+dances very well," said Lois, with heightened color, moved to
+defend the girl under an instinct of opposition to Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"So your friend thinks, or thought some time ago," said
+Wickersham. "My dear girl, she can't dance at all. She is simply a
+disreputable young woman, who has been run out of her own town, as
+she ought to be run out of this, as an impostor, if nothing else."
+He turned to Mrs. Wentworth: "A man who brought such a woman to a
+place like this ought to be kicked out of town."</p>
+<p>"If you are speaking of Mr. Keith, I don't believe that of him,"
+said Lois, coldly.</p>
+<p>Wickersham looked at her for a moment. A curious light was in
+his eyes as he said:</p>
+<p>"I am not referring to any one. I am simply generalizing." He
+shrugged his shoulders and turned away.</p>
+<p>As Mrs. Wentworth and Lois entered their carriage, a gentleman
+was helping some one into a hack just behind Mrs. Wentworth's
+carriage. The light fell on them at the moment that Lois stepped
+forward, and she recognized Mr. Keith and the dancer, Mile.
+Terpsichore. He was handing her in with all the deference that he
+would have shown the highest lady in the land.</p>
+<p>Lois Huntington drove home in a maze. Life appeared to have
+changed twice for her in a single evening. Out of that crowd of
+strangers had come one who seemed to be a part of her old life.
+They had taken each other up just where they had parted. The long
+breach in their lives had been bridged. He had seemed the old
+friend and champion of her childhood, who, since her aunt had
+revived her recollection of him, had been a sort of romantic hero
+in her dreams. Their meeting had been such as she had sometimes
+pictured to herself it would be. She believed him finer, higher,
+than others. Then, suddenly, she had found that the vision was but
+an idol of clay. All that her aunt had said of him had been dashed
+to pieces in a trice.</p>
+<p>He was not worthy of her notice. He was not a gentleman. He was
+what Mr. Wickersham had called him. He had boasted to her of his
+intimacy with a common dancing-girl. He had left her to fly to her
+and escort her home.</p>
+<p>As Keith had left the house, Terpsichore had come out of the
+side entrance, and they had met. Keith was just wondering how he
+could find her, and he considered the meeting a fortunate one. She
+was in a state of extreme agitation. It was the first time that she
+had undertaken to dance at such an entertainment. She had refused,
+but had been over-persuaded, and she declared it was all a plot
+between Wickersham and her manager to ruin her. She would be even
+with them both, if she had to take a pistol to right her
+wrongs.</p>
+<p>Keith had little idea that the chief motive of her acceptance
+had been the hope that she might find him among the company. He did
+what he could to soothe her, and having made a promise to call upon
+her, he bade her good-by, happily ignorant of the interpretation
+which she who had suddenly sprung uppermost in his thoughts had,
+upon Wickersham's instigation, put upon his action.</p>
+<p>Keith walked home with a feeling to which he had been long a
+stranger. He was somehow happier than he had been in years. A young
+girl had changed the whole entertainment for him--the whole
+city--almost his whole outlook on life. He had not felt this way
+for years--not since Alice Yorke had darkened life for him. Could
+love be for him again?</p>
+<p>The dial appeared to have turned back for him. He felt younger,
+fresher, more hopeful. He walked out into the street and tried to
+look up at the stars. The houses obscured them; they were hardly
+visible. The city streets were no place for stars and sentiment. He
+would go through the park and see them. So he strolled along and
+turned into a park. The gas-lamps shed a yellow glow on the trees,
+making circles of feeble light on the walks, and the shadows lay
+deep on the ground. Most of the benches were vacant; but here and
+there a waif or a belated homegoer sat in drowsy isolation. The
+stars were too dim even from this vantage-ground to afford Keith
+much satisfaction. His thoughts flew back to the mountains and the
+great blue canopy overhead, spangled with stars, and a blue-eyed
+girl amid pillows whom he used to worship. An arid waste of years
+cut them off from the present, and his thoughts came back to a
+sweet-faced girl with dark eyes, claiming him as her old friend.
+She appeared to be the old ideal rather than the former.</p>
+<p>All next day Keith thought of Lois Huntington. He wanted to go
+and see her but he waited until the day after. He would not appear
+too eager.</p>
+<p>He called at Norman's office for the pleasure of talking of her;
+but Norman was still absent. The following afternoon he called at
+Norman's house. The servant said Mrs. Norman was out.</p>
+<p>"Miss Huntington?"</p>
+<p>"She left this morning."</p>
+<p>Keith walked up the street feeling rather blank. That night he
+started for the South. But Lois Huntington was much in his
+thoughts. He wondered if life would open for him again. When a man
+wonders about this, life has already opened.</p>
+<p>By the time he reached New Leeds, he had already made up his
+mind to write and ask Miss Abby for an invitation to Brookford, and
+he wrote his father a full account of the girl he had known as a
+child, over which the old General beamed.</p>
+<p>He forgave people toward whom he had hard feelings. The world
+was better than he had been accounting it. He even considered more
+leniently than he had done Mrs. Wentworth's allowing Ferdy
+Wickersham to hang around her. It suddenly flashed on him that,
+perhaps, Ferdy was in love with Lois Huntington. Crash! went his
+kind feelings, his kind thoughts. The idea of Ferdy making love to
+that pure, sweet, innocent creature! It was horrible! Her
+innocence, her charming friendliness, her sweetness, all swept over
+him, and he thrilled with a sense of protection.</p>
+<p>Could he have known what Wickersham had done to poison her
+against him, he would have been yet more enraged. As it was, Lois
+was at that time back at her old home; but with how different
+feelings from those which she had had but a few days before!
+Sometimes she hated Keith, or, at least, declared to herself that
+she hated him; and at others she defended him against her own
+charge. And more and more she truly hated Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"So you met Mr. Keith?" said her aunt, abruptly, a day or two
+after her return. "How did you like him?"</p>
+<p>"I did not like him," said Lois, briefly, closing her lips with
+a snap, as if to keep the blood out of her cheeks.</p>
+<p>"What! you did not like him? Girls are strange creatures
+nowadays. In my time, a girl--a girl like you--would have thought
+him the very pink of a man. I suppose you liked that young
+Wickersham better?" she added grimly.</p>
+<p>"No, I did not like him either. But I think Mr. Keith is
+perfectly horrid."</p>
+<p>"Horrid!" The old lady's black eyes snapped. "Oh, he didn't ask
+you to dance! Well, I think, considering he knew you when you were
+a child, and knew you were my niece, he might--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes, I danced with him; but he is not very nice.
+He--ah--Something I saw prejudiced me."</p>
+<p>Miss Abby was so insistent that she should tell her what had
+happened that she yielded.</p>
+<p>"Well, I saw him on the street helping a woman into a
+carriage."</p>
+<p>"A woman? And why shouldn't he help her in? He probably was the
+only man you saw that would do it, if you saw the men I met."</p>
+<p>"A dis--reputable woman," said Lois, slowly.</p>
+<p>"And, pray, what do you know of disreputable women? Not that
+there are not enough of them to be seen!"</p>
+<p>"Some one told me--and she looked it," said Lois, blushing. The
+old lady unexpectedly whipped around and took her part so warmly
+that Lois suddenly found herself defending Gordon. She could not
+bear that others should attack him, though she took frequent
+occasion to tell herself that she hated him. In fact, she hated him
+so that she wanted to see him to show him how severe she would
+be.</p>
+<p>The occasion might have come sooner than she expected; but alas!
+Fate was unkind. Keith was not conscious until he found that Lois
+Huntington had left town how much he had thought of her. Her
+absence appeared suddenly to have emptied the city. By the time he
+had reached his room he had determined to follow her home. That
+rift of sunshine which had entered his life should not be shut out
+again. He sat down and wrote to her: a friendly letter, expressing
+warmly his pleasure at having met her, picturing jocularly his
+disappointment at having failed to find her. He made a single
+allusion to the Terpsichore episode. He had done what he could, he
+said, to soothe his friend's ruffled feelings; but, though he
+thought he had some influence with her, he could not boast of
+having had much success in this. In the light in which Lois read
+this letter, the allusion to the dancing-girl outweighed all the
+rest, and though her heart had given a leap when she first saw that
+she had a letter from Keith, when she laid it down her feeling had
+changed. She would show him that she was not a mere country chit to
+be treated as he had treated her. His "friend" indeed!</p>
+<p>When Keith, to his surprise, received no reply to his letter, he
+wrote again more briefly, asking if his former letter had been
+received; but this shared the fate of the first.</p>
+<p>Meantime Lois had gone off to visit a friend. Her mind was not
+quite as easy as it should have been. She felt that if she had it
+to go over, she would do just the same thing; but she began to
+fancy excuses for Keith. She even hunted up the letters he had
+written her as a boy.</p>
+<p>It is probable that Lois's failure to write did more to raise
+her in Keith's estimation and fix her image in his mind than
+anything else she could have done. Keith knew that something
+untoward had taken place, but what it was he could not conceive. At
+least, however, it proved to him that Lois Huntington was different
+from some of the young women he had met of late. So he sat down and
+wrote to Miss Brooke, saying that he was going abroad on a matter
+of importance, and asking leave to run down and spend Sunday with
+them before he left. Miss Brooke's reply nearly took his breath
+away. She not only refused his request, but intimated that there
+was a good reason why his former letters had not been acknowledged
+and why he would not be received by her.</p>
+<p>It was rather incoherent, but it had something to do with
+"inexplicable conduct." On this Keith wrote Miss Brooke, requesting
+a more explicit charge and demanding an opportunity to defend
+himself. Still he received no reply; and, angry that he had
+written, he took no further steps about it.</p>
+<p>By the time Lois reached home she had determined to answer his
+letter. She would write him a severe reply.</p>
+<p>Miss Abby, however, announced to Lois, the day of her return,
+that Mr. Keith had written asking her permission to come down and
+see them. The blood sprang into Lois's face, and if Miss Abby had
+had on her spectacles at that moment, she must have read the tale
+it told.</p>
+<p>"Oh, he did! And what--?" She gave a swallow to restrain her
+impatience. "What did you say to him, Aunt Abby? Have you answered
+the letter?" This was very demurely said.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Of course, I wrote him not to come. I preferred that he
+should not come."</p>
+<p>Could she have but seen Lois's face!</p>
+<p>"Oh, you did!"</p>
+<p>"Yes. I want no hypocrites around me." Her head was up and her
+cap was bristling. "I came very near telling him so, too. I told
+him that I had it from good authority that he had not behaved in
+altogether the most gentlemanly way--consorting openly with a hussy
+on the street! I think he knows whom I referred to."</p>
+<p>"But, Aunt Abby, I do not know that she was. I only heard she
+was," defended Lois.</p>
+<p>"Who told you?"</p>
+<p>"Mr. Wickersham."</p>
+<p>"Well, <i>he</i> knows," said Miss Abigail, with decision.
+"Though I think he had very little to do to discuss such matters
+with you."</p>
+<p>"But, Aunt Abby, I think you had better have let him come. We
+could have shown him our disapproval in our manner. And possibly he
+might have some explanations?"</p>
+<p>"I guess he won't make any mistake about that. The hypocrite! To
+sit up and talk to me as if he were a bishop! I have no doubt he
+would have explanation enough. They always do."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+<h3>GENERAL KEITH VISITS STRANGE LANDS</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Just then the wheel turned. Interest was awaking in England in
+American enterprises, and, fortunately for Keith, he had friends on
+that side.</p>
+<p>Grinnell Rhodes now lived in England, dancing attendance on his
+wife, the daughter of Mr. Creamer of Creamer, Crustback &amp;
+Company, who was aspiring to be in the fashionable set there.</p>
+<p>Matheson, the former agent of the Wickershams, with whom Ferdy
+had quarrelled, had gone back to England, and had acquired a
+reputation as an expert. By one of the fortuitous happenings so
+hard to account for, about this time Keith wrote to Rhodes, and
+Rhodes consulted Matheson, who knew the properties. Ferdy had
+incurred the Scotchman's implacable hate, and the latter was urged
+on now by a double motive. To Rhodes, who was bored to death with
+the life he was leading, the story told by the Wickershams' old
+superintendent was like a trumpet to a war-horse.</p>
+<p>Out of the correspondence with Rhodes grew a suggestion to Keith
+to come over and try to place the Rawson properties with an English
+syndicate. Keith had, moreover, a further reason for going. He had
+not recovered from the blow of Miss Brooke's refusal to let him
+visit Lois. He knew that in some way it was connected with his
+attention to Terpsichore; he knew that there was a
+misunderstanding, and felt that Wickersham was somehow connected
+with it. But he was too proud to make any further attempt to
+explain it.</p>
+<p>Accordingly, armed with the necessary papers and powers, he
+arranged to go to England. He had control of and options on lands
+which were estimated to be worth several millions of dollars at any
+fair valuation.</p>
+<p>Keith had long been trying to persuade his father to accompany
+him to New York on some of his visits; but the old gentleman had
+never been able to make up his mind to do so.</p>
+<p>"I have grown too old to travel in strange lands," he said. "I
+tried to get there once, but they stopped me just in sight of a
+stone fence on the farther slope beyond Gettysburg." A faint flash
+glittered in his quiet eyes. "I think I had better restrain my
+ambition now to migrations from the blue bed to the brown, and
+confine my travels to 'the realms of gold'!"</p>
+<p>Now, after much urging, as Gordon was about to go abroad to try
+and place the Rawson properties there, the General consented to go
+to New York and see him off. It happened that Gordon was called to
+New York on business a day or two before his father was ready to
+go. So he exacted a promise that he would follow him, and went on
+ahead. Though General Keith would have liked to back out at the
+last moment, as he had given his word, he kept it. He wrote his son
+that he must not undertake to meet him, as he could not tell by
+what train he should arrive.</p>
+<p>"I shall travel slowly," he said, "for I wish to call by and see
+one or two old friends on my way, whom I have not seen for
+years."</p>
+<p>The fact was that he wished to see the child of his friend,
+General Huntington, and determined to avail himself of this
+opportunity to call by and visit her. Gordon's letter about her had
+opened a new vista in life.</p>
+<p>The General found Brookford a pleasant village, lying on the
+eastern slope of the Piedmont, and having written to ask permission
+to call and pay his respects, he was graciously received by Miss
+Abby, and more than graciously received by her niece. Miss Lois
+would probably have met any visitor at the train; but she might not
+have had so palpitating a heart and so rich a color in meeting many
+a young man.</p>
+<p>Few things captivate a person more than to be received with real
+cordiality by a friend immediately on alighting at a strange
+station from a train full of strangers. But when the traveller is
+an old and somewhat unsophisticated man, and when the friend is a
+young and very pretty girl, and when, after a single look, she
+throws her arms around his neck and kisses him, the capture is
+likely to be as complete as any that could take place in life. When
+Lois Huntington, after asking about his baggage, and exclaiming
+because he had sent his trunk on to New York and had brought only a
+valise, as if he were only stopping off between trains, finally
+settled herself down beside the General and took the reins of the
+little vehicle that she had come in, there was, perhaps, not a more
+pleased old gentleman in the world than the one who sat beside
+her.</p>
+<p>"How you have grown!" he said, gazing at her with admiration.
+"Somehow, I always thought of you as a little girl--a very pretty
+little girl."</p>
+<p>She thought of what his son had said at their meeting at the
+ball.</p>
+<p>"But you know one must grow some, and it has been eleven years
+since then. Think how long that has been!"</p>
+<p>"Eleven years! Does that appear so long to you?" said the old
+man, smiling. "So it is in our youth. Gordon wrote me of his
+meeting you and of how you had changed."</p>
+<p>I wonder what he meant by that, said Lois to herself, the color
+mounting to her cheek. "He thought I had changed, did he?" she
+asked tentatively, after a moment, a trace of grimness stealing
+into her face, where it lay like a little cloud in May.</p>
+<p>"Yes; he hardly knew you. You see, he did not have the greeting
+that I got."</p>
+<p>"I should think not!" exclaimed Lois. "If he had, I don't know
+what he might have thought!" She grew as grave as she could.</p>
+<p>"He said you were the sweetest and prettiest girl there, and
+that all the beauty of New York was there, even the beautiful
+Mrs.--what is her name? She was Miss Yorke."</p>
+<p>Lois's face relaxed suddenly with an effect of sunshine breaking
+through a cloud.</p>
+<p>"Did he say that?" she exclaimed.</p>
+<p>"He did, and more. He is a young man of some discernment,"
+observed the old fellow, with a chuckle of gratification.</p>
+<p>"Oh, but he was only blinding you. He is in love with Mrs.
+Lancaster."</p>
+<p>"Not he."</p>
+<p>But Lois protested guilefully that he was.</p>
+<p>A little later she asked the General:</p>
+<p>"Did you ever hear of any one in New Leeds who was named
+Terpsichore?"</p>
+<p>"Terpsichore? Of course. Every one knows her there. I never saw
+her until she became a nurse, when she was nursing my son. She
+saved his life, you know?"</p>
+<p>"Saved his life!" Her face had grown almost grim. "No, I never
+heard of it. Tell me about it."</p>
+<p>"Saved his life twice, indeed," said the old General. "She has
+had a sad past, but she is a noble woman." And unheeding Lois's
+little sniff, he told the whole story of Terpsichore, and the brave
+part she had played. Spurred on by his feeling, he told it well, no
+less than did he the part that Keith had played. When he was
+through, there had been tears in Lois's eyes, and her bosom was
+still heaving.</p>
+<p>"Thank you," she said simply, and the rest of the drive was in
+silence.</p>
+<p>When General Keith left Brookford he was almost as much in love
+with his young hostess as his son could have been, and all the rest
+of his journey he was dreaming of what life might become if Gordon
+and she would but take a fancy to each other, and once more return
+to the old place. It would be like turning back the years and
+reversing the consequences of the war.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The General, on his arrival in New York, was full of his visit
+to Brookford and of Lois. "There is a girl after my own heart," he
+declared to Gordon, with enthusiasm. "Why don't you go down there
+and get that girl?"</p>
+<p>Gordon put the question aside with a somewhat grim look. He was
+very busy, he said. His plans were just ripening, and he had no
+time to think about marrying. Besides, "a green country girl" was
+not the most promising wife. There were many other women who, etc.,
+etc.</p>
+<p>"Many other women!" exclaimed the General. "There may be; but I
+have not seen them lately. As to 'a green country girl'--why, they
+make the best wives in the world if you get the right kind. What do
+you want? One of these sophisticated, fashionable, strong-minded
+women--a woman's-rights woman? Heaven forbid! When a gentleman
+marries, he wants a lady and he wants a wife, a woman to love him;
+a lady to preside over his home, not over a woman's meeting."</p>
+<p>Gordon quite agreed with him as to the principle; but he did not
+know about the instance cited.</p>
+<p>"Why, I thought you had more discernment," said the old
+gentleman. "She is the sweetest creature I have seen in a long
+time. She has both sense and sensibility. If I were forty years
+younger, I should not be suggesting her to you, sir. I should be on
+my knees to her for myself." And the old fellow buttoned his coat,
+straightened his figure, and looked quite spirited and young.</p>
+<p>At the club, where Gordon introduced him, his father soon became
+quite a toast. Half the habitu&eacute;s of the "big room" came to
+know him, and he was nearly always surrounded by a group listening
+to his quaint observations of life, his stories of old times, his
+anecdotes, his quotations from Plutarch or from "Dr. Johnson,
+sir."</p>
+<p>An evening or two after his appearance at the club, Norman
+Wentworth came in, and when the first greetings were over, General
+Keith inquired warmly after his wife.</p>
+<p>"Pray present my compliments to her. I have never had the honor
+of meeting her, sir, but I have heard of her charms from my son,
+and I promise myself the pleasure of calling upon her as soon as I
+have called on your mother, which I am looking forward to doing
+this evening."</p>
+<p>Norman's countenance changed a little at the unexpected words,
+for half a dozen men were around. When, however, he spoke it was in
+a very natural voice.</p>
+<p>"Yes, my mother is expecting you," he said quietly. Mrs.
+Wentworth also would, he said, be very glad to see him. Her day was
+Thursday, but if General Keith thought of calling at any other
+time, and would be good enough to let him know, he thought he could
+guarantee her being at home. He strolled away.</p>
+<p>"By Jove! he did it well," said one of the General's other
+acquaintances when Norman was out of ear-shot.</p>
+<p>"You know, he and his wife have quarrelled," explained Stirling
+to the astonished General.</p>
+<p>"Great Heavens!" The old gentleman looked inexpressibly
+shocked.</p>
+<p>"Yes--Wickersham."</p>
+<p>"That scoundrel!"</p>
+<p>"Yes; he is the devil with the women."</p>
+<p>Next evening, as the General sat with Stirling among a group,
+sipping his toddy, some one approached behind him.</p>
+<p>Stirling, who had become a great friend of the General's,
+greeted the newcomer.</p>
+<p>"Hello, Ferdy! Come around; let me introduce you to General
+Keith, Gordon Keith's father."</p>
+<p>The General, with a pleasant smile on his face, rose from his
+chair and turned to greet the newcomer. As he did so he faced Ferdy
+Wickersham, who bowed coldly. The old gentleman stiffened, put his
+hand behind his back, and with uplifted head looked him full in the
+eyes for a second, and then turned his back on him.</p>
+<p>"I beg your pardon, Mr. Stirling, for declining to recognize any
+one whom you are good enough to wish to introduce to me, but that
+man I must decline to recognize. He is not a gentleman."</p>
+<p>"I doubt if you know one," said Ferdy, with a shrug, as he
+strolled away with affected indifference. But a dozen men had seen
+the cut.</p>
+<p>"I guess you are right enough about that, General," said one of
+them.</p>
+<p>When the General reflected on what he had done, he was
+overwhelmed with remorse. He apologized profusely to Stirling for
+having committed such a solecism.</p>
+<p>"I am nothing but an irascible old idiot, sir, and I hope you
+will excuse my constitutional weakness, but I really could not
+recognize that man."</p>
+<p>Stirling's inveterate amiability soon set him at ease again.</p>
+<p>"It is well for Wickersham to hear the truth now and then," he
+said. "I guess he hears it rarely enough. Most people feed him on
+lies."</p>
+<p>Some others appeared to take the same view of the matter, for
+the General was more popular than ever.</p>
+<p>Gordon found a new zest in showing his father about the city.
+Everything astonished him. He saw the world with the eyes of a
+child. The streets, the crowds, the shop-windows, the shimmering
+stream of carriages that rolled up and down the avenue, the
+elevated railways which had just been constructed, all were a
+marvel to him.</p>
+<p>"Where do these people get their wealth?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"Some of them get it from rural gentlemen who visit the town,"
+said Gordon, laughing.</p>
+<p>The old fellow smiled. "I suspect a good many of them get it
+from us countrymen. In fact, at the last we furnish it all. It all
+comes out of the ground."</p>
+<p>"It is a pity that we did not hold on to some of it," said
+Gordon.</p>
+<p>The old gentleman glanced at him. "I do not want any of it. My
+son, Agar's standard was the best: 'neither poverty nor riches.'
+Riches cannot make a gentleman."</p>
+<p>Keith laughed and called him old-fashioned, but he knew in his
+heart that he was right.</p>
+<p>The beggars who accosted him on the street never turned away
+empty-handed. He had it not in his heart to refuse the outstretched
+hand of want.</p>
+<p>"Why, that man who pretended that he had a large family and was
+out of work is a fraud," said Gordon. "I'll bet that he has no
+family and never works."</p>
+<p>"Well, I didn't give him much," said the old man. "But remember
+what Lamb said: 'Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted
+distress. It is good to believe him. Give, and under the personate
+father of a family think, if thou pleasest, that thou hast relieved
+an indigent bachelor.'"</p>
+<p>A week later Gordon was on his way to England and the General
+had returned home.</p>
+<p>It was just after this that the final breach took place between
+Norman Wentworth and his wife. It was decided that for their
+children's sake there should be no open separation; at least, for
+the present. Norman had business which would take him away for a
+good part of the time, and the final separation could be left to
+the future. Meanwhile, to save appearances somewhat, it was
+arranged that Mrs. Wentworth should ask Lois Huntington to come up
+and spend the winter in New York, partly as her companion and
+partly as governess for the children. This might stop the mouths of
+some persons.</p>
+<p>When the proposal first reached Miss Abigail, she rejected it
+without hesitation; she would not hear of it. Curiously enough,
+Lois suddenly appeared violently anxious to go. But following the
+suggestion came an invitation from Norman's mother asking Miss
+Abigail to pay her a long visit. She needed her, she said, and she
+asked as a favor that she would let Lois accept her
+daughter-in-law's invitation. So Miss Abby consented. "The Lawns"
+was shut up for the winter, and the two ladies went up to New
+York.</p>
+<p>As Norman left for the West the very day that Lois was
+installed, she had no knowledge of the condition of affairs in that
+unhappy household, except what Gossip whispered about her. This
+would have been more than enough, but for the fact that the girl
+stiffened as soon as any one approached the subject, and froze even
+such veterans as Mrs. Nailor.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth was far too proud to refer to it. All Lois knew,
+therefore, was that there was trouble and she was there to help
+tide it over, and she meant, if she could, to make it up.
+Meanwhile, Mrs. Wentworth was very kind, if formal, to her, and the
+children, delighted to get rid of the former governess, whom they
+insisted in describing as an "old cat," were her devoted
+slaves.</p>
+<p>Yet Lois was not as contented as she had fondly expected to
+be.</p>
+<p>She learned soon after her arrival that one object of her visit
+to New York would be futile. She would not see Mr. Keith. He had
+gone abroad.--"In pursuit of Mrs. Lancaster," said Mrs. Nailor; for
+Lois was willing enough to hear all that lady had to say on this
+subject, and it was a good deal. "You know, I believe she is going
+to marry him. She will unless she can get a title."</p>
+<p>"I do not believe a title would make any difference to her,"
+said Lois, rather sharply, glad to have any sound reason for
+attacking Mrs. Nailor.</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't you believe it! She'd snap one up quick enough if she
+had the chance."</p>
+<p>"She has had a plenty of chances," asserted Lois.</p>
+<p>"Well, it may serve Mr. Keith a good turn. He looked very low
+down for a while last Spring--just after that big Creamer ball. But
+he had quite perked up this Fall, and, next thing I heard, he had
+gone over to England after Alice Lancaster, who is spending the
+winter there. It was time she went, too, for people were beginning
+to talk a good deal of the way she ran after Norman Wentworth."</p>
+<p>"I must go," said Lois, suddenly rising; "I have to take the
+children out."</p>
+<p>"Poor dears!" sighed Mrs. Nailor. "I am glad they have some one
+to look after them." Lois's sudden change prevented any further
+condolence. Fortunately, Mrs. Nailor was too much delighted with
+the opportunity to pour her information into quite fresh ears to
+observe Lois's expression.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The story of the trouble between Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth was soon
+public property. Wickersham's plans appeared to him to be working
+out satisfactorily. Louise Wentworth must, he felt, care for him to
+sacrifice so much for him. In this assumption he let down the
+barriers of prudence which he had hitherto kept up, and, one
+evening when the opportunity offered, he openly declared himself.
+To his chagrin and amazement, she appeared to be shocked and even
+to resent it.</p>
+<p>Yes, she liked him--liked him better than almost any one, she
+admitted; but she did not, she could not, love him. She was
+married.</p>
+<p>Wickersham ridiculed the idea.</p>
+<p>Married! Well, what difference did that make? Did not many
+married women love other men than their husbands? Had not her
+husband gone after another?</p>
+<p>Her eyes closed suddenly; then her eyelids fluttered.</p>
+<p>"Yes; but I am not like that. I have children." She spoke
+slowly.</p>
+<p>"Nonsense," cried Wickersham. "Of course, we love each other and
+belong to each other. Send the children to your husband."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth recoiled in horror. There was that in his manner
+and look which astounded her. "Abandon her children?" How could
+she? Her whole manner changed. "You have misunderstood me."</p>
+<br>
+<a name="p356.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/p356.jpg"><img src="images/p356.jpg"
+width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"Sit down. I want to talk to you."</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>Wickersham grew angry.</p>
+<p>"Don't be a fool, Louise. You have broken with your husband.
+Now, don't go and throw away happiness for a priest's figment. Get
+a divorce and marry me, if you want to; but at least accept my
+love."</p>
+<p>But he had overshot the mark. He had opened her eyes. Was this
+the man she had taken as her closest friend!--for whom she had
+quarrelled with her husband and defied the world!</p>
+<p>Wickersham watched her as her doubt worked its way in her mind.
+He could see the process in her face. He suddenly seized her and
+drew her to him.</p>
+<p>"Here, stop this! Your husband has abandoned you and gone after
+another woman."</p>
+<p>She gave a gasp, but made no answer.</p>
+<p>She pushed him away from her slowly, and after a moment rose and
+walked from the room as though dazed.</p>
+<p>It was so unexpected that Wickersham made no attempt to stop
+her.</p>
+<p>A moment later Lois entered the room. She walked straight up to
+him. Wickersham tried to greet her lightly, but she remained
+grave.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Wickersham, I do not think you--ought to come here--as
+often as you do."</p>
+<p>"And, pray, why not?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>Her brown eyes looked straight into his and held them
+steadily.</p>
+<p>"Because people talk about it."</p>
+<p>"I cannot help people talking. You know what they are," said
+Wickersham, amused.</p>
+<p>"You can prevent giving them occasion to talk. You are too good
+a friend of Cousin Louise to cause her unhappiness." The honesty of
+her words was undoubted. It spoke in every tone of her voice and
+glance of her eyes. "She is most unhappy."</p>
+<p>Wickersham conceived a new idea. How lovely she was in her soft
+blue dress!</p>
+<p>"Very well, I will do what you say There are few things I would
+not do for you." He stepped closer to her and gazed in her eyes.
+"Sit down. I want to talk to you."</p>
+<p>"Thank you; I must go now."</p>
+<p>Wickersham tried to detain her, but she backed away, her hands
+down and held a little back.</p>
+<p>"Good-by."</p>
+<p>"Miss Huntington--Lois--" he said; "one moment."</p>
+<p>But she opened the door and passed out.</p>
+<p>Wickersham walked down the street in a sort of maze.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+<h3>KEITH TRIES HIS FORTUNES IN ANOTHER LAND</h3>
+<br>
+<p>In fact, as usual, Mrs. Nailor's statement to Lois had some
+foundation, though very little. Mrs. Lancaster had gone abroad, and
+Keith had followed her.</p>
+<p>Keith, on his arrival in England, found Rhodes somewhat changed,
+at least in person. Years of high living and ease had rounded him,
+and he had lost something of his old spirit. At times an expression
+of weariness or discontent came into his eyes.</p>
+<p>He was as cordial as ever to Keith, and when Keith unfolded his
+plans he entered into them with earnestness.</p>
+<p>"You have come at a good time," he said. "They are beginning to
+think that America is all a bonanza."</p>
+<p>After talking over the matter, Rhodes invited Keith down to the
+country.</p>
+<p>"We have taken an old place in Warwickshire for the hunting. An
+old friend of yours is down there for a few days,"--his eyes
+twinkled,--"and we have some good fellows there. Think you will
+like them--some of them," he added.</p>
+<p>"Who is my friend?" asked Keith.</p>
+<p>"Her name was Alice Yorke," he replied, with his eyes on Keith's
+face.</p>
+<p>At the name another face sprang to Keith's mind. The eyes were
+brown, not blue, and the face was the fresh face of a young girl.
+Yet Keith accepted.</p>
+<p>Rhodes did not tell him that Mrs. Lancaster had not accepted
+their invitation until after she had heard that he was to be
+invited. Nor did he tell him that she had authorized him to
+subscribe largely to the stock of the new syndicate.</p>
+<p>On reaching the station they were met by a rich equipage with
+two liveried servants, and, after a short drive through beautiful
+country, they turned into a fine park, and presently drove up
+before an imposing old country house; for "The Keep" was one of the
+finest mansions in all that region. It was also one of the most
+expensive. It had broken its owners to run it. But this was nothing
+to Creamer of Creamer, Crustback &amp; Company; at least, it was
+nothing to Mrs. Creamer, or to Mrs. Rhodes, who was her daughter.
+She had plans, and money was nothing to her. Rhodes was manifestly
+pleased at Keith's exclamations of appreciation as they drove
+through the park with its magnificent trees, its coppices and
+coverts, its stretches of emerald sward and roll of gracious hills,
+and drew up at the portal of the mansion. Yet he was inclined to be
+a little apologetic about it, too.</p>
+<p>"This is rather too rich for me," he said, between a smile and a
+sigh. "Somehow, I began too late."</p>
+<p>It was a noble old hall into which he ushered Keith, the
+wainscoting dark with age, and hung with trophies of many a chase
+and forgotten field. A number of modern easy-chairs and great rich
+rugs gave it an air of comfort, even if they were not altogether
+harmonious.</p>
+<p>Keith did not see Mrs. Rhodes till the company were all
+assembled in the drawing-room for dinner. She was a rather pretty
+woman, distinctly American in face and voice, but in speech more
+English than any one Keith had seen since landing. Her hair and
+speech were arranged in the extreme London fashion. She was
+"awfully keen on" everything she fancied, and found most things
+English "ripping." She greeted Keith with somewhat more formality
+than he had expected from Grinnell Rhodes's wife, and introduced
+him to Colonel Campbell, a handsome, broad-shouldered man, as "an
+American," which Keith thought rather unnecessary, since no one
+could have been in doubt about it.</p>
+<p>Keith found, on his arrival in the drawing-room, that the house
+was full of company, a sort of house-party assembled for the
+hunting.</p>
+<p>Suddenly there was a stir, followed by a hush in the
+conversation, and monocles and lorgnons went up.</p>
+<p>"Here she comes," said a man near Keith.</p>
+<p>"Who is she?" asked a thin woman with ugly hands, dropping her
+monocle with the air of a man.</p>
+<p>"La belle Am&eacute;ricaine," replied the man beside her, "a
+friend of the host."</p>
+<p>"Oh! Not of the hostess?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. I met her last night--"</p>
+<p>"Steepleton is ahead--wins in a walk."</p>
+<p>"Oh, she's rich? The castle needs a new roof? Will it be in time
+for next season?"</p>
+<p>The gentleman said he knew nothing about it.</p>
+<p>Keith turned and faced Alice Lancaster.</p>
+<p>She was dressed in a black gown that fitted perfectly her
+straight, supple figure, the soft folds clinging close enough to
+show the gracious curves, and falling away behind her in a train
+that, as she stood with her head uplifted, gave her an appearance
+almost of majesty. Her round arms and perfect shoulders were of
+dazzling whiteness; her abundant brown hair was coiled low on her
+snowy neck, showing the beauty of her head; and her single ornament
+was one rich red rose fastened in her bodice with a small diamond
+clasp. It was the little pin that Keith had found in the Ridgely
+woods and returned to her so long ago; though Keith did not
+recognize it. It was the only jewel about her, and was worn simply
+to hold the rose, as though that were the thing she valued. Keith's
+thoughts sprang to the first time he ever saw her with a red rose
+near her heart--the rose he had given her, which the humming-bird
+had sought as its chalice.</p>
+<p>The other ladies were all gowned in satin and velvet of rich
+colors, and were flaming in jewels, and as Mrs. Lancaster stood
+among them and they fell back a little on either side to look at
+her, they appeared, as it were, a setting for her.</p>
+<p>After the others were presented, Keith stepped forward to greet
+her, and her face lit up with a light that made it suddenly
+young.</p>
+<p>"I am so glad to see you." She clasped his hand warmly. "It is
+so good to see an old friend from our ain countree."</p>
+<p>"I do not need to say I am glad to see you," said Keith, looking
+her in the eyes. "You are my ain countree here."</p>
+<p>At that moment the rose fell at her feet. It had slipped somehow
+from the clasp that held it. A half-dozen men sprang forward to
+pick it up, but Keith was ahead of them. He took it up, and, with
+his eyes looking straight into hers, handed it to her.</p>
+<p>"It is your emblem; it is what I always think of you as being."
+The tone was too low for any one else to hear; but her mounting
+color and the light in her eyes told that she caught it.</p>
+<p>Still looking straight into his eyes without a word, she stuck
+the rose in her bodice just over her heart.</p>
+<p>Several women turned their gaze on Keith and scanned him with
+sudden interest, and one of them, addressing her companion, a
+broad-shouldered man with a pleasant, florid face, said in an
+undertone:</p>
+<p>"That is the man you have to look out for, Steepleton."</p>
+<p>"A good-looking fellow. Who is he?"</p>
+<p>"Somebody, I fancy, or our hostess wouldn't have him here."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The dinner that evening was a function. Mrs. Rhodes would rather
+have suffered a serious misfortune than fail in any of the social
+refinements of her adopted land. Rhodes had suggested that Keith be
+placed next to Mrs. Lancaster, but Mrs. Rhodes had another plan in
+mind. She liked Alice Lancaster, and she was trying to do by her as
+she would have been done by. She wanted her to make a brilliant
+match. Lord Steepleton appeared designed by Providence for this
+especial purpose: the representative of an old and distinguished
+house, owner of a famous--indeed, of an historic--estate, unhappily
+encumbered, but not too heavily to be relieved by a providential
+fortune. Hunting was his most serious occupation. At present he was
+engaged in the most serious hunt of his career: he was hunting an
+heiress.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Rhodes was his friend, and as his friend she had put him
+next to Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>Ordinarily, Mrs. Lancaster would have been extremely pleased to
+be placed next the lion of the occasion. But this evening she would
+have liked to be near another guest. He was on the other side of
+the board, and appeared to be, in the main, enjoying himself,
+though now and then his eyes strayed across in her direction, and
+presently, as he caught her glance, he lifted his glass and smiled.
+Her neighbor observed the act, and putting up his monocle, looked
+across the table; then glanced at Mrs. Lancaster, and then looked
+again at Keith more carefully.</p>
+<p>"Who is your friend?" he asked.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster smiled, with a pleasant light in her eyes.</p>
+<p>"An old friend of mine, Mr. Keith."</p>
+<p>"Ah! Fortunate man. Scotchman?"</p>
+<p>"No; an American."</p>
+<p>"Oh!--You have known him a long time?"</p>
+<p>"Since I was a little girl."</p>
+<p>"Oh!--What is he?"</p>
+<p>"A gentleman."</p>
+<p>"Yes." The Englishman took the trouble again to put up his
+monocle and take a fleeting glance across the table. "He looks it,"
+he said. "I mean, what does he do? Is he a capitalist like--like
+our host? Or is he just getting to be a capitalist?"</p>
+<p>"I hope he is," replied Mrs. Lancaster, with a twinkle in her
+eyes that showed she enjoyed the Englishman's mystification. "He is
+engaged in mining."</p>
+<p>She gave a rosy picture of the wealth in the region from which
+Keith came.</p>
+<p>"All your men do something, I believe?" said the gentleman.</p>
+<p>"All who are worth anything," assented Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>"No wonder you are a rich people."</p>
+<p>Something about his use of the adjective touched her.</p>
+<p>"Our people have a sense of duty, too, and as much courage as
+any others, only they do not make any to-do about it. I have a
+friend--a <i>gentleman</i>--who drove a stage-coach through the
+mountains for a while rather than do nothing, and who was held up
+one night and jumped from the stage on the robber, and chased him
+down the mountains and disarmed him."</p>
+<p>"Good!" exclaimed the gentleman. "Nervy thing!"</p>
+<p>"Rather," said Mrs. Lancaster, with mantling cheeks, stirred by
+what she considered a reflection on her people. And that was not
+all he did. "He had charge of a mine, and one day the mine was
+flooded while the men were at work, and he went in in the darkness
+and brought the men out safe."</p>
+<p>"Good!" said the gentleman. "But he had others with him? He did
+not go alone?"</p>
+<p>"He started alone, and two men volunteered to go with him. But
+he sent them back with the first group they found, and then, as
+there were others, he waded on by himself to where the others were,
+and brought them out, bringing on his shoulder the man who had
+attempted his life."</p>
+<p>"Fine!" exclaimed the gentleman. "I've been in some tight places
+myself; but I don't know about that. What was his name?"</p>
+<p>"Keith."</p>
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+<p>Her eyes barely glanced his way; but the Earl of Steepleton saw
+in them what he had never been able to bring there.</p>
+<p>The Englishman put up his monocle and this time gazed long at
+Gordon.</p>
+<p>"Nervy chap!" he said quietly. "Won't you present me after
+dinner?"</p>
+<p>In his slow mind was dawning an idea that, perhaps, after all,
+this quiet American who had driven his way forward had found a
+baiting-place which he, with all his titles and long pedigrees,
+could not enter. His honest, outspoken admiration had, however,
+done more to make him a place in that guarded fortress than all
+Mrs. Rhodes's praises had effected.</p>
+<p>A little later the guests had all departed or scattered. Those
+who remained were playing cards and appeared settled for a good
+while.</p>
+<p>"Keith, we are out of it. Let's have a game of billiards," said
+the host, who had given his seat to a guest who had just come in
+after saying good night on the stair to one of the ladies.</p>
+<p>Keith followed him to the billiard-room, a big apartment
+finished in oak, with several large tables in it, and he and Rhodes
+began to play. The game, however, soon languished, for the two men
+had much to talk about.</p>
+<p>"Houghton, you may go," said Rhodes to the servant who attended
+to the table. "I will ring for you when I want you to shut up."</p>
+<p>"Thank you, sir"; and he was gone.</p>
+<p>"Now tell me all about everything," said Rhodes. "I want to hear
+everything that has happened since I came away--came into exile. I
+know about the property and the town that has grown up just as I
+knew it would. Tell me about the people--old Squire Rawson and
+Phrony, and Wickersham, and Norman and his wife."</p>
+<p>Keith told him about them. "Rhodes," he said, as he ended, "you
+started it and you ought to have stayed with it. Old Rawson says
+you foretold it all."</p>
+<p>Suddenly Rhodes flung his cue down on the table and straightened
+up. "Keith, this is killing me. Sometimes I think I can't stand it
+another day. I've a mind to chuck up the whole business and cut for
+it."</p>
+<p>Keith gazed at him in amazement. The clouded brow, the burning
+eyes, the drawn mouth, all told how real that explosion was and
+from what depths it came. Keith was quite startled.</p>
+<p>"It all seems to me so empty, so unreal, so puerile. I am bored
+to death with it. Do you think this is real?" He waved his arms
+impatiently about him. "It is all a sham and a fraud. I am
+nothing--nobody. I am a puppet on a hired stage, playing to
+amuse--not myself!--the Lord knows I am bored enough by it!--but a
+lot of people who don't care any more about me than I do about
+them. I can't stand this. D--n it! I don't want to make love to any
+other man's wife any more than I will have any of them making love
+to my wife. I think they are beginning to understand that. I showed
+a little puppy the front door not long ago--an earl, too, or next
+thing to it, an earl's eldest son--for doing what he would no more
+have dared to do in an Englishman's house than he would have tried
+to burn it. After that, I think, they began to see I might be
+something. Keith, do you remember what old Rawson said to us once
+about marrying?"</p>
+<p>Keith had been thinking of it all the evening.</p>
+<p>"Keith, I was not born for this; I was born to <i>do</i>
+something. But for giving up I might have been like Stevenson or
+Eads or your man Maury, whom they are all belittling because he did
+it all himself instead of getting others to do it. By George! I
+hope to live till I build one more big bridge or run one more long
+tunnel. Jove! to stand once more up on the big girders, so high
+that the trees look small below you, and see the bridge growing
+under your eyes where the old croakers had said nothing would
+stand!"</p>
+<p>Keith's eyes sparkled, and he reached out his hand; and the
+other grasped it.</p>
+<p>When Keith returned home, he was already in sight of
+victory.</p>
+<p>The money had all been subscribed. His own interest in the
+venture was enough to make him rich, and he was to be general
+superintendent of the new company, with Matheson as his manager of
+the mines. All that was needed now was to complete the details of
+the transfer of the properties, perfect his organization, and set
+to work. This for a time required his presence more or less
+continuously in New York, and he opened an office in one of the
+office buildings down in the city, and took an apartment in a
+pleasant up-town hotel.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>When Keith returned to New York that Autumn, it was no longer as
+a young man with eyes aflame with hope and expectation and face
+alight with enthusiasm. The eager recruit had changed to the
+veteran. He had had experience of a world where men lived and died
+for the most sordid of all rewards--money, mere money.</p>
+<p>The fight had left its mark upon him. The mouth had lost
+something of the smile that once lurked about its corners, but had
+gained in strength. The eyes, always direct and steady, had more
+depth. The shoulders had a squarer set, as though they had been
+braced against adversity. Experience of life had sobered him.</p>
+<p>Sometimes it had come to him that he might be caught by the
+current and might drift into the same spirit, but self-examination
+up to this time had reassured him. He knew that he had other
+motives: the trust reposed in him by his friends, the
+responsibility laid upon him, the resolve to justify that
+confidence, were still there, beside his eager desire for
+success.</p>
+<p>He called immediately to see Norman. He was surprised to find
+how much he had aged in this short time. His hair was sprinkled
+with gray. He had lost all his lightness. He was distrait and
+almost morose.</p>
+<p>"You men here work too hard," asserted Keith. "You ought to have
+run over to England with me. You'd have learned that men can work
+and live too. I spent some of the most profitable time I was over
+there in a deer forest, which may have been Burnam-wood, as all the
+trees had disappeared-gone somewhere, if not to Dunsinane."</p>
+<p>Norman half smiled, but he answered wearily: "I wish I had been
+anywhere else than where I was." He turned away while he was
+speaking and fumbled among the papers on his desk. Keith rose, and
+Norman rose also.</p>
+<p>"I will send you cards to the clubs. I shall not be in town
+to-night, but to-morrow night, or the evening after, suppose you
+dine with me at the University. I'll have two or three fellows to
+meet you--or, perhaps, we'll dine alone. What do you say? We can
+talk more freely."</p>
+<p>Keith said that this was just what he should prefer, and Norman
+gave him a warm handshake and, suddenly seating himself at his
+desk, dived quickly into his papers.</p>
+<p>Keith came out mystified. There was something he could not
+understand. He wondered if the trouble of which he had heard had
+grown.</p>
+<p>Next morning, looking over the financial page of a paper, Keith
+came on a paragraph in which Norman's name appeared. He was
+mentioned as one of the directors of a company which the paper
+declared was among those that had disappointed the expectations of
+investors. There was nothing very tangible about the article; but
+the general tone was critical, and to Keith's eye unfriendly.</p>
+<p>When, the next afternoon, Keith rang the door-bell at Norman's
+house, and asked if Mrs. Wentworth was at home, the servant who
+opened the door informed him that no one of that name lived there.
+They used to live there, but had moved. Mrs. Wentworth lived
+somewhere on Fifth Avenue near the Park. It was a large new house
+near such a street, right-hand side, second house from the
+corner.</p>
+<p>Keith had a feeling of disappointment. Somehow, he had hoped to
+hear something of Lois Huntington.</p>
+<p>Keith, having resolved to devote the afternoon to the call on
+his friend's wife, and partly in the hope of learning where Lois
+was, kept on, and presently found himself in front of a new double
+house, one of the largest on the block. Keith felt reassured.</p>
+<p>"Well, this does not look as if Wentworth were altogether
+broke," he thought.</p>
+<p>A strange servant opened the door. Mrs. Wentworth was not at
+home. The other lady was in--would the gentleman come in? There was
+the flutter of a dress at the top of the stair.</p>
+<p>Keith said no. He would call again. The servant looked puzzled,
+for the lady at the top of the stair had seen Mr. Keith cross the
+street and had just given orders that he should be admitted, as she
+would see him. Now, as Keith walked away, Miss Lois Huntington
+descended the stair.</p>
+<p>"Why didn't you let him in, Hucless?" she demanded.</p>
+<p>"I told him you were in, Miss; but he said he would not come
+in."</p>
+<p>Miss Huntington turned and walked slowly back up to her room.
+Her face was very grave; she was pondering deeply.</p>
+<p>A little later Lois Huntington put on her hat and went out.</p>
+<p>Lois had not found her position at Mrs. Wentworth's the most
+agreeable in the world. Mrs. Wentworth was moody and capricious,
+and at times exacting.</p>
+<p>She had little idea how often that quiet girl who took her
+complaints so calmly was tempted to break her vow of silence,
+answer her upbraidings, and return home. But her old friends were
+dropping away from her. And it was on this account and for Norman's
+sake that Lois put up with her capriciousness. She had promised
+Norman to stay with her, and she would do it.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Norman's quarrel with Alice Lancaster was a sore trial to
+Lois. Many of her friends treated Lois as if she were a sort of
+upper servant, with a mingled condescension and hauteur. Lois was
+rather amused at it, except when it became too apparent, and then
+she would show her little claws, which were sharp enough. But Mrs.
+Lancaster had always been sweet to her, and Lois had missed her
+sadly. She no longer came to Mrs. Wentworth's. Lois, however, was
+always urged to come and see her, and an intimacy had sprung up
+between the two. Lois, with her freshness, was like a breath of
+Spring to the society woman, who was a little jaded with her
+experience; and the elder lady, on her part, treated the young girl
+with a warmth that was half maternal, half the cordiality of an
+elder sister. What part Gordon Keith played in this friendship must
+be left to surmise.</p>
+<p>It was to Mrs. Lancaster's that Lois now took her way. Her
+greeting was a cordial one, and Lois was soon confiding to her her
+trouble; how she had met an old friend after many years, and then
+how a contretemps had occurred. She told of his writing her, and of
+her failure to answer his letters, and how her aunt had refused to
+allow him to come to Brookford to see them.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster listened with interest.</p>
+<p>"My dear, there was nothing in that. Yes, that was just one of
+Ferdy's little lies," she said, in a sort of reverie.</p>
+<p>"But it was so wicked in him to tell such falsehoods about a
+man," exclaimed Lois, her color coming and going, her eyes
+flashing.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+<p>"Ferdy does not like Mr. Keith, and he does like you, and he
+probably thought to prevent your liking him."</p>
+<p>"I detest him."</p>
+<p>The telltale color rushed up into her cheeks as Mrs. Lancaster's
+eyes rested on her, and as it mounted, those blue eyes grew a
+little more searching.</p>
+<p>"I can scarcely bear to see him when he comes there," said
+Lois.</p>
+<p>"Has he begun to go there again?" Mrs. Lancaster inquired, in
+some surprise.</p>
+<p>"Yes; and he pretends that he is coming to see me!" said the
+girl, with a flash in her eyes. "You know that is not true?"</p>
+<p>"Don't you believe him," said the other, gravely. Her eyes, as
+they rested on the girl's face, had a very soft light in them.</p>
+<p>"Well, we must make it up," she said presently. "You are going
+to Mrs. Wickersham's?" she asked suddenly.</p>
+<p>"Yes; Cousin Louise is going and says I must go. Mr. Wickersham
+will not be there, you know."</p>
+<p>"Yes." She drifted off into a reverie.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+<h3>THE DINNER AT MRS. WICKERSHAM'S</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Keith quickly discovered that Rumor was busy with Ferdy
+Wickersham's name in other places than gilded drawing-rooms. He had
+been dropped from the board of more than one big corporation in
+which he had once had a potent influence. Knowing men, like
+Stirling and his club friends, began to say that they did not see
+how he had kept up. But up-town he still held on-held on with a
+steady eye and stony face that showed a nerve worthy of a better
+man. His smile became more constant,--to be sure, It was belied by
+his eyes: that cold gleam was not mirth,--but his voice was as
+insolent as ever.</p>
+<p>Several other rumors soon began to float about. One was that he
+and Mrs. Wentworth had fallen out. As to the Cause of this the town
+was divided. One story was that the pretty governess at Mrs.
+Wentworth's was in some way concerned with it.</p>
+<p>However this was, the Wickersham house was mortgaged, and Rumor
+began to say even up-town that the Wickersham fortune had melted
+away.</p>
+<p>The news of Keith's success in England had reached home as soon
+as he had. His friends congratulated him, and his acquaintances
+greeted him with a warmth that, a few years before, would have
+cheered his heart and have made him their friend for life. Mrs.
+Nailor, when she met him, almost fell on his neck. She actually
+called him her "dear boy."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I have been hearing about you!" she said archly. "You must
+come and dine with us at once and tell us all about it."</p>
+<p>"About what?" inquired Keith.</p>
+<p>"About your great successes on the other side. You see, your
+friends keep up with you!"</p>
+<p>"They do, indeed, and sometimes get ahead of me," said
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"How would to-morrow suit you? No, not to-morrow--Saturday? No;
+we are going out Saturday. Let me see--we are so crowded with
+engagements I shall have to go home and look at my book. But you
+must come very soon. You have heard the news, of course? Isn't it
+dreadful?"</p>
+<p>"What news?" He knew perfectly what she meant.</p>
+<p>"About the Norman-Wentworths getting a divorce? Dreadful, isn't
+it? Perfectly dreadful! But, of course, it was to be expected. Any
+one could see that all along?"</p>
+<p>"I could not," said Keith, dryly; "but I do not claim to be any
+one."</p>
+<p>"Which side are you on? Norman's, I suppose?"</p>
+<p>"Neither," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"You know, Ferdy always was in love with her?" This with a
+glance to obtain Keith's views.</p>
+<p>"No; I know nothing about it."</p>
+<p>"Yes; always," she nodded oracularly. "Of course, he is making
+love to Alice Lancaster, too, and to the new governess at the
+Wentworths'."</p>
+<p>"Who is that?" asked Keith, moved by some sudden instinct to
+inquire.</p>
+<p>"That pretty country cousin of Norman's, whom they brought there
+to save appearances when Norman first left. Huntington is her
+name."</p>
+<p>Keith suddenly grew hot.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Ferdy is making love to her, too. Why, they say that is
+what they have quarrelled about. Louise is insanely jealous, and
+she is very pretty. Yes--you know, Ferdy is like some other men?
+Just gregarious! Yes? But Louise Wentworth was always his <i>grande
+passion</i>. He is just amusing himself with the governess, and
+she, poor little fool, supposes she has made a conquest. You know
+how it is?"</p>
+<p>"I really know nothing about it," declared Keith, in a
+flame.</p>
+<p>"Yes; and he was always her <i>grande passion</i>? Don't you
+think so?"</p>
+<p>"No, I do not," said Keith, firmly. "I know nothing about it;
+but I believe she and Norman were devoted,--as devoted a couple as
+I ever saw,--and I do not see why people cannot let them alone. I
+think none too well of Ferdy Wickersham, but I don't believe a word
+against her. She may be silly; but she is a hundred times better
+than some who calumniate her."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you dear boy! You were always so amiable. It's a pity the
+world is not like you; but it is not."</p>
+<p>"It is a pity people do not let others alone and attend to their
+own affairs," remarked Keith, grimly. "I believe more than half the
+trouble is made by the meddlers who go around gossiping."</p>
+<p>"Don't they! Why, every one is talking about it. I have not been
+in a drawing-room where it is not being discussed."</p>
+<p>"I suppose not," said Mr. Keith.</p>
+<p>"And, you know, they say Norman Wentworth has lost a lot of
+money, too. But, then, he has a large account to fall back on.
+Alice Lancaster has a plenty."</p>
+<p>"What's that?" Keith's voice had an unpleasant sharpness in
+it.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you know, he is her trustee, and they are great friends.
+Good-by. You must come and dine with us sometime--sometime soon,
+too."</p>
+<p>And Mrs. Nailor floated away, and in the first drawing-room she
+visited told of Keith's return and of his taking the story of
+Louise Wentworth and Ferdy Wickersham very seriously; adding, "And
+you know, I think he is a great admirer of Louise himself--a very
+great admirer. Of course, he would like to marry Alice Lancaster,
+just as Ferdy would. They all want to marry her; but Louise
+Wentworth is the one that has their hearts. She knows how to
+capture them. You keep your eyes open. You ought to have seen the
+way he looked when I mentioned Ferdy Wickersham and her. My dear, a
+man doesn't look that way unless he feels something here." She
+tapped solemnly the spot where she imagined her heart to be, that
+dry and desiccated organ that had long ceased to know any real
+warmth.</p>
+<p>A little time afterwards, Keith, to his great surprise, received
+an invitation to dine at Mrs. Wickersham's. He had never before
+received an invitation to her house, and when he had met her, she
+had always been stiff and repellent toward him. This he had
+regarded as perfectly natural; for he and Ferdy had never been
+friendly, and of late had not even kept up appearances.</p>
+<p>He wondered why he should be invited now. Could it be true, as
+Stirling had said, laughing, that now he had the key and would find
+all doors open to him?</p>
+<p>Keith had not yet written his reply when he called that evening
+at Mrs. Lancaster's. She asked him if he had received such an
+invitation. Keith said yes, but he did not intend to go. He almost
+thought it must have been sent by mistake.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; now come. Ferdy won't be there, and Mrs. Wickersham
+wants to be friendly with you. You and Ferdy don't get along; but
+neither do she and Ferdy. You know they have fallen out? Poor old
+thing! She was talking about it the other day, and she burst out
+crying. She said he had been her idol."</p>
+<p>"What is the matter?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, Ferdy's selfishness."</p>
+<p>"He is a brute! Think of a man quarrelling with his mother!
+Why--!" He went into a reverie in which his face grew very soft,
+while Mrs. Lancaster watched him silently. Presently he started. "I
+have nothing against her except a sort of general animosity from
+boyhood, which I am sorry to have."</p>
+<p>"Oh, well, then, come. As people grow older they outgrow their
+animosities and wish to make friends."</p>
+<p>"You being so old as to have experienced it?" said Keith.</p>
+<p>"I am nearly thirty years old," she said. "Isn't it
+dreadful?"</p>
+<p>"Aurora is much older than that," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"Ah, Sir Flatterer, I have a mirror." But her eyes filled with a
+pleasant light as Keith said:</p>
+<p>"Then it will corroborate what needs no proof."</p>
+<p>She knew it was flattery, but she enjoyed it and dimpled.</p>
+<p>"Now, you will come? I want you to come." She looked at him with
+a soft glow in her face.</p>
+<p>"Yes. On your invitation."</p>
+<p>"Alice Lancaster, place one good deed to thy account: 'Blessed
+are the peacemakers,'" said Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>When Keith arrived at Mrs. Wickersham's he found the company
+assembled in her great drawing-room--the usual sort to be found in
+great drawing-rooms of large new chateau-like mansions in a great
+and commercial city.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keats!" called out the prim servant. They always took this
+poetical view of his name.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wickersham greeted him civilly and solemnly. She had aged
+much since Keith saw her last, and had also grown quite deaf. Her
+face showed traces of the desperate struggle she was making to keep
+up appearances. It was apparent that she had not the least idea who
+he was; but she shook hands with him much as she might have done at
+a funeral had he called to pay his respects. Among the late
+arrivals was Mrs. Wentworth. She was the richest-dressed woman in
+the room, and her jewels were the finest, but she had an expression
+on her face, as she entered, which Keith had never seen there. Her
+head was high, and there was an air of defiance about her which
+challenged the eye at once.</p>
+<p>"I don't think I shall speak to her," said a voice near
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"Well, I have known her all my life, and until it becomes a
+public scandal I don't feel authorized to cut her--"</p>
+<p>The speaker was Mrs. Nailor, who was in her most charitable
+mood.</p>
+<p>"Oh, of course, I shall speak to her here, but I mean--I
+certainly shall not visit her."</p>
+<p>"You know she has quarrelled with her friend, Mrs. Lancaster?
+About her husband." This was behind her fan.</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes. She is to be here to-night. Quite brazen, isn't it? We
+shall see how they meet. I met a remarkably pretty girl down in the
+dressing-room," she continued; "one of the guests. She has such
+pretty manners, too. Really, I thought, from her politeness to me
+in arranging my dress, she must be one of the maids until Mrs.
+Wentworth spoke to her. Young girls nowadays are so rude! They take
+up the mirror the whole time, and never think of letting you see
+yourself. I wonder who she can be?"</p>
+<p>"Possibly Mrs. Wentworth's companion. I think she is here. She
+has to have some one to do the proprieties, you know?" said Mrs.
+Nailor.</p>
+<p>"I should think it might be as well," assented the other, with a
+sniff. "But she would hardly be here!"</p>
+<p>"She is really her governess, a very ill-bred and rude young
+person," said Mrs. Nailor.</p>
+<p>The other sighed.</p>
+<p>"Society is getting so democratic now, one might say, so mixed,
+that there is no telling whom one may meet nowadays."</p>
+<p>"No, indeed," pursued Mrs. Nailor. "I do not at all approve of
+governesses and such persons being invited out. I think the English
+way much the better. There the governess never dreams of coming to
+the table except to luncheon, and her friends are the housekeeper
+and the butler."</p>
+<p>Keith, wearied of the banalities at his ear, crossed over to
+where Mrs. Wentworth stood a little apart from the other ladies.
+One or two men were talking to her. She was evidently pleased to
+see him. She talked volubly, and with just that pitch in her voice
+that betrays a subcurrent of excitement.</p>
+<p>From time to time she glanced about her, appearing to Keith to
+search the faces of the other women. Keith wondered if it were a
+fancy of his that they were holding a little aloof from her.
+Presently Mrs. Nailor came up and spoke to her.</p>
+<p>Keith backed away a little, and found himself mixed up with the
+train of a lady behind him, a dainty thing of white muslin.</p>
+<p>He apologized in some confusion, and turning, found himself
+looking into Lois Huntington's eyes. For a bare moment he was in a
+sort of maze. Then the expression in her face dispelled it. She
+held out her hand, and he clasped it; and before he had withdrawn
+his eyes from hers, he knew that his peace was made, and Mrs.
+Wickersham's drawing-room had become another place. This, then, was
+what Alice Lancaster meant when she spoke of the peacemakers.</p>
+<p>"It does not in the least matter about the dress, I assure you,"
+she said in reply to his apology. "My dressmaker, Lois Huntington,
+can repair it so that you will not know it has been torn. It was
+only a ruse of mine to attract your attention." She was trying to
+speak lightly. "I thought you were not going to speak to me at all.
+It seems to be a way you have of treating your old friends--your
+oldest friends," she laughed.</p>
+<p>"Oh, the insolence of youth!" said Keith, wishing to keep away
+from a serious subject. "Let us settle this question of age here
+and now. I say you are seven years old."</p>
+<p>"You are a Bourbon," she said; "you neither forget nor learn.
+Look at me. How old do I look?"</p>
+<p>"Seven--"</p>
+<p>"No. Look."</p>
+<p>"I am looking-would I were Argus! You look like--perpetual
+Youth."</p>
+<p>And she did. She was dressed in pure white. Her dark eyes were
+soft and gentle, yet with mischief lurking in them, and her
+straight brows, almost black, added to their lustre. Her dark hair
+was brushed back from her white forehead, and as she turned, Keith
+noted again, as he had done the first time he met her, the fine
+profile and the beautiful lines of her round throat, with the
+curves below it, as white as snow. "Perpetual Youth," he
+murmured.</p>
+<p>"And do you know what you are?" she challenged him.</p>
+<p>"Yes; Age."</p>
+<p>"No. Flattery. But I am proof. I have learned that men are
+deceivers ever. You positively refused to see me when I had left
+word with the servant that I would see you if you called." She gave
+him a swift little glance to see how he took her charge.</p>
+<p>"I did nothing of the kind. I will admit that I should know
+where you are by instinct, as Sir John knew the Prince; but I did
+not expect you to insist on my doing so. How was I to know you were
+in the city?"</p>
+<p>"The servant told you."</p>
+<p>"The servant told me?"</p>
+<p>As Keith's brow puckered in the effort to unravel the mystery,
+she nodded.</p>
+<p>"Um-hum--I heard him. I was at the head of the stair."</p>
+<p>Keith tapped his head.</p>
+<p>"It's old age--sheer senility."</p>
+<p>"'No; I don't want to see the other lady,'" she said, mimicking
+him so exactly that he opened his eyes wide.</p>
+<p>"I am staying at Mrs. Wentworth's--Cousin Norman's," she
+continued, with a little change of expression and the least little
+lift of her head.</p>
+<p>Keith's expression, perhaps, changed slightly, too, for she
+added quietly: "Cousin Louise had to have some one with her, and I
+am teaching the children. I am the governess."</p>
+<p>"I have always said that children nowadays have all the best
+things," said Keith, desirous to get off delicate ground. "You
+know, some one has said he never ate a ripe peach in his life: when
+he was a boy the grown-ups had them, and since he grew up the
+children have them all."</p>
+<p>She laughed.</p>
+<p>"I am very severe, I assure you."</p>
+<p>"You look it. I should think you might be Herod himself."</p>
+<p>She smiled, and then the smile died out, and she glanced around
+her.</p>
+<p>"I owe you an apology," she said in a lowered voice.</p>
+<p>"For what?"</p>
+<p>"For--mis--for not answering your letters. But I mis--I don't
+know how to say what I wish. Won't you accept it without an
+explanation?" She held out her hand and gave him the least little
+flitting glance of appeal.</p>
+<p>"I will," said Keith. "With all my heart."</p>
+<p>"Thank you. I have been very unhappy about it." She breathed a
+little sigh of relief, which Keith caught.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster did not arrive until all the other guests had
+been there a little while. But when she entered she had never
+looked handsomer. As soon as she had greeted her hostess, her eyes
+swept around the room, and in their circuit rested for a moment on
+Keith, who was talking to Lois. She gave them a charming smile. The
+next moment, however, her eyes stole that way again, and this time
+they bore a graver expression. The admiration that filled the
+younger girl's eyes was unbounded and unfeigned.</p>
+<p>"Don't you think she is the handsomest woman in the room?" she
+asked, with a nod toward Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>Keith was suddenly conscious that he did not wish to commit
+himself to such praise. She was certainly very handsome, he
+admitted, but there were others who would pass muster, too, in a
+beauty show.</p>
+<p>"Oh, but I know you must think so; every one says you do," Lois
+urged, with a swift glance up at him, which, somehow, Keith would
+have liked to avoid.</p>
+<p>"Then, I suppose it must be so; for every one knows my innermost
+thoughts. But I think she was more beautiful when she was younger.
+I do not know what it is; but there is something in Society that,
+after a few years, takes away the bloom of ingenuousness and puts
+in its place just the least little shade of unreality."</p>
+<p>"I know what you mean; but she is so beautiful that one would
+never notice it. What a power such beauty is! I should be afraid of
+it." Lois was speaking almost to herself, and Keith, as she was
+deeply absorbed in observing Mrs. Lancaster, gazed at her with
+renewed interest.</p>
+<p>"I'd so much rather be loved for myself'," the girl went on
+earnestly. "I think it is one of the compensations that those who
+want such beauty have-"</p>
+<p>"Well, it is one of the things which you must always hold merely
+as a conjecture, for you can never know by experience."</p>
+<p>She glanced up at him with a smile, half pleased, half
+reproving.</p>
+<p>"Do you think I am the sort that likes flattery? I believe you
+think we are all silly. I thought you were too good a friend of
+mine to attempt that line with me."</p>
+<p>Keith declared that all women loved flattery, but protested, of
+course, that he was not flattering her.</p>
+<p>"Why should I?" he laughed.</p>
+<p>"Oh, just because you think it will please me, and because it is
+so easy. It is so much less trouble. It takes less intellect, and
+you don't think I am worth spending intellect on."</p>
+<p>This Keith stoutly denied.</p>
+<p>She gave him a fleeting glance out of her brown eyes. "She,
+however, is as good as she is handsome," she said, returning to
+Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>"Yes; she is one of those who 'do good by stealth, and blush to
+find it fame.'"</p>
+<p>"There are not a great many like that around here," Lois smiled.
+"Here comes one now?" she added, as Mrs. Nailor moved up to them.
+She was "so glad" to see Miss Huntington out. "You must like your
+Winter in New York?" she said, smiling softly. "You have such
+opportunities for seeing interesting people-like Mr. Keith, here?"
+She turned her eyes on Keith.</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes. I do. I see so many entertaining people," said Lois,
+innocently.</p>
+<p>"They are very kind to you?" purred the elder lady.</p>
+<p>"Most condescending." Lois turned her eyes toward Keith with a
+little sparkle in them; but as she read his appreciation a smile
+stole into them.</p>
+<p>Dinner was solemnly announced, and the couples swept out in that
+stately manner appropriate to solemn occasions, such as marriages,
+funerals, and fashionable dinners.</p>
+<p>"Do you know your place?" asked Keith of Lois, to whom he had
+been assigned.</p>
+<p>"Don't I? A governess and not know her place! You must help me
+through."</p>
+<p>"Through what?"</p>
+<p>"The dinner. You do not understand what a tremendous
+responsibility you have. This is my first dinner."</p>
+<p>"I always said dinners were a part of the curse," said Keith,
+lightly, smiling down at her fresh face with sheer content. "I
+shall confine myself hereafter to breakfast and lunch-except when I
+receive invitations to Mrs. Wickersham's." he added.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster was on the other side of Keith; so he found the
+dinner much pleasanter than he had expected. She soon fell to
+talking of Lois, a subject which Keith found very agreeable.</p>
+<p>"You know, she is staying with Louise Wentworth? Louise had to
+have some one to stay with her, so she got her to come and teach
+the children this Winter. Louise says she is trying to make
+something of her."</p>
+<p>"From my slight observation, it seems to me as if the Creator
+has been rather successful in that direction already. How does she
+propose to help Him out?"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster bent forward and took a good look at the girl,
+who at the moment was carrying on an animated conversation with
+Stirling. Her color was coming and going, her eyes were sparkling,
+and her cheek was dimpling with fun.</p>
+<p>"She looks as if she came out of a country garden, doesn't she?"
+she said.</p>
+<p>"Yes, because she has, and has not yet been wired to a
+stick."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster's eyes grew graver at Keith's speech. Just then
+the conversation became more general. Some one told a story of a
+man travelling with his wife and meeting a former wife, and
+forgetting which one he then had.</p>
+<p>"Oh, that reminds me of a story I heard the other day. It was
+awfully good-but just a little wicked," exclaimed Mrs. Nailor.</p>
+<p>Keith's smile died out, and there was something very like a
+cloud lowering on his brow. Several others appeared surprised, and
+Mr. Nailor, a small bald-headed man, said across the table: "Hally,
+don't you tell that story." But Mrs. Nailor was not to be
+controlled.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I must tell it! It is not going to hurt any of you. Let me
+see if there is any one here very young and innocent?" She glanced
+about the table. "Oh, yes; there is little Miss Huntington. Miss
+Huntington, you can stop your ears while I tell it."</p>
+<p>"Thank you," said Lois, placidly. She leaned a little forward
+and put her fingers in her ears.</p>
+<p>A sort of gasp went around the table, and then a shout of
+laughter, led by Stirling. Mrs. Nailor joined in it, but her face
+was red and her eyes were angry. Mrs. Wentworth looked annoyed.</p>
+<p>"Good," said Mrs. Lancaster, in an undertone.</p>
+<p>"Divine," said Keith, his eyes snapping with satisfaction.</p>
+<p>"It was not so bad as that," said Mrs. Nailor, her face very
+red. "Miss Huntington, you can take your hands down now; I sha'n't
+tell it."</p>
+<p>"Thank you," said Lois, and sat quietly back in her chair, with
+her face as placid as a child's.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor suddenly changed the conversation to Art. She was
+looking at a painting on the wall behind Keith, and after
+inspecting it a moment through her lorgnon, turned toward the head
+of the table.</p>
+<p>"Where did you get that picture, Mrs. Wickersham? Have I ever
+seen it before?"</p>
+<p>The hostess's gaze followed hers.</p>
+<p>"That? Oh, we have had it ever so long. It is a portrait of an
+ancestor of mine. It belonged to a relative, a distant
+relative--another branch, you know, in whose family it came down,
+though we had even more right to it, as we were an older branch,"
+she said, gaining courage as she went on.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster turned and inspected the picture.</p>
+<p>"I, too, almost seem to have seen it before," she said
+presently, in a reflective way.</p>
+<p>"My dear, you have not seen it before," declared the hostess,
+positively. "Although we have had it for a good while, it was at
+our place in the country. Brush, the picture-dealer, says it is one
+of the finest 'old masters' in New York, quite in the best style of
+Sir Peter--What's his name?"</p>
+<p>"Then I have seen some one so like it--? Who can it be?" said
+Mrs. Lancaster, her mind still working along the lines of
+reminiscence.</p>
+<p>Nearly every one was looking now.</p>
+<p>"Why, I know who it is!" said Lois Huntington, who had turned to
+look at it, to Mrs. Lancaster. "It is Mr. Keith." Her clear voice
+was heard distinctly.</p>
+<p>"Of course, it is," said Mrs. Lancaster. Others agreed with
+her.</p>
+<p>Keith, too, had turned and looked over his shoulder at the
+picture behind him, and for a moment he seemed in a dream. His
+father was gazing down at him out of the frame. The next moment he
+came to himself. It was the man-in-armor that used to hang in the
+library at Elphinstone. As he turned back, he glanced at Mrs.
+Lancaster, and her eyes gazed into his. The next moment he
+addressed Mrs. Wickersham and started a new subject of
+conversation.</p>
+<p>"That is it," said Mrs. Lancaster to herself. Then turning to
+her hostess, she said: "No, I never saw it before; I was
+mistaken."</p>
+<p>But Lois knew that she herself had seen it before, and
+remembered where it was.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wickersham looked extremely uncomfortable, but Keith's calm
+courtesy set her at ease again.</p>
+<p>When the gentlemen, after their cigars, followed the ladies into
+the drawing-room, Keith found Mrs. Lancaster and Lois sitting
+together, a little apart from the others, talking earnestly. He
+walked over and joined them.</p>
+<p>They had been talking of the incident of the picture, but
+stopped as he came up.</p>
+<p>"Now, Lois," said Mrs. Lancaster, gayly, "I have known Mr. Keith
+a long time, and I give you one standing piece of advice. Don't
+believe one word that he tells you; for he is the most insidious
+flatterer that lives."</p>
+<p>"On the contrary," said Keith, bowing and speaking gravely to
+the younger girl, "I assure you that you may believe implicitly
+every word that I tell you. I promise you in the beginning that I
+shall never tell you anything but the truth as long as I live. It
+shall be my claim upon your friendship."</p>
+<p>"Thank you," said Lois, lifting her eyes to his face. Her color
+had deepened a little at his earnest manner. "I love a palpable
+truth."</p>
+<p>"You do not get it often in Society," said Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>"I promise you that you shall always have it from me," said
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"Thank you," she said again, quite earnestly, looking him calmly
+in the eyes. "Then we shall always be friends."</p>
+<p>"Always."</p>
+<p>Just then Stirling came up and with a very flattering speech
+asked Miss Huntington to sing.</p>
+<p>"I hear you sing like a seraph," he declared.</p>
+<p>"I thought they always cried," she said, smiling; then, with a
+half-frightened look across toward her cousin, she sobered and
+declared that she could not.</p>
+<p>"I have been meaning to have her take lessons," said Mrs.
+Wentworth, condescendingly, from her seat near by; "but I have not
+had time to attend to it. She will sing very well when she takes
+lessons." She resumed her conversation. Stirling was still pressing
+Miss Huntington, and she was still excusing herself; declaring that
+she had no one to play her accompaniments.</p>
+<p>"Please help me," she said in an undertone to Keith. "I used to
+play them myself, but Cousin Louise said I must not do that; that I
+must always stand up to sing."</p>
+<p>"Nonsense," said Keith. "You sha'n't sing if you do not wish to
+do so; but let me tell you: there is a deed of record in my State
+conveying a tract of land to a girl from an old gentleman on the
+expressed consideration that she had sung 'Annie Laurie' for him
+when he asked her to do it, without being begged."</p>
+<p>She looked at him as if she had not heard, and then glanced at
+her cousin.</p>
+<p>"Either sing or don't sing, my dear," said Mrs. Wentworth, with
+a slight frown. "You are keeping every one waiting."</p>
+<p>Keith glanced over at her, and was about to say to Lois, "Don't
+sing"; but he was too late. Folding her hands before her, and
+without moving from where she stood near the wall, she began to
+sing "Annie Laurie." She had a lovely voice, and she sang as simply
+and unaffectedly as if she had been singing in her own room for her
+own pleasure.</p>
+<p>When she got through, there was a round of applause throughout
+the company. Even Mrs. Wentworth joined in it; but she came over
+and said:</p>
+<p>"That was well done; but next time, my dear, let some one play
+your accompaniment."</p>
+<p>"Next time, don't you do any such thing," said Keith, stoutly.
+"You can never sing it so well again if you do. Please accept this
+from a man who would rather have heard you sing that song that way
+than have heard Albani sing in 'Lohengrin.'" He took the rosebud
+out of his buttonhole and gave it to her, looking her straight in
+the eyes.</p>
+<p>"Is this the truth?" she asked, with her gaze quite steady on
+his face.</p>
+<p>"The palpable truth," he said.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+<h3>A MISUNDERSTANDING</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Miss Lois Huntington, as she sank back in the corner of her
+cousin's carriage, on their way home, was far away from the
+rattling New York street. Mrs. Wentworth's occasional recurrence to
+the unfortunate incidents of stopping her ears and of singing the
+song without an accompaniment did not ruffle her. She knew she had
+pleased one man--the one she at that moment would rather have
+pleased than all the rest of New York. Her heart was eased of a
+load that had made it heavy for many a day. They were once more
+friends. Mrs. Wentworth's chiding sounded as if it were far away on
+some alien shore, while Lois floated serenely on a tide that
+appeared to begin away back in her childhood, and was bearing her
+gently, still gently, she knew not whither. If she tried to look
+forward she was lost in a mist that hung like a soft haze over the
+horizon. Might there be a haven yonder in that rosy distance? Or
+were those still the billows of the wide and trackless sea? She did
+not know or care. She would drift and meantime think of him, the
+old friend who had turned the evening for her into a real delight.
+Was he in love with Mrs. Lancaster? she wondered. Every one said he
+was, and it would not be unnatural if he were. It was on her
+account he had gone to Mrs. Wickersham's. She undoubtedly liked
+him. Many men were after her. If Mr. Keith was trying to marry her,
+as every one said, he must be in love with her. He would never
+marry any one whom he did not love. If he were in love with Mrs.
+Lancaster, would she marry him? Her belief was that she would.</p>
+<p>At the thought she for one moment had a pang of envy.</p>
+<p>Her reverie was broken in on by Mrs. Wentworth.</p>
+<p>"Why are you so pensive? You have not said a word since we
+started."</p>
+<p>"Why, I do not know. I was just thinking. You know, such a
+dinner is quite an episode with me."</p>
+<p>"Did you have a pleasant time? Was Mr. Keith agreeable? I was
+glad to see you had him; for he is a very agreeable man when he
+chooses, but quite moody, and you never know what he is going to
+say."</p>
+<p>"I think that is one of his--of his charms--that you don't know
+what he is going to say. I get so tired of talking to people who
+say just what you know they are going to say--just what some one
+else has just said and what some one else will say to-morrow. It is
+like reading an advertisement."</p>
+<p>"Lois, you must not be so unconventional," said Mrs. Wentworth.
+"I must beg you not to repeat such a thing as your performance this
+evening. I don't like it."</p>
+<p>"Very well, Cousin Louise, I will not," said the girl, a little
+stiffly. "I shall recognize your wishes; but I must tell you that I
+do not agree with you. I hate conventionality. We all get
+machine-made. I see not the least objection to what I did, except
+your wishes, of course, and neither did Mr. Keith."</p>
+<p>"Well, while you are with me, you must conform to my wishes. Mr.
+Keith is not responsible for you. Mr. Keith is like other
+men--ready to flatter a young and unsophisticated girl."</p>
+<p>"No; Mr. Keith is not like other men. He does not have to wait
+and see what others think and say before he forms an opinion. I am
+so tired of hearing people say what they think others think. Even
+Mr. Rimmon, at church, says what he thinks his congregation
+likes--just as when he meets them he flatters them and tells them
+what dear ladies they are, and how well they look, and how good
+their wine is. Why can't people think for themselves?"</p>
+<p>"Well, on my word, Lois, you appear to be thinking for yourself!
+And you also appear to think very highly of Mr. Keith," said Mrs.
+Wentworth.</p>
+<p>"I do. I have known Mr. Keith all my life," said the girl,
+gravely. "He is associated in my mind with all that I loved."</p>
+<p>"There, I did not mean to call up sorrowful thoughts," said Mrs.
+Wentworth. "I wanted you to have a good time."</p>
+<p>Next day Mr. Keith gave himself the pleasure of calling promptly
+at Mrs. Norman's. He remembered the time when he had waited a day
+or two before calling on Miss Huntington and had found her gone,
+with its train of misunderstandings. So he had no intention of
+repeating the error. In Love as in War, Success attends
+Celerity.</p>
+<p>Miss Huntington was not at home, the servant said in answer to
+Keith's inquiries for the ladies; she had taken the children out to
+see Madam Wentworth. But Mrs. Wentworth would see Mr. Keith.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth was more than usually cordial. She was
+undoubtedly more nervous than she used to be. She soon spoke of
+Norman, and for a moment grew quite excited.</p>
+<p>"I know what people say about me," she exclaimed. "I know they
+say I ought to have borne everything and have gone on smiling and
+pretending I was happy even when I had the proof that he
+was--was--that he no longer cared for me, or for my--my happiness.
+But I could not--I was not constituted so. And if I have refused to
+submit to it I had good reason."</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Wentworth," said Keith, "will you please tell me what you
+are talking about?"</p>
+<p>"You will hear about it soon enough," she said, with a bitter
+laugh. "All you have to do is to call on Mrs. Nailor or Mrs.
+Any-one-else for five minutes."</p>
+<p>"If I hear what I understand you to believe, that Norman cares
+for some one else, I shall not believe it."</p>
+<p>She laughed bitterly.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you and Norman always swore by each other. I guess that you
+are no better than other men."</p>
+<p>"We are, at least, better than some other men," said Keith, "and
+Norman is better than most other men."</p>
+<p>She simply shrugged her shoulders and drifted into a reverie. It
+was evidently not a pleasant one.</p>
+<p>Keith rose to go. And a half-hour later he quite casually called
+at old Mrs. Wentworth's, where he found the children having a romp.
+Miss Huntington looked as sweet as a rose, and Keith thought, or at
+least hoped, she was pleased to see him.</p>
+<p>Keith promptly availed himself of Mrs. Wentworth's permission,
+and was soon calling every day or two at her house, and even on
+those days when he did not call he found himself sauntering up the
+avenue or in the Park, watching for the slim, straight, trim little
+figure he now knew so well. He was not in love with Lois. He said
+this to himself quite positively. He only admired her, and had a
+feeling of protection and warm friendship for a young and
+fatherless girl who had once had every promise of a life of ease
+and joy, and was by the hap of ill fortune thrown out on the cold
+world and into a relation of dependence. He had about given up any
+idea of falling in love. Love, such as he had once known it, was
+not for him. Love for love's sake--love that created a new world
+and peopled it with one woman--was over for him. At least, so he
+said.</p>
+<p>And when he had reasoned thus, he would find himself hurrying
+along the avenue or in the Park, straining his eyes to see if he
+could distinguish her among the crowd of walkers and loungers that
+thronged the sidewalk or the foot-path a quarter of a mile away.
+And if he could not, he was conscious of disappointment; and if he
+did distinguish her, his heart would give a bound, and he would go
+racing along till he was at her side.</p>
+<p>Oftenest, though, he visited her at Mrs. Wentworth's, where he
+could talk to her without the continual interruption of the
+children's busy tongues, and could get her to sing those
+old-fashioned songs that, somehow, sounded to him sweeter than all
+the music in the world.</p>
+<p>In fact, he went there so often to visit her that he began to
+neglect his other friends. Even Norman he did not see as much of as
+formerly.</p>
+<p>Once, when he was praising her voice to Mrs. Wentworth, she said
+to him: "Yes, I think she would do well in concert. I am urging her
+to prepare herself for that; not at present, of course, for I need
+her just now with the children; but in a year or two the boys will
+go to school and the two girls will require a good French
+governess, or I may take them to France. Then I shall advise her to
+try concert. Of course, Miss Brooke cannot take care of her always.
+Besides, she is too independent to allow her to do it."</p>
+<p>Keith was angry in a moment. He had never liked Mrs. Wentworth
+so little. "I shall advise her to do nothing of the kind," he said
+firmly. "Miss Huntington is a lady, and to have her patronized and
+treated as an inferior by a lot of <i>nouveaux riches</i> is more
+than I could stand."</p>
+<p>"I see no chance of her marrying," said Mrs. Wentworth. "She has
+not a cent, and you know men don't marry penniless girls these
+days."</p>
+<p>"Oh, they do if they fall in love. There are a great many men in
+the world and even in New York, besides the small tuft-hunting,
+money-loving parasites that one meets at the so-called swell
+houses. If those you and I know were all, New York would be a very
+insignificant place. The brains and the character and the heart;
+the makers and leaders, are not found at the dinners and balls we
+are honored with invitations to by Mrs. Nailor and her like. Alice
+Lancaster was saying the other day--"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth froze up.</p>
+<p>"Alice Lancaster!" Her eyes flashed. "Do not quote her to me!"
+Her lips choked with the words.</p>
+<p>"She is a friend of yours, and a good friend of yours," declared
+Keith, boldly.</p>
+<p>"I do not want such friends as that," she said, flaming
+suddenly. "Who do you suppose has come between my husband and
+me?"</p>
+<p>"Not Mrs. Lancaster."</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"No," said Keith, firmly; "you wrong them both. You have been
+misled."</p>
+<p>She rose and walked up and down the room in an excitement like
+that of an angry lioness.</p>
+<p>"You are the only friend that would say that to me."</p>
+<p>"Then I am a better friend than others." He went on to defend
+Mrs. Lancaster warmly.</p>
+<p>When Keith left he wondered if that outburst meant that she
+still loved Norman.</p>
+<p>It is not to be supposed that Mr. Keith's visits to the house of
+Mrs. Wentworth had gone unobserved or unchronicled. That portion of
+the set that knew Mrs. Wentworth best, which is most given to the
+discussion of such important questions as who visits whom too
+often, and who has stopped visiting whom altogether, with the
+reasons therefor, was soon busy over Keith's visits.</p>
+<p>They were referred to in the society column of a certain journal
+recently started, known by some as "The Scandal-monger's Own," and
+some kind friend was considerate enough to send Norman Wentworth a
+marked copy.</p>
+<p>Some suggested timidly that they had heard that Mr. Keith's
+visits were due to his opinion of the governess; but they were
+immediately suppressed.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor expressed the more general opinion when she declared
+that even a d&eacute;butante would know that men like Ferdy
+Wickersham and Mr. Keith did not fall in love with unknown
+governesses. That sort of thing would do to put in books; but it
+did not happen in real life. They might visit them, but--! After
+which she proceeded to say as many ill-natured things about Miss
+Lois as she could think of; for the story of Lois's stopping her
+ears had also gotten abroad.</p>
+<p>Meantime, Keith pursued his way, happily ignorant of the motives
+attributed to him by some of those who smiled on him and invited
+him to their teas. A half-hour with Lois Huntington was reward
+enough to him for much waiting. To see her eyes brighten and to
+hear her voice grow softer and more musical as she spoke his name;
+to feel that she was in sympathy with him, that she understood him
+without explanation, that she was interested in his work: these
+were the rewards which lit up life for him and sent him to his
+rooms cheered and refreshed. He knew that she had no idea of taking
+him otherwise than as a friend. She looked on him almost as a
+contemporary of her father. But life was growing very sweet for him
+again.</p>
+<p>It was not long before the truth was presented to him.</p>
+<p>One of his club friends rallied him on his frequent visits in a
+certain quarter and the conquest which they portended. Keith
+flushed warmly. He had that moment been thinking of Lois
+Huntington. He had just been to see her, and her voice was still in
+his ears; so, though he thought it unusual in Tom Trimmer to refer
+to the matter, it was not unnatural. He attempted to turn the
+subject lightly by pretending to misunderstand him.</p>
+<p>"I mean, I hear you have cut Wickersham out. Ferdy thought he
+had a little corner there."</p>
+<p>Again Keith reddened. He, too, had sometimes thought that Ferdy
+was beginning to be attentive to Lois Huntington. Others manifestly
+thought so too.</p>
+<p>"I don't know that I understand you," he said.</p>
+<p>"Don't you?" laughed the other. "Haven't you seen the papers
+lately?"</p>
+<p>Keith chilled instantly.</p>
+<p>"Norman Wentworth is my friend," he said quietly.</p>
+<p>"So they say is Mrs. Norm--" began Mr. Trimmer, with a
+laugh.</p>
+<p>Before he had quite pronounced the name, Keith leaned forward,
+his eyes levelled right into the other's.</p>
+<p>"Don't say that, Trimmer. I want to be friends with you," he
+said earnestly. "Don't you ever couple my name with that lady's.
+Her husband is my friend, and any man that says I am paying her any
+attention other than such as her husband would have me pay her says
+what is false."</p>
+<p>"I know nothing about that," said Tom, half surlily. "I am only
+giving what others say."</p>
+<p>"Well, don't you even do that." He rose to his feet, and stood
+very straight. "Do me the favor to say to any one you may hear
+intimate such a lie that I will hold any man responsible who says
+it."</p>
+<p>"Jove!" said Mr. Trimmer, afterwards, to his friend Minturn,
+"must be some fire there. He was as hot as pepper in a minute.
+Wanted to fight any one who mentioned the matter. He'll have his
+hands full if he fights all who are talking about him and Ferdy's
+old flame. I heard half a roomful buzzing about it at Mrs.
+Nailor's. But it was none of my affair. If he wants to fight about
+another man's wife, let him. It's not the best way to stop the
+scandal."</p>
+<p>"You know, I think Ferdy is a little relieved to get out of
+that," added Mr. Minturn. "Ferdy wants money, and big money. He
+can't expect to get money there. They say the chief cause of the
+trouble was Wentworth would not put up money enough for her. He has
+got his eye on the Lancaster-Yorke combine, and he is all devotion
+to the widow now."</p>
+<p>"She won't look at him. She has too much sense. Besides, she
+likes Keith," said Stirling.</p>
+<p>As Mr. Trimmer and his friend said, if Keith expected to silence
+all the tongues that were clacking with his name and affairs, he
+was likely to be disappointed. There are some people to whose minds
+the distribution of scandal is as great a delight as the sweetest
+morsel is to the tongue. Besides, there was one person who had a
+reason for spreading the report. Ferdy Wickersham had returned and
+was doing his best to give it circulation.</p>
+<p>Norman Wentworth received in his mail, one morning, a thin
+letter over which a frown clouded his brow. The address was in a
+backhand. He had received a letter in the same handwriting not long
+previously--an anonymous letter. It related to his wife and to one
+whom he had held in high esteem. He had torn it up furiously in
+little bits, and had dashed them into the waste-basket as he had
+dashed the matter from his mind. He was near tearing this letter up
+without reading it; but after a moment he opened the envelope. A
+society notice in a paper the day before had contained the name of
+his wife and that of Mr. Gordon Keith, and this was not the only
+time he had seen the two names together. As his eye glanced over
+the single page of disguised writing, a deeper frown grew on his
+brow. It was only a few lines; but it contained a barbed arrow that
+struck and rankled:</p>
+<blockquote>"When the cat's away<br>
+The mice will play.<br>
+If you have cut your wisdom-teeth,<br>
+You'll know your mouse. His name is ----"</blockquote>
+<p>It was signed, "<i>A True Friend</i>."</p>
+<p>Norman crushed the paper in his band, in a rage for having read
+it. But it was too late. He could not banish it from his mind: so
+many things tallied with it. He had heard that Keith was there a
+great deal. Why had he ceased speaking of it of late?</p>
+<p>When Keith next met Norman there was a change in the latter. He
+was cold and almost morose; answered Keith absently, and after a
+little while rose and left him rather curtly.</p>
+<p>When this had occurred once or twice Keith determined to see
+Norman and have a full explanation. Accordingly, one day he went to
+his office. Mr. Wentworth was out, but Keith said he would wait for
+him in his private office.</p>
+<p>On the table lay a newspaper. Keith picked it up to glance over
+it. His eye fell on a marked passage. It was a notice of a dinner
+to which he had been a few evenings before. Mrs. Wentworth's name
+was marked with a blue pencil, and a line or two below it was his
+own name similarly marked.</p>
+<p>Keith felt the hot blood surge into his face, then a grip came
+about his throat. Could this be the cause? Could this be the reason
+for Norman's curtness? Could Norman have this opinion of him? After
+all these years!</p>
+<p>He rose and walked from the office and out into the street. It
+was a blow such as he had not had in years. The friendship of a
+lifetime seemed to have toppled down in a moment.</p>
+<p>Keith walked home in deep reflection. That Norman could treat
+him so was impossible except on one theory: that he believed the
+story which concerned him and Mrs. Wentworth. That he could believe
+such a story seemed absolutely impossible. He passed through every
+phase of regret, wounded pride, and anger. Then it came to him
+clearly enough that if Norman were laboring under any such
+hallucination it was his duty to dispel it. He should go to him and
+clear his mind. The next morning he went again to Norman's office.
+To his sorrow, he learned that he had left town the evening before
+for the West to see about some business matters. He would be gone
+some days. Keith determined to see him as soon as he returned.</p>
+<p>Keith had little difficulty in assigning the scandalous story to
+its true source, though he did Ferdy Wickersham an injustice in
+laying the whole blame on him.</p>
+<p>Meantime, Keith determined that he would not go to Mrs.
+Wentworth's again until after he had seen Norman, even though it
+deprived him of the chance of seeing Lois. It was easier to him, as
+he was very busy now pushing through the final steps of his deal
+with the English syndicate. This he was the more zealous in as his
+last visit South had shown him that old Mr. Rawson was beginning to
+fail.</p>
+<p>"I am just livin' now to hear about Phrony," said the old man,
+"--and to settle with that man," he added, his deep eyes burning
+under his shaggy brows.</p>
+<p>Keith had little idea that the old man would ever live to hear
+of her again, and he had told him so as gently as he could.</p>
+<p>"Then I shall kill him," said the old man, quietly.</p>
+<p>Keith was in his office one morning when his attention was
+arrested by a heavy step outside his door. It had something
+familiar in it. Then he heard his name spoken in a loud voice. Some
+one was asking for him, and the next moment the door opened and
+Squire Rawson stood on the threshold. He looked worn; but his face
+was serene. Keith's intuition told him why he had come; and the old
+man did not leave it in any doubt. His greeting was brief.</p>
+<p>He had gotten to New York only that morning, and had already
+been to Wickersham's office; but the office was shut.</p>
+<p>"I have come to find her," he said, "and I'll find her, or I'll
+drag him through this town by his neck." He took out a pistol and
+laid it by him on the table.</p>
+<p>Keith was aghast. He knew the old man's resolution. His face
+showed that he was not to be moved from it. Keith began to argue
+with him. They did not do things that way in New York, he said. The
+police would arrest him. Or if he should shoot a man he would be
+tried, and it would go hard with him. He had better give up his
+pistol. "Let me keep it for you," he urged.</p>
+<p>The old man took up the pistol and felt for his pocket.</p>
+<p>"I'll find her or I'll kill him," he said stolidly. "I have come
+to do one or the other. If I do that, I don't much keer what they
+do with me. But I reckon some of 'em would take the side of a woman
+what's been treated so. Well, I'll go on an' wait for him. How do
+you find this here place?" He took out a piece of paper and,
+carefully adjusting his spectacles, read a number. It was the
+number of Wickersham's office.</p>
+<p>Keith began to argue again; but the other's face was set like a
+rock. He simply put up his pistol carefully. "I'll kill him if I
+don't find her. Well, I reckon somebody will show me the way. Good
+day." He went out.</p>
+<p>The moment his footsteps had died away, Keith seized his hat and
+dashed out.</p>
+<p>The bulky figure was going slowly down the street, and Keith saw
+him stop a man and show him his bit of paper. Keith crossed the
+street and hurried on ahead of him. Wickersham's office was only a
+few blocks away, and a minute later Keith rushed into the front
+office. The clerks hooked up in surprise at his haste. Keith
+demanded of one of them if Mr. Wickersham was in. The clerk
+addressed turned and looked at another man nearer the door of the
+private office, who shook his head warningly. No, Mr. Wickersham
+was not in.</p>
+<p>Keith, however, had seen the signal, and he walked boldly up to
+the door of the private office.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Wickersham is in, but he is engaged," said the man, rising
+hastily.</p>
+<p>"I must see him immediately," said Keith, and opening the door,
+walked straight in.</p>
+<p>Wickersham was sitting at his desk poring over a ledger, and at
+the sudden entrance he looked up, startled. When he saw who it was
+he sprang to his feet, his face changing slightly. Just then one of
+the clerks followed Keith.</p>
+<p>As Keith, however, spoke quietly, Wickersham's expression
+changed, and the next second he had recovered his composure and
+with it his insolence.</p>
+<p>"To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit?" he
+demanded, with a curl of his lip.</p>
+<p>Keith gave a little wave of his arm, as if he would sweep away
+his insolence.</p>
+<p>"I have come to warn you that old Adam Rawson is in town hunting
+you."</p>
+<p>Wickersham's self-contained face paled suddenly, and he stepped
+a little back. Then his eye fell on the clerk, who stood just
+inside the door. "What do you want?" he demanded angrily. "----
+you! can't you keep out when a gentleman wants to see me on private
+business?"</p>
+<p>The clerk hastily withdrew.</p>
+<p>"What does he want?" he asked of Keith, with a dry voice.</p>
+<p>"He is hunting for you. He wants to find his granddaughter, and
+he is coming after you."</p>
+<p>"What the ---- do I know about his granddaughter!" cried
+Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"That is for you to say. He swears that he will kill you unless
+you produce her. He is on his way here now, and I have hurried
+ahead to warn you."</p>
+<p>Wickersham's face, already pale, grew as white as death, for he
+read conviction in Keith's tone. With an oath he turned to a bell
+and rang it.</p>
+<p>"Ring for a cab for me at once," he said to the clerk who
+appeared. "Have it at my side entrance."</p>
+<p>As Keith passed out he heard him say to the clerk:</p>
+<p>"Tell any one who calls I have left town. I won't see a
+soul."</p>
+<p>A little later an old man entered Wickersham &amp; Company's
+office and demanded to see F.C. Wickersham.</p>
+<p>There was a flurry among the men there, for they all knew that
+something unusual had occurred; and there was that about the
+massive, grim old man, with his fierce eyes, that demanded
+attention.</p>
+<p>On learning that Wickersham was not in, he said he would wait
+for him and started to take a seat.</p>
+<p>There was a whispered colloquy between two clerks, and then one
+of them told him that Mr. Wickersham was not in the city. He had
+been called away from town the day before, and would be gone for a
+month or two. Would the visitor leave his name?</p>
+<p>"Tell him Adam Rawson has been to see him, and that he will come
+again." He paused a moment, then said slowly: "Tell him I'm huntin'
+for him and I'm goin' to stay here till I find him."</p>
+<p>He walked slowly out, followed by the eyes of every man in the
+office.</p>
+<p>The squire spent his time between watching for Wickersham and
+hunting for his granddaughter. He would roam about the streets and
+inquire for her of policemen and strangers, quite as if New York
+were a small village like Ridgely instead of a great hive in which
+hundreds of thousands were swarming, their identity hardly known to
+any but themselves. Most of those to whom he applied treated him as
+a harmless old lunatic. But he was not always so fortunate. One
+night, when he was tired out with tramping the streets, he wandered
+into one of the parks and sat down on a bench, where he finally
+fell asleep. He was awakened by some one feeling in his pocket. He
+had just been dreaming that Phrony had found him and hail sat down
+beside him and was fondling him, and when he first came back to
+consciousness her name was on his lips. He still thought it was she
+who sat beside him, and he called her by name, "Phrony." The girl,
+a poor, painted, bedizened creature, was quick enough to answer to
+the name.</p>
+<p>"I am Phrony; go to sleep again."</p>
+<p>The joy of getting back his lost one aroused the old man, and he
+sat up with an exclamation of delight. The next second, at sight of
+the strange, painted face, he recoiled.</p>
+<p>"You Phrony?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. Don't you know me?" She snuggled closer beside him, and
+worked quietly at his big watch, which somehow had caught in his
+tight vest pocket.</p>
+<p>"No, you ain't! Who are you, girl? What are you doin'?"</p>
+<p>The young woman put her arms around his neck, and began to talk
+cajolingly. He was "such a dear old fellow," etc., etc. But the old
+man's wit had now returned to him. His disappointment had angered
+him.</p>
+<p>"Get away from me, woman. What are you doin' to me?" he demanded
+roughly.</p>
+<p>She still clung to him, using her poor blandishments. But the
+squire was angry. He pushed her off. "Go away from me, I say. What
+do you want? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You don't know
+who I am. I am a deacon in the church, a trustee of Ridge College,
+and I have a granddaughter who is older than you. If you don't go
+away, I will tap you with my stick."</p>
+<p>The girl, having secured his watch, with something between a
+curse and a laugh, went off, calling him "an old drunk fool."</p>
+<p>Next moment the squire put his hand in his pocket to take out
+his watch, but it was gone. He felt in his other pockets, but they
+were empty, too. The young woman had clung to him long enough to
+rob him of everything. The squire rose and hurried down the walk,
+calling lustily after her; but it was an officer who answered the
+call. When the squire told his story he simply laughed and told him
+he was drunk, and threatened, if he made any disturbance, to "run
+him in."</p>
+<p>The old countryman flamed out.</p>
+<p>"Run who in?" he demanded. "Do you know who I am, young
+man?"</p>
+<p>"No, I don't, and I don't keer a ----."</p>
+<p>"Well, I'm Squire Rawson of Ridgely, and I know more law than a
+hundred consarned blue-bellied thief-hiders like you. Whoever says
+I am drunk is a liar. But if I was drunk is that any reason for you
+to let a thief rob me? What is your name? I've a mind to arrest you
+and run you in myself. I've run many a better man in."</p>
+<p>It happened that the officer's record was not quite clear enough
+to allow him to take the chance of a contest with so bold an
+antagonist as the squire of Ridgely. He did not know just who he
+was, or what he might be able to do. So he was willing to "break
+even," and he walked off threatning, but leaving the squire master
+of the field.</p>
+<p>The next day the old man applied to Keith, who placed the matter
+in Dave Dennison's hands and persuaded the squire to return
+home.</p>
+<p>Keith was very unhappy over the misunderstanding between Norman
+and himself. He wrote Norman a letter asking an interview as soon
+as he returned. But he received no reply. Then, having heard of his
+return, he went to his office one day to see him.</p>
+<p>Yes, Mr. Wentworth was in. Some one was with him, but would Mr.
+Keith walk in? said the clerk, who knew of the friendship between
+the two. But Keith sent in his name.</p>
+<p>The clerk came out with a surprised look on his face. Mr.
+Wentworth was "engaged."</p>
+<p>Keith went home and wrote a letter, but his letter was returned
+unopened, and on it was the indorsement, "Mr. Norman Wentworth
+declines to hold any communication with Mr. Gordon Keith."</p>
+<p>After this, Keith, growing angry, swore that he would take no
+further steps.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+<h3>PHRONY TRIPPER AND THE REV. MR. RIMMON</h3>
+<br>
+<p>As Keith stepped from his office one afternoon, he thought he
+heard his name called--called somewhat timidly. When, however, he
+turned and glanced around among the hurrying throng that filled the
+street, he saw no one whom he knew. Men and women were bustling
+along with that ceaseless haste that always struck him in New
+York--haste to go, haste to return, haste to hasten: the trade-mark
+of New York life: the hope of outstripping in the race.</p>
+<p>A moment later he was conscious of a woman's step close behind
+him. He turned as the woman came up beside him, and faced--Phrony
+Tripper. She was so worn and bedraggled and aged that for a moment
+he did not recognize her. Then, as she spoke, he knew her.</p>
+<p>"Why, Phrony!" He held out his hand. She seized it almost
+hungrily.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Keith! Is it really you? I hardly dared hope it was. I
+have not seen any one I knew for so long--so long!" Her face
+worked, and she began to whimper; but Keith soothed her.</p>
+<p>He drew her away from the crowded thoroughfare into a side
+street.</p>
+<p>"You knew--?" she said, and gazed at him with a silent
+appeal.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I knew. He deceived you and deluded you into running away
+with him."</p>
+<p>"I thought he loved me, and he did when he married me. I am sure
+he did. But when he met that lady--"</p>
+<p>"When he did what?" asked Keith, who could scarcely believe his
+own ears. "Did he marry you? Ferdy Wickersham? Who married you?
+When? Where was it? Who was present?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; I would not come until he promised--"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I knew he would promise. But did he marry you afterwards?
+Who was present? Have you any witnesses?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. Oh, yes. I was married here in New York--one night--about
+ten o'clock--the night we got here. Mr. Plume was our only witness.
+Mr. Plume had a paper the preacher gave him; but he lost it."</p>
+<p>"He did! Who married you? Where was it?"</p>
+<p>"His name was Rimm--Rimm-something--I cannot remember much; my
+memory is all gone. He was a young man. He married us in his room.
+Mr. Plume got him for me. He offered to marry us himself--said he
+was a preacher; but I wouldn't have him, and said I would go home
+or kill myself if they didn't have a preacher. Then Mr. Plume went
+and came back, and we all got in a carriage and drove a little way,
+and got out and went into a house, and after some talk we were
+married. I don't know the street. But I would know him if I saw
+him. He was a young, fat man, that smiled and stood on his toes."
+The picture brought up to Keith the fat and unctuous Rimmon.</p>
+<p>"Well, then you went abroad, and your husband left you over
+there?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; I was in heaven for--for a little while, and then he left
+me--for another woman. I am sure he cared for me, and he did not
+mean to treat me so; but she was rich and so beautiful, and--what
+was I?" She gave an expressive gesture of self-abnegation.</p>
+<p>"Poor fool!" said Keith to himself. "Poor girl!" he said
+aloud.</p>
+<p>"I have written; but, maybe, he never got my letter. He would
+not have let me suffer so."</p>
+<p>Keith's mouth shut closer.</p>
+<p>She went on to tell of Wickersham's leaving her; of her hopes
+that after her child was born he would come back to her. But the
+child was born and died. Then of her despair; of how she had spent
+everything, and sold everything she had to come home.</p>
+<p>"I think if I could see him and tell him what I have been
+through, maybe he would--be different. I know he cared for me for a
+while.--But I can't find him," she went on hopelessly. "I don't
+want to go to him where there are others to see me, for I'm not fit
+to see even if they'd let me in--which they wouldn't." (She glanced
+down at her worn and shabby frock.) "I have watched for him 'most
+all day, but I haven't seen him, and the police ordered me
+away."</p>
+<p>"I will find him for you," said Keith, grimly.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no! You mustn't--you mustn't say anything to him. It would
+make him--it wouldn't do any good, and he'd never forgive me." She
+coughed deeply.</p>
+<p>"Phrony, you must go home," said Keith.</p>
+<p>For a second a spasm shot over her face; then a ray of light
+seemed to flit across it, and then it died out.</p>
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+<p>"No, I'll never go back there," she said.</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes, you will--you must. I will take you back. The mountain
+air will restore you, and--" She was shaking her head, but the look
+in her eyes showed that she was thinking of something far off.</p>
+<p>"No--no!"</p>
+<p>"I will take you," repeated Keith. "Your grandfather will be--he
+will be all right. He has just been here hunting for you."</p>
+<p>The expression on her face was so singular that Keith put his
+hand on her arm. To his horror, she burst into a laugh. It was so
+unreal that men passing glanced at her quickly, and, as they passed
+on, turned and looked back again.</p>
+<p>"Well, good-by; I must find my husband," she said, holding out
+her hand nervously and speaking in a hurried manner. "He's got the
+baby with him. Tell 'em at home I'm right well, and the baby is
+exactly like grandmother, but prettier, of course." She laughed
+again as she turned away and started off hastily.</p>
+<p>Keith caught up with her.</p>
+<p>"But, Phrony--" But she hurried on, shaking her head, and
+talking to herself about finding her baby and about its beauty.
+Keith kept up with her, put his hand in his pocket, and taking out
+several bills, handed them to her.</p>
+<p>"Here, you must take this, and tell me where you are
+staying."</p>
+<p>She took the money mechanically.</p>
+<p>"Where am I? Oh!--where am I staying? Sixteen Himmelstrasse,
+third floor--yes, that's it. No:--18 Rue Petits Champs,
+troisi&egrave;me &eacute;tage. Oh, no:--241 Hill Street. I'll show
+you the baby. I must get it now." And she sped away, coughing.</p>
+<p>Keith, having watched her till she disappeared, walked on in
+deep reflection, hardly knowing what course to take. Presently his
+brow cleared. He turned and went rapidly back to the great office
+building where Wickersham had his offices on the first floor. He
+asked for Mr. Wickersham. A clerk came forward. Mr. Wickersham was
+not in town. No, he did not know when he would be back.</p>
+<p>After a few more questions as to the possible time of his
+return, Keith left his card.</p>
+<p>That evening Keith went to the address that Phrony had given
+him. It was a small lodging-house of, perhaps, the tenth rate. The
+dowdy woman in charge remembered a young woman such as he
+described. She was ill and rather crazy and had left several weeks
+before. She had no idea where she had gone. She did not know her
+name. Sometimes she called herself "Miss Tripper," sometimes "Mrs.
+Wickersham."</p>
+<p>Keith took a cab and drove to the detective agency where Dave
+Dennison had his office. Keith told him why he had come, and Dave
+listened with tightened lips and eyes in which the flame burned
+deeper and deeper.</p>
+<p>"I'll find her," he said.</p>
+<p>Having set Dennison to work, Keith next directed his steps
+toward the commodious house to which the Rev. William H. Rimmon had
+succeeded, along with the fashionable church and the fashionable
+congregation which his uncle had left.</p>
+<p>He was almost sure, from the name she had mentioned, that Mr.
+Rimmon had performed the ceremony. Rimmon had from time to time
+connected his name with matrimonial affairs which reflected little
+credit on him.</p>
+<p>From the time Mr. Rimmon had found his flattery and patience
+rewarded, the pulpit from which Dr. Little had for years delivered
+a well-weighed, if a somewhat dry, spiritual pabulum had
+changed.</p>
+<p>Mr. Rimmon knew his congregation too well to tax their patience
+with any such doctrinal sermons as his uncle had been given to. He
+treated his people instead to pleasant little discourses which were
+as much like Epictetus and Seneca as St. John or St. Paul.</p>
+<p>Fifteen minutes was his limit,--eighteen at the
+outside,--weighed out like a ration. Doubtless, Mr. Rimmon had his
+own idea of doing good. His assistants worked hard in back streets
+and trod the dusty byways, succoring the small fry, while he
+stepped on velvet carpets and cast his net for the larger fish.</p>
+<p>Was not Dives as well worth saving as Lazarus--and better worth
+it for Rimmon's purposes! And surely he was a more agreeable
+dinner-companion. Besides, nothing was really proved against Dives;
+and the crumbs from his table fed many a Lazarus.</p>
+<p>But there were times when the Rev. William H. Rimmon had a
+vision of other things: when the Rev. Mr. Rimmon, with his plump
+cheeks and plump stomach, with his embroidered stoles and fine
+surplices, his rich cassocks and hand-worked slippers, had a vision
+of another life. He remembered the brief period when, thrown with a
+number of earnest young men who had consecrated their lives to the
+work of their Divine Master, he had had aspirations for something
+essentially different from the life he now led. Sometimes, as he
+would meet some hard-working, threadbare brother toiling among the
+poor, who yet, for all his toil and narrowness of means, had in his
+face that light that comes only from feasting on the living bread,
+he envied him for a moment, and would gladly have exchanged for a
+brief time the "good things" that he had fallen heir to for that
+look of peace. These moments, however, were rare, and were
+generally those that followed some evening of even greater
+conviviality than usual, or some report that the stocks he had
+gotten Ferdy Wickersham to buy for him had unexpectedly gone down,
+so that he must make up his margins. When the margins had been made
+up and the stocks had reacted, Mr. Rimmon was sufficiently well
+satisfied with his own lot.</p>
+<p>And of late Mr. Rimmon had determined to settle down. There were
+those who said that Mr. Rimmon's voice took on a peculiarly
+unctuous tone when a certain young widow, as noted for her wealth
+as for her good looks and good nature entered the portals of his
+church.</p>
+<p>Keith now having rung the bell at Mr. Rimmon's pleasant rectory
+and asked if he was at home, the servant said he would see. It is
+astonishing how little servants in the city know of the movements
+of their employers. How much better they must know their
+characters!</p>
+<p>A moment later the servant returned.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Rimmon is in. He will be down directly; will the
+gentleman wait?"</p>
+<p>Keith took his seat and inspected the books on the table--a
+number of magazines, a large work on Exegesis, several volumes of
+poetry, the Social Register, and a society journal that contained
+the gossip and scandal of the town.</p>
+<p>Presently Mr. Rimmon was heard descending the stair. He had a
+light footfall, extraordinarily light in one so stout; for he had
+grown rounder with the years.</p>
+<p>"Ah, Mr. Keith. I believe we have met before. What can I do for
+you?" He held Keith's card in his hand, and was not only civil, but
+almost cordial. But he did not ask Keith to sit down.</p>
+<p>Keith said he had come to him hoping to obtain a little
+information which he was seeking for a friend. He was almost
+certain that Mr. Rimmon could give it to him.</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes. Well? I shall be very glad, I am sure, if I can be of
+service to you. It is a part of our profession, you know. What is
+it?"</p>
+<p>"Why," said Keith, "it is in regard to a marriage ceremony--a
+marriage that took place in this city three or four years ago,
+about the middle of November three years ago. I think you possibly
+performed the ceremony."</p>
+<p>"Yes, yes. What are the names of the contracting parties? You
+see, I solemnize a good many marriage ceremonies. For some reason,
+a good many persons come to me. My church is rather--popular, you
+see. I hate to have 'fashionable' applied to holy things. I cannot
+tell without their names."</p>
+<p>"Why, of course," said Keith, struck by the sudden assumption of
+a business manner. "The parties were Ferdinand C. Wickersham and a
+young girl, named Euphronia Tripper."</p>
+<p>Keith was not consciously watching Mr. Rimmon, but the change in
+him was so remarkable that it astonished him. His round jaw
+actually dropped for a second. Keith knew instantly that he was the
+man. His inquiry had struck home. The next moment, however, Mr.
+Rimmon had recovered himself. A single glance shot out of his eyes,
+so keen and suspicious that Keith was startled. Then his eyes half
+closed again, veiling their flash of hostility.</p>
+<p>"F.C. Wickershaw and Euphronia Trimmer?" he repeated half aloud,
+shaking his head. "No, I don't remember any such names. No, I never
+united in the bonds of matrimony any persons of those names. I am
+quite positive." He spoke decisively.</p>
+<p>"No, not Wicker<i>shaw</i>--F.C. Wicker<i>sham</i> and Euphronia
+Tripper. Ferdy Wickersham--you know him. And the girl was named
+Tripper; she might have called herself 'Phrony' Tripper."</p>
+<p>"My dear sir, I cannot undertake to remember the names of all
+the persons whom I happen to come in contact with in the
+performance of my sacred functions," began Mr. Rimmon. His voice
+had changed, and a certain querulousness had crept into it.</p>
+<p>"No, I know that," said Keith, calmly; "but you must at least
+remember whether within four years you performed a marriage
+ceremony for a man whom you know as well as you know Ferdy
+Wickersham--?"</p>
+<p>"Ferdy Wickersham! Why don't you go and ask him?" demanded the
+other, suddenly. "You appear to know him quite as well as I, and
+certainly Mr. Wickersham knows quite as well as I whether or not he
+is married. I know nothing of your reasons for persisting in this
+investigation. It is quite irregular, I assure you. I don't know
+that ever in the course of my life I knew quite such a case. A
+clergyman performs many functions simply as a ministerial official.
+I should think that the most natural way of procedure would be to
+ask Mr. Wickersham."</p>
+<p>"Certainly it might be. But whatever my reason may be, I have
+come to ask you. As a matter of fact, Mr. Wickersham took this
+young girl away from her home. I taught her when she was a
+school-girl. Her grandfather, who brought her up, is a friend of
+mine. I wish to clear her good name. I have reason to think that
+she was legally married here in New York, and that you performed
+the ceremony, and I came to ask you whether you did so or not. It
+is a simple question. You can at least say whether you did so or
+did not. I assumed that as a minister you would be glad to help
+clear a young woman's good name."</p>
+<p>"And I have already answered you," said Mr. Rimmon, who, while
+Keith was speaking, had been forming his reply.</p>
+<p>Keith flushed.</p>
+<p>"Why, you have not answered me at all. If you have, you can
+certainly have no objection to doing me the favor of repeating it.
+Will you do me the favor to repeat it? Did you or did you not marry
+Ferdy Wickersham to a young girl about three years ago?"</p>
+<p>"My dear sir, I have told you that I do not recognize your right
+to interrogate me in this manner. I know nothing about your
+authority to pursue this investigation, and I refuse to continue
+this conversation any longer."</p>
+<p>"Then you refuse to give me any information whatever?" Keith was
+now very angry, and, as usual, very quiet, with a certain line
+about his mouth, and his eyes very keen.</p>
+<p>"I do most emphatically refuse to give you any information
+whatever. I decline, indeed, to hold any further communication with
+you," (Keith was yet quieter,) "and I may add that I consider your
+entrance here an intrusion and your manner little short of an
+impertinence." He rose on his toes and fell on his heels, with, the
+motion which Keith had remarked the first time he met him.</p>
+<p>Keith fastened his eye on him.</p>
+<p>"You do?" he said. "You think all that? You consider even my
+entrance to ask you, a minister of the Gospel, a question that any
+good man would have been glad to answer, 'an intrusion'? Now I am
+going; but before I go I wish to tell you one or two things. I have
+heard reports about you, but I did not believe them. I have known
+men of your cloth, the holiest men on earth, saints of God, who
+devoted their lives to doing good. I was brought up to believe that
+a clergyman must be a good man. I could not credit the stories I
+have heard coupled with your name. I now believe them true, or, at
+least, possible."</p>
+<p>Mr. Riminon's face was purple with rage. He stepped forward with
+uplifted hand.</p>
+<p>"How dare you, sir!" he began.</p>
+<p>"I dare much more," said Keith, quietly.</p>
+<p>"You take advantage of my cloth--!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; I do not. I have one more thing to say to you before I
+go. I wish to tell you that one of the shrewdest detectives in New
+York is at work on this case. I advise you to be careful, for when
+you fall you will fall far. Good day."</p>
+<p>He left Mr. Rimmon shaken and white. His indefinite threats had
+struck him more deeply than any direct charge could have done. For
+Mr. Rimmon knew of acts of which Keith could not have dreamed.</p>
+<p>When he rose he went to his sideboard, and, taking out a bottle,
+poured out a stiff drink and tossed it off. "I feel badly," he said
+to himself: "I have allowed that--that fellow to excite me, and Dr.
+Splint said I must not get excited. I did pretty well, though; I
+gave him not the least information, and yet I did not tell a
+falsehood, an actual falsehood."</p>
+<p>With the composure that the stimulant brought, a thought
+occurred to him. He sat down and wrote a note to Wickersham, and,
+marking it, "Private," sent it by a messenger.</p>
+<p>The note read:</p>
+<p>"DEAR FERDY: I must see you without an hour's delay on a matter
+of the greatest possible importance. Tripper-business. Your friend
+K. has started investigation; claims to have inside facts. I shall
+wait at my house for reply. If impossible for you to come
+immediately, I will run down to your office.</p>
+<p>"Yours, RIMMON."</p>
+<p>When Mr. Wickersham received this note, he was in his office. He
+frowned as he glanced at the handwriting. He said to himself:</p>
+<p>"He wants more money, I suppose. He is always after money, curse
+him. He must deal in some other office as well as in this." He
+started to toss the note aside, but on second thought he tore it
+open. For a moment he looked puzzled, then a blank expression
+passed over his face.</p>
+<p>He turned to the messenger-boy, who was waiting and chewing gum
+with the stolidity of an automaton.</p>
+<p>"Did they tell you to wait for an answer?"</p>
+<p>"Sure!"</p>
+<p>He leant over and scribbled a line and sealed it. "Take that
+back."</p>
+<p>"Yes, sir." The automaton departed, glancing from side to side
+and chewing diligently.</p>
+<p>The note read: "Will meet you at club at five."</p>
+<p>As the messenger passed up the street, a smallish man who had
+come down-town on the same car with him, and had been reading a
+newspaper on the street for some little time, crossed over and
+accosted him.</p>
+<p>"Can you take a note for me?"</p>
+<p>"Where to?"</p>
+<p>"Up-town. Where are you going?"</p>
+<p>The boy showed his note.</p>
+<p>"Um--hum! Well, my note will be right on your way." He scribbled
+a line. It read: "Can't be back till eight. Look out for Shepherd.
+Pay boy 25 if delivered before four."</p>
+<p>"You drop this at that number before four o'clock and you'll get
+a quarter."</p>
+<p>Then he passed on.</p>
+<p>That afternoon Keith walked up toward the Park. All day he had
+been trying to find Phrony, and laying plans for her relief when
+she should be found. The avenue was thronged with gay equipages and
+richly dressed women, yet among all his friends in New York there
+was but one woman to whom he could apply in such a case--Alice
+Lancaster. Old Mrs. Wentworth would have been another, but he could
+not go to her now, since his breach with Norman. He knew that there
+were hundreds of good, kind women; they were all about him, but he
+did not know them. He had chosen his friends in another set. The
+fact that he knew no others to whom he could apply struck a sort of
+chill to his heart. He felt lonely and depressed. He determined to
+go to Dr. Templeton. There, at least, he was sure of sympathy.</p>
+<p>He turned to go back down-town, and at a little distance caught
+sight of Lois Huntington. Suddenly a light appeared to break in on
+his gloom. Here was a woman to whom he could confide his trouble
+with the certainty of sympathy. As they walked along he told her of
+Phrony; of her elopement; of her being deserted; and of his chance
+meeting with her and her disappearance again. He did not mention
+Wickersham, for he felt that until he had the proof of his marriage
+he had no right to do so.</p>
+<p>"Why, I remember that old, man, Mr. Rawson," said Lois. "It was
+where my father stayed for a while?" Her voice was full of
+tenderness.</p>
+<p>"Yes. It is his granddaughter."</p>
+<p>"I remember her kindness to me. We must find her. I will help
+you." Her face was sweet with tender sympathy, her eyes luminous
+with firm resolve.</p>
+<p>Keith gazed at her with a warm feeling surging about his heart.
+Suddenly the color deepened in her cheeks; her expression changed;
+a sudden flame seemed to dart into her eyes.</p>
+<p>"I wish I knew that man!"</p>
+<p>"What would you do?" demanded Keith, smiling at her
+fierceness.</p>
+<p>"I'd make him suffer all his life." She looked the incarnation
+of vengeance.</p>
+<p>"Such a man would be hard to make suffer," hazarded Keith.</p>
+<p>"Not if I could find him."</p>
+<p>Keith soon left her to carry out his determination, and Lois
+went to see Mrs. Lancaster, and told her the story she had heard.
+It found sympathetic ears, and the next day Lois and Mrs. Lancaster
+were hard at work quietly trying to find the unfortunate woman.
+They went to Dr. Templeton; but, unfortunately, the old man was ill
+in bed.</p>
+<p>The next afternoon, Keith caught sight of Lois walking up the
+street with some one; and when he got nearer her it was Wickersham.
+They were so absorbed that Keith passed without either of them
+seeing him. He walked on with more than wonder in his heart. The
+meeting, however, had been wholly accidental on Lois's part.</p>
+<p>Wickersham of late had frequently fallen in with Lois when she
+was out walking. And this afternoon he had hardly joined her when
+she began to speak of the subject that had been uppermost in her
+mind all day. She did not mention any names, but told the story
+just as she had heard it.</p>
+<p>Fortunately for Wickersham, she was so much engrossed in her
+recital that she did not observe her companion's face until he had
+recovered himself. He had fallen a little behind her and did not
+interrupt her until he had quite mastered himself. Then he asked
+quietly:</p>
+<p>"Where did you get that story?"</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith told me."</p>
+<p>"And he said the man who did that was a 'gentleman'?"</p>
+<p>"No, he did not say that; he did not give me the least idea who
+it was. Do you know who it was?"</p>
+<p>The question was so unexpected that Wickersham for a moment was
+confounded. Then he saw that she was quite innocent. He almost
+gasped.</p>
+<p>"I? How could I? I have heard that story--that is, something of
+it. It is not as Mr. Keith related it. He has some of the facts
+wrong. I will tell you the true story if you will promise not to
+say anything about it."</p>
+<p>Lois promised.</p>
+<p>"Well, the truth is that the poor creature was crazy; she took
+it into her head that she was married to some one, and ran away
+from home to try and find him. At one time she said it was a Mr.
+Wagram; then it was a man named Plume, a drunken sot; then I think
+she for a time fancied it was Mr. Keith himself; and"--he glanced
+at her quickly--"I am not sure she did not claim me once. I knew
+her slightly. Poor thing! she was quite insane."</p>
+<p>"Poor thing!" sighed Lois, softly. She felt more kindly toward
+Wickersham than she had ever done before.</p>
+<p>"I shall do what I can to help you find her," he added.</p>
+<p>"Thank you. I hope you may be successful."</p>
+<p>"I hope so," said Wickersham, sincerely.</p>
+<p>That evening Wickersham called on Mr. Rimmon, and the two were
+together for some time. The meeting was not wholly an amicable one.
+Wickersham demanded something that Mr. Rimmon was unwilling to
+comply with, though the former made him an offer at which his eyes
+glistened. He had offered to carry his stock for him as long as he
+wanted it carried. Mr. Rimmon showed him his register to satisfy
+him that no entry had been made there of the ceremony he had
+performed that night a few years before; but he was unwilling to
+write him a certificate that he had not performed such a ceremony.
+He was not willing to write a falsehood.</p>
+<p>Wickersham grew angry.</p>
+<p>"Now look here, Rimmon," he said, "you know perfectly well that
+I never meant to marry that--to marry any one. You know that I was
+drunk that night, and did not know what I was doing, and that what
+I did was out of kindness of heart to quiet the poor little
+fool."</p>
+<p>"But you married her in the presence of a witness," said Mr.
+Rimmon, slowly. "And I gave him her certificate."</p>
+<p>"You must have been mistaken. I have the affidavit of the man
+that he signed nothing of the kind. I give you my word of honor as
+to that. Write me the letter I want." He pushed the decanter on the
+table nearer to Rimmon, who poured out a drink and took it slowly.
+It appeared to give him courage, for after a moment he shook his
+head.</p>
+<p>"I cannot."</p>
+<p>Wickersham looked at him with level eyes.</p>
+<p>"You will do it, or I will sell you out," he said coldly.</p>
+<p>"You cannot. You promised to carry that stock for me till I
+could pay up the margins."</p>
+<p>"Write me that letter, or I will turn you out of your pulpit.
+You know what will happen if I tell what I know of you."</p>
+<p>The other man's face turned white.</p>
+<p>"You would not be so base."</p>
+<p>Wickersham rose and buttoned up his coat.</p>
+<p>"It will be in the papers day after to-morrow."</p>
+<p>"Wait," gasped Rimmon. "I will see what I can say." He poured a
+drink out of the decanter, and gulped it down. Then he seized a pen
+and a sheet of paper and began to write. He wrote with care.</p>
+<p>"Will this do?" he asked tremulously.</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"You promise not to use it unless you have to?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"And to carry the stock for me till it reacts and lets me
+out?"</p>
+<p>"I will make no more promises."</p>
+<p>"But you did promise--," began Mr. Rimmon.</p>
+<p>Wickersham put the letter in his pocket, and taking up his hat,
+walked out without a word. But his eyes glinted with a curious
+light.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+<h3>ALICE LANCASTER FINDS PHRONY</h3>
+<p>Mr. Rimmon was calling at Mrs. Lancaster's a few days after his
+interview with Keith and the day following the interview with
+Wickersham. Mr. Rimmon called at Mrs. Lancaster's quite frequently
+of late. They had known each other a long time, almost ever since
+Mr. Rimmon had been an acolyte at his uncle Dr. Little's church,
+when the stout young man had first discovered the slim, straight
+figure and pretty face, with its blue eyes and rosy mouth, in one
+of the best pews, with a richly dressed lady beside her. He had
+soon learned that this was Miss Alice Yorke, the only daughter of
+one of the wealthiest men in town. Miss Alice was then very devout:
+just at the age and stage when she bent particularly low on all the
+occasions when such bowing is held seemly. And the mind of the
+young man was not unnaturally affected by her devoutness.</p>
+<p>Since then Mr. Rimmon had never quite banished her from his
+mind, except, of course, during the brief interval when she had
+been a wife. When she became a widow she resumed her place with
+renewed power. And of late Mr. Rimmon had begun to have hope.</p>
+<p>Now Mr. Rimmon was far from easy in his mind. He knew something
+of Keith's attention to Mrs. Lancaster; but it had never occurred
+to him until lately that he might be successful. Wickersham he had
+feared at times; but Wickersham's habits had reassured him. Mrs.
+Lancaster would hardly marry him. Now, however, he had an uneasy
+feeling that Keith might injure him, and he called partly to
+ascertain how the ground lay, and partly to forestall any possible
+injury Keith might do. To his relief, he found Mrs. Lancaster more
+cordial than usual. The line of conversation he adopted was quite
+spiritual, and he felt elevated by it. Mrs. Lancaster also was
+visibly impressed. Presently she said: "Mr. Rimmon, I want you to
+do me a favor."</p>
+<p>"Even to the half of my kingdom," said Mr. Rimmon, bowing with
+his plump hand on his plump bosom.</p>
+<p>"It is not so much as that; it is only a little of your time
+and, maybe, a little of your company. I have just heard of a poor
+young woman here who seems to be in quite a desperate way. She has
+been abandoned by her husband, and is now quite ill. The person who
+told me, one of those good women who are always seeking out such
+cases, tells me that she has rarely seen a more pitiable case. The
+poor thing is absolutely destitute. Mrs. King tells me she has seen
+better days."</p>
+<p>For some reason, perhaps, that the circumstances called up not
+wholly pleasant associations, Mr. Rimmon's face fell a little at
+the picture drawn. He did not respond with the alacrity Mrs.
+Lancaster had expected.</p>
+<p>"Of course, I will do it, if you wish it--or I could have some
+of our workers look up the case, and, if the facts warrant it,
+could apply some of our alms to its relief. I should think,
+however, the woman is rather a fit subject for a hospital. Why
+hasn't she been sent to a hospital, I wonder?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know. No, that is not exactly what I meant," declared
+Mrs. Lancaster. "I thought I would go myself and that, as Dr.
+Templeton is ill, perhaps you would go with me. She seems to be in
+great distress of mind, and possibly you might be able to comfort
+her. I have never forgotten what an unspeakable comfort your uncle
+was when we were in trouble years ago."</p>
+<p>"Oh, of course, I will go with you," said the divine. "There is
+no place, dear lady, where I would not go in such company," he
+added, his head as much on one side as his stout neck would allow,
+and his eyes as languishing as he dared make them.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster, however, did not appear to notice this. Her face
+did not change.</p>
+<p>"Very well, then: we will go to-morrow. I will come around and
+pick you up. I will get the address."</p>
+<p>So the following morning Mrs. Lancaster's carriage stopped in
+front of the comfortable house which adjoined Mr. Rimmon's church,
+and after a little while that gentleman came down the steps. He was
+not in a happy frame of mind, for stocks had fallen heavily the day
+before, and he had just received a note from Ferdy Wickersham.
+However, as he settled his plump person beside the lady, the Rev.
+William H. Rimmon was as well-satisfied-looking as any man on earth
+could be. Who can blame him if he thought how sweet it would be if
+he could drive thus always!</p>
+<p>The carriage presently stopped at the entrance of a narrow
+street that ran down toward the river. The coachman appeared
+unwilling to drive down so wretched an alley, and waited for
+further instructions. After a few words the clergyman and Mrs.
+Lancaster got out.</p>
+<p>"You wait here, James; we will walk." They made their way down
+the street, through a multitude of curious children with one common
+attribute, dirt, examining the numbers on either side, and
+commiserating the poor creatures who had to live in such
+squalor.</p>
+<p>Presently Mrs. Lancaster stopped.</p>
+<p>"This is the number."</p>
+<p>It was an old house between two other old houses.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster made some inquiries of a slatternly woman who sat
+sewing just inside the doorway, and the latter said there was such
+a person as she asked for in a room on the fourth floor. She knew
+nothing about her except that she was very sick and mostly out of
+her head. The health-doctor had been to see her, and talked about
+sending her to a hospital.</p>
+<p>The three made their way up the narrow stairs and through the
+dark passages, so dark that matches had to be lighted to show them
+the way. Several times Mr. Rimmon protested against Mrs. Lancaster
+going farther. Such holes were abominable; some one ought to be
+prosecuted for it. Finally the woman stopped at a door.</p>
+<p>"She's in here." She pushed the door open without knocking, and
+walked in, followed by Mrs. Lancaster and Mr. Rimmon. It was a
+cupboard hardly more than ten feet square, with a little window
+that looked out on a dead-wall not more than an arm's-length
+away.</p>
+<p>A bed, a table made of an old box, and another box which served
+as a stool, constituted most of the furniture, and in the bed,
+under a ragged coverlid, lay the form of the sick woman.</p>
+<p>"There's a lady and a priest come to see you," said the guide,
+not unkindly. She turned to Mrs. Lancaster. "I don't know as you
+can make much of her. Sometimes she's right flighty."</p>
+<p>The sick woman turned her head a little and looked at them out
+of her sunken eyes.</p>
+<p>"Thank you. Won't you be seated?" she said, with a politeness
+and a softness of tone that sounded almost uncanny coming from such
+a source.</p>
+<p>"We heard that you were sick, and have come to see if we could
+not help you," said Mrs. Lancaster, in a tone of sympathy, leaning
+over the bed.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Mr. Rimmon, in his full, rich voice, which made the
+little room resound; "it is our high province to minister to the
+sick, and through the kindness of this dear lady we may be able to
+remove you to more commodious quarters--to some one of the
+charitable institutions which noble people like our friend here
+have endowed for such persons as yourself?"</p>
+<br>
+<a name="p422.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/p422.jpg"><img src="images/p422.jpg"
+width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"It is he! 'Tis he!" she cried.</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>Something about the full-toned voice with its rising inflection
+caught the invalid's attention, and she turned her eyes on him with
+a quick glance, and, half raising her head, scanned his face
+closely.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Rimmon, here, may be able to help you in other ways too,"
+Mrs. Lancaster again began; but she got no further. The name
+appeared to electrify the woman.</p>
+<p>With a shriek she sat up in bed.</p>
+<p>"It is he! 'Tis he!" she cried. "You are the very one. You will
+help me, won't you? You will find him and bring him back to me?"
+She reached out her thin arms to him in an agony of
+supplication.</p>
+<p>"I will help you,--I shall be glad to do so,--but whom am I to
+bring back? How can I help you?"</p>
+<p>"My husband--Ferdy--Mr. Wickersham. I am the girl you married
+that night to Ferdy Wickersham. Don't you remember? You will bring
+him back to me? I know he would come if he knew."</p>
+<p>The effect that her words, and even more her earnestness,
+produced was remarkable. Mrs. Lancaster stood in speechless
+astonishment.</p>
+<p>Mr. Rimmon for a moment turned ashy pale. Then he recovered
+himself.</p>
+<p>"She is quite mad," he said in a low tone to Mrs. Lancaster. "I
+think we had better go. She should be removed to an asylum."</p>
+<p>But Mrs. Lancaster could not go. Just then the woman stretched
+out her arms to her.</p>
+<p>"You will help me? You are a lady. I loved him so. I gave up all
+for him. He married me. Didn't you marry us, sir? Say you did. Mr.
+Plume lost the paper, but you will give me another, won't you?"</p>
+<p>The commiseration in Mr. Rimmon's pale face grew deeper and
+deeper. He rolled his eyes and shook his head sadly.</p>
+<p>"Quite mad--quite mad," he said in an undertone. And, indeed,
+the next moment it appeared but too true, for with a laugh the poor
+creature began a babble of her child and its beauty. "Just like its
+father. Dark eyes and brown hair. Won't he be glad to see it when
+he comes? Have you children?" she suddenly asked Mrs.
+Lancaster.</p>
+<p>"No." She shook her head.</p>
+<p>Then a strange thing happened.</p>
+<p>"I am so sorry for you," the poor woman said. And the next
+second she added: "I want to show mine to Alice Yorke. She is the
+only lady I know in New York. I used to know her when I was a young
+girl, and I used to be jealous of her, because I thought Ferdy was
+in love with her. But he was not, never a bit."</p>
+<p>"Come away," said Mr. Rimmon to Mrs. Lancaster. "She is crazy
+and may become violent."</p>
+<p>But he was too late; the whole truth was dawning on Mrs.
+Lancaster. A faint likeness had come to her, a memory of a far-back
+time. She ignored him, and stepped closer to the bed.</p>
+<p>"What is your name?" she asked in a kind voice, bending toward
+the woman and taking her hand.</p>
+<p>"Euphronia Tripper; but I am now Mrs. Wickersham. He married
+us." She turned her deep eyes on Mr. Rimmon. At sight of him a
+change came over her face.</p>
+<p>"Where is my husband?" she demanded. "I wrote to you to bring
+him. Won't you bring him?"</p>
+<p>"Quite mad--quite mad!" repeated Mr. Rimmon, shaking his head
+solemnly, and turning his gaze on Mrs. Lancaster. But he saw his
+peril. Mrs. Lancaster took no notice of him. She began to talk to
+the woman at the door, and gave her a few directions, together with
+some money. Then she advanced once more to the bed.</p>
+<p>"I want to make you comfortable. I will send some one to take
+care of you." She shook hands with her softly, pulled down her
+veil, and then, half turning to Mr. Rimmon, said quietly, "I am
+ready."</p>
+<p>As they stepped into the street, Mr. Rimmon observed at a little
+distance a man who had something familiar about him, but the next
+second he passed out of sight.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster walked silently down the dirty street without
+turning her head or speaking to the preacher, who stepped along a
+little behind her, his mind full of misgiving.</p>
+<p>Mr. Rimmon, perhaps, did as hard thinking in those few minutes
+as he had ever done during the whole course of his life. It was a
+serious and delicate position. His reputation, his position,
+perhaps even his profession, depended on the result. He must sound
+his companion and placate her at any cost.</p>
+<p>"That is one of the saddest spectacles I ever saw," he
+began.</p>
+<p>To this Mrs. Lancaster vouchsafed no reply.</p>
+<p>"She is quite mad."</p>
+<p>"No wonder!"</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes. What do you think of her?"</p>
+<p>"That she is Ferdy Wickersham's wife--or ought to be."</p>
+<p>"Ah, yes." Here was a gleam of light. "But she is so insane that
+very little reliance should be placed on anything that she says. In
+such instances, you know, women make the most preposterous
+statements and believe them. In her condition, she might just as
+well have claimed me for her husband."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster recognized this, and looked just a little
+relieved. She turned as if about to speak, but shut her lips
+tightly and walked on to the waiting carriage. And during the rest
+of the return home she scarcely uttered a word.</p>
+<p>An hour later Ferdy Wickersham was seated in his private office,
+when Mr. Rimmon walked in.</p>
+<p>Wickersham greeted him with more courtesy than he usually showed
+him.</p>
+<p>"Well," he said, "what is it?"</p>
+<p>"Well, it's come."</p>
+<p>Wickersham laughed unmirthfully. "What? You have been found out?
+Which commandment have you been caught violating?"</p>
+<p>"No; it's you," said Mr. Rimmon, his eyes on Wickersham, with a
+gleam of retaliation in them. "Your wife has turned up." He was
+gratified to see Wickersham's cold face turn white. It was a sweet
+revenge.</p>
+<p>"My wife! I have no wife." Wickersham looked him steadily in the
+eyes.</p>
+<p>"You had one, and she is in town."</p>
+<p>"I have no wife," repeated Wickersham, firmly, not taking his
+eyes from the clergyman's face. What he saw there did not satisfy
+him. "I have your statement."</p>
+<p>The other hesitated and reflected.</p>
+<p>"I wish you would give me that back. I was in great distress of
+mind when I gave you that."</p>
+<p>"You did not give it," said Wickersham. "You sold it." His lip
+curled.</p>
+<p>"I was--what you said you were when it occurred," said Mr.
+Rimmon. "I was not altogether responsible."</p>
+<p>"You were sober enough to make me carry a thousand shares of
+weak stock for you till yesterday, when it fell twenty points,"
+said Wickersham. "Oh, I guess you were sober enough."</p>
+<p>"She is in town," said Rimmon, in a dull voice.</p>
+<p>"Who says so?"</p>
+<p>"I have seen her."</p>
+<p>"Where is she?"--indifferently.</p>
+<p>"She is ill. She is mad."</p>
+<p>Wickersham's face settled a little. His eyes blinked as if a
+blow had been aimed at him nearly. Then he recovered his poise.</p>
+<p>"How mad?"</p>
+<p>"As mad as a March hare."</p>
+<p>"You can attend to it," he said, looking the clergyman full in
+the face. "I don't want her to suffer. There will be some expense.
+Can you get her into a comfortable place for--for a thousand
+dollars?"</p>
+<p>"I will try. The poor creature would be better off," said the
+other, persuading himself. "She cannot last long. She is a very ill
+woman."</p>
+<p>Wickersham either did not hear or pretended not to hear.</p>
+<p>"You go ahead and do it. I will send you the money the day after
+it is done," he said. "Money is very tight to-day, almost a panic
+at the board."</p>
+<p>"That stock? You will not trouble me about it?"</p>
+<p>Wickersham growled something about being very busy, and rose and
+bowed the visitor out. The two men shook hands formally at the door
+of the inner office; but it was a malevolent look that Wickersham
+shot at the other's stout back as he walked out.</p>
+<p>As Mr. Rimmon came out of the office he caught sight of the
+short, stout man he had seen in the street to which he had gone
+with Mrs. Lancaster. Suddenly the association of ideas brought to
+him Keith's threat. He was shadowed. A perspiration broke out over
+him.</p>
+<p>Wickersham went back to his private office, and began once more
+on his books. What he saw there was what he began to see on all
+sides: ruin. He sat back in his chair and reflected. His face,
+which had begun to grow thinner of late, as well as harder, settled
+more and more until it looked like gray stone. Presently he rose,
+and locking his desk carefully, left his office.</p>
+<p>As he reached the street, a man, who had evidently been waiting
+for him, walked up and spoke to him. He was a tall, thin, shabby
+man, with a face and figure on which drink was written
+ineffaceably. Wickersham, without looking at him, made an angry
+gesture and hastened his step. The other, however, did the same,
+and at his shoulder began to whine.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Wickersham, just a word."</p>
+<p>"Get out," said Wickersham, still walking on. "I told you never
+to speak to me again."</p>
+<p>"I have a paper that you'd give a million dollars to get hold
+of."</p>
+<p>Wickersham's countenance showed not the least change.</p>
+<p>"If you don't keep away from here, I'll hand you over to the
+police."</p>
+<p>"If you'll just give me a dollar I'll swear never to trouble you
+again. I have not had a mouthful to eat to-day. You won't let me
+starve?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, I will. Starve and be ---- to you!" He suddenly stopped
+and faced the other. "Plume, I wouldn't give you a cent if you were
+actually starving. Do you see that policeman? If you don't leave me
+this minute, I'll hand you over to him. And if you ever speak to me
+again or write to me again, or if I find you on the street about
+here, I'll arrest you and send you down for blackmail and stealing.
+Now do you understand?"</p>
+<p>The man turned and silently shuffled away, his face working and
+a glint in his bleared eye.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>An evening or two later Dave Dennison reported to Keith that he
+had found Phrony. Dave's face was black with hate, and his voice
+was tense with suppressed feeling.</p>
+<p>"How did you find her?" inquired Keith.</p>
+<p>"Shadowed the preacher. Knew he and that man had been
+confabbin'. She's clean gone," he added. "They've destroyed her.
+She didn't know me." His face worked, and an ominous fire burned in
+his eyes.</p>
+<p>"We must get her home."</p>
+<p>"She can't go. You'd never know her. We'll have to put her in an
+asylum."</p>
+<p>Something in his voice made Keith look at him. He met his
+gaze.</p>
+<p>"They're getting ready to do it--that man and the preacher. But
+I don't mean 'em to have anything more to do with her. They've done
+their worst. Now let 'em keep away from her."</p>
+<p>Keith nodded his acquiescence.</p>
+<p>That evening Keith went to see a doctor he knew, and next day,
+through his intervention, Phrony was removed to the private ward of
+an asylum, where she was made as comfortable as possible.</p>
+<p>It was evident that she had not much longer to stay. But God had
+been merciful to her. She babbled of her baby and her happiness at
+seeing it soon. And a small, strongly built man with grave eyes sat
+by her in the ambulance, and told her stories of it with a
+fertility of invention that amazed the doctor who had her in
+charge.</p>
+<p>When Mr. Rimmon's agents called next day to make the preliminary
+arrangements for carrying out his agreement with Wickersham, they
+found the room empty. The woman who had charge of the house had
+been duly "fixed" by Dave, and she told a story sufficiently
+plausible to pass muster. The sick woman had disappeared at night
+and had gone she did not know where. She was afraid she might have
+made away with herself, as she was out of her head. This was
+verified, and this was the story that went back to Mr. Rimmon and
+finally to Ferdy Wickersham. A little later the body of a woman was
+found in the river, and though there was nothing to identify her,
+it was stated in one of the papers that there was good ground for
+believing that she was the demented woman whose disappearance had
+been reported the week before.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+<h3>THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE</h3>
+<br>
+<p>One day after Phrony was removed, Keith was sitting in the
+office he had taken in New York, working on the final papers which
+were to be exchanged when his deal should be completed, when there
+was a tap at the door. A knock at the door is almost as individual
+as a voice. There was something about this knock that awakened
+associations in Keith's mind. It was not a woman's tap, yet Terpy
+and Phrony Tripper both sprang into Keith's mind.</p>
+<p>Almost at the same moment the door opened slowly, and pausing on
+the threshold stood J. Quincy Plume. But how changed from the Mr.
+Plume of yore, the jovial and jocund manager of the Gumbolt
+<i>Whistle</i>, or the florid and flowery editor of the New Leeds
+<i>Clarion</i>!</p>
+<p>The apparition in the door was a shabby representation of what
+J. Quincy Plume had been in his palmy days. He bore the last marks
+of extreme dissipation; his eyes were dull, his face bloated, and
+his hair thin and long. His clothes looked as if they had served
+him by night as well as by day for a long time. His shoes were
+broken, and his hat, once the emblem of his station and high
+spirits, was battered and rusty.</p>
+<p>"How are you, Mr. Keith?" he began boldly enough. But his
+assumption of something of his old air of bravado died out under
+Keith's icy and steady gaze, and he stepped only inside of the
+room, and, taking off his hat, waited uneasily.</p>
+<p>"What do you want of me?" demanded Keith, leaning back in his
+chair and looking at him coldly.</p>
+<p>"Well, I thought I would like to have a little talk with you
+about a matter--"</p>
+<p>Keith, without taking his eyes from his face, shook his head
+slowly.</p>
+<p>"About a friend of yours," continued Plume.</p>
+<p>Again Keith shook his head very slowly.</p>
+<p>"I have a little information that might be of use to you--that
+you'd like to have."</p>
+<p>"I don't want it."</p>
+<p>"You would if you knew what it was."</p>
+<p>"No."</p>
+<p>"Yes, you would. It's about Squire Rawson's granddaughter--about
+her marriage to that man Wickersham."</p>
+<p>"How much do you want for it?" demanded Keith.</p>
+<p>Plume advanced slowly into the room and looked at a chair.</p>
+<p>"Don't sit down. How much do you want for it?" repeated
+Keith.</p>
+<p>"Well, you are a rich man now, and--"</p>
+<p>"I thought so." Keith rose. "However rich I am, I will not pay
+you a cent." He motioned Plume to the door.</p>
+<p>"Oh, well, if that's the way you take it!" Plume drew himself up
+and stalked to the door. Keith reseated himself and again took up
+his pen.</p>
+<p>At the door Plume turned and saw that Keith had put him out of
+his mind and was at work again.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Keith, if you knew what information I have--"</p>
+<p>Keith sat up suddenly.</p>
+<p>"Go out of here!"</p>
+<p>"If you'd only listen--"</p>
+<p>Keith stood up, with a sudden flame in his eyes.</p>
+<p>"Go on, I say. If you do not, I will put you out. It is as much
+as I can do to keep my hands off you. You could not say a word that
+I would believe on any subject."</p>
+<p>"I will swear to this."</p>
+<p>"Your oath would add nothing to it."</p>
+<p>Plume waited, and after a moment's reflection began in a
+different key.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith, I did not come here to sell you anything--"</p>
+<p>"Yes, you did."</p>
+<p>"No, I did not. I did not come--only for that. If I could have
+sold it, I don't say I wouldn't, for I need money--the Lord knows
+how much I need it! I have not a cent in the world to buy me a
+mouthful to eat--or drink. I came to tell you something that only
+<i>I</i> know--"</p>
+<p>"I have told you that I would not believe you on oath," began
+Keith, impatiently.</p>
+<p>"But you will, for it is true; and I tell it not out of love for
+you (though I never disliked--I always liked you--would have liked
+you if you'd have let me), but out of hate for that--. That man has
+treated me shamefully--worse than a yellow dog! I've done for that
+man what I wouldn't have done for my brother. You know what I've
+done for him, Mr. Keith, and now when he's got no further use for
+me, he kicks me out into the street and threatens to give me to the
+police if I come to him again."</p>
+<p>Keith's expression changed. There was no doubt now that for once
+Quincy Plume was sincere. The hate in his bleared eyes and bloated
+face was unfeigned.</p>
+<p>"Give me to the police! I'll give him to the police!" he broke
+out in a sudden flame at Keith's glance of inspection. "He thinks
+he has been very smart in taking from me all the papers. He thinks
+no one will believe me on my mere word, but I've got a paper he
+don't know of."</p>
+<p>His hand went to the breast of his threadbare coat with an angry
+clutch. "I've got the marriage lines of his wife."</p>
+<p>One word caught Keith, and his interest awoke.</p>
+<p>"What wife?" he asked as indifferently as he could.</p>
+<p>"His wife,--his lawful wife,--Squire Rawson's granddaughter,
+Phrony Tripper. I was at the weddin'--I was a witness. He thought
+he could get out of it, and he was half drunk; but he married
+her."</p>
+<p>"Where? When? You were present?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. They were married by a preacher named Rimmon, and he gave
+me her certificate, and I swore to her I had lost it: <i>he</i> got
+me to do it--the scoundrel! He wanted me to give it to him; but I
+swore to him I had lost it, too. I thought it would be of use some
+of these days." A gleam of the old craftiness shone in his
+eyes.</p>
+<p>Keith gazed at the man in amazement. His unblushing effrontery
+staggered him.</p>
+<p>"Would you mind letting me see that certificate?"</p>
+<p>Plume hesitated and licked his ups like a dog held back from a
+bone. Keith noted it.</p>
+<p>"I do not want you to think that I will give you any money for
+it, for I will not," he added quietly, his gray eyes on him.</p>
+<p>For a moment Plume was so taken aback that his face became a
+blank. Then, whether it was that the very frankness of the speech
+struck home to him or that he wished to secure a fragment of esteem
+from Keith, he recovered himself.</p>
+<p>"I don't expect any money for it, Mr. Keith. I don't want any
+money for it. I will not only show you this paper, I will give it
+to you."</p>
+<p>"It is not yours to give," said Keith. "It belongs to Mrs.
+Wickersham. I will see that she gets it if you deliver it to
+me."</p>
+<p>"That's so," ejaculated Plume, as if the thought had never
+occurred to him before. "I want her to have it, but you'd better
+keep it for her. That man will get it away from her. You don't know
+him as I do. You don't know what he'd do on a pinch. I tell you he
+is a gambler for life. I have seen him sit at the board and stake
+sums that would have made me rich for life. Besides," he added, as
+if he needed some other reason for giving it up, "I am afraid if he
+knew I had it he'd get it from me in some way."</p>
+<p>He walked forward and handed the paper to Keith, who saw at a
+glance that it was what Plume had declared it to be: a marriage
+certificate, dirty and worn, but still with signatures that
+appeared to be genuine. Keith's eyes flashed with satisfaction as
+he read the name of the Rev. William H. Rimmon and Plume's name,
+evidently written with the same ink at the same time.</p>
+<p>"Now," said Keith, looking up from the paper, "I will see that
+Mrs. Wickersham's family is put in possession of this paper."</p>
+<p>"Couldn't you lend me a small sum, Mr. Keith," asked Plume,
+wheedlingly, "just for old times' sake? I know I have done you
+wrong and given you good cause to hate me, but it wasn't my fault,
+an' I've done you a favor to-day, anyhow."</p>
+<p>Keith looked at him for a second, and put his hand in his
+pocket.</p>
+<p>"I'll pay you back, as sure as I live--" began Plume,
+cajolingly.</p>
+<p>"No, you will not," said Keith, sharply. "You could not if you
+would, and would not if you could, and I would not lend you a cent
+or have a business transaction with you for all the money in New
+York. I will give you this--for the person you have most injured in
+life. Now, don't thank me for it, but go."</p>
+<p>Plume took, with glistening eyes and profuse thanks, the bills
+that were handed out to him, and shambled out of the room.</p>
+<p>That night Keith, having shown the signatures to a good expert,
+who pronounced them genuine, telegraphed Dr. Balsam to notify
+Squire Rawson that he had the proof of Phrony's marriage. The
+Doctor went over to see the old squire. He mentioned the matter
+casually, for he knew his man. But as well as he knew him, he found
+himself mistaken in him.</p>
+<p>"I know that," he said quietly, "but what I want is to find
+Phrony." His deep eyes glowed for a while and suddenly flamed. "I'm
+a rich man," he broke out, "but I'd give every dollar I ever owned
+to get her back, and to get my hand once on that man."</p>
+<p>The deep fire glowed for a while and then grew dull again, and
+the old man sank back into his former grim silence.</p>
+<p>The Doctor looked at him commiseratingly. Keith had written him
+fully of Phrony and her condition, and he had decided to say
+nothing to the old grandfather.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+<h3>"SNUGGLERS' ROOST"</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Wickersham began to renew his visits to Mrs. Wentworth, which he
+had discontinued for a time when he had found himself repulsed. The
+repulse had stimulated his desire to win her; but he had a further
+motive. Among other things, she might ask for an accounting of the
+money he had had of her, and he wanted more money. He must keep up
+appearances, or others might pounce upon him.</p>
+<p>When he began again, it was on a new line. He appealed to her
+sympathy. If he had forgotten himself so far as to ask for more
+than friendship, she would, he hoped, forgive him. She could not
+find a truer friend. He would never offend her so again; but he
+must have her friendship, or he might do something desperate.</p>
+<p>Fortunately for him, Wickersham had a good advocate at court.
+Mrs. Wentworth was very lonely and unhappy just then, and the plea
+prevailed. She forgave him, and Wickersham again began to be a
+visitor at the house.</p>
+<p>But deeper than these lay another motive. While following Mrs.
+Wentworth he had been thrown with Lois Huntington. Her freshness,
+her beauty, the charm of her girlish figure, the unaffected gayety
+of her spirits, attracted him, and he had paused in his other
+pursuit to captivate her, as he might have stepped aside to pluck a
+flower beside the way. To his astonishment, she declined the honor;
+more, she laughed at him. It teased him to find himself balked by a
+mere country girl, and from this moment he looked on her with new
+eyes. The unexpected revelation of a deeper nature than most he had
+known astonished him. Since their interview on the street Lois
+received him with more friendliness than she had hitherto shown
+him. In fact, the house was a sad one these days, and any diversion
+was welcome. The discontinuance of Keith's visits had been so
+sudden that Lois had felt it all the more. She had no idea of the
+reason, and set it down to the score of his rumored success with
+Mrs. Lancaster. She, too, could play the game of pique, and she did
+it well. She accordingly showed Wickersham more favor than she had
+ever shown him before. While, therefore, he kept up his visits to
+Mrs. Norman, he was playing all the time his other game with her
+cousin, knowing the world well enough to be sure that it would not
+believe his attentions to the latter had any serious object. In
+this he was not mistaken. The buzz that coupled his name with Mrs.
+Wentworth's was soon as loud as ever.</p>
+<p>Finally Lois decided to take matters in her own hands. She would
+appeal to Mr. Wickersham himself. He had talked to her of late in a
+manner quite different from the sneering cynicism which he aired
+when she first met him. In fact, no one could hold higher
+sentiments than he had expressed about women or about life. Mr.
+Keith himself had never held loftier ideals than Mr. Wickersham had
+declared to her. She began to think that the tittle-tattle that she
+got bits of whenever she saw Mrs. Nailor or some others was,
+perhaps, after all, slander, and that Mr. Wickersham was not aware
+of the injury he was doing Mrs. Wentworth. She would appeal to his
+better nature. She lay in wait several times without being able to
+meet him in a way that would not attract attention. At length she
+wrote him a note, asking him to meet her on the street, as she
+wished to speak to him privately.</p>
+<p>When Wickersham met her that afternoon at the point she had
+designated, not far from the Park, he had a curious expression on
+his cold face.</p>
+<p>She was dressed in a perfectly simple, dark street costume which
+fitted without a wrinkle her willowy figure, and a big black hat
+with a single large feather shaded her face and lent a shadow to
+her eyes which gave them an added witchery. Wickersham thought he
+had never known her so pretty or so chic. He had not seen as
+handsome a figure that day, and he had sat at the club window and
+scanned the avenue with an eye for fine figures.</p>
+<p>She held out her hand in the friendliest way, and looking into
+his eyes quite frankly, said, with the most natural of voices:</p>
+<p>"Well, I know you think I have gone crazy, and are consumed with
+curiosity to know what I wanted with you?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know about the curiosity," he said, smiling at her.
+"Suppose we call it interest. You don't have to be told now that I
+shall be only too delighted if I am fortunate enough to be of any
+service to you." He bent down and looked so deep into her eyes that
+she drew a little back.</p>
+<p>"The fact is, I am plotting a little treason," she said, with a
+blush, slightly embarrassed.</p>
+<p>"By Jove! she is a real beauty," thought Wickersham, noting,
+with the eye of a connoisseur, the white, round throat, the dainty
+curves of the slim figure, and the purity of the oval face, in
+which the delicate color came and went under his gaze.</p>
+<p>"Well, if this be treason, I'll make the most of it," he said,
+with his most fascinating smile. "Treasons, stratagems, and spoils
+are my game."</p>
+<p>"But this may be treason partly against yourself?" She gave a
+half-glance up at him to see how he took this.</p>
+<p>"I am quite used to this, too, my dear girl, I assure you," he
+said, wondering more and more. She drew back a little at the
+familiarity.</p>
+<p>"Come and let us stroll in the Park," he suggested, and though
+she demurred a little, he pressed her, saying it was quieter there,
+and she would have a better opportunity of showing him how he could
+help her.</p>
+<p>They walked along talking, he dealing in light badinage of a
+flattering kind, which both amused and disturbed her a little, and
+presently he turned into a somewhat secluded alley, where he found
+a bench sheltered and shadowed by the overhanging boughs of a
+tree.</p>
+<p>"Well, here is a good place for confidences." He took her hand
+and, seating himself, drew her down beside him. "I will pretend
+that you are a charming dryad, and I--what shall I be?"</p>
+<p>"My friend," she said calmly, and drew her hand away from
+him.</p>
+<p>"<i>Votre ami? Avec tout mon coeur</i>. I will be your best
+friend." He held out his hand.</p>
+<p>"Then you will do what I ask? You are also a good friend of Mrs.
+Wentworth?"</p>
+<p>A little cloud flitted over his face but she did not see it.</p>
+<p>"We do not speak of the absent when the present holds all we
+care for," he said lightly.</p>
+<p>She took no notice of this, but went on: "I do not think you
+would wittingly injure any one."</p>
+<p>He laughed softly. "Injure any one? Why, of course I would
+not--I could not. My life is spent in making people have a pleasant
+time--though some are wicked enough to malign me."</p>
+<p>"Well," she said slowly, "I do not think you ought to come to
+Cousin Louise's so often. You ought not to pay Cousin Louise as
+much attention as you do."</p>
+<p>"What!" He threw back his head and laughed.</p>
+<p>"You do not know what an injury you are doing her," she
+continued gravely. "You cannot know how people are talking about
+it?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't I?" he laughed. Then, as out of the tail of his eye
+he saw her troubled face, he stopped and made his face grave. "And
+you think I am injuring her!" She did notice the covert
+cynicism.</p>
+<p>"I am sure you are--unwittingly. You do not know how unhappy she
+is."</p>
+<p>An expression very like content stole into his dark eyes.</p>
+<p>Lois continued:</p>
+<p>"She has not been wise. She has been foolish and unyielding
+and--oh, I hate to say anything against her, for she has been very
+kind to me!--She has allowed others to make trouble between her and
+her husband; but she loves him dearly for all that--and--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, she does! You think so!" said Wickersham, with an ugly
+little gleam under his half-closed lids and a shrewd glance at
+Lois.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Oh, yes, I am sure of it. I know it. She adores him."</p>
+<p>"She does, eh?"</p>
+<p>"Yes. She would give the world to undo what she has done and win
+him back."</p>
+<p>"She would, eh?" Again that gleam in Wickersham's dark eyes as
+they slanted a glance at the girl's earnest face.</p>
+<p>"I think she had no idea till--till lately how people talked
+about her, and it was a great shock to her. She is a very proud
+woman, you know?"</p>
+<p>"Yes," he assented, "quite proud."</p>
+<p>"She esteems you--your friendship--and likes you ever so much,
+and all that." She was speaking rapidly now, her sober eyes on
+Wickersham's face with an appealing look in them. "And she doesn't
+want to do anything to--to wound you; but I think you ought not to
+come so often or see her in a way to make people talk--and I
+thought I'd say so to you." A smile that was a plea for sympathy
+flickered in her eyes.</p>
+<p>Wickersham's mind had been busy. This explained the change in
+Louise Wentworth's manner of late--ever since he had made the bold
+declaration of his intention to conquer her. Another idea suggested
+itself. Could the girl be jealous of his attentions to Mrs.
+Wentworth? He had had women play such a part; but none was like
+this girl. If it was a game it was a deep one. He took his line,
+and when she ended composed his voice to a low tone as he leant
+toward her.</p>
+<p>"My dear girl, I have listened to every word you said. I am
+shocked to hear what you tell me. Of course I know people have
+talked about me,--curse them! they always will talk,--but I had no
+idea it had gone so far. As you know, I have always taken Mrs.
+Wentworth's side in the unhappy differences between her and her
+husband. This has been no secret. I cannot help taking the side of
+the woman in any controversy. I have tried to stand her friend,
+notwithstanding what people said. Sometimes I have been able to
+help her. But--" He paused and took a long breath, his eyes on the
+ground. Then, leaning forward, he gazed into her face.</p>
+<p>"What would you say if I should tell you that my frequent visits
+to Mrs. Wentworth's house were not to see her--entirely?" He felt
+his way slowly, watching the effect on her. It had no effect. She
+did not understand him.</p>
+<p>"What do you mean?"</p>
+<p>He leant over, and taking hold of her wrist with one hand, he
+put his other arm around her. "Lois, can you doubt what I mean?" He
+threw an unexpected passion into his eyes and into his voice,--he
+had done it often with success,--and drew her suddenly to him.</p>
+<p>Taken by surprise, she, with a little exclamation, tried to draw
+away from him, but he held her firmly.</p>
+<p>"Do you think I went there to see her? Do you give me no credit
+for having eyes--for knowing the prettiest, sweetest, dearest
+little girl in New York? I must have concealed my secret better
+than I thought. Why, Lois, it is you I have been after." His eyes
+were close to hers and looked deep into them.</p>
+<p>She gave an exclamation of dismay and tried to rise. "Oh, Mr.
+Wickersham, please let me go!" But he held her fast.</p>
+<p>"Why, of course, it is yourself."</p>
+<p>"Let me go--please let me go, Mr. Wickersham," she exclaimed as
+she struggled.</p>
+<p>"Oh, now don't get so excited," he said, drawing her all the
+closer to him, and holding her all the tighter. "It is not becoming
+to your beautiful eyes. Listen to me, my darling. I am not going to
+hurt you. I love you too much, little girl, and I want your love.
+Sit down. Listen to me." He tried to kiss her, but his lips just
+touched her face.</p>
+<p>"No; I will not listen." She struggled to her feet, flushed and
+panting, but Wickersham rose too.</p>
+<p>"I will kiss you, you little fool." He caught her, and clasping
+her with both arms, kissed her twice violently; then, as she gave a
+little scream, released her. "There!" he said. As he did so she
+straightened herself and gave him a ringing box on his ear.</p>
+<p>"There!" She faced him with blazing eyes.</p>
+<p>Angry, and with his cheek stinging, Wickersham seized her
+again.</p>
+<p>"You little devil!" he growled, and kissed her on her cheek
+again and again.</p>
+<p>As he let her go, she faced him. She was now perfectly calm.</p>
+<p>"You are not a gentleman," she said in a low, level tone, tears
+of shame standing in her eyes.</p>
+<p>For answer he caught her again.</p>
+<p>Then the unexpected happened. At that moment Keith turned a
+clump of shrubbery a few paces off, that shut out the alley from
+the bench which Wickersham had selected. For a second he paused,
+amazed. Then, as he took in the situation, a black look came into
+his face.</p>
+<p>The next second he had sprung to where Wickersham stood, and
+seizing him by the collar, jerked him around and slapped him full
+in the face.</p>
+<p>"You hound!" He caught him again, the light of fury in his eyes,
+the primal love of fight that has burned there when men have fought
+for a woman since the days of Adam, and with a fierce oath hurled
+him spinning back across the walk, where he measured his length on
+the ground.</p>
+<p>Then Keith turned to the girl:</p>
+<p>"Come; I will see you home."</p>
+<p>The noise had attracted the attention of others besides Gordon
+Keith. Just at this juncture a stout policeman turned the curve at
+a double-quick.</p>
+<p>As he did so, Wickersham rose and slipped away.</p>
+<p>"What th' devil 'rre ye doin'?" the officer demanded in a rich
+brogue before he came to a halt. "I'll stop this racket. I'll run
+ye ivery wan in. I've got ye now, me foine leddy; I've been waitin'
+for ye for some time." He seized Lois by the arm roughly.</p>
+<p>"Let her go. Take your hand off that lady, sir. Don't you dare
+to touch her." Keith stepped up to him with his eyes flashing and
+hand raised.</p>
+<p>"And you too. I'll tache you to turn this park into--"</p>
+<p>"Take your hand off her, or I'll make you sorry for it."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you will!" But at the tone of authority he released
+Lois.</p>
+<p>"What is your name? Give me your number. I'll have you
+discharged for insulting a lady," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"Oh, me name's aall right. Me name's Mike Doherty--Sergeant
+Doherty. I guess ye'll find it on the rolls right enough. And as
+for insultin' a leddy, that's what I'm goin' to charrge against
+ye--that and--"</p>
+<p>"Why, Mike Doherty!" exclaimed Keith. "I am Mr. Keith--Gordon
+Keith."</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith! Gordon Keith!" The big officer leant over and looked
+at Keith in the gathering dusk. "Be jabbers, and so it is! Who's
+your leddy friend?" he asked in a low voice. "Be George, she's a
+daisy!"</p>
+<p>Keith stiffened. The blood rushed to his face, and he started to
+speak sharply. He, however, turned to Lois.</p>
+<p>"Miss Huntington, this is an old friend of mine. This is Mike
+Doherty, who used to be the best man on the ship when I ran the
+blockade as a boy."</p>
+<p>"The verry same," said Mike.</p>
+<p>"He used to teach me boxing," continued Keith.</p>
+<p>"I taaught him the left upper-cut," nodded the sergeant.</p>
+<p>Keith went on and told the story of his coming on a man who was
+annoying Miss Huntington, but he did not give his name.</p>
+<p>"Did ye give him the left upper-cut?" demanded Sergeant
+Doherty.</p>
+<p>"I am not sure that I did not," laughed Keith. "I know he went
+down over there where you saw him lying--and I have ended one or
+two misunderstandings with it very satisfactorily."</p>
+<p>"Ah, well, then, I'm glad I taaught ye. I'm glad ye've got such
+a good defender, ma'am. Ye'll pardon what I said when I first
+coomed up. But I was a little over-het. Ye see, this place is kind
+o' noted for--for--This place is called 'Snugglers' Roost.' Nobody
+comes here this time 'thout they'rre a little aff, and we has
+arders to look out for 'em."</p>
+<p>"I am glad I had two such defenders," said Lois, innocently.</p>
+<p>"I'm always glad to meet Mr. Keith's friends--and his inimies
+too," said the sergeant, taking off his helmet and bowing. "If I
+can sarve ye any time, sind worrd to Precin't XX, and I'll be proud
+to do it."</p>
+<p>As Keith and Lois walked slowly homeward, Lois gave him an
+account of her interview with Wickersham. Only she did not tell him
+of his kissing her the first time. She tried to minimize the insult
+now, for she did not know what Keith might do. He had suddenly
+grown so quiet.</p>
+<p>What she said to Keith, however, was enough to make him very
+grave. And when he left her at Mrs. Wentworth's house the gravity
+on his face deepened to grimness. That Wickersham should have dared
+to insult this young girl as he had done stirred Keith's deepest
+anger. What Keith did was, perhaps, a very foolish thing. He tried
+to find him, but failing in this, he wrote him a note in which he
+told him what he thought of him, and added that if he felt
+aggrieved he would be glad to send a friend to him and arrange to
+give him any satisfaction which he might desire.</p>
+<p>Wickersham, however, had left town. He had gone West on
+business, and would not return for some weeks, the report from his
+office stated.</p>
+<p>On reaching home, Lois went straight to her room and thought
+over the whole matter. It certainly appeared grave enough to her.
+She determined that she would never meet Wickersham again, and,
+further, that she would not remain in the house if she had to do
+so. Her cheeks burned with shame as she thought of him, and then
+her heart sank at the thought that Keith might at that moment be
+seeking him.</p>
+<p>Having reached her decision, she sought Mrs. Wentworth.</p>
+<p>As soon as she entered the room, Mrs. Wentworth saw that
+something serious had occurred, and in reply to her question Lois
+sat down and quietly told the story of having met Mr. Wickersham
+and of his attempting to kiss her, though she did not repeat what
+Wickersham had said to her. To her surprise, Mrs. Wentworth burst
+out laughing.</p>
+<p>"On my word, you were so tragic when you came in that I feared
+something terrible had occurred. Why, you silly creature, do you
+suppose that Ferdy meant anything by what he did?"</p>
+<p>"He meant to insult me--and you," said Lois, with a lift of her
+head and a flash in her eye.</p>
+<p>"Nonsense! He has probably kissed a hundred girls, and will kiss
+a hundred more if they give him the chance to do so."</p>
+<p>"I gave him no chance," said Lois, sitting very straight and
+stiff, and with a proud dignity which the other might well have
+heeded.</p>
+<p>"Now, don't be silly," said Mrs. Wentworth, with a little
+hauteur. "Why did you walk in a secluded part of the Park with
+him?"</p>
+<p>"I thought I could help a friend of mine," said Lois.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith, I suppose!"</p>
+<p>"No; <i>not</i> Mr. Keith."</p>
+<p>"A woman, perhaps?"</p>
+<p>"Yes; a woman." She spoke with a hauteur which Mrs. Wentworth
+had never seen in her.</p>
+<p>"Cousin Louise," she said suddenly, after a moment's reflection,
+"I think I ought to say to you that I will never speak to Mr.
+Wickersham again."</p>
+<p>The color rushed to Mrs. Wentworth's face, and her eyes gave a
+flash. "You will never do what?" she demanded coldly, looking at
+her with lifted head.</p>
+<p>"I will never meet Mr. Wickersham again."</p>
+<p>"You appear to have met him once too often already. I think you
+do not know what you are saying or whom you are speaking to."</p>
+<p>"I do perfectly," said Lois, looking her full in the eyes.</p>
+<p>"I think you had better go to your room," said Mrs. Wentworth,
+angrily.</p>
+<p>The color rose to Lois's face, and her eyes were sparkling. Then
+the color ebbed back again as she restrained herself.</p>
+<p>"You mean you wish me to go?" Her voice was calm.</p>
+<p>"I do. You have evidently forgotten your place."</p>
+<p>"I will go home," she said. She walked slowly to the door. As
+she reached it she turned and faced Mrs. Wentworth. "I wish to
+thank you for all your kindness to me; for you have been very kind
+to me at times, and I wish--" Her voice broke a little, but she
+recovered herself, and walking back to Mrs. Wentworth, held out her
+hand. "Good-by."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth, without rising, shook hands with her coldly.
+"Good-by."</p>
+<p>Lois turned and walked slowly from the room.</p>
+<p>As soon as she had closed the door she rushed up-stairs, and,
+locking herself in, threw herself on the bed and burst out crying.
+The strain had been too great, and the bent bow at last
+snapped.</p>
+<p>An hour or two later there was a knock on her door. Lois opened
+it, and Mrs. Wentworth entered. She appeared rather surprised to
+find Lois packing her trunk.</p>
+<p>"Are you really going away?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"Yes, Cousin Louise."</p>
+<p>"I think I spoke hastily to you. I said one or two things that I
+regret. I had no right to speak to you as I did," said Mrs.
+Wentworth.</p>
+<p>"No, I do not think you had," said Lois, gravely; "but I will
+try and never think of it again, but only of your kindness to
+me."</p>
+<p>Suddenly, to her astonishment, Mrs. Wentworth burst out weeping.
+"You are all against me," she exclaimed--"all! You are all so hard
+on me!"</p>
+<p>Lois sprang toward her, her face full of sudden pity. "Why,
+Cousin Louise!"</p>
+<p>"You are all deserting me. What shall I do! I am so wretched! I
+am so lonely--so lonely! Oh, I wish I were dead!" sobbed the
+unhappy woman. "Then, maybe, some one might be sorry for me even if
+they did not love me."</p>
+<p>Lois slipped her arm around her and drew her to her, as if their
+ages had been reversed. "Don't cry, Cousin Louise. Calm
+yourself."</p>
+<p>Lois drew her down to a sofa, and kneeling beside her, tried to
+comfort her with tender words and assurances of her affection.
+"There, Cousin Louise, I do love you--we all love you. Cousin
+Norman loves you."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Wentworth only sobbed her dissent.</p>
+<p>"I will stay. I will not go," said Lois. "If you want me."</p>
+<p>The unhappy woman caught her in her arms and thanked her with a
+humility which was new to the girl. And out of the reconciliation
+came a view of her which Lois had never seen, and which hardly any
+one had seen often.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+<h3>TERPY'S LAST DANCE AND WICKERSHAM'S FINAL THROW</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Curiously enough, the interview between Mrs. Lancaster and Lois
+brought them closer together than before. The older woman seemed to
+find a new pleasure in the young girl's society, and as often as
+she could she had the girl at her house. Sometimes, too, Keith was
+of the party. He held himself in leash, and hardly dared face the
+fact that he had once more entered on the lane which, beginning
+among flowers, had proved so thorny in the end. Yet more and more
+he let himself drift into that sweet atmosphere whose light was the
+presence of Lois Huntington.</p>
+<p>One evening they all went together to see a vaudeville
+performance that was being much talked about.</p>
+<p>Keith had secured a box next the stage. The theatre was crowded.
+Wickersham sat in another box with several women, and Keith was
+aware that he was covertly watching his party. He had never
+appeared gayer or been handsomer.</p>
+<p>The last number but one was a dance by a new danseuse, who, it
+was stated in the playbills, had just come over from Russia.
+According to the reports, the Russian court was wild about her, and
+she had left Europe at the personal request of the Czar. However
+this might be, it appeared that she could dance. The theatre was
+packed nightly, and she was the drawing-card.</p>
+<p>As the curtain rose, the danseuse made her way to the centre of
+the stage. She had raven-black hair and brows; but even as she
+stood, there was something in the pose that seemed familiar to
+Keith, and as she stepped forward and bowed with a little jerk of
+her head, and then, with a nod to the orchestra, began to dance,
+Keith recognized Terpy. That abandon was her own.</p>
+<p>As she swept the boxes with her eyes, they fell on Keith, and
+she started, hesitated, then went on. Next moment she glanced at
+the box again, and as her eye caught Keith's she gave him a glance
+of recognition. She was not to be disconcerted now, however. She
+had never danced so well. And she was greeted with raptures of
+applause. The crowd was wild with delight.</p>
+<p>At that moment, from one of the wings, a thin curl of smoke rose
+and floated up alongside a painted tamarind-tree. It might at first
+have been only the smoke of a cigar. Next moment, however, a flick
+of flame stole out and moved up the tree, and a draught of air blew
+the smoke across the stage. There were a few excited whispers, a
+rush in the wings; some one in the gallery shouted "Fire!" and just
+then a shower of sparks from the flaming scenery fell on the
+stage.</p>
+<p>In a second the whole audience was on its feet. In a second more
+there would have been a panic which must have cost many lives.
+Keith saw the danger. "Stay in this box," he said. "The best way
+out is over the stage. I will come for you if necessary." He sprang
+on the stage, and, with a wave of his arm to the audience, shouted:
+"Down in your seats! It is all right."</p>
+<p>Those nearest the stage, seeing a man stand between them and the
+fire, had paused, and the hubbub for a moment had ceased. Keith
+took advantage of it.</p>
+<p>"This theatre can be emptied in three minutes if you take your
+time," he cried; "but the fire is under control."</p>
+<p>Terpy had seized the burning piece of scenery and torn it down,
+and was tearing off the flaming edges with her naked hands. He
+sprang to Terpy's side. Her filmy dress caught fire, but Keith
+jerked off his coat and smothered the flame. Just then the water
+came, and the fire was subdued.</p>
+<p>"Strike up that music again," Keith said to the musicians. Then
+to Terpy he said: "Begin dancing. Dance for your life!" The girl
+obeyed, and, all blackened as she was, began to dance again. She
+danced as she had never danced before, and as she danced the people
+at the rear filed out, while most of those in the body of the house
+stood and watched her. As the last spark of flame was extinguished
+the girl stopped, breathless. Thunders of applause broke out, but
+ceased as Terpy suddenly sank to the floor, clutching with her
+blackened hands at her throat. Keith caught her, and lowering her
+gently, straightened her dress. The next moment a woman sprang out
+of her box and knelt beside him; a woman's arm slipped under the
+dancer's head, and Lois Huntington, on her knees, was loosening
+Terpy's bodice as if she had been a sister.</p>
+<p>A doctor came up out of the audience and bent over her, and the
+curtain rang down.</p>
+<p>That night Keith and Lois and Mrs. Lancaster all spent in the
+waiting-room of the Emergency Hospital. They knew that Terpy's life
+was ebbing fast. She had swallowed the flame, the doctor said.
+During the night a nurse came and called for Keith. The dying woman
+wanted to see him. When Keith reached her bedside, the doctor, in
+reply to a look of inquiry from him, said: "You can say anything to
+her; it will not hurt her." He turned away, and Keith seated
+himself beside her. Her face and hands were swathed in
+bandages.</p>
+<p>"I want to say good-by," she said feebly. "You don't mind now
+what I said to you that time?" Keith, for answer, stroked the
+coverlid beside her. "I want to go back home--to Gumbolt.--Tell the
+boys good-by for me."</p>
+<p>Keith said he would--as well as he could, for he had little
+voice left.</p>
+<p>"I want to see <i>her</i>," she said presently.</p>
+<p>"Whom?" asked Keith.</p>
+<p>"The younger one. The one you looked at all the time. I want to
+thank her for the doll. I ran away."</p>
+<p>Lois was sent for, but when she reached the bedside Terpy was
+too far gone to speak so that she could be understood. But she was
+conscious enough to know that Lois was at her side and that it was
+her voice that repeated the Lord's Prayer.</p>
+<p>The newspapers the next day rang with her praises, and that
+night Keith went South with her body to lay it on the hillside
+among her friends, and all of old Gumbolt was there to meet
+her.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Wickersham, on finding his attempt at explanation to Mrs.
+Wentworth received with coldness, turned his attentions in another
+direction. It was necessary. His affairs had all gone wrong of
+late. He had seen his great fortune disappear under his hands. Men
+who had not half his ability were succeeding where he had failed.
+Men who once followed him now held aloof, and refused to be drawn
+into his most tempting schemes. His enemies were working against
+him. He would overthrow them yet. Norman Wentworth and Gordon Keith
+especially he hated.</p>
+<p>He began to try his fortune with Mrs. Lancaster again. Now, if
+ever, appeared a good time. She was indifferent to every
+man--unless she cared for Keith. He had sometimes thought she
+might; but he did not believe it. Keith, of course, would like to
+marry her; but Wickersham did not believe Keith stood any chance.
+Though she had refused Wickersham, she had never shown any one else
+any special favor. He would try new tactics and bear her off before
+she knew it. He began with a dash. He was quite a different man
+from what he had been. He even was seen in church, turning on
+Rimmon a sphinx-like face that a little disconcerted that eloquent
+person.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster received him with the serene and unruffled
+indifference with which she received all her admirers, and there
+were many. She treated him, however, with the easy indulgence with
+which old friends are likely to be treated for old times' sake; and
+Wickersham was deceived. Fortune appeared suddenly to smile on him
+again. Hope sprang up once more.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor one day met Lois, and informed her that Mr.
+Wickersham was now a rival of Mr. Keith's with Mrs. Lancaster, and,
+what was more, that Norman Wentworth had learned that it was not
+Wickersham at all, but Mr. Keith who had really caused the trouble
+between Norman and his wife.</p>
+<p>Lois was aghast. She denied vehemently that it was true; but
+Mrs. Nailor received her denial with amused indulgence.</p>
+<p>"Oh, every one knows it," she said. "Mr. Keith long ago cut
+Fredy out; and Norman knows it."</p>
+<p>Lois went home in a maze. This, then, explained why Mr. Keith
+had suddenly stopped coming to the house. When he had met her he
+had appeared as glad as ever to see her, but he had also appeared
+constrained. He had begun to talk of going away. He was almost the
+only man in New York that she could call her friend. To think of
+New York without him made her lonely. He was in love with Mrs.
+Lancaster, she knew--of that she was sure, notwithstanding Mrs.
+Nailor's statement. Could Mrs. Lancaster have treated him badly?
+She had not even cared for her husband, so people said; would she
+be cruel to Keith?</p>
+<p>The more she pondered over it the more unhappy Lois became.
+Finally it appeared to her that her duty was plain. If Mrs.
+Lancaster had rejected Keith for Wickersham, she might set her
+right. She could, at least, set her right as to the story about him
+and Mrs. Wentworth.</p>
+<p>That afternoon she called on Mrs. Lancaster. It was in the
+Spring, and she put on a dainty gown she had just made.</p>
+<p>She was received with the sincere cordiality that Alice
+Lancaster always showed her. She was taken up to her boudoir, a
+nest of blue satin and sunshine. And there, of all occupations in
+the world, Mrs. Lancaster, clad in a soft lavender tea-gown, was
+engaged in mending old clothes. "For my orphans," she said, with a
+laugh and a blush that made her look charming.</p>
+<p>A photograph of Keith stood on the table in a silver frame.
+When, however, Lois would have brought up the subject of Mr. Keith,
+his name stuck in her throat.</p>
+<p>"I have what the children call 'a swap' for you," said the girl,
+smiling.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster smiled acquiescingly as she bit off a thread.</p>
+<p>"I heard some one say the other day that you were one of those
+who 'do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.'"</p>
+<p>"Oh, how nice! I am not, at all, you know. Still, it is pleasant
+to deceive people that way. Who said it?"</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith." Lois could not help blushing a little; but she had
+broken the ice.</p>
+<p>"And I have one to return to you. I heard some one say that you
+had 'the rare gift of an absolutely direct mind.' That you were
+like George Washington: you couldn't tell a lie--that truth had its
+home in your eyes." Her eyes were twinkling.</p>
+<p>"My! Who said that?" asked the girl.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith."</p>
+<p>Lois turned quickly under pretence of picking up something, but
+she was not quick enough to hide her face from her friend. The red
+that burned in her cheeks flamed down and made her throat rosy.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster looked at the young girl. She made a pretty
+picture as she sat leaning forward, the curves of her slim,
+light-gowned figure showing against the background of blue. Her
+face was pensive, and she was evidently thinking deeply.</p>
+<p>"What are you puzzling over so?"</p>
+<p>At the question the color mounted into her cheeks, and the next
+second a smile lit up her face as she turned her eyes frankly on
+Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>"You would be amused to know. I was wondering how long you had
+known Mr. Keith, and what he was like when he was young."</p>
+<p>"When he was young! Do you call him old now? Why, he is only a
+little over thirty."</p>
+<p>"Is that all! He always seems much older to me, I do not know
+why. But he has seen so much--done so much. Why, he appears to have
+had so many experiences! I feel as if no matter what might happen,
+he would know just what to do. For instance, that story that Cousin
+Norman told me once of his going down into the flooded mine, and
+that night at the theatre, when there was the fire--why, he just
+took charge. I felt as if he would take charge no matter what might
+happen."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster at first had smiled at the girl's enthusiasm, but
+before Lois had finished, she had drifted away.</p>
+<p>"He would--he would," she repeated, pensively.</p>
+<p>"Then that poor girl--what he did for her. I just--" Lois
+paused, seeking for a word--"trust him!"</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster smiled.</p>
+<p>"You may," she said. "That is exactly the word."</p>
+<p>"Tell me, what was he like when--you first knew him?"</p>
+<p>"I don't know--why, he was--he was just what he is now--you
+could have trusted him--"</p>
+<p>"Why didn't you marry him?" asked Lois, her eyes on the other's
+face.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster looked at her with almost a gasp.</p>
+<p>"Why, Lois! What are you talking about? Who says--?"</p>
+<p>"He says so. He said he was desperately in love with you."</p>
+<p>"Why, Lois--!" began Mrs. Lancaster, with the color mounting to
+her cheeks. "Well, he has gotten bravely over it," she laughed.</p>
+<p>"He has not. He is in love with you now," the young girl said
+calmly.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster turned and faced her with her mouth open to
+speak, and read the girl's sincerity in her face. "With me!" She
+clasped her hands with a pretty gesture over her bosom. A warm
+feeling suddenly surged to her heart.</p>
+<p>The younger woman nodded.</p>
+<p>"Yes--and, oh, Mrs. Lancaster, don't treat him badly!" She laid
+both hands on her arm and looked at her earnestly. "He has loved
+you always," she continued.</p>
+<p>"Loved me! Lois, you are dreaming." But as she said it, Alice's
+heart was beating.</p>
+<p>"Yes, he was talking to me one evening, and he began to tell me
+of his love for a girl,--a young girl,--and what a part it had
+played in his life--"</p>
+<p>"But I was married," put in Mrs. Lancaster, seeking for further
+proof rather than renouncing this.</p>
+<p>"Yes, he said she did not care for him; but he had always
+striven to keep her image in his heart--her image as she was when
+he knew her and as he imagined her."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster's face for a moment was a study.</p>
+<p>"Do you know whom he is in love with now?" she said
+presently.</p>
+<p>"Yes; with you."</p>
+<p>"No--not with me; with you." She put her hand on Lois's cheek
+caressingly, and gazed into her eyes.</p>
+<p>The girl's eyes sank into her lap. Her face, which had been
+growing white and pink by turns, suddenly flamed.</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Lancaster, I believe I--" she began in low tones. She
+raised her eyes, and they met for a moment Mrs. Lancaster's.
+Something in their depths, some look of sympathy, of almost
+maternal kindness, struck her, passed through to her long-stilled
+heart. With a little cry she threw herself into the other's arms
+and buried her burning face in her lap.</p>
+<p>The expression on the face of the young widow changed. She
+glanced down for a moment at the little head in her lap, then
+bending down, she buried her face in the brown tresses, and drew
+her form close to her heart.</p>
+<p>In a moment the young girl was pouring out her soul to her as if
+she had been her daughter.</p>
+<p>The expression in Alice Lancaster's eyes was softer than it had
+been for a long time, for it was the light of self-sacrifice that
+shone in them.</p>
+<p>"You have your happiness in your hands," she said tenderly.</p>
+<p>Lois looked up with dissent in her eyes.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster shook her head.</p>
+<p>"No. He will never be in love with me again."</p>
+<p>The girl gave a quick intaking of her breath, her hand clutching
+at her throat.</p>
+<p>"Oh, Mrs. Lancaster!" She was thinking aloud rather than
+speaking. "I thought that you cared for him."</p>
+<p>Alice Lancaster shook her head. She tried to meet frankly the
+other's eyes, but as they gazed deep into hers with an inquiry not
+to be put aside, hers failed and fell.</p>
+<p>"No," she said, but it was with a gasp.</p>
+<p>Lois's eyes opened wide, and her face changed.</p>
+<p>"Oh!" she murmured, as the sense of what she had done swept over
+her. She rose to her feet and, bending down, kissed Mrs. Lancaster
+tenderly. One might have thought she was the elder of the two.</p>
+<p>Lois returned home in deep thought. She had surprised Mrs.
+Lancaster's secret, and the end was plain. She allowed herself no
+delusions. The dream that for a moment had shed its radiance on her
+was broken. Keith was in love with Mrs. Lancaster, and Alice loved
+him. She prayed that they might be happy--especially Keith. She was
+angry with herself that she had allowed herself to become so
+interested in him. She would forget him. This was easier said than
+done. But she could at least avoid seeing him. And having made her
+decision, she held to it firmly. She avoided him in every way
+possible.</p>
+<p>The strain, however, had been too much for Lois, and her
+strength began to go. The doctor advised Mrs. Wentworth to send her
+home. "She is breaking down, and you will have her ill on your
+hands," he said. Lois, too, was pining to get away. She felt that
+she could not stand the city another week. And so, one day, she
+disappeared from town.</p>
+<p>When Wickersham met Mrs. Lancaster after her talk with Lois, he
+was conscious of the change in her. The old easy, indulgent
+attitude was gone; and in her eye, instead of the lazy, half-amused
+smile, was something very like scorn. Something had happened, he
+knew.</p>
+<p>His thoughts flew to Keith, Norman, Rimmon, also to several
+ladies of his acquaintance. What had they told her? Could it be the
+fact that he had lost nearly everything--that he had spent Mrs.
+Wentworth's money? That he had written anonymous letters? Whatever
+it was, he would brave it out. He had been in some hard places
+lately, and had won out by his nerve. He assumed an injured and a
+virtuous air, and no man could do it better.</p>
+<p>"What has happened? You are so strange to me. Has some one been
+prejudicing you against me? Some one has slandered me," he said,
+with an air of virtue.</p>
+<p>"No. No one." Mrs. Lancaster turned her rings with a little
+embarrassment. She was trying to muster the courage to speak
+plainly to him. He gave it to her.</p>
+<p>"Oh, yes; some one has. I think I have a right to demand who it
+is. Is it that man Keith?"</p>
+<p>"No." She glanced at him with a swift flash in her eye. "Mr.
+Keith has not mentioned your name to me since I came home."</p>
+<p>Her tone fired him with jealousy.</p>
+<p>"Well, who was it, then? He is not above it. He hates me enough
+to say anything. He has never got over our buying his old place,
+and has never lost an opportunity to malign me since."</p>
+<p>She looked him in the face, for the first time, quite
+steadily.</p>
+<p>"Let me tell you, Mr. Keith has never said a word against you to
+me--and that is much more than I can say for you; so you need not
+be maligning him now."</p>
+<p>A faint flush stole into Wickersham's face.</p>
+<p>"You appear to be championing his cause very warmly."</p>
+<p>"Because he is a friend of mine and an honorable gentleman."</p>
+<p>He gave a hard, bitter laugh.</p>
+<p>"Women are innocent!"</p>
+<p>"It is more than men are" she said, fired, as women always are,
+by a fleer at the sex.</p>
+<p>"Who has been slandering me?" he demanded, angered suddenly by
+her retort. "I have stood in a relation to you which gives me a
+right to demand the name."</p>
+<p>"What relation to me?--Where is your wife?"</p>
+<p>His face whitened, and he drew in his breath as if struck a
+blow,--a long breath,--but in a second he had recovered himself,
+and he burst into a laugh.</p>
+<p>"So you have heard that old story--and believe it?" he said,
+with his eyes looking straight into hers. As she made no answer, he
+went on. "Now, as you have heard it, I will explain the whole thing
+to you. I have always wanted to do it; but--but--I hardly knew
+whether it were better to do it or leave it alone. I thought if you
+had heard it you would mention it to me--"</p>
+<p>"I have done so now," she said coldly.</p>
+<p>"I thought our relation--or, as you object to that word, our
+friendship--entitled me to that much from you."</p>
+<p>"I never heard it till--till just now," she defended, rather
+shaken by his tone and air of candor.</p>
+<p>"When?</p>
+<p>"Oh--very recently."</p>
+<p>"Won't you tell me who told you?"</p>
+<p>"No--o. Go on."</p>
+<p>"Well, that woman--that poor girl--her name was--her name
+is--Phrony Tripper--or Trimmer. I think that was her name--she
+called herself Euphronia Tripper." He was trying with puckered brow
+to recall exactly. "I suppose that is the woman you are referring
+to?" he said suddenly.</p>
+<p>"It is. You have not had more than one, have you?"</p>
+<p>He laughed, pleased to give the subject a lighter tone.</p>
+<p>"Well, this poor creature I used to know in the South when I was
+a boy--when I first went down there, you know? She was the daughter
+of an old farmer at whose house we stayed. I used to talk to her.
+You know how a boy talks to a pretty girl whom he is thrown with in
+a lonesome old country place, far from any amusement." Her eyes
+showed that she knew, and he was satisfied and proceeded.</p>
+<p>"But heavens! the idea of being in love with her! Why, she was
+the daughter of a farmer. Well, then I fell in with her
+afterwards--once or twice, to be accurate--when I went down there
+on business, and she was a pretty, vain country girl--"</p>
+<p>"I used to know her," assented Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>"You did!" His face fell.</p>
+<p>"Yes; when I went there to a little Winter resort for my
+throat--when I was seventeen. She used to go to the school taught
+by Mr. Keith."</p>
+<p>"She did? Oh, then you know her name? It was Tripper, wasn't
+it?"</p>
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+<p>"I thought it was. Well, she was quite pretty, you remember;
+and, as I say, I fell in with her again, and having been old
+friends--" He shifted in his seat a little as if
+embarrassed--"Why--oh, you know how it is. I began to talk nonsense
+to her to pass away the time,--told her she was pretty and all
+that,--and made her a few presents--and--" He paused and took a
+long breath. "I thought she was very queer. The first thing I knew,
+I found she was--out of her mind. Well, I stopped and soon came
+away, and, to my horror, she took it into her head that she was my
+wife. She followed me here. I had to go abroad, and I heard no more
+of her until, not long ago, I heard she had gone completely crazy
+and was hunting me up as her husband. You know how such poor
+creatures are?" He paused, well satisfied with his recital, for
+first surprise and then a certain sympathy took the place of
+incredulity in Mrs. Lancaster's face.</p>
+<p>"She is absolutely mad, poor thing, I understand," he sighed,
+with unmistakable sympathy in his voice.</p>
+<p>"Yes," Mrs. Lancaster assented, her thoughts drifting away.</p>
+<p>He watched her keenly, and next moment began again.</p>
+<p>"I heard she had got hold of Mr. Rimmon's name and declares that
+he married us."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster returned to the present, and he went on:</p>
+<p>"I don't know how she got hold of it. I suppose his being the
+fashionable preacher, or his name being in the papers frequently,
+suggested the idea. But if you have any doubt on the subject, ask
+him."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Lancaster looked assent.</p>
+<p>"Here--Having heard the story, and thinking it might be as well
+to stop it at once, I wrote to Mr. Rimmon to give me a statement to
+set the matter at rest, and I have it in my pocket." He took from
+his pocket-book a letter and spread it before Mrs. Lancaster. It
+read:</p>
+<blockquote>"DEAR MR. WICKERSHAM: I am sorry you are being annoyed.
+I cannot imagine that you should need any such statement as you
+request. The records of marriages are kept in the proper office
+here. Any one who will take the trouble to inspect those records
+will see that I have never made any such report. This should be
+more than sufficient.<br>
+<br>
+"I feel sure this will answer your purpose.<br>
+<br>
+"Yours sincerely,<br>
+<br>
+"W.H. RIMMON."</blockquote>
+<br>
+<p>"I think that settles the matter," said Wickersham, with his
+eyes on her face.</p>
+<p>"It would seem so," said Mrs. Lancaster, gravely.</p>
+<p>As she spoke slowly, Wickersham put in one more nail.</p>
+<p>"Of course, you know there must be a witness to a marriage," he
+said. "If there be such a witness, let K---- let those who are
+engaged in defaming me produce him."</p>
+<p>"No, no," said Mrs. Lancaster, quickly. "Mr. Rimmon's
+statement--I think I owe you an apology for what I said. Of course,
+it appeared incredible; but something occurred--I can't tell you--I
+don't want to tell you what--that shocked me very much, and I
+suppose I judged too hastily and harshly. You must forget what I
+said, and forgive me for my injustice."</p>
+<p>"Certainly I will," he said earnestly.</p>
+<p>The revulsion in her belief inclined her to be kinder toward him
+than she had been in a long time.</p>
+<p>The change in her manner toward him made Wickersham's heart
+begin to beat. He leant over and took her hand.</p>
+<p>"Won't you give me more than justice, Alice?" he began. "If you
+knew how long I have waited--how I have hoped even against
+hope--how I have always loved you--" She was so taken aback by his
+declaration that for a moment she did not find words to reply, and
+he swept on: "--you would not be so cold--so cruel to me. I have
+always thought you the most beautiful--the most charming woman in
+New York."</p>
+<p>She shook her head. "No, you have not."</p>
+<p>"I have; I swear I have! Even when I have hung around--around
+other women, I have done so because I saw you were taken up
+with--some one else. I thought I might find some one else to
+supplant you, but never for one moment have I failed to acknowledge
+your superiority--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; you have not. How can you dare to tell me that!" she
+smiled, recovering her self-possession.</p>
+<p>"I have, Alice, ever since you were a girl--even when you
+were--were--when you were beyond me--I loved you more than
+ever--I--" Her face changed, and she recoiled from him.</p>
+<p>"Don't," she said.</p>
+<p>"I will." He seized her hand and held it tightly. "I loved you
+even then better than I ever loved in my life--better than
+your--than any one else did." Her face whitened.</p>
+<p>"Stop!" she cried. "Not another word. I will not listen. Release
+my hand." She pulled it from him forcibly, and, as he began again,
+she, with a gesture, stopped him.</p>
+<p>"No--no--no! It is impossible. I will not listen."</p>
+<p>His face changed as he looked into her face. She rose from her
+seat and turned away from him, taking two or three steps up and
+down, trying to regain control of herself.</p>
+<p>He waited and watched her, an angry light coming into his eyes.
+He misread her feelings. He had made love to married women before
+and had not been repulsed.</p>
+<p>She turned to him now, and with level eyes looked into his.</p>
+<p>"You never loved me in your life. I have had men in love with
+me, and know when they are; but you are not one of them."</p>
+<p>"I was--I am--" he began, stepping closer to her; but she
+stopped him.</p>
+<p>"Not for a minute," she went on, without heeding him. "And you
+had no right to say that to me."</p>
+<p>"What?" he demanded.</p>
+<p>"What you said. My husband loved me with all the strength of a
+noble, high-minded man, and notwithstanding the difference in our
+ages, treated me as his equal; and I loved him--yes, loved him
+devotedly," she said, as she saw a spark come into his eyes.</p>
+<p>"You love some one else now," he said coolly.</p>
+<p>It might have been anger that brought the rush of color to her
+face. She turned and looked him full in the face.</p>
+<p>"If I do, it is not you."</p>
+<p>The arrow went home. His eyes snapped with anger.</p>
+<p>"You took such lofty ground just now that I should hardly have
+supposed the attentions of Mr. Wentworth meant anything so serious.
+I thought that was mere friendship."</p>
+<p>This time there was no doubt that the color meant anger.</p>
+<p>"What do you mean?" she demanded, looking him once more full in
+the eyes.</p>
+<p>"I refer to what the world says, especially as he himself is
+such a model of all the Christian virtues."</p>
+<p>"What the world says? What do you mean?" she persisted, never
+taking her eyes from his face.</p>
+<p>He simply shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+<p>"So I assume Mr. Keith is the fortunate suitor for the remnant
+of your affections: Keith the immaculate--Keith the pure and pious
+gentleman who trades on his affections. I wish you good luck."</p>
+<p>At his insolence Mrs. Lancaster's patience suddenly snapped.</p>
+<p>"Go," she said, pointing to the door. "Go."</p>
+<p>When Wickersham walked out into the street, his face was white
+and drawn, and a strange light was in his eyes. He had played one
+of his last cards, and had played it like a fool. Luck had gone
+against him, and he had lost his head. His heart--that heart that
+had never known remorse and rarely dismay--began to sink. Luck had
+been going against him now for a long time, so long that it had
+swept away his fortune and most of his credit. What was worse to
+him, he was conscious that he had lost his nerve. Where should he
+turn? Unless luck turned or he could get help he would go down. He
+canvassed the various means of escape. Man after man had fallen
+away from him. Every scheme had failed.</p>
+<p>He attributed it all to Norman--to Norman and Keith. Norman had
+ruined him in New York; Keith had blocked him and balked him in the
+South. But one resource remained to him. He would make one more
+supreme effort. Then, if he failed? He thought of a locked drawer
+in his desk, and a black pistol under the papers there. His cheek
+blanched at the thought, but his lips closed tight. He would not
+survive disgrace. His disgrace meant the known loss of his fortune.
+One thing he would do. Keith had escaped him, had succeeded, but
+Norman he could overthrow. Norman had been struck hard; he would
+now complete his ruin. With this mental tonic he straightened up
+and walked rapidly down the street.</p>
+<p>That evening Wickersham was closeted for some time with a man
+who had of late come into especial notice as a strong and merciless
+financier--Mr. Kestrel.</p>
+<p>Mr. Kestrel received him at first with a coldness which might
+have repelled a less determined man. He had no delusions about
+Wickersham; but Wickersham knew this, and unfolded to him, with
+plausible frankness, a scheme which had much reason in it. He had
+at the same time played on the older man's foibles with great
+astuteness, and had awakened one or two of his dormant animosities.
+He knew that Mr. Kestrel had had a strong feeling against Norman
+for several years.</p>
+<p>"You are one of the few men who do not have to fall down and
+worship the name of Wentworth," he said.</p>
+<p>"Well, I rather think not," said Mr. Kestrel, with a glint in
+his eyes, as he recalled Norman Wentworth's scorn of him at the
+board-meeting years before, when Norman had defended Keith against
+him.</p>
+<p>"--Or this new man, Keith, who is undertaking to teach New York
+finance?"</p>
+<p>Mr. Kestrel gave a hard little laugh, which was more like a
+cough than an expression of mirth, but which meant that he was
+amused.</p>
+<p>"Well, neither do I," said Wickersham. "To tell you frankly, I
+hate them both, though there is money, and big money, in this, as
+you can see for yourself from what I have said. This is my real
+reason for wanting you in it. If you jump in and hammer down those
+things, you will clean them out. I have the old patents to all the
+lands that Keith sold those people. They antedate the titles under
+which Rawson claims. If you can break up the deal now, we will go
+in and recover the lands from Rawson. Wentworth is so deep in that
+he'll never pull through, and his friend Keith has staked
+everything on this one toss."</p>
+<p>Old Kestrel's parchment face was inscrutable as he gazed at
+Wickersham and declared that he did not know about that. He did not
+believe in having animosities in business matters, as it marred
+one's judgment. But Wickersham knew enough to be sure that the seed
+he had planted would bear fruit, and that Kestrel would stake
+something on the chance.</p>
+<p>In this he was not deceived. The next day Mr. Kestrel acceded to
+his plan.</p>
+<p>For some days after that there appeared in a certain paper a
+series of attacks on various lines of property holdings, that was
+characterized by other papers as a "strong bearish movement." The
+same paper contained a vicious article about the attempt to unload
+worthless coal-lands on gullible Englishmen. Meantime Wickersham,
+foreseeing failure, acted independently.</p>
+<p>The attack might not have amounted to a great deal but for one
+of those untimely accidents that sometimes overthrow all
+calculations. One of the keenest and oldest financiers in the city
+suddenly dropped dead, and a stampede started on the Stock
+Exchange. It was stayed in a little while, but meantime a number of
+men had been hard hit, and among these was Norman Wentworth. The
+papers next day announced the names of those who had suffered, and
+much space was given in one of them to the decline of the old firm
+of Wentworth &amp; Son, whose history was almost contemporary with
+that of New York.</p>
+<p>By noon it was extensively rumored that Wentworth &amp; Son
+would close their doors. The firm which had lasted for three
+generations, and whose name had been the synonym for honor and for
+philanthropy, which had stood as the type of the highest that can
+exist in commerce, would go down. Men spoke of it with a regret
+which did them honor--hard men who rarely expressed regret for the
+losses of another.</p>
+<p>It was rumored, too, that Wickersham &amp; Company must assign;
+but this caused little surprise and less regret. Aaron Wickersham
+had had friends, but his son had not succeeded to them.</p>
+<p>Keith, having determined to talk to Alice Lancaster about Lois,
+was calling on the former a day or two after her interview with
+Wickersham. She was still somewhat disturbed over it, and showed it
+in her manner so clearly that Keith asked what was the trouble.</p>
+<p>It was nothing very much, she said. Only she had broken finally
+with a friend she had known a long time, and such things upset
+her.</p>
+<p>Keith was sympathetic, and suddenly, to his surprise, she broke
+down and began to cry. He had never seen her weep before since she
+sat, as a girl, in the pine-woods and he lent her his handkerchief
+to dry her tears. Something in the association gave him a feeling
+of unwonted tenderness. She had not appeared to him so soft, so
+feminine, in a long time. He essayed to comfort her. He, too, had
+broken with an old friend, the friend of a lifetime, and he would
+never get over it.</p>
+<p>"Mine was such a blow to me," she said, wiping her eyes; "such
+cruel things were said to me. I did not think any one but a woman
+would have said such biting things to a woman."</p>
+<p>"It was Ferdy Wickersham, I know," said Keith, his eyes
+contracting; "but what on earth could he have said? What could he
+have dared to say to wound you so?"</p>
+<p>"He said all the town was talking about me and Norman." She
+began to cry again. "Norman, dear old Norman, who has been more
+like a brother to me than any one I have ever known, and whom I
+would give the world to bring back happiness to."</p>
+<p>"He is a scoundrel!" exclaimed Keith. "I have stood all--more
+than I ever expected to stand from any man living; but if he is
+attacking women"--he was speaking to himself rather than to her--"I
+will unmask him. He is not worth your notice," he said kindly,
+addressing her again. "Women have been his prey ever since I knew
+him, when he was but a young boy." Mrs. Lancaster dried her
+eyes.</p>
+<p>"You refer to the story that he had married that poor girl and
+abandoned her?"</p>
+<p>"Yes--partly that. That is the worst thing I know of him."</p>
+<p>"But that is not true. However cruel he is, that accusation is
+unfounded. I know that myself."</p>
+<p>"How do you know it?" asked Keith, in surprise.</p>
+<p>"He told me the whole story: explained the thing to my
+satisfaction. It was a poor crazy girl who claimed that he married
+her; said Mr. Rimmon had performed the ceremony She was crazy. I
+saw Mr. Rimmon's letter denying the whole thing."</p>
+<p>"Do you know his handwriting?" inquired Keith, grimly.</p>
+<p>"Whose?"</p>
+<p>"Well, that of both of them?"</p>
+<p>She nodded, and Keith, taking out his pocket-book, opened it and
+took therefrom a slip of paper. "Look at that. I got that a few
+days ago from the witness who was present."</p>
+<p>"Why, what is this?" She sprang up in her excitement.</p>
+<p>"It is incredible!" she said slowly. "Why, he told me the story
+with the utmost circumstantiality."</p>
+<p>"He lied to you," said Keith, grimly. "And Rimmon lied. That is
+their handwriting. I have had it examined by the best expert in New
+York City. I had not intended to use that against him, but only to
+clear the character of that poor young creature whom he deceived
+and then abandoned; but as he is defaming her here, and is at his
+old trade of trying to deceive women, it is time he was shown up in
+his true colors."</p>
+<p>She gave a shudder of horror, and wiped her right hand with her
+left. "Oh, to think that he dared!" She wiped her hand on her
+handkerchief.</p>
+<p>At that moment a servant brought in a card. As Mrs. Lancaster
+gazed at it, her eyes flashed and her lip curled.</p>
+<p>"Say that Mrs. Lancaster begs to be excused."</p>
+<p>"Yes, madam." The servant hesitated. "I think he heard you
+talking, madam."</p>
+<p>"Say that Mrs. Lancaster begs to be excused," she said
+firmly.</p>
+<p>The servant, with a bow, withdrew.</p>
+<p>She handed the card to Keith. On it was the name of the Rev.
+William H. Rimmon.</p>
+<p>Mr. Rimmon, as he stood in the hall, was in unusually good
+spirits, though slightly perturbed. He had determined to carry
+through a plan that he had long pondered over. He had decided to
+ask Mrs. Lancaster to become Mrs. Rimmon.</p>
+<p>As Keith glanced toward the door, he caught Mr. Rimmon's eye. He
+was waiting on the threshold and rubbing his hands with eager
+expectancy. Just then the servant gave him the message. Keith saw
+his countenance fall and his face blanch. He turned, picked up his
+hat, and slipped out of the door, with a step that was almost a
+slink.</p>
+<p>As Mr. Rimmon passed down the street he knew that he had reached
+a crisis in his life. He went to see Wickersham, but that gentleman
+was in no mood for condolences. Everything had gone against him. He
+was facing utter ruin. Rimmon's upbraiding angered him.</p>
+<p>"By the way, you are the very man I wanted to see," he said
+grimly. "I want you to sign a note for that twenty thousand I lost
+by you when you insisted on my holding that stock."</p>
+<p>Rimmon's jaw fell. "That you held for me? Sign a note!
+Twenty-six thousand!"</p>
+<p>"Yes. Don't pretend innocence--not on me. Save that for the
+pulpit. I know you," said the other, with a chilling laugh.</p>
+<p>"But you were to carry that. That was a part of our agreement.
+Why, twenty thousand would take everything I have."</p>
+<p>"Don't play that on me," said Wickersham, coldly. "It won't
+work. You can make it up when you get your widow."</p>
+<p>Rimmon groaned helplessly.</p>
+<p>"Come; there is the note. Sign."</p>
+<p>Rimmon began to expostulate, and finally refused pointblank to
+sign. Wickersham gazed at him with amusement.</p>
+<p>"You sign that, or I will serve suit on you in a half-hour, and
+we will see how the Rev. Mr. Rimmmon stands when my lawyers are
+through with him. You will believe in hell then, sure enough."</p>
+<p>"You won't dare do it. Your marriage would come out. Mrs.
+Lancaster would--"</p>
+<p>"She knows it," said Wickersham, calmly. And, as Rimmon looked
+sceptical, "I told her myself to spare you the trouble. Sign." He
+rose and touched a bell.</p>
+<p>Rimmon, with a groan, signed the paper.</p>
+<p>"You must have showed her my letter!"</p>
+<p>"Of course, I did."</p>
+<p>"But you promised me not to. I am ruined!"</p>
+<p>"What have I to do with that? 'See thou to that,'" said
+Wickersham, with a bitter laugh.</p>
+<p>Rimmon's face paled at the quotation. He, too, had betrayed his
+Lord.</p>
+<p>"Now go." Wickersham pointed to the door.</p>
+<p>Mr. Rimmon went home and tried to write a letter to Mrs.
+Lancaster, but he could not master his thoughts. That pen that
+usually flowed so glibly failed to obey him. He was in darkness. He
+saw himself dishonored, displaced. Wickersham was capable of
+anything. He did not know where to turn. He thought of his brother
+clergymen. He knew many good men who spent their lives helping
+others. But something deterred him from applying to them now. To
+some he had been indifferent, others he had known only socially.
+Yet others had withdrawn themselves from him more and more of late.
+He had attributed it to their envy or their folly. He suddenly
+thought of old Dr. Templeton. He had always ignored that old man as
+a sort of crack-brained creature who had not been able to keep up
+with the world, and had been left stranded, doing the work that
+properly belonged to the unsuccessful. Curiously enough, he was the
+one to whom the unhappy man now turned. Besides, he was a friend of
+Mrs. Lancaster.</p>
+<p>A half-hour later the Rev. Mr. Rimmon was in Dr. Templeton's
+simple study, and was finding a singular sense of relief in pouring
+out his troubles to the old clergyman. He told him something of his
+unhappy situation--not all, it is true, but enough to enable the
+other to see how grave it was, as much from what he inferred as
+from what Rimmon explained. He even began to hope again. If the
+Doctor would undertake to straighten out the complications he might
+yet pull through. To his dismay, this phase of the matter did not
+appear to present itself to the old man's mind. It was the sin that
+he had committed that had touched him.</p>
+<p>"Let us carry it where only we can find relief;" he said. "Let
+us take it to the Throne of Grace, where we can lay all our
+burdens"; and before Rimmon knew it, he was on his knees, praying
+for him as if he had been a very outcast.</p>
+<p>When the Rev. Mr. Rimmon came out of the shabby little study,
+though he had not gotten the relief he had sought, he, somehow,
+felt a little comforted, while at the same time he felt humble. He
+had one of those brief intervals of feeling that, perhaps, there
+was, after all, something that that old man had found which he had
+missed, and he determined to find it. But Mr. Rimmon had wandered
+far out of the way. He had had a glimpse of the pearl, but the
+price was great, and he had not been able to pay it all.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>Wickersham discounted the note; but the amount was only a
+bagatelle to him: a bucket-shop had swallowed it within an hour. He
+had lost his instinct. It was only the love of gambling that
+remained.</p>
+<p>Only one chance appeared to remain for him. He had made up with
+Louise Wentworth after a fashion. He must get hold of her in some
+way. He might obtain more money from her. The method he selected
+was a desperate one; but he was a desperate man.</p>
+<p>After long pondering, he sat down and wrote her a note, asking
+her "to meet some friends of his, a Count and Countess Torelli, at
+supper" next evening.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+<h3>THE RUN ON THE BANK</h3>
+<br>
+<p>It was the day after the events just recorded that Keith's deal
+was concluded. The attack on him and the attempt made by Wickersham
+and Kestrel to break up his deal had failed, and the deeds and
+money were passed.</p>
+<p>Keith was on his way back to his office from his final interview
+with the representative of the syndicate that had bought the
+properties. He was conscious of a curious sensation, partly of
+exhilaration, partly of almost awe, as he walked through the
+crowded streets, where every one was bent on the same quest: gold.
+At last he had won. He was rich. He wondered, as he walked along,
+if any of the men he shouldered were as rich as he. Norman and
+Ferdy Wickersham recurred to him. Both had been much wealthier; but
+Wickersham, he knew, was in straits, and Norman was in some
+trouble. He was unfeignedly glad about Wickersham; but the
+recollection of Norman clouded his face.</p>
+<p>It was with a pang that he recalled Norman's recent conduct to
+him--a pang that one who had always been his friend should have
+changed so; but that was the way of the world. This reflection,
+however, was not consoling.</p>
+<p>He reached his office and seated himself at his desk, to take
+another look at his papers. Before he opened them he rose and
+locked the door, and opening a large envelope, spread the papers
+out on the desk before him.</p>
+<p>He thought of his father. He must write and tell him of his
+success. Then he thought of his old home. He remembered his
+resolution to restore it and make it what it used to be. But how
+much he could do with the money it would take to fit up the old
+place in the manner he had contemplated! By investing it
+judiciously he could double it.</p>
+<p>Suddenly there was a step outside and a knock at his door,
+followed by voices in the outer office. Keith rose, and putting his
+papers back in his pocket, opened the door. For a second he had a
+mingled sensation of pleasure and surprise. His father stood there,
+his bag clutched in his hand. He looked tired, and had aged some
+since Keith saw him last; but his face wore the old smile that
+always illumined it when it rested on his son.</p>
+<p>Keith greeted him warmly and drew him inside. "I was just
+thinking of you, sir."</p>
+<p>"You would not come to see me, so I have come to see you. I have
+heard from you so rarely that I was afraid you were sick." His eyes
+rested fondly on Gordon's face.</p>
+<p>"No; I have been so busy; that is all. Well, sir, I have won."
+His eyes were sparkling.</p>
+<p>The old gentleman's face lit up.</p>
+<p>"You have? Found Phrony, have you? I am so glad. It will give
+old Rawson a new lease of life. I saw him after he got back. He has
+failed a good deal lately."</p>
+<p>"No, sir. I have found her, too; but I mean I have won out at
+last."</p>
+<p>"Ah, you have won her? I congratulate you. I hope she will make
+you happy."</p>
+<p>Keith laughed.</p>
+<p>"I don't mean that. I mean I have sold my lands at last. I
+closed this morning with the Englishmen, and received the
+money."</p>
+<p>The General smiled.</p>
+<p>"Ah, you have, have you? That's very good. I am glad for old
+Adam Rawson's sake."</p>
+<p>"I was afraid he would die before the deeds passed," said Keith.
+"But see, here are the drafts to my order." He spread them out.
+"This one is my commission. And I have the same amount of common
+stock."</p>
+<p>His father made no comment on this, but presently said: "You
+will have enough to restore the old place a little."</p>
+<p>"How much would it cost to fix up the place as you think it
+ought to be fixed up?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, some thousands of dollars. You see, the house is much out
+of repair, and the quarters ought really all to be rebuilt. Old
+Charlotte's house I have kept in repair, and Richard now sleeps in
+the house, as he has gotten so rheumatic. I should think five or
+six thousand dollars might do it."</p>
+<p>"I can certainly spare that much," said Keith, laughing.</p>
+<p>"How is Norman?" asked the General.</p>
+<p>Keith was conscious of a feeling of discontent. His countenance
+fell.</p>
+<p>"Why, I don't know. I don't see much of him these days."</p>
+<p>"Ah! I want to go to see him."</p>
+<p>"The fact is, we have--er--had--. There has been an unfortunate
+misunderstanding between us. No one regrets it more than I; but I
+think I can say it was not at all my fault, and I have done all and
+more than was required of me."</p>
+<p>"Ah, I am very sorry for that. It's a pity--a pity!" said the
+old General. "What was it about?"</p>
+<p>"Well, I don't care to talk about it, sir. But I can assure you,
+I was not in the least to blame. It was caused mainly, I believe,
+by that fellow, Wickersham."</p>
+<p>"He's a scoundrel!" said the General, with sudden vehemence.</p>
+<p>"He is, sir!"</p>
+<p>"I will go and see Norman. I see by the papers he is in some
+trouble."</p>
+<p>"I fear he is, sir. His bank has been declining."</p>
+<p>"Perhaps you can help him?" His face lit up. "You remember, he
+once wrote you--a long time ago?"</p>
+<p>"I remember; I have repaid that," said Keith, quickly. "He has
+treated me very badly." He gave a brief account of the trouble
+between them.</p>
+<p>The old General leant back and looked at his son intently. His
+face was very grave and showed that he was reflecting deeply.</p>
+<p>"Gordon," he said presently, "the Devil is standing very close
+to you. A real misunderstanding should always be cleared up. You
+must go to him."</p>
+<p>"What do you mean, sir?" asked his son, in some confusion.</p>
+<p>"You are at the parting of the ways. A gentleman cannot
+hesitate. Such a debt never can be paid by a gentleman," he said
+calmly. "You must help him, even if you cannot restore the old
+place. Elphinstone has gone for a debt before." He rose as if there
+was nothing more to be said. "Well, I will go and wait for you at
+your rooms." He walked out.</p>
+<p>Keith sat and reflected. How different he was from his father!
+How different from what he had been years ago! Then he had had an
+affection for the old home and all that it represented. He had
+worked with the idea of winning it back some day. It had been an
+inspiration to him. But now it was wealth that he had begun to
+seek.</p>
+<p>It came to him clearly how much he had changed. The process all
+lay before him. It had grown with his success, and had kept pace
+with it in an almost steady ratio since he had set success before
+him as a goal. He was angry with himself to find that he was
+thinking now of success merely as Wealth. Once he had thought of
+Honor and Achievement, even of Duty. He remembered when he had not
+hesitated to descend into what appeared the very jaws of death,
+because it seemed to him his duty. He wondered if he would do the
+same now.</p>
+<p>He felt that this was a practical view which he was now taking
+of life. He was now a practical man; yes, practical like old
+Kestrel, said his better self. He felt that he was not as much of a
+gentleman as he used to be. He was further from his father; further
+from what Norman was. This again brought Norman to his mind. If the
+rumors which he had heard were true, Norman was now in a tight
+place.</p>
+<p>As his father had said, perhaps he might be able to help him.
+But why should he do it? If Norman had helped him in the past, had
+he not already paid him back? And had not Norman treated him badly
+of late without the least cause--met his advances with a rebuff?
+No; he would show him that he was not to be treated so. He still
+had a small account in Norman's bank, which he had not drawn out
+because he had not wished to let Norman see that he thought enough
+of his coldness to make any change; but he would put his money now
+into old Creamer's bank. After looking at his drafts again, he
+unlocked his door and went out on the street.</p>
+<p>There was more commotion on the street than he had seen in some
+days. Men were hurrying at a quicker pace than the rapid gait which
+was always noticeable in that thoroughfare. Groups occasionally
+formed and, after a word or two, dispersed. Newsboys were crying
+extras and announcing some important news in an unintelligible
+jargon. Messengers were dashing about, rushing in and out of the
+big buildings. Something unusual was evidently going on. As Keith,
+on his way to the bank of which Mr. Creamer was president, passed
+the mouth of the street in which Norman's office was situated, he
+looked down and saw quite a crowd assembled. The street was full.
+He passed on, however, and went into the big building, on the first
+floor of which Creamer's bank had its offices. He walked through to
+the rear of the office, to the door of Mr. Creamer's private
+office, and casually asked the nearest clerk for Mr. Creamer. The
+young man said he was engaged. Keith, however, walked up to the
+door, and was about to knock, when, at a word spoken by his
+informant, another clerk came hastily forward and said that Mr.
+Creamer was very busily engaged and could see no one.</p>
+<p>"Well, he will see me," said Keith, feeling suddenly the courage
+that the possession of over a quarter of a million dollars gave,
+and he boldly knocked on the door, and, without waiting to be
+invited in, opened it.</p>
+<p>Mr. Creamer was sitting at his desk, and two or three other men,
+one or two of whom Keith had seen before, were seated in front of
+him in close conference. They stared at the intruder.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith." Mr. Creamer's tone conveyed not the least feeling,
+gave no idea either of welcome or surprise.</p>
+<p>"Excuse me for interrupting you for a moment," said Keith. "I
+want to open an account here. I have a draft on London, which I
+should like to deposit and have you collect for me."</p>
+<p>The effect was immediate; indeed, one might almost say magical.
+The atmosphere of the room as suddenly changed as if May should be
+dropped into the lap of December. The old banker's face relaxed. He
+touched a bell under the lid of his desk, and at the same moment
+pushed back his chair.</p>
+<p>"Gentlemen, let me introduce my friend, Mr. Keith." He presented
+Keith in turn to each of his companions, who greeted him with that
+degree of mingled reserve and civility which is due to a man who
+has placed a paper capable of effecting such a marked change in the
+hands of the most self-contained banker in Bankers' Row.</p>
+<p>A tap at the door announced an answer to the bell, and the next
+moment a clerk came in.</p>
+<p>"Ask Mr. Penwell to come here," said Mr. Creamer. "Mr. Penwell
+is the head of our foreign department," he added in gracious
+explanation to Keith.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith, gentlemen, is largely interested in some of those
+Southern mining properties that you have heard me speak of; and has
+just put through a very fine deal with an English syndicate."</p>
+<p>The door opened, and a cool-looking, slender man of fifty-odd,
+with a thin gray face, thin gray hair very smoothly brushed, and
+keen gray eyes, entered. He was introduced to Mr. Keith. After Mr.
+Creamer had stated the purpose of Keith's visit and had placed the
+drafts in Mr. Penwell's hands, the latter stated, as an interesting
+item just off the ticker, that he understood Wentworth was in
+trouble. Some one had just come and said that there was a run on
+his bank.</p>
+<p>"Those attacks on him in the newspapers must have hurt him
+considerably," observed one of the visitors.</p>
+<p>"Yes, he has been a good deal hurt," said Mr. Creamer. "We are
+all right, Penwell?" He glanced at his subordinate.</p>
+<p>Mr. Penwell nodded with deep satisfaction.</p>
+<p>"So are we," said one of the visitors. "This is the end of
+Wentworth &amp; Son. He will go down."</p>
+<p>"He has been going down for some time. Wife too
+extravagant."</p>
+<p>This appeared to be the general opinion. But Keith scarcely
+heard the speakers. He stood in a maze.</p>
+<p>The announcement of Norman's trouble had come to him like a
+thunder-clap. And he was standing now as in a dream. Could it be
+possible that Norman was going to fail? And if he failed, would
+this be all it meant to these men who had known him always?</p>
+<p>The vision of an old gentleman sitting in his home, which he had
+lost, came back to him across the years.</p>
+<p>"That young man is a gentleman," he heard him say. "It takes a
+gentleman to write such a letter to a friend in misfortune. Write
+to him and say we will never forget his kindness." He heard the
+same old gentleman say, after years of poverty, "You must pay your
+debt though I give up Elphinstone."</p>
+<p>Was he not now forgetting Norman's kindness? But was it not too
+late? Could he save him? Would he not simply be throwing away his
+money to offer it to him? Suddenly again, he seemed to hear his
+father's voice:</p>
+<p>"The Devil is standing close behind you. You are at the parting
+of the ways. A gentleman cannot hesitate."</p>
+<p>"Mr. Creamer," he said suddenly, "why don't Norman Wentworth's
+friends come to his rescue and help him out of his
+difficulties?"</p>
+<p>The question might have come from the sky, it was so unexpected.
+It evidently caught the others unprepared with an answer. They
+simply smiled vaguely. Mr. Creamer said presently, rubbing his
+chin:</p>
+<p>"Why, I don't suppose they know the extent of his
+difficulties."</p>
+<p>"And I guess he has no collateral to offer?" said another.</p>
+<p>"Collateral! No; everything he has is pledged."</p>
+<p>"But I mean, why don't they lend him money without collateral,
+if necessary, to tide him over his trouble? He is a man of probity.
+He has lived here all his life. He must have many friends able to
+help him. They know that if he had time to realize on his
+properties he would probably pull through."</p>
+<p>With one accord the other occupants of the room turned and
+looked at Keith.</p>
+<p>"Did you say you had made a fortune in mining deals?" asked one
+of the gentlemen across the table, gazing at Keith through his
+gold-rimmed glasses with a wintry little smile.</p>
+<p>"No, I did not. Whatever was said on that subject Mr. Creamer
+said."</p>
+<p>"Oh! That's so. He did. Well, you are the sort of a man we want
+about here."</p>
+<p>This remark was received with some amusement by the others; but
+Keith passed it by, and turned to Mr. Creamer.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Creamer, how much money will you give me on this draft?
+This is mine. The other I wish to deposit here."</p>
+<p>"Why, I don't know just what the exchange would be. What is the
+exchange on this, Penwell?"</p>
+<p>"Will you cash this draft for me?" asked Keith.</p>
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+<p>"Well, will you do me a further favor? It might make very little
+difference if I were to make a deposit in Norman's bank; but if you
+were to make such a deposit there, it would probably reassure
+people, and the run might be stopped. I have known of one or two
+instances."</p>
+<p>Mr. Creamer agreed, and the result was a sort of reaction in
+Norman's favor, in sentiment if not in action. It was arranged that
+Keith should go and make a deposit, and that Mr. Creamer should
+send a man to make a further one and offer Wentworth aid.</p>
+<p>When Gordon Keith reached the block on which stood Norman's
+bank, the street was already filled with a dense crowd, pushing,
+growling, complaining, swearing, threatening. It was evidently a
+serious affair, and Keith, trying to make his way through the mob,
+heard many things about Norman which he never could have believed
+it would have been possible to hear. The crowd was in an ugly mood,
+and was growing uglier. A number of policemen were trying to keep
+the people in line so that they could take their turn. Keith found
+it impossible to make his way to the front. His explanation that he
+wished to make a deposit was greeted with shouts of derision.</p>
+<p>"Stand back there, young man. We've heard that before; you can't
+work that on us. We would all like to make deposits--somewhere
+else."</p>
+<p>"Except them what's already made 'em," some one added, at which
+there was a laugh.</p>
+<p>Keith applied to a policeman with hardly more success, until he
+opened the satchel he carried, and mentioned the name of the banker
+who was to follow him. On this the officer called another, and
+after a hurried word the two began to force their way through the
+crowd, with Keith between them. By dint of commanding, pushing, and
+explaining, they at length reached the entrance to the bank, and
+finally made their way, hot and perspiring, to the counter. A clerk
+was at work at every window counting out money as fast as checks
+were presented.</p>
+<p>Just before Keith reached the counter, on glancing through an
+open door, he saw Norman sitting at his desk, white and grim. His
+burning eyes seemed deeper than ever. He glanced up, and Keith
+thought he caught his gaze on him, but he was not sure, for he
+looked away so quickly. The next moment he walked around inside the
+counter and spoke to a clerk, who opened a ledger and gave him a
+memorandum. Then he came forward and spoke to a teller at the
+receiving-window.</p>
+<p>"Do you know that man with the two policemen? That is Mr. Gordon
+Keith. Here is his balance; pay it to him as soon as he reaches the
+window."</p>
+<p>The teller, bending forward, gazed earnestly out of the small
+grated window over the heads of those nearest him. Keith met his
+gaze, and the teller nodded. Norman turned away without looking,
+and seated himself on a chair in the rear of the bank.</p>
+<p>When Keith reached the window, the white-faced teller said
+immediately:</p>
+<p>"Your balance, Mr. Keith, is so much; you have a check?" He
+extended his hand to take it.</p>
+<p>"No," said Keith; "I have not come to draw out any money. I have
+come to make a deposit."</p>
+<p>The teller was so much astonished that he simply ejaculated:</p>
+<p>"Sir--?"</p>
+<p>"I wish to make a deposit," said Keith, raising his voice a
+little, and speaking with great distinctness.</p>
+<p>His voice had the quality of carrying, and a silence settled on
+the crowd,--one of those silences that sometimes fall, even on a
+mob, when the wholly unexpected happens,--so that every word that
+was spoken was heard distinctly.</p>
+<p>"Ah--we are not taking deposits to-day," said the astonished
+teller, doubtfully.</p>
+<p>Keith smiled.</p>
+<p>"Well, I suppose there is no objection to doing so? I have an
+account in this bank, and I wish to add to it. I am not afraid of
+it."</p>
+<p>The teller gazed at him in blank amazement; he evidently thought
+that Keith was a little mad. He opened his mouth as if to speak,
+but said nothing from sheer astonishment.</p>
+<p>"I have confidence enough in this bank," pursued Keith, "to put
+my money here, and here I propose to put it, and I am not the only
+one; there will be others here in a little while."</p>
+<p>"I shall--really, I shall have to ask Mr. Wentworth," faltered
+the clerk.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Wentworth has nothing to do with it," said Keith,
+positively, and to close the discussion, he lifted his satchel
+through the window, and, turning it upside down, emptied before the
+astonished teller a pile of bills which made him gasp. "Enter that
+to my credit," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"How much is it?"</p>
+<p>The sum that Keith mentioned made him gasp yet more. It was up
+in the hundreds of thousands.</p>
+<p>"There will be more here in a little while." He turned his head
+and glanced toward the door. "Ah, here comes some one now," he
+said, as he recognized one of the men whom he had recently left at
+the council board, who was then pushing his way forward, under the
+guidance of several policemen.</p>
+<p>The amount deposited by the banker was much larger than Keith
+had expected, and a few well-timed words to those about him had a
+marked effect upon the depositors. He said their apprehension was
+simply absurd. They, of course, had the right to draw out their
+money, if they wished it, and they would get it, but he advised
+them to go home and wait to do so until the crowd dispersed. The
+bank was perfectly sound, and they could not break it unless they
+could also break its friends.</p>
+<p>A few of the struggling depositors dropped out of line, some of
+the others saying that, as they had waited so long, they guessed
+they would get their money now.</p>
+<p>The advice given, perhaps, had an added effect, as at that
+moment a shriek arose from a woman near the door, who declared that
+her pocket had been picked of the money she had just drawn.</p>
+<p>The arrival of the new depositors, and the spreading through the
+crowd of the information that they represented several of the
+strongest banks in the city, quieted the apprehensions of the
+depositors, and a considerable number of them abandoned the idea of
+drawing out their money and went off. Though many of them remained,
+it was evident that the dangerous run had subsided. A notice was
+posted on the front door of the bank that the bank would remain
+open until eight o'clock and would be open the following morning at
+eight, which had something to do with allaying the excitement of
+the depositors.</p>
+<p>That afternoon Keith went back to the bank. Though depositors
+were still drawing out their money, the scene outside was very
+different from that which he had witnessed earlier in the day.
+Keith asked for Mr. Wentworth, and was shown to his room. When
+Keith entered, Norman was sitting at his desk figuring busily.
+Keith closed the door behind him and waited. The lines were deep on
+Norman's face; but the hunted look it had borne in the morning had
+passed away, and grim resolution had taken its place. When at
+length he glanced up, his already white face grew yet whiter. The
+next second a flush sprang to his cheeks; he pushed back his chair
+and rose, and, taking one step forward, stretched out his hand.</p>
+<p>"Keith!"</p>
+<p>Keith took his hand with a grip that drove the blood from the
+ends of Norman's fingers.</p>
+<p>"Norman!"</p>
+<p>Norman drew a chair close to his desk, and Keith sat down.
+Norman sank into his, looked down on the floor for a second, then,
+raising his eyes, looked full into Keith's eyes.</p>
+<p>"Keith--?" His voice failed him; he glanced away, reached over,
+and took up a paper lying near, and the next instant leant forward,
+and folding his arms on the desk, dropped his head on them, shaken
+with emotion.</p>
+<p>Keith rose from his chair, and bending over him, laid his hand
+on his head, as he might have done to a younger brother.</p>
+<p>"Don't, Norman," he said helplessly; "it is all right." He moved
+his hand down Norman's arm with a touch as caressing as if he had
+been a little child, but all he said was: "Don't, Norman; it is all
+right."</p>
+<p>Suddenly Norman sat up.</p>
+<p>"It is all wrong!" he said bitterly. "I have been a fool. I had
+no right--. But I was mad! I have wrecked my life. But I was
+insane. I was deceived. I do not know even now how it happened. I
+ought to have known, but--I learned only just now. I can never
+explain. I ask your pardon humbly."</p>
+<p>Keith leant forward and laid his hand upon him
+affectionately.</p>
+<p>"There, there! You owe me no apology, and I ask no explanation;
+it was all a great mistake."</p>
+<p>"Yes, and all my fault. She was not to blame; it was my folly. I
+drove her to--desperation."</p>
+<p>"I want to ask just one thing. Was it Ferdy Wickersham who made
+you believe I had deceived you?" asked Keith, standing straight
+above him.</p>
+<p>"In part--mainly. But I was mad." He drew his hand across his
+forehead, sat back in his chair, and, with eyes averted, sighed
+deeply. His thoughts were evidently far from Keith. Keith's eyes
+rested on him, and his face paled a little with growing
+resolution.</p>
+<p>"One question, Norman. Pardon me for asking it. My only reason
+is that I would give my life, a worthless life you once saved, to
+see you as you once were. I know more than you think I know. You
+love her still? I know you must."</p>
+<p>Norman turned his eyes and let them rest on Keith's face. They
+were filled with anguish.</p>
+<p>"Better than my life. I adore her."</p>
+<p>Keith drew in his breath with a long sigh of relief and of
+content.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I have no hope," Norman went on despairingly. "I gave her
+every right to doubt it. I killed her love. I do not blame her. It
+was all my fault. I know it now, when it is too late."</p>
+<p>"It is not too late."</p>
+<p>Norman shook his head, without even looking at Keith.</p>
+<p>"Too late," he said, speaking to himself.</p>
+<p>Keith rose to his feet.</p>
+<p>"It is not too late," he declared, with a sudden ring in his
+voice; "she loves you."</p>
+<p>Norman shook his head.</p>
+<p>"She hates me; I deserve it."</p>
+<p>"In her heart she adores you," said Keith, in a tone of
+conviction.</p>
+<p>Norman turned away with a half-bitter laugh.</p>
+<p>"You don't know."</p>
+<p>"I do know, and you will know it, too. How long shall you be
+here?"</p>
+<p>"I shall spend the night here," said Norman. "I must be ready
+for whatever may happen to-morrow morning.--I have not thanked you
+yet." He extended his hand to Keith. "You stemmed the tide for me
+to-day. I know what it must have cost you. I cannot regret it, and
+I know you never will; and I beg you to believe that, though I go
+down to-morrow, I shall never forget it, and if God spares me, I
+will repay you."</p>
+<p>Keith's eyes rested on him calmly.</p>
+<p>"You paid me long ago, Norman. I was paying a debt to-day, or
+trying to pay one, in a small way. It was not I who made that
+deposit to-day, but a better man and a finer gentleman than I can
+ever hope to be--my father. It was he who inspired me to do that;
+he paid that debt."</p>
+<p>From what Keith had heard, he felt that he was justified in
+going to see Mrs. Wentworth. Possibly, it was not too late;
+possibly, he might be able to do something to clear away the
+misapprehension under which she labored, and to make up the trouble
+between her and Norman. Norman still loved her dearly, and Keith
+believed that she cared for him. Lois Huntington always declared
+that she did, and she could not have been deceived.</p>
+<p>That she had been foolish Keith knew; that she had been wicked
+he did not believe. She was self-willed, vain, extravagant; but
+deep under her cold exterior burned fires of which she had once or
+twice given him a glimpse; and he believed that her deepest feeling
+was ever for Norman.</p>
+<p>When he reached Mrs. Wentworth's house he was fortunate enough
+to find her at home. He was shown into the drawing-room.</p>
+<p>When Mrs. Wentworth entered the room, Keith was conscious of a
+change in her since he had seen her last. She, too, had heard the
+clangor of the evil tongues that had connected their names. She
+greeted him with cordial words, but her manner was constrained, and
+her expression was almost suspicious.</p>
+<p>She changed, however, under Keith's imperturbable and unfeigned
+friendliness, and suddenly asked him if he had seen Norman. For the
+first time real interest spoke in her voice and shone in her face.
+Keith said he had seen him.</p>
+<p>"I have come to see if I could not help you. Perhaps, I may be
+able to do something to set things right."</p>
+<p>"No--it is too late. Things have gone too far. We have just
+drifted--drifted!" She flung up her hands and tossed them apart
+with a gesture of despair. "Drifted!" she repeated. She put her
+handkerchief to her eyes.</p>
+<p>Keith watched her in silence for a moment, and then rising, he
+seated himself beside her.</p>
+<p>"Come--this is all wrong--all wrong!" He caught her by the wrist
+and firmly took her hand down from her eyes, much as an older
+brother might have done. "I want to talk to you. Perhaps, I can
+help you--I may have been sent here for the purpose--who knows? At
+least, I want to help you. Now tell me." He looked into her face
+with grave, kind eyes. "You do not care for Ferdy Wickersham? That
+would be impossible."</p>
+<p>"No, of course not,--except as a friend,--and Norman liked
+another woman--your friend!" Her eyes flashed a sudden flame.</p>
+<p>"Never! never!" repeated Keith, after a pause. "Norman is not
+that sort."</p>
+<p>His absolute certainty daunted her.</p>
+<p>"He did. I have reason to think--" she began. But Keith put her
+down.</p>
+<p>"Never! I would stake my salvation on it."</p>
+<p>"He is going to get a--try to get a divorce. He is willing to
+blacken my name."</p>
+<p>"What! Never."</p>
+<p>"But you do not know the reasons I have for saying so," she
+protested. "If I could tell you--"</p>
+<p>"No, and I do not care. Doubt your own senses rather than
+believe that. Ferdy Wickersham is your authority for that."</p>
+<p>"No, he is not--not my only authority. You are all so hard on
+Ferdy. He is a good friend of mine."</p>
+<p>"He is not," asserted Keith. "He is your worst enemy--your very
+worst. He is incapable of being a friend."</p>
+<p>"What have you against him?" she demanded. "I know you and he
+don't like each other, but--"</p>
+<p>"Well, for one thing, he deceived a poor girl, and then
+abandoned her--and--"</p>
+<p>"Perhaps, your information is incorrect? You know how easy it is
+to get up a slander, and such women are--not to be believed. They
+always pretend that they have been deceived."</p>
+<p>"She was not one of 'such women,'" said Keith, calmly. "She was
+a perfectly respectable woman, and the granddaughter of an old
+friend of mine."</p>
+<p>"Well, perhaps, you may have been misinformed?"</p>
+<p>"No; I have the evidence that Wickersham married her--and--"</p>
+<p>"Oh, come now--that is absurd! Ferdy married! Why, Ferdy never
+cared enough for any one to marry her--unless she had money. He has
+paid attention to a rich woman, but--You must not strain my
+credulity too far. I really thought you had something to show
+against him. Of course, I know he is not a saint,--in fact, very
+far from it,--but he does not pretend to be. But, at least, he is
+not a hypocrite."</p>
+<p>"He is a hypocrite and a scoundrel," declared Keith, firmly. "He
+is married, and his wife is living now. He abandoned her, and she
+is insane. I know her."</p>
+<p>"You know her! Ferdy married!" She paused in wonder. His
+certainty carried conviction with it.</p>
+<p>"I have his marriage certificate."</p>
+<p>"You have?" A sort of amaze passed over her face.</p>
+<p>He took out the paper and gave it to her. She gazed at it with
+staring eyes. "That is his hand." She rose with a blank face, and
+walked to the window; then, after a moment, came back and sat down.
+She had the expression of a person lost. "Tell me about it."</p>
+<p>Keith told her. He also told her of Norman's losses.</p>
+<p>Again that look of amazement crossed her face; her eyes became
+almost blank.</p>
+<p>"Norman's fortune impaired! I cannot understand it--<i>he</i>
+told me--Oh, there must be some mistake!" she broke out vehemently.
+"You are deceiving me. No! I don't mean that, of course,--I know
+you would not,--but you have been deceived yourself." Her face was
+a sudden white.</p>
+<p>Keith shook his head. "No!"</p>
+<p>"Why, look here. He cannot be hard up. He has kept up my
+allowance and met every demand--almost every demand--I have made on
+him." She was grasping at straws.</p>
+<p>"And Ferdy Wickersham has spent it in Wall Street."</p>
+<p>"What! No, he has not! There, at least, you do him an injustice.
+What he has got from me he has invested securely. I have all the
+papers--at least, some of them."</p>
+<p>"How has he invested it?"</p>
+<p>"Partly in a mine called the 'Great Gun Mine,' in New Leeds.
+Partly in Colorado.--I can help Norman with it." Her face
+brightened as the thought came to her.</p>
+<p>Keith shook his head.</p>
+<p>"The Great Gun Mine is a fraud--at least, it is worthless, not
+worth five cents on the dollar of what has been put in it. It was
+flooded years ago. Wickersham has used it as a mask for his
+gambling operations in Wall Street, but has not put a dollar into
+it for years; and now he does not even own it. His creditors have
+it."</p>
+<p>Her face had turned perfectly white.</p>
+<p>A look, partly of pity for her, partly of scorn for Wickersham,
+crossed Keith's face. He rose and strode up and down the room in
+perplexity.</p>
+<p>"He is a common thief," he said sternly--"beneath contempt!"</p>
+<p>His conviction suddenly extended to her. When he looked at her,
+she showed in her face that she believed him. Her last prop had
+fallen. The calamity had made her quiet.</p>
+<p>"What shall I do?" she asked hopelessly.</p>
+<p>"You must tell Norman."</p>
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+<p>"Make a clean breast of it."</p>
+<p>"You do not know Norman! How can I? He would despise me so! You
+do not know how proud he is. He--!" Words failed her, and she
+stared at Keith helplessly.</p>
+<p>"If I do not know Norman, I know no one on earth. Go to him and
+tell him everything. It will be the happiest day of his life--your
+salvation and his."</p>
+<p>"You think so?"</p>
+<p>"I know it."</p>
+<p>She relapsed into thought, and Keith waited.</p>
+<p>"I was to see Fer--Mr. Wickersham to-night," she began
+presently. "He asked me to supper to meet some friends--the Count
+and Countess Torelli."</p>
+<p>Keith smiled. A fine scorn came into his eyes.</p>
+<p>"Where does he give the dinner? At what hour?"</p>
+<p>She named the place--a fashionable restaurant up-town. The time
+was still several hours away.</p>
+<p>"You must go to Norman."</p>
+<p>She sat in deep reflection.</p>
+<p>"It is your only chance--your only hope. Give me authority to
+act for you, and go to him. He needs you."</p>
+<p>"If I thought he would forgive me?" she said in a low tone.</p>
+<p>"He will. I have just come from him. Write me the authority and
+go at once."</p>
+<p>A light appeared to dawn in her face.</p>
+<p>She rose suddenly.</p>
+<p>"What shall I write?"</p>
+<p>"Write simply that I have full authority to act for you--and
+that you have gone to Norman."</p>
+<p>She walked into the next room, and seating herself at an
+escritoire, she wrote for a short time. When she handed the paper
+to Keith it contained just what he had requested: a simple
+statement to F.C. Wickersham that Mr. Keith had full authority to
+represent her and act for her as he deemed best.</p>
+<p>"Will that do?" she asked.</p>
+<p>"I think so," said Keith. "Now go. Norman is waiting."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+<h3>RECONCILIATION</h3>
+<br>
+<p>For some time after Keith left her Mrs. Wentworth sat absolutely
+motionless, her eyes half closed, her lips drawn tight, in deep
+reflection. Presently she changed her seat and ensconced herself in
+the corner of a divan, leaning her head on her hand; but her
+expression did not change. Her mind was evidently working in the
+same channel. A tumult raged within her breast, but her face was
+set sphinx-like, inscrutable. Just then there was a scurry
+up-stairs; a boy's voice was heard shouting:</p>
+<p>"See here, what papa sent us."</p>
+<p>There was an answering shout, and then an uproar of childish
+delight. A sudden change swept over her. Light appeared to break
+upon her. Something like courage came into her face, not unmingled
+with tenderness, softening it and dispelling the gloom which had
+clouded it. She rose suddenly and walked with a swift, decisive
+step out of the room and up the richly carpeted stairs. To a maid
+on the upper floor she said hurriedly: "Tell Fenderson to order the
+brougham--at once," and passed into her chamber.</p>
+<p>Closing the door, she locked it. She opened a safe built in the
+wall; a package of letters fell out into the room. A spasm almost
+of loathing crossed her face. She picked up the letters and began
+to tear them up with almost violence, throwing the fragments into
+the grate as though they soiled her hands. Going back to the safe,
+she took out box after box of jewelry, opening them to glance in
+and see that the jewels were there. Yes, they were there: a pearl
+necklace; bracelets which had been the wonder of her set, and which
+her pretended friend and admirer had once said were worth as much
+as her home. She put them all into a bag, together with several
+large envelopes containing papers.</p>
+<p>Then she went to a dress-closet, and began to search through it,
+choosing, finally, a simple, dark street dress, by no means one of
+the newest. A gorgeous robe, which had been laid out for her to
+wear, she picked up and flung on the floor with sudden loathing. It
+was the gown she had intended to wear that night.</p>
+<p>A tap at the door, and the maid's mild voice announced the
+carriage; and a few minutes later Mrs. Wentworth descended the
+stairs.</p>
+<p>"Tell Mademoiselle Clarisse that Mr. Wentworth will be here this
+evening to see the children."</p>
+<p>"Yes, madam." The maid's quiet voice was too well trained to
+express the slightest surprise, but as soon as the outer door had
+closed on her mistress, and she had heard the carriage drive away,
+she rushed down to the lower storey to convey the astounding
+intelligence, and to gossip over it for half an hour before she
+deemed it necessary to give the message to the governess who had
+succeeded Lois when the latter went home.</p>
+<p>It was just eight o'clock that evening when the carriage drove
+up to the door of Norman Wentworth's bank, and a lady enveloped in
+a long wrap, her dark veil pulled down over her face, sprang out
+and ran up the steps. The crowd had long ago dispersed, though now
+and then a few timid depositors still made their way into the bank,
+to be on the safe side.</p>
+<p>The intervention of the banks and the loans they had made that
+afternoon had stayed the run and saved the bank from closing; but
+Norman Wentworth knew that if he was not ruined, his bank had
+received a shock from which it would not recover in a long time,
+and his fortune was crippled, he feared, almost beyond repair. The
+tired clerks looked up as the lady entered the bank, and, with
+glances at the clock, muttered a few words to each other about her
+right to draw money after the closing-hour had passed. When,
+however, she walked past their windows and went straight to Mr.
+Wentworth's door, their interest increased.</p>
+<p>Norman, with his books before him, was sitting back in his
+chair, his head leaning back and resting in his clasped hands, deep
+in thought upon the gloom of the present and the perplexities of
+the future, when there was a tap at the door.</p>
+<p>With some impatience he called to the person to enter.</p>
+<p>The door opened, and Norman could scarcely believe his senses.
+For a second he did not even sit forward. He did not stir; he
+simply remained sitting back in his chair, his face turned to the
+door, his eyes resting on the figure before him in vague amazement.
+The next second, with a half-cry, his wife was on her knees beside
+him, her arms about him, her form shaken with sobs. He sat forward
+slowly, and his arm rested on her shoulders.</p>
+<p>"There! don't cry," he said slowly; "it might be worse."</p>
+<p>But all she said was:</p>
+<p>"Oh, Norman! Norman!"</p>
+<p>He tried to raise her, with grave words to calm her; but she
+resisted, and clung to him closer.</p>
+<p>"It is not so bad; it might be worse," he repeated.</p>
+<p>She rose suddenly to her feet and flung back her veil.</p>
+<p>"Can you forgive me? I have come to beg your forgiveness on my
+knees. I have been mad--mad. I was deceived. No! I will not say
+that--I was crazy--a fool! But I loved you always, you only. You
+will forgive me? Say you will."</p>
+<p>"There, there! Of course I will--I do. I have been to blame
+quite as much--more than you. I was a fool."</p>
+<p>"Oh, no, no! You shall not say that; but you will believe that I
+loved you--you only--always! You will believe this? I was mad."</p>
+<p>He raised her up gently, and with earnest words reassured her,
+blaming himself for his harshness and folly.</p>
+<p>She suddenly opened her bag and emptied the contents out on his
+desk.</p>
+<p>"There! I have brought you these."</p>
+<p>Her husband gazed in silent astonishment.</p>
+<p>"I don't understand."</p>
+<p>"They are for you," she said--"for us. To pay <i>our</i> debts.
+To help you." She pulled off her glove and began to take off her
+diamond rings.</p>
+<p>"They will not go a great way," said Norman, with a smile of
+indulgence.</p>
+<p>"Well, as far as they will go they shall go. Do you think I will
+keep anything I have when you are in trouble--when your good name
+is at stake? The house--everything shall go. It is all my fault. I
+have been a wicked, silly fool; but I did not know--I ought to have
+known; but I did not. I do not see how I could have been so blind
+and selfish."</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't blame yourself. I have not blamed you," said Norman,
+soothingly. "Of course, you did not know. How could you? Women are
+not expected to know about those things."</p>
+<p>"Yes, they are," insisted Mrs. Wentworth. "If I had not been
+such a fool I might have seen. It is all plain to me now. Your
+harassment--my folly--it came to me like a stroke of
+lightning."</p>
+<p>Norman's eyes were on her with a strange inquiring look in
+them.</p>
+<p>"How did you hear?" he asked.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith--he came to me and told me."</p>
+<p>"I wish he had not done it. I mean, I did not want you troubled.
+You were not to blame. You were deceived."</p>
+<p>"Oh, don't say that! I shall never cease to thank him. He tore
+the veil away, and I saw what a heartless, vain, silly fool I have
+been." Norman put his hand on her soothingly. "But I have never
+forgotten that I was your wife, nor ceased to love you," she went
+on vehemently.</p>
+<p>"I believe it."</p>
+<p>"I have come to confess everything to you--all my folly--all my
+extravagance--my insane folly. But what I said just now is true: I
+have never forgotten that I was your wife."</p>
+<p>Norman, with his arm supporting her, reassured her with
+comforting words, and, sustained by his confidence, she told him of
+her folly in trusting Ferdy Wickersham: of her giving him her
+money--of everything.</p>
+<p>"Can you forgive me?" she asked after her shamefaced
+recital.</p>
+<p>"I will never think of that again," said Norman, "and if I do,
+it will be with gratitude that they have played their part in doing
+away with the one great sorrow of my life and bringing back the
+happiness of my youth, the one great blessing that life holds for
+me."</p>
+<p>"I have come to take you home," she said; "to ask you to come
+back, if you will but forgive me." She spoke humbly.</p>
+<p>Norman's face gave answer even before he could master himself to
+speak. He stretched out his hand, and drew her to him. "I am at
+home now. Wherever you are is my home."</p>
+<p>When Norman came out of his private office, there was such a
+change in him that the clerks who had remained at the bank thought
+that he must have received some great aid from the lady who had
+been closeted with him so long. He had a few brief words with the
+cashier, explaining that he would be back at the bank before eight
+o'clock in the morning, and saying good night, hurried to the door
+after Mrs. Wentworth. Handing her into the carriage, he ordered the
+coachman to drive home, and, springing in after her, he closed the
+door behind him, and they drove off.</p>
+<p>Keith, meantime, had not been idle. After leaving Mrs.
+Wentworth, he drove straight to a detective agency. Fortunately the
+chief was in, and Keith was ushered into his private office
+immediately. He was a quiet-looking, stout man, with a gray
+moustache and keen dark eyes. He might have been a moderately
+successful merchant or official, but for the calmness of his manner
+and the low tones of his voice. Keith came immediately to the
+point.</p>
+<p>"I have a piece of important work on hand this evening," he
+said, "of a private and delicate nature." The detective's look was
+acquiescent. "Could I get Dennison?"</p>
+<p>"I think so."</p>
+<p>Keith stated his case. At the mention of Wickersham's name a
+slight change--the very slightest--flickered across the detective's
+calm face. Keith could not tell whether it was mere surprise or
+whether it was gratification.</p>
+<p>"Now you see precisely what I wish," he said, as he finished
+stating the case and unfolding his plan. "It may not be necessary
+for him even to appear, but I wish him to be on hand in case I
+should need his service. If Wickersham does not accede to my
+demand, I shall arrest him for the fraud I have mentioned. If he
+does accede, I wish Dennison to accompany him to the boat of the
+South American Line that sails to-morrow morning, and not leave him
+until the pilot comes off. I do not apprehend that he will refuse
+when he knows the hand that I hold."</p>
+<p>"No, he will not. He knows what would happen if proceedings were
+started," said the detective. "Excuse me a moment." He walked out
+of the office, closing the door behind him, and a few minutes later
+returned with David Dennison.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith, this is Mr. John Dimm. I have explained to him the
+nature of the service you require of him." He looked at Mr. Dimm,
+who simply nodded his acquiescence. "You will take your orders from
+Mr. Keith, should anything arise to change his plans, and act
+accordingly."</p>
+<p>"I know him," said Keith, amused at the cool professional air
+with which his old friend greeted him in the presence of his
+principal.</p>
+<p>Dave simply blinked; but his eyes had a fire in them.</p>
+<p>It was arranged that Dennison should precede Keith to the place
+he had mentioned and order a supper there, while Keith should get
+the ticket at the steamship office and then follow him. So when
+Keith had completed his arrangements, he found Dennison at supper
+at a table near the ladies' entrance, a view of which he commanded
+in a mirror just before him. Mr. Dimm's manner had entirely
+changed. He was a man of the world and a host as he handed Keith to
+his seat.</p>
+<p>"A supper for two has been ordered in private dining-room 21,
+for 9:45," he said in an undertone as the waiter moved off. "They
+do not know whether it is for a gentleman and a lady, or two
+gentlemen; but I suppose it is for a lady, as he has been here a
+number of times with ladies. If you are sure that the lady will not
+come, you might wait for him there. I will remain here until he
+comes, and follow him up, in case you need me."</p>
+<p>Keith feared that the waiter might mention his presence.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; he knows us," said Dave, with a faint smile at the bare
+suggestion.</p>
+<p>Mr. Dimm called the head-waiter and spoke to him in an
+undertone. The waiter himself showed Keith up to the room, where he
+found a table daintily set with two covers.</p>
+<p>The champagne-cooler, filled with ice, was already on the floor
+beside the table. Keith looked at it grimly. The curtains of the
+window were down, and Keith walked over to see on what street the
+window looked. It was a deep embrasure. The shade was drawn down,
+and he raised it, to find that the window faced on a dead-wall. At
+the moment the door opened and he heard Wickersham's voice.</p>
+<p>"No one has come yet?"</p>
+<p>"No, sir, not as I knows of," stammered the waiter. "I have just
+come on."</p>
+<p>"Where is Jacques, the man who usually waits on me?" demanded
+Wickersham, half angrily.</p>
+<p>"Jacques est souffrant. Il est tr&egrave;s malade."</p>
+<p>Wickersham grunted. "Well, take this," he said, "and remember
+that if you serve me properly there will be a good deal more to
+follow."</p>
+<p>The waiter thanked him profusely.</p>
+<p>"Now, get down and be on the lookout, and when a lady comes and
+asks for 21, show her up immediately. If she asks who is here, tell
+her two gentlemen and a lady. You understand?"</p>
+<p>The waiter bowed his assent and retired. Wickersham came in and
+closed the door behind him.</p>
+<p>He had just thrown his coat on a chair, laid his hat on the
+mantelpiece, and was twirling his moustache at the mirror above it,
+when he caught sight in the mirror of Keith. Keith had stepped out
+behind him from the recess, and was standing by the table, quietly
+looking at him. He gave an exclamation and turned quickly.</p>
+<p>"Hah! What is this? You here! What are you doing here? There is
+some mistake." He glanced at the door.</p>
+<p>"No, there is no mistake," said Keith, advancing; "I am waiting
+for you."</p>
+<p>"For me! Waiting for me?" he demanded, mystified.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Did you not tell the waiter just now a gentleman was here?
+I confess you do not seem very pleased to see me."</p>
+<p>"You have read my looks correctly," said Wickersham, who was
+beginning to recover himself, and with it his scornful manner. "You
+are the last person on earth I wish to see--ever. I do not know
+that I should weep if I never had that pleasure again."</p>
+<p>Keith bowed.</p>
+<p>"I think it probable. You may, hereafter, have even less cause
+for joy at meeting me."</p>
+<p>"Impossible," said Wickersham.</p>
+<p>Keith put his hand on a chair, and prepared to sit down,
+motioning Wickersham to take the other seat.</p>
+<p>"The lady you are waiting for will not be here this evening," he
+said, "and it may be that our interview will be protracted."</p>
+<p>Wickersham passed by the last words.</p>
+<p>"What lady? Who says I am waiting for a lady?"</p>
+<p>"You said so at the door just now. Besides, I say so."</p>
+<p>"Oh! You were listening, were you?" he sneered.</p>
+<p>"Yes; I heard it."</p>
+<p>"How do you know she will not be here? What do you know about
+it?"</p>
+<p>"I know that she will no more be here than the Countess Torelli
+will," said Keith. He was looking Wickersham full in the face and
+saw that the shot went home.</p>
+<p>"What do you want?" demanded Wickersham. "Why are you here? Are
+you after money or a row?"</p>
+<p>"I want you--I want you, first, to secure all of Mrs.
+Wentworth's money that you have had, or as much as you can."</p>
+<p>Wickersham was so taken aback that his dark face turned almost
+white, but he recovered himself quickly.</p>
+<p>"You are a madman, or some one has been deceiving you. You are
+the victim of a delusion."</p>
+<p>Keith, with his eyes fastened on him, shook his head.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; I am not."</p>
+<p>A look of perplexed innocence came over Wickersham's face.</p>
+<p>"Yes, you are," he said, in an almost friendly tone. "You are
+the victim of some hallucination. I give you my word, I do not know
+even what you are talking about. I should say you were engaged in
+blackmail--" The expression in his eyes changed like a flash, but
+something in Keith's eyes, as they met his, caused him to add, "if
+I did not know that you were a man of character. I, too, am a man
+of character, Mr. Keith. I want you to know it." Keith's eyes
+remained calm and cold as steel. Wickersham faltered. "I am a man
+of means--of large means. I am worth--. My balance in bank this
+moment is--is more than you will ever be worth. Now I want to ask
+you why, in the name of Heaven, should I want anything to do with
+Mrs. Wentworth's money?"</p>
+<p>"If you have such a balance in bank," said Keith, "it will
+simplify my mission, for you will doubtless be glad to return Mr.
+Wentworth's money that you have had from Mrs. Wentworth. I happen
+to know that his money will come in very conveniently for Norman
+just now."</p>
+<p>"Oh, you come from Wentworth, do you?" demanded Wickersham.</p>
+<p>"No; from Mrs. Wentworth," returned Keith.</p>
+<p>"Did she send you?" Wickersham shot at Keith a level glance from
+under his half-closed lids.</p>
+<p>"I offered to come. She knows I am here."</p>
+<p>"What proof have I of that?"</p>
+<p>"My statement."</p>
+<p>"And suppose I do not please to accept your statement?"</p>
+<p>Keith leant a little toward him over the table.</p>
+<p>"You will accept it."</p>
+<p>"He must hold a strong hand," thought Wickersham. He shifted his
+ground suddenly. "What, in the name of Heaven, are you driving at,
+Keith? What are you after? Come to the point."</p>
+<p>"I will," said Keith, rising. "Let us drop our masks; they are
+not becoming to you, and I am not accustomed to them. I have come
+for several things: one of them is Mrs. Wentworth's money, which
+you got from her under false pretences." He spoke slowly, and his
+eyes were looking in the other's eyes.</p>
+<p>Wickersham sprang to his feet.</p>
+<p>"What do you mean, sir?" he demanded, with an oath. "I have
+already told you--! I will let no man speak to me in that way."</p>
+<p>Keith did not stir. Wickersham paused to get his breath.</p>
+<p>"You would not dare to speak so if a lady's name were not
+involved, and you did not know that I cannot act as I would, for
+fear of compromising her."</p>
+<p>An expression of contempt swept across Keith's face.</p>
+<p>"Sit down," he said. "I will relieve your mind. Mrs. Wentworth
+is quite ready to meet any disclosures that may come. I have her
+power of attorney. She has gone to her husband and told him
+everything."</p>
+<p>Wickersham's face whitened, and he could not repress the look of
+mingled astonishment and fear that stole into his eyes.</p>
+<p>"Now, having given you that information," continued Keith, "I
+say that you stole Mrs. Wentworth's money, and I have come to
+recover it, if possible."</p>
+<p>Wickersham rose to his feet. With a furious oath he sprang for
+his overcoat, and, snatching it up, began to feel for the
+pocket.</p>
+<p>"I'll blow your brains out."</p>
+<p>"No, you will not," said Keith, "and I advise you to make less
+noise. An officer is outside, and I have but to whistle to place
+you where nothing will help you. A warrant is out for your arrest,
+and I have the proof to convict you."</p>
+<p>Wickersham, with his coat still held in one hand, and the other
+in the pocket, shot a glance at Keith. He was daunted by his
+coolness.</p>
+<p>"You must think you hold a strong hand," he said. "But I have
+known them to fail."</p>
+<p>Keith bowed.</p>
+<p>"No doubt. This one will not fail. I have taken pains that it
+shall not, and I have other cards which I have not shown you. Sit
+down and listen to me, and you shall judge for yourself."</p>
+<p>With a muttered oath, Wickersham walked back to his seat; but
+before he did so, he slipped quietly into his pocket a pistol which
+he took from his overcoat.</p>
+<p>Quickly as the act was done, Keith saw it.</p>
+<p>"Don't you think you had better put your pistol back?" he said
+quietly. "An officer is waiting just outside that door, a man that
+can neither be bullied nor bought. Perhaps, you will agree with me
+when I tell you that, though called Dimm, his real name is David
+Dennison. He has orders at the least disturbance to place you under
+arrest. Judge for yourself what chance you will have."</p>
+<p>"What do you wish me to do?" asked Wickersham, sullenly.</p>
+<p>"I wish you, first, to execute some papers which will secure to
+Norman Wentworth, as far as can possibly be done, the amount of
+money that you have gotten from Mrs. Wentworth under the pretence
+of investing it for her in mines. Mrs. Wentworth's name will not be
+mentioned in this instrument. The money was her husband's, and you
+knew it, and you knew it was impairing his estate to furnish it.
+Secondly, I require that you shall leave the country to-morrow
+morning. I have arranged for passage for you, on a steamer sailing
+before sunrise."</p>
+<p>"Thank you," sneered Wickersham. "Really, you are very
+kind."</p>
+<p>"Thirdly, you will sign a paper which contains only a few of the
+facts, but enough, perhaps, to prevent your returning to this
+country for some years to come."</p>
+<p>Wickersham leant across the table and burst out laughing.</p>
+<p>"And you really think I will do that? How old do you think I am?
+Why did you not bring me a milk-bottle and a rattle? You do my
+intellect a great deal of honor."</p>
+<p>For answer Keith tapped twice on a glass with the back of a
+knife. The next second the door opened, and Dave Dennison entered,
+impassive, but calmly observant, and with a face set like rock.</p>
+<p>At sight of him Wickersham's face whitened.</p>
+<p>"One moment, Dave," said Keith; "wait outside a moment
+more."</p>
+<p>Dennison bowed and closed the door. The latch clicked, but the
+knob did not settle back.</p>
+<p>"I will give you one minute in which to decide," said Keith. He
+drew from his pocket and threw on the table two papers. "There are
+the papers." He took out his watch and waited.</p>
+<p>Wickersham picked up the papers mechanically and glanced over
+them. His face settled. Gambler that he was with the fortunes of
+men and the reputations of women, he knew that he had lost. He
+tried one more card--it was a poor one.</p>
+<p>"Why are you so hard on me?" he asked, with something like a
+whine--a faint whine--in his voice. "You, who I used to think--whom
+I have known from boyhood, you have always been so hard on me! What
+did I ever do to you that you should have hounded me so?"</p>
+<p>Keith's face showed that the charge had reached him, but it
+failed of the effect that Wickersham had hoped for. His lip curled
+slightly.</p>
+<p>"I am not hard on you; I am easy on you--but not for your sake,"
+he added vehemently. "You have betrayed every trust reposed in you.
+You have deceived men and betrayed women. No vow has been sacred
+enough to restrain you; no tie strong enough to hold you.
+Affection, friendship, faith, have all been trampled under your
+feet. You have deliberately attempted to destroy the happiness of
+one of the best friends you have ever had; have betrayed his trust
+and tried to ruin his life. If I served you right I would place you
+beyond the power to injure any one, forever. The reason I do not is
+not on your account, but because I played with you when we were
+boys, and because I do not know how far my personal feeling might
+influence me in carrying out what I still recognize as mere
+justice." He closed his watch. "Your time is up. Do you agree?"</p>
+<p>"I will sign the papers," said Wickersham, sullenly.</p>
+<p>Keith drew out a pen and handed it to him. Wickersham signed the
+papers slowly and deliberately.</p>
+<p>"When did you take to writing backhand?" asked Keith.</p>
+<p>"I have done it for several years," declared Wickersham. "I had
+writer's cramp once."</p>
+<p>The expression on Keith's face was very like a sneer, but he
+tried to suppress it.</p>
+<p>"It will do," he said, as he folded the papers and took another
+envelope from his pocket. "This is your ticket for the steamer for
+Buenos Ayres, which sails to-morrow morning at high tide. Dennison
+will go with you to a notary to acknowledge these papers, and then
+will show you aboard of her and will see that you remain aboard
+until the pilot leaves her. To-morrow a warrant will be put in the
+hands of an officer and an application will be made for a receiver
+for your property."</p>
+<p>Wickersham leant back in his chair, with hate speaking from
+every line of his face.</p>
+<p>"You will administer on my effects? I suppose you are also going
+to be administrator, <i>de bonis non</i>, of the lady in whose
+behalf you have exhibited such sudden interest?"</p>
+<p>Keith's face paled and his nostrils dilated for a moment. He
+leant slightly forward and spoke slowly, his burning eyes fastened
+on Wickersham's face.</p>
+<p>"Your statement would be equally infamous whether it were true
+or false. You know that it is a lie, and you know that I know it is
+a lie. I will let that suffice. I have nothing further to say to
+you." He tapped on the edge of the glass again, and Dennison walked
+in. "Dennison," he said, "Mr. Wickersham has agreed to my plans. He
+will go aboard the Buenos Ayres boat to-night. You will go with him
+to the office I spoke of, where he will acknowledge these papers;
+then you will accompany him to his home and get whatever clothes he
+may require, and you will not lose sight of him until you come off
+with the pilot."</p>
+<p>Dennison bowed without a word; but his eyes snapped.</p>
+<p>"If he makes any attempt to evade, or gives you any cause to
+think he is trying to evade, his agreement, you have your
+instructions."</p>
+<p>Dennison bowed again, silently.</p>
+<p>"I now leave you." Keith rose and inclined his head slightly
+toward Wickersham.</p>
+<p>As he turned, Wickersham shot at him a Parthian arrow:</p>
+<p>"I hope you understand, Mr. Keith, that the obligations I have
+signed are not the only obligations I recognize. I owe you a
+personal debt, and I mean to live to pay it. I shall pay it,
+somehow."</p>
+<p>Keith turned and looked at him steadily.</p>
+<p>"I understand perfectly. It is the only kind of debt, as far as
+I know, that you recognize. Your statement has added nothing to
+what I knew. It matters little what you do to me. I have, at least,
+saved two friends from you."</p>
+<p>He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him.</p>
+<p>As Wickersham pulled on his gloves, he glanced at Dave Dennison.
+But what he saw in his face deterred him from speaking. His eyes
+were like coals of fire.</p>
+<p>"I am waiting," he said. "Hurry."</p>
+<p>Wickersham walked out in silence.</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The following afternoon, when Dave Dennison reported that he had
+left his charge on board the outgoing steamer, bound for a far
+South American port, Keith felt as if the atmosphere had in some
+sort cleared.</p>
+<p>A few days later Phrony's worn spirit found rest. Keith, as he
+had already arranged, telegraphed Dr. Balsam of her death, and the
+Doctor went over and told Squire Rawson, at the same time, that she
+had been found and lost.</p>
+<p>The next day Keith and Dave Dennison took back to the South all
+that remained of the poor creature who had left there a few years
+before in such high hopes.</p>
+<p>One lady, closely veiled, attended the little service that old
+Dr. Templeton conducted in the chapel of the hospital where Phrony
+had passed away, before the body was taken South. Alice Lancaster
+had been faithful to the end in looking after her.</p>
+<p>Phrony was buried in the Rawson lot in the little burying-ground
+at Ridgely, not far from the spot where lay the body of General
+Huntington. As Keith passed this grave he saw that flowers had been
+laid on it recently, but they had withered.</p>
+<p>All the Ridge-neighborhood gathered to do honor to Phrony and to
+testify their sympathy for her grandfather. It was an exhibition of
+feeling such as Keith had not seen since he left the country. The
+old man appeared stronger than he had seemed for some time. He took
+charge and gave directions in a clear and steady voice.</p>
+<p>When the services were over and the last word had been said, he
+stepped forward and raised his hand.</p>
+<p>"I've got her back," he said. "I've got her back where nobody
+can take her from me again. I was mighty harsh on her; but I've
+done forgive her long ago--and I hope she knows it now. I heard
+once that the man that took her away said he didn't marry her.
+But--". He paused for a moment, then went on: "He was a liar. I've
+got the proof.--But I want you all to witness that if I ever meet
+him, in this world or the next, the Lord do so to me, and more
+also! if I don't kill him!" He paused again, and his breathing was
+the only sound that was heard in the deathly stillness that had
+fallen on the listening crowd.</p>
+<p>"--And if any man interferes and balks me in my right," he
+continued slowly, "I'll have his blood. Good-by. I thank you for
+her." He turned back to the grave and began to smooth the
+sides.</p>
+<p>Keith's eyes fell on Dave Dennison, where he stood on the outer
+edge of the crowd. His face was sphinx-like; but his bosom heaved
+twice, and Keith knew that two men waited to meet Wickersham.</p>
+<p>As the crowd melted away, whispering among themselves, Keith
+crossed over and laid a rose on General Huntington's grave.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+<h3>THE CONSULTATION</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Keith had been making up his mind for some time to go to
+Brookford. New York had changed utterly for him since Lois left.
+The whole world seemed to have changed. The day after he reached
+New York, Keith received a letter from Miss Brooke. She wrote that
+her niece was ill and had asked her to write and request him to see
+Mrs. Lancaster, who would explain something to him. She did not say
+what it was. She added that she wished she had never heard of New
+York. It was a cry of anguish.</p>
+<p>Keith's heart sank like lead. For the first time in his life he
+had a presentiment. Lois Huntington would die, and he would never
+see her again. Despair took hold of him. Keith could stand it no
+longer. He went to Brookford.</p>
+<p>The Lawns was one of those old-fashioned country places, a few
+miles outside of the town, such as our people of means used to have
+a few generations ago, before they had lost the landholding
+instinct of their English ancestors and gained the herding
+proclivity of modern life. The extensive yard and grounds were
+filled with shrubbery--lilacs, rose-bushes, and evergreens--and
+shaded by fine old trees, among which the birds were singing as
+Keith drove up the curving road, and over all was an air of
+quietude and peace which filled his heart with tenderness.</p>
+<p>"This is the bower she came from," he thought to himself, gazing
+around. "Here is the country garden where the rose grew."</p>
+<p>Miss Brooke was unfeignedly surprised to see Keith.</p>
+<p>She greeted him most civilly. Lois had long since explained
+everything to her, and she made Keith a more than ample apology for
+her letter. "But you must admit," she said, "that your actions were
+very suspicious.--When a New York man is handing dancing-women to
+their carriages!" A gesture and nod completed the sentence.</p>
+<p>"But I am not a New York man," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"Oh, you are getting to be a very fair counterfeit," said the
+old lady, half grimly.</p>
+<p>Lois was very ill. She had been under a great strain in New
+York, and had finally broken down.</p>
+<p>Among other items of interest that Keith gleaned was that Dr.
+Locaman, the resident physician at Brookford, was a suitor of Lois.
+Keith asked leave to send for a friend who was a man of large
+experience and a capital doctor.</p>
+<p>"Well, I should be glad to have him sent for. These men here are
+dividing her up into separate pieces, and meantime she is going
+down the hill every day. Send for any one who will treat her as a
+whole human being and get her well."</p>
+<p>So Keith telegraphed that day for Dr. Balsam, saying that he
+wanted him badly, and would be under lasting obligations if he
+would come to Brookford at once.</p>
+<p>Brookford! The name called up many associations to the old
+physician. It was from Brookford that that young girl with her
+brown eyes and dark hair had walked into his life so long ago. It
+was from Brookford that the decree had come that had doomed him to
+a life of loneliness and exile. A desire seized him to see the
+place. Abby Brooke had been living a few years before. She might be
+living now.</p>
+<p>As the Doctor descended from the cars, he was met by Keith, who
+told him that the patient was the daughter of General
+Huntington--the little girl he had known so long ago.</p>
+<p>"I thought, perhaps, it was your widow," said the Doctor.</p>
+<p>A little dash of color stole into Keith's grave face, then
+flickered out.</p>
+<p>"No." He changed the subject, and went on to say that the other
+physicians had arranged to meet him at the house. Then he gave him
+a little history of the case.</p>
+<p>"You are very much interested in her?"</p>
+<p>"I have known her a long time, you see. Yes. Her aunt is a
+friend of mine."</p>
+<p>"He is in love with her," said the old man to himself. "She has
+cut the widow out."</p>
+<p>As they entered the hall, Miss Abby came out of a room. She
+looked worn and ill.</p>
+<p>"Ah!" said Keith. "Here she is." He turned to present the
+Doctor, but stopped with his lips half opened. The two stood
+fronting each, other, their amazed eyes on each other's faces, as
+it were across the space of a whole generation.</p>
+<p>"Theophilus!"</p>
+<p>"Abby!"</p>
+<p>This was all. The next moment they were shaking hands as if they
+had parted the week before instead of thirty-odd years ago. "I told
+you I would come if you ever needed me," said the Doctor. "I have
+come."</p>
+<p>"And I never needed you more, and I have needed you often. It
+was good in you to come--for my little girl." Her voice suddenly
+broke, and she turned away, her handkerchief at her eyes.</p>
+<p>The Doctor's expression settled into one of deep concern.
+"There--there. Don't distress yourself. We must reserve our powers.
+We may need them. Now, if you will show me to my room for a moment,
+I would like to get myself ready before going in to see your little
+girl."</p>
+<p>Just as the Doctor reappeared, the other doctors came out of the
+sick-room, the local physician, a simple young man, following the
+city specialist with mingled pride and awe. The latter was a
+silent, self-reliant man with a keen eye, thin lips, and a dry,
+business manner. They were presented to the Doctor as Dr. Memberly
+and Dr. Locaman, and looked him over. There was a certain change of
+manner in each of them: the younger man, after a glance, increased
+perceptibly his show of respect toward the city man; the latter
+treated the Doctor with civility, but talked in an ex-cathedra way.
+He understood the case and had no question as to its treatment. As
+for Dr. Balsam, his manner was the same to both, and had not
+changed a particle. He said not a word except to ask questions as
+to symptoms and the treatment that had been followed. The Doctor's
+face changed during the recital, and when it was ended his
+expression was one of deep thoughtfulness.</p>
+<p>The consultation ended, they all went into the sick-room, Dr.
+Memberly, the specialist, first, the young doctor next, and Dr.
+Balsam last. Dr. Memberly addressed the nurse, and Dr. Locaman
+followed him like his shadow, enforcing his words and copying
+insensibly his manner. Dr. Balsam walked over to the bedside, and
+leaning over, took the patient's thin, wan hand.</p>
+<p>"My dear, I am Dr. Balsam. Do you remember me?"</p>
+<p>She glanced at him, at first languidly, then with more interest,
+and then, as recollection returned to her, with a faint smile.</p>
+<p>"Now we must get well."</p>
+<p>Again she smiled faintly.</p>
+<p>The Doctor drew up a chair, and, without speaking further, began
+to stroke her hand, his eyes resting on her face.</p>
+<p>One who had seen the old physician before he entered that house
+could scarcely have known him as the same man who sat by the bed
+holding the hand of the wan figure lying so placid before him. At a
+distance he appeared a plain countryman; on nearer view his eyes
+and mouth and set chin gave him a look of unexpected determination.
+When he entered a sick-room he was like a king coming to his own.
+He took command and fought disease as an arch-enemy. So now.</p>
+<p>Dr. Memberly came to the bedside and began to talk in a low,
+professional tone. Lois shut her eyes, but her fingers closed
+slightly on Dr. Balsam's hand.</p>
+<p>"The medicine appears to have quieted her somewhat. I have
+directed the nurse to continue it," observed Dr. Memberly.</p>
+<p>"Quite so. By all means continue it," assented Dr. Locaman. "She
+is decidedly quieter."</p>
+<p>Dr. Balsam's head inclined just enough to show that he heard
+him, and he went on stroking her hand.</p>
+<p>"Is there anything you would suggest further than has already
+been done?" inquired the city physician of Dr. Balsam.</p>
+<p>"No. I think not."</p>
+<p>"I must catch the 4:30 train," said the former to the younger
+man. "Doctor, will you drive me down to the station?"</p>
+<p>"Yes, certainly. With pleasure."</p>
+<p>"Doctor, you say you are going away to-night?" This from the
+city physician to Dr. Balsam.</p>
+<p>"No, sir; I shall stay for a day or two." The fingers of the
+sleeper quite closed on his hand. "I have several old friends here.
+In fact, this little girl is one of them, and I want to get her
+up."</p>
+<p>The look of the other changed, and he cleared his throat with a
+dry, metallic cough.</p>
+<p>"You may rest satisfied that everything has been done for the
+patient that science can do," he said stiffly.</p>
+<p>"I think so. We won't rest till we get the little girl up," said
+the older doctor. "Now we will take off our coats and work."</p>
+<p>Once more the fingers of the sleeper almost clutched his.</p>
+<p>When the door closed, Lois turned her head and opened her eyes,
+and when the wheels were heard driving away she looked at the
+Doctor with a wan little smile, which he answered with a
+twinkle.</p>
+<p>"When did you come?" she asked faintly. It was the first sign of
+interest she had shown in anything for days.</p>
+<p>"A young friend of mine, Gordon Keith, told me you were sick,
+and asked me to come, and I have just arrived. He brought me up."
+He watched the change in her face.</p>
+<p>"I am so much obliged to you. Where is he now?"</p>
+<p>"He is here. Now we must get well," he said encouragingly. "And
+to do that we must get a little sleep."</p>
+<p>"Very well. You are going to stay with me?"</p>
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+<p>"Thank you"; and she closed her eyes tranquilly and, after a
+little, fell into a doze.</p>
+<p>When the Doctor came out of the sick-room he had done what the
+other physicians had not done and could not do. He had fathomed the
+case, and, understanding the cause, he was able to prescribe the
+cure.</p>
+<p>"With the help of God we will get your little girl well," he
+said to Miss Abby.</p>
+<p>"I begin to hope, and I had begun to despair," she said. "It was
+good of you to come."</p>
+<p>"I am glad I came, and I will come whenever you want me, Abby,"
+replied the old Doctor, simply.</p>
+<p>From this time, as he promised, so he performed. He took off his
+coat, and using the means which the city specialist had suggested,
+he studied his patient's case and applied all his powers to the
+struggle.</p>
+<p>The great city doctor recorded the case among his cures; but in
+his treatment he did not reckon the sleepless hours that that
+country doctor had sat by the patient's bedside, the unremitting
+struggle he had made, holding Death at bay, inspiring hope, and
+holding desperately every inch gained.</p>
+<p>When the Doctor saw Keith he held out his hand to him. "I am
+glad you sent for me."</p>
+<p>"How is she, Doctor? Will she get well?"</p>
+<p>"I trust so. She has been under some strain. It is almost as if
+she had had a shock."</p>
+<p>Keith's mind sprang back to that evening in the Park, and he
+cursed Wickersham in his heart.</p>
+<p>"Possibly she has had some strain on her emotions?"</p>
+<p>Keith did not know.</p>
+<p>"I understand that there is a young man here who has been in
+love with her for some time, and her aunt thinks she returned the
+sentiment."</p>
+<p>Keith did not know. But the Doctor's words were like a dagger in
+his heart.</p>
+<p>Keith went back to work; but he seemed to himself to live in
+darkness. As soon as a gleam of light appeared, it was suddenly
+quenched. Love was not for him.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+<h3>THE MISTRESS OF THE LAWNS</h3>
+<br>
+<p>Strange to say, the episode in which Keith had figured as the
+reliever of Norman Wentworth's embarrassment had a very different
+effect upon those among whom he had moved, from what he had
+expected. Keith's part in the transaction was well known.</p>
+<p>His part, too, in the Wickersham matter was understood by his
+acquaintances. Wickersham had as good as absconded, some said; and
+there were many to tell how long they had prophesied this very
+thing, and how well they had known his villany. Mrs. Nailor was
+particularly vindictive. She had recently put some money in his
+mining scheme, and she could have hanged him. She did the next
+thing: she damned him. She even extended her rage to old Mrs.
+Wickersham, who, poor lady, had lost her home and everything she
+had in the world through Ferdy.</p>
+<p>The Norman-Wentworths, who had moved out of the splendid
+residence that Mrs. Norman's extravagance had formerly demanded,
+into the old house on Washington Square, which was still occupied
+by old Mrs. Wentworth, were, if anything, drawn closer than ever to
+their real friends; but they were distinctly deposed from the
+position which Mrs. Wentworth had formerly occupied in the gay set,
+who to her had hitherto been New York. They were far happier than
+they had ever been. A new light had come into Norman's face, and a
+softness began to dawn in hers which Keith had never seen there
+before. Around them, too, began to gather friends whom Keith had
+never known of, who had the charm that breeding and kindness give,
+and opened his eyes to a life there of which he had hitherto hardly
+dreamed. Keith, however, to his surprise, when he was in New York,
+found himself more sought after by his former acquaintances than
+ever before. The cause was a simple one. He was believed to be very
+rich. He must have made a large fortune. The mystery in which it
+was involved but added to its magnitude. No man but one of immense
+wealth could have done what Keith did the day he stopped the run on
+Wentworth &amp; Son. Any other supposition was incredible.
+Moreover, it was now plain that in a little while he would marry
+Mrs. Lancaster, and then he would be one of the wealthiest men in
+New York. He was undoubtedly a coming man. Men who, a short time
+ago, would not have wasted a moment's thought on him, now greeted
+him with cordiality and spoke of him with respect; women who, a
+year or two before, would not have seen him in a ball-room, now
+smiled to him on the street, invited him among their "best
+companies," and treated him with distinguished favor. Mrs. Nailor
+actually pursued him. Even Mr. Kestrel, pale, thin-lipped, and
+frosty as ever in appearance, thawed into something like cordiality
+when he met him, and held out an icy hand as with a wintry smile he
+congratulated him on his success.</p>
+<p>"Well, we Yankees used to think we had the monopoly of business
+ability, but we shall have to admit that some of you young fellows
+at the South know your business. You have done what cost the
+Wickershams some millions. If you want any help at any time, come
+in and talk to me. We had a little difference once; but I don't let
+a little thing like that stand in the way with a friend."</p>
+<p>Keith felt his jaws lock as he thought of the same man on the
+other side of a long table sneering at him.</p>
+<p>"Thank you," said he. "My success has been greatly exaggerated.
+You'd better not count too much on it."</p>
+<p>Keith knew that he was considered rich, and it disturbed him.
+For the first time in his life he felt that he was sailing under
+false colors.</p>
+<p>Often the fair face, handsome figure, and cordial, friendly air
+of Alice Lancaster came to him; not so often, it is true, as
+another, a younger and gentler face, but still often enough. He
+admired her greatly. He trusted her. Why should he not try his
+fortune there, and be happy? Alice Lancaster was good enough for
+him. Yes, that was the trouble. She was far too good for him if he
+addressed her without loving her utterly. Other reasons, too,
+suggested themselves. He began to find himself fitting more and
+more into the city life. He had the chance possibly to become rich,
+richer than ever, and with it to secure a charming companion. Why
+should he not avail himself of it? Amid the glitter and gayety of
+his surroundings in the city, this temptation grew stronger and
+stronger. Miss Abby's sharp speech recurred to him. He was becoming
+"a fair counterfeit" of the men he had once despised. Then came a
+new form of temptation. What power this wealth would give him! How
+much good he could accomplish with it!</p>
+<p>When the temptation grew too overpowering he left his office and
+went down into the country. It always did him good to go there. To
+be there was like a plunge in a cool, limpid pool. He had been so
+long in the turmoil and strife of the struggle for success--for
+wealth; had been so wholly surrounded by those who strove as he
+strove, tearing and trampling and rending those who were in their
+way, that he had almost lost sight of the life that lay outside of
+the dust and din of that arena. He had almost forgotten that life
+held other rewards than riches. He had forgotten the calm and
+tranquil region that stretched beyond the moil and anguish of the
+strife for gain.</p>
+<p>Here his father walked with him again, calm, serene, and
+elevated, his thoughts high above all commercial matters, ranging
+the fields of lofty speculation with statesmen, philosophers, and
+poets, holding up to his gaze again lofty ideals; practising,
+without a thought of reward, the very gospel of universal
+gentleness and kindness.</p>
+<p>There his mother, too, moved in spirit once more beside him with
+her angelic smile, breathing the purity of heaven. How far away it
+seemed from that world in which he had been living!--as far as they
+were from the worldlings who made it.</p>
+<p>Curiously, when he was in New York he found himself under the
+allurement of Alice Lancaster. When he was in the country he found
+that he was in love with Lois Huntington.</p>
+<p>It was this that mystified him and worried him. He
+believed--that is, he almost believed--that Alice Lancaster would
+marry him. His friends thought that she would. Several of them had
+told him so. Many of them acted on this belief. And this had
+something to do with his retirement. As much as he liked Alice
+Lancaster, as clearly as he felt how but for one fact it would have
+suited that they should marry, one fact changed everything: he was
+not in love with her.</p>
+<p>He was in love with a young girl who had never given him a
+thought except as a sort of hereditary friend. Turning from one
+door at which the light of happiness had shone, he had found
+himself caught at another from which a radiance shone that dimmed
+all other lights. Yet it was fast shut. At length he determined to
+cut the knot. He would put his fate to the test.</p>
+<p>Two days after he formed this resolve he walked into the hotel
+at Brookford and registered. As he turned, he stood face to face
+with Mrs. Nailor. Mrs. Nailor of late had been all cordiality to
+him.</p>
+<p>"Why, you dear boy, where did you come from?" she asked him in
+pleased surprise. "I thought you were stretched at Mrs. Wentworth's
+feet in the--Where has she been this summer?"</p>
+<p>Keith's brow clouded. He remembered when Wickersham was her
+"dear boy."</p>
+<p>"It is a position I am not in the habit of occupying--at least,
+toward ladies who have husbands to occupy it. You are thinking of
+some one else," he added coldly, wishing devoutly that Mrs. Nailor
+were in Halifax.</p>
+<p>"Well, I am glad you have come here. You remember, our
+friendship began in the country? Yes? My husband had to go and get
+sick, and I got really frightened about him, and so we determined
+to come here, where we should be perfectly quiet. We got here last
+Saturday. There is not a man here."</p>
+<p>"Isn't there?" asked Keith, wishing there were not a woman
+either. "How long are you going to stay?" he asked absently.</p>
+<p>"Oh, perhaps a month. How long shall you be here?"</p>
+<p>"Not very long," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"I tell you who is here; that little governess of Mrs.
+Wentworth's she was so disagreeable to last winter. She has been
+very ill. I think it was the way she was treated in New York. She
+was in love with Ferdy Wickersham, you know? She lives here, in a
+lovely old place just outside of town, with her old aunt or cousin.
+I had no idea she had such a nice old home. We saw her yesterday.
+We met her on the street."</p>
+<p>"I remember her; I shall go and see her," said Keith, recalling
+Mrs. Nailor's speech at Mrs. Wickersham's dinner, and Lois's
+revenge.</p>
+<p>"I tell you what we will do. She invited us to call, and we will
+go together," said Mrs. Nailor.</p>
+<p>Keith paused a moment in reflection, and then said casually:</p>
+<p>"When are you going?"</p>
+<p>"Oh, this afternoon."</p>
+<p>"Very well; I will go."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor drove Keith out to The Lawns that afternoon.</p>
+<p>In a little while Miss Huntington came in. Keith observed that
+she was dressed as she had been that evening at dinner, in white,
+but he did not dream that it was the result of thought. He did not
+know with what care every touch had been made to reproduce just
+what he had praised, or with what sparkling eyes she had surveyed
+the slim, dainty figure in the old cheval-glass. She greeted Mrs.
+Nailor civilly and Keith warmly.</p>
+<p>"I am very glad to see you. What in the world brought you here
+to this out-of-the-way place?" she said, turning to the latter and
+giving him her cool, soft hand, and looking up at him with
+unfeigned pleasure, a softer and deeper glow coming into her cheek
+as she gazed into his eyes.</p>
+<p>"A sudden fit of insanity," said Keith, taking in the sweet,
+girlish figure in his glance. "I wanted to see some roses that I
+knew bloomed in an old garden about here."</p>
+<p>"He, perhaps, thought that, as Brookford is growing so
+fashionable now, he might find a mutual friend of ours here?" Mrs.
+Nailor said.</p>
+<p>"As whom, for instance?" queried Keith, unwilling to commit
+himself.</p>
+<p>"You know, Alice Lancaster has been talking of coming here? Now,
+don't pretend that you don't know. Whom does every one say you
+are--all in pursuit of?"</p>
+<p>"I am sure I do not know," said Keith, calmly. "I suppose that
+you are referring to Mrs. Lancaster, but I happened to know that
+she was not here. No; I came to see Miss Huntington." His face wore
+an expression of amusement.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor made some smiling reply. She did not see the
+expression in Keith's eyes as they, for a second, caught Lois's
+glance.</p>
+<p>Just then Miss Abigail came in. She had grown whiter since Keith
+had seen her last, and looked older. She greeted Mrs. Nailor
+graciously, and Keith cordially. Miss Lois, for some reason of her
+own, was plying Mrs. Nailor with questions, and Keith fell to
+talking with Miss Abigail, though his eyes were on Lois most of the
+time.</p>
+<p>The old lady was watching her too, and the girl, under the
+influence of the earnest gaze, glanced around and, catching her
+aunt's eye upon her, flashed her a little answering smile full of
+affection and tenderness, and then went on listening intently to
+Mrs. Nailor; though, had Keith read aright the color rising in her
+cheeks, he might have guessed that she was giving at least half her
+attention to his side of the room, where Miss Abigail was talking
+of her. Keith, however, was just then much interested in Miss
+Abigail's account of Dr. Locaman, who, it seemed, was more
+attentive to Lois than ever.</p>
+<p>"I don't know what she will do," she said. "I suppose she will
+decide soon. It is an affair of long standing."</p>
+<p>Keith's throat had grown dry.</p>
+<p>"I had hoped that my cousin Norman might prove a protector for
+her; but his wife is not a good person. I was mad to let her go
+there. But she would go. She thought she could be of some service.
+But that woman is such a fool!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, she is not a bad woman," interrupted Keith.</p>
+<p>"I do not know how bad she is," said Miss Abigail. "She is a
+fool. No good woman would ever have allowed such an intimacy as she
+allowed to come between her and her husband; and none but a fool
+would have permitted a man to make her his dupe. She did not even
+have the excuse of a temptation; for she is as cold as a
+tombstone."</p>
+<p>"I assure you that you are mistaken," defended Keith. "I know
+her, and I believe that she has far more depth than you give her
+credit for--"</p>
+<p>"I give her credit for none," said Miss Abigail, decisively.
+"You men are all alike. You think a woman with a pretty face who
+does not talk much is deep, when she is only dull. On my word, I
+think it is almost worse to bring about such a scandal without
+cause than to give a real cause for it. In the latter case there is
+at least the time*-worn excuse of woman's frailty."</p>
+<p>Keith laughed.</p>
+<p>"They are all so stupid," asserted Miss Abigail, fiercely. "They
+are giving up their privileges to be--what? I blushed for my sex
+when I was there. They are beginning to mistake civility for
+servility. I found a plenty of old ladies tottering on the edge of
+the grave, like myself, and I found a number of ladies in the shops
+and in the churches; but in that set that you go with--! They all
+want to be 'women'; next thing they'll want to be like men. I
+sha'n't be surprised to see them come to wearing men's clothes and
+drinking whiskey and smoking tobacco--the little fools! As if they
+thought that a woman who has to curl her hair and spend a half-hour
+over her dress to look decent could ever be on a level with a man
+who can handle a trunk or drive a wagon or add up a column of
+figures, and can wash his face and hands and put on a clean collar
+and look like--a gentleman!"</p>
+<p>"Oh, not so bad as that," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"Yes; there is no limit to their folly. I know them. I am one
+myself."</p>
+<p>"But you do not want to be a man?"</p>
+<p>"No, not now. I am too old and dependent. But I'll let you into
+a secret. I am secretly envious of them. I'd like to be able to put
+them down under my heel and make them--squeal."</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor turned and spoke to the old lady. She was evidently
+about to take her leave. Keith moved over, and for the first time
+addressed Miss Huntington.</p>
+<p>"I want you to show me about these grounds," he said, speaking
+so that both ladies could hear him. He rose, and both walked out of
+the parlor. When Mrs. Nailor came out, Keith and his guide were
+nowhere to be found, so she had to wait; but a half-hour afterwards
+he and Miss Huntington came back from the stables.</p>
+<p>As they drove out of the grounds they passed a good-looking
+young fellow just going in. Keith recognized Dr. Locaman.</p>
+<p>"That is the young man who is so attentive to your young
+friend," said Mrs. Nailor; "Dr. Locaman. He saved her life and now
+is going to marry her."</p>
+<p>It gave Keith a pang.</p>
+<p>"I know him. He did not save her life. If anybody did that, it
+was an old country doctor, Dr. Balsam."</p>
+<p>"That old man! I thought he was dead years ago."</p>
+<p>"Well, he is not. He is very much alive."</p>
+<p>A few evenings later Keith found Mrs. Lancaster in the hotel. He
+had just arrived from The Lawns when Mrs. Lancaster came down to
+dinner. Her greeting was perfect. Even Mrs. Nailor was mystified.
+She had never looked handsomer. Her black gown fitted perfectly her
+trim figure, and a single red rose, half-blown, caught in her
+bodice was her only ornament. She possessed the gift of simplicity.
+She was a beautiful walker, and as she moved slowly down the long
+dining-room as smoothly as a piece of perfect machinery, every eye
+was upon her. She knew that she was being generally observed, and
+the color deepened in her cheeks and added the charm of freshness
+to her beauty.</p>
+<p>"By Jove! what a stunning woman!" exclaimed a man at a table
+near by to his wife.</p>
+<p>"It is not difficult to be 'a stunning woman' in a Worth gown,
+my dear," she said sweetly. "May I trouble you for the
+Worcestershire?"</p>
+<p>Keith's attitude toward Mrs. Lancaster puzzled even so old a
+veteran as Mrs. Nailor.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor was an adept in the art of inquisition. To know
+about her friends' affairs was one of the objects of her life, and
+it was not only the general facts that she insisted on knowing: she
+proposed to be acquainted with their deepest secrets and the
+smallest particulars. She knew Alice Lancaster's views, or believed
+she did; but she had never ventured to speak on the subject to
+Gordon Keith. In fact, she stood in awe of Keith, and now he had
+mystified her by his action. Finally, she could stand it no longer,
+and so next evening she opened fire on Keith. Having screwed her
+courage to the sticking-point, she attacked boldly. She caught him
+on the verandah, smoking alone, and watching him closely to catch
+the effect of her attack, said suddenly:</p>
+<p>"I want to ask you a question: are you in love with Alice
+Lancaster?"</p>
+<p>Keith turned slowly and looked at her, looked at her so long
+that she began to blush.</p>
+<p>"Don't you think, if I am, I had better inform her first?" he
+said quietly.</p>
+<p>Mrs. Nailor was staggered; but she was in for it, and she had to
+fight her way through. "I was scared to death, my dear," she said
+when she repeated this part of the conversation, "for I never know
+just how he is going to take anything; but he was so quiet, I went
+on."</p>
+<p>"Well, yes, I think you had," she said; "Alice can take care of
+herself; but I tell you that you have no right to be carrying on
+with that sweet, innocent young girl here. You know what people say
+of you?"</p>
+<p>"No; I do not," said Keith. "I was not aware that I was of
+sufficient importance here for people to say anything, except
+perhaps a few persons who know me."</p>
+<p>"They say you have come here to see Miss Huntington?"</p>
+<p>"Do they?" asked Keith, so carelessly that Mrs. Nailor was just
+thinking that she must be mistaken, when he added: "Well, will you
+ask people if they ever heard what Andrew Jackson said to Mr.
+Buchanan once when he told him it was time to go and dress to
+receive Lady Wellesley?"</p>
+<p>"What did he say?" asked Mrs. Nailor.</p>
+<p>"He said he knew a man in Tennessee who had made a fortune by
+attending to his own business."</p>
+<p>Having failed with Keith, Mrs. Nailor, the next afternoon,
+called on Miss Huntington. Lois was in, and her aunt was not well;
+so Mrs. Nailor had a fair field for her research. She decided to
+test the young girl, and she selected the only mode which could
+have been successful with herself. She proposed a surprise. She
+spoke of Keith and noticed the increased interest with which the
+girl listened. This was promising.</p>
+<p>"By the way," she said, "you know the report is that Mr. Keith
+has at last really surrendered?"</p>
+<p>"Has he? I am so glad. If ever a man deserved happiness it is
+he. Who is it?"</p>
+<p>The entire absence of self-consciousness in Lois's expression
+and voice surprised Mrs. Nailor.</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Lancaster," she said, watching for the effect of her
+answer. "Of course, you know he has always been in love with
+her?"</p>
+<p>The girl's expression of unfeigned admiration of Mrs. Lancaster
+gave Mrs. Nailor another surprise. She decided that she had been
+mistaken in suspecting her of caring for Keith.</p>
+<p>"He has evidently not proposed yet. If she were a little older I
+should be certain of it," she said to herself as she drove away;
+"but these girls are so secretive one can never tell about them.
+Even I could not look as innocent as that to save my life if I were
+interested."</p>
+<p>That evening Keith called at The Lawns. He did not take with him
+a placid spirit. Mrs. Nailor's shaft had gone home, and it rankled.
+He tried to assure himself that what people were thinking had
+nothing to do with him. But suppose Miss Abigail took this view of
+the matter? He determined to ascertain. One solution of the
+difficulty lay plain before him: he could go away. Another
+presented itself, but it was preposterous. Of all the women he knew
+Lois Huntington was the least affected by him in the way that
+flatters a man. She liked him, he knew; but if he could read women
+at all, and he thought he could, she liked him only as a friend,
+and had not a particle of sentiment about him. He was easy, then,
+as to the point Mrs. Nailor had raised; but had he the right to
+subject Lois to gossip? This was the main thing that troubled him.
+He was half angry with himself that it kept rising in his mind. He
+determined to find out what her aunt thought of it, and decided
+that he could let that direct his course. This salved his
+conscience. Once or twice the question dimly presented itself
+whether it were possible that Lois could care for him. He banished
+it resolutely.</p>
+<p>When he reached The Lawns, he found that Miss Abigail was sick,
+so the virtuous plan he had formed fell through. He was trying to
+fancy himself sorry; but when Lois came out on the verandah in
+dainty blue gown which fell softly about her girlish figure, and
+seated herself with unconscious grace in the easy-chair he pushed
+up for her, he knew that he was glad to have her all to himself.
+They fell to talking about her aunt.</p>
+<p>"I am dreadfully uneasy about her," the girl said. "Once or
+twice of late she has had something like fainting spells, and the
+last one was very alarming. You don't know what she has been to
+me." She looked up at him with a silent appeal for sympathy which
+made his heart beat. "She is the only mother I ever knew, and she
+is all I have in the world." Her voice faltered, and she turned
+away her head. A tear stole down her cheek and dropped in her lap.
+"I am so glad you like each other. I hear you are engaged," she
+said suddenly.</p>
+<p>He was startled; it chimed in so with the thought in his mind at
+the moment.</p>
+<p>"No, I am not; but I would like to be."</p>
+<p>He came near saying a great deal more; but the girl's eyes were
+fixed on him so innocently that he for a moment hesitated. He felt
+it would be folly, if not sacrilege, to go further.</p>
+<p>Just then there was a step on the walk, and the young man Keith
+had seen, Dr. Locaman, came up the steps. He was a handsome man,
+stout, well dressed, and well satisfied.</p>
+<p>Keith could have consigned him and all his class to a distant
+and torrid clime.</p>
+<p>He came up the steps cheerily and began talking at once. He was
+so glad to see Keith, and had he heard lately from Dr.
+Balsam?--"such a fine type of the old country doctor," etc.</p>
+<p>No, Keith said; he had not heard lately. His manner had
+stiffened at the young man's condescension, and he rose to go.</p>
+<p>He said casually to Lois, as he shook hands, "How did you hear
+the piece of news you mentioned?"</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Nailor told me. You must tell me all about it."</p>
+<p>"I will sometime."</p>
+<p>"I hope you will be very happy," she said earnestly; "you
+deserve to be." Her eyes were very soft.</p>
+<p>"No, I do not," said Keith, almost angrily. "I am not at all
+what you suppose me to be."</p>
+<p>"I will not allow you to say such things of yourself," she said,
+smiling. "I will not stand my friends being abused even by
+themselves."</p>
+<p>Keith felt his courage waning. Her beauty, her sincerity, her
+tenderness, her innocence, her sweetness thrilled him. He turned
+back to her abruptly.</p>
+<p>"I hope you will always think that of me," he said earnestly. "I
+promise to try to deserve it. Good-by."</p>
+<p>"Good-by. Don't forget me." She held out her hand.</p>
+<p>Keith took it and held it for a second.</p>
+<p>"Never," he said, looking her straight in the eyes. "Good-by";
+and with a muttered good-by to Dr. Locaman, who stood with
+wide-open eyes gazing at him, he turned and went down the
+steps.</p>
+<p>"I don't like that man," said the young Doctor. This speech
+sealed his fate.</p>
+<p>"Don't you? I do," said Lois, half dreamily. Her thoughts were
+far from the young physician at that moment; and when they returned
+to him, she knew that she would never marry him. A half-hour later,
+he knew it.</p>
+<p>The next morning Lois received a note from Keith, saying he had
+left for his home.</p>
+<p>When he bade Mrs. Lancaster good-by that evening, she looked as
+if she were really sorry that he was going. She walked with him
+down the verandah toward where his carriage awaited him, and Keith
+thought she had never looked sweeter.</p>
+<p>He had never had a confidante,--at least, since he was a college
+boy,--and a little of the old feeling came to him. He lingered a
+little; but just then Mrs. Nailor came out of the door near him.
+For a moment Keith could almost have fancied he was back on the
+verandah at Gates's. Her mousing around had turned back the dial a
+dozen years.</p>
+<p>Just what brought it about, perhaps, no one of the participants
+in the little drama could have told; but from this time the
+relations between the two ladies whom Keith left at the hotel that
+Summer night somehow changed. Not outwardly, for they still sat and
+talked together; but they were both conscious of a difference. They
+rather fenced with each other after that. Mrs. Nailor set it down
+to a simple cause. Mrs. Lancaster was in love with Gordon Keith,
+and he had not addressed her. Of this she was satisfied. Yet she
+was a little mystified. Mrs. Lancaster hardly defined the reason to
+herself. She simply shut up on the side toward Mrs. Nailor, and
+barred her out. A strange thing was that she and Miss Huntington
+became great friends. They took to riding together, walking
+together, and seeing a great deal of each other, the elder lady
+spending much of her time up at Miss Huntington's home, among the
+shrubbery and flowers of the old place. It was a mystification to
+Mrs. Nailor, who frankly confessed that she could only account for
+it on the ground that Mrs. Lancaster wanted to find out how far
+matters had gone between Keith and Miss Huntington. "That girl is a
+sly minx," she said. "These governesses learn to be deceptive. I
+would not have her in my house."</p>
+<p>If there was a more dissatisfied mortal in the world than Gordon
+Keith that Autumn Keith did not know him. He worked hard, but it
+did not ease his mind. He tried retiring to his old home, as he had
+done in the Summer; but it was even worse than it had been then.
+Rumor came to him that Lois Huntington was engaged. It came through
+Mrs. Nailor, and he could not verify it; but, at least, she was
+lost to him. He cursed himself for a fool.</p>
+<p>The picture of Mrs. Lancaster began to come to him oftener and
+oftener as she had appeared to him that night on the
+verandah--handsome, dignified, serene, sympathetic. Why should he
+not seek release by this way? He had always admired, liked her. He
+felt her sympathy; he recognized her charm; he appreciated
+her--yes, her advantage. Curse it! that was the trouble. If he were
+only in love with her! If she were not so manifestly advantageous,
+then he might think his feeling was more than friendship; for she
+was everything that he admired.</p>
+<p>He was just in this frame of mind when a letter came from
+Rhodes, who had come home soon after Keith's visit to him. He had
+not been very well, and they had decided to take a yacht-cruise in
+Southern waters, and would he not come along? He could join them at
+either Hampton Roads or Savannah, and they were going to run over
+to the Bermudas.</p>
+<p>Keith telegraphed that he would join them, and two days later
+turned his face to the South. Twenty-four hours afterwards he was
+stepping up the gangway and being welcomed by as gay a group as
+ever fluttered handkerchiefs to cheer a friend. Among them the
+first object that had caught his eye as he rowed out was the
+straight, lithe figure of Mrs. Lancaster. A man is always ready to
+think Providence interferes specially in his, case, provided the
+interpretation accords with his own views, and this looked to Keith
+very much as if it were Providence. For one thing, it saved him the
+trouble of thinking further of a matter which, the more he thought
+of it, the more he was perplexed. She came forward with the others,
+and welcomed him with her old frank, cordial grasp of the hand and
+gracious air. When he was comfortably settled, he felt a distinct
+self-content that he had decided to come.</p>
+<p>A yacht-cruise is dependent on three things: the yacht itself,
+the company on board, and the weather. Keith had no cause to
+complain of any of these.</p>
+<p>The "Virginia Dare" was a beautiful boat, and the weather was
+perfect--just the weather for a cruise in Southern waters. The
+company were all friends of Keith; and Keith found himself sailing
+in Summer seas, with Summer airs breathing about him. Keith was at
+his best. He was richly tanned by exposure, and as hard as a nail
+from work in the open air. Command of men had given him that calm
+assurance which is the mark of the captain. Ambition--ambition to
+be, not merely to possess--was once more calling to him with her
+inspiring voice, and as he hearkened his face grew more and more
+distinguished. Providence, indeed, or Grinnell Rhodes was working
+his way, and it seemed to him--he admitted it with a pang of
+contempt for himself at the admission--that Mrs. Lancaster was at
+least acquiescent in their hands. Morning after morning they sat
+together in the shadow of the sail, and evening after evening
+together watched the moon with an ever-rounder golden circle steal
+up the cloudless sky. Keith was pleased to find how much interested
+he was becoming. Each day he admired her more and more; and each
+day he found her sweeter than she had been before. Once or twice
+she spoke to him of Lois Huntington, but each time she mentioned
+her, Keith turned the subject. She said that they had expected to
+have her join them; but she could not leave her aunt.</p>
+<p>"I hear she is engaged," said Keith.</p>
+<p>"Yes, I heard that. I do not believe it. Whom did you hear it
+from?"</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Nailor."</p>
+<p>"So did I."</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr style="width: 35%;">
+<br>
+<br>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2>
+<h3>THE OLD IDEAL</h3>
+<br>
+<p>One evening they sat on deck. Alice Lancaster had never appeared
+so sweet. It happened that Mrs. Rhodes had a headache and was down
+below, and Rhodes declared that he had some writing to do. So Mrs.
+Lancaster and Keith had the deck to themselves.</p>
+<p>They had been sailing for weeks among emerald isles and through
+waters as blue as heaven. Even the "still-vex'd Bermoothes" had
+lent them their gentlest airs.</p>
+<p>They had left the Indies and were now approaching the American
+shore. Their cruise was almost at an end, and possibly a little
+sadness had crept over them both. As she had learned more and more
+of his life and more and more of his character, she had found
+herself ready to give up everything for him if he only gave her
+what she craved. But one thing had made itself plain to Alice:
+Keith was not in love with her as she knew he could be in love. If
+he were in love, it was with an ideal. And her woman's intuition
+told her that she was not that ideal.</p>
+<p>This evening she was unusually pensive. She had never looked
+lovelier or been more gracious and charming, and as Keith thought
+of the past and of the future,--the long past in which they had
+been friends, the long future in which he would live alone,--his
+thought took the form of resolve. Why should they not always be
+together? She knew that he liked her, so he had not much to do to
+go further. The moon was just above the horizon, making a broad
+golden pathway to them. The soft lapping of the waves against the
+boat seemed to be a lullaby suited to the peacefulness of the
+scene; and the lovely form before him, clad in soft raiment that
+set it off; the fair face and gentle voice, appeared to fill
+everything with graciousness. Keith had more than once, in the past
+few weeks, considered how he would bring the subject up, and what
+he would say if he ever addressed her. He did not, however, go
+about it in the way he had planned. It seemed to him to come up
+spontaneously. Under the spell of the Summer night they had drifted
+into talking of old times, and they both softened as their memory
+went back to their youth and their friendship that had begun among
+the Southern woods and had lasted so many years.</p>
+<p>She had spoken of the influence his opinions had had with
+her.</p>
+<p>"Do you know," he said presently, "I think you have exerted more
+influence on my life than any one else I ever knew after I grew
+up?"</p>
+<p>She smiled, and her face was softer than usual.</p>
+<p>"I should be very glad to think that, for I think there are few
+men who set out in life with such ideals as you had and afterwards
+realize them."</p>
+<p>Keith thought of his father and of how steadily that old man had
+held to his ideals through everything. "I have not realized them,"
+he said firmly. "I fear I have lost most of them. I set out in life
+with high ideals, which I got from my father; but, somehow, I seem
+to have changed them."</p>
+<p>She shook her head, with a pleasant light in her eyes.</p>
+<p>"I do not think you have. Do you remember what you said to me
+once about your ideal?"</p>
+<p>He turned and faced her. There was an expression of such
+softness and such sweetness in her face that a kind of anticipatory
+happiness fell on him.</p>
+<p>"Yes; and I have always been in love with that ideal," he said
+gravely.</p>
+<p>She said gently: "Yes, I knew it."</p>
+<p>"Did you?" asked Keith, in some surprise. "I scarcely knew it
+myself, though I believe I have been for some time."</p>
+<p>"Yes?" she said. "I knew that too."</p>
+<p>Keith bent over her and took both her hands in his. "I love and
+want love in return--more than I can ever tell you."</p>
+<p>A change came over her face, and she drew in her breath
+suddenly, glanced at him for a second, and then looked away, her
+eyes resting at last on the distance where a ship lay, her sails
+hanging idly in the dim haze. It might have been a dream-ship. At
+Keith's words a picture came to her out of the past. A young man
+was seated on the ground, with a fresh-budding bush behind him.
+Spring was all about them. He was young and slender and
+sun-browned, with deep-burning eyes and close-drawn mouth, with the
+future before him; whatever befell, with the hope and the courage
+to conquer. He had conquered, as he then said he would to the young
+girl seated beside him.</p>
+<p>"When I love," he was saying, "she must fill full the measure of
+my dreams. She must uplift me. She must have beauty and sweetness;
+she must choose the truth as that bird chooses the flowers. And to
+such an one I will give worship without end."</p>
+<p>Years after, she had come across the phrase again in a poem. And
+at the words the same picture had come to her, and a sudden hunger
+for love, for such love,--the love she had missed in life,--had
+seized her. But it was then too late. She had taken in its place
+respect and companionship, a great establishment and social
+prominence.</p>
+<p>For a moment her mother, sitting calm and calculating in the
+little room at Ridgely, foretelling her future and teaching, with
+commercial exactness, the advantages of such a union, flashed
+before her; and then once more for a moment came the heart-hunger
+for what she had missed.</p>
+<p>Why should she not take the gift thus held out to her? She liked
+him and he liked her. She trusted him. It was the best chance of
+happiness she would ever have. Besides, she could help him. He had
+powers, and she could give him the opportunity to develop them.
+Love would come. Who could tell? Perhaps, the other happiness might
+yet be hers. Why should she throw it away? Would not life bring the
+old dream yet? Could it bring it? Here was this man whom she had
+known all her life, who filled almost the measure of her old dream,
+at her feet again. But was this love? Was this the "worship with
+out end"? As her heart asked the question, and she lifted her eyes
+to his face, the answer came with it: No. He was too cool, too
+calm. This was but friendship and respect, that same "safe
+foundation" she had tried. This might do for some, but not for him.
+She had seen him, and she knew what he could feel. She had caught a
+glimpse of him that evening when Ferdy Wickersham was so attentive
+to the little Huntington girl. She had seen him that night in the
+theatre when the fire occurred. He was in love; but it was with
+Lois Huntington, and happiness might yet be his.</p>
+<p>The next moment Alice's better nature reasserted itself. The
+picture of the young girl sitting with her serious face and her
+trustful eyes came back to her. Lois, moved by her sympathy and
+friendship, had given her a glimpse of her true heart, which she
+knew she would have died before she would have shown another. She
+had confided in her absolutely. She heard the tones of her
+voice:</p>
+<p>"Why, Mrs. Lancaster, I dream of him. He seems to me so real, so
+true. For such a man I could--I could worship him!" Then came the
+sudden lifting of the veil; the straight, confiding, appealing
+glance, the opening of the soul, and the rush to her knees as she
+appealed for him.</p>
+<p>It all passed through Mrs. Lancaster's mind as she looked far
+away over the slumbering sea, while Keith waited for her
+answer.</p>
+<p>When she glanced up at Keith he was leaning over the rail,
+looking far away, his face calm and serious. What was he thinking
+of? Certainly not of her.</p>
+<p>"No, you are not--not in love with me," she said firmly.</p>
+<p>Keith started, and looked down on her with a changed
+expression.</p>
+<p>She raised her hand with a gesture of protest, rose and stood
+beside him, facing him frankly.</p>
+<p>"You are in love, but not with me."</p>
+<p>Keith took her hand. She did not take it from him; indeed, she
+caught his hand with a firm clasp.</p>
+<p>"Oh, no; you are not," she smiled. "I have had men in love with
+me--"</p>
+<p>"You have had one, I know--" he began.</p>
+<p>"Yes, once, a long time ago--and I know the difference. I told
+you once that I was not what you thought me."</p>
+<p>"And I told you--" began Keith; but she did not pause.</p>
+<p>"I am still less so now. I am not in the least what you think
+me--or you are not what I think you."</p>
+<p>"You are just what I think you," began Keith. "You are the most
+charming woman in the world--you are my--" He hesitated as she
+looked straight into his eyes and shook her head.</p>
+<p>"What? No, I am not. I am a worldly, world-worn woman. Oh, yes,
+I am," as dissent spoke in his face. "I know the world and am a
+part of it and depend upon it. Yes, I am. I am not so far gone that
+I cannot recognize and admire what is better, higher, and nobler
+than the world of which I speak; but I am bound to the wheel--Is
+not that the illustration you wrote me once? I thought then it was
+absurd. I know now how true it is."</p>
+<p>"I do not think you are," declared Keith. "If you were, I would
+claim the right to release you--to save you for--yourself
+and--"</p>
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+<p>"No, no. I have become accustomed to my Sybarite's couch of
+which you used to tell me. Would you be willing to give up all you
+have striven for and won--your life--the honors you have won and
+hope to win?"</p>
+<p>"They are nothing--those I have won! Those I hope to win, I
+would win for us both. You should help me. They would be for you,
+Alice." His eyes were deep in hers.</p>
+<p>She fetched a long sigh.</p>
+<p>"No, no; once, perhaps, I might have--but now it is too late. I
+chose my path and must follow it. You would not like to give up all
+you--hope for--and become like--some we know?"</p>
+<p>"God forbid!"</p>
+<p>"And I say, 'Amen.' And if you would, I would not be willing to
+have you do it. You are too much to me--I honor you too much," she
+corrected quickly, as she caught the expression in his face. "I
+could not let you sink into a--society man--like--some of those I
+sit next to and dance with and drive with and--enjoy and despise.
+Do I not know that if you loved me you would have convinced me of
+it in a moment? You have not convinced me. You are in love,--as you
+said just now,--but not with me. You are in love with Lois
+Huntington."</p>
+<p>Keith almost staggered. It was so direct and so exactly what his
+thought had been just now. But he said:</p>
+<p>"Oh, nonsense! Lois Huntington considers me old enough to be her
+grandfather. Why, she--she is engaged to or in love with Dr.
+Locaman."</p>
+<p>"She is not," said Mrs. Lancaster, firmly, "and she never will
+be. If you go about it right she will marry you." She added calmly:
+"I hope she will, with all my heart."</p>
+<p>"Marry me! Lois Huntington! Why--"</p>
+<p>"She considers me her grandmother, perhaps; but not you her
+grandfather. She thinks you are much too young for me. She thinks
+you are the most wonderful and the best and most charming man in
+the world."</p>
+<p>"Oh, nonsense!"</p>
+<p>"I do not know where she got such an idea--unless you told her
+so yourself," she said, with a smile.</p>
+<p>"I would like her to think it," said Keith, smiling; "but I have
+studiously avoided divulging myself in my real and fatal
+character."</p>
+<p>"Then she must have got it from the only other person who knows
+you in your true character."</p>
+<p>"And that is--?"</p>
+<p>She looked into his eyes with so amused and so friendly a light
+in her own that Keith lifted her hand to his lips.</p>
+<p>"I do not deserve such friendship."</p>
+<p>"Yes, you do; you taught it to me."</p>
+<p>He sat back in his chair, trying to think. But all he could
+think of was how immeasurably he was below both these women.</p>
+<p>"Will you forgive me?" he said suddenly, almost miserably. He
+meant to say more, but she rose, and at the moment he heard a step
+behind him. He thought her hand touched his head for a second, and
+that he heard her answer, "Yes"; but he was not sure, for just then
+Mrs. Rhodes spoke to them, and they all three had to pretend that
+they thought nothing unusual had been going on.</p>
+<p>They received their mail next day, and were all busy reading
+letters, when Mrs. Rhodes gave an exclamation of surprise.</p>
+<p>"Oh, just hear this! Little Miss Huntington's old aunt is
+dead."</p>
+<p>There was an exclamation from every one.</p>
+<p>"Yes," she went on reading, with a faint little conventional
+tone of sympathy in her voice; "she died ten days ago--very
+suddenly, of heart-disease."</p>
+<p>"Oh, poor little Lois! I am so sorry for her!" It was Alice
+Lancaster's voice.</p>
+<p>But Keith did not hear any more. His heart was aching, and he
+was back among the shrubbery of The Lawns. All that he knew was
+that Rhodes and Mrs. Rhodes were expressing sympathy, and that Mrs.
+Lancaster, who had not said a word after the first exclamation,
+excused herself and left the saloon. Keith made up his mind
+promptly. He went up on deck. Mrs. Lancaster was sitting alone far
+aft in the shadow. Her back was toward him, and her hand was to her
+eyes. He went up to her. She did not look up; but Keith felt that
+she knew it was he.</p>
+<p>"You must go to her," she said.</p>
+<p>"Yes," said Keith. "I shall. I wish you would come."</p>
+<p>"Oh, I wish I could! Poor little thing!" she sighed.</p>
+<p>Two days after that Keith walked into the hotel at Brookford.
+The clerk recognized him as he appeared, and greeted him cordially.
+Something in Keith's look or manner, perhaps, recalled his former
+association with the family at The Lawns, for, as Keith signed his
+name, he said:</p>
+<p>"Sad thing, that, up on the hill."</p>
+<p>"What?" said Keith, absently.</p>
+<p>"The old lady's death and the breaking up of the old place," he
+said.</p>
+<p>"Oh!--yes, it is," said Keith; and then, thinking that he could
+learn if Miss Huntington were there without appearing to do so,
+except casually, he said:</p>
+<p>"Who is there now?"</p>
+<p>"There is not any one there at all, I believe."</p>
+<p>Keith ordered a room, and a half-hour later went out.</p>
+<p>Instead of taking a carriage, he walked There had been a change
+in the weather. The snow covered everything, and the grounds looked
+wintry and deserted. The gate was unlocked, but had not been opened
+lately, and Keith had hard work to open it wide enough to let
+himself through. He tramped along through the snow, and turning the
+curve in the road, was in front of the house. It was shut up. Every
+shutter was closed, as well as the door, and a sudden chill struck
+him. Still he went on; climbed the wide, unswept steps, crossed the
+portico, and rang the bell, and finally knocked. The sound made him
+start. How lonesome it seemed! He knocked again, but no one came.
+Only the snowbirds on the portico stopped and looked at him
+curiously. Finally, he thought he heard some one in the snow. He
+turned as a man came around the house. It was the old coachman and
+factotum. He seemed glad enough to see Keith, and Keith was, at
+least, glad to see him.</p>
+<p>"It's a bad business, it is, Mr. Kathe," he said sadly.</p>
+<p>"Yes, it is, John. Where is Miss Huntington?"</p>
+<p>"Gone, sir," said John, with surprise in his voice that Keith
+should not know.</p>
+<p>"Gone where?"</p>
+<p>"An' that no one knows," said John.</p>
+<p>"What! What do you mean?"</p>
+<p>"Just that, sir," said the old fellow. "She went away two days
+after the funeral, an' not a worrd of her since."</p>
+<p>"But she's at some relative's?" said Keith, seeking information
+at the same time he gave it.</p>
+<p>"No, sir; not a relative in the world she has, except Mr.
+Wentworth in New York, and she has not been there."</p>
+<p>Keith learned, in the conversation which followed, that Miss
+Abigail had died very suddenly, and that two days after the funeral
+Miss Lois had had the house shut up, and taking only a small trunk,
+had left by train for New York. They had expected to hear from her,
+though she had said they would not do so for some time; and when no
+letter had come they had sent to New York, but had failed to find
+her. This all seemed natural enough. Lois was abundantly able to
+take care of herself, and, no doubt, desired for the present to be
+in some place of retirement. Keith decided, therefore, that he
+would simply go to the city and ascertain where she was. He thought
+of going to see Dr. Locaman, but something restrained him. The snow
+was deep, and he was anxious to find Lois; so he went straight down
+to the city that evening. The next day he discovered that it was
+not quite so easy to find one who wished to be lost. Norman knew
+nothing of her.</p>
+<p>Norman and his wife were now living with old Mrs. Wentworth, and
+they had all invited her to come to them; but she had declined.
+Keith was much disturbed.</p>
+<p>Lois, however, was nearer than Keith dreamed.</p>
+<p>Her aunt's death had stricken Lois deeply. She could not bear to
+go to New York. It stood to her only for hardness and
+isolation.</p>
+<p>Just then a letter came from Dr. Balsam. She must come to him,
+he said. He was sick, or he would come for her. An impulse seized
+her to go to him. She would go back to the scenes of her childhood:
+the memories of her father drew her; the memory also of her aunt in
+some way urged her. Dr. Balsam appeared just then nearer to her
+than any one else. She could help him. It seemed a haven of refuge
+to her.</p>
+<p>Twenty-four hours later the old Doctor was sitting in his room.
+He looked worn and old and dispirited. The death of an old friend
+had left a void in his life.</p>
+<p>There was a light step outside and a rap at the door.</p>
+<p>"It's the servant," thought the Doctor, and called somewhat
+gruffly, "Come in."</p>
+<p>When the door opened it was not the servant. For a moment the
+old man scarcely took in who it was. She seemed to be almost a
+vision. He had never thought of Lois in black. She was so like a
+girl he had known long, long ago.</p>
+<p>Then she ran forward, and as the old man rose to his feet she
+threw her arms about his neck, and the world suddenly changed for
+him--changed as much as if it had been new-created.</p>
+<p>From New York Keith went down to the old plantation to see his
+father. The old gentleman was renewing his youth among his books.
+He was much interested in Keith's account of his yachting-trip.
+While there Keith got word of important business which required his
+presence in New Leeds immediately. Ferdy Wickersham had returned,
+and had brought suit against his company, claiming title to all the
+lands they had bought from Adam Rawson.</p>
+<p>On his arrival at New Leeds, Keith learned that Wickersham had
+been there just long enough to institute his suit, the papers in
+which had been already prepared before he came. There was much
+excitement in the place. Wickersham had boasted that he had made a
+great deal of money in South America.</p>
+<p>"He claims now," said Keith's informant, Captain Turley, "that
+he owns all of Squire Rawson's lands. He says you knew it was all
+his when you sold it to them Englishmen, and that Mr. Rhodes, the
+president of the company, knew it was his, and he has been
+defrauded."</p>
+<p>"Well, we will see about that," said Keith, grimly.</p>
+<p>"That's what old Squire Rawson said. The old man came up as soon
+as he heard he was here; but Wickersham didn't stay but one night.
+He had lighted out."</p>
+<p>"What did the squire come for?" inquired Keith, moved by his old
+friend's expression.</p>
+<p>"He said he came to kill him. And he'd have done it. If
+Wickersham's got any friends they'd better keep him out of his
+way." His face testified his earnestness.</p>
+<p>Keith had a curious feeling. Wickersham's return meant that he
+was desperate. In some way, too, Keith felt that Lois Huntington
+was concerned in his movements. He was glad to think that she was
+abroad.</p>
+<p>But Lois was being drawn again into his life in a way that he
+little knew.</p>
+<p>In the seclusion and quietude of Ridgely at that season, Lois
+soon felt as if she had reached, at last, a safe harbor. The care
+of the old Doctor gave her employment, and her mind, after a while,
+began to recover its healthy tone. She knew that the happiness of
+which she had once dreamed would never be hers; but she was
+sustained by the reflection that she had tried to do her duty: she
+had sacrificed herself for others. She spent her time trying to
+help those about her. She had made friends with Squire Rawson, and
+the old man found much comfort in talking to her of Phrony.</p>
+<p>Sometimes, in the afternoon, when she was lonely, she climbed
+the hill and looked after the little plot in which lay the grave of
+her father. She remembered her mother but vaguely: as a beautiful
+vision, blurred by the years; but her father was clear in her
+memory. His smile, his cheeriness, his devotion to her remained
+with her. And the memory of him who had been her friend in her
+childhood came to her sometimes, saddening her, till she would
+arouse herself and by an effort banish him from her thoughts.</p>
+<p>Often when she went up to the cemetery she would see others
+there: women in black, with a fresher sorrow than hers; and
+sometimes the squire, who was beginning now to grow feeble and
+shaky with age, would be sitting on a bench among the shrubbery
+beside a grave on which he had placed flowers. The grave was
+Phrony's. Once he spoke to her of Wickersham. He had brought a suit
+against the old man, claiming that he had a title to all of the
+latter's property. The old fellow was greatly stirred up by it. He
+denounced him furiously.</p>
+<p>"He has robbed me of her," he said "Let him beware. If he ever
+comes across my path I shall kill him."</p>
+<p>So the Winter passed, and Spring was beginning to come. Its
+harbingers, in their livery of red and green, were already showing
+on the hillsides. The redbud was burning on the Southern slopes;
+the turf was springing, fresh and green; dandelions were dappling
+the grass like golden coins sown by a prodigal; violets were
+beginning to peep from the shelter of leaves caught along the
+fence-rows; and some favored peach-trees were blushing into
+pink.</p>
+<p>For some reason the season made Lois sad. Was it that it was
+Nature's season for mating; the season for Youth to burst its
+restraining bonds and blossom into love? She tried to fight the
+feeling, but it clung to her. Dr Balsam, watching her with
+quickened eyes, grew graver, and prescribed a tonic. Once he had
+spoken to her of Keith, and she had told him that he was to marry
+Mrs. Lancaster. But the old man had made a discovery. And he never
+spoke to her of him again.</p>
+<p>Lois, to her surprise and indignation, received one morning a
+letter from Wickersham asking her to make an appointment with him
+on a matter of mutual interest. He wished, he said, to make friends
+with old Mr. Rawson and she could help him. He mentioned Keith and
+casually spoke of his engagement. She took no notice of this
+letter; but one afternoon she was lonelier than usual, and she went
+up the hill to her father's grave. Adam Rawson's horse was tied to
+the fence, and across the lots she saw him among the rose-bushes at
+Phrony's grave. She sat down and gave herself up to reflection.
+Gradually the whole of her life in New York passed before her: its
+unhappiness; its promise of joy for a moment; and then the shutting
+of it out, as if the windows of her soul had been closed.</p>
+<p>She heard the gate click, and presently heard a step behind her.
+As it approached she turned and faced Ferdy Wickersham. She seemed
+to be almost in a dream. He had aged somewhat, and his dark face
+had hardened. Otherwise he had not changed. He was still very
+handsome. She felt as if a chill blast had struck her. She caught
+his eye on her, and knew that he had recognized her. As he came up
+the path toward her, she rose and moved away; but he cut across to
+intercept her, and she heard him speak her name.</p>
+<p>She took no notice, but walked on.</p>
+<p>"Miss Huntington." He stepped in front of her.</p>
+<p>Her head went up, and she looked him in the eyes with a scorn in
+hers that stung him. "Move, if you please."</p>
+<p>His face flushed, then paled again.</p>
+<p>"I heard you were here, and I have come to see you, to talk with
+you," he began. "I wish to be friends with you."</p>
+<p>She waved him aside.</p>
+<p>"Let me pass, if you please."</p>
+<p>"Not until you have heard what I have to say. You have done me a
+great injustice; but I put that by. I have been robbed by persons
+you know, persons who are no friends of yours, whom I understand
+you have influence with, and you can help to right matters. It will
+be worth your while to do it."</p>
+<p>She attempted to pass around him; but he stepped before her.</p>
+<p>"You might as well listen; for I have come here to talk to you,
+and I mean to do it. I can show you how important it is for you to
+aid me--to advise your friends to settle. Now, will you
+listen?"</p>
+<p>"No." She looked him straight in the eyes.</p>
+<p>"Oh, I guess you will," he sneered. "It concerns your friend,
+Mr. Keith, whom you thought so much of. Your friend Keith has
+placed himself in a very equivocal position. I will have him behind
+bars before I am done. Wait until I have shown that when he got all
+that money from the English people he knew that that land was mine,
+and that he had run the lines falsely on which he got the
+money."</p>
+<p>"Let me pass," said Lois. With her head held high she started
+again to walk by him; but he seized her by the wrist.</p>
+<p>"This is not Central Park. You shall hear me."</p>
+<p>"Let me go, Mr. Wickersham," she said imperiously. But he held
+her firmly.</p>
+<p>At that moment she heard an oath behind her, and a voice
+exclaimed:</p>
+<p>"It is you, at last! And still troubling women!"</p>
+<p>Wickersham's countenance suddenly changed. He released her wrist
+and fell back a step, his face blanching. The next second, as she
+turned quickly, old Adam Rawson's bulky figure was before her. He
+was hurrying toward her: the very apotheosis of wrath. His face was
+purple; his eyes blazed; his massive form was erect, and quivering
+with fury. His heavy stick was gripped in his left hand, and with
+the other he was drawing a pistol from his pocket.</p>
+<p>"I have waited for you, you dog, and you have come at last!" he
+cried.</p>
+<p>Wickersham, falling back before his advance, was trying, as Lois
+looked, to get out a pistol. His face was as white as death. Lois
+had no time for thought. It was simply instinct. Old Rawson's
+pistol was already levelled. With a cry she threw herself between
+them; but it was too late.</p>
+<p>She was only conscious of a roar and blinding smoke in her eyes
+and of something like a hot iron at her side; then, as she sank
+down, of Squire Rawson's stepping over her. Her sacrifice was in
+vain, for the old man was not to be turned from his revenge. As he
+had sworn, so he performed. And the next moment Wickersham, with
+two bullets in his body, had paid to him his long-piled-up
+debt.</p>
+<p>When Lois came to, she was in bed, and Dr. Balsam was leaning
+over her with a white, set face.</p>
+<p>"I am all right," she said, with a faint smile. "Was he
+hurt?"</p>
+<p>"Don't talk now," said the Doctor, quietly. "Thank God, you are
+not hurt much."</p>
+<p>Keith was sitting in his office in New Leeds alone that
+afternoon. He had just received a telegram from Dave Dennison that
+Wickersham had left New York. Dennison had learned that he was
+going to Ridgely to try to make up with old Rawson. Just then the
+paper from Ridgely was brought in. Keith's eye fell on the
+head-lines of the first column, and he almost fell from his chair
+as he read the words:</p>
+<br>
+<center><b>DOUBLE TRAGEDY--FATAL SHOOTING<br>
+<br>
+F.C. WICKERSHAM SHOOTS MISS LOIS HUNTINGTON AND<br>
+IS KILLED BY SQUIRE RAWSON</b></center>
+<br>
+<p>The account of the shooting was in accordance with the heading,
+and was followed by the story of the Wickersham-Rawson trouble.</p>
+<p>Keith snatched out his watch, and the next second was dashing
+down the street on his way to the station. A train was to start for
+the east in five minutes. He caught it as it ran out of the
+station, and swung himself up to the rear platform.</p>
+<p>Curiously enough, in his confused thoughts of Lois Huntington
+and what she had meant to him was mingled the constant recollection
+of old Tim Gilsey and his lumbering stage running through the
+pass.</p>
+<p>It was late in the evening when he reached Ridgely; but he
+hastened at once to Dr. Balsam's office. The moon was shining, and
+it brought back to him the evenings on the verandah at Gates's so
+long ago. But it seemed to him that it was Lois Huntington who had
+been there among the pillows; that it was Lois Huntington who had
+always been there in his memory. He wondered if she would be as she
+was then, as she lay dead. And once or twice he wondered if he
+could be losing his wits; then he gripped himself and cleared his
+mind.</p>
+<p>In ten minutes he was in Dr. Balsam's office. The Doctor greeted
+him with more coldness than he had ever shown him. Keith felt his
+suspicion.</p>
+<p>"Where is Lois--Miss Lois Huntington? Is she--?" He could not
+frame the question.</p>
+<p>"She is doing very well."</p>
+<p>Keith's heart gave a bound of hope. The blood surged back and
+forth in his veins. Life seemed to revive for him.</p>
+<p>"Is she alive? Will she live?" he faltered.</p>
+<p>"Yes. Who says she will not?" demanded the Doctor, testily.</p>
+<p>"The paper--the despatch."</p>
+<p>"No thanks to you that she does!" He faced Keith, and suddenly
+flamed out: "I want to tell you that I think you have acted like a
+damned rascal!"</p>
+<p>Keith's jaw dropped, and he actually staggered with amazement.
+"What! What do you mean? I do not understand!"</p>
+<p>"You are not a bit better than that dog that you turned her over
+to, who got his deserts yesterday."</p>
+<p>"But I do not understand!" gasped Keith, white and hot.</p>
+<p>"Then I will tell you. You led that innocent girl to believe
+that you were in love with her, and then when she was fool enough
+to believe you and let herself become--interested, you left her to
+run, like a little puppy, after a rich woman."</p>
+<p>"Where did you hear this?" asked Keith, still amazed, but
+recovering himself. "What have you heard? Who told you?"</p>
+<p>"Not from her." He was blazing with wrath.</p>
+<p>"No; but from whom?"</p>
+<p>"Never mind. From some one who knew the facts. It is the
+truth."</p>
+<p>"But it is not the truth. I have been in love with Lois
+Huntington since I first met her."</p>
+<p>"Then why in the name of heaven did you treat her so?"</p>
+<p>"How? I did not tell her so because I heard she was in love with
+some one else--and engaged to him. God knows I have suffered enough
+over it. I would die for her." His expression left no room for
+doubt as to his sincerity.</p>
+<p>The old man's face gradually relaxed, and presently something
+that was almost a smile came into his eyes. He held out his
+hand.</p>
+<p>"I owe you an apology. You are a d----d fool!"</p>
+<p>"Can I see her?" asked Keith.</p>
+<p>"I don't know that you can see anything. But I could, if I were
+in your place. She is on the side verandah at my hospital--where
+Gates's tavern stood. She is not much hurt, though it was a close
+thing. The ball struck a button and glanced around. She is sitting
+up. I shall bring her home as soon as she can be moved."</p>
+<p>Keith paused and reflected a moment, then held out his hand.</p>
+<p>"Doctor, if I win her will you make our house your home?"</p>
+<p>The old man's face softened, and he held out his hand again.</p>
+<p>"You will have to come and see me sometimes."</p>
+<p>Five minutes later Keith turned up the walk that led to the side
+verandah of the building that Dr. Balsam had put up for his
+sanatorium on the site of Gates's hotel. The moon was slowly
+sinking toward the western mountain-tops, flooding with soft light
+the valley below, and touching to silver the fleecy clouds that,
+shepherded by the gentle wind, wreathed the highest peaks beyond.
+How well Keith remembered it all: the old house with its long
+verandah; the moonlight flooding it; the white figure reclining
+there; and the boy that talked of his ideal of loveliness and love.
+She was there now; it seemed to him that she had been there always,
+and the rest was merely a dream. He walked up on the turf, but
+strode rapidly. He could not wait. As he mounted the steps, he took
+off his hat.</p>
+<p>"Good evening." He spoke as if she must expect him.</p>
+<p>She had not heard him before. She was reclining among pillows,
+and her face was turned toward the western sky. Her black dress
+gave him a pang. He had never thought of her in black, except as a
+little girl. And such she almost seemed to him now.</p>
+<p>She turned toward him and gave a gasp.</p>
+<p>"Mr. Keith!"</p>
+<p>"Lois--I have come--" he began, and stopped.</p>
+<p>She held out her hand and tried to sit up. Keith took her hand
+softly, as if it were a rose, and closing his firmly over it, fell
+on one knee beside her chair.</p>
+<p>"Don't try to sit up," he said gently. "I went to Brookford as
+soon as I heard of it--" he began, and then placed his other hand
+on hers, covering it with his firm grasp.</p>
+<p>"I thought you would," she said simply.</p>
+<p>Keith lifted her hand and held it against his cheek. He was
+silent a moment. What should he say to her? Not only all other
+women, but all the rest of the world, had disappeared.</p>
+<p>"I have come, and I shall not go away again until you go with
+me."</p>
+<p>For answer she hid her face and began to cry softly. Keith knelt
+with her hand to his lips, murmuring his love.</p>
+<p>"I am so glad you have come. I don't know what to do," she said
+presently.</p>
+<p>"You do not have to know. I know. It is decided. I love you--I
+have always loved you. And no one shall ever come between us. You
+are mine--mine only." He went on pouring out his soul to her.</p>
+<br>
+<a name="p546.jpg"></a>
+<p class="ctr"><a href="images/p546.jpg"><img src="images/p546.jpg"
+width="45%" alt=""></a><br>
+<b>"Lois--I have come"--he began</b></p>
+<br>
+<p>"My old Doctor--?" she began presently, and looked up at him
+with eyes "like stars half-quenched in mists of silver dew."</p>
+<p>"He agrees. We will make him live with us."</p>
+<p>"Your father-?"</p>
+<p>"Him, too. You shall be their daughter."</p>
+<p>She gave him her hands.</p>
+<p>"Well, on that condition."</p>
+<hr style="width: 25%;">
+<p>The first person Keith sought to tell of his new happiness was
+his father. The old gentleman was sitting on the porch at
+Elphinstone in the sun, enjoying the physical sensation of warmth
+that means so much to extreme youth and extreme age. He held a copy
+of Virgil in his hand, but he was not reading; he was repeating
+passages of it by heart. They related to the quiet life. His son
+heard him saying softly:</p>
+<blockquote>"'O Fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,<br>
+Agricolas!'"</blockquote>
+<p>His mind was possibly far back in the past.</p>
+<p>His placid face lit up with the smile that always shone there
+when his son appeared.</p>
+<p>"Well, what's the news?" he asked. "I know it must be good."</p>
+<p>"It is," smiled Keith. "I am engaged to be married."</p>
+<p>The old gentleman's book fell to the floor.</p>
+<p>"You don't say so! Ah, that's very good! Very good! I am glad of
+that; every young man ought to marry. There is no happiness like it
+in this world, whatever there may be in the next.</p>
+<blockquote>"'Interea dulces pendent circum oscula
+nati.'</blockquote>
+<p>"I will come and see you," he smiled.</p>
+<p>"Come and see me!"</p>
+<p>"But I am not very much at home in New York," he pursued rather
+wistfully; "it is too noisy for me. I am too old-fashioned for
+it."</p>
+<p>"New York? But I'm not going to live in New York!"</p>
+<p>A slight shadow swept over the General's face.</p>
+<p>"Well, you must live where she will be happiest," he said
+thoughtfully. "A gentleman owes that to his wife.--Do you think she
+will be willing to live elsewhere?"</p>
+<p>"Who do you think it is, sir!"</p>
+<p>"Mrs. Lancaster, isn't it?"</p>
+<p>"Why, no; it is Lois Huntington. I am engaged to her. She has
+promised to marry me."</p>
+<p>"To her!--to Lois Huntington--my little girl!" The old gentleman
+rose to his feet, his face alight with absolute joy. "That is
+something like it! Where is she? When is it to be? I will come and
+live with you."</p>
+<p>"Of course, you must. It is on that condition that she agrees to
+marry me," said Keith, smiling with new happiness at his
+pleasure.</p>
+<p>"'In her tongue is the law of kindness,'" quoted the old
+gentleman. "God bless you both. 'Her price is far above rubies.'"
+And after a pause he added gently: "I hope your mother knows of
+this. I think she must: she seems so close to me to-day."</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GORDON KEITH***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Gordon Keith, by Thomas Nelson Page,
+Illustrated by George Wright
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Gordon Keith
+
+Author: Thomas Nelson Page
+
+Release Date: November 17, 2004  [eBook #14068]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GORDON KEITH***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Kat Jeter, Charlie Kirschner, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 14068-h.htm or 14068-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/0/6/14068/14068-h/14068-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/0/6/14068/14068-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+GORDON KEITH
+
+by
+
+THOMAS NELSON PAGE
+
+With Illustrations by George Wright
+
+1903
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+A GRANDDAUGHTER
+
+OF ONE LOIS HUNTINGTON
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+     I. GORDON KEITH'S PATRIMONY
+    II. GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN OVERSEER
+   III. THE ENGINEER AND THE SQUIRE
+    IV. TWO YOUNG MEN
+     V. THE RIDGE COLLEGE
+    VI. ALICE YORKE
+   VII. MRS. YORKE FINDS A GENTLEMAN
+  VIII. MR. KEITH'S IDEALS
+    IX. MR. KEITH IS UNPRACTICAL
+     X. MRS. YORKE CUTS A KNOT
+    XI. GUMBOLT
+   XII. KEITH DECLINES AN OFFER
+  XIII. KEITH IN NEW YORK
+   XIV. THE HOLD-UP
+    XV. MRS. YORKE MAKES A MATCH
+   XVI. KEITH VISITS NEW YORK, AND MRS. LANCASTER SEES A GHOST
+  XVII. KEITH MEETS NORMAN
+ XVIII. MRS. LANCASTER
+   XIX. WICKERSHAM AND PHRONY
+    XX. MRS. LANCASTER'S WIDOWHOOD
+   XXI. THE DIRECTORS' MEETING
+  XXII. MRS. CREAMER'S BALL
+ XXIII. GENERAL KEITH VISITS STRANGE LANDS
+  XXIV. KEITH TRIES HIS FORTUNES ABROAD
+   XXV. THE DINNER AT MRS. WICKERSHAM'S
+  XXVI. A MISUNDERSTANDING
+ XXVII. PHRONY TRIPPER AND THE REV. MR. RIMMON
+XXVIII. ALICE LANCASTER FINDS PHRONY
+  XXIX. THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE
+   XXX. "SNUGGLERS' ROOST"
+  XXXI. TERPY'S LAST DANCE AND WICKERSHAM'S FINAL THROW
+ XXXII. THE RUN ON THE BANK
+XXXIII. RECONCILIATION
+ XXXIV. THE CONSULTATION
+  XXXV. THE MISTRESS OF THE LAWNS
+ XXXVI. THE OLD IDEAL
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+She was the first to break the silence (frontispiece)
+"If you don't go back to your seat I'll dash your brains
+  out," said Keith
+"Then why don't you answer me?"
+Sprang over the edge of the road into the thick bushes below
+"Why, Mr. Keith!" she exclaimed
+"Sit down. I want to talk to you"
+"It is he! 'Tis he!" she cried
+"Lois--I have come--" he began
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+_INTRODUCTORY_
+
+GORDON KEITH'S PATRIMONY
+
+Gordon Keith was the son of a gentleman. And this fact, like the cat the
+honest miller left to his youngest son, was his only patrimony. As in
+that case also, it stood to the possessor in the place of a good many
+other things. It helped him over many rough places. He carried it with
+him as a devoted Romanist wears a sacred scapulary next to the heart.
+
+His father, General McDowell Keith of "Elphinstone," was a gentleman of
+the old kind, a type so old-fashioned that it is hardly accepted these
+days as having existed. He knew the Past and lived in it; the Present he
+did not understand, and the Future he did not know. In his latter days,
+when his son was growing up, after war had swept like a vast inundation
+over the land, burying almost everything it had not borne away, General
+Keith still survived, unchanged, unmoved, unmarred, an antique memorial
+of the life of which he was a relic. His one standard was that of a
+gentleman.
+
+This idea was what the son inherited from the father along with some
+other old-fashioned things which he did not know the value of at first,
+but which he came to understand as he grew older.
+
+When in after times, in the swift rush of life in a great city, amid
+other scenes and new manners, Gordon Keith looked back to the old life
+on the Keith plantation, it appeared to him as if he had lived then in
+another world.
+
+Elphinstone was, indeed, a world to itself: a long, rambling house, set
+on a hill, with white-pillared verandahs, closed on the side toward the
+evening sun by green Venetian blinds, and on the other side looking away
+through the lawn trees over wide fields, brown with fallow, or green
+with cattle-dotted pasture-land and waving grain, to the dark rim of
+woods beyond. To the westward "the Ridge" made a straight, horizontal
+line, except on clear days, when the mountains still farther away showed
+a tenderer blue scalloped across the sky.
+
+A stranger passing through the country prior to the war would have heard
+much of Elphinstone, the Keith plantation, but he would have seen from
+the main road (which, except in summer, was intolerably bad) only long
+stretches of rolling fields well tilled, and far beyond them a grove on
+a high hill, where the mansion rested in proud seclusion amid its
+immemorial oaks and elms, with what appeared to be a small hamlet lying
+about its feet. Had he turned in at the big-gate and driven a mile or
+so, he would have found that Elphinstone was really a world to itself;
+almost as much cut off from the outer world as the home of the Keiths
+had been in the old country. A number of little blacks would have opened
+the gates for him; several boys would have run to take his horse, and he
+would have found a legion of servants about the house. He would have
+found that the hamlet was composed of extensive stables and barns, with
+shops and houses, within which mechanics were plying their trades with
+the ring of hammers, the clack of looms, and the hum of
+spinning-wheels-all for the plantation; whilst on a lower hill farther
+to the rear were the servants' quarters laid out in streets, filled
+with children.
+
+Had the visitor asked for shelter, he would have received, whatever his
+condition, a hospitality as gracious as if he had been the highest in
+the land; he would have found culture with philosophy and wealth with
+content, and he would have come away charmed with the graciousness of
+his entertainment. And yet, if from any other country or region than the
+South, he would have departed with a feeling of mystification, as though
+he had been drifting in a counter-current and had discovered a part of
+the world sheltered and to some extent secluded from the general
+movement and progress of life.
+
+This plantation, then, was Gordon's world. The woods that rimmed it were
+his horizon, as they had been that of the Keiths for generations; more
+or less they always affected his horizon. His father appeared to the boy
+to govern the world; he governed the most important part of it--the
+plantation--without ever raising his voice. His word had the convincing
+quality of a law of nature. The quiet tones of his voice were
+irresistible. The calm face, lighting up at times with the flash of his
+gray eyes, was always commanding: he looked so like the big picture in
+the library, of a tall, straight man, booted and spurred, and partly in
+armor, with a steel hat over his long curling hair, and a grave face
+that looked as if the sun were on it. It was no wonder, thought the boy,
+that he was given a sword by the State when he came back from the
+Mexican War; no wonder that the Governor had appointed him Senator, a
+position he declined because of his wife's ill health. Gordon's wonder
+was that his father was not made President or Commander-in-Chief of the
+army. It no more occurred to him that any one could withstand his father
+than that the great oak-trees in front of the house, which it took his
+outstretched arms six times to girdle, could fall.
+
+Yet it came to pass that within a few years an invading army marched
+through the plantation, camped on the lawn, and cut down the trees; and
+Gordon Keith, whilst yet a boy, came to see Elphinstone in the hands of
+strangers, and his father and himself thrown out on the world.
+
+His mother died while Gordon was still a child. Until then she had not
+appeared remarkable to the boy: she was like the atmosphere, the
+sunshine, and the blue, arching sky, all-pervading and existing as a
+matter of course. Yet, as her son remembered her in after life, she was
+the centre of everything, never idle, never hurried; every one and
+everything revolved about her and received her light and warmth. She was
+the refuge in every trouble, and her smile was enchanting. It was only
+after that last time, when the little boy stood by his mother's bedside
+awed and weeping silently in the shadow of the great darkness that was
+settling upon them, that he knew how absolutely she had been the centre
+and breath of his life. His father was kneeling beside the bed, with a
+face as white as his mother's, and a look of such mingled agony and
+resignation that Gordon never forgot it. As, because of his father's
+teaching, the son in later life tried to be just to every man, so, for
+his mother's sake, he remembered to be kind to every woman.
+
+In the great upheaval that came just before the war, Major Keith stood
+for the Union, but was defeated. When his State seceded, he raised a
+regiment in the congressional district which he had represented for one
+or two terms. As his duties took him from home much of the time, he sent
+Gordon to the school of the noted Dr. Grammer, a man of active mind and
+also active arm, named by his boys, from the latter quality,
+"Old Hickory."
+
+Gordon, like some older men, hoped for war with all his soul. A
+great-grandfather an officer of the line in the Revolution, a
+grandfather in the navy of 1812, and his father a major in the Mexican
+War, with a gold-hilted sword presented him by the State, gave him a
+fair pedigree, and he looked forward to being a great general himself.
+He would be Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great at least. It was his
+preference for a career, unless being a mountain stage-driver was. He
+had seen one or two such beings in the mountains when he accompanied his
+father once on a canvass that he was making for Congress, enthroned
+like Jove, in clouds of oil-coats and leather, mighty in power and
+speech; and since then his dreams had been blessed at times with
+lumbering coaches and clanking teams.
+
+One day Gordon was sent for to come home. When he came down-stairs next
+morning his father was standing in the drawing-room, dressed in full
+uniform, though it was not near as showy as Gordon had expected it to
+be, or as dozens of uniforms the boy had seen the day before about the
+railway-stations on his journey home, gorgeous with gold lace. He was
+conscious, however, that some change had taken place, and a resemblance
+to the man-in-armor in the picture over the library mantel suddenly
+struck the boy. There was the high look, the same light in the eyes, the
+same gravity about the mouth; and when his father, after taking leave of
+the servants, rode away in his gray uniform, on his bay horse
+"Chevalier," with his sword by his side, to join his men at the
+county-seat, and let Gordon accompany him for the first few miles, the
+boy felt as though he had suddenly been transported to a world of which
+he had read, and were riding behind a knight of old. Ah! if there were
+only a few Roundheads formed at the big-gate, how they would
+scatter them!
+
+About the third year of the war, Mr. Keith, now a brigadier-general,
+having been so badly wounded that it was supposed he could never again
+be fit for service in the field, was sent abroad by his government to
+represent it in England in a semi-confidential, semi-diplomatic
+position. He had been abroad before--quite an unusual occurrence at
+that time.
+
+General Keith could not bring himself to leave his boy behind him and
+have the ocean between them, so he took Gordon with him.
+
+After a perilous night in running the blockade, when they were fired on
+and escaped only by sending up rockets and passing as one of the
+blockading squadron, General Keith and Gordon transferred at Nassau to
+their steamer. The vessel touched at Halifax, and among the passengers
+taken on there were an American lady, Mrs. Wickersham of New York, and
+her son Ferdy Wickersham, a handsome, black-eyed boy a year or two older
+than Gordon. As the two lads were the only passengers aboard of about
+their age, they soon became as friendly as any other young animals would
+have become, and everything went on balmily until a quarrel arose over a
+game which they were playing on the lower deck. As General Keith had
+told Gordon that he must be very discreet while on board and not get
+into any trouble, the row might have ended in words had not the sympathy
+of the sailors been with Gordon. This angered the other boy in the
+dispute, and he called Gordon a liar. This, according to Gordon's code,
+was a cause of war. He slapped Ferdy in the mouth, and the next second
+they were at it hammer-and-tongs. So long as they were on their feet,
+Ferdy, who knew something of boxing, had much the best of it and
+punished Gordon severely, until the latter, diving into him, seized him.
+
+In wrestling Ferdy was no match for him, for Gordon had wrestled with
+every boy on the plantation, and after a short scuffle he lifted Ferdy
+and flung him flat on his back on the deck, jarring the wind out of him.
+Ferdy refused to make up and went off crying to his mother, who from
+that time filled the ship with her abuse of Gordon.
+
+The victory of the younger boy gave him great prestige among the
+sailors, and Mike Doherty, the bully of the fore-castle, gave him boxing
+lessons during all the rest of the voyage, teaching him the mystery of
+the "side swing" and the "left-hand upper-cut," which Mike said was "as
+good as a belaying-pin."
+
+"With a good, smooth tongue for the girlls and a good upper-cut for thim
+as treads on your toes, you are aall right," said Mr. Doherty; "you're
+rigged for ivery braize. But, boy, remimber to be quick with both, and
+don't forgit who taaught you."
+
+Thus, it was that, while Gordon Keith was still a boy of about twelve or
+thirteen, instead of being on the old plantation rimmed by the great
+woods, where his life had hitherto been spent, except during the brief
+period when he had been at Dr. Grammer's school, he found himself one
+summer in a little watering-place on the shores of an English lake as
+blue as a china plate, set amid ranges of high green hills, on which
+nestled pretty white or brown villas surrounded by gardens and parks.
+
+The water was a new element for Gordon. The home of the Keiths was in
+the high country back from the great watercourses, and Gordon had never
+had a pair of oars in his hands, nor did he know how to swim; but he
+meant to learn. The sight of the boats rowed about by boys of his own
+age filled him with envy. And one of them, when he first caught sight of
+it, inspired him with a stronger feeling than envy. It was painted white
+and was gay with blue and red stripes around the gunwale. In it sat two
+boys. One, who sat in the stern, was about Gordon's age; the other, a
+little larger than Gordon, was rowing and used the oars like an adept.
+In the bow was a flag, and Gordon was staring at it, when it came to him
+with a rush that it was a "Yankee" flag. He was conscious for half a
+moment that he took some pride in the superiority of the oarsman over
+the boys in the other boats. His next thought was that he had a little
+Confederate flag in his trunk. He had brought it from home among his
+other treasures. He would show his colors and not let the Yankee boys
+have all of the honors. So away he put as hard as his legs could carry
+him. When he got back to the waterside he hired a boat from among those
+lying tied at the stairs, and soon had his little flag rigged up, when,
+taking his seat, he picked up the oars and pushed off. It was rather
+more difficult than it had looked. The oars would not go together.
+However, after a little he was able to move slowly, and was quite elated
+at his success when he found himself out on the lake. Just then he
+heard a shout:
+
+"Take down that flag!"
+
+Gordon wished to turn his boat and look around, but could not do so.
+However, one of the oars came out of the water, and as the boat veered a
+little he saw the boys in the white boat with the Union flag bearing
+down on him.
+
+The oarsman was rowing with strong, swift strokes even while he looked
+over his shoulder, and the boat was shooting along as straight as an
+arrow, with the clear water curling about its prow. Gordon wished for a
+moment that he had not been so daring, but the next second his
+fighting--blood was up, as the other boy called imperiously:
+
+"Strike that flag!"
+
+Gordon could see his face now, for he was almost on him. It was round
+and sunburnt, and the eyes were blue and clear and flashing with
+excitement. His companion, who was cheering him on, was Ferdy
+Wickersham.
+
+"Strike that flag, I say," called the oarsman.
+
+"I won't. Who are you? Strike your own flag."
+
+"I am Norman Wentworth. That's who I am, and if you don't take that flag
+down I will take it down for you, you little nigger-driving rebel."
+
+Gordon Keith was not a boy to neglect the amenities of the occasion.
+
+"Come and try it then, will you, you nigger-stealing Yankees!" he
+called. "I will fight both of you." And he settled himself for defence.
+
+"Well, I will," cried his assailant. "Drop the tiller, Ferdy, and sit
+tight. I will fight fair." Then to Gordon again: "I have given you fair
+warning, and I will have that flag or sink you."
+
+Gordon's answer was to drop one oar as useless, seize the other, and
+steadying himself as well as he could, raise it aloft as a weapon.
+
+"I will kill you if you try it," he said between clinched teeth.
+
+However, the boy rowing the other boat was not to be frightened. He
+gave a vigorous stroke of his oars that sent his boat straight into the
+side of Gordon's boat.
+
+The shock of the two boats coming together pitched Gordon to his knees,
+and came near flinging him into the water; but he was up again in a
+second, and raising his oar, dealt a vicious blow with it, not at the
+boy in the boat, but at the flag in the bow of the boat. The
+unsteadiness of his footing, however, caused him to miss his aim, and he
+only splintered his oar into fragments.
+
+"Hit him with the oar, Norman," called the boy in the stern. "Knock him
+out of the boat."
+
+The other boy made no answer, but with a quick turn of his wrist twisted
+his boat out of its direct course and sent it skimming off to one side.
+Then dropping one oar, he caught up the other with both hands, and with
+a rapid, dexterous swing swept a cataract of water in Gordon's face,
+drenching him, blinding him, and filling his eyes, mouth, and ears with
+the unexpected deluge. Gordon gasped and sputtered, and before he could
+recover from this unlooked-for flank movement, another turn of the wrist
+brought the attacking boat sharp across his bow, and, with a shout of
+triumph, Norman wrenched the defiant flag out of its socket.
+
+Gordon had no time for thought. He had time only to act. With a cry,
+half of rage, half of defiance, he sprang up on the point of the bow of
+his boat, and with outstretched arms launched himself at the bow of the
+other, where the captor had flung the flag, to use both oars. His boat
+slipped from under his feet, and he fell short, but caught the gunwale
+of the other, and dragged himself up to it. He held just long enough to
+clutch both flags, and the next second, with a faint cheer, he rolled
+off and sank with a splash in the water.
+
+Norman Wentworth had risen, and with blazing eyes, his oar uplifted, was
+scrambling toward the bow to repel the boarder, when the latter
+disappeared. Norman gazed at the spot with staring eyes. The next second
+he took in what was happening, and, with an exclamation of horror, he
+suddenly dived overboard. When he came to the top, he was pulling the
+other boy up with him.
+
+Though Norman was a good swimmer, there was a moment of extreme danger;
+for, half unconscious, Gordon pulled him under once. But fortunately
+Norman kept his head, and with a supreme effort breaking the drowning
+boy's hold, he drew him to the top once more. Fortunately for both, a
+man seeing the trouble had brought his boat to the spot, and, just as
+Norman rose to the surface with his burden, he reached out and, seizing
+him, dragged both him and the now unconscious Gordon aboard his boat.
+
+It was some days before Gordon was able to sit up, and meanwhile he
+learned that his assailant and rescuer had been every day to make
+inquiry about him, and his father, Mr. Wentworth, had written to
+Gordon's father and expressed his concern at the accident.
+
+"It is a strange fate," he wrote, "that should after all these years
+have arrayed us against each other thus, and have brought our boys face
+to face in a foreign land. I hear that your boy behaved with the courage
+which I knew your son would show."
+
+General Keith, in turn, expressed his gratitude for the promptness and
+efficiency with which the other's son had apprehended the danger and
+met it.
+
+"My son owes his life to him," he said. "As to the flag, it was the
+fortune of war," and he thought the incident did credit to both
+combatants. He "only wished," he said, "that in every fight over a flag
+there were the same ability to restore to life those who defended it."
+
+Gordon, however, could not participate in this philosophic view of his
+father's. He had lost his flag; he had been defeated in the battle. And
+he owed his life to his victorious enemy.
+
+He was but a boy, and his defeat was gall and wormwood to him. It was
+but very little sweetened by the knowledge that his victor had come to
+ask after him.
+
+He was lying in bed one afternoon, lonely and homesick and sad. His
+father was away, and no one had been in to him for, perhaps, an hour.
+The shrill voices of children and the shouts of boys floated in at the
+open window from somewhere afar off. He was not able to join them. It
+depressed him, and he began to pine for the old plantation--a habit that
+followed him through life in the hours of depression.
+
+Suddenly there was a murmur of voices outside the room, and after a few
+moments the door softly opened, and a lady put her head in and looked at
+him. She was a stranger and was dressed in a travelling-suit. Gordon
+gazed at her without moving or uttering a sound. She came in and closed
+the door gently behind her, and then walked softly over to the side of
+the bed and looked down at him with kind eyes. She was not exactly
+pretty, but to Gordon she appeared beautiful, and he knew that she was a
+friend. Suddenly she dropped down on her knees beside him and put her
+arm over him caressingly.
+
+"I am Norman's mother," she said, "and I have come to look after you and
+to take you home with me if they will let me have you." She stooped over
+and kissed him.
+
+The boy put up his pinched face and kissed her.
+
+"I will go," he said in his weak voice.
+
+She kissed him again, and smiled down at him with moist eyes, and talked
+to him in tender tones, stroking his hair and telling him of Norman's
+sorrow for the trouble, of her own unhappiness, and of her regret that
+the doctors would not let him be moved. When she left, it was with a
+promise that she would come back again and see him; and Gordon knew that
+he had a friend in England of his own kind, and a truth somehow had
+slipped into his heart which set at odds many opinions which he had
+thought principles. He had never thought to feel kindly toward a Yankee.
+
+When Gordon was able to be out again, his father wished him to go and
+thank his former foe who had rescued him. But it was too hard an ordeal
+for the boy to face. Even the memory of Mrs. Wentworth could not
+reconcile him to this.
+
+"You don't know how hard it is, father," he said, with that assurance
+with which boyhood always draws a line between itself and the rest of
+the world. "Did you ever have to ask pardon of one who had fought you?"
+
+General Keith's face wore a singular expression. Suddenly he felt a
+curious sensation in a spot in his right side, and he was standing in a
+dewy glade in a piece of woodland on a Spring morning, looking at a
+slim, serious young man standing very straight and still a few paces
+off, with a pistol gripped in his hand, and, queerly enough, his name,
+too, was Norman Wentworth. But he was not thinking of him. He was
+thinking of a tall girl with calm blue eyes, whom he had walked with the
+day before, and who had sent him away dazed and half maddened. Then some
+one a little to one side spoke a few words and began to count, "One,
+two--" There was a simultaneous report of two pistols, two little puffs
+of smoke, and when the smoke had cleared away, the other man with the
+pistol was sinking slowly to the ground, and he himself was tottering
+into the arms of the man nearest him.
+
+He came back to the present with a gasp.
+
+"My son," he said gravely, "I once was called on and failed. I have
+regretted it all my life, though happily the consequences were not as
+fatal as I had at one time apprehended. If every generation did not
+improve on the follies and weaknesses of those that have gone before,
+there would be no advance in the world. I want you to be wiser and
+stronger than I."
+
+Gordon's chance of revenge came sooner than he expected. Not long after
+he got out of doors again he was on his way down to the lake, where he
+was learning to swim, when a number of boys whom he passed began to hoot
+at him. In their midst was Ferdy Wickersham, the boy who had crossed the
+ocean with him. He was setting the others on. The cry that came to
+Gordon was: "Nigger-driver! Nigger-driver!" Sometimes Fortune, Chance,
+or whatever may be the deity of fortuitous occurrence, places our
+weapons right to hand. What would David have done had there not been a
+stony brook between him and Goliath that day? Just as Gordon with
+burning face turned to defy his deriders, a pile of small stones lay at
+his feet. It looked like Providence. He could not row a boat, but he
+could fling a stone like young David. In a moment he was sending stones
+up the hill with such rapidity that the group above him were thrown into
+confusion.
+
+Then Gordon fell into an error of more noted generals. Seizing a supply
+of missiles, he charged straight up the hill. Though the group had
+broken at the sudden assault, by the time he reached the hill-top they
+had rallied, and while he was out of ammunition they made a charge on
+him. Wheeling, he went down the hill like the wind, while his pursuers
+broke after him with shouts of triumph. As he reached the stone-pile he
+turned and made a stand, which brought them to a momentary stop. Just
+then a shout arose below him. Gordon turned to see rushing up the hill
+toward him Norman Wentworth. He was picking up stones as he ran. Gordon
+heard him call out something, but he did not wait for his words. Here
+was his arch-enemy, his conqueror, and here, at least, he was his equal.
+Without wasting further time with those above him, Gordon sprang toward
+his new assailant, and steadying himself, hurled his heaviest stone.
+Fortunately, Norman Wentworth had been reared in the country and knew
+how to dodge as well as to throw a stone, or his days might have ended
+then and there.
+
+"Hold on! don't throw!" he shouted "I am coming to help you," and,
+without waiting, he sent a stone far over Gordon's head at the party on
+the height above. Gordon, who was poising himself for another shot,
+paused amazed in the midst of his aim, open-mouthed and wide-eyed.
+
+"Come on," cried Norman. "You and I together can lick them. I know the
+way, and we will get above them." So saying, he dashed down a side
+alley, Gordon close at his heels, and, by making a turn, they came out a
+few minutes later on the hill above their enemies, who were rejoicing in
+their easy victory, and, catching them unprepared, routed them and
+scattered them in an instant.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham, finding himself defeated, promptly surrendered and
+offered to enlist on their side. Norman, however, had no idea of letting
+him off so easy.
+
+"I am going to take you prisoner, but not until I have given you a good
+kicking. You know better than to take sides against an American."
+
+"He is a rebel," said Ferdy.
+
+"He is an American," said Norman. And he forthwith proceeded to make
+good his word, and to do it in such honest style that Ferdy, after first
+taking it as a joke, got angry and ran away howling.
+
+Gordon was doubtful as to the wisdom of this severity.
+
+"He will tell," he said.
+
+"Let him," said Norman, contemptuously. "He knows what he will get if he
+does. I was at school with him last year, and I am going to school with
+him again. I will teach him to fight with any one else against an
+American!"
+
+This episode made the two boys closer allies than they would have been
+in a year of peace.
+
+General Keith, finding his mission fruitless, asked leave to return home
+immediately, so that Gordon saw little more of his former foe and
+new ally.
+
+A few days before their departure, Gordon, passing along a road, came on
+a group of three persons, two children and a French governess with
+much-frizzled hair, very black eyes, and a small waist. One of the
+children was a very little girl, richly dressed in a white frock with a
+blue sash that almost covered it, with big brown eyes and yellow
+ringlets; the other child was a ragged girl several years older, with
+tangled hair, gray eyes, and the ruddy, chubby cheeks so often seen in
+children of her class. The governess was in a state of great
+excitement, and was talking French so fast that it was a wonder any
+tongue could utter the words. The little girl of the fine frock and
+brown eyes was clutching to her bosom with a defiant air a large doll
+which the governess was trying to get from her, while the other child
+stood by, looking first toward one of them and then toward the other,
+with an expression divided between timidity and eagerness. A big picture
+of a ballet-dancer with a gay frock and red shoes in a flaring
+advertisement on a sign-board had something to do with the trouble. Now
+the girl drew nearer to the other child and danced a few steps, holding
+out her hand; now she cast a look over her shoulder down the hill, as if
+to see that her retreat were not cut off.
+
+"_Mais, c'est a moi_--it's _my_ doll. I _will_ have it," insisted the
+little girl, backing away and holding it firmly; at which the governess
+began again almost tearing her hair in her desperation, though she ended
+by giving it a pat to see that it was all right.
+
+The approach of Gordon drew her attention to him.
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed in desperation, "_c'est epouvantable_--it ees
+terr-e-ble! Dese young ladie weel give de doll to dat meeseerable
+creature!"
+
+"She is not a 'meeseerable creature'!" insisted the little girl, mocking
+her, her brown eyes flashing. "She danced for me, and I will give it to
+her--I like her."
+
+"Oh, _ciel_! What shall I do! Madame weel abuse me--weel keel me!"
+
+"Mamma will not mind; it is _my_ doll. Aunt Abby gave it to me. I can
+get a plenty more, and I will give it to her," insisted the little girl
+again. Then suddenly, gaining more courage, she turned quickly, and,
+before the governess could stop her, thrust the doll into the other
+child's arms.
+
+"Here, you _shall_ have it."
+
+The governess, with a cry of rage, made a spring for the child, but too
+late: the grimy little hands had clutched the doll, and turning without
+a word of thanks, the little creature sped down the road like a
+frightened animal, her ragged frock fluttering behind her.
+
+"Why, she did not say 'Thank you'!" exclaimed the child, in a
+disappointed tone, looking ruefully after the retreating figure.
+
+The governess broke out on her vehemently in French, very comically
+mingling her upbraidings of her charge, her abuse of the little girl,
+and her apprehension of "Madame."
+
+"Never mind; she does not know any better," said Gordon.
+
+The child's face brightened at this friendly encouragement.
+
+"She is a nasty little creature! You shall not play with her," cried the
+governess, angrily.
+
+"She is not nasty! I like her, and I will play with her," declared the
+child, defiantly.
+
+"What is your name?" asked the boy, much amused by such sturdiness in so
+small a tot.
+
+"Lois Huntington. What is your name?" She looked up at him with her big
+brown eyes.
+
+"Gordon Keith."
+
+"How do you do, Gordon Keith?" She held out her hand.
+
+"How do you do, Lois Huntington?"
+
+She shook hands with him solemnly.
+
+A day or two later, as Gordon was passing through one of the streets in
+the lower part of the village, he came upon a hurdy-gurdy playing a
+livelier tune than most of them usually gave. A crowd of children had
+gathered in the street. Among them was a little barelegged girl who,
+inspired by the music, was dancing and keeping perfect time as she
+tripped back and forth, pirouetted and swayed on the tips of her bare
+toes, flirting her little ragged frock, and kicking with quite the air
+of a ballet-dancer. She divided the honors with the dismal Savoyard, who
+ground away at his organ, and she brought a flicker of admiration into
+his bronzed and grimy face, for he played for her the same tune over and
+over, encouraging her with nods and bravas. She was enjoying her triumph
+quite as much as any prima donna who ever tripped it on a more
+ambitious stage.
+
+Gordon recognized in the little dancer the tangled-haired child who had
+run away with the little girl's doll a few days before.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+GENERAL KEITH BECOMES AN OVERSEER
+
+When the war closed, though it was not recognized at first, the old
+civilization of the South passed away. Fragments of the structure that
+had once risen so fair and imposing still stood for a time, even after
+the foundations were undermined: a bastion here, a tower there; but in
+time they followed the general overthrow, and crumbled gradually to
+their fall, leaving only ruins and decay.
+
+For a time it was hoped that the dilapidation might be repaired and the
+old life be lived again. General Keith, like many others, though broken
+and wasted in body, undertook to rebuild with borrowed money, but with
+disastrous results. The conditions were all against him.
+
+Three or four years' effort to repair his fallen fortunes only plunged
+him deeper in debt. General Keith, like most of his neighbors and
+friends, found himself facing the fact that he was hopelessly insolvent.
+As soon as he saw he could not pay his debts he stopped spending and
+notified his creditors.
+
+"I see nothing ahead of me," he wrote, "but greater ruin. I am like a
+horse in a quicksand: every effort I make but sinks me deeper."
+
+Some of his neighbors took the benefit of the bankrupt-law which was
+passed to give relief. General Keith was urged to do likewise, but
+he declined.
+
+"Though I cannot pay my debts," he said, "the least I can do is to
+acknowledge that I owe them. I am unwilling to appear, even for a short
+time, to be denying what I know to be a fact."
+
+He gave up everything that he owned, reserving nothing that would bring
+in money.
+
+When Elphinstone was sold, it brought less than the debts on it. The old
+plate, with the Keith coat-of-arms on it, from which generations of
+guests had been served, and which old Richard, the butler, had saved
+during the war, went for its weight in silver. The library had been
+pillaged until little of it remained. The old Keith pictures, some of
+them by the best artists, which had been boxed and stored elsewhere
+until after the war, now went to the purchaser of the place for less
+than the price of their frames. Among them was the portrait of the man
+in the steel coat and hat, who had the General's face.
+
+What General Keith felt during this transition no one, perhaps, ever
+knew; certainly his son did not know it, and did not dream of it until
+later in life.
+
+It was, however, not only in the South that fortunes were lost by the
+war. As vast as was the increase of riches at the North among those who
+stayed at home, it did not extend to those who took the field. Among
+these was a young officer named Huntington, from Brookford, a little
+town on the sunny slope that stretches eastwardly from the Alleghanies
+to the Delaware. Captain Huntington, having entered the army on the
+outbreak of the war, like Colonel Keith rose to the rank of general,
+and, like General Keith, received a wound that incapacitated him for
+service. His wife was a Southern woman, and had died abroad, just at the
+close of the war, leaving him a little girl, who was the idol of his
+heart. He was interested in the South, and came South to try and
+recuperate from the effects of his wound and of exposure during the war.
+
+The handsomest place in the neighborhood of Elphinstone was "Rosedale,"
+the family-seat of the Berkeleys. Mr. Berkeley had been killed in the
+war, and the plantation went, like Elphinstone and most of the other
+old estates, for debt. And General Huntington purchased it.
+
+As soon as General Keith heard of his arrival in the neighborhood, he
+called on him and invited him to stay at his house until Rosedale should
+be refurnished and made comfortable again. The two gentlemen soon became
+great friends, and though many of the neighbors looked askance at the
+Federal officer and grumbled at his possessing the old family-seat of
+the Berkeleys, the urbanity and real kindness of the dignified,
+soldierly young officer soon made his way easier and won him respect if
+not friendship. When a man had been a general at the age of twenty-six,
+it meant that he was a man, and when General Keith pronounced that he
+was a gentleman, it meant that he was a gentleman. Thus reasoned the
+neighbors.
+
+His only child was a pretty little girl of five or six years, with great
+brown eyes, yellow curls, and a rosebud face that dimpled adorably when
+she laughed. When Gordon saw her he recognized her instantly as the tot
+who had given her doll to the little dancer two years before. Her eyes
+could not be mistaken. She used to drive about in the tiniest of village
+carts, drawn by the most Liliputian of ponies, and Gordon used to call
+her "Cindy,"--short for Cinderella,--which amused and pleased her. She
+in turn called him her sweetheart; tyrannized over him, and finally
+declared that she was going to marry him.
+
+"Why, you are not going to have a rebel for a sweetheart?" said her
+father.
+
+"Yes, I am. I am going to make him Union," she declared gravely.
+
+"Well, that is a good way. I fancy that is about the best system of
+Reconstruction that has yet been tried."
+
+He told the story to General Keith, who rode over very soon afterwards
+to see the child, and thenceforth called her his fairy daughter.
+
+One day she had a tiff with Gordon, and she announced to him that she
+was not going to kiss him any more.
+
+"Oh, yes, you are," said he, teasing her.
+
+"I am not." Her eyes flashed. And although he often teased her
+afterwards, and used to draw a circle on his cheek which, he said, was
+her especial reservation, she kept her word, even in spite of the
+temptation which he held out to her to take her to ride if she
+would relent.
+
+One Spring General Huntington's cough suddenly increased, and he began
+to go downhill so rapidly as to cause much uneasiness to his friends.
+General Keith urged him to go up to a little place on the side of the
+mountains which had been quite a health-resort before the war.
+
+"Ridgely is one of the most salubrious places I know for such trouble as
+yours. And Dr. Theophilus Balsam is one of the best doctors in the
+State. He was my regimental surgeon during the war. He is a Northern man
+who came South before the war. I think he had an unfortunate
+love-affair."
+
+"There is no place for such trouble as mine," said the younger man,
+gravely. "That bullet went a little too deep." Still, he went
+to Ridgely.
+
+Under the charge of Dr. Balsam the young officer for a time revived, and
+for a year or two appeared on the way to recovery. Then suddenly his old
+trouble returned, and he went down as if shot. The name Huntington had
+strong association for the old physician; for it was a Huntington that
+Lois Brooke, the younger sister of Abigail Brooke, his old sweetheart,
+had married, and Abigail Brooke's refusal to marry him had sent him
+South. The Doctor discovered early in his acquaintance with the young
+officer that he was Abigail Brooke's nephew. He, however, made no
+reference to his former relation to his patient's people.
+
+Division bitterer than that war in which he had fought lay between them,
+the division that had embittered his life and made him an exile from his
+people. But the little girl with her great, serious eyes became the old
+physician's idol and tyrant, and how he worked over her father! Even in
+those last hours when the end had unexpectedly appeared, and General
+Huntington was making his last arrangements with the same courage which
+had made him a noted officer when hardly more than a boy, the Doctor
+kept his counsel almost to the end.
+
+"How long have I to live, Doctor?" panted the dying man, when he rallied
+somewhat from the attack that had struck him down.
+
+"Not very long."
+
+"Then I wish you to send for General Keith. I wish him to take my child
+to my aunt, Miss Abigail Brooke."
+
+"I will attend to it" said the Doctor.
+
+"So long as she lives she will take care of her. But she is now an old
+woman, and when she dies, God knows what will become of her."
+
+"I will look after her as long as I live," said the Doctor.
+
+"Thank you, Doctor." There was a pause. "She is a saint." His mind had
+gone back to his early life. To this Dr. Balsam made no reply. "She has
+had a sad life. She was crossed in love but instead of souring, it
+sweetened her."
+
+"I was the man," said the Doctor, quietly. "I will look after your
+child."
+
+"You were! I never knew his name. She never married."
+
+He gave a few directions, and presently said: "My little girl? I wish to
+see her. It cannot hurt me?"
+
+"No, it will not hurt you," said the Doctor, quietly.
+
+The child was brought, and the dying man's eyes lit up as they rested on
+her pink face and brown eyes filled with a vague wonder.
+
+"You must remember papa."
+
+She stood on tiptoe and, leaning over, kissed him.
+
+"And you must go to Aunt Abby when I have gone."
+
+"I will take Gordon Keith with me," said the child.
+
+The ghost of a smile flickered about the dying man's eyes. Then came a
+fit of coughing, and when it had passed, his head, after a few gasps,
+sank back.
+
+At a word from the Doctor, an attendant took the child out of the room.
+
+That evening the old Doctor saw that the little girl was put to bed, and
+that night he sat up alone with the body. There were many others to
+relieve him, but he declined them and kept his vigil alone.
+
+What memories were with him; what thoughts attended him through those
+lonely hours, who can tell!
+
+General Keith went immediately to Ridgely on hearing of General
+Huntington's death. He took Gordon with him, thinking that he would help
+to comfort the little orphaned girl. The boy had no idea how well he was
+to know the watering-place in after years. The child fell to his care
+and clung to him, finally going to sleep in his arms. While the
+arrangements were being made, they moved for a day or two over to Squire
+Rawson's, the leading man of the Ridge region, where the squire's
+granddaughter, a fresh-faced girl of ten or twelve years, took care of
+the little orphan and kept her interested.
+
+The burial, in accordance with a wish expressed by General Huntington,
+took place in a corner of the little burying-ground at Ridgely, which
+lay on a sunny knoll overlooking the long slope to the northeastward.
+The child walked after the bier, holding fast to Gordon's hand, while
+Dr. Balsam and General Keith walked after them.
+
+As soon as General Keith could hear from Miss Brooke he took the child
+to her; but to the last Lois said that she wanted Gordon to come
+with her.
+
+Soon afterwards it appeared that General Huntington's property had
+nearly all gone. His plantation was sold.
+
+Several times Lois wrote Gordon quaint little letters scrawled in a
+childish hand, asking about the calves and pigeons and chickens that had
+been her friends. But after a while the letters ceased to come.
+
+When Elphinstone was sold, the purchaser was a certain Mr. Aaron
+Wickersham of New York, the father of Ferdy Wickersham, with whom Gordon
+had had the rock-battle. Mr. Wickersham was a stout and good-humored
+man of fifty, with a head like a billiard-bail, and a face that was both
+shrewd and kindly. He had, during the war, made a fortune out of
+contracts, and was now preparing to increase it in the South, where the
+mountain region, filled with coal and iron, lay virgin for the first
+comer with sufficient courage and astuteness to take it. He found the
+new legislature of the State an instrument well fitted to his hands. It
+could be manipulated.
+
+The Wickershams had lately moved into a large new house on Fifth Avenue,
+where Fashion was climbing the hill toward the Park in the effort to get
+above Murray Hill, and possibly to look down upon the substantial and
+somewhat prosaic mansions below, whose doors it had sometimes been found
+difficult to enter. Mrs. Wickersham was from Brookford, the same town
+from which the Huntingtons came, and, when a young and handsome girl,
+having social ambitions, had married Aaron Wickersham when he was but a
+clerk in the banking-house of Wentworth & Son. And, be it said, she had
+aided him materially in advancing his fortunes. She was a handsome
+woman, and her social ambitions had grown. Ferdy was her only child, and
+was the joy and pride of her heart. Her ambition centred in him. He
+should be the leader of the town, as she felt his beauty and his
+smartness entitled him to be. It was with this aim that she induced her
+husband to build the fine new house on the avenue. She knew the value of
+a large and handsome mansion in a fashionable quarter. Aaron Wickersham
+knew little of fashion; but he knew the power of money, and he had
+absolute confidence in his wife's ability. He would furnish the means
+and leave the rest to her. The house was built and furnished by
+contract, and Mrs. Wickersham took pride in the fact that it was much
+finer than the Wentworth mansion on Washington Square, and more
+expensive than the house of the Yorkes, which was one of the big houses
+on the avenue, and had been the talk of the town when it was built ten
+years before. Will Stirling, one of the wags, said that it was a good
+thing that Mr. Wickersham did not take the contract for himself.
+
+Mr. Wickersham, having spent a considerable sum in planning and
+preparing his Southern enterprise, and having obtained a charter from
+the legislature of the State that gave him power to do almost anything
+he wished, suddenly found himself balked by the fact that the people in
+the mountain region which he wished to reach with his road were so
+bitterly opposed to any such innovation that it jeopardized his entire
+scheme. From the richest man in that section, an old cattle-dealer and
+lumberman named Rawson, to Tim Gilsey, who drove the stage from Eden to
+Gumbolt Gap, they were all opposed to any "newfangled" notions, and they
+regarded everything that came from carpet-baggers as "robbery and
+corruption."
+
+He learned that "the most influential man down there" was General Keith,
+and that his place was for sale.
+
+"I can reach him," said Mr. Wickersham, with a gleam in his eye. "I will
+have a rope around his neck that will lead him." So he bought the place.
+
+Fortunately, perhaps, for Mr. Wickersham, he hinted something of his
+intentions to his counsel, a shrewd old lawyer of the State, who thought
+that he could arrange the matter better than Mr. Wickersham could.
+
+"You don't know how to deal with these old fellows," he said.
+
+"I know men," said Mr. Wickersham, "and I know that when I have a hold
+on a man--"
+
+"You don't know General Keith," said Mr. Bagge. The glint in his eye
+impressed the other and he yielded.
+
+So Mr. Wickersham bought the Keith plantation and left it to Greene
+Bagge, Esq., to manage the business. Mr. Bagge wrote General Keith a
+diplomatic letter eulogistic of the South and of Mr. Wickersham's
+interest in it, and invited the General to remain on the place for the
+present as its manager.
+
+General Keith sat for some time over that letter, his face as grave as
+it had ever been in battle. What swept before his mental vision who
+shall know? The history of two hundred years bound the Keiths to
+Elphinstone. They had carved it from the forest and had held it against
+the Indian. From there they had gone to the highest office of the State.
+Love, marriage, death--all the sanctities of life--were bound up with
+it. He talked it over with Gordon.
+
+Gordon's face fell.
+
+"Why, father, you will be nothing but an overseer."
+
+General Keith smiled. Gordon remembered long afterwards, with shame for
+his Speech, how wistful that smile was.
+
+"Yes; I shall be something more than that. I shall be, at least, a
+faithful one. I wish I could be as successful a one."
+
+He wrote saying that, as he had failed for himself, he did not see how
+he could succeed for another. But upon receiving a very flattering
+reassurance, he accepted the offer. Thus, the General remained as an
+employe on the estate which had been renowned for generations as the
+home of the Keiths. And as agent for the new owner he farmed the place
+with far greater energy and success than he had ever shown on his own
+account. It was a bitter cup for Gordon to have his father act as an
+"overseer"; but if it contained any bitterness for General Keith, he
+never gave the least evidence of it, nor betrayed his feeling by the
+slightest sign.
+
+When Mr. Wickersham visited his new estate he admitted that Mr. Bagge
+knew better than he how to deal with General Keith.
+
+When he was met at the station by a tall, gray-haired gentleman who
+looked like something between a general and a churchwarden, he was
+inclined to be shy; but when the gentleman grasped his hand, and with a
+voice of unmistakable sincerity said he had driven out himself to meet
+him, to welcome him among them, he felt at home.
+
+"It is gentlemen like yourself to whom we must look for the preservation
+of our civilization," said General Keith, and introduced him personally
+to every man he met as, "the gentleman who has bought my old place--not
+a 'carpet-bagger,' but a gentleman interested in the development of our
+country, sir."
+
+Mr. Wickersham, in fact, was treated with a distinction to which he had
+been a stranger during his former visits South. He liked it. He felt
+quite like a Southern gentleman, and with one or two Northerners whom he
+met held himself a little distantly.
+
+Once or twice the new owner of Elphinstone came down with parties of
+friends--"to look at the country." They were interested in developing
+it, and had been getting sundry acts passed by the legislature with this
+in view. (General Keith's nose always took a slight elevation when the
+legislature was mentioned.) General Keith entertained the visitors
+precisely as he had done when he was the master, and Mr. Wickersham and
+his guests treated him, in the main, as if he were still the master.
+General Keith sat at the foot of the table opposite Mr. Wickersham, and
+directed the servants, who still called him "Master," and obeyed him
+as such.
+
+Mr. Wickersham conceived a great regard for General Keith, not unmingled
+with a certain contempt for his inability to avail himself of the new
+conditions. "Fine old fellow," he said to his friends. "No more
+business-sense than a child. If he had he would go in with us and make
+money for himself instead of telling us how to make it." He did not know
+that General Keith would not have "gone in" with him in the plan he had
+carried through that legislature to save his life. But he honored the
+old fellow all the more. He had stood up for the General against Mrs.
+Wickersham, who hated all Keiths on Ferdy's account. The old General,
+who was as oblivious of this as a child, was always sending Mrs.
+Wickersham his regards.
+
+"Perhaps, she might like to come down and see the place?" he suggested.
+"It is not what it used to be, but we can make her comfortable." His
+glance as it swept about him was full of affection.
+
+Mr. Wickersham said he feared that Mrs. Wickersham's health would not
+permit her to come South.
+
+"This is the very region for her," said the General. "There is a fine
+health-resort in the mountains, a short distance from us. I have been
+there, and it is in charge of an old friend of mine, Dr. Balsam, one of
+the best doctors in the State. He was my regimental surgeon. I can
+recommend him. Bring her down, and let us see what we can do for her."
+
+Mr. Wickersham thanked him with a smile. Time had been when Mrs.
+Wickersham had been content with small health-resorts. But that time was
+past. He did not tell General Keith that Mrs. Wickersham, remembering
+the fight between her son and Gordon, had consented to his buying the
+place from a not very noble motive, and vowed that she would never set
+her foot on it so long as a Keith remained there. He only assured the
+General that he would convey his invitation.
+
+Mr. Wickersham's real interest, however, lay in the mountains to the
+westward. And General Keith gave him some valuable hints as to the
+deposits lying in the Ridge and the mountains beyond the Ridge.
+
+"I will give you letters to the leading men in that region," he said.
+"The two most influential men up there are Dr. Balsam and Squire Rawson.
+They have, like Abraham and Lot, about divided up the country."
+
+Mr. Wickersham's eyes glistened. He thanked him, and said that he might
+call on him.
+
+Once there came near being a clash between Mr. Wickersham and General
+Keith. When Mr. Wickersham mentioned that he had invited a number of
+members of the legislature--"gentlemen interested in the development of
+the resources of the State"--to meet him, the General's face changed.
+There was a little tilting of the nose and a slight quivering of the
+nostrils. A moment later he spoke.
+
+"I will have everything in readiness for your--f--for your guests; but I
+must ask you to excuse me from meeting them."
+
+Mr. Wickersham turned to him in blank amazement.
+
+"Why, General?"
+
+The expression on the old gentleman's face answered him. He knew that at
+a word he should lose his agent, and he had use for him. He had plans
+that were far-reaching, and the General could be of great service
+to him.
+
+When the statesmen arrived, everything on the place was in order; they
+were duly met at the station, and were welcomed at the house by the
+owner. Everything for their entertainment was prepared. Even the fresh
+mint was in the tankard on the old sideboard. Only the one who had made
+these preparations was absent.
+
+Just before the vehicles were to return from the railway, General Keith
+walked into the room where Mr. Wickersham was lounging. He was booted
+and spurred for riding.
+
+"Everything is in order for your guests, sir. Richard will see that they
+are looked after. These are the keys. Richard knows them all, and is
+entirely reliable. I will ask you to excuse me till--for a day or two."
+
+Mr. Wickersham had been revolving in his mind what he should say to the
+old gentleman. He had about decided to speak very plainly to him on the
+folly of such narrowness. Something, however, in the General's air again
+deterred him: a thinning of the nostril; an unwonted firmness of the
+mouth. A sudden increase in the resemblance to the man-in-armor over the
+mantel struck him--a mingled pride and gravity. It removed him a hundred
+years from the present.
+
+The keen-eyed capitalist liked the General, and in a way honored him
+greatly. His old-fashioned ideas entertained him. So what he said was
+said kindly. He regretted that the General could not stay; he "would
+have liked him to know his friends."
+
+"They are not such bad fellows, after all. Why, one of them is a
+preacher," he said jocularly as he walked to the door, "and a very
+bright fellow. J. Quincy Plume is regarded as a man of great ability."
+
+"Yes, sir; I have heard of him. His doctrine is from the 'Wicked Bible';
+he omits the 'not.' Good morning." And General Keith bowed himself out.
+
+When the guests arrived, Mr. Wickersham admitted to himself that they
+were a strange lot of "assorted statesmen." He was rather relieved that
+the General had not remained. When he looked about the table that
+evening, after the juleps were handed around and the champagne had
+followed, he was still more glad. The set of old Richard's head and the
+tilt of his nose were enough to face. An old and pampered hound in the
+presence of a pack of puppies could not have been more disdainful.
+
+The preacher he had mentioned, Mr. J. Quincy Plume, was one of the
+youngest members of the party and one of the most striking--certainly
+one of the most convivial and least abashed. Mr. Plume had, to use his
+own expression, "plucked a feather from many wings, and bathed his
+glistening pinions in the iridescent light of many orbs." He had been
+"something of a doctor"; then had become a preacher--to quote him again,
+"not exactly of the gospel as it was understood by mossbacked
+theologians, of 'a creed outworn,'" but rather the "gospel of the new
+dispensation, of the new brotherhood--the gospel of liberty, equality,
+fraternity." Now he had found his true vocation, that of statesmanship,
+where he could practise what he had preached; could "bask in the light
+of the effulgent sun of progress, and, shod with the sandals of Mercury,
+soar into a higher empyrean than he had yet attained." All of which,
+being translated, meant that Mr. Plume, having failed in several
+professions, was bent now on elevating himself by the votes of the
+ignorant followers whom he was cajoling into taking him as a leader.
+
+Mr. Wickersham had had some dealing with him and had found him capable
+and ready for any job. When he had been in the house an hour Mr.
+Wickersham was delighted with him, and mentally decided to secure him
+for his agent. When he had been there a day Mr. Wickersham mentally
+questioned whether he had not better drop him out of his schemes
+altogether.
+
+One curious thing was that each guest secretly warned him against all
+the others.
+
+The prices were much higher than Mr. Wickersham had expected. But they
+were subject to scaling.
+
+"Well, Richard, what do you think of the gentlemen?" asked Mr.
+Wickersham of the old servant, much amused at his disdain.
+
+"What gent'mens?"
+
+"Why, our guests." He used the possessive that the General used.
+
+"Does you call dem 'gent'mens?'" demanded the old servant, fixing his
+eyes on him.
+
+"Well, no; I don't think I do--all of them."
+
+"Nor, suh; dee ain't gent'mens; dee's scalawags!" said Richard, with
+contempt. "I been livin' heah 'bout sixty years, I reckon, an' I never
+seen nobody like dem eat at de table an' sleep in de beds in dis
+house befo'."
+
+When the statesmen were gone and General Keith had returned, old Richard
+gave Mr. Wickersham an exhibition of the manner in which a gentleman
+should be treated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE ENGINEER AND THE SQUIRE
+
+Marius amid the ruins of Carthage is not an inspiring figure to us while
+we are young; it is Marius riding up the Via Sacra at the head of his
+resounding legions that then dazzles us. But as we grow older we see how
+much greater he was when, seated amid the ruins, he sent his scornful
+message to Rome. So, Gordon Keith, when a boy, thought being a gentleman
+a very easy and commonplace thing. He had known gentlemen all his
+life--had been bred among them. It was only later on, after he got out
+into the world, that he saw how fine and noble that old man was, sitting
+unmoved amid the wreck not only of his life and fortunes, but of
+his world.
+
+General Keith was unable to raise even the small sum necessary to send
+the boy to college, but among the debris of the old home still remained
+the relics of a once choice library, and General Keith became himself
+his son's instructor. It was a very irregular system of study, but the
+boy, without knowing it, was browsing in those pastures that remain ever
+fresh and green. There was nothing that related to science in any form.
+
+"I know no more of science, sir, than an Indian," the General used to
+say. "The only sciences I ever thought I knew were politics and war, and
+I have failed in both."
+
+He knew very little of the world--at least, of the modern world. Once,
+at table, Gordon was wishing that they had money.
+
+"My son," said his father, quietly, "there are some things that
+gentlemen never discuss at table. Money is one of them." Such were his
+old-fashioned views.
+
+It was fortunate for his son, then, that there came to the neighborhood
+about this time a small engineering party, sent down by Mr. Wickersham
+to make a preliminary survey for a railroad line up into the Ridge
+country above General Keith's home. The young engineer, Mr. Grinnell
+Rhodes, brought a letter to General Keith from Mr. Wickersham. He had
+sent his son down with the young man, and he asked that the General
+would look after him a little and would render Mr. Rhodes any assistance
+in his power. The tall young engineer, with his clear eyes, pleasant
+voice, and quick ways, immediately ingratiated himself with both General
+Keith and Gordon. The sight of the instruments and, much more, the
+appearance of the young "chief," his knowledge of the world, and his
+dazzling authority as, clad in corduroy and buttoned in high yellow
+gaiters, he day after day strode forth with his little party and ran his
+lines, sending with a wave of his hand his rodmen to right or left
+across deep ravines and over eminences, awakened new ambitions in Gordon
+Keith's soul. The talk of building great bridges, of spanning mighty
+chasms, and of tunnelling mountains inspired the boy. What was Newton
+making his calculations from which to deduce his fundamental laws, or
+Galileo watching the stars from his Florentine tower? This young captain
+was Archimedes and Euclid, Newton and Galileo, all in one. He made
+them live.
+
+It was a new world for Gordon. He suddenly awoke.
+
+Both the engineer and Gordon could well have spared one of the
+engineer's assistants. Ferdy Wickersham had fulfilled the promise of his
+boyhood, and would have been very handsome but for an expression about
+the dark eyes which raised a question. He was popular with girls, but
+made few friends among men, and he and Mr. Rhodes had already clashed.
+Rhodes gave some order which Ferdy refused to obey. Rhodes turned on
+him a cold blue eye. "What did you say?"
+
+"I guess this is my father's party; he's paying the freight, and I guess
+I am his son."
+
+"I guess it's my party, and you'll do what I say or go home," said Mr.
+Rhodes, coldly. "Your father has no 'son' in this party. I have a
+rodman. Unless you are sick, you do your part of the work."
+
+Ferdy submitted for reasons of his own; but his eyes lowered, and he did
+not forget Mr. Rhodes.
+
+The two youngsters soon fell out. Ferdy began to give orders about the
+place, quite as if he were the master. The General cautioned Gordon not
+to mind what he said. "He has been spoiled a little; but don't mind him.
+An only child is at a great disadvantage." He spoke as if Gordon were
+one of a dozen children.
+
+But Ferdy Wickersham misunderstood the other's concession. He resented
+the growing intimacy between Rhodes and Gordon. He had discovered that
+Gordon was most sensitive about the old plantation, and he used his
+knowledge. And when Mr. Rhodes interposed it only gave the sport of
+teasing Gordon a new point.
+
+One morning, when the three were together, Ferdy began, what he probably
+meant for banter, to laugh at Gordon for bragging about his plantation.
+
+"You ought to have heard him, Mr. Rhodes, how he used to blow about it."
+
+"I did not blow about it," said Gordon, flushing.
+
+Rhodes, without looking up, moved in his seat uneasily.
+
+"Ferdy, shut up--you bother me. I am working."
+
+But Ferdy did not heed either this warning or the look on Gordon's face.
+His game had now a double zest: he could sting Gordon and worry Rhodes.
+
+"I don't see why my old man was such a fool as to want such a dinged
+lonesome old place for, anyhow," he said, with a little laugh. "I am
+going to give it away when I get it."
+
+Gordon's face whitened and flamed again, and his eyes began to snap.
+
+"Then it's the only thing you ever would give away," said Mr. Rhodes,
+pointedly, without raising his eyes from his work.
+
+Gordon took heart. "Why did you come down here if you feel that way
+about it?"
+
+"Because my old man offered me five thousand if I'd come. You didn't
+think I'd come to this blanked old place for nothin', did you? Not
+much, sonny."
+
+"Not if he knew you," Said Mr. Rhodes, looking across at him. "If he
+knew you, he'd know you never did anything for nothing, Ferdy."
+
+Ferdy flushed. "I guess I do it about as often as you do. I guess you
+struck my governor for a pretty big pile."
+
+Mr. Rhodes's face hardened, and he fixed his eyes on him. "If I do, I
+work for it honestly. I don't make an agreement to work, and then play
+'old soldier' on him."
+
+"I guess you would if you didn't have to work."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't," said Mr. Rhodes, firmly, "and I don't want to hear
+any more about it. If you won't work, then I want you to let me work."
+
+Ferdy growled something under his breath about guessing that Mr. Rhodes
+was "working to get Miss Harriet Creamer and her pile"; but if Mr.
+Rhodes heard him he took no notice of it, and Ferdy turned back to
+the boy.
+
+Meantime, Gordon had been calculating. Five thousand dollars! Why, it
+was a fortune! It would have relieved his father, and maybe have saved
+the place. In his amazement he almost forgot his anger with the boy who
+could speak of such a sum so lightly.
+
+Ferdy gave him a keen glance. "What are you so huffy about, Keith?" he
+demanded. "I don't see that it's anything to you what I say about the
+place. You don't own it. I guess a man has a right to say what he
+chooses of his own."
+
+Gordon wheeled on him with blazing eyes, then turned around and walked
+abruptly away. He could scarcely keep back his tears. The other boy
+watched him nonchalantly, and then turned to Mr. Rhodes, who was
+glowering over his papers. "I'll take him down a point or two. He's
+always blowing about his blamed old place as if he still owned it. He's
+worse than the old man, who is always blowing about 'before the war' and
+his grandfather and his old pictures. I can buy better ancestors on
+Broadway for twenty dollars."
+
+Mr. Rhodes gathered up his papers and rose to his feet.
+
+"You could not make yourself as good a descendant for a million," he
+said, fastening his eye grimly on Ferdy.
+
+"Oh, couldn't I? Well, I guess I could. I guess I am about as good as he
+is, or you either."
+
+"Well, you can leave me out of the case," said Mr. Rhodes, sharply. "I
+will tell you that you are not as good as he, for he would never have
+said to you what you have said to him if your positions had been
+reversed."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"I don't expect you do," said Mr. Rhodes. He stalked away. "I can't
+stand that boy. He makes me sick," he said to himself. "If I hadn't
+promised his governor to make him stick, I would shake him."
+
+Ferdy was still smarting under Mr. Rhodes's biting sarcasm when the
+three came together again. He meant to be even with Rhodes, and he
+watched his opportunity.
+
+Rhodes was a connection of the Wentworths, and had been helped at
+college by Norman's father, which Ferdy knew. One of the handsomest
+girls in their set, Miss Louise Caldwell, was a cousin of Rhodes, and
+Norman was in love with her. Ferdy, who could never see any one
+succeeding without wishing to supplant him, had of late begun to fancy
+himself in love with her also, but Mr. Rhodes, he knew, was Norman's
+friend. He also knew that Norman was Mr. Rhodes's friend in a little
+affair which Mr. Rhodes was having with one of the leading belles of the
+town, Miss Harriet Creamer, the daughter of Nicholas Creamer of Creamer,
+Crustback & Company.
+
+Ferdy had received that day a letter from his mother which stated that
+Louise Caldwell's mother was making a set at Norman for her daughter.
+Ferdy's jealousy was set on edge, and he now began to talk about Norman.
+Rhodes sniffed at the sneering mention of his name, and Gordon, whose
+face still wore a surly look, pricked up his ears.
+
+"You need not always be cracking Norman up," said Wickersham to Rhodes.
+"You would not be if I were to tell you what I know about him. He is no
+better than anybody else."
+
+"Oh, he is better than some, Ferdy," said Mr. Rhodes. Gordon gave an
+appreciative grunt which drew Ferdy's eyes on him.
+
+"You think so too, Keith, I suppose?" he said. "Well, you needn't. You
+need not be claiming to be such a friend of his. He is not so much of a
+friend of yours, I can tell you. I have heard him say as many mean
+things about you as any one."
+
+It was Gordon's opportunity. He had been waiting for one.
+
+"I don't believe it. I believe it's a lie," he declared, his face
+whitening as he gathered himself together. His eyes, which had been
+burning, had suddenly begun to blaze.
+
+Mr. Rhodes looked up. He said nothing, but his eyes began to sparkle.
+
+"You're a liar yourself," retorted Wickersham, turning red.
+
+Gordon reached for him. "Take it back!" At the same moment Rhodes sprang
+and caught him, but not quite in time. The tip of Gordon's fingers as he
+slapped at Ferdy just reached the latter's cheek and left a red
+mark there.
+
+"Take it back," he said again between his teeth as Rhodes flung his arm
+around him.
+
+For answer Ferdy landed a straight blow in his face, making his nose
+bleed and his head ring.
+
+"Take that!"
+
+Gordon struggled to get free, but in vain. Rhodes with one arm swept
+Wickersham back. With the other he held Gordon in an iron grip. "Keep
+off, or I will let him go," he said.
+
+The boy ceased writhing, and looked up into the young man's face. "You
+had just as well let me go. I am going to whip him. He has told a lie on
+my friend, who saved my life. And he's hit me. Let me go." He began
+to whimper.
+
+"Now, look here, boys," said Rhodes; "you have got to stop right here
+and make up. I won't have this fighting."
+
+"Let him go. I can whip him," said Ferdy, squaring himself, and adding
+an epithet.
+
+Gordon was standing quite still. "I am going to fight him," he said,
+"and whip him. If he whips me, I am going to fight him again until I do
+whip him."
+
+Mr. Rhodes's face wore a puzzled expression. He looked down at the
+sturdy face with its steady eyes, tightly gripped mouth, and chin which
+had suddenly grown squarer.
+
+"If I let you go will you promise not to fight?"
+
+"I will promise not to fight him here if he will come out behind the
+barn," said Gordon. "But if he don't, I'm going to fight him here. I am
+going to fight him and I am going to whip him."
+
+Mr. Rhodes considered. "If I go out there with you and let you have two
+rounds, will you make up and agree never to refer to the subject again?"
+
+"Yes," said Wickersham.
+
+"If I whip him," said Gordon.
+
+"Come along with me. I will let you two boys try each other's mettle for
+two rounds, but, remember, you have got to stop when I call time."
+
+So they came to a secluded spot, where the two boys took off their
+coats.
+
+"Come, you fellows had better make up now," said Mr. Rhodes, standing
+above them good-humored and kindly.
+
+"I don't see what we are fighting about," said Ferdy.
+
+"Take back what you said about Norman," demanded Gordon.
+
+"There is nothing to take back," declared Ferdy.
+
+"Then take that!" said Gordon, stepping forward and tapping him in the
+mouth with the back of his hand.
+
+He had not expected the other boy to be so quick. Before he could put
+himself on guard, Ferdy had fired away, and catching him right in the
+eye, he sent him staggering back. He was up again in a second, however,
+and the next moment was at his opponent like a tiger. The rush was as
+unlooked for on Wickersham's part as Wickersham's blow had been by
+Gordon, and after a moment the lessons of Mike Doherty began to tell,
+and Gordon was ducking his head and dodging Wickersham's blows; and he
+began to drive him backward.
+
+"By Jove! he knows his business," said Rhodes to himself.
+
+Just then he showed that he knew his business, for, swinging out first
+with his right, he brought in the cut which was Mr. Doherty's _chef
+d'oeuvre_, and catching Wickersham under the chin, he sent him flat on
+his back on the ground.
+
+Mr. Rhodes called time and picked him up.
+
+"Come, now, that's enough," he said.
+
+Gordon wiped the blood from his face.
+
+"He has got to take back what he said about Norman, or I have another
+round."
+
+"You had better take it back, Ferdy. You began it," said the umpire.
+
+"I didn't begin it. It's a lie!"
+
+"You did," said Mr. Rhodes, coldly. He turned to Gordon. "You have one
+more round."
+
+"I take it back," growled Ferdy.
+
+Just then there was a step on the grass, and General Keith stood beside
+them. His face was very grave as he chided the boys for fighting; but
+there was a gleam in his eyes that showed Mr. Rhodes and possibly the
+two combatants that he was not wholly displeased. At his instance and
+Mr. Rhodes's, the two boys shook hands and promised not to open the
+matter again.
+
+As Wickersham continued to shirk the work of rodman, Rhodes took Gordon
+in his party, instructed him in the use of the instruments, and inspired
+him with enthusiasm for the work, none the less eager because he
+contrasted him with Ferdy. Rhodes knew what General Keith's name was
+worth, and he thought his son being of his party would be no
+hindrance to him.
+
+The trouble came when he proposed to the General to pay Gordon for his
+work.
+
+"He is worth no salary at present, sir," said the General. "I shall be
+delighted to have him go with you, and your instruction will more than
+compensate us."
+
+The matter was finally settled by Rhodes declining positively to take
+Gordon except on his own terms. He needed an axeman and would pay him as
+such. He could not take him at all unless he were under his authority.
+
+Mr. Rhodes was not mistaken. General Keith's name was one to conjure
+with. Squire Rawson was the principal man in all the Ridge region, and
+he had, as Rhodes knew, put himself on record as unalterably opposed to
+a railroad. He was a large, heavy man, deep-chested and big-limbed, with
+grizzled hair and beard, a mouth closer drawn than might have been
+expected in one with his surroundings, and eyes that were small and
+deep-set, but very keen. His two-storied white house, with wings and
+portico, though not large, was more pretentious than most of those in
+the section, and his whitewashed buildings, nestled amid the fruit-trees
+on a green hill looking up the valley to the Gap, made quite a
+settlement. He was a man of considerable property and also of great
+influence, and in the Ridge region, as elsewhere, wealth is a basis of
+position and influence. The difference is one of degree. The evidences
+of wealth in the Ridge country were land and cattle, and these Squire
+Rawson had in abundance. He was esteemed the best judge of cattle in all
+that region.
+
+Consistency is a jewel; but there are regions where Hospitality is
+reckoned before Consistency, and as soon as the old squire learned that
+General Keith's son was with the surveying party, even though it was, to
+use a common phrase, "comin' interferin'" with that country, he rode
+over to their camp and invited Gordon and his "friends" to be his guests
+as long as they should remain in that neighborhood.
+
+"I don't want you to think, young man," he said to Rhodes, "that I'm
+goin' to agree to your dod-rotted road comin' through any land of mine,
+killin' my cattle; but I'll give you a bed and somethin' to eat."
+
+Rhodes felt that he had gained a victory; Gordon was doubtful.
+
+Though the squire never failed to remind the young engineer that the
+latter was a Yankee, and as such the natural and necessary enemy of the
+South, he and Rhodes became great friends, and the squire's hospitable
+roof remained the headquarters of the engineering party much longer than
+there was any necessity for its being so.
+
+The squire's family consisted of his wife, a kindly, bustling little old
+dame, who managed everything and everybody, including the squire, with a
+single exception. This was her granddaughter, Euphronia Tripper, a plump
+and fresh young girl with light hair, a fair skin, and bright
+eyes. The squire laid down the law to those about him, but Mrs.
+Rawson--"Elizy"-laid down the law for him. This the old fellow was ready
+enough to admit. Sometimes he had a comical gleam in his deep eyes when
+he turned them on his guests as he rose at her call of "Adam, I
+want you."
+
+"Boys, learn to obey promptly," he said; "saves a sight o' trouble. It's
+better in the family 'n a melojeon. It's got to come sooner or later,
+and the sooner the better for you. The difference between me and most
+married men around here is that they lies about it, and I don't. I know
+I belongs to Eliza. She owns me, but then she treats me well. I'm sort
+o' meek when she's around, but then I make up for it by bein' so durned
+independent when I'm away from home. Besides, it's a good deal better to
+be ordered about by somebody as keers for you than not to have anybody
+in the world as keers whether you come or stay."
+
+Besides Mrs. Rawson, there were in the family a widowed daughter, Mrs.
+Tripper, a long, pale, thin woman, with sad eyes, who had once been
+pretty, and her daughter Euphronia, already referred to, who, in right
+of being very pretty, was the old squire's idol and was never thwarted
+in anything. She was, in consequence, a spoiled little damsel,
+self-willed, very vain, and as susceptible as a chameleon. The ease with
+which she could turn her family around her finger gave her a certain
+contempt for them. At first she was quite enamoured of the young
+engineer; but Mr. Rhodes was too busy to give any thought to a girl whom
+he regarded as a child, and she turned her glances on Gordon. Gordon
+also was impervious to her charms. He was by no means indifferent to
+girls; several little damsels who attended St. Martin's Church had at
+one time or another been his load-stars for a while; but he was an
+aristocrat at heart, and held himself infinitely above a girl like Miss
+Euphronia.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham had no such motives for abstaining from a flirtation
+with the young girl as those which restrained Rhodes and Keith.
+
+Euphronia had not at first taken much notice of him. She had been
+inclined to regard Ferdy Wickersham with some disfavor as a Yankee; but
+when the other two failed her, Wickersham fell heir to her
+blandishments. Her indifference to him had piqued him and awakened an
+interest which possibly he might not otherwise have felt. He had seen
+much of the world for a youngster, and could make a good show with what
+he knew. He could play on the piano, and though the aged instrument
+which the old countryman had got at second-hand for his granddaughter
+gave forth sounds which might have come from a tinkling cymbal, yet
+Ferdy played with a certain dash and could bring from it tunes which the
+girl thought very fine. The two soon began to be so much together that
+both Rhodes and Keith fell to rallying Ferdy as to his conquest. Ferdy
+accepted it with complacency.
+
+"I think I shall stay here while you are working up in the mountains,"
+he said to his chief as the time drew near for them to leave.
+
+"You will do nothing of the kind. I promised to take you with me, and I
+will take you dead or alive."
+
+A frown began on the youngster's face, but passed away quickly, and in
+its place came a look of covert complacency.
+
+"I thought your father had offered you five thousand dollars if you
+would stick it out through, the whole trip?" Keith said.
+
+Ferdy shut one eye slowly and gazed at Gordon with the other.
+
+"Sickness was barred. I'll tell the old man I've studied. He'd never
+drop on to the game. He is a soft old bird, anyway."
+
+"Do you mean you are going to lie to him?" asked Gordon.
+
+"Oh, you are sappy! All fellows lie to their governors," declared Ferdy,
+easily. "Why, I wouldn't have any fun at all if I did not lie. You stay
+with me a bit, my son, and I'll teach you a few useful things."
+
+"Thank you. I have no doubt you are a capable teacher," sniffed Gordon;
+"but I think I won't trouble you."
+
+That evening, as Keith was coming from his work, he took a cross-cut
+through the fields and orchard, and under an overshadowing tree he came
+on Ferdy and Euphronia. They were so deeply engaged that Keith hastily
+withdrew and, making a detour, passed around the orchard to the house.
+
+At supper Mrs. Tripper casually inquired of her daughter where she had
+been, a remark which might have escaped Keith's observation had not
+Ferdy Wickersham answered it in some haste.
+
+"She went after the cows," he said, with a quick look at her, "and I
+went fishing, but I did not catch anything."
+
+"I thought, Phrony, I saw you in the orchard," said her mother.
+
+Wickersham looked at her quickly again.
+
+"No, she wasn't in the orchard," he said, "for I was there."
+
+"No, I wasn't in the orchard this evening," said Euphronia. "I went
+after the cows." She looked down in her plate.
+
+Keith ate the rest of his supper in silence. He could not tell on Ferdy;
+that would not be "square." He consulted his mentor, his chief, who
+simply laughed at him.
+
+"Leave 'em alone," he counselled. "I guess she knew how to lie before he
+came. Ferdy has some sense. And we are going to leave for the mountains
+in a little while. I am only waiting to bring the old squire around."
+
+Gordon shook his head.
+
+"My father says you mistake his hospitality for yielding," he said. "You
+will never get him to consent to your plan."
+
+Rhodes laughed.
+
+"Oh, won't I! I have had these old countrymen to deal with before. Just
+give them time and show them the greenbacks. He will come around. Wait
+until I dangle the shekels before him."
+
+But Mr. Rhodes found that in that provincial field there were some
+things stronger than shekels. And among these were prejudices. The more
+the young engineer talked, the more obstinate appeared the old
+countryman.
+
+"I raise cattle," he said in final answer to all his eloquence.
+
+"Raise cattle! You can make more by raising coal in one year than you
+can by raising cattle all your life. Why, you have the richest mineral
+country back here almost in the world," said the young diplomat,
+persuasively.
+
+"And that's the reason I want to keep the railroads out," said the
+squire, puffing quietly. "I don't want the Yankees to come down and take
+it away from us."
+
+Rhodes laughed. "I'd like to see any one take anything from you. They
+will develop it for you."
+
+"I never seen anybody develop anything for another man, leastways a
+Yankee," said Squire Rawson, reflectively.
+
+Just then Ferdy chipped in. He was tired of being left out.
+
+"My father'll come down here and show you old mossbacks a thing or two,"
+he laughed.
+
+The old man turned his eyes on him slowly. Ferdy was not a favorite with
+him. For one thing, he played on the piano. But there were
+other reasons.
+
+"Who is your father, son?" The squire drew a long whiff from his pipe.
+
+"Aaron Wickersham of Wickersham & Company, who is setting up the chips
+for this railroad. We are going to run through here and make it one of
+the greatest lines of the country."
+
+"Oh, you're _goin'_ to run it! From the way you talked I thought maybe
+you _had_ run it. Was a man named Aaron once thought he knew more 'bout
+runnin' a' expedition than his brother did. Ever heard what became
+of him?"
+
+"No," said Ferdy.
+
+"Well, he run some of 'em in the ground. He didn't have sense to know
+the difference between a calf and God."
+
+Ferdy flushed.
+
+"Well, my old man knows enough to run this railroad. He has run bigger
+things than this."
+
+"If he knows as much as his son, he knows a lot. He ought to be able to
+run the world." And the squire turned back to Rhodes:
+
+"What are you goin' to do, my son, when you've done all you say you're
+goin' to do for us? You will be too good to live among them Yankees; you
+will have to come back here, I reckon."
+
+"No; I'm going to marry and settle down," said Rhodes, jestingly. "Maybe
+I'll come back here sometime just to receive your thanks for showing you
+how benighted you were before I came, and for the advice I gave you."
+
+"He is trying to marry a rich woman," said Ferdy, at which Rhodes
+flushed a little.
+
+The old man took no notice of the interruption.
+
+"Well, you must," he said to Rhodes, his eyes resting on him
+benevolently. "You must come back sometime and see me. I love to hear a
+young man talk who knows it all. But you take my advice, my son; don't
+marry no rich man's daughter. They will always think they have done you
+a favor, and they will try to make you think so too, even if your wife
+don't do it. You take warnin' by me. When I married, I had just sixteen
+dollars and my wife she had seventeen, and I give you my word I have
+never heard the last of that one dollar from that day to this."
+
+Rhodes laughed and said he would remember his advice.
+
+"Sometimes I think," said the old man, "I have mistaken my callin'. I
+was built to give advice to other folks, and instid of that they have
+been givin' me advice all my life. It's in and about the only thing I
+ever had given me, except physic."
+
+The night before the party left, Ferdy packed his kit with the rest; but
+the next morning he was sick in his bed. His pulse was not quick, but he
+complained of pains in every limb. Dr. Balsam came over to see him, but
+could find nothing serious the matter. He, however, advised Rhodes to
+leave him behind. So, Ferdy stayed at Squire Rawson's all the time that
+the party was in the mountains. But he wrote his father that he
+was studying.
+
+During the time that Rhodes's party was in the mountains Squire Rawson
+rode about with them examining lands, inspecting coal-beds, and adding
+much to the success of the undertaking.
+
+He appeared to be interested mainly in hunting up cattle, and after he
+had introduced the engineers and secured the tardy consent of the
+landowners for them to make a survey, he would spend hours haggling over
+a few head of mountain cattle, or riding around through the mountains
+looking for others.
+
+Many a farmer who met the first advances of the stranger with stony
+opposition yielded amicably enough after old Rawson had spent an hour or
+two looking at his "cattle," or had conversed with him and his
+weather-beaten wife about the "craps" and the "child'en."
+
+"You are a miracle!" declared young Rhodes, with sincere admiration.
+"How do you manage it?"
+
+The old countryman accepted the compliment with becoming modesty.
+
+"Oh, no; ain't no miracle about it. All I know I learned at the Ridge
+College, and from an old uncle of mine, and in the war. He used to say,
+'Adam, don't be a fool; learn the difference between cattle.' Now,
+before you come, I didn't know nothin' about all them fureign
+countries--they was sort of vague, like the New Jerusalem--or about
+coal. You've told me all about that. I had an idea that it was all made
+jest so,--jest as we find it,--as the Bible says 'twas; but you know a
+lot--more than Moses knowed, and he was 'skilled in all the learnin' of
+the Egyptians.' You haven't taken to cattle quite as kindly as I'd 'a'
+liked, but you know a lot about coal. Learn the difference between
+cattle, my son. There's a sight o' difference between 'em."
+
+Rhodes declared that he would remember his advice, and the two parted
+with mutual esteem.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+TWO YOUNG MEN
+
+The young engineer, on his return to New York, made a report to his
+employer. He said that the mineral resources were simply enormous, and
+were lying in sight for any one to pick up who knew how to deal with the
+people to whom they belonged. They could be had almost for the asking.
+But he added this statement: that the legislative charters would hardly
+hold, and even if they did, it would take an army to maintain what they
+gave against the will of the people. He advised securing the services of
+Squire Rawson and a few other local magnates.
+
+Mr. Wickersham frowned at this plain speaking, and dashed his pen
+through this part of the report. "I am much obliged to you for the
+report on the minerals. The rest of it is trash. You were not paid for
+your advice on that. When I want law I go to a lawyer."
+
+Mr. Rhodes rose angrily.
+
+"Well, you have for nothing an opinion that is worth more than that of
+every rascally politician that has sold you his opinion and himself, and
+you will find it out."
+
+Mr. Wickersham did find it out. However much was published about it, the
+road was not built for years. The legislative charters, gotten through
+by Mr. J. Quincy Plume and his confreres, which were to turn that region
+into a modern Golconda, were swept away with the legislatures that
+created them, and new charters had to be obtained.
+
+Squire Rawson, however, went on buying cattle and, report said, mineral
+rights, and Gordon Keith still followed doggedly the track along which
+Mr. Rhodes had passed, sure that sometime he should find him a great
+man, building bridges and cutting tunnels, commanding others and sending
+them to right or left with a swift wave of his arm as of old. Where
+before Gordon studied as a task, he now worked for ambition, and that
+key unlocked unknown treasures.
+
+Mr. Rhodes fell in with Norman just after his interview with Mr.
+Wickersham. He was still feeling sore over Mr. Wickersham's treatment of
+his report. He had worked hard over it. He attributed it in part to
+Ferdy's complaint of him. He now gave Norman an account of his trip, and
+casually mentioned his meeting Gordon Keith.
+
+"He's a good boy," he said, "a nice kid. He licked Ferdy-a very pretty
+little piece of work. Ferdy had both the weight and the reach on him."
+
+"Licked Ferdy! It's an old grudge, I guess?" said Norman.
+
+"No. They started in pretty good friends. It was about you."
+
+"About me?" Norman's face took on new interest.
+
+"Yes; Ferdy said something, and Keith took it up. He seems pretty fond
+of you. I think he had it in for Ferdy, for Ferdy had been bedevilling
+him about the place. You know old Wickersham owns it. Ferdy's strong
+point is not taste. So I think Gordon was feeling a bit sore, and when
+Ferdy lit into you, Keith slapped him."
+
+Norman was all alert now.
+
+"Well? Which licked?"
+
+"Oh, that was all. Keith won at the end of the first round. He'd have
+been fighting now if he had not licked him."
+
+The rest of the talk was of General Keith and of the hardship of his
+position.
+
+"They are as poor as death," said Rhodes. He told of his surroundings.
+
+When Norman got home, he went to his mother. Her eye lighted up as it
+rested on the alert, vigorous figure and fresh, manly, eager face. She
+knew he had something on his mind.
+
+"Mother, I have a plan," he said. "You remember Gordon Keith, the boy
+whose boat I sank over in England--'Keith the rebel'?"
+
+Mrs. Wentworth remembered well. She remembered an older fight than that,
+between a Keith and a Wentworth.
+
+"Well, I have just heard of him. Rhodes--you remember Rhodes? Grinnell
+Rhodes? Used to be stroke, the greatest stroke ever was. Well, Rhodes
+has been down South and stayed at Keith's father's home. He says it's a
+beautiful old place, and now belongs to Mr. Wickersham, Ferdy's father,
+and the old gentleman, General Keith, who used to own it farms it for
+him. Think of that! It's as if father had to be a bookkeeper in the
+bank! Rhodes says he's a fine old fellow, and that Gordon is one of the
+best. He was down there running a railway line for Mr. Wickersham, and
+took Gordon with him. And he says he's the finest sort of a fellow, and
+wants to go to college dreadfully, but hasn't a cent nor any way to get
+anything. Rhodes says it's awful down there. They are so poor."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth smiled. "Well?"
+
+Norman blushed and stammered a little, as he often did when he was
+embarrassed.
+
+"Well, you know I have some money of my own, and I thought if you don't
+mind it I'd like to lend him a little. I feel rather piggish just
+spending it right and left for nothing, when a fellow like that would
+give his eyes for the chance to go to college. Grinnell Rhodes says that
+he is ever so fond of me; that Ferdy was blowing once and said something
+against me, and Gordon jumped right into him--said I was a friend of
+his, and that Ferdy should not say anything against me in his presence.
+He knocked Ferdy down. I tell you, when a fellow is ready to fight for
+another years after he has seen him, he is a good friend."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth's face showed that she too appreciated such a friend.
+
+"How do you know he needs it, or would accept it if he did?"
+
+"Why, Rhodes says we have no idea of the poverty down there. He says our
+poorest clerks are rich compared with those people. And I'll write him a
+letter and offer to lend it to him. I'll tell him it's mine."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth went over and kissed the boy. The picture rose to her
+mind of a young man fresh from fields where he had won renown, honored
+by his State, with everything that wealth and rank could give, laying
+his honors at the feet of a poor young girl.
+
+"All right, my son."
+
+That night Norman sat down and wrote a letter.
+
+A few days later than this, Gordon Keith received a letter with the
+post-mark "New York." Who was there in New York who could know him? Not
+his young engineer. He knew his hand. He was now abroad. As he read the
+letter he wondered yet more. It was from Norman Wentworth. He had met an
+old friend, he said, who had told him about Gordon and about his
+father's misfortunes. He himself, he said, was at college, and he found
+himself in a position to be able to help a friend. He did not know to
+what extent aid might be of service; but he had some means of his own,
+and he asked that Gordon would allow him to make him a loan of whatever
+might be necessary to relieve his father and himself.
+
+When Gordon finished reading the letter there were tears in his eyes.
+
+He laid the letter in his father's lap, and the old gentleman read it
+through slowly. He sat lost in reflection for a few moments and then
+handed the letter back to Gordon.
+
+"Write to him and thank him, my son--thank him warmly for both of us. I
+will never forget his kindness. He is a gentleman."
+
+This was all; but he too showed in his face that that far-off shaft of
+light had reached his heart and rested there.
+
+The General afterwards meditated deeply as to the wisdom of this action.
+Just then, however, Providence seemed to come to his aid.
+
+Old Adam Rawson, hearing that he was hard up, or moved by some kindly
+impulse, offered to make him a loan. He "happened to have," he wrote, "a
+little pile lying by that he didn't have any particular use for just
+then, and it had come to him that, maybe, the General might be able to
+use it to advantage. He didn't care anything about security or
+interest."
+
+The General was perplexed. He did not need it himself, but he was glad
+to borrow enough to send Gordon to college for a year. He sent Gordon up
+to old Rawson's with a letter.
+
+The old man read the letter and then looked Gordon over; he read it and
+looked him over again, much as if he were appraising a young steer.
+
+"Well, I didn't say I'd lend it to you," he said; "but, maybe, I'll do
+it if 'twill help the General. Investin' in a young man is kind of
+hazardous; it's like puttin' your money in a harry-dick--you don't know
+what he's goin' to be. All you has to go on is the frame and your
+jedgment."
+
+Fortunately for Keith, the old cattle-dealer had a good opinion of his
+"jedgment." He went on: "But I admit blood counts for somethin', and I'm
+half minded to adventure some on your blood."
+
+Gordon laughed. He would be glad to be tried on any account, he said,
+and would certainly repay the money.
+
+"Well, I b'lieve you will if you can," said the squire. "And that's more
+than I can say of everybody. I'll invest a leetle money in your future,
+and I want to say this to you, that your future will depend on whether
+you pay it back or not. I never seen a young man as didn't pay his debts
+come to any good in my life, and I never seen one as did as didn't.
+I've seen many a man'd shoot you if you dared to question his honor, an'
+wouldn't pay you a dollar if he was lousy with 'em." He took out his
+wallet, and untying the strings carefully, began to count out the
+greenbacks.
+
+"I have to carry a pretty good pile to buy calves with," he chuckled;
+"but I reckon you'll be a fair substitute for one or two. How much do
+you want--I mean, how little can you git along with?"
+
+Gordon told him the amount his father had suggested. It was not a great
+sum.
+
+"That seems a heap of money to put in book-learnin'," said the old man,
+thoughtfully, his eyes fixed on Gordon. "My whole edication didn't cost
+twenty-five dollars. With all that learnin', you'd know enough to teach
+the Ridge College."
+
+Gordon, who had figured it out, began to give his necessary expenses.
+When he had finished, the old man counted out his bills. Gordon said he
+would give him his note for it, and his father would indorse it. The
+other shook his head.
+
+"No; I don't want any bond. I'll remember it and you'll remember it.
+I've known too many men think they'd paid a debt when they'd given their
+bond. I don't want you to think that. If you're goin' to pay me, you'll
+do it without a bond, and if you ain't, I ain't goin' to sue you; I'm
+jest goin' to think what a' o'nery cuss you are."
+
+So Gordon returned home, and a few weeks later was delving deep into new
+mysteries.
+
+Gordon's college life may be passed over. He worked well, for he felt
+that it was necessary to work.
+
+Looking around when he left college, the only thing that appeared in
+sight for Gordon Keith was to teach school. To be sure, the business;
+"the universal refuge of educated indigents," as his father quoted with
+a smile, was already overcrowded. But Gordon heard of a school which up
+to this time had not been overwhelmed with applicants. There was a
+vacancy at the Ridge College. Finally poor Gunn, after holding out as
+long as he could, had laid down his arms, as all soldiers must do sooner
+or later, and Gordon applied for the position. The old squire remembered
+the straight, broad-shouldered boy with his father's eyes and also
+remembered the debt he owed him, and with the vision of a stern-faced
+man with eyes of flame riding quietly at the head of his men across a
+shell-ploughed field, he wrote to Gordon to come.
+
+"If he's got half of his daddy in him he'll straighten 'em out," he
+said.
+
+So, Gordon became a school-teacher.
+
+"I know no better advice to give you," said General Keith to Gordon, on
+bidding him good-by, "than to tell you to govern yourself, and you will
+be able to govern them. 'He that is slow to anger is better than the
+mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.'"
+
+During the years in which Gordon Keith was striving to obtain an
+education as best he might, Ferdy Wickersham had gone to one of the
+first colleges of the land. It was the same college which Norman
+Wentworth was attending. Indeed, Norman's being there was the main
+reason that Ferdy was sent there. Mr. Wickersham wished his son to have
+the best advantages. Mrs. Wickersham desired this too, but she also had
+a further motive. She wished her son to eclipse Norman Wentworth. Both
+were young men of parts, and as both had unlimited means at their
+disposal, neither was obliged to study.
+
+Norman Wentworth, however, had applied himself to secure one of the high
+class-honors, and as he was universally respected and very popular, he
+was regarded as certain to have it, until an unexpected claimant
+suddenly appeared as a rival.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham never took the trouble to compete for anything until he
+discovered that some one else valued it. It was a trait he had
+inherited from his mother, who could never see any one possessing a
+thing without coveting it.
+
+The young man was soon known at college as one of the leaders of the gay
+set. His luxuriously furnished rooms, his expensive suppers and his
+acquaintance with dancing-girls were talked about, and he soon had a
+reputation for being one of the wildest youngsters of his class.
+
+"Your son will spend all the money you can make for him," said one of
+his friends to Mr. Wickersham.
+
+"Well," said the father, "I hope he will have as much pleasure in
+spending it as I have had in making it, that's all."
+
+He not only gave Ferdy all the money he suggested a need for, but he
+offered him large bonuses in case he should secure any of the honors he
+had heard of as the prizes of the collegiate work.
+
+Mrs. Wickersham was very eager for him to win this particular prize.
+Apart from her natural ambition, she had a special reason. The firm of
+Norman Wentworth & Son was one of the oldest and best-known houses in
+the country. The home of Norman Wentworth was known to be one of the
+most elegant in the city, as it was the most exclusive, and both Mr. and
+Mrs. Wentworth were recognized as representatives of the old-time
+gentry. Mrs. Wickersham might have endured the praise of the elegance of
+the mansion. She had her own ideas as to house-furnishing, and the
+Wentworth mansion was furnished in a style too quiet and antiquated to
+suit her more modern tastes. If it was filled with old mahogany and hung
+with damask-satin, Mrs. Wickersham had carved walnut and gorgeous
+hangings. And as to those white marble busts, and those books that were
+everywhere, she much preferred her brilliant figures which she "had
+bought in Europe," and books were "a nuisance about a house." They ought
+to be kept in a library, as she kept hers--in a carved-walnut case with
+glass doors.
+
+The real cause of Mrs. Wickersham's dislike of Mrs. Wentworth lay
+deeper.
+
+The elder lady had always been gracious to Mrs. Wickersham when they
+met, as she was gracious to every one, and when a very large
+entertainment was given by her, had invited Mrs. Wickersham to it. But
+Mrs. Wickersham felt that Mrs. Wentworth lived within a charmed circle.
+And Mrs. Wickersham was envious.
+
+It must be said that Ferdy needed no instigation to supersede Norman in
+any way that did not require too much work. He and Norman were very good
+friends; certainly Norman thought so; but at bottom Ferdy was envious of
+Norman's position and prestige, and deep in his heart lurked a
+long-standing grudge against the older boy, to which was added of late a
+greater one. Norman and he fancied the same girl, and Louise Caldwell
+was beginning to favor Norman.
+
+Ferdy announced to his father that the class-honor would be won if he
+would give him money enough, and the elder Wickersham, delighted, told
+him to draw on him for all the money he wanted. This Ferdy did promptly.
+He suddenly gave up running away from college, applied himself to
+cultivating the acquaintance of his fellow-students, spent his money
+lavishly in entertainments, and for a time it appeared that he might
+wrest the prize from Norman's grasp.
+
+College boys, however, are a curious folk. The mind of youth is
+virtuous. It is later on in life that it becomes sordid. Ferdy wrote his
+father that he had the prize, and that Norman, his only rival, had given
+up the fight. Mrs. Wickersham openly boasted of her son's success and of
+her motive, and sent him money lavishly. Young Wickersham's ambition,
+however, like that of many another man, o'erleaped itself. Wickersham
+drew about him many companions, but they were mainly men of light
+weight, roisterers and loafers, whilst the better class of his
+fellow-students quickly awoke to a true realization of the case. A new
+element was being introduced into college politics. The recognition of
+danger was enough to set the best element in the college to meet it. At
+the moment when Ferdy Wickersham felt himself victor, and abandoned
+himself to fresh pleasures, a new and irresistible force unexpectedly
+arose which changed the fate of the day. Wickersham tried to stem the
+current, but in vain. It was a tidal wave. Ferdy Wickersham faced
+defeat, and he could not stand it. He suddenly abandoned college, and
+went off, it was said, with a coryphee. His father and mother did not
+know of it for some time after he had left.
+
+Mr. Wickersham received the first intimation of it in the shape of a
+draft which came to him from some distant point. When Mrs. Wickersham
+learned of it, she fell into a consuming rage, and then took to her bed.
+The downfall of her hopes and of her ambition had come through the
+person she loved best on earth. Finally she became so ill that Mr.
+Wickersham telegraphed a peremptory order to his son to come home, and
+after a reasonable time the young man appeared.
+
+His mother's joy at meeting him overshadowed everything else with her,
+and the prodigal was received by her with that forgiveness which is both
+the weakness and the strength of a mother's heart. The father, however,
+had been struck as deeply as the mother. His ambition, if of a different
+kind, had been quite as great as that of Mrs. Wickersham, and the
+hard-headed, keen-sighted man, who had spent his life fighting his way
+to the front, often with little consideration for the rights of others,
+felt that one of his motives and one of his rewards had
+perished together.
+
+The interview that took place in his office between him and his son was
+one which left its visible stamp on the older man, and for a time
+appeared to have had an effect even on the younger, with all his
+insolence and impervious selfishness. When Aaron Wickersham unlocked his
+private door and allowed his son and heir to go out, the clerks in the
+outer office knew by the young man's face, quite as well as by the
+rumbles of thunder which had come through the fast-closed door, that
+the "old man" had been giving the young one a piece of his mind.
+
+At first the younger man had been inclined to rebel; but for once in his
+life he found that he had passed the limit of license, and his father,
+whom he had rather despised as foolishly pliable, was unexpectedly his
+master. He laid before Ferdy, with a power which the latter could not
+but acknowledge, the selfishness and brutality of his conduct since he
+was a boy. He told him of his own earlier privations, of his labors, of
+his ambitions.
+
+"I have worked my heart out," he said, "for your mother and for you. I
+have never known a moment of rest or of what you call 'fun.' I set it
+before me when your mother promised to marry me that I would make her as
+good as the first lady in the land--that is, in New York. She should
+have as big a house and as fine a carriage and as handsome frocks as any
+one of them--as old Mrs. Wentworth or old Mrs. Brooke of Brookford, who
+were the biggest people I ever knew. And I have spent my life for it. I
+have grown old before my time. I have gotten so that things have lost
+their taste to me; I have done things that I never dreamed I would do to
+accomplish it. I have lost the power to sleep working for it, and when
+you came I thought I would have my reward in you. I have not only never
+stinted you, but I have lavished money on you as if I was the richest
+man in New York. I wanted you to have advantages that I never had: as
+good as Norman Wentworth or any one else. I have given you things, and
+seen you throw them away, that I would have crawled on my knees from my
+old home to this office to get when I was a boy. And I thought you were
+going to be my pride and my stay and my reward. And you said you were
+doing it, and your mother and I had staked our hearts on you. And all
+the time you were running away and lying to me and to her, and not doing
+one honest lick of work."
+
+The young man interrupted him. "That is not so," he said surlily.
+
+His father pulled out a drawer and took from it a letter. Spreading it
+open on his desk, he laid the palm of his open hand on it. "Not so? I
+have got the proof of it here." He looked at the young man with level
+eyes, eyes in which was such a cold gleam that Ferdy's gaze fell.
+
+"I did not expect you to do it for _me_," Aaron Wickersham went on
+slowly, never taking his eyes from his son's face, "for I had discovered
+that you did not care a button for my wishes; but I did think you would
+do it for your mother. For she thought you were a god and worshipped
+you. She has been talking for ten years of the time when she would go to
+see you come out at the head of your class. She was going to Paris to
+get the clothes to wear if you won, and you--" His voice broke--"you
+won't even graduate! What will you think next summer when Mrs. Wentworth
+is there to see her son, and all the other men and women I know who have
+sons who graduate there, and your mother--?" The father's voice broke
+completely, and he looked away. Even Ferdy for a moment seemed grave and
+regretful. Then after a glance at his father he recovered his composure.
+
+"I'm not to blame," he said surlily, "if she did. It was her fault."
+
+Aaron Wickersham turned on him.
+
+"Stop," he said in a quiet voice. "Not another word. One other word,
+and, by God! I'll box your head off your shoulders. Say what you please
+about me, but not one word against her. I will take you from college and
+put you to sweeping the floor of this office at twenty dollars a month,
+and make you live on your salary, too, or starve, if you say one
+other word."
+
+Ferdy's face blanched at the implacable anger that blazed in his
+father's eyes, but even more at the coldness of the gleam. It made
+him shiver.
+
+A little later young Wickersham entered his father's office, and though
+he was not much liked by the older clerks, it soon appeared that he had
+found a congenial occupation and one for which he had a natural gift.
+For the first time in his life he appeared inclined to work.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE RIDGE COLLEGE
+
+The school over which Gordon had undertaken to preside was not a very
+advanced seminary of learning, and possibly the young teacher did not
+impart to his pupils a great deal of erudition.
+
+His predecessors in the schoolmaster's chair had been, like their
+patrons, the product of a system hardly less conservative than that of
+the Locrians. Any one who proposed an innovation would have done so with
+a rope about his neck, and woe to him if it proved unsuccessful.
+
+When Gordon reported first to the squire, the old man was manifestly
+pleased.
+
+"Why, you've growed considerable. I didn't have no idea you'd be so big
+a man." He measured him with satisfaction. "You must be nigh as big
+as your pa."
+
+"I'm broader across the shoulders, but not so tall," said the young man.
+
+"He is a pretty tall man," said the squire, slowly, with the light of
+reflection in his eye. "You're a-goin' to try the Ridge College, are
+you?" He had a quizzical twinkle in his eye as it rested on the younger
+man's face.
+
+"I'm going to try it." And Gordon's face lit up. "I don't know much, but
+I'll do the best I can."
+
+His modesty pleased the other.
+
+"You know more than Jake Dennison, I reckon, except about devilment. I
+was afred you mightn't be quite up to the place here; you was rather
+young when I seen you last." He measured him as he might have done a
+young bullock.
+
+"Oh, I fancy I shall be," interrupted the young man, flushing at the
+suggestion.
+
+"You've got to learn them Dennison boys, and them Dennison boys is
+pretty hard to learn anything. You will need all the grit you've got."
+
+"Oh, I'll teach them," asserted Gordon, confidently. The old man's eye
+rested on him.
+
+"'Tain't _teachin'_ I'm a-talkin' about. It's _learnin'_ I'm tellin' you
+they need. You've got to learn 'em a good deal, or they'll learn you.
+Them Dennison boys is pretty slow at learnin'."
+
+The young man intimated that he thought he was equal to it.
+
+"Well, we'll see," grunted the old fellow, with something very like a
+twinkle in his deep eyes. "Not as they'll do you any harm without you
+undertake to interfere with them," he drawled. "But you're pretty young
+to manage 'em jest so; you ain't quite big enough either, and you're too
+big to git in through the cat-hole. And I allow that you don't stand no
+particular show after the first week or so of gittin' into the house any
+other way."
+
+"I'll get in, though, and I won't go in through the cat-hole either.
+I'll promise you that, if you'll sustain me."
+
+"Oh, I'll sustain you," drawled the squire. "I'll sustain you in
+anything you do, except to pizon 'em with _slow_ pizon, and I ain't
+altogether sure that wouldn' be jest manslaughter."
+
+"All right." Keith's eyes snapped, and presently, as the outer man's
+gaze rested on him, his snapped also.
+
+So the compact was struck, and the trustee went on to give further
+information.
+
+"Your hours will be as usual," said he: "from seven to two and fo' to
+six in summer, and half-past seven to two and three to five in winter,
+and you'll find all the books necessary in the book-chist. We had to
+have 'em locked up to keep 'em away from the rats and the
+dirt-daubers. Some of 'em's right smartly de-faced, but I reckon you'll
+git on with 'em all right."
+
+"Well, those are pretty long hours," said Gordon. "Seems to me they had
+better be shortened. I shall--"
+
+"Them's the usual hours," interrupted the old man, positively. "I've
+been trustee now for goin' on twenty-six year, an' th'ain't never been
+any change in 'em. An' I ain't see as they've ever been too
+long--leastways, I never see as the scholars ever learned too much in
+'em. They ain't no longer than a man has to work in the field, and the
+work's easier."
+
+Gordon looked at the old man keenly. It was his first battle, and it had
+come on at once, as his father had warned him. The struggle was bitter,
+if brief, but he conquered--conquered himself. The old countryman's face
+had hardened.
+
+"If you want to give satisfaction you'd better try to learn them
+scholars an' not the trustees," he said dryly. "The Dennison boys is
+hard, but we're harder."
+
+Gordon looked at him quickly. His eyes were resting on him, and had a
+little twinkle in them.
+
+"We're a little like the old fellow 'at told the young preacher 'at he'd
+better stick to abusin' the sins of Esau and Jacob and David and Peter,
+an' let the sins o' that congregation alone."
+
+"I'll try and give you satisfaction," said Keith.
+
+The squire appeared pleased. His face relaxed and his tone changed.
+
+"_You_ won't have no trouble," he said good-humoredly. "Not if you're
+like your father. I told 'em you was his son, an' I'd be responsible
+for you."
+
+Gordon Keith looked at him with softened eyes. A mention of his father
+always went to his heart.
+
+"I'll try and give you satisfaction," he said earnestly. "Will you do me
+a favor?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will you come over to the examination of the school when it opens, and
+then let me try the experiment of running it my way for, say, two
+months, and then come to another examination? Then if I do not satisfy
+you I'll do anything you say; I'll go back to the old way."
+
+"Done," said the trustee, cordially. And so, Gordon Keith won another
+victory, and started the school under favorable auspices.
+
+Adam Rawson asked him to come and live at his house. "You might give
+Phrony a few extra lessons to fit her for a bo'din'-school," he said. "I
+want her to have the best edvantages."
+
+Keith soon ingratiated himself further with the old squire. He broke his
+young horses for him, drove his wagon, mended his vehicles, and was
+ready to turn his hand to anything that came up about the place.
+
+As his confidence in the young man grew, the squire let Keith into a
+secret.
+
+"You mind when you come up here with that young man from the
+North,--that engineer fellow,--what come a-runnin' of a railroad
+a-hellbulgin' through this country, and was a-goin' to carry off all the
+coal from the top of the Alleghanies spang down to Torment?" Keith
+remembered. "Well, he was right persuasive," continued the squire, "and
+I thought if all that money was a-goin' to be made and them railroads
+had to come, like he said, jest as certain as water runnin' down a hill,
+I might as well git some of it. I had a little slipe or two up there
+before, and havin' a little money from my cattle, lumber, and sich, I
+went in and bought a few slipes more, jest to kind of fill in like, and
+Phrony's growin' up, and I'm a-thinkin' it is about time to let the
+railroads come in; so, if you kin git your young man, let him know I've
+kind o' changed my mind."
+
+Miss Euphronia Tripper had grown up into a plump and pretty country girl
+of fifteen or sixteen, whose rosy cheeks, flaxen hair, and blue eyes,
+as well as the fact that she was the only heiress of the old squire, who
+was one of the "best-fixed" men in all that "country," made her quite
+the belle of the region. She had already made a deep impression on both
+big Jake Dennison and his younger brother Dave. Dave was secretly in
+love with her, but Jake was openly so, a condition which he manifested
+by being as plainly and as hopelessly bound in her presence as a bear
+cub tangled in a net. For her benefit he would show feats of strength
+which might have done credit to a boy-Hercules; but let her turn on him
+the glow of her countenance, and he was a hopeless mass of
+perspiring idiocy.
+
+Keith found her a somewhat difficult pupil to deal with. She was much
+more intent on making an impression on him than on progressing in
+her studies.
+
+After the first shyness of her intercourse with the young teacher had
+worn off, she began for a while rather to make eyes at him, which if
+Keith ever dreamed of, he never gave the least sign of it. She,
+therefore, soon abandoned the useless campaign, and for a time held him
+in mingled awe and disdain.
+
+The Ridge College was a simple log-building of a single room, with a
+small porch in front, built of hewn logs and plastered inside.
+
+Gordon Keith, on entering on his new duties, found his position much
+easier than he had been led to expect.
+
+Whether it was the novelty of the young teacher's quiet manner, clear
+eyes, broad shoulders, and assured bearing, or the idea of the
+examination with which he undertook to begin the session, he had a week
+of surprising quiet. The school filled day after day, and even the noted
+Dennison boys, from Jacob Dennison, the strapping six-foot senior, down
+to Dave, who was the youngest and smartest of the three, appeared duly
+every morning, and treated the young teacher with reasonable civility,
+if with somewhat insolent familiarity.
+
+The day of the examination Squire Rawson attended, solemn and pompous
+with a superfluity of white shirt-front. Brief as was the examination,
+it revealed to Keith an astonishing state of ignorance of the simplest
+things. It was incredible to him that, with so many hours of so-called
+study, so little progress had been made. He stated this in plain
+language, and outlined his plan for shorter hours and closer
+application. A voice from the boys' side muttered that the owner did not
+see anything the matter with the old hours. They were good enough for
+them. Keith turned quickly:
+
+"What is that?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"What is that, Dennison?" he demanded. "I thought I heard you speak."
+
+"Wall, if you did, I warn't speakin' to you," said Jacob Dennison,
+surlily.
+
+"Well, when you speak in school, address yourself to me," said Keith. He
+caught Euphronia Tripper's eyes on him.
+
+"I mought an' I moughtn't," said Jacob, insolently.
+
+"I propose to see that you do."
+
+Jacob's reply was something between a grunt and a sneer, and the school
+rustled with a sound very much like applause.
+
+Next morning, on his arrival at school, Keith found the door fastened on
+the inside. A titter from within revealed the fact that it was no
+accident, and the guffaw of derision that greeted his sharp command that
+the door should be opened immediately showed that the Dennison boys were
+up to their old tricks.
+
+"Open the door, Jake Dennison, instantly!" he called.
+
+The reply was sung through the keyhole:
+
+"'Ole Molly hyah, what you doin' dyah? Settin' in de cordner, smokin' a
+ciggyah.'"
+
+It was little Dave's voice, and was followed by a puff of tobacco smoke
+through the keyhole and a burst of laughter led by Phrony Tripper.
+
+An axe was lying at the woodpile near by, and in two minutes the door
+was lying in splinters on the school-house floor, and Keith, with a
+white face and a dangerous tremble in his voice, was calling the amazed
+school to order. He heard the lessons through, and at noon, the hour he
+had named the day before, dismissed all the younger scholars. The
+Dennisons and one or two larger boys he ordered to remain. As the
+scholars filed out, there was a colloquy between Jacob Dennison and his
+younger brother Dave. Dave had the brains of the family, and he was
+whispering to Jake. Keith moved his chair and seated himself near the
+door. There was a brief muttered conversation among the Dennisons, and
+then Jake Dennison rose, put on his hat slowly, and, addressing the
+other boys, announced that he didn't know what they were going to do,
+but he was "a-gwine home and git ready to go and see the dance up
+at Gates's."
+
+He swaggered toward the door, the others following in his wake.
+
+Keith rose from his seat.
+
+"Go back to your places." He spoke so quietly that his voice could
+scarcely be heard.
+
+"Go nowhere! You go to h----l!" sneered the big leader, contemptuously.
+"'Tain't no use for you to try to stop me--I kin git away with two
+like you."
+
+Perhaps, he could have done so, but Keith was too quick for him. He
+seized the split-bottomed chair from which he had risen, and whirling it
+high above his head, brought it crashing down on his assailant, laying
+him flat on the floor. Then, without a second's hesitation, he sprang
+toward the others.
+
+"Into your seats instantly!" he shouted, as he raised once more the
+damaged, but still formidable, weapon. By an instinct the mutineers fell
+into the nearest seats, and Keith turned back to his first opponent,
+who was just rising from the floor with a dazed look on his face. A few
+drops of blood were trickling down his forehead.
+
+[Illustration: "If you don't go back to your seat, I'll dash your brains
+out," said Keith.]
+
+"If you don't go to your seat instantly, I'll dash your brains out,"
+said Keith, looking him full in the eye. He still grasped the chair, and
+as he tightened his grip on it, the crestfallen bully sank down on the
+bench and broke into a whimper about a grown man hitting a boy with
+a chair.
+
+Suddenly Keith, in the moment of victory, found himself attacked in the
+rear. One of the smaller boys, who had gone out with the rest, hearing
+the fight, had rushed back, and, just as Keith drove Jake Dennison to
+his seat, sprang on him like a little wild-cat. Turning, Keith seized
+and held him.
+
+"What are you doing, Dave Dennison, confound you?" he demanded angrily.
+
+"I'm one of 'em," blubbered the boy, trying to reach him with both fist
+and foot. "I don't let nobody hit my brother."
+
+Keith found that he had more trouble in quelling Dave, the smallest
+member of the Dennison tribe, than in conquering the bigger brothers.
+
+"Sit down and behave yourself," he said, shoving him into a seat and
+holding him there. "I'm not going to hit him again if he
+behaves himself."
+
+Keith, having quieted Dave, looked to see that Jake was not much hurt.
+He took out his handkerchief.
+
+"Take that and wipe your face with it," he said quietly, and taking from
+his desk his inkstand and some writing-paper, he seated himself on a
+bench near the door and began to write letters. It grew late, but the
+young teacher did not move. He wrote letter after letter. It began to
+grow dark; he simply lit the little lamp on his desk, and taking up a
+book, settled down to read; and when at last he rose and announced that
+the culprits might go home, the wheezy strains of the three instruments
+that composed the band at Gates's had long since died out, and Gordon
+Keith was undisputed master of Ridge College.
+
+His letter to the trustees was delivered that morning, saying that if
+they would sustain his action he would do his best to make the school
+the best in that section; but if not, his resignation was in
+their hands.
+
+"I guess he is the sort of medicine those youngsters need," said Dr.
+Balsam. "We'd better let it work."
+
+"I reckon he can ride 'em," said Squire Rawson.
+
+It was voted to sustain him.
+
+The fact that a smooth-faced boy, not as heavy as Jake Dennison by
+twenty pounds, had "faced down" and quelled the Dennisons all three
+together, and kept Jake Dennison from going where he wanted to go,
+struck the humor of the trustees, and they stood by their teacher almost
+unanimously, and even voted to pay for a new door, which he had offered
+to pay for himself, as he said he might have to chop it down again. Not
+that there was not some hostility to him among those to whom his methods
+were too novel; but when he began to teach his pupils boxing, and showed
+that with his fists he was more than a match for Jake Dennison, the
+chief opposition to him died out; and before the year ended, Jake
+Dennison, putting into practice the art he had learned from his teacher,
+had thrashed Mr. William Bluffy, the cock of another walk high up across
+the Ridge, for ridiculing the "newfangled foolishness" of Ridge College,
+and speaking of its teacher as a "dom-fool furriner." Little Dave
+Dennison, of all those opposed to him, alone held out. He appeared to be
+proof against Keith's utmost efforts to be friends.
+
+One day, however, Dave Dennison did not come to school. Keith learned
+that he had fallen from a tree and broken his leg--"gettin' hawks' eggs
+for Phrony," Keith's informant reported. Phrony was quite scornful about
+it, but a little perky as well.
+
+"If a boy was such a fool as to go up a tree when he had been told it
+wouldn't hold him, she could not help it. She did not want the eggs,
+anyhow," she said disdainfully. This was all the reward that little Dave
+got for his devotion and courage.
+
+That afternoon Keith went over the Ridge to see Dave.
+
+The Dennison home was a small farm-house back of the Ridge, in what was
+known as a "cove," an opening in the angle between the mountains, where
+was a piece of level or partly level ground on the banks of one of the
+little mountain creeks. When Keith arrived he found Mrs. Dennison, a
+small, angular woman with sharp eyes, a thin nose, and thin lips, very
+stiff and suspicious. She had never forgiven Keith for his victory over
+her boys, and she looked now as if she would gladly have set the dogs on
+him instead of calling them off as she did when he strode up the path
+and the yelping pack dashed out at him.
+
+She "didn' know how Dave was," she said glumly. "The Doctor said he was
+better. She couldn' see no change. Yes, he could go in, she s'posed, if
+he wanted to," she said ungraciously.
+
+Keith entered. The boy was lying on a big bed, his head resting against
+the frame of the little opening which went for a window, through which
+he was peeping wistfully out at the outside world from which he was to
+be shut off for so many weary weeks. He returned Keith's greeting in the
+half-surly way in which he had always received his advances since the
+day of the row; but when Keith sat down on the bed and began to talk to
+him cheerily of his daring in climbing where no one else had ventured to
+go, he thawed out, and presently, when Keith drifted on to other stories
+of daring, he began to be interested, and after a time grew
+almost friendly.
+
+He was afraid they might have to cut his leg off. His mother, who always
+took a gloomy view of things, had scared him by telling him she thought
+it might have to be done; but Keith was able to reassure him. The Doctor
+had told him that, while the fracture was very bad, the leg would
+be saved.
+
+"If he had not been as hard as a lightwood knot, that fall would have
+mashed him up," said the Doctor. This compliment Keith repeated, and it
+evidently pleased Dave. The pale face relaxed into a smile. Keith told
+him stories of other boys who had had similar accidents and had turned
+them to good account--of Arkwright and Sir William Jones and Commodore
+Maury, all of whom had laid the foundation for their future fame when
+they were in bed with broken legs.
+
+When Keith came away he left the boy comforted and cheered, and even the
+dismal woman at the door gave him a more civil parting than her
+greeting had been.
+
+Many an afternoon during the boy's convalescence Keith went over the
+Ridge to see him, taking him story-books, and reading to him until he
+was strong enough to read himself. And when, weeks later, the lame boy
+was able to return to school, Keith had no firmer friend in all the
+Ridge region than Dave Dennison, and Dave had made a mental progress
+which, perhaps, he would not have made in as many months at school, for
+he had received an impulse to know and to be something more than he was.
+He would show Phrony who he was.
+
+It was fine to Gordon to feel that he was earning his own living. He was
+already making his way in the world, and often from this first rung of
+the ladder the young teacher looked far up the shining steep to where
+Fame and Glory beckoned with their radiant hands. He would be known. He
+would build bridges that should eclipse Stevenson's. He would be like
+Warren Hastings, and buy back the home of his fathers and be a great
+gentleman.
+
+The first pay that he received made him a capitalist. He had no idea
+before of the joy of wealth. He paid it to old Rawson.
+
+"There is the first return for your investment," he said.
+
+"I don' know about its bein' the first return," said the squire, slowly;
+"but an investment ain't done till it's all returned." His keen eyes
+were on Keith's face.
+
+"I know it," said Keith, laughing.
+
+But for Dr. Balsam, Keith sometimes thought that he must have died that
+first winter, and, in fact, the young man did owe a great deal to the
+tall, slab-sided man, whose clothes hung on him so loosely that he
+appeared in the distance hardly more than a rack to support them. As he
+came nearer he was a simple old countryman with a deeply graved face and
+unkempt air. On nearer view still, you found the deep gray eyes both
+shrewd and kindly; the mouth under its gray moustache had fine lines,
+and at times a lurking smile, which yet had in it something grave.
+
+To Dr. Balsam, Keith owed a great deal more than he himself knew at the
+time. For it is only by looking back that Youth can gauge the steps by
+which it has climbed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ALICE YORKE
+
+It is said that in Brazil a small stream which rises under a bank in a
+gentleman's garden, after flowing a little distance, encounters a rock
+and divides into two branches, one of which flows northward and empties
+into the Amazon, whilst the other, turning to the southward, pours its
+waters into the Rio del Plata. A very small obstruction caused the
+divergence and determined the course of those two streams. So it is
+in life.
+
+One afternoon in the early Spring, Gordon Keith was walking home from
+school, his books under his arm, when, so to speak, he came on the stone
+that turned him from his smooth channel and shaped his course in life.
+
+He was going to break a colt for Squire Rawson that afternoon, so he was
+hurrying; but ever as he strode along down the winding road, the
+witchery of the tender green leaves and the odors of Spring filled eyes
+and nostrils, and called to his spirit with that subtle voice which has
+stirred Youth since Youth's own Spring awoke amid the leafy trees. In
+its call were freedom, and the charm of wide spaces, and the unspoken
+challenge of Youth to the world, and haunting vague memories, and
+whisperings of unuttered love, and all that makes Youth Youth.
+
+Presently Gordon became aware that a little ahead of him, under the
+arching boughs, were two children who were hunting for something in the
+road, and one of them was crying. At the same moment there turned the
+curve beyond them, coming toward him, a girl on horseback. He watched
+her with growing interest as she galloped toward him, for he saw that
+she was young and a stranger. Probably she was from "the Springs," as
+she was riding one of Gates's horses and was riding him hard.
+
+The rider drew in her horse and stopped as she came up to the children.
+Keith heard her ask what was the matter with the little one, and the
+older child's reply that she was crying because she had lost her money.
+"She was goin' to buy candy with it at the store, but dropped it."
+
+The girl sprang from her horse.
+
+"Oh, you poor little thing! Come here, you dear little kitten. I'll give
+you some money. Won't you hold my horse? He won't hurt you." This to the
+elder child.
+
+She threw herself on her knees in the road, as regardless of the dust as
+were the children, and drawing the sobbing child close to her, took her
+handkerchief from her pocket and gently wiped its little, dirty, smeared
+face, and began comforting it in soothing tones. Keith had come up and
+stood watching her with quickening breath. All he could see under her
+hat was an oval chin and the dainty curve of a pink cheek where it faded
+into snow, and at the back of a small head a knot of brown hair resting
+on the nape of a shapely neck. For the rest, she had a trim figure and
+wore new gloves which fitted perfectly. Keith mentally decided that she
+must be about sixteen or seventeen years old, and, from the glimpse he
+had caught of her, must be pretty. He became conscious suddenly that he
+had on his worst suit of clothes.
+
+"Good evening," he said, raising his hand to his hat.
+
+The girl glanced up just as the hat was lifted.
+
+"How do you do?"
+
+Their eyes met, and the color surged into Keith's face, and the hat came
+off with quite a flourish.
+
+Why, she was beautiful! Her eyes were as blue as wet violets.
+
+"I will help you hunt for it," he said half guilefully, half kindly.
+"Where did she drop it?" He did not take his eyes from the picture of
+the slim figure on her knees.
+
+"She has lost her money, poor little dear! She was on her way to the
+store to buy candy, and lost all her money."
+
+At this fresh recital of her loss, the little, smeared face began to
+pucker again. But the girl cleared it with a kiss.
+
+"There, don't cry. I will give you some. How much was it? A nickel! A
+whole nickel!" This with the sweetest smile. "Well, you shall have a
+quarter, and that's four nickels--I mean five."
+
+"She is not strong on arithmetic," said Keith to himself. "She is like
+Phrony in that."
+
+She began to feel about her skirt, and her face changed.
+
+"Oh, I haven't a cent. I have left my purse at the hotel." This was to
+Keith.
+
+"Let me give it to her." And he also began to feel in his pocket, but as
+he did so his countenance fell. He, too, had not a cent.
+
+"I have left my purse at home, too," he said. "We shall have to do like
+the woman in the Bible, and sweep diligently till we find the money
+she lost."
+
+"We are a pauper lot," said Alice Yorke, with a little laugh. Then, as
+she glanced into the child's big eyes that were beginning to be troubled
+again, she paused. The next second she drew a small bracelet from her
+wrist, and began to pull at a small gold charm. "Here, you shall have
+this; this is gold."
+
+"Oh, don't do that," said Keith. "She wouldn't appreciate it, and it is
+a pity to spoil your bracelet."
+
+She glanced up at him with a little flash in her blue eyes, as a
+vigorous twist broke the little gold piece from its chain.
+
+"She shall have it. There, see how she is smiling. I have enjoyed it,
+and I am glad to have you have it. Now, you can get your candy.
+Now, kiss me."
+
+Somehow, the phrase and the tone brought back to Keith a hill-top
+overlooking an English village, and a blue lake below, set like a
+mirror among the green hills. A little girl in white, with brown eyes,
+was handing a doll to another child even more grimy than this one. The
+reminiscence came to him like a picture thrown by a magic lantern.
+
+The child, without taking her eyes from the tiny bit of metal, put up
+her little mouth, and the girl kissed her, only to have the kiss wiped
+off with the chubby, dirty little hand.
+
+The next moment the two little ones started down the road, their heads
+close together over the bit of yellow gold. Then it was that Alice Yorke
+for the first time took a real look at Keith,--a look provoked by the
+casual glance she had had of him but a moment before,--and as she did so
+the color stole up into her cheeks, as she thought of the way in which
+she had just addressed him. But for his plain clothes he looked quite a
+gentleman. He had a really good figure; straight, broad shoulders, and
+fine eyes.
+
+"Can you tell me what time it is?" she asked, falteringly. "I left my
+watch at the hotel."
+
+"I haven't a watch; but I think it must be about four o'clock--it was
+half-past three when I left school, by the school clock; I am not sure
+it was just right."
+
+"Thank you." She looked at her horse. "I must get back to the hotel. Can
+you--?"
+
+Keith forestalled her.
+
+"May I help you up?'
+
+"Thanks. Do you know how to mount me?"
+
+"I think so," he said airily, and stepped up close to her, to lift her
+by the elbows to her saddle. She put out a foot clad in a very pretty,
+neat shoe. She evidently expected Keith to let her step into his hand.
+He knew of this mode of helping a lady up, but he had never tried it.
+And, though he stooped and held his hand as if quite accustomed to it,
+he was awkward about it, and did not lift her; so she did not get up.
+
+"I don't think you can do it that way," said the girl.
+
+"I don't think so either," said Keith. "I must learn it. But I know how
+to do it this way." He caught her by both elbows. "Now jump!"
+
+Taken by surprise she gave a little spring, and he lifted her like a
+feather, and seated her in her saddle.
+
+As she rode away, he stood aside and lifted his hat with an air that
+surprised her. Also, as she rode away, he remarked that she sat her
+horse very well and had a very straight, slim figure; but the picture of
+her kneeling in the dust, with her arm around the little sobbing child,
+was what he dwelt on.
+
+Just as she disappeared, a redbird in its gorgeous uniform flitted
+dipping across the road, and, taking his place in a bush, began to sing
+imperiously for his mate.
+
+"Ah, you lucky rascal," thought Keith, "you don't get caught by a pretty
+girl, in a ragged coat. You have your best clothes on every day."
+
+Next second, as the bird's rich notes rang out, a deeper feeling came to
+him, and a wave of dissatisfaction with his life swept over him. He
+suddenly seemed lonelier than he had been. Then the picture of the girl
+on her knees came back to him, and his heart softened toward her. He
+determined to see her again. Perhaps, Dr. Balsam knew her?
+
+As the young girl rode back to the hotel she had her reward in a
+pleasant sensation. She had done a good deed in helping to console a
+little child, and no kindness ever goes without this reward. Besides,
+she had met a young, strange man, a country boy, it was true, and very
+plainly dressed, but with the manner and tone of a gentleman, quite
+good-looking, and very strong. Strength, mere physical strength, appeals
+to all girls at certain ages, and Miss Alice Yorke's thoughts quite
+softened toward the stranger. Why, he as good as picked her up! He must
+be as strong as Norman Wentworth, who stroked his crew. She recalled
+with approval his good shoulders.
+
+She would ask the old Doctor who he was. He was a pleasant old man, and
+though her mother and Mrs. Nailor, another New York lady, did not like
+the idea of his being the only doctor at the Springs, he had been very
+nice to her. He had seen her sitting on the ground the day before and
+had given her his buggy-robe to sit on, saying, with a smile, "You must
+not sit on the wet ground, or you may fall into my hands."
+
+"I might do worse," she had said. And he had looked at her with his deep
+eyes twinkling.
+
+"Ah, you young minx! When do you begin flattering? And at what age do
+you let men off?"
+
+When Miss Alice Yorke arrived at the hotel she found her mother and Mrs.
+Nailor engaged in an animated conversation on the porch.
+
+The girl told of the little child she had found crying in the road, and
+gave a humorous account of the young countryman trying to put her on
+her horse.
+
+"He was very good-looking, too," she declared gayly. "I think he must be
+studying for the ministry, like Mr. Rimmon, for he quoted the Bible."
+
+Both Mrs. Yorke and Mrs. Nailor thought it rather improper for her to be
+riding alone on the public roads.
+
+The next day Keith put on his best suit of clothes when he went to
+school, and that afternoon he walked home around the Ridge, as he had
+done the day before, thinking that possibly he might meet the girl
+again, but he was disappointed. The following afternoon he determined to
+go over to the Springs and see if she was still there and find out who
+she was. Accordingly, he left the main road, which ran around the base
+of the Ridge, and took a foot-path which led winding up through the
+woods over the Ridge. It was a path that Gordon often chose when he
+wanted to be alone. The way was steep and rocky, and was so little used
+that often he never met any one from the time he plunged into the woods
+until he emerged from them on the other side of the Ridge. In some
+places the pines were so thick that it was always twilight among them;
+in others they rose high and stately in the full majesty of primeval
+growth, keeping at a distance from each other, as though, like another
+growth, the higher they got the more distant they wished to hold all
+others. Trees have so much in common with men, it is no wonder that the
+ancients, who lived closer to both than we do nowadays, fabled that
+minds of men sometimes inhabited their trunks.
+
+Gordon Keith was in a particularly gloomy frame of mind on this day. He
+had been trying to inspire in his pupils some conception of the poetry
+contained in history. He told them the story of Hannibal--his aim, his
+struggles, his conquest. As he told it the written record took life, and
+he marched and fought and lived with the great Carthaginian
+captain--lived for conquest.
+
+"Beyond the Alps lies Italy." He had read the tale with lips that
+quivered with feeling, but as he looked up at his little audience, he
+met only listless eyes and dull faces. A big boy was preparing a pin to
+evoke from a smaller neighbor the attention he himself was withholding.
+The neighbor was Dave Dennison. Dave was of late actually trying to
+learn something. Dave was the only boy who was listening. A little girl
+with a lisp was trying in vain to divide her attention between the story
+and an imprisoned fly the boy next her was torturing, whilst Phrony was
+reading a novel on the sly. The others were all engaged in any other
+occupation than thinking of Hannibal or listening to the reader.
+
+Gordon had shut the book in a fit of disappointment and disgust and
+dismissed the school, and now he was trying with very poor success to
+justify himself for his outbreak of impatience. His failure spoiled the
+pleasure he had anticipated in going to the Springs to find out who the
+Madonna of the Dust was.
+
+At a spot high up on the rocky backbone, one could see for a long way
+between the great brownish-gray trunks, and Gordon turned out of the dim
+path to walk on the thick brown carpet of pine-needles. It was a
+favorite spot with Gordon, and here he read Keats and Poe and other
+poets of melancholy, so dear to a young man's heart.
+
+Beyond the pines at their eastern edge, a great crag jutted forth in a
+sort of shoulder, a vast flying-buttress that supported the pine-clad
+Ridge above--a mighty stone Atlas carrying the hills on its shoulder.
+From this rock one looked out eastward over the rolling country below to
+where, far beyond sloping hills covered with forest, it merged into a
+soft blue that faded away into the sky itself. In that misty space lay
+everything that Gordon Keith had known and loved in the past. Off there
+to the eastward was his old home, with its wide fields, its deep
+memories. There his forefathers had lived for generations and had been
+the leaders, making their name always the same with that of gentleman.
+
+Farther away, beyond that dim line lay the great world, the world of
+which he had had as a boy a single glimpse and which he would
+yet conquer.
+
+Keith had climbed to the crest of the Ridge and was making his way
+through the great pines to the point where the crag jutted out sheer and
+massive, overlooking the reaches of rolling country below, when he
+lifted his eyes, and just above him, half seated, half reclining against
+a ledge of rock, was the very girl he had seen two days before. Her eyes
+were closed, and her face was so white that the thought sprang into
+Keith's mind that she was dead, and his heart leaped into his throat. At
+the distance of a few yards he stopped and scanned her closely. She had
+on a riding-habit; her hat had fallen on her neck; her dark hair,
+loosened, lay about her throat, increasing the deep pallor of her face.
+Keith's pity changed into sorrow. Suddenly, as he leaned forward, his
+heart filled with a vague grief, she opened her eyes--as blue as he
+remembered them, but now misty and dull. She did not stir or speak, but
+gazed at him fixedly for a little space, and then the eyes closed again
+wearily, her head dropped over to the side, and she began to sink down.
+
+Gordon sprang forward to keep her from rolling down the bank. As he
+gently caught and eased her down on the soft carpeting of pine-needles,
+he observed how delicate her features were; the blue veins showed
+clearly on her temples and the side of her throat, and her face had that
+refinement that unconsciousness often gives.
+
+Gordon knew that the best thing to do was to lower her head and unfasten
+her collar. As he loosened the collar, the whiteness of her throat
+struck him almost dazzlingly. Instinctively he took the little crumpled
+handkerchief that lay on the pine carpet beside her, and spread it over
+her throat reverently. He lifted her limp hand gently and felt her
+little wrist for her pulse.
+
+Just then her eyelids quivered; her lips moved slightly, stopped, moved
+again with a faint sigh; and then her eyelids opened slowly, and again
+those blue eyes gazed up at him with a vague inquiry.
+
+The next second she appeared to recover consciousness. She drew a long,
+deep breath, as though she were returning from some unknown deep, and a
+faint little color flickered in her cheek.
+
+"Oh, it's you?" she said, recognizing him. "How do you do? I think I
+must have hurt myself when I fell. I tried to ride my horse down the
+bank, and he slipped and fell with me, and I do not remember much after
+that. He must have run away. I tried to walk, but--but I am better now.
+Could you catch my horse for me?"
+
+Keith rose and, followed the horse's track for some distance along the
+little path. When he returned, the girl was still seated against
+the rock.
+
+"Did you see him?" she asked languidly, sitting up.
+
+"I am afraid that he has gone home. He was galloping. I could tell from
+his tracks."
+
+"I think I can walk. I must."
+
+She tried to rise, but, with the pain caused by the effort, the blood
+sprang to her cheek for a second and then fled back to her heart, and
+she sank back, her teeth catching her lip sharply to keep down an
+expression of anguish.
+
+"I must get back. If my horse should reach, the hotel without me, my
+mother will be dreadfully alarmed. I promised her to be back by--"
+
+Gordon did not hear what the hour was, for she turned away her face and
+began to cry quietly. She tried to brush the tears away with her
+fingers; but one or two slipped past and dropped on her dress. With face
+still averted, she began to feel about her dress for her handkerchief;
+but being unable to find it, she gave it up.
+
+There was something about her crying so quietly that touched the young
+man very curiously. She seemed suddenly much younger, quite like a
+little girl, and he felt like kissing her to comfort her. He did the
+next thing.
+
+"Don't cry," he said gently. "Here, take mine." He pressed his
+handkerchief on her. He blessed Heaven that it was uncrumpled.
+
+Now there is something about one's lending another a handkerchief that
+goes far toward breaking down the barriers of conventionality and
+bridges years. Keith in a moment had come to feel a friendliness for the
+girl that he might not have felt in years, and he began to soothe her.
+
+"I don't know what is the matter--with me," she said, as she dried her
+eyes. "I am not--usually so--weak and foolish. I was only afraid my
+mother would think something had happened to me--and she has not been
+very well." She made a brave effort to command herself, and sat up very
+straight. "There. Thank you very much." She handed him his handkerchief
+almost grimly. "Now I am all right. But I am afraid I cannot walk. I
+tried, but--. You will have to go and get me a carriage, if you please."
+
+Keith rose and began to gather up his books and stuff them in his
+pockets.
+
+"No carriage can get up here; the pines are too thick below, and there
+is no road; but I will carry you down to where a vehicle can come, and
+then get you one."
+
+She took a glance at his spare figure. "You cannot carry me, you are
+not strong enough I want you to get me a carriage or a wagon, please.
+You can go to the hotel. We are stopping at the Springs."
+
+By this time Gordon had forced the books into his pocket, and he squared
+himself before her.
+
+"Now," he said, without heeding her protest; and leaning down, he
+slipped his arms under her and lifted her as tenderly and as easily as
+if she had been a little girl.
+
+As he bore her along, the pain subsided, and she found opportunity to
+take a good look at his face. His profile was clean-cut; the mouth was
+pleasant and curved slightly upward, but, under the weight he was
+carrying, was so close shut as to bring out the chin boldly. The
+cheekbones were rather high; the gray eyes were wide open and full of
+light. And as he advanced, walking with easy strides where the path was
+smooth, picking his way carefully where it was rough, the color rose
+under the deep tan of his cheeks.
+
+She was the first to break the silence. She had been watching the rising
+color in his face, the dilation of his nostrils, and feeling the
+quickening rise and fall of his chest.
+
+"Put me down now and rest; you are tired."
+
+"I am not tired." He trudged on. He would show her that if he had not
+been able to mount her on her horse, at least it was not from lack
+of strength.
+
+"Please put me down; it pains me," she said guilefully. He stopped
+instantly, and selecting a clear place, seated her softly.
+
+"I beg your pardon. I was a brute, thinking only of myself."
+
+He seated himself near her, and stole a glance at her face. Their eyes
+met, and he looked away. He thought her quite beautiful.
+
+To break the silence, she asked, a little tone of politeness coming into
+her voice: "May I inquire what your name is? I am Miss Yorke--Miss Alice
+Yorke," she added, intending to make him feel at ease.
+
+"Gordon Keith is my name. Where are you from?" His manner was again
+perfectly easy.
+
+"From New York."
+
+"I thought you were."
+
+She fancied that a little change came over his face and into his manner,
+and she resented it. She looked down the hill. Without a word he rose
+and started to lift her again. She made a gesture of dissent. But before
+she could object further, he had lifted her again, and, with steady eyes
+bent on the stony path, was picking his way down the steep hill.
+
+"I am dreadfully sorry," he said kindly, as she gave a start over a
+little twinge. "It is the only way to get down. No vehicle could get up
+here at present, unless it were some kind of a flying chariot like
+Elijah's. It is only a little farther now."
+
+What a pleasant voice he had! Every atom of pride and protection in his
+soul was enlisted.
+
+When they reached the road, the young lady wanted Gordon to go off and
+procure a vehicle at the hotel. But he said he could not leave her alone
+by the roadside; he would carry her on to a house only a little way
+around the bend.
+
+"Why, I can carry a sack of salt," he said, with boyish pride, standing
+before her very straight and looking down on her with frank eyes.
+
+Her eyes flashed in dudgeon over the comparison.
+
+"A girl is very different from a sack of salt."
+
+"Not always--Lot's wife, for instance. If you keep on looking back, you
+don't know what may happen to you. Come on."
+
+Just then a vehicle rapidly driven was heard in the distance, and the
+next moment it appeared in sight.
+
+"There comes mamma now," said the girl, waving to the lady in it.
+
+Mrs. Yorke sprang from the carriage as soon as it drew up. She was a
+handsome woman of middle age and was richly dressed. She was now in a
+panic of motherly solicitude.
+
+"Oh, Alice, how you have frightened me!" she exclaimed. "You were due at
+the hotel two hours ago, and when your horse came without you! You will
+kill me!" She clapped her hands to her heart and panted. "You know my
+heart is weak!"
+
+Alice protested her sorrow, and Keith put in a word for her, declaring
+that she had been dreadfully troubled lest the horse should
+frighten her.
+
+"And well she might be," exclaimed Mrs. Yorke, giving him a bare glance
+and then turning back to her daughter. "Mrs. Nailor was the first who
+heard your horse had come home. She ran and told me. And, oh, I was so
+frightened! She was sure you were killed."
+
+"You might be sure she would be the first to hear and tell you," said
+the girl. "Why, mamma, one always sprains one's knee when one's horse
+falls. That is part of the programme. This--gentleman happened to come
+along, and helped me down to the road, and we were just discussing
+whether I should go on farther when you came up. Mother, this is
+Mr. Keith."
+
+Keith bowed. He was for some reason pleased that she did not say
+anything of the way in which he had brought her down the Ridge.
+
+Mrs. Yorke turned and thanked him with graciousness, possibly with a
+little condescension. He was conscious that she gave him a sweeping
+glance, and was sorry his shoes were so old. But Mrs. Yorke took no
+further notice of him.
+
+"Oh, what will your father say! You know he wanted us to go to
+California; but you would come South. After Mr. Wickersham told you of
+his place, nothing else would satisfy you."
+
+"Oh, papa! You know I can settle him," said the girl.
+
+Mrs. Yorke began to lament the wretchedness of a region where there was
+no doctor of reputation.
+
+"There is a very fine surgeon in the village. Dr. Balsam is one of the
+best surgeons anywhere," said Keith.
+
+"Oh, I know that old man. No doubt, he is good enough for little common
+ailments," said Mrs. Yorke, "but in a case like this! What does he know
+about surgery?" She turned back to her daughter. "I shall telegraph your
+father to send Dr. Pilbury down at once."
+
+Keith flushed at her manner.
+
+"A good many people have to trust their lives to him," he said coldly.
+"And he has had about as much surgical practice as most men. He was in
+the army."
+
+The girl began again to belittle her injury.
+
+It was nothing, absolutely nothing, she declared.
+
+"And besides," she said, "I know the Doctor. I met him the other day. He
+is a dear old man." She ended by addressing Keith.
+
+"One of the best," said Keith, warmly.
+
+"Well, we must get you into the vehicle and take you home immediately,"
+said her mother. "Can you help put my daughter into the carriage?" Mrs.
+Yorke looked at the driver, a stolid colored man, who was surly over
+having had to drive his horses so hard.
+
+Before the man could answer, Gordon stepped forward, and, stooping,
+lifted the girl, and quietly put her up into the vehicle. She simply
+smiled and said, "Thank you," quite as if she were accustomed to being
+lifted into carriages by strange young men whom she had just met on
+the roadside.
+
+Mrs. Yorke's eyes opened wide.
+
+"How strong you must be!" she exclaimed, with a woman's admiration for
+physical strength.
+
+Keith bowed, and, with a flush mounting to his cheeks, backed a little
+away.
+
+"Oh, he has often lifted sacks of salt," said the girl, half turning her
+eyes on Keith with a gleam of satisfaction in them.
+
+Mrs. Yorke looked at her in astonishment.
+
+"Why, Alice!" she exclaimed reprovingly under her breath.
+
+"He told me so himself," asserted the girl, defiantly.
+
+"I may have to do so again," said Keith, dryly.
+
+Mrs. Yorke's hand went toward the region of her pocket, but uncertainly;
+for she was not quite sure what he was. His face and air belied his
+shabby dress. A closer look than she had given him caused her to stop
+with a start.
+
+"Mr.--ah--?" After trying to recall the name, she gave it up. "I am very
+much obliged to you for your kindness to my daughter," she began. "I do
+not know how I can compensate you; but if you will come to the hotel
+sometime to-morrow--any time--perhaps, there is something--? Can you
+come to the hotel to-morrow?" Her tone was condescending.
+
+"Thank you," said Keith, quietly. "I am afraid I cannot go to the
+village to-morrow. I have already been more than compensated in being
+able to render a service to a lady. I have a school, and I make it a
+rule never to go anywhere except Friday evening or Saturday." He lifted
+his hat and backed away.
+
+As they drove away the girl said, "Thank you" and "Good-by," very
+sweetly.
+
+"Who is he, Alice? What is he?" asked her mother.
+
+"I don't know. Mr. Keith. He is a gentleman."
+
+As Gordon stood by the roadside and saw the carriage disappear in a haze
+of dust, he was oppressed with a curious sense of loneliness. The
+isolation of his position seemed to strike him all on a sudden. That
+stout, full-voiced woman, with her rich clothes, had interposed between
+him and the rest of his kind. She had treated him condescendingly. He
+would show her some day who he was. But her daughter! He went off into
+a revery.
+
+He turned, and made his way slowly and musingly in the direction of his
+home.
+
+A new force had suddenly come into his life, a new land had opened
+before him. One young girl had effected it. His school suddenly became a
+prison. His field was the world.
+
+As he passed along, scarcely conscious of where he was, he met the very
+man of all others he would rather have met--Dr. Balsam. He instantly
+informed the Doctor of the accident, and suggested that he had better
+hurry on to the Springs.
+
+"A pretty girl, with blue eyes and brown hair?" inquired the Doctor.
+
+"Yes." The color stole into Gordon's cheeks.
+
+"With a silly woman for a mother, who is always talking about her heart
+and pats you on the back?"
+
+"I don't know. Yes, I think so."
+
+"I know her. Is the limb broken?" he asked with interest.
+
+"No, I do not think it is; but badly sprained. She fainted from the
+pain, I think."
+
+"You say it occurred up on the Ridge?"
+
+"Yes, near the big pines--at the summit."
+
+"Why, how did she get down? There is no road." He was gazing up at the
+pine-clad spur above them.
+
+"I helped her down." A little color flushed into his face.
+
+"Ah! You supported her? She can walk on it?"
+
+"Ur--no. I brought her down. I had to bring her. She could not walk--not
+a step."
+
+"Oh! ah! I see. I'll hurry on and see how she is."
+
+As he rode off he gave a grunt.
+
+"Humph!" It might have meant any one of several things. Perhaps, what it
+did mean was that "Youth is the same the world over, and here is a
+chance for this boy to make a fool of himself and he will probably do
+it, as I did." As the Doctor jogged on over the rocky road, his brow was
+knit in deep reflection; but his thoughts were far away among other
+pines on the Piscataqua. That boy's face had turned the dial back nearly
+forty years.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MRS. YORKE FINDS A GENTLEMAN
+
+When Mrs. Yorke arrived at the hotel, Dr. Balsam was nowhere to be
+found. She was just sending off a messenger to despatch a telegram to
+the nearest city for a surgeon, when she saw the Doctor coming up the
+hill toward the hotel at a rapid pace.
+
+He tied his horse, and, with his saddle-pockets over his arm, came
+striding up the walk. There was something reassuring in the quick, firm
+step with which he came toward her. She had not given him credit for so
+much energy.
+
+Mrs. Yorke led the way toward her rooms, giving a somewhat highly
+colored description of the accident, the Doctor following without a
+word, taking off his gloves as he walked. They reached the door, and
+Mrs. Yorke flung it open with a flurry.
+
+"Here he is at last, my poor child!" she exclaimed.
+
+The sight of Alice lying on a lounge quite effaced Mrs. Yorke from the
+Doctor's mind. The next second he had taken the girl's hand, and holding
+it with a touch that would not have crumpled a butterfly's wings, he was
+taking a flitting gauge of her pulse. Mrs. Yorke continued to talk
+volubly, but the Doctor took no heed of her.
+
+"A little rest with fixation, madam, is all that is necessary," he said
+quietly, at length, when he had made an examination. "But it must be
+rest, entire rest of limb and body--and mind," he added after a pause.
+"Will you ask Mrs. Gates to send me a kettle of hot water as soon as
+possible?"
+
+Mrs. Yorke had never been so completely ignored by any physician. She
+tossed her head, but she went to get the water.
+
+"So my young man Keith found you and brought you down the Ridge?" said
+the Doctor presently to the girl.
+
+"Yes; how do you know?" she asked, her blue eyes wide open with
+surprise.
+
+"Never mind; I may tell you next time I come, if you get well quickly,"
+he said smiling.
+
+"Who is he?" she asked.
+
+"He is the teacher of the school over the Ridge--what is known as the
+Ridge College," said the Doctor, with a smile.
+
+Just at this moment Mrs. Yorke bustled in.
+
+"Alice, I thought the Doctor said you were not to talk."
+
+The Doctor's face wore an amused expression.
+
+"Well, just one more question," said the girl to him. "How much does a
+sack of salt weigh?"
+
+"About two hundred pounds. To be accurate,--"
+
+"No wonder he said I was light," laughed the girl.
+
+"Who is a young man named Keith--a school-boy, who lives about here?"
+inquired Mrs. Yorke, suddenly.
+
+"The Keiths do not live about here," said the Doctor. "Gordon Keith, to
+whom you doubtless refer, is the son of General Keith, who lives in an
+adjoining county below the Ridge. His father was our minister during
+the war--"
+
+At this moment the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of
+Mrs. Gates with the desired kettle of hot water, and the Doctor,
+stopping in the midst of his sentence, devoted all of his attention to
+his patient.
+
+The confidence which he displayed and the deftness with which he worked
+impressed Mrs. Yorke so much that when he was through she said: "Doctor,
+I have been wondering how a man like you could be content to settle down
+in this mountain wilderness. I know many fashionable physicians in
+cities who could not have done for Alice a bit better than you have
+done--indeed, nothing like so well--with such simple appliances."
+
+Dr. Balsam's eyes rested on her gravely. "Well, madam, we could not all
+be city doctors. These few sheep in the wilderness need a little
+shepherding when they get sick. You must reflect also that if we all
+went away there would be no one to look after the city people when they
+come to our mountain wilderness; they, at least, need good attendance."
+
+By the time Gordon awoke next morning he had determined that he would
+see his new acquaintance again. He must see her; he would not allow her
+to go out of his life so; she should, at least, know who he was, and
+Mrs. Yorke should know, too.
+
+That afternoon, impelled by some strange motive, he took the path over
+the Ridge again. It had been a long day and a wearing one. He had tried
+Hannibal once more; but his pupils cared less for Hannibal than for the
+bumble-bees droning in the window-frame. For some reason the dull
+routine of lessons had been duller than usual. The scholars had never
+been so stupid. Again and again the face that he had seen rest on his
+arm the day before came between him and his page, and when the eyes
+opened they were as blue as forget-me-nots. He would rouse himself with
+a start and plunge back bravely into the mysteries of physical geography
+or of compound fractions, only to find himself, at the first quiet
+moment, picking his way through the pines with that white face resting
+against his shoulder.
+
+When school was out he declined the invitation of the boys to walk with
+them, and settled himself in his chair as though he meant to prepare the
+lessons for the next day. After a quarter of an hour, spent mostly in
+revery, he rose, put up his books, closed the door, and took the same
+path he had followed the day before. As he neared the spot where he had
+come on the girl, he almost expected to find her propped against the
+rock as he had found her the afternoon before. He was conscious of a
+distinct shock of loneliness that she was not there. The woods had never
+appeared so empty; the soughing of the pines had never sounded
+so dreary.
+
+He threw himself down on the thick brown carpet. He had not felt so
+lonely in years. What was he! And what chance did he have! He was alone
+in the wilderness. He had been priding himself on being the superior of
+those around him, and that strange woman had treated him with
+condescension, when he had strained his heart out to get her daughter to
+the road safely and without pain.
+
+His eyes rested on the level, pale line of the horizon far below him.
+Down there lay all he had ever known and loved. All was changed; his
+home belonged to an alien. He turned his face away. On the other side,
+the distant mountains lay a mighty rampart across the sky. He wondered
+if the Alps could be higher or more beautiful. A line he had been
+explaining the day before to his scholars recurred to him: "Beyond those
+mountains lies Italy."
+
+Gradually it came to him that he was duller than his scholars. Those who
+were the true leaders of men surmounted difficulties. Others had crossed
+the mountains to find the Italy of their ambition. Why should not he?
+The thought strung him up sharply, and before he knew it he was standing
+upright, his face lifted to the sky, his nerves tense, his pulses
+beating, and his breath coming quickly. Beyond that blue rim lay the
+world. He would conquer and achieve honors and fame, and win back his
+old home, and build up again his fortune, and do honor to his name. He
+seized his books, and, with one more look at the heights beyond, turned
+and strode swiftly along the path.
+
+It was, perhaps, fortunate that the day had been a dull one for both
+Mrs. Yorke and Alice. Alice had been confined to her lounge, and after
+the first anxiety was over Mrs. Yorke had been inclined to scold her for
+her carelessness and the fright she had given her. They had not agreed
+about a number of matters. Alice had been talking about her adventure
+until Mrs. Yorke had begun to criticise her rescuer as "a spindling
+country boy."
+
+"He was strong enough to bring me down the mountain a mile in his arms,"
+declared the girl. "He said it was half a mile, but I am sure it was
+a mile."
+
+Mrs. Yorke was shocked, and charged Alice with being susceptible enough
+to like all men.
+
+"All those who are strong and good-looking," protested Alice.
+
+Their little difference had now been made up, and Alice, who had been
+sitting silent, with a look of serious reflection on her face, said:
+
+"Mamma, why don't you invite him over to dinner?"
+
+Mrs. Yorke gave an exclamation of surprise.
+
+"Why, Alice, we know nothing about him."
+
+But the girl was insistent.
+
+"Why, mamma, I am sure he is a gentleman. Dr. Balsam said he was one of
+the best people about here, and his father was a clergyman. Besides, he
+is very interesting. His father was in the war; I believe he was
+a general."
+
+Mrs. Yorke pondered a moment, her pen in the air. Her thoughts flew to
+New York and her acquaintances there. Their view was her gauge.
+
+"Well," she said doubtfully, "perhaps, later I will; there is no one
+here whom we know except Mrs. Nailor. I have heard that the people are
+very interesting if you can get at them. I'll invite him first to
+luncheon Saturday, and see how he is."
+
+It is, doubtless, just as well that none of us has the magic mirror
+which we used to read of in our childhood, which showed what any one we
+wished to know about was doing. It would, no doubt, cause many
+perplexities from which, in our ignorance, we are happily free. Had
+Gordon Keith known the terms on which he was invited to take a meal in
+the presence of Mrs. Yorke, he would have been incensed. He had been
+fuming about her condescension ever since he had met her; yet he no
+sooner received her polite note than he was in the best humor possible.
+He brushed up his well-worn clothes, treated himself to a new necktie,
+which he had been saving all the session, and just at the appointed hour
+presented himself with a face so alight with expectancy, and a manner
+which, while entirely modest, was so natural and easy, that Mrs. Yorke
+was astonished. She could scarcely credit the fact that this bright-eyed
+young man, with his fine nose, firm chin, and melodious voice, was the
+same with the dusty, hot-faced, dishevelled-looking country boy to whom
+she had thought of offering money for a kindness two days before.
+
+When Keith first entered the room Alice Yorke was seated in a
+reclining-chair, enveloped in soft white, from which she gave him a
+smiling greeting. For years afterwards, whenever Gordon Keith thought of
+beauty it was of a girl smiling up at him out of a cloud of white. It
+was a charming visit for him, and he reproached himself for his hard
+thoughts about Mrs. Yorke. He aired all of his knowledge, and made such
+a favorable impression on the good lady that she became very friendly
+with him. He did not know that Mrs. Yorke's kindness to him was
+condescension, and her cordiality inspired as much by curiosity
+as courtesy.
+
+"Dr. Balsam has been telling us about you, Mr. Keith," said Mrs. Yorke,
+with a bow which brought a pleased smile to the young man's face.
+
+"He has? The Doctor has always been good to me. I am afraid he has a
+higher opinion of me than I deserve," he said, with a boy's pretended
+modesty, whilst his eyes strongly belied his words.
+
+Mrs. Yorke assured him that such could not be the case.
+
+"Don't you want to know what he said?" asked Miss Alice, with a
+bell-like laugh.
+
+"Yes; what?" he smiled.
+
+"He said if you undertook to carry a bag of salt down a mountain, or up
+it either, you would never rest until you got there."
+
+Her eyes twinkled, and Gordon appeared half teased, though he was
+inwardly pleased.
+
+Mrs. Yorke looked shocked.
+
+"Oh, Alice, Dr. Balsam did not say that, for I heard him!" she exclaimed
+reprovingly. "Dr. Balsam was very complimentary to you, Mr. Keith," she
+explained seriously. "He said your people were among the best families
+about here." She meant to be gracious; but Gordon's face flushed in
+spite of himself. The condescension was too apparent.
+
+"Your father was a pre--a--a--clergyman?" said Mrs. Yorke, who had
+started to say "preacher," but substituted the other word as more
+complimentary.
+
+"My father a clergyman! No'm. He is good enough to be one; but he was a
+planter and a--a--soldier," said Gordon.
+
+Mrs. Yorke looked at her daughter in some mystification. Could this be
+the wrong man?
+
+"Why, he said he was a clergyman?" she insisted.
+
+Gordon gazed at the girl in bewilderment.
+
+"Yes; he said he was a minister," she replied to his unspoken inquiry.
+
+Gordon broke into a laugh.
+
+"Oh, he was a special envoy to England after he was wounded."
+
+The announcement had a distinct effect upon Mrs. Yorke, who instantly
+became much more cordial to Gordon. She took a closer look at him than
+she had given herself the trouble to take before, and discovered, under
+the sunburn and worn clothes, something more than she had formerly
+observed. The young man's expression had changed. A reference to his
+father always sobered him and kindled a light in his eyes. It was the
+first time Mrs. Yorke had taken in what her daughter meant by calling
+him handsome.
+
+"Why, he is quite distinguished-looking!" she thought to herself. And
+she reflected what a pity it was that so good-looking a young man should
+have been planted down there in that out-of-the-way pocket of the world,
+and thus lost to society. She did not know that the kindling eyes
+opposite her were burning with a resolve that not only Mrs. Yorke, but
+the world, should know him, and that she should recognize his
+superiority.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+MR. KEITH'S IDEALS
+
+After this it was astonishing how many excuses Gordon could find for
+visiting the village. He was always wanting to consult a book in the
+Doctor's library, or get something, which, indeed, meant that he wanted
+to get a glimpse of a young girl with violet eyes and pink cheeks,
+stretched out in a lounging-chair, picturesquely reclining amid clouds
+of white pillows. Nearly always he carried with him a bunch of flowers
+from Mrs. Rawson's garden, which were to make patches of pink or red or
+yellow among Miss Alice's pillows, and bring a fresh light into her
+eyes. And sometimes he took a basket of cherries or strawberries for
+Mrs. Yorke. His friends, the Doctor and the Rawsons, began to rally him
+on his new interest in the Springs.
+
+"I see you are takin' a few nubbins for the old cow," said Squire
+Rawson, one afternoon as Gordon started off, at which Gordon blushed as
+red as the cherries he was carrying. It was just what he had been doing.
+
+"Well, that is the way to ketch the calf," said the old farmer,
+jovially; "but I 'low the mammy is used to pretty high feedin'." He had
+seen Mrs. Yorke driving along in much richer attire than usually dazzled
+the eyes of the Ridge neighborhood, and had gauged her with a
+shrewd eye.
+
+Miss Alice Yorke's sprain turned out to be less serious than had been
+expected. She herself had proved a much less refractory patient than her
+mother had ever known her.
+
+It does not take two young people of opposite sexes long to overcome the
+formalities which convention has fixed among their seniors, especially
+when one of them has brought the other down a mountain-side in his arms.
+
+Often, in a sheltered corner of the long verandah, Keith read to Alice
+on balmy afternoons, or in the moonlit evenings sauntered with her
+through the fields of their limited experience, and quoted snatches from
+his chosen favorites, poems that lived in his heart, and fancied her the
+"maid of the downward look and sidelong glance."
+
+Thus, by the time Alice Yorke was able to move about again, she and
+Keith had already reached a footing where they had told each other a
+good deal of their past, and were finding the present very pleasant, and
+one of them, at least, was beginning, when he turned his eyes to the
+future, to catch the glimmer of a very rosy light.
+
+It showed in his appearance, in his face, where a new expression of a
+more definite ambition and a higher resolution was beginning to take
+its place.
+
+Dr. Balsam noted it, and when he met Gordon he began to have a quizzical
+light in his deep-gray eyes. He had, too, a tender tone in his voice
+when he addressed the girl. Perhaps, a vision came to him at times of
+another country lad, well-born like this one, and, like this one, poor,
+wandering on the New England hills with another young girl, primmer,
+perhaps, and less sophisticated than this little maiden, who had come
+from the westward to spend a brief holiday on the banks of the
+Piscataqua, and had come into his life never to depart--of his dreams
+and his hopes; of his struggles to achieve the education which would
+make him worthy of her; and then of the overthrow of all: of darkness
+and exile and wanderings.
+
+When the Doctor sat on his porch of an evening, with his pipe, looking
+out over the sloping hills, sometimes his face grew almost melancholy.
+Had he not been intended for other things than this exile? Abigail
+Brooke had never married, he knew. What might have happened had he gone
+back? And when he next saw Alice Yorke there would be a softer tone in
+his voice, and he would talk a deeper and higher philosophy to her than
+she had ever heard, belittling the gaudy rewards of life, and instilling
+in her mind ideas of something loftier and better and finer than they.
+He even told her once something of the story of his life, and of the
+suffering and sorrow that had been visited upon the victims of a foolish
+pride and a selfish ambition. Though he did not confide to her that it
+was of himself he spoke, the girl's instinct instantly told her that it
+was his own experience that he related, and her interest was
+deeply excited.
+
+"Did she ever marry, Doctor?" she asked eagerly. "Oh, I hope she did
+not. I might forgive her if she did not; but if she married I would
+never forgive her!"
+
+The Doctor's eyes, as they rested on her eager face, had a kindly
+expression in them, and a look of amusement lurked there also.
+
+"No; she never married," he said. "Nor did he."
+
+"Oh, I am glad of that," she exclaimed; and then more softly added, "I
+know he did not."
+
+Dr. Balsam gazed at her calmly. He did not pursue the subject further.
+He thought he had told his story in such a way as to convey the moral
+without disclosing that he spoke of himself. Yet she had discovered it
+instantly. He wondered if she had seen also the moral he intended
+to convey.
+
+Alice Yorke was able to walk now, and many an afternoon Gordon Keith
+invited her to stroll with him on the mountain-side or up the Ridge,
+drawing her farther and farther as her strength returned.
+
+The Spring is a dangerous season for a young man and a pretty girl to be
+thrown closely together for the first time, and the budding woods are a
+perilous pasture for their browsing thoughts. It was not without some
+insight that the ancient poets pictured dryads as inhabitants of the
+woods, and made the tinkling springs and rippling streams the
+abiding-places of their nymphs.
+
+The Spring came with a burst of pink and green. The mountains took on
+delicate shades, and the trees blossomed into vast flowers, feathery and
+fine as lace.
+
+An excursion in the budding woods has been dangerous ever since the day
+when Eve found a sinuous stranger lurking there in gay disguise, and was
+beguiled into tasting the tempting fruit he offered her. It might be an
+interesting inquiry to collect even the most notable instances of those
+who, wandering all innocent and joyous amid the bowers, have found the
+honey of poisonous flowers where they meant only innocence. But the
+reader will, perhaps, recall enough instances in a private and
+unrecorded history to fill the need of illustration. It suffices, then,
+to say that, each afternoon that Gordon Keith wandered with Alice Yorke
+through the leafy woods, he was straying farther in that perilous path
+where the sunlight always sifts down just ahead, but the end is veiled
+in mist, and where sometimes darkness falls.
+
+These strolls had all the charm for him of discovery, for he was always
+finding in her some new trait, and every one was, he thought, an added
+charm, even to her unexpected alternations of ignorance and knowledge,
+her little feminine outbreaks of caprice. One afternoon they had
+strolled farther than usual, as far even as the high pines beyond which
+was the great rock looking to the northeastward. There she had asked him
+to help her up to the top of the rock, but he had refused. He told her
+that she had walked already too far, and he would not permit her
+to climb it.
+
+"Not permit me! Well, I like that!" she said, with a flash of her blue
+eyes; and springing from her seat on the brown carpet, before he could
+interpose, she was climbing up the high rock as nimbly as if she were
+a boy.
+
+He called to her to stop, but she took no heed. He began to entreat her,
+but she made no answer. He was in terror lest she might fall, and
+sprang after her to catch her; but up, up she climbed, with as steady a
+foot and as sure an eye as he could have shown himself, until she
+reached the top, when, looking down on him with dancing eyes, she kissed
+her hand in triumph and then turned away, her cheeks aglow. When he
+reached the top, she was standing on the very edge of the precipice,
+looking far over the long reach of sloping country to the blue line of
+the horizon. Keith almost gasped at her temerity. He pleaded with her
+not to be so venturesome.
+
+"Please stand farther back, I beg you," he said as he reached her side.
+
+"Now, that is better," she said, with a little nod to him, her blue eyes
+full of triumph, and she seated herself quietly on the rock.
+
+Keith began to scold her, but she laughed at him.
+
+He had done it often, she said, and what he could do she could do.
+
+The beauty of the wide landscape sank into both their minds, and after a
+little they both took a graver tone.
+
+"Tell me where your old home is," she said presently, after a long pause
+in which her face had grown thoughtful. "You told me once that you could
+see it from this rock."
+
+Keith pointed to a spot on the far horizon. He did not know that it was
+to see this even more than to brave him that she had climbed to the top
+of the rock.
+
+"Now tell me about it," she said. "Tell me all over what you have told
+me before." And Keith related all he could remember. Touched with her
+sympathy, he told it with more feeling than he had ever shown before.
+When he spoke of the loss of his home, of his mortification, and of his
+father's quiet dignity, she turned her face away to keep him from seeing
+the tears that were in her eyes.
+
+"I can understand your feeling a little," she said presently; "but I did
+not know that any one could have so much feeling for a plantation. I
+suppose it is because it is in the country, with its trees and flowers
+and little streams. We have had three houses since I can remember. The
+one that we have now on Fifth Avenue is four times as large--yes, six
+times as large--and a hundred times as fine as the one I can first
+remember, and yet, somehow, I always think, when I am sad or lonely, of
+the little white house with the tiny rooms in it, with their low
+ceilings and small windows, where I used to go when I was a very little
+girl to see my father's mother. Mamma does not care for it; she was
+brought up in the city; but I think my father loves it just as I do. He
+always says he is going to buy it back, and I am going to make him
+do it."
+
+"I am going to buy back mine some day," said Keith, very slowly.
+
+She glanced at him. His eyes were fastened on the far-off horizon, and
+there was that in his face which she had never seen there before, and
+which made her admire him more than she had ever done.
+
+"I hope you will," she said. She almost hated Ferdy Wickersham for
+having spoken of the place as Keith told her he had spoken.
+
+When Keith reached home that evening he had a wholly new feeling for the
+girl with whom accident had so curiously thrown him. He was really in
+love with her. Hitherto he had allowed himself merely to drift with the
+pleasant tide that had been setting in throughout these last weeks. But
+the phases that she had shown that afternoon, her spirit, her courage,
+her capricious rebelliousness, and, above all, that glimpse into her
+heart which he had obtained as she sat on the rock overlooking the wide
+sweep where he had had his home, and where the civilization to which it
+belonged had had its home, had shown him a new creature, and he plunged
+into love. Life appeared suddenly to open wide her gates and flood him
+with her rosy light.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MR. KEITH IS UNPRACTICAL, AND MRS. YORKE GIVES HIM GOOD ADVICE
+
+The strolls in the budding woods and the glimpses shown her of a spirit
+somewhat different from any she had known were beginning to have their
+influence on Alice. It flattered her and filled her with a certain
+content that the young school-teacher should like her so much; yet,
+knowing herself, it gave her a vague feeling that he was wanting in that
+quality of sound judgment which she recognized in some of her other
+admirers. It rather frightened her to feel that she was on a pedestal;
+and often he soared away from her with his poetry and his fancies, and
+she was afraid that he would discover it and think she was a hypocrite.
+Something that her mother had said remained in her mind.
+
+"He knows so much, mamma," said Alice one day. "Why, he can quote whole
+pages of poetry."
+
+"He is too romantic, my dear, to be practical," said Mrs. Yorke, who
+looked at the young men who approached her daughter with an eye as cool
+as a physician's glass. "He, perhaps, does know more about books than
+any boy of his age I am acquainted with; but poetry is a very poor thing
+to live on; and if he were practical he would not be teaching that
+wretched little school in the wilderness."
+
+"But, mamma, he will rise. You don't know how ambitious he is, and what
+determination he has. They have lost everything. The place that Ferdy
+Wickersham told me about his father owning, with its old pictures and
+all that, was his old home. Old Mr. Keith, since he lost it, has been
+farming it for Mr. Wickersham. Think of that!"
+
+"Just so," said Mrs. Yorke. "He inherits it. They are all unpractical.
+Your father began life poor; but he was practical, and he had the
+ability to succeed."
+
+Alice's face softened. "Dear old dad!" she said; "I must write to him."
+Even as she thought of him she could not but reflect how absorption in
+business had prevented his obtaining the culture of which this young
+school-teacher had given her a glimpse, and had crushed, though it could
+not wholly quench, the kindliness which lived in his big heart.
+
+Though Alice defended Keith, she felt in her heart there was some truth
+in her mother's estimate. He was too romantic. She soon had proof of it.
+
+General Keith came up to the Ridge just then to see Gordon. At least, he
+gave this out as the reason for his visit, and Gordon did not know until
+afterwards that there was another reason for it--that he had been in
+correspondence for some time with Dr. Balsam. He was looking thin; but
+when Gordon spoke of it, he put it by with a smile.
+
+"Oh, I am very well. We need not worry about my troubles. I have but
+two: that old wound, and Old Age; both are incurable."
+
+Gordon was very pleased to have the opportunity to introduce his father
+to Mrs. Yorke and Miss Alice. As he scanned the thin, fine face with its
+expression of calm and its lines of fortitude, he felt that it was a
+good card to play. His resemblance to the man-in-armor that hung in the
+old dining-room had increased.
+
+The General and Miss Alice promptly became great friends. He treated her
+with a certain distinction that pleased her. Mrs. Yorke, too, was both
+pleased and flattered by his gracious manner. She was, however, more
+critical toward him than her daughter was.
+
+General Keith soon discovered Gordon's interest in the young girl. It
+was not difficult to discover, for every moment of his spare time was
+devoted to her in some way. The General observed them with a quiet smile
+in his eyes. Now and then, however, the smile died out as he heard
+Gordon expressing views which were somewhat new to him. One evening they
+were all seated on the verandah together, and Gordon began to speak of
+making a fortune as a high aim. He had heard Mrs. Yorke express the same
+sentiments a few days before.
+
+"My son," said his father, gently, looking at him with grave eyes, "a
+fortune is a great blessing in the hands of the man who knows how to
+spend it. But riches considered as something to possess or to display is
+one of the most despicable and debasing of all the aims that men
+can have."
+
+Mrs. Yorke's eyes opened wide and her face hardened a little. Gordon
+thought of the toil and patience it had cost him to make even his little
+salary, and wealth appeared to him just then a very desirable
+acquisition.
+
+"Why, father," he said, "it opens the world to a man. It gives such
+great opportunities for everything; travel, knowledge, art, science,
+power, the respect and esteem of the world, are obtained by it."
+
+Something like this Mrs. Yorke had said to him, meaning, kindly enough,
+to encourage him in its pursuit.
+
+The old General smiled gravely.
+
+"Opportunity for travel and the acquirement of knowledge wealth
+undoubtedly gives, but happily they are not dependent upon wealth, my
+son. The Columbuses of science, the Galileos, Newtons, Keplers; the
+great benefactors of the world, the great inventors, the great artists,
+the great poets, philosophers, and statesmen have few of them
+been rich."
+
+"He appears to have lived in another world, mamma," said Alice when he
+had left. "He is an old dear. I never knew so unworldly a person."
+
+Mrs. Yorke's chin tilted a little.
+
+"Now, Alice, don't you be silly. He lives in another world now, and
+certainly, of all the men I know, none appears less fitted to cope with
+this world. The only real people to him appear to be those whom he has
+read of. He never tried wealth."
+
+"He used to be rich--very rich. Don't you remember what that lady told
+you?"
+
+"I don't believe it," said Mrs. Yorke, sententiously.
+
+Alice knew that this closed the argument. When her mother in such cases
+said she did not believe a thing, it meant that the door of her mind was
+fast shut and no reason could get into it.
+
+Mrs. Yorke could not but notice that some change had taken place in
+Alice of late. In a way she had undoubtedly improved. She was more
+serious, more thoughtful of Mrs. Yorke herself, less wilful. Yet it was
+not without some misgiving that Mrs. Yorke noted the change.
+
+She suddenly had her eyes opened. Mrs. Nailor, one of her New York
+friends, performed this amiable office. She assigned the possible cause,
+though not directly--Mrs. Nailor rarely did things directly. She was a
+small, purring lady, with a tilt of the head, and an insinuating voice
+of singular clearness, with a question-mark in it. She was of a very
+good family, lived in a big house on Murray Hill, and had as large a
+circle of acquaintance as any one in New York. She prided herself on
+knowing everybody worth knowing, and everything about everybody. She was
+not lacking in amiability; she was, indeed, so amiable that she would
+slander almost any absent friend to please one who was present. She had
+a little grudge against Keith, for she had been struck from the first by
+his bright eyes and good manners; but Keith had been so much engrossed
+by his interest in Alice Yorke that he had been remiss in paying Mrs.
+Nailor that attention which she felt her position required. Mrs. Nailor
+now gave Mrs. Yorke a judicious hint.
+
+"You have such a gift for knowing people?" she said to her, "and your
+daughter is so like you?" She showed her even teeth.
+
+Mrs. Yorke was not quite sure what she meant, and she answered somewhat
+coldly that she was glad that Mrs. Nailor thought so. Mrs. Nailor soon
+indicated her meaning.
+
+"The young schoolmaster--he is a schoolmaster in whom your daughter is
+interested, isn't he? Yes? He appears so well-read? He brought your
+daughter down the mountain the day her horse ran off with her? So
+romantic to make an acquaintance that way--I quite envy you? There is so
+little real romance these days! It is delightful to find it?" She
+sighed, and Mrs. Yorke thought of Daniel Nailor and his little bald head
+and round mouth. "Yes, I quite envy you--and your daughter. Who is he?"
+
+Mrs. Yorke said he was of a very old and distinguished family. She gave
+him a pedigree that would have done honor to a Derby-winner.
+
+"I am so glad," declared Mrs. Nailor. "I knew he must be, of course. I
+am sure you would never encourage such an intimacy unless he were?" She
+smiled herself off, leaving Mrs. Yorke fuming.
+
+"That woman is always sticking pins into people," she said to herself.
+But this pin had stuck fast, and Mrs. Yorke was in quite a panic.
+
+Mrs. Yorke determined to talk to Alice on the first occasion that
+offered itself; but she would not do it too abruptly. All that would be
+needed would be a hint judiciously given. For surely a girl of such
+sound sense as Alice, a girl brought up so wisely, could not for a
+moment think of acting so foolishly. And really Mrs. Yorke felt that she
+herself was very fond of this young man. She might do something for
+him--something that should be of use to him in after life. At first this
+plan took the form in her mind of getting her husband to give him a
+place; but she reflected that this would necessitate bringing him where
+his acquaintance with them might prove inconvenient. She would aid him
+in going to college for another year. This would be a delicate way to
+discharge the obligation under which his kindness had placed her.
+
+Keith, meantime, was happily ignorant of the plot that was forming
+against him. The warm weather was coming, and he knew that before long
+Mrs. Yorke and Alice would be flitting northward. However, he would make
+his hay while the sun shone for him. So one afternoon Keith had borne
+Miss Alice off to his favorite haunt, the high rock in the Ridge woods.
+He was in unusual spirits; for he had escaped from Mrs. Nailor, who of
+late had appeared to be rather lying in wait for him. It was the spot he
+loved best; for the pines behind him seemed to shut out the rest of the
+world, and he felt that here he was in some sort nearer to having Alice
+for his own than anywhere else. It was here that he had caught that
+glimpse of her heart which he felt had revealed her to him.
+
+This afternoon he was talking of love and of himself; for what young man
+who talks of love talks not of himself? She was dressed in white, and a
+single red rose that he had given her was stuck in her dress. He had
+been reading a poem to her. It contained a picture of the goddess of
+love, decked out for "worship without end." The book now lay at his
+side, and he was stretched at her feet.
+
+"If I ever am in love," he said suddenly, "it will be with a girl who
+must fill full the measure of my dreams." He was looking away through
+the pine-trees to the sky far beyond; but the soft light in his face
+came not from that far-off tent of blue. He was thinking vaguely how
+much bluer than the sky were her eyes.
+
+"Yes?" Her tone was tender.
+
+"She must be a beauty, of course." He gazed at her with that in his eyes
+which said, as plainly as words could have said it, "You are
+beautiful."
+
+But she was looking away, wondering to herself who it might be.
+
+"I mean she must have what _I_ call beauty," he added by way of
+explanation. "I don't count mere red and white beauty. Phrony Tripper
+has that." This was not without intention. Alice had spoken of Phrony's
+beauty one day when she saw her at the school.
+
+"But she is very pretty," asserted the girl, "so fresh and such color!"
+
+"Oh, pretty! yes; and color--a wine-sap apple has color. But I am
+speaking of real beauty, the beauty of the rose, the freshness that you
+cannot define, that holds fragrance, a something that you love, that you
+feel even more than you see."
+
+She thought of a school friend of hers, Louise Caldwell, a tall,
+statuesque beauty, with whom another friend, Norman Wentworth, was in
+love, and she wondered if Keith would think her such a beauty as he
+described.
+
+"She must be sweet," he went on, thinking to himself for her benefit. "I
+cannot define that either, but you know what I mean?"
+
+She decided mentally that Louise Caldwell would not fill his measure.
+
+"It is something that only some girls have in common with some
+flowers--violets, for instance."
+
+"Oh, I don't care for sweet girls very much," she said, thinking of
+another schoolmate whom the girls used to call _eau sucre_.
+
+"You do," he said positively. "I am not talking of that kind. It is
+womanliness and gentleness, fragrance, warmth, beauty, everything."
+
+"Oh, yes. That kind?" she said acquiescingly. "Well, go on; you expect
+to find a good deal."
+
+"I do," he said briefly, and sat up. "I expect to find the best."
+
+She glanced at him with new interest. He was very good-looking when he
+was spirited. And his eyes now were full of light.
+
+"Well, beauty and sweetness," she said; "what else? I must know, for I
+may have to help you find her. There don't appear to be many around
+Ridgely, since you have declined to accept the only pretty girl I
+have seen."
+
+"She must be good and true. She must know the truth as--" His eye fell
+at that instant on a humming-bird, a gleaming jewel of changing sapphire
+that, poised on half-invisible wings, floated in a bar of sunlight
+before a sprig of pink honeysuckle. "--As that bird knows the flowers
+where the honey lies."
+
+"Where do you expect to find this paragon?"
+
+As if in answer, the humming-bird suddenly caught sight of the red rose
+in her dress, and, darting to it, thrust its bill deep into the crimson
+heart of the flower. They both gave an exclamation of delighted wonder.
+
+"I have found her," he said firmly, leaning a little toward her, with
+mantling cheeks and close-drawn lips, his glowing eyes on her face. "The
+bird has found her for me."
+
+The bird darted away.
+
+"Ah, it is gone! What will you give her in return?" She turned to him,
+and spoke half mockingly, wishing to get off such delicate ground.
+
+He turned and gazed into her eyes.
+
+"'Worship without end.'" There was that in his face that made her change
+color. She looked away and began to think of her own ideal. She found
+that her idea of the man she loved had been of height of figure and
+breadth of shoulders, a handsome face and fashionable attire. She had
+pictured him as tall and straight, taller than this boy and larger every
+way, with a straight nose, brown eyes, and dark hair. But chiefly she
+had thought of the style of his clothes. She had fancied the neckties he
+should wear, and the pins that should be stuck in them. He must be
+brave, of course, a beautiful dancer, a fine tennis-player. She had once
+thought that black-eyed, handsome young Ferdy Wickersham was as near her
+ideal as any one else she knew. He led germans divinely. But he was
+selfish, and she had never admired him as much as another man, who was
+less showy, but was, she knew, more of a man: Norman Wentworth, a bold
+swimmer, a good horseman, and a leader of their set. It suddenly
+occurred to her now how much more like this man Norman Wentworth was
+than Ferdy Wickersham, and following her thought of the two, she
+suddenly stepped up on a higher level and was conscious of a certain
+elation, much like that she had had the day she had climbed up before
+Gordon Keith on the out-jutting rock and looked far down over the wide
+expanse of forest and field, to where his home had been.
+
+She sat for a little while in deep reflection. Presently she said, quite
+gravely and a little shyly:
+
+"You know, I am not a bit what you think I am. Why, you treat me as if I
+were a superior being. And I am not; I am a very matter-of-fact girl."
+
+He interrupted her with a gesture of dissent, his eyes full of light.
+
+"Nonsense! You don't know me, you don't know men, or you would know that
+any girl is the superior of the best man," he reiterated.
+
+"You don't know girls," she retorted.
+
+"I know one, at least," he said, with a smile that spoke his admiration.
+
+"I am not sure that you do," she persisted, speaking slowly and very
+seriously. She was gazing at him in a curious, reflective way.
+
+"The one I know is good enough for me." He leaned over and shyly took
+her hand and raised it to his lips, then released it. She did not resist
+him, but presently she said tentatively:
+
+"I believe I had rather be treated as I am than as something I am not. I
+like you too much to want to deceive you, and I think you are deceived."
+
+He, of course, protested that he was not deceived. He "knew perfectly
+well," he said. She was not convinced; but she let it go. She did not
+want to quarrel with him for admiring her.
+
+That afternoon, when Alice came in, her manner was so different from
+what it had been of late that her mother could not but observe it. One
+moment she was distraite; the next she was impatient and even irritable;
+then this mood changed, and she was unusually gay; her cheeks glowed and
+her eyes sparkled; but even as she reflected, a change came, and she
+drifted away again into a brown study.
+
+Next day, while Mrs. Yorke was still considering what to do, a card was
+handed her. It was a name written simply on one of the slips of paper
+that were kept on the hotel counter below. Keith of late had not been
+sending up his card; a servant simply announced his name. This, then,
+decided her. It was the most fortunate thing in the world that Alice had
+gone off and was out of the way. It gave Mrs. Yorke the very opportunity
+she desired. If, as she divined, the young man wished to talk to her
+about anything personal, she would speak kindly to him, but so plainly
+that he could never forget it. After all, it would be true kindness to
+him to do so. She had a virtuous feeling as she smoothed her hair
+before a mirror.
+
+He was not in the sitting-room when she came down; so she sought for him
+on one of the long verandahs where they usually sat. He was seated at
+the far end, where he would be more or less secluded, and she marched
+down on him. He was evidently on the watch for her, and as soon as she
+appeared he rose from his seat. She had made up her mind very clearly
+what she would say to him; but as she approached him it was not so easy
+to say as she had fancied it. There was something in his bearing and
+expression that deterred her from using the rather condescending words
+she had formulated. His face was somewhat pale; his mouth was firmly
+set, throwing out the chin in a way to make it quite strong; his eyes
+were anxious, but steady; his form was very erect, and his shoulders
+were very square and straight. He appeared to her older than she had
+considered him. It would not do to patronize this man. After greeting
+her, he handed her a chair solemnly, and the next moment plunged
+straight into his subject. It was so sudden that it almost took her
+breath away; and before she knew it he had, with the blood coming and
+going in his cheeks, declared his love for her daughter, and asked her
+permission to pay her his addresses. After the first gulp or two he had
+lost his embarrassment, and was speaking in a straightforward, manly
+way. The color had come rushing back into his face, and his eyes were
+filled with light. Mrs. Yorke felt that it was necessary to do
+something. So, though she felt some trepidation, she took heart and
+began to answer him. As she proceeded, her courage returned to her, and
+seeing that he was much disturbed, she became quite composed.
+
+She regretted extremely, she said, that she had not foreseen this. It
+was all so unexpected to her that she was quite overwhelmed by it. She
+felt that this was a lie, and she was not sure that he did not know it.
+Of course, it was quite impossible that she could consent to anything
+like what he had proposed.
+
+"Do you mean because she is from the North and I am from the South?" he
+asked earnestly.
+
+"No; of course not. I have Southern blood myself. My grandmother was
+from the South." She smiled at his simplicity.
+
+"Then why?"
+
+This was embarrassing, but she must answer.
+
+"Why, you--we--move in--quite different--spheres, and--ah, it's really
+not to be thought of Mr. Keith," she said, half desperately.
+
+He himself had thought of the different spheres in which they moved, but
+he had surmounted that difficulty. Though her father, as he had learned,
+had begun life as a store-boy, and her mother was not the most learned
+person in the world, Alice Yorke was a lady to her finger-tips, and in
+her own fine person was the incontestable proof of a strain of gentle
+blood somewhere. Those delicate features, fine hands, trim ankles, and
+silken hair told their own story.
+
+So he came near saying, "That does not make any difference"; but he
+restrained himself. He said instead, "I do not know that I
+understand you."
+
+It was very annoying to have to be so plain, but it was, Mrs. Yorke
+felt, quite necessary.
+
+"Why, I mean that my daughter has always moved in the--the
+most--exclusive society; she has had the best advantages, and has a
+right to expect the best that can be given her."
+
+"Do you mean that you think my family is not good enough for your
+daughter?"
+
+There was a tone in his quiet voice that made her glance up at him, and
+a look on his face that made her answer quickly:
+
+"Oh, no; not that, of course. I have no doubt your family is--indeed, I
+have heard it is--ur--. But my daughter has every right to expect the
+best that life can give. She has a right to expect--an--establishment."
+
+"You mean money?" Keith asked, a little hoarsely.
+
+"Why, not in the way in which you put it; but what money stands
+for--comforts, luxuries, position. Now, don't go and distress yourself
+about this. You are nothing but a silly boy. You fancy yourself in love
+with my daughter because she is the only pretty girl about here."
+
+"She is not; but she is the prettiest I know," ejaculated Keith,
+bitterly.
+
+"You think that, and so you fancy you are in love with her."
+
+"It is no fancy; I am," asserted Keith, doggedly. "I would be in love
+with her if she were as ugly as--as she is beautiful."
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't," declared Mrs. Yorke, coolly. "Now, the thing for
+you to do is to forget all about her, as she will in a short time forget
+all about you."
+
+"I know she will, though I hope she will not," groaned the young man. "I
+shall never forget her--never."
+
+His voice and manner showed such unfeigned anguish that the lady could
+not but feel real commiseration for him, especially as he appeared to be
+accepting her view of the case. She glanced at him almost kindly.
+
+"Is there nothing I can do for you? I should like very much to do
+something--something to show my appreciation of what you have done for
+us to make our stay here less dreary than it would have been."
+
+"Thank you. There is nothing," said Keith. "I am going to turn my
+attention now to--getting an establishment." He spoke half
+sarcastically, but Mrs. Yorke did not see it.
+
+"That is right," she said warmly.
+
+"It is not right," declared Keith, with sudden vehemence. "It is all
+wrong. I know it is all wrong."
+
+"What the world thinks is right can't be all wrong." Mrs. Yorke spoke
+decisively.
+
+"When are you going away?" the young man asked suddenly.
+
+"In a few days." She spoke vaguely, but even as she spoke, she
+determined to leave next day.
+
+"I thank you for all your kindness to me," said Keith, standing very
+straight and speaking rather hoarsely.
+
+Mrs. Yorke's heart smote her. If it were not for her daughter's welfare
+she could have liked this boy and befriended him. A vision came to her
+from out of the dim past; a country boy with broad shoulders suddenly
+flashed before her; but she shut it off before it became clear. She
+spoke kindly to Keith, and held out her hand to him with more real
+sincerity than she had felt in a long time.
+
+"You are a good boy," she said, "and I wish I could have answered you
+otherwise, but it would have been simple madness. You will some day know
+that it was kinder to you to make you look nakedly at facts."
+
+"I suppose so," said Keith, politely. "But some day, Mrs. Yorke, you
+shall hear of me. If you do not, remember I shall be dead."
+
+With this bit of tragedy he turned and left her, and Mrs. Yorke stood
+and watched him as he strode down the path, meaning, if he should turn,
+to wave him a friendly adieu, and also watching lest that which she had
+dreaded for a quarter of an hour might happen. It would be dreadful if
+her daughter should meet him now. He did not turn, however, and when at
+last he disappeared, Mrs. Yorke, with a sigh of relief, went up to her
+room and began to write rapidly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MRS. YORKE CUTS THE KNOT
+
+When Alice Yorke came from her jaunt, she had on her face an expression
+of pleasant anticipation. She had been talking to Dr. Balsam, and he had
+said things about Gordon Keith that had made her cheeks tingle. "Of the
+best blood of two continents," he had said of him. "He has the stuff
+that has made England and America." The light of real romance was
+beginning to envelop her.
+
+As she entered the hall she met Mrs. Nailor. Mrs. Nailor smiled at her
+knowingly, much as a cat, could she smile, might smile at a mouse.
+
+"I think your mother is out on the far end of the verandah. I saw her
+there a little while ago talking with your friend, the young
+schoolmaster. What a nice young man he is? Quite uncommon, isn't he?"
+
+Alice gave a little start. "The young schoolmaster" indeed!
+
+"Yes, I suppose so. I don't know." She hated Mrs. Nailor with her quiet,
+cat-like manner and inquisitive ways. She now hated her more than ever,
+for she was conscious that she was blushing and that Mrs. Nailor
+observed it.
+
+"Your mother is very interested in schools? Yes? I think that is nice in
+her? So few persons appreciate education?" Her air was absolute
+innocence.
+
+"I don't know. I believe she is--interested in everything," faltered
+Alice. She wanted to add, "And so you appear to be also."
+
+"So few persons care for education these days," pursued Mrs. Nailor, in
+a little chime. "And that young man is such a nice fellow? Has he a good
+school? I hear you were there? You are interested in schools, too?" She
+nodded like a little Japanese toy-baby.
+
+"I am sure I don't know. Yes; I think he has. Why don't you go?" asked
+the girl at random.
+
+"Oh, I have not been invited." Mrs. Nailor smiled amiably. "Perhaps, you
+will let me go with you sometime?"
+
+Alice escaped, and ran up-stairs, though she was eager to go out on the
+porch. However, it would serve him right to punish him by staying away
+until she was sent for, and she could not go with Mrs. Nailor's
+cat-eyes on her.
+
+She found her mother seated at a table writing busily. Mrs. Yorke only
+glanced up and said, "So you are back? Hope you had a pleasant time?"
+and went on writing.
+
+Alice gazed at her with a startled look in her eyes. She had such a
+serious expression on her face.
+
+"What are you doing?" She tried to speak as indifferently as she could.
+
+"Writing to your father." The pen went on busily.
+
+"What is the matter? Is papa ill? Has anything happened?"
+
+"No; nothing has happened. I am writing to say we shall be home the last
+of the week."
+
+"Going away!"
+
+"Yes; don't you think we have been here long enough? We only expected to
+stay until the last of March, and here it is almost May."
+
+"But what is the matter? Why have you made up your mind so suddenly?
+Mamma, you are so secret! I am sure something is the matter. Is papa not
+well?" She crossed over and stood by her mother.
+
+Mrs. Yorke finished a word and paused a moment, with the end of her
+silver penholder against her teeth.
+
+"Alice," she said reflectively, "I have something I want to say to you,
+and I have a mind to say it now. I think I ought to speak to you
+very frankly."
+
+"Well, for goodness' sake, do, mamma; for I'm dying to know what has
+happened." She seated herself on the side of a chair for support. Her
+face was almost white.
+
+"Alice--"
+
+"Yes, mamma." Her politeness was ominous.
+
+"Alice, I have had a talk with that young man--"
+
+Alice's face flushed suddenly.
+
+"What young man?" she asked, as though the Ridge Springs were thronged
+with young men behind every bush.
+
+"That young man--Mr. Keith," firmly.
+
+"Oh!" said Alice. "With Mr. Keith? Yes, mamma?" Her color was changing
+quickly now.
+
+"Yes, I have had a quite--a very extraordinary conversation with Mr.
+Keith." As Mrs. Yorke drifted again into reflection, Alice was
+compelled to ask:
+
+"What about, mamma?"
+
+"About you."
+
+"About me? What about me?" Her face was belying her assumed innocence.
+
+"Alice, I hope you are not going to behave foolishly. I cannot believe
+for a minute that you would--a girl brought up as you have been--so far
+forget yourself--would allow yourself to become interested in a
+perfectly unknown and ignorant and obscure young man."
+
+"Why, mamma, he is not ignorant; he knows more than any one I ever
+saw,--why, he has read piles of books I never even heard of,--and his
+family is one of the best and oldest in this country. His grandfathers
+or great-grandfathers were both signers of the Decla--"
+
+"I am not talking about that," interrupted Mrs. Yorke, hastily. "I must
+say you appear to have studied his family-tree pretty closely."
+
+"Dr. Balsam told me," interjected Alice.
+
+"Dr. Balsam had very little to talk of. I am talking of his being
+unknown."
+
+"But I believe he will be known some day. You don't know how clever and
+ambitious he is. He told me--"
+
+But Mrs. Yorke had no mind to let Alice dwell on what he had told her.
+He was too good an advocate.
+
+"Stuff! I don't care what he told you! Alice, he is a perfectly unknown
+and untrained young--creature. All young men talk that way. He is
+perfectly gauche and boorish in his manner--"
+
+"Why, mamma, he has beautiful manners!" exclaimed Alice "I heard a lady
+saying the other day he had the manners of a Chesterfield."
+
+"Chester-nonsense!" exclaimed Mrs. Yorke.
+
+"I think he has, too, mamma."
+
+"I don't agree with you," declared Mrs. Yorke, energetically. "How would
+he appear in New York? Why, he wears great heavy shoes, and his neckties
+are something dreadful."
+
+"His neckties are bad," admitted Alice, sadly.
+
+Mrs. Yorke, having discovered a breach in her adversary's defences, like
+a good general directed her attack against it.
+
+"He dresses horribly; he wears his hair like a--countryman; and his
+manners are as antiquated as his clothes. Think of him at the opera or
+at one of Mrs. Wentworth's receptions! He says 'madam' and 'sir' as if
+he were a servant."
+
+"I got after him about that once," said the girl, reflectively. "I said
+that only servants said that."
+
+"Well, what did he say?"
+
+"Said that that proved that servants sometimes had better manners than
+their masters."
+
+"Well, I must say, I think he was excessively rude!" asserted Mrs.
+Yorke, picking up her fan and beginning to fan rapidly.
+
+"That's what I said; but he said he did not see how it could be rude to
+state a simple and impersonal fact in a perfectly respectful way."
+
+Alice was warming up in defence and swept on.
+
+"He said the new fashion was due to people who were not sure of their
+own position, and were afraid others might think them servile if they
+employed such terms."
+
+"What does he know about fashion?"
+
+"He says fashion is a temporary and shifting thing, sometimes caused by
+accident and sometimes made by tradesmen, but that good manners are the
+same to-day that they were hundreds of years ago, and that though the
+ways in which they are shown change, the basis is always the same, being
+kindness and gentility."
+
+Mrs. Yorke gasped.
+
+"Well, I must say, you seem to have learned your lesson!" she exclaimed.
+
+Alice had been swept on by her memory not only of the words she was
+repeating, but of many conversations and interchanges of thought Gordon
+Keith and she had had during the past weeks, in which he had given her
+new ideas. She began now, in a rather low and unsteady voice, her hands
+tightly clasped, her eyes in her lap:
+
+"Mamma, I believe I like him very much--better than I shall ever--"
+
+"Nonsense, Alice! Now, I will not have any of this nonsense. I bring you
+down here for your health, and you take up with a perfectly obscure
+young countryman about whom you know nothing in the world, and--"
+
+"I know all about him, mamma. I know he is a gentleman. His
+grandfather--"
+
+"You know _nothing_ about him," asserted Mrs. Yorke, rising. "You may be
+married to a man for years and know very little of him. How can you know
+about this boy? You will go back and forget all about him in a week."
+
+"I shall never forget him, mamma," said Alice, in a low tone, thinking
+of the numerous promises she had made to the same effect within the
+past few days.
+
+"Fiddlesticks! How often have you said that? A half-dozen times at
+least. There's Norman and Ferdy Wickersham and--"
+
+"I have not forgotten them," said Alice, a little impressed by her
+mother's argument.
+
+"Of course, you have not. I don't think it's right, Alice, for you to be
+so--susceptible and shallow. At least once every three months I have to
+go through this same thing. There's Ferdy Wickersham--handsome, elegant
+manners, very ri--with fine prospects every way, devoted to you for ever
+so long. I don't care for his mother, but his people are now received
+everywhere. Why--?"
+
+"Mamma, I would not marry Ferdy Wickersham if he were the last man
+in--to save his life--not for ten millions of dollars. And he does not
+care for me."
+
+"Why, he is perfectly devoted to you," insisted Mrs. Yorke.
+
+"Ferdy Wickersham is not perfectly devoted to any one except
+himself--and never will be," asserted Alice, vehemently. "If he ever
+cared for any one it is Louise Caldwell."
+
+Mrs. Yorke shifted her ground.
+
+"There's Norman Wentworth? One of the best--"
+
+"Ah! I don't love Norman. I never could. We are the best of friends, but
+I just like and respect him."
+
+"Respect is a very safe ground to marry on," said Mrs. Yorke,
+decisively. "Some people do not have even that when they marry."
+
+"Then I am sorry for them," said Miss Alice. "But when I marry, I want
+to love. I think it would be a crime to marry a man you did not love.
+God made us with a capacity to form ideals, and if we deliberately fall
+below them--"
+
+Mrs. Yorke burst out laughing.
+
+"Oh, stuff! That boy has filled your head with enough nonsense to last a
+lifetime. I would not be such a parrot. I want to finish my letter now."
+
+Mrs. Yorke concluded her letter, and two mornings later the Yorkes took
+the old two-horse stage that plied between the Springs and the little
+grimy railway-station, ten miles away at the foot of the Ridge, and
+metaphorically shook the dust of Ridgely from their feet, though, from
+their appearance when they reached the railway, it, together with much
+more, must have settled on their shoulders.
+
+The road passed the little frame school-house, and as the stage rattled
+by, the young school-teacher's face changed. He stood up and looked out
+of the window with a curious gaze in his burning eyes. Suddenly his face
+lit up: a little head under a very pretty hat had nodded to him. He
+bowed low, and went back to his seat with a new expression. That bow
+chained him for years. He almost forgave her high-headed mother.
+
+Alice bore away with her a long and tragic letter which she did not
+think it necessary to confide to her mother at this time, in view of the
+fact that the writer declared that in his present condition he felt
+bound to recognize her mother's right to deny his request to see her;
+but that he meant to achieve such success that she would withdraw her
+prohibition, and to return some day and lay at her feet the highest
+honors life could give.
+
+A woman who has discarded a man is, perhaps, nearer loving him just
+afterwards than ever before. Certainly Miss Alice Yorke thought more
+tenderly of Gordon Keith when she found herself being borne away from
+him than she had ever done during the weeks she had known him.
+
+It is said that a broken heart is a most valuable possession for a young
+man. Perhaps, it was so to Keith.
+
+The rest of the session dragged wearily for him. But he worked like
+fury. He would succeed. He would rise. He would show Mrs. Yorke who
+he was.
+
+Mrs. Yorke, having reached home, began at once to lead her daughter back
+to what she esteemed a healthier way of thinking than she had fallen
+into. This opportunity came in the shape of a college commencement with
+a consequent boat-race, and all the gayeties that this entailed.
+
+Mrs. Yorke was, in her way, devoted to her daughter, and had a definite
+and what she deemed an exalted ambition for her. This meant that she
+should be the best-dressed girl in society, should be a belle, and
+finally should make the most brilliant marriage of her set--to wit, the
+wealthiest marriage. She had dreamed at times of a marriage that should
+make her friends wild with envy--of a title, a high title. Alice had
+beauty, style, wealth, and vivacity; she would grace a coronet, and
+mamma would be "Madam, the Countess's mother." But mamma encountered an
+unexpected obstacle.
+
+When Mrs. Yorke, building her air-castles, casually let fall her idea of
+a title for Alice, there was a sudden and unexpected storm from an
+unlooked-for quarter. Dennis Yorke, usually putty in his wife's hands,
+had two or three prejudices that were principles with him. As to these
+he was rock. His daughter was his idol.
+
+For her, from the time she had opened her blue eyes on him and blinked
+at him vaguely, he had toiled and schemed until his hair had turned from
+brown to gray and then had disappeared from his round, strongly set
+head. For the love he bore her he had served longer than Jacob served
+for Rachel, and the time had not appeared long. The suggestion that the
+money he had striven for from youth to age should go to some reprobate
+foreigner, to pay his gambling-debts, nearly threw him into a
+convulsion. His ancestors had been driven from home to starve in the
+wilderness by such creatures. "Before any d----d foreign reprobate should
+have a dollar of his money he would endow a lunatic asylum with it." So
+Mrs. Yorke prudently refrained from pressing this subject any further at
+this time, and built her hopes on securing the next most advantageous
+alliance--a wealthy one. She preferred Norman Wentworth to any of the
+other young men, for he was not only rich, but the Wentworths were an
+old and established house, and Mrs. Wentworth was one of the old
+aristocrats of the State, whose word was law above that of even the
+wealthiest of the new leaders. To secure Norman Wentworth would be
+"almost as good as a title." An intimacy was sedulously cultivated with
+"dear Mrs. Wentworth," and Norman, the "dear boy," was often brought to
+the house.
+
+Perversely, he and Alice did not take to each other in the way Mrs.
+Yorke had hoped. They simply became the best of friends, and Mrs. Yorke
+had the mortification of seeing a tall and statuesque schoolmate of
+Alice's capture Norman, while Alice appeared totally indifferent to him.
+What made it harder to bear was that Mrs. Caldwell, Louise Caldwell's
+mother, a widow with barely enough to live respectably on, was quietly
+walking off with the prize which Mrs. Yorke and a number of other
+mothers were striving to secure, and made no more of it than if it had
+been her right. It all came of her family connections. That was the way
+with those old families. They were so selfishly exclusive and so proud.
+They held themselves superior to every one else and appeared to despise
+wealth. Mrs. Yorke did not believe Mrs. Caldwell really did despise
+wealth, but she admitted that she made a very good show of doing it.
+
+Mrs. Yorke, foreseeing her failure with Norman Wentworth, was fain to
+accept in his place Ferdy Wickersham, who, though certainly not Norman's
+equal in some respects, was his superior in others.
+
+To be sure, Ferdy was said to be a somewhat reckless young fellow, and
+Mr. Yorke did not fancy him; but Mrs. Yorke argued, "Boys will be boys,
+and you know, Mr. Yorke, you have told me you were none too good
+yourself." On this, Dennis Yorke growled that a man was "a fool ever to
+tell his wife anything of the kind, and that, at least, he never was in
+that young Wickersham's class."
+
+All of which Mrs. Yorke put aside, and sacrificed herself unstintedly to
+achieve success for her daughter and compel her to forget the little
+episode of the young Southern schoolmaster, with his tragic air.
+
+Ah, the dreams of the climbers! How silly they are! Golden clouds at the
+top, and just as they are reached, some little Jack comes along and
+chops down the beanstalk, clouds and all.
+
+So, Mrs. Yorke dreamed, and, a trifle anxious over Alice's persistent
+reference to the charms of Spring woods and a Southern climate, after a
+week or two of driving down-town and eager choosing of hats and wearying
+fitting of dresses, started off with the girl on the yacht of Mr.
+Lancaster, a wealthy, dignified, and cultivated friend of her husband's.
+He had always been fond of Alice, and now got up a yacht-party for her
+to see the boat-race.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Keith had thought that the time when he should leave the region where he
+had been immersed so long would be the happiest hour of his life. Yet,
+when the day came, he was conscious of a strange tugging at his heart.
+These people whom he was leaving, and for whom he had in his heart an
+opinion very like contempt on account of their ignorance and narrowness,
+appeared to him a wholly different folk. There was barely one of them
+but had been kind to him. Hard they might appear and petty; but they
+lived close together, and, break through the crust, one was sure to find
+a warm heart and often a soft one.
+
+He began to understand Dr. Balsam's speech: "I have lived in several
+kinds of society, and I like the simplest best. One can get nearer to
+men here. I do not ask gratitude. I get affection."
+
+Keith had given notice that the school would close on a certain day. The
+scholars always dropped off as summer came, to work in the crops; and
+the attendance of late had been slim. This last day he hardly expected
+to have half a dozen pupils. To his surprise, the school-house
+was filled.
+
+Even Jake Dennison, who had been off in the mountains for some little
+time getting out timber, was on hand, large and good-humored, sitting
+beside Phrony Tripper in her pink ribbons, and fanning her hard enough
+to keep a mine fresh. A little later in the day quite a number of the
+fathers and mothers of the children arrived in their rickety vehicles.
+They had come to take leave of the young teacher. There were almost as
+many as were present at the school celebration. Keith was quite
+overcome, and when the hour arrived for closing the school, instead of,
+as he had expected, tying up the half-dozen books he kept in his desk,
+shaking hands with the dozen children eager to be turned loose in the
+delightful pasturage of summer holiday, turning the key in the lock, and
+plodding alone down the dusty road to Squire Rawson's, he now found the
+school-room full, not of school-children only, but of grown people as
+well. He had learned that they expected him to say something, and there
+was nothing for him to do but to make the effort. For an hour, as he sat
+during the last lessons,--which were in the nature of a review,--the
+pages before him had been mere blurred spaces of white, and he had been
+cogitating what he should say. Yet, when he rose, every idea that he had
+tried so faithfully to put into shape fled from his brain.
+
+Dropping all the well-turned phrases which he had been trying to frame,
+he said simply that he had come there two years before with the conceit
+of a young man expecting to teach them a good deal, and that he went
+away feeling that he had taught very little, but that he had learned a
+great deal; he had learned that the kindest people in the world lived in
+that region; he should never forget their kindness and should always
+feel that his best friends were there. A few words more about his hopes
+for the school and his feeling for the people who had been so good to
+him, and he pronounced the school closed. To his surprise, at a wink
+from Squire Rawson, one of the other trustees, who had formerly been
+opposed to Keith, rose, and, addressing the assemblage, began to say
+things about him that pleased him as much as they astonished him.
+
+He said that they, too, had begun with some doubt as to how things would
+work, as one "could never tell what a colt would do till he got the
+harness on him," but this colt had "turned out to be a pretty good
+horse." Mr. Keith, maybe, had taught more than he knew. He had taught
+some folks--this with a cut of his eye over toward where Jake Dennison
+sat big and brown in the placid content of a young giant, fanning
+Euphronia for life--he had "taught some folks that a door had to be
+right strong to keep out a teacher as knowed his business." Anyhow, they
+were satisfied with him, and the trustees had voted to employ him
+another year, but he had declined. He had "business" that would take him
+away. Some thought they knew that business. (At this there was a
+responsive titter throughout the major portion of the room, and Gordon
+Keith was furious with himself for finding that he suddenly turned hot
+and red.) He himself, the speaker said, didn't pretend to know anything
+about it, but he wanted to say that if Mr. Keith didn't find the
+business as profitable as he expected, the trustees had determined to
+hold the place open for him for one year, and had elected a successor
+temporarily to hold it in case he should want to come back.
+
+At this there was a round of approval, as near general applause as that
+stolid folk ever indulged in.
+
+Keith spent the next day in taking leave of his friends.
+
+His last visit that evening was to Dr. Balsam. He had not been to the
+village often in the evening since Mrs. Yorke and her daughter had left
+the place. Now, as he passed up the walk, the summer moonlight was
+falling full on the white front of the little hotel. The slanting
+moonlight fell on the corner of the verandah where he had talked so
+often to Alice Yorke as she lay reclining on her lounge, and where he
+had had that last conversation with Mrs. Yorke, and Keith saw a young
+man leaning over some one enveloped in white, half reclining in an
+arm-chair. He wondered if the same talk were going on that had gone on
+there before that evening when Mrs. Yorke had made him look nakedly
+at Life.
+
+When Keith stated his errand, the Doctor looked almost as grave as he
+could have done had one of his cherished patients refused to respond to
+his most careful treatment.
+
+"One thing I want to say to you," he said presently "You have been
+eating your heart out of late about something, and it is telling on you.
+Give it up. Give that girl up. You will have to sooner or later. They
+will prove too strong for you. Even if you do not, she will not suit
+you; you will not get the woman you are after. She is an attractive
+young girl, but she will not remain so. A few years in fashionable
+society will change her. It is the most corroding life on earth!"
+exclaimed the Doctor, bitterly. "Convention usurps the place of every
+principle, and becomes the only god. She must change. All is Vanity!"
+repeated the Doctor, almost in a revery, his eyes resting on
+Keith's face.
+
+"Well," he said, with a sigh, "if you ever get knocked down and hurt
+badly, come back up here, and I will patch you up if I am living; and if
+not, come back anyhow. The place will heal you provided you don't take
+drugs. God bless you! Good-by." He walked with Keith to the outer edge
+of his little porch and shook hands with him again, and again said,
+"Good-by: God bless you!" When Keith turned at the foot of the hill and
+looked back, he was just reentering his door, his spare, tall frame
+clearly outlined against the light within. Keith somehow felt as if he
+were turning his back on a landmark.
+
+Just as Keith approached the gate on his return home, a figure rose up
+from a fence-corner and stood before him in the starlight.
+
+"Good even'n', Mr. Keith." The voice was Dave Dennison's. Keith greeted
+him wonderingly. What on earth could have brought the boy out at that
+time of the night? "Would you mind jest comin' down this a-way a
+little piece?"
+
+Keith walked back a short distance. Dave was always mysterious when he
+had a communication to make. It was partly a sort of shyness and partly
+a survival of frontier craft.
+
+Dave soon resolved Keith's doubt. "I hear you're a-goin' away and ain't
+comin' back no more?"
+
+"How did you hear that--I mean, that I am not coming back again?" asked
+Keith.
+
+"Well, you're a-sayin' good-by to everybody, same's if they were all
+a-goin' to die. Folks don't do that if they're a-comin' back." He leaned
+forward, and in the semi-darkness Keith was aware that he was
+scrutinizing his face.
+
+"No, I do not expect to come back--to teach school again; but I hope to
+return some day to see my friends."
+
+The boy straightened up.
+
+"Well, I wants to go with you."
+
+"You! Go with me?" Keith exclaimed. Then, for fear the boy might be
+wounded, he said: "Why, Dave, I don't even know where I am going. I have
+not the least idea in the world what I am going to do. I only know I am
+going away, and I am going to succeed."
+
+"That's right. That's all right," agreed the boy. "You're a-goin'
+somewheres, and I want to go with you. You don't know where you're
+a-goin', but you're a-goin'. You know all them outlandish countries like
+you've been a-tellin' us about, and I don't know anything, but I want to
+know, and I'm a-goin' with you. Leastways, I'm a-goin', and I'm a-goin'
+with you if you'll let me."
+
+Keith's reply was anything but reassuring. He gave good reasons against
+Dave's carrying out his plan; but his tone was kind, and the youngster
+took it for encouragement.
+
+"I ain't much account, I know," he pleaded. "I ain't any account in the
+_worl'_," he corrected himself, so that there could be no mistake about
+the matter. "They say at home I used to be some account--some little
+account--before I took to books--before I _sorter_ took to books," he
+corrected again shamefacedly; "but since then I ain't been no manner of
+account. But I think--I kinder think--I could be some account if I
+knowed a little and could go somewheres to be account."
+
+Keith was listening earnestly, and the boy went on:
+
+"When you told us that word about that man Hannibal tellin' his soldiers
+how everything lay t'other side the mountains, I begin to see what you
+meant. I thought before that I knowed a lot; then I found out how durned
+little I did know, and since then I have tried to learn, and I mean to
+learn; and that's the reason I want to go with you. You know and I
+don't, and you're the only one as ever made me want to know."
+
+Keith was conscious of a flush of warm blood about his heart. It was the
+first-fruit of his work.
+
+The boy broke in on his pleasant revery.
+
+"You'll let me go?" he asked. "Cause I'm a-goin' certain sure. I ain't
+a-goin' to stay here in this country no longer. See here." He pulled out
+an old bag and poked it into Keith's hand. "I've got sixteen dollars and
+twenty-three cents there. I made it, and while the other boys were
+spendin' theirn, I saved mine. You can pour it out and count it."
+
+Keith said he would go and see his father about it the next day.
+
+This did not appear to satisfy Dave.
+
+"I'm a-goin' whether he says so or not," he burst forth. "I want to see
+the worl'. Don't nobody keer nothin' about me, an' I want to git out."
+
+"Oh, yes! Why, I care about you," said Keith.
+
+To his surprise, the boy began to whimper.
+
+"Thankee. I'm obliged to you. I--want to go away--where Phrony ner
+nobody--ner anybody won't never see me no more--any more."
+
+The truth dawned on Keith. Little Dave, too, had his troubles, his
+sorrows, his unrequited affections. Keith warmed to the boy.
+
+"Phrony is a lot older than you," he said consolingly.
+
+"No, she ain't; we are just of an age; and if she was I wouldn't keer.
+I'm goin' away."
+
+Keith had to interpose his refusal to take him in such a case. He said,
+however, that if he could obtain his father's consent, as soon as he got
+settled he would send for him. On the basis of this compromise the boy
+went home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GUMBOLT
+
+With the savings of his two years of school-teaching Keith found that he
+had enough, by practising rigid economy, to give himself another year at
+college, and he practised rigid economy.
+
+He worked under the spur of ambition to show Alice Yorke and those who
+surrounded her that he was not a mere country clod.
+
+With his face set steadily in the direction where stood the luminous
+form of the young girl he had met and come to worship amid the
+blossoming woods, he studied to such good purpose that at the end of the
+session he had packed two years' work into one.
+
+Keith had no very definite ideas, when he started out at the end of his
+college year, as to what he should do. He only knew that he had strong
+pinions, and that the world was before him. He wished to bury himself
+from observation until he should secure the success with which he would
+burst forth on an astonished world, overwhelm Mrs. Yorke, and capture
+Alice. His first intention had been to go to the far West; but on
+consideration he abandoned the idea.
+
+Rumors were already abroad that in the great Appalachian mountain-range
+opportunity might be as golden as in that greater range on the other
+side of the continent.
+
+Keith had a sentiment that he would rather succeed in the South than
+elsewhere.
+
+"Only get rifles out and railroads in, and capital will come pouring
+after them," Rhodes had said. "Old Wickersham knows his business."
+
+That was a good while ago, and at last the awakening had begun. Now that
+carpet-bagging was at an end, and affairs were once more settled in that
+section, the wealth of the country was again being talked of in
+the press.
+
+The chief centre of the new life was a day's drive farther in the
+mountains than Eden, the little hamlet which Keith had visited once with
+Dr. Balsam when he attended an old stage-driver, Gilsey by name, and cut
+a bullet out of what he called his "off-leg." This was the veiled
+Golconda. To the original name of Humboldt the picturesque and humorous
+mountaineer had given the name of "Gumbolt."
+
+This was where old Adam Rawson, stirred by the young engineer's
+prophecy, had taken time by the forelock and had bought up the mineral
+rights, and "gotten ahead" of Wickersham & Company.
+
+Times and views change even in the Ridge region, and now, after years of
+delay, Wickersham & Company's railroad was about to be built. It had
+already reached Eden.
+
+Keith, after a few days with his father, stopped at Ridgely to see his
+old friends. The Doctor looked him over with some disapproval.
+
+"As gaunt as a greyhound," he muttered. "My patient not married yet, I
+suppose? Well, she will be. You'd better tear her out of your memory
+before she gets too firmly lodged there."
+
+Keith boldly said he would take the chances.
+
+When old Rawson saw him he, too, remarked on his thinness; but more
+encouragingly.
+
+"Well, 'a lean dog for a long chase,'" he said.
+
+"How are cattle?" inquired Keith.
+
+The old fellow turned his eyes on him with a keen look.
+
+"Cattle's tolerable. I been buyin' a considerable number up toward
+Gumbolt, where you're goin'. I may get you to look after 'em some day,"
+he chuckled.
+
+Gordon wrote to Dave Dennison that he was going to Gumbolt and would
+look out for him. A little later he learned that the boy had already
+gone there.
+
+The means of reaching Gumbolt from Eden, the terminus of the railroad
+which Wickersham & Company were building, was still the stage, a
+survivor of the old-time mountain coach, which had outlasted all the
+manifold chances and changes of fortune.
+
+Happily for Keith, he had been obliged, though it was raining, to take
+the outside seat by the driver, old Tim Gilsey, to whom he recalled
+himself, and by his coolness at "Hellstreak Hill," where the road
+climbed over the shoulder of the mountain along a sheer cliff, and
+suddenly dropped to the river below, a point where old Gilsey was wont
+to display his skill as a driver and try the nerves of passengers, he
+made the old man his friend for life.
+
+When the stage began to ascend the next hill, the old driver actually
+unbent so far as to give an account of a "hold-up" that had occurred at
+that point not long before, "all along of the durned railroad them
+Yankees was bringin' into the country," to which he laid most of the
+evils of the time. "For when you run a stage you know who you got with
+you," declared Mr. Gilsey; "but when you run a railroad you dunno
+who you got."
+
+"Well, tell me about the time you were held up."
+
+"Didn't nobody hold me up," sniffed Mr. Gilsey. "If I had been goin' to
+stop I wouldn't 'a' started. It was a dom fool they put up here when I
+was down with rheumatiz. Since then they let me pick my substitute.
+
+"Well," he said, as a few lights twinkled below them, "there she is.
+Some pretty tough characters there, too. But you ain't goin' to have no
+trouble with 'em. All you got to do is to put the curb on 'em onct."
+
+As Keith looked about him in Gumbolt, the morning after his arrival, he
+found that his new home was only a rude mining-camp, raw and rugged; a
+few rows of frame houses, beginning to be supplanted by hasty brick
+structures, stretched up the hills on the sides of unpaved roads, dusty
+in dry weather and bottomless in wet. Yet it was, for its size, already
+one of the most cosmopolitan places in the country. Of course, the
+population was mainly American, and they were beginning to pour
+in--sharp-eyed men from the towns in black coats, and long-legged,
+quiet-looking and quiet-voiced mountaineers in rusty clothes, who hulked
+along in single file, silent and almost fugitive in the glare of
+daylight. Quiet they were and well-nigh stealthy, with something of the
+movement of other denizens of the forest, unless they were crossed and
+aroused, and then, like those other denizens, they were fierce almost
+beyond belief. A small cavil might make a great quarrel, and pistols
+would flash as quick as light.
+
+The first visit that Keith received was from J. Quincy Plume, the editor
+of the _Gumbolt Whistle_. He had the honor of knowing his distinguished
+father, he said, and had once had the pleasure of being at his old home.
+He had seen Keith's name on the book, and had simply called to offer him
+any services he or his paper could render him. "There are so few
+gentlemen in this ---- hole," he explained, "that I feel that we should
+all stand together." Keith, knowing J. Quincy's history,
+inwardly smiled.
+
+Mr. Plume had aged since he was the speaker of the carpet-bag
+legislature; his black hair had begun to be sprinkled with gray, and had
+receded yet farther back on his high forehead, his hazel eyes were a
+little bleared; and his full lips were less resolute than of old. He had
+evidently seen bad times since he was the facile agent of the Wickersham
+interests. He wore a black suit and a gay necktie which had once been
+gayer, a shabby silk hat, and patent-leather shoes somewhat broken.
+
+His addiction to cards and drink had contributed to Mr. Plume's
+overthrow, and after a disappearance from public view for some time he
+had turned up just as Gumbolt began to be talked of, with a small sheet
+somewhat larger than a pocket-handkerchief, which, in prophetic tribute
+to Gumbolt's future manufactures, he christened the _Gumbolt Whistle_.
+
+Mr. Plume offered to introduce Keith to "the prettiest woman in
+Gumbolt," and, incidentally, to "the best cocktail" also. "Terpsichore
+is a nymph who practises the Terpsichorean art; indeed, I may say,
+presides over a number of the arts, for she has the best faro-bank in
+town, and the only bar where a gentleman can get a drink that will not
+poison a refined stomach. She is, I may say, the leader of
+Gumbolt society."
+
+Keith shook his head; he had come to work, he declared.
+
+"Oh, you need not decline; you will have to know Terpy. I am virtue
+itself; in fact, I am Joseph--nowadays. You know, I belong to the
+cloth?" Keith's expression indicated that he had heard this fact. "But
+even I have yielded to her charms--intellectual, I mean, of course."
+
+Mr. Plume withdrew after having suggested to Keith to make him a small
+temporary loan, or, if more convenient, to lend him the use of his name
+on a little piece of bank-paper "to tide over an accidental and
+unexpected emergency," assuring Keith that he would certainly take it up
+within sixty days.
+
+Unfortunately for Keith, Plume's cordiality had made so much impression
+on him that he was compliant enough to lend him the use of his name, and
+as neither at the expiration of sixty days, nor at any other time, did
+Mr. Plume ever find it convenient to take up his note, Keith found
+himself later under the necessity of paying it himself. This
+circumstance, it is due to Mr. Plume to say, he always deplored, and
+doubtless with sincerity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Women were at a premium in Gumbolt, and Mr. Plume was not the only
+person who hymned the praises of "Terpsichoar," as she was mainly
+called. Keith could not help wondering what sort of a creature she was
+who kept a dance-house and a faro-bank, and yet was spoken of with
+unstinted admiration and something very like respect by the crowd that
+gathered in the "big room of the Windsor." She must be handsome, and
+possibly was a good dancer, but she was no doubt a wild, coarse
+creature, with painted cheeks and dyed hair. The mental picture he
+formed was not one to interfere with the picture he carried in
+his heart.
+
+Next day, as he was making a purchase in a shop, a neat and trim-looking
+young woman, with a fresh complexion and a mouth full of white teeth,
+walked in, and in a pleasant voice said, "Good mornin', all." Keith did
+not associate her at all with Terpsichore, but he was surprised that old
+Tim Gilsey should not have known of her presence in town. He was still
+more surprised when, after having taken a long and perfectly unabashed
+look at him, with no more diffidence in it than if he had been a lump of
+ore she was inspecting, she said:
+
+"You're the fellow that come to town night before last? Uncle Tim was
+tellin' me about you."
+
+"Yes; I got here night before last. Who is Uncle Tim?"
+
+"Uncle Tim Gilsey."
+
+She walked up and extended her hand to him with the most perfect
+friendliness, adding, with a laugh as natural as a child's:
+
+"We'll have to be friends; Uncle Tim says you're a white man, and that's
+more than some he brings over the road these days are."
+
+"Yes, I hope so. You are Mr. Gilsey's nieces I am glad to meet you"
+
+The young woman burst out laughing.
+
+"Lor', _no_. I ain't anybody's niece; but he's my uncle--I've adopted
+_him_. I'm Terpy--Terpsichore, run Terpsichore's Hall," she said by way
+of explanation, as if she thought he might not understand her allusion.
+
+Keith's breath was almost taken away. Why, she was not at all like the
+picture he had formed of her. She was a neat, quiet-looking young woman,
+with a fine figure, slim and straight and supple, a melodious voice, and
+laughing gray eyes.
+
+"You must come and see me. We're to have a blow-out to-night. Come
+around. I'll introduce you to the boys. I've got the finest ball-room in
+town--just finished--and three fiddles. We christen it to-night. Goin'
+to be the biggest thing ever was in Gumbolt."
+
+Keith awoke from his daze.
+
+"Thank you, but I am afraid I'll have to ask you to excuse me," he said.
+
+"Why?" she inquired simply.
+
+"Because I can't come. I am not much of a dancer."
+
+She looked at him first with surprise and then with amusement.
+
+"Are you a Methodist preacher?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Salvation?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I thought, maybe, you were like Tib Drummond, the Methodist, what's
+always a-preachin' ag'in' me." She turned to the storekeeper. "What do
+you think he says? He says he won't come and see me, and he ain't a
+preacher nor Salvation Army neither. But he will, won't he?"
+
+"You bet," said the man, peeping up with a grin from behind a barrel.
+"If he don't, he'll be about the only one in town who don't."
+
+"No," said Keith, pleasantly, but firmly. "I can't go."
+
+"Oh, yes, you will," she laughed. "I'll expect you. By-by"; and she
+walked out of the store with a jaunty air, humming a song about the
+"iligint, bauld McIntyres."
+
+The "blow-out" came off, and was honored with a column in the next issue
+of the Whistle--a column of reeking eulogy. But Keith did not attend,
+though he heard the wheezing of fiddles and the shouting and stamping of
+Terpsichore's guests deep into the night.
+
+Keith was too much engrossed for the next few days in looking about him
+for work and getting himself as comfortably settled as possible to think
+of anything else.
+
+If, however, he forgot the "only decent-looking woman in Gumbolt," she
+did not forget him. The invitation of a sovereign is equivalent to a
+command the world over; and Terpsichore was as much the queen regnant of
+Gumbolt as Her Majesty, Victoria, was Queen of England, or of any other
+country in her wide realm. She was more; she was absolute. She could
+have had any one of a half-dozen men cut the throat of any other man in
+Gumbolt at her bidding.
+
+The mistress of the "Dancing Academy" had not forgotten her boast. The
+institution over which she presided was popular enough almost to justify
+her wager. There were few men of Keith's age in Gumbolt who did not
+attend its sessions and pay their tribute over the green tables that
+stretched along the big, low room.
+
+In fact, Miss Terpsichore was not of that class that forget either
+friends or foes; whatever she was she was frankly and outspokenly. Mr.
+Plume informed Keith that she was "down on him."
+
+"She's got it in for you," he said. "Says she's goin' to drive you out
+of Gumbolt."
+
+"Well, she will not," said Keith, with a flash in his eye.
+
+"She is a good friend and a good foe," said the editor. "Better go and
+offer a pinch of incense to Diana. She is worth cultivating. You ought
+to see her dance."
+
+Keith, however, had made his decision. A girl with eyes like dewy
+violets was his Diana, and to her his incense was offered.
+
+A day or two later Keith was passing down the main street, when he saw
+the young woman crossing over at the corner ahead of him, stepping from
+one stone to another quite daintily. She was holding up her skirt, and
+showed a very neat pair of feet in perfectly fitting boots. At the
+crossing she stopped. As Keith passed her, he glanced at her, and caught
+her eye fastened on him. She did not look away at all, and Keith
+inclined his head in recognition of their former meeting.
+
+"Good morning," she said.
+
+"Good morning." Keith lifted his hat and was passing on.
+
+"Why haven't you been to see me?" she demanded.
+
+Keith pretended not to hear.
+
+"I thought I invited you to come and see me?"
+
+Still, Keith did not answer, but he paused. His head was averted, and he
+was waiting until she ceased speaking to go on.
+
+Suddenly, to his surprise, she bounded in front of him and squared her
+straight figure right before him.
+
+"Did you hear what I said to you?" she demanded tempestuously.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then why don't you answer me?" Her gaze was fastened on his face. Her
+cheeks were flushed, her voice was imperative, and her eyes flashed.
+
+"Because I didn't wish to do so," said Keith, calmly.
+
+Suddenly she flamed out and poured at him a torrent of vigorous oaths.
+He was so taken by surprise that he forgot to do anything but wonder,
+and his calmness evidently daunted her.
+
+"Don't you know that when a lady invites you to come to see her, you
+have to do it?"
+
+"I have heard that," said Keith, beginning to look amused.
+
+"You have? Do you mean to say Tam not a lady?"
+
+"Well, from your conversation, I might suppose you were a man," said
+Keith, half laughing.
+
+"I will show you that I am man enough for you. Don't you know I am the
+boss of this town, and that when I tell you to do a thing you have
+to obey me?"
+
+"No; I do not know that," said Keith. "You may be the boss of this town,
+but I don't have to obey you."
+
+"Well, I will show you about it, and ---- quick, too. See if I don't! I
+will run you out of this town, my young man."
+
+"Oh, I don't think you will," said Keith, easily.
+
+"Yes, I will, and quick enough, too. You look out for me."
+
+"Good morning," said Keith, raising his hat.
+
+The loudness of her tone and the vehemence of her manner had arrested
+several passers-by, who now stood looking on with interest.
+
+"What's the matter, Terpy?" asked one of them. "What are you so peppery
+about? Bank busted?"
+
+The young woman explained the matter with more fairness than Keith would
+have supposed.
+
+"Oh, he is just a fool. Let him alone," said the man; whilst another
+added: "He'll come around, darlin'; don't you bother; and if he don't,
+I will."
+
+"---- him! He's got to go. I won't let him now. You know when I say a
+thing it's got to be, and I mean to make him know it, too," asserted the
+young Amazon. "I'll have him driven out of town, and if there ain't any
+one here that's man enough to do it, I'll do it myself." This
+declaration she framed with an imprecation sufficiently strong if an
+oath could make it so.
+
+That evening Tim Gilsey came in to see Keith. He looked rather grave.
+
+"I am sorry you did not drop in, if it was for no more than to git
+supper," he said. "Terpy is a bad one to have against you. She's the
+kindest gal in the world; but she's got a temper, and when a gal's got a
+temper, she's worse'n a fractious leader."
+
+"I don't want her against me; but I'll be hanged if I will be driven
+into going anywhere that I don't want to go," asserted Keith.
+
+"No, I don't say as you should," said the old driver, his eye resting on
+Keith with a look that showed that he liked him none the less for his
+pluck. "But you've got to look out. This ain't back in the settlements,
+and there's a plenty around here as would cut your throat for a wink of
+Terpy's eye. They will give you a shake for it, and if you come out of
+that safe it will be all right. I'll see one or two of the boys and see
+that they don't let 'em double up on you. A horse can't do nothin' long
+if he has got a double load on him, no matter what he is."
+
+Tim strolled out, and, though Keith did not know it for some time, he
+put in a word for him in one or two places which stood him in good stead
+afterwards.
+
+The following day a stranger came up to Keith. He was a thin man between
+youth and middle age, with a long face and a deep voice, and light hair
+that stuck up on his head. His eyes were deep-set and clear; his mouth
+was grave and his chin strong. He wore a rusty black coat and short,
+dark trousers.
+
+"Are you Mr. Keith?" His voice was deep and melancholy.
+
+Keith bowed. He could not decide what the stranger was. The short
+trousers inclined him to the church.
+
+"I am proud to know you, sir. I am Mr. Drummond, the Methodist
+preacher." He gripped Keith's hand.
+
+Keith expressed the pleasure he had in meeting him.
+
+"Yes, sir; I am proud to know you," repeated Mr. Drummond. "I hear you
+have come out on the right side, and have given a righteous reproof to
+that wretched dancing Jezebel who is trying to destroy the souls of the
+young men of this town."
+
+Keith said that he was not aware that he had done anything of the kind.
+As to destroying the young men, he doubted if they could be injured by
+her--certainly not by dancing. In any event, he did not merit
+his praise.
+
+Mr. Drummond shook his head. "Yes, sir. You are the first young man who
+has had the courage to withstand the wiles of that person. She is the
+most abandoned creature in this town; she beguiles the men so that I can
+make no impression on them. Even when I am holding my meetings, I can
+hear the strains of her fiddles and the shouts of the ribald followers
+that throng her den-of-Satan. I have tried to get her to leave, but she
+will not go."
+
+Keith's reply was that he thought she had as much right there as any
+one, and he doubted if there were any way to meet the difficulty.
+
+"I am sorry to hear you say that," said the preacher. "I shall break up
+her sink of iniquity if I have to hold a revival meeting at her very
+door and call down brimstone and fire upon her den of wickedness"
+
+"If you felt so on the subject of dancing, why did you come here?"
+demanded Keith. "It seems to me that dancing is one of the least sins
+of Gumbolt."
+
+The preacher looked at him almost pensively. "I thought it my duty. I
+have encountered ridicule and obloquy; but I do not mind them. I count
+them but dross. Wherever I have found the print of my Lord's shoe in the
+earth, there I have coveted to set my feet also."
+
+Keith bowed. The speech of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth carried its cachet with
+it. The stiff, awkward figure had changed. The preacher's sincerity had
+lent him dignity, and his simple use of a simple tinker's words had
+suddenly uplifted him to a higher plane.
+
+"Do not you think you might go about it in a less uncompromising spirit?
+You might succeed better and do more good," said Keith.
+
+"No, sir; I will make no compromise with the devil--not even to succeed.
+Good-by. I am sorry to find you among the obdurate." As he shook hands,
+his jaw was set fast and his eye was burning. He strode off with the
+step of a soldier advancing in battle.
+
+Keith had not long to wait to test old Gilsey's advice. He was sitting
+in the public room of the Windsor, a few evenings later, among the
+motley crew that thronged that popular resort, who were discoursing of
+many things, from J. Quincy Plume's last editorial on "The New Fanny
+Elssler," to the future of Gumbolt, when Mr. Plume himself entered. His
+appearance was the signal for some humor, for Mr. Plume had long passed
+the time when any one but himself took him seriously.
+
+"Here comes somebody that can tell us the news," called some one. "Come
+in, J. Quincy, and tell us what you know."
+
+"That would take too long," said Mr. Plume, as he edged himself toward
+the stove. "You will find all the news in the _Whistle_ to-morrow."
+
+Just then another new arrival, who had pushed his way in toward the
+stove, said: "I will tell you a piece of news: Bill Bluffy is back."
+
+"Come back, has he?" observed one of the company. "Well, that is more
+interesting to J. Quincy than if the railroad had come. They are hated
+rivals. Since J. Quincy has taken to writing editorials on Terpy, Bill
+says there ain't no show for him. He threatened to kill Terp, I heard."
+
+"Oh, I guess he has got more sense than that, drunk or sober. He had
+better stick to men; shootin' of women ain't popular in most parts, an'
+it ain't likely to get fashionable in Gumbolt, I reckon."
+
+"He is huntin' for somebody," said the newcomer.
+
+"I guess if he is going to get after all of Terpy's ardent admirers, he
+will have his hands pretty full," observed Mr. Plume--a sentiment which
+appeared to meet with general approval.
+
+Just then the door opened a little roughly, and a man entered slowly
+whom Keith knew intuitively to be Mr. Bill Bluffy himself. He was a
+young, brown-bearded man, about Keith's size, but more stockily built,
+his flannel shirt was laced up in front, and had a full, broad collar
+turned over a red necktie with long ends. His slouch-hat was set on the
+back of his head. The gleaming butts of two pistols that peeped out of
+his waistband gave a touch of piquancy to his appearance. His black eyes
+were restless and sparkling with excitement. He wavered slightly in his
+gait, and his speech was just thick enough to confirm what his
+appearance suggested, and what he was careful to declare somewhat
+superfluously, that he was "on a ---- of a spree."
+
+"I am a-huntin' for a ---- furriner 'at I promised to run out of town
+before to-morrow mornin'. Is he in here!" He tried to stand still, but
+finding this difficult, advanced.
+
+A pause fell in the conversation around the stove. Two or three of the
+men, after a civil enough greeting, hitched themselves into a more
+comfortable posture in their chairs, and it was singular, though Keith
+did not recall it until afterwards, that each of them showed by the
+movement a pistol on his right hip.
+
+After a general greeting, which in form was nearer akin to an eternal
+malediction than to anything else, Mr. Bluffy walked to the bar. Resting
+himself against it, he turned, and sweeping his eye over the assemblage,
+ordered every man in the room to walk up and take a drink with him,
+under penalties veiled in too terrific language to be wholly
+intelligible. The violence of his invitation was apparently not quite
+necessary, as every man in the room pulled back his chair promptly and
+moved toward the bar, leaving Keith alone by the stove. Mr. Bluffy had
+ordered drinks, when his casual glance fell on Keith standing quietly
+inside the circle of chairs on the other side of the stove. He pushed
+his way unsteadily through the men clustered at the bar.
+
+"Why in the ---- don't you come up and do what I tell you? Are you
+deaf?"
+
+"No," said Keith, quietly; "but I'll get you to excuse me."
+
+"Excuse ----! You aren't too good to drink with me, are you? If you
+think you are, I'll show you pretty ----d quick you ain't."
+
+Keith flushed.
+
+"Drink with him," said two or three men in an undertone. "Or take a
+cigar," said one, in a friendly aside.
+
+"Thank you, I won't drink," said Keith, yet more gravely, his face
+paling a little, "and I don't care for a cigar."
+
+"Come on, Mr. Keith," called some one.
+
+The name caught the young bully, and he faced Keith more directly.
+
+"Keith?--Keith!" he repeated, fastening his eyes on him with a cold
+glitter in them. "So you're Mr. Keith, are you?"
+
+"That is my name," said Keith, feeling his blood tingling.
+
+"Well, you're the man I'm a-lookin' for. No, you won't drink with me,
+'cause I won't let you, you ---- ---- ----! You are the ---- ---- that
+comes here insultin' a lady?"
+
+"No; I am not," said Keith, keeping his eyes on him.
+
+"You're a liar!" said Mr. Bluffy, adding his usual expletives. "And
+you're the man I've come back here a-huntin' for. I promised to drive
+you out of town to-night if I had to go to hell a-doin' it."
+
+His white-handled pistol was out of his waistband with a movement so
+quick that he had it cocked and Keith was looking down the barrel before
+he took in what had been done. Quickness was Mr. Bluffy's strongest
+card, and he had played it often.
+
+Keith's face paled slightly. He looked steadily over the pistol, not
+three feet from him, at the drunken creature beyond it. His nerves grew
+tense, and every muscle in his frame tightened. He saw the beginning of
+the grooves in the barrel of the pistol and the gray cones of the
+bullets at the side in the cylinder; he saw the cruel, black, drunken
+eyes of the young desperado. It was all in a flash. He had not a chance
+for his life. Yes, he had.
+
+"Let up, Bill," said a voice, coaxingly, as one might to soothe a wild
+beast. "Don't--"
+
+"Drop that pistol!" said another voice, which Keith recognized as Dave
+Dennison's.
+
+The desperado half glanced at the latter as he shot a volley of oaths at
+him. That glance saved Keith. He ducked out of the line of aim and
+sprang upon his assailant at the same time, seizing the pistol as he
+went, and turning it up just as Bluffy pulled the trigger. The ball
+went into the remote corner of the ceiling, and the desperado was
+carried off his feet by Keith's rush.
+
+The only sounds heard in the room were the shuffling of the feet of the
+two wrestlers and the oaths of the enraged Bluffy. Keith had not uttered
+a word. He fought like a bulldog, without noise. His effort was, while
+he still gripped the pistol, to bring his two hands together behind his
+opponent's back. A sudden relaxation of the latter's grip as he made
+another desperate effort to release his pistol favored Keith, and,
+bringing his hands together, he lifted his antagonist from his feet, and
+by a dexterous twist whirled him over his shoulder and dashed him with
+all his might, full length flat on his back, upon the floor. It was an
+old trick learned in his boyish days and practised on the Dennisons, and
+Gordon had by it ended many a contest, but never one more completely
+than this. A buzz of applause came from the bystanders, and more than
+one, with sudden friendliness, called to him to get Bluffy's pistol,
+which had fallen on the floor. But Keith had no need to do so, for just
+then a stoutly built young fellow snatched it up. It was Dave Dennison,
+who had come in just as the row began. He had been following up Bluffy.
+The desperado, however, was too much shaken to have used it immediately,
+and when, still stunned and breathless, he rose to his feet, the crowd
+was too much against him to have allowed him to renew the attack, even
+had he then desired it.
+
+As for Keith, he found himself suddenly the object of universal
+attention, and he might, had he been able to distribute himself, have
+slept in half the shacks in the camp.
+
+The only remark Dave made on the event was characteristic:
+
+"Don't let him git the drop on you again."
+
+The next morning Keith found himself, in some sort, famous. "Tacklin'
+Bill Bluffy without a gun and cleanin' him up," as one of his new
+friends expressed it, was no mean feat, and Keith was not insensible to
+the applause it brought him. He would have enjoyed it more, perhaps, had
+not every man, without exception, who spoke of it given him the same
+advice Dave had given--to look out for Bluffy. To have to kill a man or
+be killed oneself is not the pleasantest introduction to one's new home;
+yet this appeared to Keith the dilemma in which he was placed, and as,
+if either had to die, he devoutly hoped it would not be himself, he
+stuck a pistol in his pocket and walked out the next morning with very
+much the same feeling he supposed he should have if he had been going to
+battle. He was ashamed to find himself much relieved when some one he
+met volunteered the information that Bluffy had left town by light that
+morning. "Couldn't stand the racket. Terpy wouldn't even speak to him.
+But he'll come back. Jest as well tote your gun a little while, till
+somebody else kills him for you." A few mornings later, as Keith was
+going down the street, he met again the "only decent-lookin' gal in
+Gumbolt." It was too late for him to turn off, for when he first caught
+sight of her he saw that she had seen him, and her head went up, and she
+turned her eyes away. He hoped to pass without appearing to know her;
+but just before they met, she cut her eye at him, and though his gaze
+was straight ahead, she said, "Good morning," and he touched his hat as
+he passed. That afternoon he met her again. He was passing on as before,
+without looking at her, but she stopped him. "Good afternoon." She spoke
+rather timidly, and the color that mounted to her face made her very
+handsome. He returned the salutation coldly, and with an uneasy feeling
+that he was about to be made the object of another outpouring of her
+wrath. Her intention, however, was quite different. "I don't want you to
+think I set that man on you; it was somebody else done it." The color
+came and went in her cheeks.
+
+Keith bowed politely, but preserved silence.
+
+"I was mad enough to do it, but I didn't, and them that says I done it
+lies." She flushed, but looked him straight in the face.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Keith, civilly, starting to move on.
+
+"I wish they would let me and my affairs alone," she began.' "They're
+always a-talkin' about me, and I never done 'em no harm. First thing
+they know, I'll give 'em something to talk about."
+
+The suppressed fire was beginning to blaze again, and Keith looked
+somewhat anxiously down the street, wishing he were anywhere except in
+that particular company. To relieve the tension, he said:
+
+"I did not mean to be rude to you the other day. Good morning."
+
+At the kind tone her face changed.
+
+"I knew it. I was riled that mornin' about another thing--somethin' what
+happened the day before, about Bill," she explained. "Bill's bad enough
+when he's in liquor, and I'd have sent him off for good long ago if they
+had let him alone. But they're always a-peckin' and a-diggin' at him.
+They set him on drinkin' and fightin', and not one of 'em is man enough
+to stand up to him."
+
+She gave a little whimper, and then, as if not trusting herself further,
+walked hastily away. Mr. Gilsey said to Gordon soon afterwards:
+
+"Well, you've got one friend in Gumbolt as is a team by herself; you've
+captured Terp. She says you're the only man in Gumbolt as treats her
+like a lady."
+
+Keith was both pleased and relieved.
+
+A week or two after Keith had taken up his abode in Gumbolt, Mr. Gilsey
+was taken down with his old enemy, the rheumatism, and Keith went to
+visit him. He found him in great anxiety lest his removal from the box
+should hasten the arrival of the railway. He unexpectedly gave Keith
+evidence of the highest confidence he could have in any man. He asked
+if he would take the stage until he got well. Gordon readily assented.
+
+So the next morning at daylight Keith found himself sitting in the boot,
+enveloped in old Tim's greatcoat, enthroned in that high seat toward
+which he had looked in his childhood-dreams.
+
+It was hard work and more or less perilous work, but his experience as a
+boy on the plantation and at Squire Rawson's, when he had driven the
+four-horse wagon, stood him in good stead.
+
+Old Tim's illness was more protracted than any one had contemplated,
+and, before the first winter was out, Gordon had a reputation as a
+stage-driver second only to old Gilsey himself.
+
+Stage-driving, however, was not his only occupation, and before the next
+Spring had passed, Keith had become what Mr. Plume called "one of
+Gumbolt's rising young sons." His readiness to lend a hand to any one
+who needed a helper began to tell. Whether it was Mr. Gilsey trying to
+climb with his stiff joints to the boot of his stage, or Squire Rawson's
+cousin, Captain Turley, the sandy-whiskered, sandy-clothed surveyor,
+running his lines through the laurel bushes among the gray debris of the
+crumbled mountain-side; Mr. Quincy Plume trying to evolve new copy from
+a splitting head, or the shouting wagon-drivers thrashing their teams up
+the muddy street, he could and would help any one.
+
+He was so popular that he was nominated to be the town constable, a
+tribute to his victory over Mr. Bluffy.
+
+Terpy and he, too, had become friends, and though Keith stuck to his
+resolution not to visit her "establishment," few days went by that she
+did not pass him on the street or happen along where he was, and always
+with a half-abashed nod and a rising color.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+KEITH DECLINES AN OFFER
+
+With the growth of Gumbolt, Mr. Wickersham and his friends awakened to
+the fact that Squire Rawson was not the simple cattle-dealer he appeared
+to be, but was a man to be reckoned with. He not only held a large
+amount of the most valuable property in the Gap, but had as yet proved
+wholly intractable about disposing of it. Accordingly, the agent of
+Wickersham & Company, Mr. Halbrook, came down to Gumbolt to look into
+the matter. He brought with him a stout, middle-aged Scotchman, named
+Matheson, with keen eyes and a red face, who was represented to be the
+man whom Wickersham & Company intended to make the superintendent of
+their mines as soon as they should be opened.
+
+The railroad not having yet been completed more than a third of the way
+beyond Eden, Mr. Halbrook took the stage to Gumbolt.
+
+Owing to something that Mr. Gilsey had let fall about Keith, Mr.
+Halbrook sent next day for Keith. He wanted him to do a small piece of
+surveying for him. With him was the stout Scotchman, Matheson.
+
+The papers and plats were on a table in his room, and Keith was looking
+at them.
+
+"How long would it take you to do it?" asked Mr. Halbrook. He was a
+short, alert-looking man, with black eyes and a decisive manner. He
+always appeared to be in a hurry.
+
+Keith was so absorbed that he did not answer immediately, and the agent
+repeated the question with a little asperity in his tone.
+
+"I say how long would it take you to run those lines?"
+
+"I don't know," said Keith, doubtfully. "I see a part of the property
+lies on the mountain-side just above and next to Squire Rawson's lands.
+I could let you know to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow! You people down here always want to put things off. That is
+the reason you are so behind the rest of the world. The stage-driver,
+however, told me that you were different, and that is the reason I
+sent for you."
+
+Keith straightened himself. "Dr. Chalmers said when some one praised him
+as better than other Scotchmen, 'I thank you, sir, for no compliment
+paid me at the expense of my countrymen." He half addressed himself to
+the Scotchman.
+
+Matheson turned and looked him over, and as he did so his grim face
+softened a little.
+
+"I know nothing about your doctors," said Mr. Halbrook; "what I want is
+to get this work done. Why can't you let me know to-day what it will
+cost? I have other things to do. I wish to leave to-morrow afternoon."
+
+"Well," said Keith, with a little flush in his face, "I could guess at
+it to-day. I think it will take a very short time. I am familiar with a
+part of this property already, and--"
+
+Mr. Halbrook was a man of quick intellect; moreover, he had many things
+on his mind just then. Among them he had to go and see what sort of a
+trade he could make with this Squire Rawson, who had somehow stumbled
+into the best piece of land in the Gap, and was now holding it in an
+obstinate and unreasonable way.
+
+"Well, I don't want any guessing. I'll tell you what I will do. I will
+pay you so much for the job." He named a sum which was enough to make
+Keith open his eyes. It was more than he had ever received for any one
+piece of work.
+
+"It would be cheaper for you to pay me by the day," Keith began.
+
+"Not much! I know the way you folks work down here. I have seen
+something of it. No day-work for me. I will pay you so many dollars for
+the job. What do you say? You can take it or leave it alone. If you do
+it well, I may have some more work for you." He had no intention of
+being offensive; he was only talking what he would have called
+"business"; but his tone was such that Keith answered him with a flash
+in his eye, his breath coming a little more quickly.
+
+"Very well; I will take it."
+
+Keith took the papers and went out. Within a few minutes he had found
+his notes of the former survey and secured his assistants. His next step
+was to go to Captain Turley and take him into partnership in the work,
+and within an hour he was out on the hills, verifying former lines and
+running such new lines as were necessary. Spurred on by the words of the
+newcomer even more than by the fee promised him, Keith worked with might
+and main, and sat up all night finishing the work. Next day he walked
+into the room where Mr. Halbrook sat, in the company's big new office at
+the head of the street. He had a roll of paper under his arm.
+
+"Good morning, sir." His head was held rather high, and his voice had a
+new tone in it.
+
+Mr. Wickersham's agent looked up, and his face clouded. He was not used
+to being addressed in so independent a tone.
+
+"Good morning. I suppose you have come to tell me how long it will take
+you to finish the job that I gave you, or that the price I named is not
+high enough?"
+
+"No," said Keith, "I have not. I have come to show you that my people
+down here do not always put things off till to-morrow. I have come to
+tell you that I have done the work. Here is your survey." He unrolled
+and spread out before Mr. Halbrook's astonished gaze the plat he had
+made. It was well done, the production of a draughtsman who knew the
+value of neatness and skill. The agent's eyes opened wide.
+
+"Impossible! You could not have done it, or else you--"
+
+"I have done it," said Keith, firmly. "It is correct."
+
+"You had the plat before?" Mr. Halbrook's eyes were fastened on him
+keenly. He was feeling a little sore at what he considered having been
+outwitted by this youngster.
+
+"I had run certain of the lines before," said Keith: "these, as I
+started to tell you yesterday. And now," he said, with a sudden change
+of manner, "I will make you the same proposal I made yesterday. You can
+pay me what you think the work is worth. I will not hold you to your
+bargain of yesterday."
+
+The other sat back in his chair, and looked at him with a different
+expression on his face.
+
+"You must have worked all night?' he said thoughtfully.
+
+"I did," said Keith, "and so did my assistant, but that is nothing. I
+have often done that for less money. Many people sit up all night in
+Gumbolt," he added, with a smile.
+
+"That old stage-driver said you were a worker." Mr. Halbrook's eyes were
+still on him. "Where are you from?"
+
+"Born and bred in the South," said Keith.
+
+"I owe you something of an apology for what I said yesterday. I shall
+have some more work for you, perhaps."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The agent, when he went back to the North, was as good as his word. He
+told his people that there was one man in Gumbolt who would do their
+work promptly.
+
+"And he's straight," he said. "He says he is from the South; but he is a
+new issue."
+
+He further reported that old Rawson, the countryman who owned the land
+in the Gap, either owned or controlled the cream of the coal-beds there.
+"He either knows or has been well advised by somebody who knows the
+value of all the lands about there. And he has about blocked the game. I
+think it's that young Keith, and I advise you to get hold of Keith."
+
+"Who is Keith? What Keith? What is his name?" asked Mr. Wickersham.
+
+"Gordon Keith."
+
+Mr. Wickersham's face brightened. "Oh, that is all right; we can get
+him. We might give him a place?"
+
+Mr. Halbrook nodded.
+
+Mr. Wickersham sat down and wrote a letter to Keith, saying that he
+wished to see him in New York on a matter of business which might
+possibly turn out to his advantage. He also wrote a letter to General
+Keith, suggesting that he might possibly be able to give his son
+employment, and intimating that it was on account of his high regard for
+the General.
+
+That day Keith met Squire Rawson on the street. He was dusty and
+travel-stained.
+
+"I was jest comin' to see you," he said.
+
+They returned to the little room which Keith called his office, where
+the old fellow opened his saddle-bags and took out a package of papers.
+
+"They all thought I was a fool," he chuckled as he laid out deed after
+deed. "While they was a-talkin' I was a-ridin'. They thought I was
+buyin' cattle, and I was, but for every cow I bought I got a calf in the
+shape of the mineral rights to a tract of land. I'd buy a cow and I'd
+offer a man half as much again as she was worth if he'd sell me the
+mineral rights at a fair price, and he'd do it. He never had no use for
+'em, an' I didn't know as I should either; but that young engineer o'
+yourn talked so positive I thought I might as well git 'em inside my
+pasture-fence." He sat back and looked at Keith with quizzical
+complacency.
+
+"Come a man to see me not long ago," he continued; "Mr.
+Halbrook--black-eyed man, with a face white and hard like a tombstone.
+I set up and talked to him nigh all night and filled him plumb full of
+old applejack. That man sized me up for a fool, an' I sized him up for a
+blamed smart Yankee. But I don't know as he got much the better of me."
+
+Keith doubted it too.
+
+"I think it was in and about the most vallyble applejack that I ever
+owned," continued the old landowner, after a pause. "You know, I don't
+mind Yankees as much as I used to--some of 'em. Of course, thar was Dr.
+Balsam; he was a Yankee; but I always thought he was somethin' out of
+the general run, like a piebald horse. That young engineer o' yourn that
+come to my house several years ago, he give me a new idea about
+'em--about some other things, too. He was a very pleasant fellow, an' he
+knowed a good deal, too. It occurred to me 't maybe you might git hold
+of him, an' we might make somethin' out of these lands on our own
+account. Where is he now?"
+
+Keith explained that Mr. Rhodes was somewhere in Europe.
+
+"Well, time enough. He'll come home sometime, an' them lands ain't
+liable to move away. Yes, I likes some Yankees now pretty well; but,
+Lord! I loves to git ahead of a Yankee! They're so kind o' patronizin'
+to you. Well," he said, rising, "I thought I'd come up and talk to you
+about it. Some day I'll git you to look into matters a leetle for me."
+
+The next day Keith received Mr. Wickersham's letter requesting him to
+come to New York. Keith's heart gave a bound.
+
+The image of Alice Yorke flashed into his mind, as it always did when
+any good fortune came to him. Many a night, with drooping eyes and
+flagging energies, he had sat up and worked with renewed strength
+because she sat on the other side of the hot lamp.
+
+It is true that communication between them had been but rare. Mrs. Yorke
+had objected to any correspondence, and he now began to see, though
+dimly, that her objection was natural. But from time to time, on
+anniversaries, he had sent her a book, generally a book of poems with
+marked passages in it, and had received in reply a friendly note from
+the young lady, over which he had pondered, and which he had always
+treasured and filed away with tender care.
+
+Keith took the stage that night for Eden on his way to New York. As they
+drove through the pass in the moonlight he felt as if he were soaring
+into a new life. He was already crossing the mountains beyond which lay
+the Italy of his dreams.
+
+He stopped on his way to see his father. The old gentleman's face glowed
+with pleasure as he looked at Gordon and found how he had developed.
+Life appeared to be reopening for him also in his son.
+
+"I will give you a letter to an old friend of mine, John Templeton. He
+has a church in New York. But it is not one of the fashionable ones; for
+
+     "'Unpractised he to fawn or seek for power
+     By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour:
+     Far other aims his heart had learned to prize,
+     More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise.'
+
+"You will find him a safe adviser. You will call also and pay my respects
+to Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth."
+
+On his way, owing to a break in the railroad, Keith had to change his
+train at a small town not far from New York. Among the passengers was an
+old lady, simply and quaintly dressed, who had taken the train somewhere
+near Philadelphia. She was travelling quite alone, and appeared to be
+much hampered by her bags and parcels. The sight of an old woman, like
+that of a little girl, always softened Keith's heart. Something always
+awoke in him that made him feel tender. When Keith first observed this
+old lady, the entire company was streaming along the platform in that
+haste which always marks the transfer of passengers from one train to
+another. No one appeared to notice her, and under the weight of her bags
+and bundles she was gradually dropping to the rear of the crowd. As
+Keith, bag in hand, swung past her with the rest, he instinctively
+turned and offered his services to help carry her parcels. She panted
+her thanks, but declined briefly, declaring that she should do
+very well.
+
+"You may be doing very well," Keith said pleasantly, "but you will do
+better if you will let me help you."
+
+"No, thank you." This time more firmly than before. "I am quite used to
+helping myself, and am not old enough for that yet. I prefer to carry my
+own baggage," she added with emphasis.
+
+"It is not the question of age, I hope, that gives me the privilege of
+helping a lady," said Keith. He was already trying to relieve her of her
+largest bag and one or two bundles.
+
+A keen glance from a pair of very bright eyes was shot at him.
+
+"Well, I will let you take that side of that bag and this bundle--no;
+that one. Now, don't run away from me."
+
+"No; I will promise not," said Keith, laughing; and relieved of that
+much of her burden, the old lady stepped out more briskly than she had
+been doing. When they finally reached a car, the seats were nearly all
+filled. There was one, however, beside a young woman at the far end, and
+this Keith offered to the old lady, who, as he stowed her baggage close
+about her, made him count the pieces carefully. Finding the tale
+correct, she thanked him with more cordiality than she had shown before,
+and Keith withdrew to secure a seat for himself. As, however, the car
+was full, he stood up in the rear of the coach, waiting until some
+passengers might alight at a way-station. The first seat that became
+vacant was one immediately behind the old lady, who had now fallen into
+a cheerful conversation with the young woman beside her.
+
+"What do you do when strangers offer to take your bags?" Keith heard her
+asking as he seated himself.
+
+"Why, I don't know; they don't often ask. I never let them do it," said
+the young woman, firmly.
+
+"A wise rule, too. I have heard that that is the way nowadays that they
+rob women travelling alone. I had a young man insist on taking my bag
+back there; but I am very suspicious of these civil young men." She
+leaned over and counted her parcels again. Keith could not help laughing
+to himself. As she sat up she happened to glance around, and he caught
+her eye. He saw her clutch her companion and whisper to her, at which
+the latter glanced over her shoulder and gave him a look that was almost
+a stare. Then the two conferred together, while Keith chuckled with
+amusement. What they were saying, had Keith heard it, would have amused
+him still more than the other.
+
+"There he is now, right behind us," whispered the old lady.
+
+"Why, he doesn't look like a robber."
+
+"They never do. I have heard they never do. They are the most dangerous
+kind. Of course, a robber who looked it would be arrested on sight."
+
+"But he is very good-looking," insisted the younger woman, who had, in
+the meantime, taken a second glance at Keith, who pretended to be
+immersed in a book.
+
+"Well, so much the worse. They are the very worst kind. Never trust a
+good-looking young stranger, my dear. They may be all right in romances,
+but never in life."
+
+As her companion did not altogether appear to take this view, the old
+lady half turned presently, and taking a long look down the other side
+of the car, to disarm Keith of any suspicion that she might be looking
+at him, finally let her eyes rest on his face, quite accidentally, as it
+were. A moment later she was whispering to her companion.
+
+"I am sure he is watching us. I am going to ask you to stick close
+beside me when we get to New York until I find a hackney-coach."
+
+"Have you been to New York often?" asked the girl, smiling.
+
+"I have been there twice in the last thirty years; but I spent several
+winters there when I was a young girl. I suppose it has changed a good
+deal in that time?"
+
+The young lady also supposed that it had changed in that time, and
+wondered why Miss Brooke--the name the other had given--did not come to
+New York oftener.
+
+"You see, it is such an undertaking to go now," said the old lady.
+"Everything goes with such a rush that it takes my breath away. Why,
+three trains a day each way pass near my home now. One of them actually
+rushes by in the most impetuous and disdainful way. When I was young we
+used to go to the station at least an hour before the train was due, and
+had time to take out our knitting and compose our thoughts; but now one
+has to be at the station just as promptly as if one were going to
+church, and if you don't get on the train almost before it has stopped,
+the dreadful thing is gone before you know it. I must say, it is very
+destructive to one's nerves."
+
+Her companion laughed.
+
+"I don't know what you will think when you get to New York."
+
+"Think! I don't expect to think at all. I shall just shut my eyes and
+trust to Providence."
+
+"Your friends will meet you there, I suppose?"
+
+"I wrote them two weeks ago that I should be there to-day, and then my
+cousin wrote me to let her know the train, and I replied, telling her
+what train I expected to take. I would never have come if I had imagined
+we were going to have this trouble."
+
+The girl reassured her by telling her that even if her friends did not
+meet her, she would put her in the way of reaching them safely. And in a
+little while they drew into the station.
+
+Keith's first impression of New York was dazzling to him. The rush, the
+hurry, stirred him and filled him with a sense of power. He felt that
+here was the theatre of action for him.
+
+The offices of Wickersham & Company were in one of the large buildings
+down-town. The whole floor was filled with pens and railed-off places,
+beyond which lay the private offices of the firm. Mr. Wickersham was
+"engaged," and Keith had to wait for an hour or two before he could
+secure an interview with him. When at length he was admitted to Mr.
+Wickersham's inner office, he was received with some cordiality. His
+father was asked after, and a number of questions about Gumbolt were put
+to him. Then Mr. Wickersham came to the point. He had a high regard for
+his father, he said, and having heard that Gordon was living in Gumbolt,
+where they had some interests, it had occurred to him that he might
+possibly be able to give him a position. The salary would not be large
+at first, but if he showed himself capable it might lead to
+something better.
+
+Keith was thrilled, and declared that what he most wanted was work and
+opportunity to show that he was able to work. Mr. Wickersham was sure of
+this, and informed him briefly that it was outdoor work that they had
+for him--"the clearing up of titles and securing of such lands as we may
+wish to obtain," he added.
+
+This was satisfactory to Keith, and he said so.
+
+Mr. Wickersham's shrewd eyes had a gleam of content in them.
+
+"Of course, our interest will be your first consideration?" he said.
+
+"Yes, sir; I should try and make it so."
+
+"For instance," proceeded Mr. Wickersham, "there are certain lands lying
+near our lands, not of any special value; but still you can readily
+understand that as we are running a railroad through the mountains, and
+are expending large sums of money, it is better that we should control
+lands through which our line will pass."
+
+Keith saw this perfectly. "Do you know the names of any of the owners?"
+he inquired. "I am familiar with some of the lands about there."
+
+Mr. Wickersham pondered. Keith was so ingenuous and eager that there
+could be no harm in coming to the point.
+
+"Why, yes; there is a man named Rawson that has some lands or some sort
+of interest in lands that adjoin ours. It might be well for us to
+control those properties."
+
+Keith's countenance fell.
+
+"It happens that I know something of those lands."
+
+"Yes? Well, you might possibly take those properties along with others?"
+
+"I could certainly convey any proposition you wish to make to Mr.
+Rawson, and should be glad to do so," began Keith.
+
+"We should expect you to use your best efforts to secure these and all
+other lands that we wish," interrupted Mr. Wickersham, speaking with
+sudden sharpness. "When we employ a man we expect him to give us all his
+services, and not to be half in our employ and half in that of the man
+we are fighting."
+
+The change in his manner and tone was so great and so unexpected that
+Keith was amazed. He had never been spoken to before quite in this way.
+He, however, repressed his feeling.
+
+"I should certainly render you the best service I could," he said; "but
+you would not expect me to say anything to Squire Rawson that I did not
+believe? He has talked with me about these lands, and he knows their
+value just as well as you do."
+
+Mr. Wickersham looked at him with a cold light in his eyes, which
+suddenly recalled Ferdy to Keith.
+
+"I don't think that you and I will suit each other, young man," he said.
+
+Keith's face flushed; he rose. "I don't think we should, Mr. Wickersham.
+Good morning." And turning, he walked out of the room with his head
+very high.
+
+As he passed out he saw Ferdy. He was giving some directions to a
+clerk, and his tone was one that made Keith glad he was not under him.
+
+"Haven't you any brains at all?" Keith heard him say.
+
+"Yes, but I did not understand you."
+
+"Then you are a fool," said the young man.
+
+Just then Keith caught his eye and spoke to him. Ferdy only nodded
+"Hello!" and went on berating the clerk.
+
+Keith walked about the streets for some time before he could soothe his
+ruffled feelings and regain his composure. How life had changed for him
+in the brief interval since he entered Mr. Wickersham's office! Then his
+heart beat high with hope; life was all brightness to him; Alice Yorke
+was already won. Now in this short space of time his hopes were all
+overthrown. Yet, his instinct told him that if he had to go through the
+interview again he would do just as he had done.
+
+He felt that his chance of seeing Alice would not be so good early in
+the day as it would be later in the afternoon; so he determined to
+deliver first the letter which his father had given him to Dr.
+Templeton.
+
+The old clergyman's church and rectory stood on an ancient street over
+toward the river, from which wealth and fashion had long fled. His
+parish, which had once taken in many of the well-to-do and some of the
+wealthy, now embraced within its confines a section which held only the
+poor. But, like an older and more noted divine, Dr. Templeton could say
+with truth that all the world was his parish; at least, all were his
+parishioners who were needy and desolate.
+
+The rectory was an old-fashioned, substantial house, rusty with age, and
+worn by the stream of poverty that had flowed in and out for many years.
+
+When Keith mounted the steps the door was opened by some one without
+waiting for him to ring the bell, and he found the passages and front
+room fairly filled with a number of persons whose appearance bespoke
+extreme poverty.
+
+The Doctor was "out attending a meeting, but would be back soon," said
+the elderly woman, who opened the door. "Would the gentleman wait?"
+
+Just then the door opened and some one entered hastily. Keith was
+standing with his back to the door; but he knew by the movement of those
+before him, and the lighting up of their faces, that it was the Doctor
+himself, even before the maid said: "Here he is now."
+
+He turned to find an old man of medium size, in a clerical dress quite
+brown with age and weather, but whose linen was spotless. His brow under
+his snow-white hair was lofty and calm; his eyes were clear and kindly;
+his mouth expressed both firmness and gentleness; his whole face was
+benignancy itself.
+
+His eye rested for a moment on Keith as the servant indicated him, and
+then swept about the room; and with little more than a nod to Keith he
+passed him by and entered the waiting-room. Keith, though a little
+miffed at being ignored by him, had time to observe him as he talked to
+his other visitors in turn. He manifestly knew his business, and
+appeared to Keith, from the scraps of conversation he heard, to know
+theirs also. To some he gave encouragement; others he chided; but to all
+he gave sympathy, and as one after another went out their faces
+brightened.
+
+When he was through with them he turned and approached Keith with his
+hands extended.
+
+"You must pardon me for keeping you waiting so long; these poor people
+have nothing but their time, and I always try to teach them the value of
+it by not keeping them waiting."
+
+"Certainly, sir," said Keith, warmed in the glow of his kindly heart. "I
+brought a letter of introduction to you from my father, General Keith."
+
+The smile that this name brought forth made Keith the old man's friend
+for life.
+
+"Oh! You are McDowell Keith's son. I am delighted to see you. Come back
+into my study and tell me all about your father."
+
+When Keith left that study, quaint and old-fashioned as were it and its
+occupant, he felt as though he had been in a rarer atmosphere. He had
+not dreamed that such a man could be found in a great city. He seemed to
+have the heart of a boy, and Keith felt as if he had known him all his
+life. He asked Gordon to return and dine with him, but Gordon had a
+vision of sitting beside Alice Yorke at dinner that evening
+and declined.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+KEITH IN NEW YORK
+
+Keith and Norman Wentworth had, from time to time, kept up a
+correspondence, and from Dr. Templeton's Keith went to call on Norman
+and his mother.
+
+Norman, unfortunately, was now absent in the West on business, but Keith
+saw his mother.
+
+The Wentworth mansion was one of the largest and most dignified houses
+on the fine old square--a big, double mansion. The door, with its large,
+fan-shaped transom and side-windows, reminded Keith somewhat of the hall
+door at Elphinstone, so that he had quite a feeling of old association
+as he tapped with the eagle knocker. The hall was not larger than at
+Elphinstone, but was more solemn, and Keith had never seen such palatial
+drawing-rooms. They stretched back in a long vista. The heavy mahogany
+furniture was covered with the richest brocades; the hangings were of
+heavy crimson damask. Even the walls were covered with rich crimson
+damask-satin. The floor was covered with rugs in the softest colors,
+into which, as Keith followed the solemn servant, his feet sank deep,
+giving him a strange feeling of luxuriousness. A number of fine pictures
+hung on the walls, and richly bound books lay on the shirting tables
+amid pieces of rare bric-a-brac.
+
+This was the impression received from the only glance he had time to
+give the room. The next moment a lady rose from behind a tea-table
+placed in a nook near a window at the far end of the spacious room. As
+Gordon turned toward her she came forward. She gave him a cordial
+hand-shake and gracious words of welcome that at once made Keith feel at
+home. Turning, she started to offer him a chair near her table, but
+Keith had instinctively gone behind her chair and was holding it
+for her.
+
+"It is so long since I have had the chance," he said.
+
+As she smiled up at him her face softened. It was a high-bred face, not
+always as gentle as it was now, but her smile was charming.
+
+"You do not look like the little, wan boy I saw that morning in bed, so
+long ago. Do you remember?"
+
+"I should say I did. I think I should have died that morning but for
+you. I have never forgotten it a moment since." The rising color in his
+cheeks took away the baldness of the speech.
+
+She bowed with the most gracious smile, the color stealing up into her
+cheeks and making her look younger.
+
+"I am not used to such compliments. Young men nowadays do not take the
+trouble to flatter old ladies."
+
+Her face, though faded, still bore the unmistakable stamp of
+distinction. Calm, gray eyes and a strong mouth and chin recalled
+Norman's face. The daintiest of caps rested on her gray hair like a
+crown, and several little ringlets about her ears gave the charm of
+quaintness to the patrician face. Her voice was deep and musical. When
+she first spoke it was gracious rather than cordial; but after the
+inspective look she had given him it softened, and from this time Keith
+felt her warmth.
+
+The easy, cordial, almost confidential manner in which she soon began to
+talk to him made Keith feel as if they had been friends always, and in a
+moment, in response to a question from her, he was giving quite frankly
+his impression of the big city: of its brilliance, its movement, its
+rush, that keyed up the nerves like the sweep of a swift torrent.
+
+"It almost takes my breath away," he said. "I feel as if I were on the
+brink of a torrent and had an irresistible desire to jump into it and
+swim against it."
+
+She looked at the young man in silence for a moment, enjoying his
+sparkling eyes, and then her face grew grave.
+
+"Yes, it is interesting to get the impression made on a fresh young
+mind. But so many are dashed to pieces, it appears to me of late to be a
+maelstrom that engulfs everything in its resistless and terrible sweep.
+Fortune, health, peace, reputation, all are caught and swept away; but
+the worst is its heartlessness--and its emptiness."
+
+She sighed so deeply that the young man wondered what sorrow could touch
+her, intrenched and enthroned in that beautiful mansion, surrounded by
+all that wealth and taste and affection could give. Years afterwards,
+that picture of the old-time gentlewoman in her luxurious home came
+back to him.
+
+Just then a cheery voice was heard calling outside:
+
+"Cousin?--cousin?--Matildy Carroll, where are you?"
+
+It was the voice of an old lady, and yet it had something in it familiar
+to Keith.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth rose, smiling.
+
+"Here I am in the drawing-room," she said, raising her voice the least
+bit. "It is my cousin, a dear old friend and schoolmate," she explained
+to Keith. "Here I am. Come in here." She advanced to the door,
+stretching out her hand to some one who was coming down the stair.
+
+"Oh, dear, this great, grand house will be the death of me yet!"
+exclaimed the other lady, as she slowly descended.
+
+"Why, it is not any bigger than yours," protested Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"It's twice as large, and, besides, I was born in that and learned all
+its ups and downs and passages and corners when I was a child, just as I
+learned the alphabet. But this house! It is as full of devious ways and
+pitfalls as the way in 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and I would never learn it
+any more than I could the multiplication table. Why, that second-floor
+suite you have given me is just like six-times-nine. When you first put
+me in there I walked around to learn my way, and, on my word, I thought
+I should never get back to my own room. I thought I should have to
+sleep in a bath-tub. I escaped from the bath-room only to land in the
+linen-closet. That was rather interesting. Then when I had calculated
+all your sheets and pillow-cases, I got out of that to what I recognized
+as my own room. No! it was the broom-closet--eight-times-seven! That was
+the only familiar thing I saw. I could have hugged those brooms. But, my
+dear, I never saw so many brooms in my life! No wonder you have to have
+all those servants. I suppose some of them are to sweep the other
+servants up. But you really must shut off those apartments and just give
+me one little room to myself; or, now that I have escaped from the
+labyrinth, I shall put on my bonnet and go straight home."
+
+All this was delivered from the bottom step with a most amusing gravity.
+
+"Well, now that you have escaped, come in here," said Mrs. Wentworth,
+laughing. "I want a friend of mine to know you--a young man--"
+
+"A gentleman!"
+
+"Yes; a young gentleman from--"
+
+"My dear!" exclaimed the other lady. "I am not fit to see a young
+gentleman--I haven't on my new cap. I really could not."
+
+"Oh, yes, you can. Come in. I want you to know him, too. He
+is--m--m--m--"
+
+This was too low for Keith to hear. The next second Mrs. Wentworth
+turned and reentered the room, holding by the hand Keith's old lady of
+the train.
+
+As she laid her eyes on Keith, she stopped with a little shriek, shut
+both eyes tight, and clutched Mrs. Wentworth's arm.
+
+"My dear, it's my robber!"
+
+"It's what?"
+
+"My robber! He's the young man I told you of who was so suspiciously
+civil to me on the train. I can never look him in the face--never!"
+Saying which, she opened her bright eyes and walked straight up to
+Keith, holding out her hand. "Confess that you are a robber and
+save me."
+
+Keith laughed and took her hand.
+
+"I know you took me for one." He turned to Mrs. Wentworth and described
+her making him count her bundles.
+
+"You will admit that gentlemen were much rarer on that train than
+ruffians or those who looked like ruffians?" insisted the old lady,
+gayly. "I came through the car, and not one soul offered me a seat. You
+deserve all the abuse you got for being so hopelessly unfashionable as
+to offer any civility to a poor, lonely, ugly old woman."
+
+"Abby, Mr. Keith does not yet know who you are. Mr. Keith, this is my
+cousin, Miss Brooke."
+
+"Miss Abigail Brooke, spinster," dropping him a quaint little curtsy.
+
+So this was little Lois's old aunt, Dr. Balsam's sweetheart--the girl
+who had made him a wanderer; and she was possibly the St. Abigail of
+whom Alice Yorke used to speak!
+
+The old lady turned to Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"He is losing his manners; see how he is staring. What did I tell you?
+One week in New York is warranted to break any gentleman of
+good manners."
+
+"Oh, not so bad as that," said Mrs. Wentworth. "Now you sit down there
+and get acquainted with each other."
+
+So Keith sat down by Miss Brooke, and she was soon telling him of her
+niece, who, she said, was always talking of him and his father.
+
+"Is she as pretty as she was as a child?" Keith asked.
+
+"Yes--much too pretty; and she knows it, too," smiled the old lady. "I
+have to hold her in with a strong hand, I tell you. She has got her head
+full of boys already."
+
+Other callers began to appear just then. It was Mrs. Wentworth's day,
+and to call on Mrs. Wentworth was in some sort the cachet of good
+society. Many, it was true, called there who were not in "society" at
+all,--serene and self-contained old residents, who held themselves above
+the newly-rich who were beginning to crowd "the avenues" and force
+their way with a golden wedge,--and many who lived in splendid houses on
+the avenue had never been admitted within that dignified portal. They
+now began to drop in, elegantly dressed women and handsomely appointed
+girls. Mrs. Wentworth received them all with that graciousness that was
+her native manner. Miss Brooke, having secured her "new cap," was seated
+at her side, her faded face tinged with rising color, her keen eyes
+taking in the scene with quite as much avidity as Gordon's. Gordon had
+fallen back quite to the edge of the group that encircled the hostess,
+and was watching with eager eyes in the hope that, among the visitors
+who came in in little parties of twos and threes, he might find the face
+for which he had been looking. The name Wickersham presently fell on
+his ear.
+
+"She is to marry Ferdy Wickersham," said a lady near him to another.
+They were looking at a handsome, statuesque girl, with a proud face, who
+had just entered the room with her mother, a tall lady in black with
+strong features and a refined voice, and who were making their way
+through the other guests toward the hostess. Mrs. Wentworth greeted them
+cordially, and signed to the elder lady to take a seat beside her.
+
+"Oh, no; she is flying for higher game than that." They both put up
+their lorgnons and gave her a swift glance.
+
+"You mean--" She nodded over toward Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why, she would not allow him to. She has not a cent in the world. Her
+mother has spent every dollar her husband left her, trying to get
+her off."
+
+"Yes; but she has spent it to good purpose. They are old friends. Mrs.
+Wentworth does not care for money. She has all she needs. She has never
+forgotten that her grandfather was a general in the Revolution, and Mrs.
+Caldwell's grandfather was one also, I believe. She looks down on the
+upper end of Fifth Avenue--the Wickershams and such. Don't you know what
+Mrs. Wentworth's cousin said when she heard that the Wickershams had a
+coat-of-arms? She said, 'Her father must have made it.'"
+
+Something about the placid voice and air of the lady, and the knowledge
+she displayed of the affairs of others, awoke old associations in Keith,
+and turning to take a good look at her, he recognized Mrs. Nailor, the
+inquiring lady with the feline manner and bell-like voice, who used to
+mouse around the verandah at Gates's during Alice Yorke's convalescence.
+
+He went up to her and recalled himself. She apparently had some
+difficulty in remembering him, for at first she gave not the slightest
+evidence of recognition; but after the other lady had moved away she was
+more fortunate in placing him.
+
+"You have known the Wentworths for some time?"
+
+Keith did not know whether this was a statement or an inquiry. She had a
+way of giving a tone of interrogation to her statements. He explained
+that he and Norman Wentworth had been friends as boys.
+
+"A dear fellow, Norman?" smiled Mrs. Nailor. "Quite one of our rising
+young men? He wanted, you know, to give up the most brilliant prospects
+to help his father, who had been failing for some time. Not failing
+financially?" she explained with the interrogation-point again.
+
+"Of course, I don't believe those rumors; I mean in health?"
+
+Keith had so understood her.
+
+"Yes, he has quite gone. Completely shattered?" She sighed deeply. "But
+Norman is said to be wonderfully clever, and has gone in with his father
+into the bank?" she pursued. "The girl over there is to marry him--if
+her mother can arrange it? That tall, stuck-up woman." She indicated
+Mrs. Caldwell, who was sitting near Mrs. Wentworth. "Do you think her
+handsome?"
+
+Keith said he did. He thought she referred to the girl, who looked
+wonderfully handsome in a tailor-made gown under a big white hat.
+
+"Romance is almost dying out?" she sighed. "It is so beautiful to find
+it? Yes?"
+
+Keith agreed with her about its charm, but hoped it was not dying out.
+He thought of one romance he knew.
+
+"You used to be very romantic? Yes?"
+
+Keith could not help blushing.
+
+"Have you seen the Yorkes lately?" she continued. Keith had explained
+that he had just arrived. "You know Alice is a great belle? And so
+pretty, only she knows it too well; but what pretty girl does not? The
+town is divided now as to whether she is going to marry Ferdy Wickersham
+or Mr. Lancaster of Lancaster & Company. He is one of our leading men,
+considerably older than herself, but immensely wealthy and of a
+distinguished family. Ferdy Wickersham was really in love with"--she
+lowered her voice--"that girl over there by Mrs. Wentworth; but she
+preferred Norman Wentworth; at least, her mother did, so Ferdy has gone
+back to Alice? You say you have not been to see her? No? You are going,
+of course? Mrs. Yorke was so fond of you?"
+
+"Which is she going to--I mean, which do people say she prefers?"
+inquired Keith, his voice, in spite of himself, betraying his interest.
+
+"Oh, Ferdy, of course. He is one of the eligibles, so good-looking, and
+immensely rich, too; They say he is really a great financier. Has his
+father's turn? You know he came from a shop?"
+
+Keith admitted his undeniable good looks and knew of his wealth; but he
+was so confounded by the information he had received that he was in
+quite a state of confusion.
+
+Just then a young clergyman crossed the room toward them. He was a stout
+young man, with reddish hair and a reddish face. His plump cheeks, no
+less than his well-filled waistcoat, showed that the Rev. Mr. Rimmon
+was no anchoret.
+
+"Ah, my dear Mrs. Nailor, so glad to see you! How well you look! I
+haven't seen you since that charming evening at Mrs. Creamer's."
+
+"Do you call that charming? What did you think of the dinner?" asked
+Mrs. Nailor, dryly.
+
+He laughed, and, with a glance around, lowered his voice.
+
+"Well, the champagne was execrable after the first round. Didn't you
+notice that? You didn't notice it? Oh, you are too amiable to admit it.
+I am sure you noticed it, for no one in town has such champagne as you."
+
+He licked his lips with reminiscent satisfaction.
+
+"No, I assure you, I am not flattering you. One of my cloth! How dare
+you charge me with it!" he laughed. "I have said as much to Mrs. Yorke.
+You ask her if I haven't."
+
+"How is your uncle's health?" inquired Mrs. Nailor.
+
+The young man glanced at her, and the glance appeared to satisfy him.
+
+"Robust isn't the word for it. He bids fair to rival the patriarchs in
+more than his piety."
+
+Mrs. Nailor smiled. "You don't appear as happy as a dutiful nephew
+might."
+
+"But he is so good--so pious. Why should I wish to withhold him from the
+joys for which he is so ripe?"
+
+Mrs. Nailor laughed.
+
+"You are a sinner," she declared.
+
+"We are all miserable sinners," he replied. "Have you seen the Yorkes
+lately?"
+
+"No; but I'll be bound you have."
+
+"What do you think of the story about old Lancaster?"
+
+"Oh, I think she'll marry him if mamma can arrange it."
+
+"'Children, obey your parents,'" quoted Mr. Rimmon, with a little smirk
+as he sidled away.
+
+"He is one of our rising young clergymen, nephew of the noted Dr.
+Little," explained Mrs. Nailor. "You know of him, of course? A good deal
+better man than his nephew." This under her breath. "He is his uncle's
+assistant and is waiting to step into his shoes. He wants to marry your
+friend, Alice Yorke. He is sure of his uncle's church if flattery can
+secure it."
+
+Just then several ladies passed near them, and Mrs. Nailor, seeing an
+opportunity to impart further knowledge, with a slight nod moved off to
+scatter her information and inquiries, and Keith, having made his adieus
+to Mrs. Wentworth, withdrew. He was not in a happy frame of mind over
+what he had heard.
+
+The next visit that Keith paid required more thought and preparation
+than that to the Wentworth house. He had thought of it, had dreamed of
+it, for years. He was seized with a sort of nervousness when he found
+himself actually on the avenue, in sight of the large brown-stone
+mansion which he knew must be the abode of Miss Alice Yorke.
+
+He never forgot the least detail of his visit, from the shining brass
+rail of the outside steps and the pompous little hard-eyed servant in a
+striped waistcoat and brass buttons, who looked at him insolently as he
+went in, to the same servant as he bowed to him obsequiously as he came
+out. He never forgot Alice Yorke's first appearance in the radiance of
+girlhood, or Mrs. Yorke's affable imperviousness, that baffled
+him utterly.
+
+The footman who opened the door to Keith looked at him with keenness,
+but ended in confusion of mind. He stood, at first, in the middle of the
+doorway and gave him a glance of swift inspection. But when Keith asked
+if the ladies were in he suddenly grew more respectful. The visitor was
+not up to the mark in appointment, but there was that in his air and
+tone which Bower recognized. He would see. Would he be good enough
+to walk in?
+
+When he returned after a few minutes, indifference had given place to
+servility.
+
+Would Mr. Keats please be good enough to walk into the drawing-room?
+Thankee, sir. The ladies would be down in a few moments.
+
+Keith did not know that this change in bearing was due to the pleasure
+expressed above-stairs by a certain young lady who had flatly refused to
+accept her mother's suggestion that they send word they were not
+at home.
+
+Alice Yorke was not in a very contented frame of mind that day. For some
+time she had been trying to make up her mind on a subject of grave
+importance to her, and she had not found it easy to do. Many questions
+confronted her. Curiously, Keith himself had played a part in the
+matter. Strangely enough, she was thinking of him at the very time his
+card was brought up. Mrs. Yorke, who had not on her glasses, handed the
+card to Alice. She gave a little scream at the coincidence.
+
+"Mr. Keith! How strange!"
+
+"What is that?" asked her mother, quickly. Her ears had caught the name.
+
+"Why, it is Mr. Keith. I was just--." She stopped, for Mrs. Yorke's face
+spoke disappointment.
+
+"I do not think we can see him," she began.
+
+"Why, of course, I must see him, mamma. I would not miss seeing him for
+anything in the world. Go down, Bower, and say I will be down directly."
+The servant disappeared.
+
+"Now, Alice," protested her mother, who had already exhausted several
+arguments, such as the inconvenience of the hour, the impoliteness of
+keeping the visitor waiting, as she would have to do to dress, and
+several other such excuses as will occur to mammas who have plans of
+their own for their daughters and unexpectedly receive the card of a
+young man who, by a bare possibility, may in ten minutes upset the work
+of nearly two years--"Now, Alice, I think it very wrong in you to do
+anything to give that young man any idea that you are going to reopen
+that old affair."
+
+Alice protested that she had no idea of doing anything like that. There
+was no "old affair." She did not wish to be rude when he had taken the
+trouble to call--that was all.
+
+"Fudge!" exclaimed Mrs. Yorke. "Trouble to call! Of course, he will take
+the trouble to call. He would call a hundred times if he thought he
+could get--" she caught her daughter's eye and paused--"could get you.
+But you have no right to cause him unhappiness."
+
+"Oh, I guess I couldn't cause him much unhappiness now. I fancy he is
+all over it now," said the girl, lightly. "They all get over it. It's a
+quick fever. It doesn't last, mamma. How many have there been?"
+
+"You know better. Isn't he always sending you books and things? He is
+not like those others. What would Mr. Lancaster say?"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Lancaster! He has no right to say anything," pouted the girl,
+her face clouding a little. "Mr. Lancaster will say anything I want him
+to say," she added as she caught sight of her mother's unhappy
+expression. "I wish you would not always be holding him up to me. I like
+him, and he is awfully good to me--much better than I deserve; but I get
+awfully tired of him sometimes: he is so serious. Sometimes I feel like
+breaking loose and just doing things. I do!" She tossed her head and
+stamped her foot with impatience like a spoiled child.
+
+"Well, there is Ferdy?--" began her mother.
+
+The girl turned on her.
+
+"I thought we had an understanding on that subject, mamma. If you ever
+say anything more about my marrying Ferdy, I _will_ do things! I vow
+I will!"
+
+"Why, I thought you professed to like Ferdy, and he is certainly in love
+with you."
+
+"He certainly is not. He is in love with Lou Caldwell as much as he
+could be in love with any one but himself; but if you knew him as well
+as I do you would know he is not in love with any one but Ferdy."
+
+Mrs. Yorke knew when to yield, and how to do it. Her face grew
+melancholy and her voice pathetic as she protested that all she wished
+was her daughter's happiness.
+
+"Then please don't mention that to me again," said the girl.
+
+The next second her daughter was leaning over her, soothing her and
+assuring her of her devotion.
+
+"I want to invite him to dinner, mamma."
+
+Mrs. Yorke actually gasped.
+
+"Nonsense! Why, he would be utterly out of place. This is not Ridgely. I
+do not suppose he ever had on a dress-coat in his life!" Which was true,
+though Keith would not have cared a button about it.
+
+"Well, we can invite him to lunch," said Alice, with a sigh.
+
+But Mrs. Yorke was obdurate. She could not undertake to invite an
+unknown young man to her table. Thus, the want of a dress-suit limited
+Mrs. Yorke's hospitality and served a secondary and more important
+purpose for her.
+
+"I wish papa were here; he would agree with me," sighed the girl.
+
+When the controversy was settled Miss Alice slipped off to gild the
+lily. The care she took in the selection of a toilet, and the tender
+pats and delicate touches she gave as she turned before her
+cheval-glass, might have belied her declaration to her mother, a little
+while before, that she was indifferent to Mr. Keith, and might even have
+given some comfort to the anxious young man in the drawing-room below,
+who, in default of books, was examining the pictures with such interest.
+He had never seen such a sumptuous house.
+
+Meantime, Mrs. Yorke executed a manoeuvre. As soon as Alice disappeared,
+she descended to the drawing-room. But she slipped on an extra diamond
+ring or two. Thus she had a full quarter of an hour's start of
+her daughter.
+
+The greeting between her and the young man was more cordial than might
+have been expected. Mrs. Yorke was surprised to find how Keith had
+developed. He had broadened, and though his face was thin, it had
+undeniable distinction. His manner was so dignified that Mrs. Yorke was
+almost embarrassed.
+
+"Why, how you have changed!" she exclaimed. What she said to herself
+was: "What a bother for this boy to come here now, just when Alice is
+getting her mind settled! But I will get rid of him."
+
+She began to question him as to his plans.
+
+What Keith had said to himself when the step on the stair and the
+rustling gown introduced Mrs. Yorke's portly figure was: "Heavens! it's
+the old lady! I wonder what the old dragon will do, and whether I am not
+to see Her!" He observed her embarrassment as she entered the room, and
+took courage.
+
+The next moment they were fencing across the room, and Keith was girding
+himself like another young St. George.
+
+How was his school coming on? she asked.
+
+He was not teaching any more. He had been to college, and had now taken
+up engineering. It offered such advantages.
+
+She was so surprised. She would have thought teaching the very career
+for him. He seemed to have such a gift for it.
+
+Keith was not sure that this was not a "touch." He quoted Dr. Johnson's
+definition that teaching was the universal refuge of educated indigents.
+"I do not mean to remain an indigent all my life," he added, feeling
+that this was a touch on his part.
+
+Mrs. Yorke pondered a moment.
+
+"But that was not his name. His name was Balsam. I know, because I had
+some trouble getting a bill out of him."
+
+Keith changed his mind about the touch.
+
+Just then there was another rustle on the stair and another step,--this
+time a lighter one,--and the next moment appeared what was to the young
+man a vision.
+
+Keith's face, as he rose to greet her, showed what he thought. For a
+moment, at least, the dragon had disappeared, and he stood in the
+presence only of Alice Yorke.
+
+The girl was, indeed, as she paused for a moment just in the wide
+doorway under its silken hangings,--the minx! how was he to know that
+she knew how effective the position was?--a picture to fill a young
+man's eye and flood his face with light, and even to make an old man's
+eye grow young again. The time that had passed had added to the charm of
+both face and figure; and, arrayed in her daintiest toilet of blue and
+white, Alice Yorke was radiant enough to have smitten a much harder
+heart than that which was at the moment thumping in Keith's breast and
+looking forth from his eager eyes. The pause in the doorway gave just
+time for the picture to be impressed forever in Keith's mind.
+
+Her eyes were sparkling, and her lips parted with a smile of pleased
+surprise.
+
+"How do you do?" She came forward with outstretched arm and a cordial
+greeting.
+
+Mrs. Yorke could not repress a mother's pride at seeing the impression
+that her daughter's appearance had made. The expression on Keith's face,
+however, decided her that she would hazard no more such meetings.
+
+The first words, of course, were of the surprise Alice felt at finding
+him there. "How did you remember us?"
+
+"I was not likely to forget you," said Keith, frankly enough. "I am in
+New York on business, and I thought that before going home I would see
+my friends." This with some pride, as Mrs. Yorke was present.
+
+"Where are you living?"
+
+Keith explained that he was an engineer and lived in Gumbolt.
+
+"Ah, I think that is a splendid profession," declared Miss Alice. "If I
+were a man I would be one. Think of building great bridges across mighty
+rivers, tunnelling great mountains!"
+
+"Maybe even the sea itself," said Mr. Keith, who, so long as Alice's
+eyes were lighting up at the thought of his profession, cared not what
+Mrs. Yorke thought.
+
+"I doubt if engineers would find much to do in New York," put in Mrs.
+Yorke. "I think the West would be a good field--the far West," she
+explained.
+
+"It was so good in you to look us up," Miss Alice said sturdily and,
+perhaps, a little defiantly, for she knew what her mother was thinking.
+
+"If that is being good," said Keith, "my salvation is assured." He
+wanted to say, as he looked at her, "In all the multitude in New York
+there is but one person that I really came to see, and I am repaid," but
+he did not venture so far. In place of it he made a mental calculation
+of the chances of Mrs. Yorke leaving, if only for a moment. A glance at
+her, however, satisfied him that the chance of it was not worth
+considering, and gloom began to settle on him. If there is anything that
+turns a young man's heart to lead and encases it in ice, it is, when he
+has travelled leagues to see a girl, to have mamma plant herself in the
+room and mount guard. Keith knew now that Mrs. Yorke had mounted guard,
+and that no power but Providence would dislodge her. The thought of the
+cool woods of the Ridge came to him like a mirage, torturing him.
+
+He turned to the girl boldly.
+
+"Sha'n't you ever come South again?" he asked. "The humming-birds are
+waiting."
+
+Alice smiled, and her blush made her charming.
+
+Mrs. Yorke answered for her. She did not think the South agreed with
+Alice.
+
+Alice protested that she loved it.
+
+"How is my dear old Doctor? Do you know, he and I have carried on quite
+a correspondence this year?"
+
+Keith did not know. For the first time in his life he envied the Doctor.
+
+"He is your--one of your most devoted admirers. The last time I saw him
+he was talking of you."
+
+"What did he say of me? Do tell me!" with exaggerated eagerness.
+
+Keith smiled, wondering what she would think if she knew.
+
+"Too many things for me to tell."
+
+His gray eyes said the rest.
+
+While they were talking a sound of wheels was heard outside, followed by
+a ring at the door. Keith sat facing the door, and could see the
+gentleman who entered the hail. He was tall and a little gray, with a
+pleasant, self-contained face. He turned toward the drawing-room, taking
+off his gloves as he walked.
+
+"Her father. He is quite distinguished-looking," thought Keith. "I
+wonder if he will come in here? He looks younger than the dragon." He
+was in some trepidation at the idea of meeting Mr. Yorke.
+
+When Keith looked at the ladies again some change had taken place in
+both of them. Their faces wore a different expression: Mrs. Yorke's was
+one of mingled disquietude and relief, and Miss Alice's an expression of
+discontent and confusion. Keith settled himself and waited to be
+presented.
+
+The gentleman came in with a pleased air as his eye rested on the young
+lady.
+
+"There is where she gets her high-bred looks--from her father," thought
+Keith; rising.
+
+The next moment the gentleman was shaking hands warmly with Miss Alice
+and cordially with Mrs. Yorke. And then, after a pause,--a pause in
+which Miss Alice had looked at her mother,--the girl introduced "Mr.
+Lancaster." He turned and spoke to Keith pleasantly.
+
+"Mr. Keith is--an acquaintance we made in the South when we were there
+winter before last," said Mrs. Yorke.
+
+"A friend of ours," said the girl. She turned back to Keith.
+
+"Tell me what Dr. Balsam said."
+
+"Mr. Keith knows the Wentworths--I believe you know the Wentworths very
+well?" Mrs. Yorke addressed Mr. Keith.
+
+"Yes, I have known Norman since we were boys. I have met his mother, but
+I never met his father."
+
+Mrs. Yorke was provoked at the stupidity of denying so advantageous an
+acquaintance. But Mr. Lancaster took more notice of Keith than he had
+done before. His dark eyes had a gleam of amusement in them as he turned
+and looked at the young man. Something in him recalled the past.
+
+"From the South, you say?"
+
+"Yes, sir." He named his State with pride.
+
+"Did I catch your name correctly? Is it Keith?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"I used to know a gentleman of that name--General Keith."
+
+"There were several of them," answered the young man, with pride. "My
+father was known as 'General Keith of Elphinstone.'"
+
+"That was he. I captured him. He was desperately wounded, and I had the
+pleasure of having him attended to, and afterwards of getting him
+exchanged. How is he? Is he still living?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mr. Lancaster turned to the ladies. "He was one of the bravest men I
+have known," he said. "I was once a recipient of his gracious
+hospitality. I went South to look into some matters there," he explained
+to the ladies.
+
+The speech brought a gratified look into Keith's eyes. Mrs. Yorke was
+divided between her feeling of relief that Mr. Lancaster should know of
+Keith's social standing and her fear that such praise might affect
+Alice. After a glance at the girl's face the latter predominated.
+
+"Men have no sense at all," she said to herself. Had she known it, the
+speech made the girl feel more kindly toward her older admirer than she
+had ever done before.
+
+Gordon's face was suffused with tenderness, as it always was at any
+mention of his father. He stepped forward.
+
+"May I shake hands with you, sir?" He grasped the hand of the older man.
+"If I can ever be of any service to you--of the least service--I hope
+you will let my father's son repay a part of his debt. You could not do
+me a greater favor." As he stood straight and dignified, grasping the
+older man's hand, he looked more of a man than he had ever done. Mr.
+Lancaster was manifestly pleased.
+
+"I will do so," he said, with a smile.
+
+Mrs. Yorke was in a fidget. "This man will ruin everything," she said to
+herself.
+
+Seeing that his chance of seeing Alice alone was gone, Keith rose and
+took leave with some stateliness. At the last moment Alice boldly asked
+him to take lunch with them next day.
+
+"Thank you," said Keith, "I lunch in Sparta to-morrow. I am going South
+to-night." But his allusion was lost on the ladies.
+
+When Keith came out, a handsome trap was standing at the door, with a
+fine pair of horses and a liveried groom.
+
+And a little later, as Keith was walking up the avenue looking at the
+crowds that thronged it in all the bravery of fine apparel, he saw the
+same pair of high-steppers threading their way proudly among the other
+teams. He suddenly became aware that some one was bowing to him, and
+there was Alice Yorke sitting up beside Mr. Lancaster, bowing to him
+from under a big hat with great white plumes. For one moment he had a
+warm feeling about his heart, and then, as the turnout was swallowed up
+in the crowd, Keith felt a sudden sense of loneliness, and he positively
+hated Mrs. Yorke. A little later he passed Ferdy Wickersham, in a long
+coat and a high hat, walking up the avenue with the girl he had seen at
+Mrs. Wentworth's. He took off his hat as they passed, but apparently
+they did not see him. And once more that overwhelming loneliness swept
+over him.
+
+He did not get over the feeling till he found himself in Dr. Templeton's
+study. He had promised provisionally to go back and take supper with the
+old clergyman, and had only not promised it absolutely because he had
+thought he might be invited to the Yorkes'. He was glad enough now to
+go, and as he received the old gentleman's cordial greeting, he felt his
+heart grow warm again. Here was Sparta, too. This, at least, was
+hospitality. He was introduced to two young clergymen, both earnest
+fellows who were working among the poor. One of them was a
+High-churchman and the other a Presbyterian, and once or twice they
+began to discuss warmly questions as to which they differed; but the old
+Rector appeared to know just how to manage them.
+
+"Come, my boys; no division here," he said, with a smile, "Remember, one
+flag, one union, one Commander. Titus is still before the walls."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE HOLD-UP
+
+Keith returned home that night. He now and then thought of Lancaster
+with a little misgiving. It was apparent that Mrs. Yorke was his friend;
+but, after all, Alice would never think of marrying a gray-haired man.
+She could not do it.
+
+His father's pleasure when he told him of the stand he had taken with
+Mr. Wickersham reassured him.
+
+"You did exactly right, sir; as a gentleman should have done," he said,
+as his face lighted up with pride and affection. "Go back and make your
+own way. Owe no man anything."
+
+Gordon went back to his little office filled with a determination to
+succeed. He had now a double motive: he would win Alice Yorke, and he
+would show Mr. Wickersham who he was. A visit from Squire Rawson not
+long after he returned gave him new hope. The old man chuckled as he
+told him that he had had an indirect offer from Wickersham for his land,
+much larger than he had expected. It had only confirmed him in his
+determination to hold on.
+
+"If it's worth that to him," he said, "it's worth that to me. We'll hold
+on awhile, and let him open a track for us. You look up the lines and
+keep your eye on 'em. Draw me some pictures of the lands. I reckon
+Phrony will have a pretty good patrimony before I'm through." He gave
+Keith a shrewd glance which, however, that young man did not see.
+
+Not long afterwards Gordon received an invitation to Norman's wedding.
+He was to marry Miss Caldwell.
+
+When Gordon read the account of the wedding, with the church "banked
+with flowers," and the bridal couple preceded by choristers, chanting,
+he was as interested as if it had been his brother's marriage. He tried
+to picture Alice Yorke in her bridesmaid's dress, "with the old lace
+draped over it and the rosebuds festooned about her."
+
+He glanced around his little room with grim amusement as he thought of
+the difference it might make to him if he had what Mrs. Yorke had called
+"an establishment." He would yet be Keith of Elphinstone.
+
+One fact related disturbed him. Ferdy Wickersham was one of the ushers,
+and it was stated that he and Miss Yorke made a handsome couple.
+
+Norman had long ago forgotten Ferdy's unfriendly action at college, and
+wishing to bury all animosities and start his new life at peace with the
+whole world, he invited Ferdy to be one of his ushers, and Ferdy, for
+his own reasons, accepted. Ferdy Wickersham was now one of the most
+talked-of young men in New York. He had fulfilled the promise of his
+youth at least in one way, for he was one of the handsomest men in the
+State. Mrs. Wickersham, in whose heart defeat rankled, vowed that she
+would never bow so low as to be an usher at that wedding. But her son
+was of a deeper nature. He declared that he was "abundantly able to
+manage his own affairs."
+
+At the wedding he was one of the gayest of the guests, and he and Miss
+Yorke were, as the newspapers stated, undoubtedly the handsomest couple
+of all the attendants. No one congratulated Mrs. Wentworth with more
+fervid words. To be sure, his eyes sought the bride's with a curious
+expression in them; and when he spoke with her apart a little later,
+there was an air of cynicism about him that remained in her memory. The
+handsomest jewel she received outside of the Wentworth family was from
+him. Its centre was a heart set with diamonds.
+
+For a time Louise Wentworth was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy over
+her good fortune. Her beautiful house, her carriages, her gowns, her
+husband, and all the equipage of her new station filled her heart. She
+almost immediately took a position that none other of the young brides
+had. She became the fashion. In Norman's devotion she might have quite
+forgotten Ferdy Wickersham, had Ferdy been willing that she should do
+so. But Ferdy had no idea of allowing himself to be forgotten. For a
+time he paid quite devoted attention to Alice Yorke; but Miss Alice
+looked on his attentions rather as a joke. She said to him:
+
+"Now, Ferdy, I am perfectly willing to have you send me all the flowers
+in New York, and go with me to the theatre every other night, and offer
+me all the flattery you have left over from Louise; but I am not going
+to let it be thought that I am going to engage myself to you; for I am
+not, and you don't want me."
+
+"I suppose you reserve that for my fortunate rival, Mr. Lancaster?" said
+the young man, insolently.
+
+Alice's eyes flashed. "At least not for you."
+
+So Ferdy gradually and insensibly drifted back to Mrs. Wentworth. For a
+little while he was almost tragic; then he settled down into a state of
+cold cynicism which was not without its effect. He never believed that
+she cared for Norman Wentworth as much as she cared for him. He believed
+that her mother had made the match, and deep in his heart he hated
+Norman with the hate of wounded pride. Moreover, as soon as Mrs.
+Wentworth was beyond him, he began to have a deeper feeling for her than
+he had ever admitted before. He set before himself very definitely just
+what he wanted to do, and he went to work about it with a patience
+worthy of a better aim. He flattered her in many ways which, experience
+had told him, were effective with the feminine heart.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham estimated Mrs. Wentworth's vanity at its true value;
+but he underestimated her uprightness and her pride. She was vain
+enough to hazard wrecking her happiness; but her pride was as great as
+her vanity.
+
+Thus, though Ferdy Wickersham flattered her vanity by his delicate
+attentions, his patient waiting, he found himself, after long service,
+in danger of being balked by her pride. His apparent faithfulness had
+enlisted her interest; but she held him at a distance with a resolution
+which he would not have given her credit for.
+
+Most men, under such circumstances, would have retired and confessed
+defeat; but not so with Ferdy Wickersham. To admit defeat was gall and
+wormwood to him. His love for Louise had given place to a feeling almost
+akin to a desire for revenge. He would show her that he could conquer
+her pride. He would show the world that he could humble Norman
+Wentworth. His position appeared to him impregnable. At the head of a
+great business, the leader of the gayest set in the city, and the
+handsomest and coolest man in town--he was bound to win. So he bided his
+time, and went on paying Mrs. Wentworth little attentions that he felt
+must win her in the end. And soon he fancied that he began to see the
+results of his patience. Old Mr. Wentworth's health had failed rapidly,
+and Norman was so wholly engrossed in business, that he found himself
+unable to keep up with the social life of their set. If, however, Norman
+was too busy to attend all the entertainments, Ferdy was never too busy
+to be on hand, a fact many persons were beginning to note.
+
+Squire Rawson's refusal of the offer for his lands began to cause Mr.
+Aaron Wickersham some uneasiness. He had never dreamed that the old
+countryman would be so intractable. He refused even to set a price on
+them. He "did not want to sell," he said.
+
+Mr. Wickersham conferred with his son. "We have got to get control of
+those lands, Ferdy. We ought to have got them before we started the
+railway. If we wait till we get through, we shall have to pay double.
+The best thing is for you to go down there and get them. You know the
+chief owner and you know that young Keith. You ought to be able to work
+them. We shall have to employ Keith if necessary. Sometimes a very small
+lever will work a big one."
+
+"Oh, I can work them easy enough," said the young man; "but I don't want
+to go down there just now--the weather's cold, and I have a lot of
+engagements and a matter on hand that requires my presence here now."
+
+His father's brow clouded. Matters had not been going well of late. The
+Wentworths had been growing cooler both in business and in social life.
+In the former it had cost him a good deal of money to have the Wentworth
+interest against him; in the latter it had cost Mrs. Wickersham a good
+deal of heart-burning. And Aaron Wickersham attributed it to the fact,
+of which rumors had come to him, that Ferdy was paying young Mrs.
+Wentworth more attention than her husband and his family liked, and they
+took this form of resenting it.
+
+"I do not know what business engagement you can have more important than
+a matter in which we have invested some millions which may be saved by
+prompt attention or lost. What engagements have you?"
+
+"That is my affair," said Ferdy, coolly.
+
+"Your affair! Isn't your affair my affair?" burst out his father.
+
+"Not necessarily. There are several kinds of affairs. I should be sorry
+to think that all of my affairs you had an interest in."
+
+He looked so insolent as he sat back with half-closed eyes and stroked
+his silken, black moustache that his father lost his temper.
+
+"I know nothing about your affairs of one kind," he burst out angrily,
+"and I do not wish to know; but I want to tell you that I think you are
+making an ass of yourself to be hanging around that Wentworth woman,
+having every one talking about you and laughing at you."
+
+The young man's dark face flushed angrily.
+
+"What's that?" he said sharply.
+
+"She is another man's wife. Why don't you let her alone?" pursued the
+father.
+
+"For that very reason," said Ferdy, recovering his composure and his
+insolent air.
+
+"---- it! Let the woman alone," said his father. "Your fooling around
+her has already cost us the backing of Wentworth & Son--and,
+incidentally, two or three hundred thousand."
+
+The younger man looked at the other with a flash of rage. This quickly
+gave way to a colder gleam.
+
+"Really, sir, I could not lower myself to measure a matter of sentiment
+by so vulgar a standard as your ---- money."
+
+His air was so intolerable that the father's patience quite gave way.
+
+"Well, by ----! you'd better lower yourself, or you'll have to stoop
+lower than that. Creamer, Crustback & Company are out with us; the
+Wentworths have pulled out; so have Kestrel and others. Your deals and
+corners have cost me a fortune. I tell you that unless we pull through
+that deal down yonder, and unless we get that railroad to earning
+something, so as to get a basis for rebonding, you'll find yourself
+wishing you had my 'damned money.'"
+
+"Oh, I guess we'll pull it through," said the young man. He rose coolly
+and walked out of the office.
+
+The afternoon he spent with Mrs. Norman. He had to go South, he told
+her, to look after some large interests they had there. He made the
+prospects so dazzling that she laughingly suggested that he had better
+put a little of her money in there for her. She had quite a snug sum
+that the Wentworths had given her.
+
+"Why do not you ask Norman to invest it?" he inquired, with a laugh.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. He says bonds are the proper investment for women."
+
+"He rather underestimates your sex, some of them," said Wickersham. And
+as he watched the color come in her cheeks, he added: "I tell you what I
+will do: I will put in fifty thousand for you on condition that you
+never mention it to a soul."
+
+"I promise," she said half gratefully, and they shook hands on it.
+
+That evening he informed his father that he would go South. "I'll get
+those lands easy enough," he said.
+
+A few days later Ferdy Wickersham got off the train at Ridgely, now
+quite a flourishing little health-resort, and in danger of becoming a
+fashionable one, and that afternoon he drove over to Squire Rawson's.
+
+A number of changes had taken place in the old white-pillared house
+since Ferdy had been an inmate. New furniture of black walnut
+supplanted, at least on the first floor, the old horsehair sofa and
+split-bottomed chairs and pine tables; a new plush sofa and a new piano
+glistened in the parlor; large mirrors with dazzling frames hung on the
+low walls, and a Brussels carpet as shiny as a bed of tulips, and as
+stiff as the stubble of a newly cut hay-field, was on the floor.
+
+But great as were these changes, they were not as great as that which
+had taken place in the young person for whom they had been made.
+
+When Ferdy Wickersham drove up to the door, there was a cry and a scurry
+within, as Phrony Tripper, after a glance out toward the gate, dashed up
+the stairs.
+
+When Miss Euphronia Tripper, after a half-hour or more of careful and
+palpitating work before her mirror, descended the old straight stairway,
+she was a very different person from the round-faced, plump school-girl
+whom Ferdy, as a lad, had flirted with under the apple-trees three or
+four years before. She was quite as different as was the new piano with
+its deep tones from the rattling old instrument that jingled and clanged
+out of tune, or as the cool, self-contained, handsome young man in
+faultless attire was from the slim, uppish boy who used to strum on it.
+It was a very pretty and blushing young country maiden who now entered
+quite accidentally the parlor where sat Mr. Ferdy Wickersham in calm and
+indifferent discourse with her grandfather on the crops, on cattle, and
+on the effect of the new railroad on products and prices.
+
+Several sessions at a boarding-school of some pretension, with ambition
+which had been awakened years before under the apple-trees, had given
+Miss Phrony the full number of accomplishments that are to be gained by
+such means. The years had also changed the round, school-girl plumpness
+into a slim yet strong figure; and as she entered the parlor,--quite
+casually, be it repeated,--with a large basket of flowers held
+carelessly in one hand and a great hat shading her face, the blushes
+that sprang to her cheeks at the wholly unexpected discovery of a
+visitor quite astonished Wickersham.
+
+"By Jove! who would have believed it!" he said to himself.
+
+Within two minutes after she had taken her seat on the sofa near
+Wickersham, that young envoy had conceived a plan which had vaguely
+suggested itself as a possibility during his journey South. Here was an
+ally to his hand; he could not doubt it; and if he failed to win he
+would deserve to lose.
+
+The old squire had no sooner left the room than the visitor laid the
+first lines for his attack.
+
+Why was she surprised to see him? He had large interests in the
+mountains, and could she doubt that if he was within a thousand miles he
+would come by to see her?
+
+The mantling cheeks and dancing eyes showed that this took effect.
+
+"Oh, you came down on business? That was all! I know," she said.
+
+Wickersham looked her in the eyes.
+
+Business was only a convenient excuse. Old Halbrook could have attended
+to the business; but he preferred to come himself. Possibly she could
+guess the reason? He looked handsome and sincere enough as he leant
+over and gazed in her face to have beguiled a wiser person than Phrony.
+
+She, of course, had not the least idea.
+
+Then he must tell her. To do this he found it necessary to sit on the
+sofa close to her. What he told her made her blush very rosy again, and
+stammer a little as she declared her disbelief in all he said, and was
+sure there were the prettiest girls in the world in New York, and that
+he had never thought of her a moment. And no, she would not listen to
+him--she did not believe a word he said; and--yes, of course, she was
+glad to see any old friend; and no, he should not go. He must stay with
+them. They expected him to do so.
+
+So Ferdy sent to Ridgely for his bags, and spent several days at Squire
+Rawson's, and put in the best work he was capable of during that time.
+He even had the satisfaction of seeing Phrony treat coldly and send away
+one or two country bumpkins who rode up in all the bravery of long
+broad-cloth coats and kid gloves.
+
+But if at the end of this time the young man could congratulate himself
+on success in one quarter, he knew that he was balked in the other.
+Phrony Tripper was heels over head in love with him; but her
+grandfather, though easy and pliable enough to all outward seeming, was
+in a land-deal as dull as a ditcher. Wickersham spread out before him
+maps and plats showing that he owned surveys which overlapped those
+under which the old man claimed.
+
+"Don't you see my patents are older than yours?"
+
+"Looks so," said the old man, calmly. "But patents is somethin' like
+folks: they may be too old."
+
+The young man tried another line.
+
+The land was of no special value, he told him; he only wanted to quiet
+their titles, etc. But the squire not only refused to sell an acre at
+the prices offered him, he would place no other price whatever on it.
+
+In fact, he did not want to sell. He had bought the land for mountain
+pasture, and he didn't know about these railroads and mines and such
+like. Phrony would have it after his death, and she could do what she
+wished with it after he was dead and gone.
+
+"He is a fool!" thought Wickersham, and set Phrony to work on him; but
+the old fellow was obdurate. He kissed Phrony for her wheedling, but
+told her that women-folks didn't understand about business. So
+Wickersham had to leave without getting the lands.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The influx of strangers was so great now at Gumbolt that there was a
+stream of vehicles running between a point some miles beyond Eden, which
+the railroad had reached, and Gumbolt. Wagons, ambulances, and other
+vehicles of a nondescript character on good days crowded the road,
+filling the mountain pass with the cries and oaths of their drivers and
+the rumbling and rattling of their wheels, and filling Mr. Gilsey's soul
+with disgust. But the vehicle of honor was still "Gilsey's stage." It
+carried the mail and some of the express, had the best team in the
+mountains, and was known as the "reg'lar." On bad nights the road was a
+little less crowded. And it was a bad night that Ferdy Wickersham took
+for his journey to Gumbolt.
+
+Keith had been elected marshal, but had appointed Dave Dennison his
+deputy, and on inclement nights Keith still occasionally relieved Tim
+Gilsey, for in such weather the old man was sometimes too stiff to climb
+up to his box.
+
+"The way to know people," said the old driver to him, "is to travel on
+the road with 'em. There is many a man decent enough to pass for a
+church deacon; git him on the road, and you see he is a hog, and not of
+no improved breed at that. He wants to gobble everything": an
+observation that Keith had some opportunity to verify.
+
+Terpsichore appeared suddenly to have a good deal of business over in
+Eden, and had been on the stage several times of late when Keith was
+driving it, and almost always took the box-seat. This had occurred often
+enough for some of his acquaintances in Gumbolt to rally him about it.
+
+"You will have to look out for Mr. Bluffy again," they said. "He's run
+J. Quincy off the track, and he's still in the ring. He's layin' low;
+but that's the time to watch a mountain cat. He's on your track."
+
+Mr. Plume, who was always very friendly with Keith, declared that it was
+not Bluffy, but Keith, who had run him off the track. "It's a case where
+virtue has had its reward," he said to Keith. "You have overthrown more
+than your enemy, Orlando. You have captured the prize we were all trying
+for. Take the goods the gods provide, and while you live, live. The
+epicurean is the only true philosopher. Come over and have a cocktail?
+No? Do you happen to have a dollar about your old clothes? I have not
+forgotten that I owe you a little account; but you are the only man of
+soul in this--Gehenna except myself, and I'd rather owe you ten dollars
+than any other man living."
+
+Keith's manner more than his words shut up most of his teasers. Nothing
+would shut up J. Quincy Plume.
+
+Keith always treated Terpsichore with all the politeness he would have
+shown to any lady. He knew that she was now his friend, and he had
+conceived a sincere liking for her. She was shy and very quiet when a
+passenger on his stage, ready to do anything he asked, obedient to any
+suggestion he gave her.
+
+It happened that, the night Wickersham chose for his trip to Gumbolt,
+Keith had relieved old Gilsey, and he found her at the Eden end of the
+route among his passengers. She had just arrived from Gumbolt by another
+vehicle and was now going straight back. As Keith came around, the young
+woman was evidently preparing to take the box-seat. He was conscious of
+a feeling of embarrassment, which was not diminished by the fact that
+Jake Dennison, his old pupil, was also going over. Jake as well as Dave
+was now living at Gumbolt. Jake was in all the splendor of a black coat
+and a gilded watch-chain, for he had been down to the Ridge to see Miss
+Euphronia Tripper.
+
+It had been a misty day, and toward evening the mist had changed into a
+drizzle.
+
+Keith said to Terpsichore, with some annoyance:
+
+"You had better go inside. It's going to be a bad night."
+
+A slight change came over her face, and she hesitated. But when he
+insisted, she said quietly, "Very well."
+
+As the passengers were about to take their seats in the coach, a young
+man enveloped in a heavy ulster came hurriedly out of the hotel,
+followed by a servant with several bags in his hands, and pushed hastily
+into the group, who were preparing to enter the coach in a more
+leisurely fashion. His hat partly concealed his face, but something
+about him called up memories to Keith that were not wholly pleasant.
+When he reached the coach door Jake Dennison and another man were just
+on the point of helping in one of the women. The young man squeezed in
+between them.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said.
+
+The two men stood aside at the polite tone, and the other stepped into
+the stage and took the back seat, where he proceeded to make himself
+comfortable in a corner. This, perhaps, might have passed but for the
+presence of the women. Woman at this mountain Eden was at a premium, as
+she was in the first.
+
+Jake Dennison and his friend both asserted promptly that there was no
+trouble about three of the ladies getting back seats, and Jake, putting
+his head in at the door, said briefly:
+
+"Young man, there are several ladies out here. You will have to give up
+that seat."
+
+As there was no response to this, he put his head in again.
+
+"Didn't you hear? I say there are some ladies out here. You will have to
+take another seat."
+
+To this the occupant of the stage replied that he had paid for his seat;
+but there were plenty of other seats that they could have. This was
+repeated on the outside, and thereupon one of the women said she
+supposed they would have to take one of the other seats.
+
+Women do not know the power of surrender. This surrender had no sooner
+been made than every man outside was her champion.
+
+"You will ride on that back seat to Gumbolt to-night, or I'll ride in
+Jim Digger's hearse. I am layin' for him anyhow." The voice was Jake
+Dennison's.
+
+"And I'll ride with him. Stand aside, Jake, and let me git in there.
+I'll yank him out," said his friend.
+
+But Jake was not prepared to yield to any one the honor of "yanking."
+Jake had just been down to Squire Rawson's, and this young man was none
+other than Mr. Ferdy Wickersham. He had been there, too.
+
+Jake had left with vengeance in his heart, and this was his opportunity.
+He was just entering the stage head foremost, when the occupant of the
+coveted seat decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and
+announced that he would give up the seat, thereby saving Keith the
+necessity of intervening, which he was about to do.
+
+The ejected tenant was so disgruntled that he got out of the stage, and,
+without taking any further notice of the occupants, called up to know if
+there was a seat outside.
+
+"Yes. Let me give you a hand," said Gordon, leaning down and helping him
+up. "How are you?"
+
+Wickersham looked at him quickly as he reached the boot.
+
+"Hello! You here?" The rest of his sentence was a malediction on the
+barbarians in the coach below and a general consignment of them all to a
+much warmer place than the boot of the Gumbolt stage.
+
+"What are you doing here?" Wickersham asked.
+
+"I am driving the stage."
+
+"Regularly?" There was something in the tone and look that made Keith
+wish to say no, but he said doggedly:
+
+"I have done it regularly, and was glad to get the opportunity."
+
+He was conscious of a certain change in Wickersham's manner toward him.
+
+As they drove along he asked Wickersham about Norman and his people, but
+the other answered rather curtly.
+
+Norman had married.
+
+"Yes." Keith had heard that. "He married Miss Caldwell, didn't he? She
+was a very pretty girl."
+
+"What do you know about here?" Wickersham asked. His tone struck Keith.
+
+"Oh, I met her once. I suppose they are very much in love with each
+other?"
+
+Wickersham gave a short laugh. "In love with Norman! Women don't fall in
+love with a lump of ice."
+
+"I do not think he is a lump of ice," said Keith, firmly.
+
+Wickersham did not answer at first, then he said sharply:
+
+"Well, she's worth a thousand of him. She married him for his money.
+Certainly not for his brains."
+
+"Norman has brains--as much as any one I know," defended Keith.
+
+"You think so!"
+
+Keith remembered a certain five minutes out behind the stables at
+Elphinstone.
+
+He wanted to ask Wickersham about another girl who was uppermost in his
+thoughts, but something restrained him. He could not bear to hear her
+name on his lips. By a curious coincidence, Wickersham suddenly said:
+"You used to teach at old Rawson's. Did you ever meet a girl named
+Yorke--Alice Yorke? She was down this way once."
+
+Keith said that he had met "Miss Yorke." He had met her at Ridgely
+Springs and also in New York. He was glad that it was dark, and that
+Wickersham could not see his face. "A very pretty girl," he hazarded as
+a leader, now that the subject was broached.
+
+"Yes, rather. Going abroad--title-hunting."
+
+"I don't expect Miss Yorke cares about a title," said Keith, stiffly.
+
+"Mamma does. Failing that, she wants old Lancaster and perquisites."
+
+"Who does? Why, Mr. Lancaster is old enough to be her father!"
+
+"Pile's old, too," said Wickersham, dryly.
+
+"She doesn't care about that either," said Keith, shortly.
+
+"Oh, doesn't she! You know her mother?"
+
+"No; I don't believe she does. Whatever her mother is, she is a fine,
+high-minded girl."
+
+Ferdy gave a laugh which might have meant anything. It made Keith hot
+all over. Keith, fearing to trust himself further, changed the subject
+and asked after the Rawsons, Wickersham having mentioned that he had
+been staying with them.
+
+"Phrony is back at home, I believes She has been off to school. I hear
+she is very much improved?"
+
+"I don't know; I didn't notice her particularly," said Wickersham,
+indifferently.
+
+"She is very pretty. Jake Dennison thinks so," laughed Keith.
+
+"Jake Dennison? Who is he?"
+
+"He's an old scholar of mine. He is inside now on the front seat; one of
+your friends."
+
+"Oh, that's the fellow! I thought I had seen him before. Well, he had
+better try some other stock, I guess. He may find that cornered. She is
+not going to take a clod like that."
+
+Wickersham went off into a train of reflection.
+
+"I say, Keith," he began unexpectedly, "maybe, you can help me about a
+matter, and if so I will make it worth your while."
+
+"About what matter?" asked Keith, wondering.
+
+"Why, about that old dolt Rawson's land. You see, the governor has got
+himself rather concerned. When he got this property up here in the
+mountains and started to build the railroad, some of these people here
+got wind of it. That fool, Rhodes, talked about it too much, and they
+bought up the lands around the old man's property. They think the
+governor has got to buy 'em out. Old Rawson is the head of 'em. The
+governor sent Halbrook down to get it; but Halbrook is a fool, too. He
+let him know he wanted to buy him out, and, of course, he raised. You
+and he used to be very thick. He was talking of you the other night."
+
+"He and I are great friends. I have a great regard for him, and a much
+higher opinion of his sense than you appear to have. He is a very
+shrewd man."
+
+"Shrewd the deuce! He's an old blockhead. He has stumbled into the
+possession of some property which I am ready to pay him a fair price
+for. He took it for a cow-pasture. It isn't worth anything. It would
+only be a convenience to us to have it and prevent a row in the future,
+perhaps. That is the only reason I want it. Besides, his title to it
+ain't worth a ----, anyhow. We have patents that antedate his. You can
+tell him that the land is not worth anything. I will give you a good sum
+if you get him to name a price at, say, fifty per cent. on what he gave
+for it. I know what he gave for it. You can tell him it ain't worth
+anything to him and that his title is faulty."
+
+"No, I could not," said Keith, shortly.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I think it is very valuable and his title perfect. And he knows
+it."
+
+Wickersham glanced at him in the dusk.
+
+"It isn't valuable at all," he said after a pause. "I will give you a
+good fee if you will get through a deal for it at any price we may agree
+on. Come!"
+
+"No," said Keith; "not for all the money you own. My advice to you is to
+go to Squire Rawson and either offer to take him in with you to the
+value of his lands, or else make him a direct offer for what those lands
+are really worth. He knows as much about the value of those lands as you
+or Mr. Halbrook or any one else knows. Take my word for it."
+
+"Rats!" ejaculated Wickersham, briefly. "I tell you what," he added
+presently: "if he don't sell us that land he'll never get a cent out of
+it. No one else will ever take it. We have him cornered. We've got the
+land above him, and the water, too, and, what is more, his title is not
+worth a damn!"
+
+"Well, that is his lookout. I expect you will find him able to take care
+of himself."
+
+Wickersham gave a grunt, then he asked Keith suddenly:
+
+"Do you know a man named Plume over there at Gumbolt?"
+
+"Yes," said Keith; "he runs the paper there."
+
+"Yes; that's he. What sort of a man is he?"
+
+Keith gave a brief estimate of Mr. Plume: "You will see him and can
+judge for yourself."
+
+"I always do," said Wickersham, briefly. "Know anybody can work him? The
+governor and he fell out some time ago, but I want to get hold of him."
+
+Keith thought he knew one who might influence Mr. Plume; but he did not
+mention the name or sex.
+
+"Who is that woman inside?" demanded Wickersham. "I mean the young one,
+with the eyes."
+
+"They call her Terpsichore. She keeps the dance-hall."
+
+"Friend of yours?"
+
+"Yes." Keith spoke shortly.
+
+The stage presently began to descend Hellstreak Hill, which Keith
+mentioned as the scene of the robbery which old Tim Gilsey had told him
+of. As it swung down the long descent, with the lights of the lamps
+flashing on the big tree-tops, and with the roar of the rushing water
+below them coming up as it boiled over the rocks, Wickersham conceived a
+higher opinion of Keith than he had had before, and he mentally resolved
+that the next time he came over that road he would make the trip in the
+daytime. They had just crossed the little creek which dashed over the
+rocks toward the river, and had begun to ascend another hill, when
+Wickersham, who had been talking about his drag, was pleased to have
+Keith offer him the reins. He took them with some pride, and Keith
+dived down into the boot. When he sat up again he had a pistol in
+his hand.
+
+"It was just about here that that 'hold-up' occurred."
+
+"Suppose they should try to hold you up now, what would you do?" asked
+Wickersham.
+
+"Oh, I don't think there is any danger now," said Keith. "I have driven
+over here at all hours and in all weathers. We are getting too civilized
+for that now, and most of the express comes over in a special wagon.
+It's only the mail and small packages that come on this stage."
+
+"But if they should?" demanded Wickersham.
+
+"Well, I suppose I'd whip up my horses and cut for it," said Keith.
+
+"I wouldn't," asserted Wickersham. "I'd like to see any man make me run
+when I have a gun in my pocket."
+
+Suddenly, as if in answer to his boast, there was a flash in the road,
+and the report of a pistol under the very noses of the leaders, which
+made them swerve aside with a rattling of the swingle-bars, and twist
+the stage sharply over to the side of the road. At the same instant a
+dark figure was seen in the dim light which the lamp threw on the road,
+close beside one of the horses, and a voice was heard:
+
+"I've got you now, ---- you!"
+
+It was all so sudden that Wickersham had not time to think. It seemed to
+him like a scene in a play rather than a reality. He instinctively
+shortened the reins and pulled up the frightened horses. Keith seized
+the reins with one band and snatched at the whip with the other; but it
+was too late. Wickersham, hardly conscious of what he was doing, was
+clutching the reins with all his might, trying to control the leaders,
+whilst pandemonium broke out inside, cries from the women and oaths
+from the men.
+
+There was another volley of oaths and another flash, and Wickersham felt
+a sharp little burn on the arm next Keith.
+
+"Hold on!" he shouted. "For God's sake, don't shoot! Hold on! Stop the
+horses!"
+
+[Illustration: Sprang over the edge of the road into the thick bushes
+below.]
+
+At the same moment Keith disappeared over the wheel. He had fallen or
+sprung from his seat.
+
+"The ---- coward!" thought Wickersham. "He is running."
+
+The next second there was a report of a pistol close beside the stage,
+and the man in the road at the horses' heads fired again. Another
+report, and Keith dashed forward into the light of the lantern and
+charged straight at the robber, who fired once more, and then, when
+Keith was within ten feet of him, turned and sprang over the edge of the
+road into the thick bushes below. Keith sprang straight after him, and
+the two went crashing through the underbrush, down the steep side of
+the hill.
+
+The inmates of the stage poured out into the road, all talking together,
+and Wickersham, with the aid of Jake Dennison, succeeded in quieting the
+horses. The noise of the flight and the pursuit had now grown more
+distant, but once more several shots were heard, deep down in the woods,
+and then even they ceased.
+
+It had all happened so quickly that the passengers had seen nothing.
+They demanded of Wickersham how many robbers there were. They were
+divided in their opinion as to the probable outcome. The men declared
+that Keith had probably got the robber if he had not been killed himself
+at the last fire.
+
+Terpsichore was in a passion of rage because the men had not jumped out
+instantly to Keith's rescue, and one of them had held her in the stage
+and prevented her from poking her head out to see the fight. In the
+light of the lantern Wickersham observed that she was handsome. He
+watched her with interest. There was something of the tiger in her lithe
+movement. She declared that she was going down into the woods herself to
+find Keith. She was sure he had been killed.
+
+The men protested against this, and Jake Dennison and another man
+started to the rescue, whilst a grizzled, weather-beaten fellow caught
+and held her.
+
+"Why, my darlint, I couldn't let you go down there. Why, you'd ruin your
+new bonnet," he said.
+
+The young woman snatched the bonnet from her head and slung it in his
+face.
+
+"You coward! Do you think I care for a bonnet when the best man in
+Gumbolt may be dying down in them woods?"
+
+With a cuff on the ear as the man burst out laughing and put his hand on
+her to soothe her, she turned and darted over the bank into the woods.
+Fortunately for the rest of her apparel, which must have suffered as
+much as the dishevelled bonnet,--which the grizzled miner had picked up
+and now held in his hand as carefully as if it were one of the birds
+which ornamented it,--some one was heard climbing up through the bushes
+toward the road a little distance ahead.
+
+The men stepped forward and waited, each one with his hand in the
+neighborhood of his belt, whilst the women instinctively fell to the
+rear. The next moment Keith appeared over the edge of the road. As he
+stepped into the light it was seen that his face was bleeding and that
+his left arm hung limp at his side.
+
+The men called to Terpy to come back: that Keith was there. A moment
+later she emerged from the bushes and clambered up the bank.
+
+"Did you get him?" was the first question she asked.
+
+"No." Keith gave the girl a swift glance, and turning quietly, he asked
+one of the men to help him off with his coat. In the light of the lamp
+he had a curious expression on his white face.
+
+"Terpy was that skeered about you, she swore she was goin' down there to
+help you," said the miner who still held the hat.
+
+A box on the ear from the young woman stopped whatever further
+observation he was going to make.
+
+"Shut up. Don't you see he's hurt?" She pushed away the man who was
+helping Keith off with his coat, and took his place.
+
+No one who had seen her as she relieved Keith of the coat and with
+dexterous fingers, which might have been a trained nurse's, cut away the
+bloody shirt-sleeve, would have dreamed that she was the virago who, a
+few moments before, had been raging in the road, swearing like a
+trooper, and cuffing men's ears.
+
+When the sleeve was removed it was found that Keith's arm was broken
+just above the elbow, and the blood was pouring from two small wounds.
+Terpy levied imperiously on the other passengers for handkerchiefs;
+then, not waiting for their contributions, suddenly lifting her skirt,
+whipped off a white petticoat, and tore it into strips. She soon had the
+arm bound up, showing real skill in her surgery. Once she whispered a
+word in his ear--a single name. Keith remained silent, but she read his
+answer, and went on with her work with a grim look on her face. Then
+Keith mounted his box against the remonstrances of every one, and the
+passengers having reentered the stage, Wickersham drove on into Gumbolt.
+His manner was more respectful to Keith than it had ever been before.
+
+Within a half-hour after their arrival the sheriff and his party, with
+Dave Dennison at the head of the posse, were on their horses, headed for
+the scene of the "hold-up." Dave could have had half of Gumbolt for
+posse had he desired it. They attempted to get some information from
+Keith as to the appearance of the robber; but Keith failed to give any
+description by which one man might have been distinguished from the rest
+of the male sex.
+
+"Could they expect a man to take particular notice of how another looked
+under such circumstances? He looked like a pretty big man."
+
+Wickersham was able to give a more explicit description.
+
+The pursuers returned a little after sunrise next morning without having
+found the robber.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+MRS. YORKE MAKES A MATCH
+
+The next day Keith was able to sit up, though the Doctor refused to let
+him go out of the house. He was alone in his room when a messenger
+announced that a woman wished to see him. When the visitor came up it
+was Terpy. She was in a state of suppressed excitement. Her face was
+white, her eyes glittered. Her voice as she spoke was tremulous
+with emotion.
+
+"They're on to him," she said in a husky voice. "That man that comed
+over on the stage with you give a description of him, this mornin', 't
+made 'em tumble to him after we had throwed 'em off the track. If I ever
+git a show at him! They knows 'twas Bill. That little devil Dennison is
+out ag'in."
+
+"Oh, they won't catch him," said Keith; but as he spoke his face
+changed. "What if he should get drunk and come into town?" he
+asked himself.
+
+"If they git him, they'll hang him," pursued the girl, without heeding
+him. "They're all up. You are so popular.
+
+"Me?" exclaimed Keith, laughing.
+
+"It's so," said the girl, gravely. "That Dave Dennison would kill
+anybody for you, and they're ag'in' Bill, all of 'em."
+
+"Can't you get word to him?" began Keith, and paused. He looked at her
+keenly. "You must keep him out of the way.'
+
+"He's wounded. You got him in the shoulder. He's got to see a doctor.
+The ball's still in there."
+
+"I knew it," said Keith, quietly.
+
+The girl gazed at him a moment, and then looked away.
+
+"That was the reason I have been a-pesterin' you, goin' back'ards and
+for'ards. I hope you will excuse me of it," she said irrelevantly.
+
+Keith sat quite still for a moment, as it all came over him. It was,
+then, him that the man was after, not robbery, and this girl, unable to
+restrain her discarded suitor without pointing suspicion to him, had
+imperilled her life for Keith, when he was conceited enough to more than
+half accept the hints of strangers that she cared for him.
+
+"We must get him away," he said, rising painfully. "Where is he?"
+
+"He's hid in a house down the road. I have flung 'em off the track by
+abusin' of him. They know I am against him, and they think I am after
+you," she said, looking at him with frank eyes; "and I have been lettin'
+'em think it," she added quietly.
+
+Keith almost gasped. Truly this girl was past his comprehension.
+
+"We must get him away," he said.
+
+"How can we do it?" she asked. "They suspicion he's here, and the
+pickets are out. If he warn't hit in the shoulder so bad, he could fight
+his way out. He ain't afraid of none of 'em," she added, with a flash of
+the old pride. "I could go with him and help him; I have done it before;
+but I would have to break up here. He's got to see a doctor."
+
+Keith sat in reflection for a moment.
+
+"Tim Gilsey is going to drive the stage over to Eden to-night. Go down
+and see if the places are all taken."
+
+"I have got a place on it," she said, "on the boot."
+
+As Keith looked at her, she added in explanation:
+
+"I take it regular, so as to have it when I want it."
+
+Under Keith's glance she turned away her eyes.
+
+"I am going to Eden to-night," said Keith.
+
+She looked puzzled.
+
+"If you could get old Tim to stop at that house for five minutes till I
+give Bluffy a letter to Dr. Balsam over at the Springs, I think we might
+arrange it. My clothes will fit him. You will have to see Uncle Tim."
+
+Her countenance lit up.
+
+"You mean you would stop there and let him take your place?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The light of craft that must have been in Delilah's eyes when Samson lay
+at her feet was in her face. She sprang up.
+
+"I will never forgit you, and Bill won't neither. He knows now what a
+hound he has been. When you let him off last night after he had slipped
+on the rock, he says that was enough for him. Before he will ever pull a
+pistol on you ag'in, he says he will blow his own brains out; and he
+will, or I will for him." She looked capable of it as she stood with
+glowing eyes and after a moment held out her hand. She appeared about to
+speak, but reflected and turned away.
+
+When the girl left Keith's room a few moments later, she carried a large
+bundle under her arm, and that night the stage stopped in the darkness
+at a little shanty at the far end of the fast-growing street, and Keith
+descended painfully and went into the house. Whilst the stage waited,
+old Tim attempted to do something to the lamp on that side, and in
+turning it down he put it out. Just then Keith, with his arm in a sling
+and wrapped in a heavy coat, came out, and was helped by old Tim up to
+the seat beside him. The stage arrived somewhat ahead of time at the
+point which the railroad had now reached, and old Tim, without waiting
+for daylight, took the trouble to hire a buggy and send the wounded man
+on, declaring that it was important that he should get to a hospital as
+soon as possible.
+
+Amusements were scarce in Gumbolt, and Ferdy Wickersham had been there
+only a day or two when, under Mr. Plume's guidance, he sought the
+entertainment of Terpsichore's Hall. He had been greatly struck by Terpy
+that night on the road, when she had faced down the men and had
+afterwards bound up Keith's arm. He had heard from Plume rumors of her
+frequent trips over the road and jests of her fancy for Keith. He would
+test it. It would break the monotony and give zest to the pursuit to
+make an inroad on Keith's preserve. When he saw her on the little stage
+he was astonished at her dancing. Why, the girl was an artist! As good a
+figure, as active a tripper, as high a kicker, as dainty a pair of
+ankles as he had seen in a long time, not to mention a keen pair of eyes
+with the devil peeping from them. To his surprise, he found Terpy stony
+to his advances. Her eyes glittered with dislike for him.
+
+He became one of the highest players that had ever entered the gilded
+apartment on Terpsichore's second floor; he ordered more champagne than
+any man in Gumbolt; but for all this he failed to ingratiate himself
+with its presiding genius. Terpsichore still looked at him with level
+eyes in which was a cold gleam, and when she showed her white teeth it
+was generally to emphasize some gibe at him. One evening, after a little
+passage at arms, Wickersham chucked her under the chin and called her
+"Darling." Terpsichore wheeled on him.
+
+"Keep your dirty hands to yourself" she said, with a flash in her eye,
+and gave him such a box on the ear as made his head ring. The men around
+broke into a guffaw.
+
+Wickersham was more than angry; he was enraged. He had heard a score of
+men call her by endearing names. He had also seen some of them get the
+same return that he received; but none so vicious. He sprang to his
+feet, his face flushed. The next second his senses returned, and he saw
+that he must make the best of it.
+
+"You vixen!" he said, with a laugh, and caught the girl by the wrist. "I
+will make you pay for that." As he tried to draw her to him, she
+whipped from her dress a small stiletto which she wore as an ornament,
+and drew it back.
+
+"Let go, or I'll drive it into you," she said, with fire darting from
+her eyes; and Wickersham let go amid the laughter and jeers of those
+about them, who were egging the girl on and calling to her to "give
+it to him."
+
+Wickersham after this tried to make his peace, but without avail. Though
+he did not know it, Terpsichore had in her heart a feeling of hate which
+was relentless. It was his description that had set the sheriff's posse
+on the track of her dissipated lover, and though she had "washed her
+hands of Bill Bluffy," as she said, she could not forgive the man who
+had injured him.
+
+Then Wickersham, having committed one error, committed another. He tried
+to get revenge, and the man who sets out to get revenge on a woman
+starts on a sad journey. At least, it was so with Wickersham.
+
+He attributed the snubbing he had received to the girl's liking for
+Keith, and he began to meditate how he should get even with them. The
+chance presented itself, as he thought, when one night he attended a
+ball at the Windsor. It was a gay occasion, for the Wickershams had
+opened their first mine, and Gumbolt's future was assured. The whole of
+Gumbolt was there--at least, all of those who did not side with Mr.
+Drummond, the Methodist preacher. Terpsichore was there, and Keith, who
+danced with her. She was the handsomest-dressed woman in the throng,
+and, to Wickersham's surprise, she was dressed with some taste, and her
+manners were quiet and subdued.
+
+Toward morning the scene became hilarious, and a call was made for
+Terpsichore to give a Spanish dance. The girl held back, but her
+admirers were in no mood for refusal, and the call became insistent.
+Keith had gone to his room, but Wickersham was still there, and his
+champagne had flowed freely. At length the girl yielded, and, after a
+few words with the host of the Windsor, she stepped forward and began
+to dance.
+
+She danced in such a way that the applause made the brass chandeliers
+ring. Even Wickersham, though he hated her, could not but admire her.
+
+Keith, who had found it useless to try to sleep even in a remote corner
+of the hotel, returned just then, and whether it was that Terpsichore
+caught sight of him as she glanced his way, or that she caught sight of
+Wickersham's hostile face, she faltered and stopped suddenly.
+
+Wickersham thought she had broken down, and, under the influence of the
+champagne, turned with a jeer to Plume.
+
+"She can't dance, Plume," he called across to the editor, who was at
+some little distance in the crowd.
+
+Those nearest to the dancer urged her to continue, but she had heard
+Wickersham's jeer, and she suddenly faced him and, pointing her long,
+bare arm toward him, said: "Put that man out, or I won't go on."
+
+Wickersham gave a laugh. "Go on? You can't go on," he said, trying to
+steady himself on his feet. "You can't dance any more than a cow."
+
+He had never heard before the hum of an angry crowd.
+
+"Throw him out! Fling him out of the window!" were the words he caught.
+
+In a second a score of men were about him, and more than a score were
+rushing in his direction with a sound that brought him quickly to
+his senses.
+
+Fortunately two men with cool heads were near by. With a spring Keith
+and a short, stout young fellow with gray eyes were making their way to
+his side, dragging men back, throwing them aside, expostulating,
+ordering, and, before anything else had happened than the tearing of his
+coat half off of his back, Wickersham found himself with Keith and Dave
+Dennison standing in front of him, defending him against the angry
+revellers.
+
+The determined air of the two officers held the assailants in check
+long enough for them to get their attention, and, after a moment, order
+was restored on condition that Wickersham should "apologize to the lady
+and leave town."
+
+This Wickersham, well sobered by the handling he had received, was
+willing to do, and he was made to walk up and offer a humble apology to
+Terpsichore, who accepted it with but indifferent grace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That winter the railroad reached Gumbolt, and Gumbolt, or New Leeds, as
+it was now called, sprang at once, so to speak, from a chrysalis to a
+full-fledged butterfly with wings unfolding in the sun of prosperity.
+
+Lands that a year or two before might have been had for a song, and
+mineral rights that might have been had for less than a song, were now
+held at fabulous prices.
+
+Keith was sitting at his table, one day, writing, when there was a heavy
+step outside, and Squire Rawson walked in on him.
+
+When all matters of mutual interest had been talked over, the squire
+broached the real object of his visit; at least, he began to approach
+it. He took out his pipe and filled it.
+
+"Well, it's come," he said.
+
+"What has come?"
+
+"The railroad. That young man Rhodes said 'twas comin', and so it's
+done. He was something of a prophet." The old fellow chuckled softly and
+lit his pipe. "That there friend of yours, Mr. Wickersham, is been down
+here ag'in. Kind o' hangs around. What's he up to?"
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"Well, it's pretty hard to tell what Wickersham is up to,--at least, by
+what he says,--especially when you don't tell me what he is doing."
+
+The old man looked pleased. Keith had let him believe that he did not
+know what he was talking of, and had expressed an opinion in which
+he agreed.
+
+"That's what I think. Well, it's about my land up here."
+
+Keith looked relived.
+
+"Has he made you another offer for it?"
+
+"No; he ain't done that, and he won't do it. That's what I tells him. If
+he wants it, let him make me a good offer; but he won't do that. He kind
+o' circles around like a pigeon before he lights, and talks about what I
+paid for it, and a hundred per cent. advance, and all that. I give a
+sight for that land he don't know nothin' about--years of hard work on
+the mountain-side, sweatin' o' days, and layin' out in the cold at
+nights, lookin' up at the stars and wonderin' how I was to git
+along--studin' of folks jest as I studied cattle. That's what I paid for
+that land. He wants me to set him a price, and I won't do that--he might
+give it." He looked shrewdly at Keith. "Ain't I right?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"He wants me to let him have control of it; but I ain't a-goin' to do
+that neither."
+
+"That's certainly right," said Keith, heartily.
+
+"I tell him I'm a-goin' to hold to that for Phrony. Phrony says she
+wants me to sell it to him, too. But women-folks don't know about
+business."
+
+Keith wondered what effect this piece of information had on Wickersham,
+and also what further design the old squire had in mind.
+
+"I think it's about time to do something with that land. If all he says
+is true,--not about _my_ land (he makes out as _my_ land is situate too
+far away ever to be much account--fact is, he don't allow I've got any
+land; he says it's all his anyway), but about other lands--everybody
+else's land but mine,--it might be a good time to look around. I know as
+my land is the best land up here. I holds the key to the situation.
+That's what we used to call it durin' the war.
+
+"Well, there ain't but three ways to git to them coal-lands back up
+yonder in the Gap: one's by way of heaven, and I 'lows there ain't many
+land-speculators goin' by that way; the other is through hell, a way
+they'll know more about hereafter; and the third's through my land."
+
+Keith laughed and waited.
+
+"He seems to be hangin' around Phrony pretty considerable?"
+
+Keith caught the gleam in the old fellow's deep eye, and looked away.
+
+"I can't make it out. Phrony she likes him."
+
+Keith fastened his gaze on something out of the window.
+
+"I don't know him," pursued the squire; "But I don't think--he'd suit
+Phrony. His ways ain't like ours, and--." He lapsed into reflection, and
+Keith, with his eyes still fastened on something outside the window,
+sighed to think of the old man's innocence. That he should imagine that
+Wickersham had any serious idea of marrying the granddaughter of a
+backwoods magistrate! The old squire broke the silence.
+
+"You don't suppose he could be hankerin' after Phrony for her property,
+do you?"
+
+"No, I do not," said Keith, positively, relieved that at last a question
+was put which he could answer directly.
+
+"Because she ain't got any," asserted the squire. "She's got prospects;
+but I'm goin' to remove them. It don't do for a young woman to have too
+much prospects. I'm goin' to sell that land and git it down in cash,
+where I can do what I want with it. And I want you to take charge of
+it for me."
+
+This, then, was the real object of his visit. He wanted Keith to take
+charge of his properties. It was a tempting offer to make Keith. The old
+man had been a shrewd negotiator.
+
+There is no success so sweet as that which comes to a young man.
+
+That night Keith spent out under the stars. Success had come. And its
+other name was Alice Yorke.
+
+The way before Keith still stretched steep enough, but the light was on
+it, the sunshine caught peak after peak high up among the clouds
+themselves, and crowning the highest point, bathed in perpetual
+sunlight, was the image of Alice Yorke.
+
+Alice Yorke had been abroad now for some time; but he had followed her.
+Often when his work was done he had locked his door and shut himself in
+from the turmoil of the bustling, noisy throng outside to dream of
+her--to read and study that he might become worthy of her.
+
+He had just seen by the papers that Alice Yorke had returned.
+
+She had escaped the dangers of a foreign service; but, by the account,
+she was the belle of the season at the watering-place which she was
+honoring with her presence. As he read the account, a little jealousy
+crept into the satisfaction which he had felt as he began. Mr. Lancaster
+was spoken of too pointedly; and there was mention of too many
+yacht-parties and entertainments in which their names appeared together.
+
+In fact, the forces exerted, against Alice Yorke had begun to tell. Her
+mother, overawed by her husband's determination, had reluctantly
+abandoned her dreams of a foreign title with its attendant honors to
+herself, and, of late, had turned all her energies to furthering the
+suit of Mr. Lancaster. It would be a great establishment that he would
+give Alice, and no name in the country stood higher. He was the soul of
+honor, personal and commercial; and in an age when many were endeavoring
+to amass great fortunes and make a dazzling display, he was content to
+live modestly, and was known for his broad-minded philanthropy. What did
+it matter that he was considerably older than Alice? reflected Mrs.
+Yorke. Mrs. Creamer and half the mothers she knew would give their eyes
+to secure him for their daughters; and certainly he had shown that he
+knew how to enter into Alice's feelings.
+
+Even Mr. Yorke had begun to favor Mr. Lancaster after Mrs. Yorke had
+skilfully pointed out that Alice's next most attentive admirer was Ferdy
+Wickersham.
+
+"Why, I thought he was still trying to get that Caldwell girl," said he.
+
+"You know he cannot get her; she is married," replied Mrs. Yorke.
+
+"I guess that would make precious little difference to that young man,
+if she would say the word. I wish he would keep away from here."
+
+"Oh, Ferdy is no worse than some others; you were always unjust to him.
+Most young men sow their wild oats."
+
+No man likes to be charged with injustice by his wife, and Mr. Yorke's
+tone showed that he was no exception to this rule.
+
+"He is worse than most others _I_ know, and the crop of oats he is
+sowing, if he does not look out, he will reap somewhere else besides in
+New York. Alice shall marry whom she pleases, provided it is not that
+young man; but she shall not marry him if she wants to."
+
+"She does not want to marry him," said Mrs. Yorke; "if she had she could
+have done it long ago."
+
+"Not while I lived," said Mr. Yorke, firmly. But from this time Mr.
+Yorke began to acquiesce in his wife's plans touching Mr. Lancaster.
+
+Finally Alice herself began to yield. The influences were very strong,
+and were skilfully exerted. The only man who had ever made any lasting
+impression on her heart was, she felt, out of the question. The young
+school-teacher, with his pride and his scorn of modern ways, had
+influenced her life more than any one else she had ever known, and
+though under her mother's management the feeling had gradually subsided,
+and had been merged into what was merely a cherished recollection,
+Memory, stirred at times by some picture or story of heroism and
+devotion, reminded her that she too might, under other conditions, have
+had a real romance. Still, after two or three years, her life appeared
+to have been made for her by Fate, and she yielded, not recognizing that
+Fate was only a very ambitious and somewhat short-sighted mamma aided by
+the conditions of an artificial state of life known as fashionable
+society.
+
+Keith wrote Alice Yorke a letter congratulating her upon her safe
+return; but a feeling, part shyness, part pride, seized him. He had
+received no acknowledgment of his last letter. Why should he write
+again? He mailed the letter in the waste-basket. Now, however, that
+success had come to him, he wrote her a brief note congratulating her
+upon her return, a stiff little plea for remembrance. He spoke of his
+good fortune: he was the agent for the most valuable lands in that
+region, and the future was beginning to look very bright. Business, he
+said, might take him North before long, and the humming-birds would show
+him the way to the fairest roses. The hope of seeing her shone in every
+line. It reached Alice Yorke in the midst of preparation for
+her marriage.
+
+Alice Yorke sat for some time in meditation over this letter. It brought
+back vividly the time which she had never wholly forgotten. Often, in
+the midst of scenes so gay and rich as to amaze her, she had recalled
+the springtime in the budding woods, with an ardent boy beside her,
+worshipping her with adoring eyes. She had lived close to Nature then,
+and Content once or twice peeped forth at her from its covert with calm
+and gentle eyes. She had known pleasure since then, joy, delight, but
+never content. However, it was too late now. Mr. Lancaster and her
+mother had won the day; she had at last accepted him and an
+establishment. She had accepted her fate or had made it.
+
+She showed the letter to her mother. Mrs. Yorke's face took on an
+inscrutable expression.
+
+"You are not going to answer it, of course?" she said.
+
+"Of course, I am; I am going to write him the nicest letter that I know
+how to write. He is one of the best friends I ever had."
+
+"What will Mr. Lancaster say?"
+
+"Mr. Lancaster quite understands. He is going to be reasonable; that is
+the condition."
+
+This appeared to be satisfactory to Mrs. Yorke, or, at least, she said
+no more.
+
+Alice's letter to Keith was friendly and even kind. She had never
+forgotten him, she said. Some day she hoped to meet him again. Keith
+read this with a pleasant light in his eyes. He turned the page, and his
+face suddenly whitened. She had a piece of news to tell him which might
+surprise him. She was engaged to be married to an old friend of her
+family's, Mr. Lancaster. He had met Mr. Lancaster, she remembered, and
+was sure he would like him, as Mr. Lancaster had liked him so much.
+
+Keith sat long over this letter, his face hard set and very white. She
+was lost to him. He had not known till then how largely he had built his
+life upon the memory of Alice Yorke. Deep down under everything that he
+had striven for had lain the foundation of his hope to win her. It went
+down with a crash. He went to his room, and unlocking his desk, took
+from his drawer a small package of letters and other little mementos of
+the past that had been so sweet. These he put in the fire and, with a
+grim face, watched them blaze and burn to ashes. She was dead to him. He
+reserved nothing.
+
+The newspapers described the Yorke-Lancaster wedding as one of the most
+brilliant affairs of the season. They dwelt particularly on the fortunes
+of both parties, the value of the presents, and the splendor of the
+dresses worn on the occasion. One journal mentioned that Mr. Lancaster
+was considerably older than the bride, and was regarded as one of the
+best, because one of the safest, matches to be found in society.
+
+Keith recalled Mr. Lancaster: dignified, cultivated, and coldly
+gracious. Then he recalled his gray hair, and found some satisfaction in
+it. He recalled, too, Mrs. Yorke's friendliness for him. This, then, was
+what it meant. He wondered to himself how he could have been so blind to
+it. When he came to think of it, Mr. Lancaster came nearer possessing
+what others strove for than any one else he knew. Yet, Youth looks on
+Youth as peculiarly its own, and Keith found it hard to look on Alice
+Yorke's marriage as anything but a sale.
+
+"They talk about the sin of selling negroes," he said; "that is as very
+a sale as ever took place at a slave-auction."
+
+For a time he plunged into the gayest life that Gumbolt offered. He even
+began to visit Terpsichore. But this was not for long. Mr. Plume's
+congratulations were too distasteful to him for him to stomach them; and
+Terpy began to show her partiality too plainly for him to take advantage
+of it. Besides, after all, though Alice Yorke had failed him, it was
+treason to the ideal he had so long carried in his heart. This still
+remained to him.
+
+He went back to his work, resolved to tear from his heart all memory of
+Alice Yorke. She was married and forever beyond his dreams. If he had
+worked before with enthusiasm, he now worked with fury. Mr. Lancaster,
+as wealthy as he was, as completely equipped with all that success could
+give, lacked one thing that Keith possessed: he lacked the promise of
+the Future. Keith would show these Yorkes who he was.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+KEITH VISITS NEW YORK, AND MRS. LANCASTER SEES A GHOST
+
+For the next year or two the tide set in very strong toward the
+mountains, and New Leeds advanced with giant strides. What had been a
+straggling village a year or two before was now a town, and was
+beginning to put on the airs of a city. Brick buildings quite as
+pretentious as the town were springing up where a year before there were
+unsightly frame boxes; the roads where hogs had wallowed in mire not
+wholly of their own kneading were becoming well-paved streets. Out on
+the heights, where had been a forest, were sprinkled sightly dwellings
+in pretty yards. The smoke of panting engines rose where but a few years
+back old Tim Gilsey drew rein over his steaming horses. Pretty girls and
+well-dressed women began to parade the sidewalks where formerly
+Terpsichore's skirts were the only feminine attire seen. And "Gordon
+Keith, civil and mining engineer," with his straight figure and tanned,
+manly face, was not ignored by them. But locked in his heart was the
+memory of the girl he had found in the Spring woods. She was forever
+beyond him; but he still clung to the picture he had enshrined there.
+
+When he saw Dr. Balsam, no reference was made to the verification of the
+latter's prophecy; but the young man knew from the kind tone in the
+older man's voice that he had heard of it. Meantime Keith had not been
+idle. Surveys and plats had been made, and everything done to facilitate
+placing the Rawson properties on the market.
+
+When old man Rawson came to New Leeds now, he made Keith's little office
+his headquarters, and much quaint philosophy Keith learned from him.
+
+"I reckon it's about time to try our cattle in the New York market," he
+said at length to Keith. It was a joke he never gave up. "You go up
+there and look around, and if you have any trouble send for me."
+
+So, taking his surveys and reports and a few letters of introduction
+Keith went to New York.
+
+Only one thought marred Keith's joy: the dearest aim he had so long had
+in view had disappeared. The triumph of standing before Alice Yorke and
+offering her the reward of his endeavor was gone. All he could do was to
+show her what she had lost. This he would do; he would win life's
+highest honors. He grew grim with resolve.
+
+Something of this triumphant feeling showed in his mien and in his face
+as he plunged into the crowded life of the city. From the time he passed
+into the throng that streamed up the long platforms of the station and
+poured into the wide ferry-boats, like grain pouring through a mill, he
+felt the thrill of the life. This was what he had striven for. He would
+take his place here and show what was in him.
+
+He had forgotten how gay the city life was. Every place of public resort
+pleased him: theatres, hotels, beer-gardens; but best of all the
+streets. He took them all in with absolute freedom and delight.
+
+Business was the watchword, the trade-mark. It buzzed everywhere, from
+the Battery to the Park. It thronged the streets, pulsating through the
+outlets and inlets at ferries and railway-stations and crossings, and
+through the great buildings that were already beginning to tower in the
+business sections. It hummed in the chief centres. And through it all
+and beyond it all shone opulence, opulence gilded and gleaming and
+dazzling in its glitter: in the big hotels; in the rich shops; in the
+gaudy theatres; along the fine avenues: a display of wealth to make the
+eyes ache; an exhibition of riches never seen before. It did Keith good
+at first just to stand in the street and watch the pageant as it passed
+like a gilded panorama. Of the inner New York he did not yet know: the
+New York of luxurious homes; of culture and of art; of refinement and
+elegance. The New York that has grown up since, with its vast wealth,
+its brazen glitter, its tides that roll up riches as the sea rolls up
+the sand, was not yet. It was still in its infancy, a chrysalis as yet
+sleeping within its golden cocoon.
+
+Keith had no idea there were so many handsome and stylish young women in
+the world as he now saw. He had forgotten how handsome the American girl
+is in her best appointment. They sailed down the avenue looking as fine
+as young fillies at a show, or streamed through the best shopping
+streets as though not only the shops, but the world belonged to them,
+and it were no longer the meek, but the proud, that inherit the earth.
+
+If in the throngs on the streets there were often marked contrasts,
+Keith was too exhilarated to remark it--at least, at first. If women
+with worn faces and garments unduly thin in the frosty air, carrying
+large bundles in their pinched hands, hurried by as though hungry, not
+only for food, but for time in which to earn food; if sad-eyed men with
+hollow cheeks, sunken chests, and threadbare clothes shambled eagerly
+along, he failed to note them in his first keen enjoyment of the
+pageant. Old clothes meant nothing where he came from; they might be the
+badge of perilous enterprise and well-paid industry, and food and fire
+were at least common to all.
+
+Keith, indeed, moved about almost in a trance, absorbing and enjoying
+the sights. It was Humanity in flood; Life at full tide.
+
+Many a woman and not a few men turned to take a second look at the
+tanned, eager face and straight, supple figure, as, with smiling, yet
+keen eyes, he stalked along with the free, swinging gait caught on the
+mountains, so different from the quick, short steps of the city man.
+Beggars, and some who from their look and apparel might not have been
+beggars, applied to him so often that he said to one of them, a fairly
+well-dressed man with a nose of a slightly red tinge:
+
+"Well, I must have a very benevolent face or a very credulous one!"
+
+"You have," said the man, with brazen frankness, pocketing the
+half-dollar given him on his tale of a picked pocket and a remittance
+that had gone wrong.
+
+Keith laughed and passed on.
+
+Meantime, Keith was making some discoveries. He did not at first call on
+Norman Wentworth. He had a feeling that it might appear as if he were
+using his friendship for a commercial purpose. He presented his business
+letters. His letters, however, failed to have the weight he had
+expected. The persons whom he had met down in New Leeds, during their
+brief visits there, were, somehow, very different when met in New York.
+Some whom he called on were civil enough to him; but as soon as he
+broached his business they froze up. The suggestion that he had
+coal-property to sell sent them down to zero. Their eyes would glint
+with a shrewd light and their faces harden into ice. One or two told him
+plainly that they had no money to embark in "wild-cat schemes."
+
+Mr. Creamer of Creamer, Crustback & Company, Capitalists, a tall,
+broad-shouldered man, with a strongly cut nose and chin and keen, gray
+eyes, that, through long habitude, weighed chances with an infallible
+appraisement, to whom Keith had a letter from an acquaintance, one of
+those casual letters that mean anything or nothing, informed him frankly
+that he had "neither time nor inclination to discuss enterprises,
+ninety-nine out of every hundred of which were frauds, and the hundredth
+generally a failure."
+
+"This is not a fraud," said Keith, hotly, rising. "I do not indorse
+frauds, sir." He began to draw on his gloves. "If I cannot satisfy any
+reasonable man of the fact I state, I am willing to fail. I ought to
+fail." With a bow, he turned to the door.
+
+Something in Keith's assurance went further with the shrewd-eyed
+capitalist than his politeness had done. He shot a swift glance as he
+was retiring toward the door.
+
+"Why didn't Wickersham make money down there?" he demanded, half in
+query, half in denial, gazing keenly over his gold-rimmed glasses. "He
+usually makes money, even if others lose it."
+
+Mr. Creamer had his own reasons for not liking Wickersham.
+
+Keith was standing at the door.
+
+"For two or three reasons. One was that he underestimated the people who
+live down there, and thought he could force them into selling him their
+lands, and so lost the best properties there."
+
+"The lands you have, I suppose?" said the banker, looking again at Keith
+quickly.
+
+"Yes, the lands I have, though you don't believe it," said Keith,
+looking him calmly in the eyes.
+
+The banker was gazing at the young man ironically; but, as he observed
+him, his credulity began to give way.
+
+That stamp of truth which men recognize was written on him unmistakably.
+Mr. Creamer's mind worked quickly.
+
+"By the way, you came from down there. Did you know a young man named
+Rhodes? He was an engineer. Went over the line."
+
+Keith's eyes brightened. "He is one of my best friends. He is in Russia
+now."
+
+Mr. Creamer nodded. "What do you think of him?"
+
+"He is one of the best."
+
+Mr. Creamer nodded. He did not think it necessary to tell Keith that
+Rhodes was paying his addresses to his daughter.
+
+"You write to him," said Keith. "He will tell you just what I have. Tell
+him they are the Rawson lands."
+
+Keith opened the door. "Good morning, sir."
+
+"One moment!" Mr. Creamer leaned back in his chair. "Whom else do you
+know here?" he asked after a second.
+
+Keith reflected a moment.
+
+"I know Mr. Wentworth."
+
+"Norman Wentworth?"
+
+"Yes; I know him very well. He is an old friend of mine."
+
+"Have you been to him?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because my relations with him are entirely personal. We used to be warm
+friends, and I did not wish to use his friendship for me as a ground on
+which to approach him in a commercial enterprise."
+
+Mr. Creamer's countenance expressed more incredulity than he intended to
+show.
+
+"He might feel under obligations to do for me what he would not be
+inclined to do otherwise," Keith explained.
+
+"Oh, I don't think you need have any apprehension on that score," Mr.
+Creamer said, with a glint of amusement in his eyes. "It is a matter of
+business, and I don't think you will find business men here overstepping
+the bounds of prudence from motives of sentiment."
+
+"There is no man whom I would rather have go into it with me; but I
+shall not ask him to do it, for the reason I have given. Good morning."
+
+The banker did not take his eyes from the door until the sound of
+Keith's steps had died away through his outer office. Then he reflected
+for a moment. Presently he touched a bell, and a clerk appeared in
+the door.
+
+"Write a note to Mr. Norman Wentworth and ask him to drop in to see
+me--any time this afternoon."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+When Norman Wentworth called at Mr. Creamer's office he found the
+financier in a good humor. The market had gone well of late, and Mr.
+Creamer's moods were not altogether unlike the mercury. His greeting was
+more cordial than usual. After a brief discussion of recent events, he
+pushed a card across to his visitor and asked casually:
+
+"What do you know about that man?"
+
+"Gordon Keith!" exclaimed the younger man, in surprise. "Is he in New
+York, and I have not seen him! Why, I know all about him. He used to be
+an old friend of mine. We were boys together ever so long ago."
+
+He went on to speak warmly of him.
+
+"Well, that was long ago," said Mr. Creamer, doubtfully. "Many things
+have happened in that time. He has had time to change."
+
+"He must have changed a good deal if he is not straight," declared
+Norman. "I wonder why he has not been to see me?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what he said," began Mr. Creamer.
+
+He gave Keith's explanation.
+
+"Did he say that? Then it's true. You ought to know his father. He is a
+regular old Don Quixote."
+
+"The Don was not particularly practical. He would not have done much
+with coal and iron lands," observed the banker. "What do you know about
+this man's knowledge of such things?"
+
+Norman admitted that on this point he had no information.
+
+"He says he knows Wickersham--your friend," said Mr. Creamer, with a sly
+look at Norman.
+
+"Yes, I expect he does--if any one knows him. He used to know him. What
+does he say of him?"
+
+"Oh, I think he knows him. Well, I am much obliged to you for coming
+around," he said in a tone of dismissal. "You are coming to dine with us
+soon, I believe? The Lancasters are coming, too. And we expect Rhodes
+home. He's due next week."
+
+"One member of your family will be glad to see him," said Norman,
+smiling. "The wedding is to take place in a few weeks, I believe?"
+
+"I hear so," said the father. "Fine young man, Rhodes? Your cousin,
+isn't he? Been very successful?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Once, as Keith passed along down Broadway, just where some of the great
+shops were at that time, before the tide had rolled so far up-town, a
+handsome carriage and pair drew up in front of one of the big shops, and
+a lady stepped from it just behind him. She was a very pretty young
+woman, and richly dressed. A straight back and a well-set head, with a
+perfect toilet, gave her distinction even among the handsomely appointed
+women who thronged the street that sunny morning, and many a woman
+turned and looked at her with approval or envy.
+
+The years, that had wrought Keith from a plain country lad into a man of
+affairs of such standing in New Leeds that a shrewd operator like Rawson
+had selected him for his representative, had also wrought a great change
+in Alice Lancaster. Alice had missed what she had once begun to expect,
+romance and all that it meant; but she had filled with dignity the place
+she had chosen. If Mr. Lancaster's absorption in serious concerns left
+her life more sombre than she had expected, at least she let no one know
+it. Association with a man like Mr. Lancaster had steadied and elevated
+her. His high-mindedness had lifted her above the level of her worldly
+mother and of many of those who constituted the set in which she lived.
+
+He admired her immeasurably. He was constantly impressed by the
+difference between her and her shallow-minded and silly mother, or even
+between her and such a young woman as Mrs. Wentworth, who lived only for
+show and extravagance, and appeared in danger of ruining her husband and
+wrecking his happiness.
+
+It was Mrs. Lancaster who descended from her carriage as Keith passed
+by. Just as she was about to enter the shop, a well-knit figure with
+square shoulders and springy step, swinging down the street, caught her
+eye. She glanced that way and gave an exclamation. The door was being
+held open for her by a blank-faced automaton in a many-buttoned uniform;
+so she passed in, but pausing just inside, she glanced back through the
+window. The next instant she left the shop and gazed down the street
+again. But Keith had turned a corner, and so Alice Lancaster did not
+see him, though she stood on tiptoe to try and distinguish him again in
+the crowd.
+
+"Well, I would have sworn that that was Gordon Keith," she said to
+herself, as she turned away, "if he had not been so broad-shouldered and
+good-looking." And wherever she moved the rest of the day her eyes
+wandered up and down the street.
+
+Once, as she was thus engaged, Ferdy Wickersham came up. He was dressed
+in the tip of the fashion and looked very handsome.
+
+"Who is the happy man?"
+
+The question was so in keeping with her thought that she blushed
+unexpectedly.
+
+"No one."
+
+"Ah, not me, then? But I know it was some one. No woman looks so
+expectant and eager for 'no one.'"
+
+"Do you think I am like you, perambulating streets trying to make
+conquests?" she said, with a smile.
+
+"You do not have to try," he answered lazily. "You do it simply by being
+on the street. I am playing in great luck to-day."
+
+"Have you seen Louise this morning?" she asked.
+
+He looked her full in the face. "I see no one but you when you are
+around."
+
+She laughed lightly.
+
+"Ferdy, you will begin to believe that after a while, if you do not stop
+saying it so often."
+
+"I shall never stop saying it, because it is true," he replied
+imperturbably, turning his dark eyes on her, the lids a little closed.
+
+"You have got so in the habit of saying it that you repeat it like my
+parrot that I taught once, when I was younger and vainer, to say,
+'Pretty Alice.' He says it all the time."
+
+"Sensible bird," said Mr. Wickersham, calmly. "Come and drive me up to
+the Park and let's have a stroll. I know such a beautiful walk. There
+are so many people out to-day. I saw the lady of the 'cat-eyes and
+cat-claws' go by just now, seeking some one whom she can turn again and
+rend." It was the name she had given Mrs. Nailor.
+
+"I do not care who is out. Are you going to the Wentworths' this
+evening?" she asked irrelevantly.
+
+"No; I rarely go there. Will you mention that to Mrs. Nailor? She
+apparently has not that confidence in my word that I could have expected
+in one so truthful as herself."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster laughed.
+
+"Ferdy--" she began, and then paused irresolute. "However--"
+
+"Well, what is it? Say it."
+
+"You ought not to go there so often as you do."
+
+"Why?" His eyes were full of insolence.
+
+"Good-by. Drive home," she said to the coachman, in a tone intentionally
+loud enough for her friend to hear.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham strolled on down the street, and a few minutes later
+was leaning in at the door of Mrs. Wentworth's carriage, talking very
+earnestly to the lady inside.
+
+Mr. Wickersham's attentions to Louise Wentworth had begun to be the talk
+of the town. Young Mrs. Wentworth was not a person to allow herself to
+be shelved. She did not propose that the older lady who bore that name
+should be known by it. She declared she would play second fiddle to no
+one. But she discovered that the old lady who lived in the old mansion
+on Washington Square was "Mrs. Wentworth," and that Mrs. Wentworth
+occupied a position from which she was not to be moved. After a little
+she herself was known as "Mrs. Norman." It was the first time Mrs.
+Norman had ever had command of much money. Her mother had made a good
+appearance and dressed her daughter handsomely, but to carry out her
+plans she had had to stint and scrape to make both ends meet. Mrs.
+Caldwell told one of her friends that her rings knew the way to the
+pawnbroker's so well that if she threw them in the street they would
+roll into his shop.
+
+This struggle Louise had witnessed with that easy indifference which was
+part her nature and part her youth. She had been brought up to believe
+she was a beauty, and she did believe it. Now that she had the chance,
+she determined to make the most of her triumph. She would show people
+that she knew how to spend money; embellishment was the aim of her life,
+and she did show them. Her toilets were the richest; her equipage was
+the handsomest and best appointed. Her entertainments soon were among
+the most splendid in the city.
+
+Those who were accustomed to wealth and to parade wondered both at Mrs.
+Norman's tastes and at her gratification of them.
+
+All the town applauded. They had had no idea that the Wentworths, as
+rich as they knew them to be, had so much money.
+
+"She must have Aladdin's lamp," they said. Only old Mrs. Wentworth
+looked grave and disapproving at the extravagance of her
+daughter-in-law. Still she never said a word of it, and when the
+grandson came she was too overjoyed to complain of anything.
+
+It was only of late that people had begun to whisper of the frequency
+with which Ferdy Wickersham was seen with Mrs. Norman. Certain it was
+that he was with her a great deal.
+
+That evening Alice Lancaster was dining with the Norman Wentworths. She
+was equally good friends with them and with their children, who on their
+part idolized her and considered her to be their especial property. Her
+appearance was always the signal for a romp. Whenever she went to the
+Wentworths' she always paid a visit to the nursery, from which she would
+return breathless and dishevelled, with an expression of mingled
+happiness and pain in her blue eyes. Louise Wentworth knew well why the
+longing look was there, and though usually cold and statuesque, she
+always softened to Alice Lancaster then more than she was wont to do.
+
+"Alice pines for children," she said to Norman, who pinched her cheek
+and, like a man, told her she thought every one as romantic and as
+affectionate as herself. Had Mrs. Nailor heard this speech she would
+have blinked her innocent eyes and have purred with silent thoughts on
+the blindness of men.
+
+This evening Mrs. Lancaster had come down from the nursery, where shouts
+of childish merriment had told of her romps with the ringletted young
+brigand who ruled there, and was sitting quite silent in the deep
+arm-chair in an attitude of profound reflection, her head thrown back,
+her white arms resting languidly on the arms of the chair, her face
+unusually thoughtful, her eyes on the gilded ceiling.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth watched her for a moment silently, and then said:
+
+"You must not let the boy tyrannize over you so."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster's reply was complete:
+
+"I love it; I just love it!"
+
+Presently Mrs. Wentworth spoke again.
+
+"What is the matter with you this evening? You seem quite distraite."
+
+"I saw a ghost to-day." She spoke without moving.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth's face took on more interest.
+
+"What do you mean? Who was it?"
+
+"I mean I saw a ghost; I might say two ghosts, for I saw in imagination
+also the ghost of myself as I was when a girl. I saw the man I was in
+love with when I was seventeen."
+
+"I thought you were in love with Ferdy then?"
+
+"No; never." She spoke with sudden emphasis.
+
+"How interesting! And you congratulated yourself on your escape? We
+always do. I was violently in love with a little hotel clerk, with oily
+hair, a snub-nose, and a waxed black moustache, in the Adirondacks when
+I was that age."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster made no reply to this, and her hostess looked at her
+keenly.
+
+"Where was it? How long before--?" She started to ask, how long before
+she was married, but caught herself. "What did he look like? He must
+have been good-looking, or you would not be so pensive."
+
+"He looked like--a man."
+
+"How old was he--I mean, when he fell in love with you?" said Mrs.
+Wentworth, with a sort of gasp, as she recalled Mr. Lancaster's gray
+hair and elderly appearance.
+
+"Rather young. He was only a few years older than I was; a young--what's
+his name?--Hercules, that brought me down a mountain in his arms the
+second time I ever saw him."
+
+"Alice Lancaster!"
+
+"I had broken my leg--almost I had got a bad fall from a horse and could
+not walk, and he happened to come along."
+
+"Of course. How romantic! Was he a doctor? Did you do it on purpose?"
+Mrs. Lancaster smiled.
+
+"No; a young schoolmaster up in the mountains. He was not handsome--not
+then. But he was fine-looking, eyes that looked straight at you and
+straight through you; the whitest teeth you ever saw; and shoulders! He
+could carry a sack of salt!" At the recollection a faint smile flickered
+about her lips.
+
+"Why didn't you marry him?"
+
+"He had not a cent in the world. He was a poor young school-teacher, but
+of a very distinguished family. However, mamma took fright, and whisked
+me away as if he had been a pestilence."
+
+"Oh, naturally!"
+
+"And he was too much in love with me. But for that I think I should not
+have given him up. I was dreadfully cut up for a little while. And he--"
+She did not finish the sentence.
+
+On this Mrs. Wentworth made no observation, though the expression about
+her mouth changed.
+
+"He made a reputation afterwards. I knew he would. He was bound to
+succeed. I believed in him even then. He had ideals. Why don't men have
+ideals now?"
+
+"Some of them do," asserted Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"Yes; Norman has. I mean unmarried men. I heard he made a fortune, or
+was making one--or something."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"He knew more than any one I ever saw--and made you want to know. All I
+ever read he set me to. And he is awfully good-looking. I had no idea he
+would be so good-looking. But I tell you this: no woman that ever saw
+him ever forgot him."
+
+"Is he married?"
+
+"I don't think so--no. If he had been I should have heard it. He really
+believed in me."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her with interest.
+
+"Where is he staying?"
+
+"I do not know. I saw him through a shop-window."
+
+"What! Did you not speak to him?"
+
+"I did not get a chance. When I came out of the shop he was gone."
+
+"That was sad. It would have been quite romantic, would it not? But,
+perhaps, after all, he did not make his fortune?" Mrs. Wentworth looked
+complacent.
+
+"He did if he set his mind to it," declared Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"How about Ferdy Wickersham?" The least little light of malevolence
+crept into Mrs. Wentworth's eyes.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster gave a shrug of impatience, and pushed a photograph on a
+small table farther away, as if it incommoded her.
+
+"Oh, Ferdy Wickersham! Ferdy Wickersham to that man is a heated room to
+the breath of hills and forests." She spoke with real warmth, and Mrs.
+Wentworth gazed at her curiously for a few seconds.
+
+"Still, I rather fancy for a constancy you'd prefer the heated rooms to
+the coldness of the hills. Your gowns would not look so well in
+the forest."
+
+It was a moment before Mrs. Lancaster's face relaxed.
+
+"I suppose I should," she said slowly, with something very like a sigh.
+"He was the only man I ever knew who made me do what I did not want to
+do and made me wish to be something better than I was," she
+added absently.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her somewhat impatiently, but she went on:
+
+"I was very romantic then; and you should have heard him read the
+'Idylls of the King.' He had the most beautiful voice. He made you live
+in Arthur's court, because he lived there himself."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth burst into laughter, but it was not very merry.
+
+"My dear Alice, you must have been romantic. How old were you, did you
+say?"
+
+"It was three years before I was married," said Mrs. Lancaster, firmly.
+
+Her friend gazed at her with a puzzled expression on her face.
+
+"Oh! Now, my dear Alice, don't let's have any more of this
+sentimentalizing. I never indulge in it; it always gives me a headache.
+One might think you were a school-girl."
+
+At the word a wood in all the bravery of Spring sprang into Alice's
+mind. A young girl was seated on the mossy ground, and outstretched at
+her feet was a young man, fresh-faced and clear-eyed, quoting a poem of
+youth and of love.
+
+"Heaven knows I wish I were," said Mrs. Lancaster, soberly. "I might
+then be something different from what I am!"
+
+"Oh, nonsense! You do nothing of the kind. Here are you, a rich woman,
+young, handsome, with a great establishment; perfectly free, with no one
+to interfere with you in any way. Now, I--"
+
+"That's just it," broke in Mrs. Lancaster, bitterly. "Free! Free from
+what my heart aches for. Free to dress in sables and diamonds and die of
+loneliness." She had sat up, and her eyes were glowing and her color
+flashing in her cheeks in her energy.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth looked at her with a curious expression in her eyes.
+
+"I want what you have, Louise Caldwell. In that big house with only
+ourselves and servants--sometimes I could wish I were dead. I envy every
+woman I see on the street with her children. Yes, I am free--too free! I
+married for respect, and I have it. But--I want devotion, sympathy. You
+have it. You have a husband who adores you, and children to fill your
+heart, cherish it." The light in her eyes was almost fierce as she
+leaned forward, her hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles showed
+white, and a strange look passed for a moment over Mrs.
+Wentworth's face.
+
+"You are enough to give one the blue-devils!" she exclaimed, with
+impatience. "Let's have a liqueur." She touched a bell, but Mrs.
+Lancaster rose.
+
+"No; I will go."
+
+"Oh, yes; just a glass." A servant appeared like an automaton at the
+door.
+
+"What will you have, Alice?" But Mrs. Lancaster was obdurate. She
+declined the invitation, and declared that she must go, as she was going
+to the opera; and the next moment the two ladies were taking leave of
+each other with gracious words and the formal manner that obtains in
+fashionable society, quite as if they had known each other just
+fifteen minutes.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster drove home, leaning very far back in her brougham.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth, too, appeared rather fatigued after her guest departed,
+and sat for fifteen minutes with the social column of a newspaper lying
+in her lap unscanned.
+
+"I thought she and Ferdy liked each other," she said to herself; "but he
+must have told the truth. They cannot have cared for each other. I think
+she must have been in love with that man."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+KEITH MEETS NORMAN
+
+The day after Keith's interview with Mr. Creamer he was walking up-town
+more slowly than was his wont; for gloom was beginning to take the place
+where disappointment had for some time been holding session. His
+experience that day had been more than usually disheartening. These
+people with all their shrewdness appeared to him to be in their way as
+contracted as his mountaineers. They lived to amass wealth, yet went
+like sheep in flocks, and were so blind that they could not recognize a
+great opportunity when it was presented. They were mere machines that
+ground through life as monotonously as the wheels in their factories,
+turning out riches, riches, riches.
+
+This morning Keith had come across an article in a newspaper which, in a
+measure, explained his want of success. It was an article on New Leeds.
+It praised, in florid sentences, the place and the people, gave a
+reasonably true account of the rise of the town, set forth in a veiled
+way a highly colored prospectus of the Wickersham properties, and
+asserted explicitly that all the lands of value had been secured by this
+company, and that such as were now being offered outside were those
+which Wickersham had refused as valueless after a thorough and searching
+examination. The falsity of the statements made Keith boil with rage.
+Mr. J. Quincy Plume immediately flashed into his mind.
+
+As he walked along, the newspaper clutched in his hand, a man brushed
+against him. Keith's mind was far away on Quincy Plume and Ferdy
+Wickersham; but instinctively, as his shoulder touched the
+stranger's, he said:
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+At the words the other turned and glanced at him casually; then stopped,
+turned and caught up with him, so as to take a good look at his face.
+The next second a hand was on Keith's shoulder.
+
+"Why, Gordon Keith!"
+
+Keith glanced up in a maze at the vigorous-looking, well-dressed young
+man who was holding out his gloved hand to him, his blue eyes full of a
+very pleasant light. Keith's mind had been so far away that for a second
+it did not return. Then a light broke over his face. He seized the
+other's hand.
+
+"Norman Wentworth!"
+
+The greeting between the two was so cordial that men hurrying by turned
+to look back at the pleasant faces, and their own set countenances
+softened.
+
+Norman demanded where Keith had just come from and how long he had been
+in town, piling his questions one on the other with eager cordiality.
+
+Keith looked sheepish, and began to explain in a rather shambling
+fashion that he had been there some time and "intended to hunt him up,
+of course"; but he had "been so taken up with business," etc., etc.
+
+"I heard you were here on business. That was the way I came to know you
+were in town," explained Norman, "and I have looked everywhere for you.
+I hope you have been successful?" He was smiling. But Keith was still
+sore from the treatment he had received in one or two offices
+that morning.
+
+"I have not been successful," he said, "and I felt sure that I should
+be. I have discovered that people here are very much like people
+elsewhere; they are very like sheep."
+
+"And very suspicious, timid sheep at that," said Norman "They have
+often gone for wool and got shorn. So every one has to be tested. An
+unknown man has a hard time here. I suppose they would not look into
+your plan?"
+
+"They classed me with 'pedlers, book-agents, and beggars'--I saw the
+signs up; looked as if they thought I was a thief. I am not used to
+being treated like a swindler."
+
+"The same old Keith! You must remember how many swindlers they have to
+deal with, my boy. It is natural that they should require a guarantee--I
+mean an introduction of some kind. You remember what one of them said
+not long ago? 'A man spends one part of his life making a fortune and
+the rest of it trying to keep others from stealing it from him.' You
+ought to have come to me. You must come and dine with me this evening,
+and we will talk it over. Perhaps, I can help you. I want to show you my
+little home, and I have the finest boy in the world."
+
+At the tone of cordial sincerity in his voice, Keith softened. He laid
+his hand on the back of Norman's and closed it tightly.
+
+"I knew I could always count on you, and I meant, of course, to come and
+see you. The reason I have not come before I will explain to you
+sometime. I was feeling a little sore over a matter--sheer lies that
+some one has written." He shook the newspaper in his hand.
+
+"Oh, don't mind that paper," said Norman. "The columns of that paper are
+for hire. They belong at present to an old acquaintance of ours. They do
+_me_ the honor to pay their compliments to my affairs now and then."
+
+Keith walked up the street with a warm feeling about his heart. That
+friendly face and kindly pressure of the hand had cheered him like
+sunshine in a wintry day, and transformed the cold, cheerless city into
+an abode of life and happiness. The crowds that thronged by him once
+more took on interest for him. The faces once more softened into human
+fellowship.
+
+That evening, when Keith arrived at Norman Wentworth's, he found that
+what he had termed his "little house" was, in fact, a very ample and
+commodious mansion on one of the most fashionable avenues in the city.
+Outside there was nothing to distinguish it particularly from the scores
+of other handsome houses that stretched for blocks up and down the
+street with ever-recurrent brown-stone monotony. They were as much alike
+as so many box-stalls in a stable.
+
+"If I had to live in one of these," thought Keith, as he was making his
+way to keep his appointment, "I should have to begin and count my house
+from the corner. No wonder the people are all so much alike!"
+
+Inside, however, the personal taste of the owner counted for much more,
+and when Keith was admitted by the velvety-stepped servant, he found
+himself in a scene of luxury for which nothing that Norman had said had
+prepared him.
+
+A hall, rather contracted, but sumptuous in its furnishings, opened on a
+series of drawing-rooms absolutely splendid with gilt and satin. One
+room, all gold and yellow, led into another all blue satin, and that
+into one where the light filtered through soft-tinted shades on
+tapestries and rugs of deep crimson.
+
+Keith could not help thinking what a fortunate man Norman was, and the
+difference between his friend's situation in this bower of roses, and
+his own in his square, bare little box on the windy mountain-side,
+insensibly flashed over him. This was "an establishment"! How unequally
+Fortune scattered her gifts! Just then, with a soft rustle of silk, the
+portieres were parted, and Mrs. Wentworth appeared. She paused for a
+second just under the arch, and the young man wondered if she knew how
+effective she was. She was a vision of lace and loveliness. A figure
+straight and sinuous, above the middle height, which would have been
+quite perfect but for being slightly too full, and which struck one
+before one looked at the face; coloring that was rich to brilliance;
+abundant, beautiful hair with a glint of lustre on it; deep hazel eyes,
+the least bit too close together, and features that were good and only
+just missed being fine Keith had remembered her as beautiful, but as
+Mrs. Wentworth stood beneath the azure portieres, her long, bare arms
+outstretched, her lips parted in a half-smile of welcome, she was much
+more striking-looking than Keith's memory had recorded. As he gazed on
+her, the expression on his face testified his admiration.
+
+She came forward with the same gratified smile on her face and greeted
+him with formal words of welcome as Norman's old friend. Her thought
+was, "What a strong-looking man he is! Like a picture I have seen
+somewhere. Why doesn't Ferdy like him?"
+
+As she sank into a soft divan, and with a sudden twist her train fell
+about her feet, making an artistic drapery, Keith experienced a sense of
+delight. He did not dream that Mrs. Wentworth knew much better than he
+precisely the pose to show the curve of her white full throat and round
+arm. The demands of notorious beauty were already beginning to tell on
+her, and even while she spoke gracious words of her husband's friendship
+for him, she from time to time added a touch here and a soft caress
+there with her long white, hands to make the arrangement the more
+complete. It was almost too perfect to be unconscious.
+
+Suddenly Keith heard Norman's voice outside, apparently on the stair,
+calling cheerily "Good-by" to some one, and the next second he came
+hastily into the drawing-room. His hair was rumpled and his necktie a
+trifle awry. As he seized and wrung Keith's hand with unfeigned
+heartiness, Keith was suddenly conscious of a change in everything. This
+was warmth, sincerity, and the beautiful room suddenly became a home.
+Mrs. Wentworth appeared somewhat shocked at his appearance.
+
+"Well, Norman, you are a sight! Just look at your necktie!"
+
+"That ruffian!" he laughed, feeling at his throat and trying to adjust
+the crooked tie.
+
+"What will Mr. Keith think?"
+
+"Oh, pshaw! Keith thinks all right. Keith is one of the men I don't have
+to apologize to. But if I do"--he turned to Keith, smiling--"I'll show
+you the apology. Come along." He seized Keith by the hand and started
+toward the door.
+
+"You are not going to take Mr. Keith up-stairs!" exclaimed his wife.
+"Remember, Mr. Keith may not share your enthusiasm."
+
+"Wait until he sees the apology. Come along, Keith." He drew Keith
+toward the door.
+
+"But, Norman, I don't think--" began Mrs. Wentworth. What she did not
+think was lost to the two men; for Norman, not heeding her, had, with
+the eagerness of a boy, dragged his visitor out of the door and started
+up the stairs, telling him volubly of the treat that was in store for
+him in the perfections of a certain small young gentleman who had been
+responsible for his tardiness in appearing below.
+
+When Norman threw back a silken portiere up-stairs and flung open a
+door, the scene that greeted Keith was one that made him agree that
+Norman was fully justified. A yellow-haired boy was rolling on the
+floor, kicking up his little pink legs in all the abandon of his years,
+while a blue-eyed little girl was sitting in a nurse's lap, making
+strenuous efforts to join her brother on the floor.
+
+At sight of his father, the boy, with a whoop, scrambled to his feet,
+and, with outstretched arms and open mouth, showing all his little white
+teeth, made a rush for him, while the young lady suddenly changed her
+efforts to descend, and began to jump up and down in a frantic ecstasy
+of delight.
+
+Norman gathered the boy up, and as soon as he could disentwine his
+little arms from about his neck, turned him toward Keith. The child gave
+the stranger one of those calm, scrutinizing looks that children give,
+and then, his face suddenly breaking into a smile, with a rippling laugh
+of good-comradeship, he sprang into Keith's outstretched arms. That
+gentleman's necktie was in danger of undergoing the same damaging
+process that had incurred Mrs. Norman's criticism, when the youngster
+discovered that lady herself, standing at the door. Scrambling down from
+his perch on Keith's shoulder, the boy, with a shout, rushed toward his
+mother. Mrs. Wentworth, with a little shriek, stopped him and held him
+off from her; she could not permit him to disarrange her toilet; her
+coiffure had cost too much thought; but the pair were evidently on terms
+of good-fellowship, and the light in the mother's eyes even as she
+restrained the boy's attempt at caresses changed her, and gave Keith a
+new insight into her character.
+
+Keith and the hostess returned to the drawing-room before Norman, and
+she was no longer the professional beauty, the cold woman of the world,
+the mere fashionable hostess. The doors were flung open more than once
+as Keith talked warmly of the boy, and within Keith got glimpses of what
+was hidden there, which made him rejoice again that his friend had such
+a treasure. These glimpses of unexpected softness drew him nearer to her
+than he had ever expected to be, and on his part he talked to her with a
+frankness and earnestness which sank deep into her mind, and opened the
+way to a warmer friendship than she usually gave.
+
+"Norman is right," she said to herself. "This is a man."
+
+At the thought a light flashed upon her. It suddenly came to her.
+
+This is "the ghost"! Yet could it be possible? She solved the question
+quickly.
+
+"Mr. Keith, did you ever know Alice Lancaster?"
+
+"Alice Lancaster--?" For a bare second he looked puzzled. "Oh, Miss
+Alice Yorke? Yes, a long time ago." He was conscious that his expression
+had changed. So he added: "I used to know her very well."
+
+"Decidedly, this is the ghost," reflected Mrs. Wentworth to herself, as
+she scanned anew Keith's strong features and sinewy frame. "Alice said
+if a woman had ever seen him, she would not be likely to forget him,
+and I think she was right."
+
+"Why do you ask me?" inquired Keith, who had now quite recovered from
+his little confusion. "Of course, you know her?"
+
+"Yes, very well. We were at school together. She is my best friend,
+almost." She shut her mouth as firmly as though this were the last
+sentence she ever proposed to utter; but her eyes, as they rested on
+Keith's face, had the least twinkle in them. Keith did not know how much
+of their old affair had been told her, but she evidently knew something,
+and it was necessary to show her that he had recovered from it long ago
+and yet retained a friendly feeling for Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"She was an old sweetheart of mine long ago; that is, I used to think
+myself desperately in love with her a hundred years ago or so, before
+she was married--and I was, too," he added.
+
+He gained not the least idea of the impression this made on Mrs.
+Wentworth.
+
+"She was talking to me about you only the other day," she said casually.
+
+Keith again made a feint to open her defence.
+
+"I hope she said kind things about me? I deserve some kindness at her
+hands, for I have only pleasant memories of her."
+
+"I wonder what he means by that?" questioned Mrs. Wentworth to herself,
+and then added:
+
+"Oh, yes; she did. Indeed, she was almost enthusiastic about
+your--friendship." Her eyes scanned his face lightly.
+
+"Has she fulfilled the promise of beauty that she gave as a school-girl?
+I used to think her one of the most beautiful creatures in the world;
+but I don't know that I was capable of judging at that time," he added,
+with a smile, "for I remember I was quite desperate about her for a
+little while." He tried to speak naturally.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth's eyes rested on his face for a moment.
+
+"Why, yes; many think her much handsomer than she ever was. She is one
+of the married beauties, you know." Her eyes just swept Keith's face.
+
+"She was also one of the sweetest girls I ever knew," Keith said, moved
+for some reason to add this tribute.
+
+"Well, I don't know that every one would call her that. Indeed, I am not
+quite sure that I should call her that myself always; but she can be
+sweet. My children adore her, and I think that is always a good sign."
+
+"Undoubtedly. They judge correctly, because directly."
+
+The picture of a young girl in a riding-habit kneeling in the dust with
+a chubby, little, ragged child in her arms flashed before Keith's mental
+vision. And he almost gave a gasp.
+
+"Is she married happily?'" he asked "I hope she is happy."
+
+"Oh, as happy as the day is long," declared Mrs. Wentworth, cheerfully.
+Deep down in her eyes was a wicked twinkle of malice. Her face wore a
+look of content. "He is not altogether indifferent yet," she said to
+herself. And when Keith said firmly that he was very glad to hear it,
+she did him the honor to disbelieve him.
+
+"Of course, you know that Mr. Lancaster is a good deal older than
+Alice?"
+
+Yes, Keith had heard so.
+
+"But a charming man, and immensely rich."
+
+"Yes." Keith began to look grim.
+
+"Aren't you going to see here?" inquired Mrs. Wentworth, finding that
+Keith was not prepared to say any more on the subject.
+
+Keith said he should like to do so very much. He hoped to see her before
+going away; but he could not tell.
+
+"She is married now, and must be so taken up with her new duties that I
+fear she would hardly remember me," he added, with a laugh. "I don't
+think I ever made much impression on her."
+
+"Alice Yorke is not one to forget her friends. Why, she spoke of you
+with real friendship," she said, smiling, thinking to herself, Alice
+likes him, and he is still in love with her. This begins to be
+interesting.
+
+"A woman does not have to give up all her friends when she marries?" she
+added, with her eyes on Keith.
+
+Keith smiled.
+
+"Oh, no; only her lovers, unless they turn into friends."
+
+"Of course, those," said Mrs. Wentworth, who, after a moment's
+reflection, added, "They don't always do that. Do you believe a woman
+ever forgets entirely a man she has really loved?"
+
+"She does if she is happily married and if she is wise."
+
+"But all women are not happily married."
+
+"And, perhaps, all are not wise," said Keith.
+
+Some association of ideas led him to say suddenly:
+
+"Tell me something about Ferdy Wickersham. He was one of your ushers,
+wasn't he?" He was surprised to see Mrs. Wentworth's countenance change.
+Her eyelids closed suddenly as if a glare were turned unexpectedly on
+them, and she caught her breath.
+
+"Yes--I have known him since we were children. Of course, you know he
+was desperately in love with Alice Lancaster?"
+
+Keith said he had heard something of the kind.
+
+"He still likes her."
+
+"She is married," said Keith, decisively.
+
+"Yes."
+
+A moment later Mrs. Wentworth drew a long breath and moistened her lips.
+
+"You knew him at the same time that you first knew Norman, did you not?"
+She was simply figuring for time.
+
+"Yes, I met him first then," said Keith.
+
+"Don't you think Ferdy has changed since he was a boy?" she demanded
+after a moment's reflection.
+
+"How do you mean?" Keith was feeling very uncomfortable, and, to save
+himself an answer, plunged along:
+
+"Of course he has changed." He did not say how, nor did he give Mrs.
+Wentworth time to explain herself. "I will tell you one thing, though,"
+he said earnestly: "he never was worthy to loose the latchet of your
+husband's shoe."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth's face changed again; she glanced down for a second, and
+then said:
+
+"You and Norman have a mutual admiration society."
+
+"We have been friends a long time," said Keith, thoughtfully.
+
+"But even that does not always count for so much. Friendships seem so
+easily broken these days."
+
+"Because there are so few Norman Wentworths. That man is blessed who has
+such a friend," said the young man, earnestly.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth looked at him with a curious light in her eyes, and as
+she gazed her face grew more thoughtful. Then, as Norman reappeared she
+changed the subject abruptly.
+
+After dinner, while they were smoking, Norman made Keith tell him of his
+coal-lands and the business that had brought him to New York. To Keith's
+surprise, he seemed to know something of it already.
+
+"You should have come to me at first," he said. "I might, at least, have
+been able to counteract somewhat the adverse influence that has been
+working against you." His brow clouded a little.
+
+"Wickersham appears to be quite a personage here. I wonder he has not
+been found out," said Keith after a little reverie.
+
+Norman shifted slightly in his chair. "Oh, he is not worth bothering
+about. Give me your lay-out now."
+
+Keith put him in possession of the facts, and he became deeply
+interested. He had, indeed, a dual motive: one of friendship for Keith;
+the other he as yet hardly confessed even to himself.
+
+The next day Keith met Norman by appointment and gave him his papers.
+And a day or two afterwards he met a number of his friends at lunch.
+
+They were capitalists and, if General Keith's old dictum, that gentlemen
+never discussed money at table, was sound, they would scarcely have met
+his requirement; for the talk was almost entirely of money. When they
+rose from the table, Keith, as he afterwards told Norman, felt like a
+squeezed orange. The friendliest man to him was Mr. Yorke, whom Keith
+found to be a jovial, sensible little man with kindly blue eyes and a
+humorous mouth. His chief cross-examiner was a Mr. Kestrel, a
+narrow-faced, parchment-skinned man with a thin white moustache that
+looked as if it had led a starved existence on his bloodless lip.
+
+"Those people down there are opposed to progress," he said, buttoning up
+his pockets in a way he had, as if he were afraid of having them picked.
+"I guess the Wickershams have found that out. I don't see any money
+in it."
+
+"It is strange that Kestrel doesn't see money in this," said Mr. Yorke,
+with a twinkle in his eye; "for he usually sees money in everything. I
+guess there were other reasons than want of progress for the Wickershams
+not paying dividends."
+
+A few days later Norman informed Keith that the money was nearly all
+subscribed; but Keith did not know until afterwards how warmly he had
+indorsed him.
+
+"You said something about sheep the other day; well, a sheep is a
+solitary and unsocial animal to a city-man with money to invest. My
+grandfather's man used to tell me: 'Sheep is kind of gregarious, Mr.
+Norman. Coax the first one through and you can't keep the others out.'
+Even Kestrel is jumping to get in."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+MRS. LANCASTER
+
+Keith had not yet met Mrs. Lancaster. He meant to call on her before
+leaving town; for he would show her that he was successful, and also
+that he had recovered. Also he wanted to see her, and in his heart was a
+lurking hope that she might regret having lost him. A word that Mrs.
+Wentworth had let fall the first evening he dined there had kept him
+from calling before.
+
+A few evenings later Keith was dining with the Norman Wentworths, and
+after dinner Norman said:
+
+"By the way, we are going to a ball to-night. Won't you come along? It
+will really be worth seeing."
+
+Keith, having no engagement, was about to accept, but he was aware that
+Mrs. Wentworth, at her husband's words, had turned and given him a quick
+look of scrutiny, that swept him from the top of his head to the toe
+of his boot.
+
+He had had that swift glance of inspection sweep him up and down many
+times of late, in business offices. The look, however, appeared to
+satisfy his hostess; for after a bare pause she seconded her husband's
+invitation.
+
+That pause had given Keith time to reflect, and he declined to go. But
+Norman, too, had seen the glance his wife had given, and he urged his
+acceptance so warmly and with such real sincerity that finally
+Keith yielded.
+
+"This is not one of _the_ balls," said Norman, laughingly. "It is only
+_a_ ball, one of our subscription dances, so you need have no scruples
+about going along."
+
+Keith looked a little mystified.
+
+"Mrs. Creamer's balls are _the_ balls, my dear fellow. There, in
+general, only the rich and the noble enter--rich in prospect and noble
+in title--"
+
+"Norman, how can you talk so!" exclaimed Mrs. Wentworth, with some
+impatience. "You know better than that. Mrs. Creamer has always been
+particularly kind to us. Why, she asks me to receive with her
+every winter."
+
+But Norman was in a bantering mood. "Am not I rich and you noble?" he
+laughed. "Do you suppose, my dear, that Mrs. Creamer would ask you to
+receive with her if we lived two or three squares off Fifth Avenue? It
+is as hard for a poor man to enter Mrs. Creamer's house as for a camel
+to pass through the needle's eye. Her motions are sidereal and her orbit
+is as regulated as that of a planet."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth protested.
+
+"Why, she has all sorts of people at her house--!"
+
+"Except the unsuccessful. Even planets have a little eccentricity of
+orbit."
+
+An hour or two later Keith found himself in such a scene of radiance as
+he had never witnessed before in all his life. Though, as Norman had
+said, it was not one of the great balls, to be present at it was in some
+sort a proof of one's social position and possibly of one's pecuniary
+condition.
+
+Keith was conscious of that same feeling of novelty and exhilaration
+that had come over him when he first arrived in the city. It came upon
+him when he first stepped from the cool outer air into the warm
+atmosphere of the brilliantly lighted building and stood among the young
+men, all perfectly dressed and appointed, and almost as similar as the
+checks they were receiving from the busy servants in the cloak-room. The
+feeling grew stronger as he mounted the wide marble stairway to the
+broad landing, which was a bower of palms and flowers, with handsome
+women passing in and out like birds in gorgeous plumage, and gay voices
+sounding in his ears. It swept over him like a flood when he entered the
+spacious ball-room and gazed upon the dazzling scene before him.
+
+"This is Aladdin's palace," he declared as he stood looking across the
+large ball-room. "The Arabian Nights have surely come again."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth, immediately after presenting Keith to one or two ladies
+who were receiving, had been met and borne off by Ferdy Wickersham, and
+was in the throng at the far end of the great apartment, and some one
+had stopped Norman on the stairway. So Keith was left for a moment
+standing alone just inside the door. He had a sense of being charmed.
+Later, he tried to account for it. Was it the sight before him? Even
+such perfect harmony of color could hardly have done it. It must be the
+dazzling radiance of youth that almost made his eyes ache with its
+beauty. Perhaps, it was the strain of the band hidden in the gallery
+among those palms. The waltz music that floated down always set him
+swinging back in the land of memory. He stood for a moment quite
+entranced. Then he was suddenly conscious of being lonely. In all the
+throng before him he could not see one soul that he knew. His friends
+were far away.
+
+Suddenly the wheezy strains of the fiddles and the blare of the horns in
+the big dining-room of the old Windsor back in the mountains sounded in
+his ears, and the motley but gay and joyous throng that tramped and
+capered and swung over the rough boards, setting the floor to swinging
+and the room to swaying, swam in a dim mist before his eyes. Girls in
+ribbons so gay that they almost made the eyes ache, faces flushed with
+the excitement and joy of the dance; smiling faces, snowy teeth,
+dishevelled hair, tarlatan dresses, green and pink and white; ringing
+laughter and whoops of real merriment--all passed before his senses.
+
+As he stood looking on the scene of splendor, he felt lost, lonely, and
+for a moment homesick. Here all was formal, stiff repressed; that gayety
+was real, that merriment was sincere. With all their crudeness, those
+people in that condition were all human, hearty, strong, real. He
+wondered if refinement and elegance meant necessarily a suppression of
+all these. There, men came not only to enjoy but to make others enjoy as
+well. No stranger could have stood a moment alone without some one
+stepping to his side and drawing him into a friendly talk. This mood
+soon changed.
+
+Still, standing alone near the door waiting for Norman to appear, Keith
+found entertainment watching the groups, the splendidly dressed women,
+clustered here and there or moving about inspecting or speaking to each
+other. One figure at the far end of the room attracted his eye again and
+again. She was standing with her back partly toward him, but he knew
+that she was a pretty woman as well as a handsome one, though he saw her
+face only in profile, and she was too far off for him to see it very
+well. Her hair was arranged simply; her head was set beautifully on her
+shoulders. She was dressed in black, the bodice covered with spangles
+that with her slightest movement shimmered and reflected the light like
+a coat of flexible mail. A number of men were standing about her, and
+many women, as they passed, held out their hands to her in the way that
+ladies of fashion have. Keith saw Mrs. Wentworth approach her, and a
+very animated conversation appeared to take place between them, and the
+lady in black turned quickly and gazed about the room; then Mrs.
+Wentworth started to move away, but the other caught and held her,
+asking her something eagerly. Mrs. Wentworth must have refused to
+answer, for she followed her a few steps; but Mrs. Wentworth simply
+waved her hand to her and swept away with her escort, laughing back at
+her over her shoulder.
+
+Keith made his way around the room toward Mrs. Wentworth. There was
+something about the young lady in black which reminded him of a girl he
+had once seen standing straight and defiant, yet very charming, in a
+woodland path under arching pine-boughs. Just then, however, a waltz
+struck up and Mrs. Wentworth began to dance, so Keith stood leaning
+against the wall. Presently a member of a group of young men near
+Keith said:
+
+"The Lancaster looks well to-night."
+
+"She does. The old man's at home, Ferdy's on deck."
+
+"Ferdy be dashed! Besides, where is Mrs. Went--?"
+
+"Don't lay any money on that."
+
+"She's all right. Try to say anything to her and you'll find out."
+
+The others laughed; and one of them asked:
+
+"Been trying yourself, Stirling?"
+
+"No. I know better, Minturn."
+
+"Why doesn't she shake Ferdy then?" demanded the other. "He's always
+hanging around when he isn't around the other."
+
+"Oh, they have been friends all their lives. She is not going to give up
+a friend, especially when others are getting down on him. Can't you
+allow anything to friendship?"
+
+"Ferdy's friendship is pretty expensive," said his friend,
+sententiously.
+
+Keith took a glance at the speakers to see if he could by following
+their gaze place Mrs. Lancaster. The one who defended the lady was a
+jolly-looking man with a merry eye and a humorous mouth. The other two
+were as much alike as their neckties, their collars, their shirt-fronts,
+their dress-suits, or their shoes, in which none but a tailor could have
+discovered the least point of difference. Their cheeks were smooth,
+their chins were round, their hair as perfectly parted and brushed as a
+barber's. Keith had an impression that he had seen them just before on
+the other side of the room, talking to the lady in black; but as he
+looked across, he saw the other young men still there, and there were
+yet others elsewhere. At the first glance they nearly all looked alike.
+Just then he became conscious that a couple had stopped close beside
+him. He glanced at them; the lady was the same to whom he had seen Mrs.
+Wentworth speaking at the other end of the room. Her face was turned
+away, and all he saw was an almost perfect figure with shoulders that
+looked dazzling in contrast with her shimmering black gown. A single
+red rose was stuck in her hair. He was waiting to get a look at her
+face, when she turned toward him.
+
+[Illustration: "Why, Mr. Keith!" she exclaimed.]
+
+"Why, Mr. Keith!" she exclaimed, her blue eyes open wide with surprise.
+She held out her hand. "I don't believe you know me?"
+
+"Then you must shut your eyes," said Keith, smiling his pleasure.
+
+"I don't believe I should have known you? Yes, I should; I should have
+known you anywhere."
+
+"Perhaps, I have not changed so much," smiled Keith.
+
+She gave him just the ghost of a glance out of her blue eyes.
+
+"I don't know. Have you been carrying any sacks of salt lately?" She
+assumed a lighter air.
+
+"No; but heavier burdens still."
+
+"Are you married?"
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"No; not so heavy as that--yet."
+
+"So heavy as that _yet_! Oh, you are engaged?"
+
+"No; not engaged either--except engaged in trying to make a lot of
+people who think they know everything understand that there are a few
+things that they don't know."
+
+"That is a difficult task," she said, shaking her head, "if you try it
+in New York."
+
+     "'John P. Robinson, he
+     Says they don't know everything down in Judee,'"
+
+put in the stout young man who had been standing by waiting to speak to
+her.
+
+"But this isn't Judee yet," she laughed, "for I assure you we do know
+everything here, Mr. Keith." She held out her hand to the gentleman who
+had spoken, and after greeting him introduced him to Keith as "Mr.
+Stirling."
+
+"You ought to like each other," she said cordially.
+
+Keith professed his readiness to do so.
+
+"I don't know about that," said Stirling, jovially. "You are too
+friendly to him."
+
+"What are you doing? Where are you staying? How long are you going to be
+in town?" demanded Mrs. Lancaster, turning to Keith.
+
+"Mining.--At the Brunswick.--Only a day or two," said Keith, laughing.
+
+"Mining? Gold-mining?"
+
+"No; not yet."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Down South at a place called New Leeds. It's near the place where I
+used to teach. It's a great city. Why, we think New York is jealous
+of us."
+
+"Oh, I know about that. A friend of mine put a little money down there
+for me. You know him? Ferdy Wickersham?"
+
+"Yes, I know him."
+
+"Most of us know him," observed Mr. Stirling, turning his eyes on Keith.
+
+"Of course, you must know him. Are you in with him? He tells me that
+they own pretty much everything that is good in that region. They are
+about to open a new mine that is to exceed anything ever known. Ferdy
+tells me I am good for I don't know how much. The stock is to be put on
+the exchange in a little while, and I got in on the ground-floor. That's
+what they call it--the lowest floor of all, you know.
+
+"Yes; some people call it the ground-floor," said Keith, wishing to
+change the subject.
+
+"You know there may be a cellar under a ground-floor," observed Mr.
+Stirling, demurely.
+
+Keith looked at him, and their eyes met.
+
+Fortunately, perhaps, for Keith, some one came up just then and claimed
+a dance with Mrs. Lancaster. She moved away, and then turned back.
+
+"I shall see you again?"
+
+"Yes. Why, I hope so-certainly."
+
+She stopped and looked at him.
+
+"When are you going away?"
+
+"Why, I don't exactly know. Very soon. Perhaps, in a day or two."
+
+"Well, won't you come to see us? Here, I will give you my address. Have
+you a card?" She took the pencil he offered her and wrote her number on
+it. "Come some afternoon--about six; Mr. Lancaster is always in then,"
+she said sedately. "I am sure you will like each other." Keith bowed.
+
+She floated off smiling. What she had said to Mrs. Wentworth occurred to
+her.
+
+"Yes; he looks like a man." She became conscious that her companion was
+asking a question.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" he said. "I have asked you three times
+who that man was, and you have not said a word."
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon. Mr. Keith, an old friend of mine," she said, and
+changed the subject.
+
+As to her old friend, he was watching her as she danced, winding in and
+out among the intervening couples. He wondered that he could ever have
+thought that a creature like that could care for him and share his hard
+life. He might as soon have expected a bird-of-paradise to live by
+choice in a coal-bunker.
+
+He strolled about, looking at the handsome women, and presently found
+himself in the conservatory. Turning a clump, of palms, he came on Mrs.
+Wentworth and Mr. Wickersham sitting together talking earnestly. Keith
+was about to go up and speak to Mrs. Wentworth, but her escort said
+something under his breath to her, and she looked away. So Keith
+passed on.
+
+A little later, Keith went over to where Mrs. Lancaster stood. Several
+men were about her, and just after Keith Joined her, another man walked
+up, if any movement so lazy and sauntering could be termed walking.
+
+"I have been wondering why I did not see you," he drawled as he came up.
+
+Keith recognized the voice of Ferdy Wickersham. He turned and faced him;
+but if Mr. Wickersham was aware of his presence, he gave no sign of it.
+His dark eyes were on Mrs. Lancaster. She turned to him.
+
+"Perhaps, Ferdinand, it was because you did not use your eyes. That is
+not ordinarily a fault of yours."
+
+"I never think of my eyes when yours are present," said he, lazily.
+
+"Oh, don't you?" laughed Mrs. Lancaster. "What were you doing a little
+while ago in the conservatory--with--?"
+
+"Nothing. I have not been in the conservatory this evening. You have
+paid some one else a compliment."
+
+"Tell that to some one who does not use her eyes," said Mrs. Lancaster,
+mockingly.
+
+"There are occasions when you must disbelieve the sight of your eyes."
+He was looking her steadily in the face, and Keith saw her expression
+change. She recovered herself.
+
+"Last time I saw you, you vowed you had eyes for none but me, you may
+remember?" she said lightly.
+
+"No. Did I? Life is too awfully short to remember. But it is true. It is
+the present in which I find my pleasure."
+
+Up to this time neither Mrs. Lancaster nor Mr. Wickersham had taken any
+notice of Keith, who stood a little to one side, waiting, with his eyes
+resting on the other young man's face. Mrs. Lancaster now turned.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Keith." She now turned back to Mr. Wickersham. "You know Mr.
+Keith?"
+
+Keith was about to step forward to greet his old acquaintance; but
+Wickersham barely nodded.
+
+"Ah, how do you do? Yes, I know Mr. Keith.--If I can take care of the
+present, I let the past and the future take care of themselves," he
+continued to Mrs. Lancaster. "Come and have a turn. That will make the
+present worth all of the past."
+
+"Ferdy, you are discreet," said one of the other men, with a laugh.
+
+"My dear fellow," said the young man, turning, "I assure you, you don't
+know half my virtues."
+
+"What are your virtues, Ferdy?"
+
+"One is not interfering with others." He turned back to Mrs. Lancaster.
+"Come, have a turn." He took one of his hands from his pocket and
+held it out.
+
+"I am engaged," said Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"Oh, that makes no difference. You are always engaged; come," he said.
+
+"I beg your pardon. It makes a difference in _this_ case," said Keith,
+coming forward. "I believe this is my turn, Mrs. Lancaster?"
+
+Wickersham's glance swept across, but did not rest on him, though it was
+enough for Keith to meet it for a second, and, without looking, the
+young man turned lazily away.
+
+"Shall we find a seat?" Mrs. Lancaster asked as she took Keith's arm.
+
+"Delighted, unless you prefer to dance."
+
+"I did not know that dancing was one of your accomplishments," she said
+as they strolled along.
+
+"Maybe, I have acquired several accomplishments that you do not know of.
+It has been a long time since you knew me," he answered lightly. As they
+turned, his eyes fell on Wickersham. He was standing where they had left
+him, his eyes fastened on them malevolently. As Keith looked he started
+and turned away. Mrs. Lancaster had also seen him.
+
+"What is there between you and Ferdy?" she asked.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"There must be. Did you ever have a row with him?"
+
+"Yes; but that was long ago."
+
+"I don't know. He has a good memory. He doesn't like you." She spoke
+reflectively.
+
+"Doesn't he?" laughed Keith. "Well, I must try and sustain it as best I
+can."
+
+"And you don't like him? Few men like him. I wonder why that is?"
+
+"And many women?" questioned Keith, as for a moment he recalled Mrs.
+Wentworth's face when he spoke of him.
+
+"Some women," she corrected, with a quick glance at him. She reflected,
+and then went on: "I think it is partly because he is so bold and partly
+that he never appears to know any one else. It is the most insidious
+flattery in the world. I like him because I have known him all my life.
+I know him perfectly."
+
+"Yes?" Keith spoke politely.
+
+She read his thought. "You wonder if I really know him? Yes, I do. But,
+somehow, I cling to those I knew in my girlhood. You don't believe that,
+but I do." She glanced at him and then looked away.
+
+"Yes, I do believe it. Then let's be friends--old friends," said Keith.
+He held out his hand, and when she took it grasped hers firmly.
+
+"Who is here with you to-night?" he asked.
+
+"No one. Mr. Lancaster does not care for balls."
+
+"Won't you give me the pleasure of seeing you home?" She hesitated for a
+moment, and then said:
+
+"I will drop you at your hotel. It is right on my way home."
+
+Just then some one came up and joined the group.
+
+"Ah, my dear Mrs. Lancaster! How well you are looking this evening!"
+
+The full voice, no less than the words, sounded familiar to Keith, and
+turning, he recognized the young clergyman whom he had met at Mrs.
+Wentworth's when he passed through New York some years before. The years
+had plainly used Mr. Rimmon well. He was dressed in an evening suit with
+a clerical waistcoat which showed that his plump frame had taken on an
+extra layer, and a double chin was beginning to rest on his collar.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster smiled as she returned his greeting.
+
+"You are my stand-by, Mr. Rimmon. I always know that, no matter what
+others may say of me, I shall be sure of at least one compliment before
+the evening is over if you are present."
+
+"That is because you always deserve it." He put his head on one side
+like an aldermanic robin. "Ah, if you knew how many compliments I do pay
+you which you never hear! My entire life is a compliment to you,"
+declared Mr. Rimmon.
+
+"Not your entire life, Mr. Rimmon. You are like some other men. You
+confound me with some one else; for I am sure I heard you saying the
+same thing five minutes ago to Louise Wentworth."
+
+"Impossible. Then I must have confounded her with you," sighed Mr.
+Rimmon, with such a look at Mrs. Lancaster out of his languishing eyes
+that she gave him a laughing tap with her fan.
+
+"Go and practise that on a debutante. I am an old married woman,
+remember."
+
+"Ah, me!" sighed the gentleman. "'Marriage and Death and Division make
+barren our lives.'"
+
+"Where does that come from?" asked Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"Ah! from--ah--" began Mr. Rimmon, then catching Keith's eyes resting on
+him with an amused look in them, he turned red.
+
+She addressed Keith. "Mr. Keith, you quoted that to me once; where does
+it come from? From the Bible?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I read it in the newspaper and was so struck by it that I remembered
+it," said Mr. Rimmon.
+
+"I read it in 'Laus Veneris,'" said Keith, dryly, with his eyes on the
+other's face. It pleased him to see it redden.
+
+Keith, as he passed through the rooms, caught sight of an old lady over
+in a corner. He could scarcely believe his senses; it was Miss Abigail.
+She was sitting back against the wall, watching the crowd with eyes as
+sharp as needles. Sometimes her thin lips twitched, and her bright eyes
+snapped with inward amusement. Keith made his way over to her. She was
+so much engaged that he stood beside her a moment without her seeing
+him. Then she turned and glanced at him.
+
+"'A chiel's amang ye takin' notes,'" he said, laughing and holding out
+his hand.
+
+"'An', faith! she'll prent 'em,'" she answered, with a nod. "How are
+you? I am glad to see you. I was just wishing I had somebody to enjoy
+this with me, but not a man. I ought to be gone; and so ought you, young
+man. I started, but I thought if I could get in a corner by myself where
+there were no men I might stay a little while and look at it; for I
+certainly never saw anything like this before, and I don't think I ever
+shall again. I certainly do not think you ought to see it."
+
+Keith laughed, and she continued:
+
+"I knew things had changed since I was a girl; but I didn't know it was
+as bad as this. Why, I don't think it ought to be allowed."
+
+"What?" asked Keith.
+
+"This." She waved her hand to include the dancing throng before them.
+"They tell me all those women dancing around there are married."
+
+"I believe many of them are."
+
+"Why don't those young women have partners?"
+
+"Why, some of them do. I suppose the others are not attractive enough,
+or something."
+
+"Especially _something_," said the old lady. "Where are their husbands?"
+
+"Why, some of them are at home, and some are here."
+
+"Where?" The old lady turned her eyes on a couple that sailed by her,
+the man talking very earnestly to his companion, who was listening
+breathlessly. "Is that her husband?"
+
+"Well, no; that is not, I believe."
+
+"No; I'll be bound it is not. You never saw a married man talking to his
+wife in public in that way--unless they were talking about the last
+month's bills. Why, it is perfectly brazen."
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"Where is her husband?" she demanded, as Mrs. Wentworth floated by, a
+vision of brocaded satin and lace and white shoulders, supported by
+Ferdy Wickersham, who was talking earnestly and looking down into her
+eyes languishingly.
+
+"Oh, her husband is here."
+
+"Well, he had better take her home to her little children. If ever I saw
+a face that I distrusted it is that man's."
+
+"Why, that is Ferdy Wickersham. He is one of the leaders of society. He
+is considered quite an Adonis," observed Keith.
+
+"And I don't think Adonis was a very proper person for a young woman
+with children to be dancing with in attire in which only her husband
+should see her." She shut her lips grimly. "I know him," she added. "I
+know all about them for three generations. One of the misfortunes of age
+is that when a person gets as old as I am she knows so much evil about
+people. I knew that young man's grandfather when he was a worthy
+mechanic. His wife was an uppish hussy who thought herself better than
+her husband, and their daughter was a pretty girl with black eyes and
+rosy cheeks. They sent her off to school, and after the first year or
+two she never came back. She had got above them. Her father told me as
+much. The old man cried about it. He said his wife thought it was all
+right; that his girl had married a smart young fellow who was a clerk in
+a bank; but that if he had a hundred other children he'd never teach
+them any more than to read, write, and figure. And to think that her son
+should be the Adonis dancing with my cousin Everett Wentworth's
+daughter-in-law! Why, my Aunt Wentworth would rise from her grave if
+she knew it!"
+
+"Well, times have changed," said Keith, laughing. "You see they are as
+good as anybody now."
+
+"Not as good as anybody--you mean as rich as anybody."
+
+"That amounts to about the same thing here, doesn't it?"
+
+"I believe it does, here," said the old lady, with a sniff. "Well," she
+said after a pause, "I think I will go back and tell Matilda what I have
+seen. And if you are wise you will come with me, too. This is no place
+for plain, country-bred people like you and me."
+
+Keith, laughing, said he had an engagement, but he would like to have
+the privilege of taking her home, and then he could return.
+
+"With a married woman, I suppose? Yes, I will be bound it is," she added
+as Keith nodded. "You see the danger of evil association. I shall write
+to your father and tell him that the sooner he gets you out of New York
+the better it will be for your morals and your manners. For you are the
+only man, except Norman, who has been so provincial as to take notice of
+an unknown old woman."
+
+So she went chatting merrily down the stairway to her carriage, making
+her observations on whatever she saw with the freshness of a girl.
+
+"Do you think Norman is happy?" she suddenly asked Keith.
+
+"Why--yes; don't you think so? He has everything on earth to make him
+happy," said Keith, with some surprise. But even at the moment it
+flitted across his mind that there was something which he had felt
+rather than observed in Mrs. Wentworth's attitude toward her husband.
+
+"Except that he has married a fool," said the old lady, briefly. "Don't
+you marry a fool, you hear?"
+
+"I believe she is devoted to Norman and to her children," Keith began,
+but Miss Abigail interrupted him.
+
+"And why shouldn't she be? Isn't she his wife? She gives him, perhaps,
+what is left over after her devotion to herself, her house, her frocks,
+her jewels, and--Adonis."
+
+"Oh, I don't believe she cares for him," declared Keith. "It is
+impossible."
+
+"I don't believe she does either, but she cares for herself, and he
+flatters her. The idea of a Norman-Wentworth's wife being flattered by
+the attention of a tinker's grandson!"
+
+When the ball broke up and Mrs. Lancaster's carriage was called, several
+men escorted her to it. Wickersham, who was trying to recover ground
+which something told him he had lost, followed her down the stairway
+with one or two other men, and after she had entered the carriage stood
+leaning in at the door while he made his adieus and peace at the
+same moment.
+
+"You were not always so cruel to me," he said in a low tone.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster laughed genuinely.
+
+"I was never cruel to you, Ferdy; you mistake leniency for harshness."
+
+"No one else would say that to me."
+
+"So much the more pity. You would be a better man if you had the truth
+told you oftener."
+
+"When did you become such an advocate of Truth? Is it this man?"
+
+"What man?"
+
+"Keith. If it is, I want to tell you that he is not what he pretends."
+
+A change came over Mrs. Lancaster's face.
+
+"He is a gentleman," she said coldly.
+
+"Oh, is he? He was a stage-driver."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster drew herself up.
+
+"If he was--" she began. But she stopped suddenly, glanced beyond
+Wickersham, and moved over to the further side of the carriage.
+
+Just then a hand was laid on Wickersham's arm, and a voice behind him
+said:
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+Wickersham knew the voice, and without looking around stood aside for
+the speaker to make his adieus. Keith stepped into the carriage and
+pulled to the door before the footman could close it.
+
+At the sound the impatient horses started off, leaving three men
+standing in the street looking very blank. Stirling was the first to
+speak; he turned to the others in amazement.
+
+"Who is Keith?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh, a fellow from the South somewhere."
+
+"Well, Keith knows his business!" said Mr. Stirling, with a nod of
+genuine admiration.
+
+Wickersham uttered an imprecation and turned back into the house.
+
+Next day Mr. Stirling caught Wickersham in a group of young men at the
+club, and told them the story.
+
+"Look out for Keith," he said. "He gave me a lesson."
+
+Wickersham growled an inaudible reply.
+
+"Who was the lady? Wickersham tries to capture so many prizes, what you
+say gives us no light," said Mr. Minturn, one of the men.
+
+"Oh, no. I'll only tell you it's not the one you think," said the jolly
+bachelor. "But I am going to take lessons of that man Keith. These
+countrymen surprise me sometimes."
+
+"He was a d----d stage-driver," said Wickersham.
+
+"Then you had better take lessons from him, Ferdy," said Stirling. "He
+drives well. He's a veteran."
+
+When Keith reached his room he lit a cigar and flung himself into a
+chair. Somehow, the evening had not left a pleasant impression on his
+mind. Was this the Alice Yorke he had worshipped, revered? Was this the
+woman whom he had canonized throughout these years? Why was she carrying
+on an affair with Ferdy Wickersham? What did he mean by those last words
+at the carriage? She said she knew him. Then she must know what his
+reputation was. Now and then it came to Keith that it was nothing to
+him. Mrs. Lancaster was married, and her affairs could not concern him.
+But they did concern him. They had agreed to be old friends--old
+friends. He would be a true friend to her.
+
+He rose and threw away his half-smoked cigar.
+
+Keith called on Mrs. Lancaster just before he left for the South. Though
+he had no such motive when he put off his visit, he could not have done
+a wiser thing. It was a novel experience for her to invite a man to call
+on her and not have him jump at the proposal, appear promptly next day,
+frock-coat, kid gloves, smooth flattery, and all; and when Keith had not
+appeared on the third day after the ball, it set her to thinking. She
+imagined at first that he must have been called out of town, but Mrs.
+Norman, whom she met, dispelled this idea. Keith had dined with them
+informally the evening before.
+
+"He appeared to be in high spirits," added the lady. "His scheme has
+succeeded, and he is about to go South. Norman took it up and put it
+through for him."
+
+"I know it," said Mrs. Lancaster, demurely.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth's form stiffened slightly; but her manner soon became
+gracious again. "Ferdy says there is nothing in it."
+
+Could he be offended, or afraid--of himself? reflected Mrs. Lancaster.
+Mrs. Wentworth's next observation disposed of this theory also. "You
+ought to hear him talk of you. By the way, I have found out who that
+ghost was."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster threw a mask over her face.
+
+"He says you have more than fulfilled the promise of your girlhood: that
+you are the handsomest woman he has seen in New York, my dear," pursued
+the other, looking down at her own shapely figure. "Of course, I do not
+agree with him, quite," she laughed. "But, then, people will differ."
+
+"Louise Wentworth, vanity is a deadly sin," said the other, smiling,
+"and we are told in the Commandments--I forget which one--to envy
+nothing of our neighbor's."
+
+"He said he wanted to go to see you; that you had kindly invited him,
+and he wished very much to meet Mr. Lancaster," said Mrs.
+Wentworth, blandly.
+
+"Yes, I am sure they will like each other," said Mrs. Lancaster, with
+dignity. "Mamma also is very anxious to see him. She used to know him
+when--when he was a boy, and liked him very much, too, though she would
+not acknowledge it to me then." She laughed softly at some recollection.
+
+"He spoke of your mother most pleasantly," declared Mrs. Wentworth, not
+without Mrs. Lancaster noticing that she was claiming to stand as
+Keith's friend.
+
+"Well, I shall not be at home to-morrow," she began. "I have promised to
+go out to-morrow afternoon."
+
+"Oh, sha'n't you? Why, what a pity! because he said he was going to pay
+his calls to-morrow, as he expected to leave to-morrow night. I think he
+would be very sorry not to see you."
+
+"Oh, well, then, I will stay in. My other engagement is of no
+consequence."
+
+Her friend looked benign.
+
+Recollecting Mrs. Wentworth's expression, Mrs. Lancaster determined that
+she would not be at home the following afternoon. She would show Mrs.
+Wentworth that she could not gauge her so easily as she fancied. But at
+the last moment, after putting on her hat, she changed her mind. She
+remained in, and ended by inviting Keith to dinner that evening, an
+invitation which was so graciously seconded by Mr. Lancaster that Keith,
+finding that he could take a later train, accepted. Mrs. Yorke was at
+the dinner, too, and how gracious she was to Keith! She "could scarcely
+believe he was the same man she had known a few years before." She "had
+heard a great deal of him, and had come around to dinner on purpose to
+meet him." This was true.
+
+"And you have done so well, too, I hear. Your friends are very pleased
+to know of your success," she said graciously.
+
+Keith smilingly admitted that he had had, perhaps, better fortune than
+he deserved; but this Mrs. Yorke amiably would by no means allow.
+
+"Mrs. Wentworth--not Louise--I mean the elder Mrs. Wentworth--was
+speaking of you. You and Norman were great friends when you were boys,
+she tells me. They were great friends of ours, you know, long before
+we met you."
+
+He wondered how much the Wentworths' indorsement counted for in securing
+Mrs. Yorke's invitation. For a good deal, he knew; but as much credit as
+he gave it he was within the mark.
+
+It was only her environment. She could no more escape from that than if
+she were in prison. She gauged every one by what others thought, and she
+possessed no other gauge. Yet there was a certain friendliness, too, in
+Mrs. Yorke. The good lady had softened with the years, and at heart she
+had always liked Keith.
+
+Most of her conversation was of her friends and their position. Alice
+was thinking of going abroad soon to visit some friends on the other
+side, "of a very distinguished family," she told Keith.
+
+When Keith left the Lancaster house that night Alice Lancaster knew that
+he had wholly recovered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+WICKERSHAM AND PHRONY
+
+Keith returned home and soon found himself a much bigger man in New
+Leeds than when he went away. The mine opened on the Rawson property
+began to give from the first large promises of success.
+
+Keith picked up a newspaper one day a little later. It announced in
+large head-lines, as befitted the chronicling of such an event, the
+death of Mr. William Lancaster, capitalist. He had died suddenly in his
+office. His wife, it was stated, was in Europe and had been cabled the
+sad intelligence. There was a sketch of his life and also of that of his
+wife. Their marriage, it was recalled, had been one of the "romances" of
+the season a few years before. He had taken society by surprise by
+carrying off one of the belles of the season, the beautiful Miss Yorke.
+The rest of the notice was taken up in conjectures as to the amount of
+his property and the sums he would be likely to leave to the various
+charitable institutions of which he had always been a liberal patron.
+
+Keith laid the paper down on his knee and went off in a revery. Mr.
+Lancaster was dead! Of all the men he had met in New York he had in some
+ways struck him the most. He had appeared to him the most perfect type
+of a gentleman; self-contained, and inclined to be cold, but a man of
+elegance as well as of brains. He felt that he ought to be sorry Mr.
+Lancaster was dead, and he tried to be sorry for his wife. He started to
+write her a letter of condolence, but stopped at the first line, and
+could get no further. Yet several times a day, for many days, she
+recurred to him, each time giving him a feeling of dissatisfaction,
+until at length he was able to banish her from his mind.
+
+Prosperity is like the tide. It comes, each wave higher and higher,
+until it almost appears that it will never end, and then suddenly it
+seems to ebb a little, comes up again, recedes again, and, before one
+knows it, is passing away as surely as it came.
+
+Just when Keith thought that his tide was in full flood, it began to ebb
+without any apparent cause, and before he was aware of it, the
+prosperity which for the last few years had been setting in so steadily
+in those mountain regions had passed away, and New Leeds and he were
+left stranded upon the rocks.
+
+Rumor came down to New Leeds from the North. The Wickersham enterprises
+were said to be hard hit by some of the failures which had occurred.
+
+A few weeks later Keith heard that Mr. Aaron Wickersham was dead. The
+clerks said that he had had a quarrel with his son the day after the
+panic and had fallen in an apoplectic fit soon afterwards. But then the
+old clerks had been discharged immediately after his death. Young
+Wickersham said he did not want any dead-wood in his offices. Also he
+did not want any dead property. Among his first steps was the sale of
+the old Keith plantation. Gordon, learning that it was for sale, got a
+friend to lend him the money and bought it in, though it would scarcely
+have been known for the same place. The mansion had been stripped of its
+old furniture and pictures soon after General Keith had left there, and
+the plantation had gone down.
+
+Rumor also said that Wickersham's affairs were in a bad way. Certainly
+the new head of the house gave no sign of it. He opened a yet larger
+office and began operations on a more extensive scale. The _Clarion_
+said that his Southern enterprises would be pushed actively, and that
+the stock of the Great Gun Mine would soon be on the New York Exchange.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham suddenly returned to New Leeds, and New Leeds showed
+his presence. Machinery was shipped sufficient to run a dozen mines. He
+not only pushed the old mines, but opened a new one. It was on a slip of
+land that lay between the Rawson property and the stream that ran down
+from the mountain. Some could not understand why he should run the shaft
+there, unless it was that he was bent on cutting the Rawson property off
+from the stream. It was a perilous location for a shaft, and Matheson,
+the superintendent, had protested against it.
+
+Matheson's objections proved to be well founded. The mine was opened so
+near the stream that water broke through into it, as Matheson had
+predicted, and though a strong wall was built, the water still got in,
+and it was difficult to keep it pumped out sufficiently to work. Some of
+the men struck. It was known that Wickersham had nearly come to a
+rupture with the hard-headed Scotchman over it; but Wickersham won.
+Still, the coal did not come. It was asserted that the shafts had failed
+to reach coal. Wickersham laughed and kept on--kept on till coal did
+come. It was heralded abroad. The _Clarion_ devoted columns to the
+success of the "Great Gun Mine" and Wickersham.
+
+Wickersham naturally showed his triumph. He celebrated it in a great
+banquet at the New Windsor, at which speeches were made which likened
+him to Napoleon and several other generals. Mr. Plume declared him
+"greater than Themistocles, for he could play the lute and make a small
+city a great one."
+
+Wickersham himself made a speech, in which he professed his joy that he
+had silenced the tongue of slander and wrested from detraction a victory
+not for himself, but for New Leeds. His enemies and the enemies of New
+Leeds were, he declared, the same. They would soon see his enemies suing
+for aid. He was applauded to the echo. All this and much more was in
+the _Clarion_ next day, with some very pointed satire about
+"rival mines."
+
+Keith, meantime, was busy poring over plats and verifying lines.
+
+The old squire came to town a morning or two later. "I see Mr.
+Wickersham's struck coal at last," he said to Keith, after he had got
+his pipe lit. His face showed that he was brimming with information.
+
+"Yes--_our_ coal." Keith showed him the plats. "He is over our line--I
+do not know just where, but in here somewhere."
+
+The old fellow put on his spectacles and looked long and carefully.
+
+"He says he owns it all; that he'll have us suin' for pardon?"
+
+"Suing for damages."
+
+The old squire gave a chuckle of satisfaction. "He is in and about
+_there_." He pointed with a stout and horny finger.
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"Well, you see, little Dave Dennison--you remember Dave? You taught
+him."
+
+"Perfectly--I mean, I remember him perfectly. He is now in New York."
+
+"Yes. Well, Dave he used to be sweet on Phrony, and he seems to be still
+sweet on her."
+
+Mr. Keith nodded.
+
+"Well, of course, Phrony she's lookin' higher than Dave--but you know
+how women air?"
+
+"I don't know--I know they are strange creatures," said Keith, almost
+with a sigh, as his past with one woman came vividly before him.
+
+"Well, they won't let a man go, noway, not entirely--unless he's in the
+way. So, though Phrony don't keer nothin' in the world about Dave, she
+sort o' kep' him on-an'-off-like till this here young Wickersham come
+down here. You know, I think she and him like each other? He's been to
+see her twicet and is always a--writin' to her?" His voice had an
+inquiry in it; but Keith took no notice of it, and the old man went on.
+
+"Well, since then she's sort of cooled off to Dave--won't have him
+around--and Dave's got sort of sour. Well, he hates Wickersham, and he
+up and told her t'other night 't Wickersham was the biggest rascal in
+New York; that he had 'most broke his father and had put the stock of
+this here new mine on the market, an' that he didn't have coal enough in
+it to fill his hat; that he'd been down in it an' that the coal all come
+out of our mine."
+
+Keith's eyes glistened.
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"Well, with that she got so mad with Dave, she wouldn't speak to him;
+and Dave left, swearin' he'd settle Wickersham and show him up, and
+he'll do it if he can."
+
+"Where is he?" asked Keith, in some anxiety. "Tell him not to do
+anything till I see him."
+
+"No; I got hold of him and straightened him out. He told me all about
+it. He was right much cut up. He jest cried about Phrony."
+
+Keith wrote a note to Wickersham. He referred to the current rumors that
+the cutting had run over on their side, suggesting, however, that it
+might have been by inadvertence.
+
+When this letter was received, Wickersham was in conference with his
+superintendent, Mr. Matheson. The interview had been somewhat stormy,
+for the superintendent had just made the very statement that Keith's
+note contained. He was not in a placid frame of mind, for the work was
+going badly; and Mr. Plume was seated in an arm-chair listening to his
+report. He did not like Plume, and had wished to speak privately to
+Wickersham; but Wickersham had told him to go ahead, that Plume was a
+friend of his, and as much interested in the success of the work as
+Matheson was. Plume's satisfaction and nonchalant air vexed the
+Scotchman. Just then Keith's note came, and Wickersham, after reading
+it, tossed it over first to Plume. Plume read it and handed it back
+without the least change of expression. Then Wickersham, after some
+reflection, tossed it to Matheson.
+
+"That's right," he nodded, when he had read it. "We are already over the
+line so far that the men know it."
+
+Wickersham's temper gave way.
+
+"Well, I know it. Do you suppose I am so ignorant as not to know
+anything? But I am not fool enough to give it away. You need not go
+bleating around about it everywhere."
+
+Plume's eye glistened with satisfaction.
+
+The superintendent's brow, which had clouded, grew darker. He had
+already stood much from this young man. He had followed his orders in
+running the mine beyond the lines shown on the plats; but he had
+accepted Wickersham's statement that the lines were wrong, not
+the workings.
+
+"I wush you to understand one thing, Mr. Wickersham," he said. "I came
+here to superintend your mines and to do my work like an honest man; but
+I don't propose to soil my hands with any dirrty dealings, or to engage
+in any violation of the law; for I am a law-abiding, God-fearing man,
+and before I'll do it I'll go."
+
+"Then you can go," said Wickersham, angrily. "Go, and be d----d to you!
+I will show you that I know my own business."
+
+"Then I will go. I do not think you do know it. If you did, you would
+not--"
+
+"Never mind. I want no more advice from you," snarled Wickersham.
+
+"I would like to have a letter saying that the work that has been done
+since you took charge has been under your express orders."
+
+"I'll see you condemned first. I suppose it was by my orders that the
+cutting ran so near to the creek that that work had to be done to keep
+the mine from being flooded?"
+
+"It was, by your _express_ orders."
+
+"I deny it. I suppose it was by my orders that the men were set on to
+strike?"
+
+"You were told of the danger and the probable consequences of your
+insisting."
+
+"Oh, you are always croaking--"
+
+"And I will croak once more," said the discharged official. "You will
+never make that mine pay, for there is no coal there. It is all on the
+other side of the line."
+
+"I won't! Well, I will show you. I, at least, stand a better chance to
+make it pay than I ever did before. I suppose you propose now to go over
+to Keith and tell him all you know about our work. I imagine he would
+like to know it--more than he knows already."
+
+"I am not in the habit of telling the private affairs of my employers,"
+said the man, coldly. "He does not need any information from me. He is
+not a fool. He knows it."
+
+"Oh, he does, does he! Then you told him," asserted Wickersham,
+furiously.
+
+This was more than the Scotchman could bear. He had already stood much,
+and his face might have warned Wickersham. Suddenly it flamed. He took
+one step forward, a long one, and rammed his clinched and hairy fist
+under the young man's nose.
+
+"You lie! And, ---- you! you know you lie. I'm a law-abiding,
+God-fearing man; but if you don't take that back, I will break every
+bone in your face. I've a mind to do it anyhow."
+
+Wickersham rolled back out of his chair as if the knotted fist under his
+nose had driven him. His face was white as he staggered to his feet.
+
+"I didn't mean--I don't say--. What do you mean anyhow?" he stammered.
+
+"Take it back." The foreman advanced slowly.
+
+"Yes--I didn't mean anything. What are you getting so mad about?"
+
+The foreman cut him short with a fierce gesture. "Write me that paper I
+want, and pay me my money."
+
+"Write what--?"
+
+"That the lower shaft and the last drift was cut by your order. Write
+it!" He pointed to the paper on the desk. Wickersham sat down and wrote
+a few lines. His hand trembled.
+
+"Here it is," he said sullenly.
+
+"Now pay me," said the glowering Scotchman.
+
+The money was paid, and Matheson, without a word, turned and walked out.
+
+"D---- him! I wish the mine had fallen in on him," Wickersham growled.
+
+"You are well quit of him," said Mr. Plume, consolingly.
+
+"I'll get even with him yet."
+
+"You have to answer your other friend," observed Mr. Plume.
+
+"I'll answer him." He seized a sheet of paper and began to write,
+annotating it with observations far from complimentary to Keith and
+Matheson. He read the letter to Plume. It was a curt inquiry whether Mr.
+Keith meant to make the charge that he had crossed his line. If so,
+Wickersham & Company knew their remedy and would be glad to know at last
+the source whence these slanderous reports had come.
+
+"That will settle him."
+
+Mr. Plume nodded. "It ought to do it."
+
+Keith's reply to this note was sent that night.
+
+It stated simply that he did make the charge, and if Mr. Wickersham
+wished it, he was prepared to prove it.
+
+Wickersham's face fell. "Matheson's been to him."
+
+"Or some one else," said Mr. Plume. "That Bluffy hates you like poison.
+You've got to do something and do it quick."
+
+Wickersham glanced up at Plume. He met his eye steadily. Wickersham's
+face showed the shadow of a frown; then it passed, leaving his face set
+and a shade paler. He looked at Plume again and licked his lips.
+Plume's eye was still on him.
+
+"What do you know!" he asked Plume.
+
+"Only what others know. They all know it or will soon."
+
+Wickersham's face settled more. He cursed in a low voice and then
+relapsed into reflection.
+
+"Get up a strike," said Plume. "They are ripe for it. Close her down and
+blow her up."
+
+Wickersham's countenance changed, and presently his brow cleared.
+
+"It will serve them right. I'll let them know who owns these mines."
+
+Next morning there was posted a notice of a cut of wages in the
+Wickersham mines. There was a buzz of excitement in New Leeds and anger
+among the mining population. At dinner-time there were meetings and much
+talking. That night again, there were meetings and whiskey and more
+talking,--louder talking,--speeches and resolutions. Next morning a
+committee waited on Mr. Wickersham, who received the men politely but
+coldly. He "thought he knew how to manage his own business. They must be
+aware that he had spent large sums in developing property which had not
+yet begun to pay. When it began to pay he would be happy, etc. If they
+chose to strike, all right. He could get others in their places."
+
+That night there were more meetings. Next day the men did not go to
+work. By evening many of them were drunk. There was talk of violence.
+Bill Bluffy, who was now a miner, was especially savage.
+
+Keith was surprised, a few days later, as he was passing along the
+street, to meet Euphronia Tripper. He spoke to her cordially. She was
+dressed showily and was handsomer than when he saw her last. The color
+mounted her face as he stopped her, and he wondered that Wickersham had
+not thought her pretty. When she blushed she was almost a beauty. He
+asked about her people at home, inquiring in a breath when she came,
+where she was staying, how long she was going to remain, etc.
+
+She answered the first questions glibly enough; but when he inquired as
+to the length of her visit and where she was staying, she appeared
+somewhat confused.
+
+"I have cousins here, the Turleys."
+
+"Oh! You are with Mr. Turley?" Keith felt relieved.
+
+"Ur--no--I am not staying with them. I am with some other friends." Her
+color was coming and going.
+
+"What is their name?"
+
+"Their name? Oh--uh--I don't know their names."
+
+"Don't know their names!"
+
+"No. You see it's a sort of private boarding-house, and they took me
+in."
+
+"Oh, I thought you said they were friends," said Keith.
+
+"Why, yes, they are, but--I have forgotten their names. Don't you
+understand?"
+
+Keith did not understand.
+
+"I only came a few days ago, and I am going right away."
+
+Keith passed on. Euphronia had clearly not changed her nature.
+Insensibly, Keith thought of Ferdy Wickersham. Old Rawson's conversation
+months before recurred to him. He knew that the girl was vain and
+light-headed. He also knew Wickersham.
+
+He mentioned to Mr. Turley having seen the girl in town, and the old
+fellow went immediately and took her out of the little boarding-house
+where she had put up, and brought her to his home.
+
+Keith was not long in doubt as to the connection between her presence
+and Wickersham's.
+
+Several times he had occasion to call at Mr. Turley's. On each occasion
+he found Wickersham there, and it was very apparent that he was not an
+unwelcome visitor.
+
+It was evident to Keith that Wickersham was trying to make an impression
+on the young girl.
+
+That evening so long ago when he had come on her and Wickersham in the
+old squire's orchard came back to him, and the stalwart old countryman,
+with his plain ways, his stout pride, his straight ideas, stood before
+him. He knew his pride in the girl; how close she was to his heart; and
+what a deadly blow it would be to him should anything befall her. He
+knew, moreover, how fiercely he would avenge any injury to her.
+
+He determined to give Wickersham a hint of the danger he was running,
+if, as he believed, he was simply amusing himself with the girl. He and
+Wickersham still kept up relations ostensibly friendly. Wickersham had
+told him he was going back to New York on a certain day; but three days
+later, as Keith was returning late from his mines, he came on Wickersham
+and Phrony in a byway outside of the town. His arm was about her. They
+were so closely engaged that they did not notice him until he was on
+them. Phrony appeared much excited. "Well, I will not go otherwise,"
+Keith heard her say. She turned hastily away as Keith came up, and her
+face was scarlet with confusion, and even Wickersham looked
+disconcerted.
+
+That night Keith waited for Wickersham at the hotel till a late hour,
+and when at length Wickersham came in he met him.
+
+"I thought you were going back to New York?" he said.
+
+"I find it pleasanter here," said the young man, with a significant look
+at him.
+
+"You appear to find it pleasant."
+
+"I always make it pleasant for myself wherever I go, my boy. You are a
+Stoic; I prefer the Epicurean philosophy."
+
+"Yes? And how about others?"
+
+"Oh, I make it pleasant for them too. Didn't it look so to-day?" The
+glance he gave him authorized Keith to go on.
+
+"Did it ever occur to you that you might make it too pleasant for
+them--for a time?"
+
+"Ah! I have thought of that. But that's their lookout."
+
+"Wickersham," said Keith, calmly, "that's a very young girl and a very
+ignorant girl, and, so far as I know, a very innocent one."
+
+"Doubtless you know!" said, the other, insolently.
+
+"Yes, I believe she is. Moreover, she comes of very good and respectable
+people. Her grandfather--"
+
+"My dear boy, I don't care anything about the grandfather! It is only
+the granddaughter I am interesting myself in. She is the only pretty
+girl within a hundred miles of here, unless you except your old friend
+of the dance-hall, and I always interest myself in the prettiest woman
+about me."
+
+"Do you intend to marry her?"
+
+Wickersham laughed, heartily and spontaneously.
+
+"Oh, come now, Keith. Are you going to marry the dance-hall keeper,
+simply because she has white teeth?"
+
+Keith frowned a little.
+
+"Never mind about me. Do you propose to marry her? She, at least, does
+not keep a dance-hall."
+
+"No; I shall leave that for you." His face and tone were insolent, and
+Keith gripped his chair. He felt himself flush. Then his blood surged
+back; but he controlled himself and put by the insolence for the moment.
+
+"Leave me out of the matter. Do you know what you are doing?" His voice
+was a little unsteady.
+
+"I know at least what you are doing: interfering in my business. I know
+how to take care of myself, and I don't need your assistance."
+
+"I was not thinking of you, but of her--"
+
+"That's the difference between us. I was," said Ferdy, coolly. He rolled
+a cigarette.
+
+"Well, you will have need to think of yourself if you wrong that girl,"
+said Keith. "For I tell you now that if anything were to happen to her,
+your life would not be worth a button in these mountains."
+
+"There are other places besides the mountains," observed Wickersham. But
+Keith noticed that he had paled a little and his voice had lost some of
+its assurance.
+
+"I don't believe the world would be big enough to hide you. I know two
+men who would kill you on sight."
+
+"Who is the other one?" asked Wickersham.
+
+"I am not counting myself--yet," said Keith, quietly. "It would not be
+necessary. The old squire and Dave Dennison would take my life if I
+interfered with their rights."
+
+"You are prudent," said Ferdy.
+
+"I am forbearing," said Keith.
+
+Wickersham's tone was as insolent as ever, but as he leaned over and
+reached for a match, Keith observed that his hand shook slightly. And
+the eyes that were levelled at Keith through the smoke of his cigarette
+were unsteady.
+
+Next morning Ferdy Wickersham had a long interview with Plume, and that
+night Mr. Plume had a conference in his private office with a man--a
+secret conference, to judge from the care with which doors were locked,
+blinds pulled down, and voices kept lowered. He was a stout, youngish
+fellow, with a low forehead, lowering eyes, and a sodden face. He might
+once have been good-looking, but drink was written on Mr. William Bluffy
+now in ineffaceable characters. Plume alternately cajoled him and
+hectored him, trying to get his consent to some act which he was
+unwilling to perform.
+
+"I don't see the slightest danger in it," insisted Plume, "and you did
+not use to be afraid. Your nerves must be getting loose."
+
+The other man's eyes rested on him with something like contempt.
+
+"My nerves're all right. I ain't skeered; but I don't want to mix up in
+your ---- business. If a man wants trouble with me, he can get it and he
+knows how to do it. I don't like yer man Wickersham--not a little bit.
+But I don't want to do it that way. I'd like to meet him fair and full
+on the street and settle which was the best man."
+
+Plume began again. "You can't do that way here now. That's broke up. But
+the way I tell you is the real way." He pictured Wickersham's wealth,
+his hardness toward his employes, his being a Yankee, his boast that he
+would injure Keith and shut up his mine.
+
+"What've you got against him?" demanded Mr. Bluffy. "I thought you and
+him was thick as thieves?"
+
+"It's a public benefit I'm after," declared Plume, unblushingly. "I am
+for New Leeds first, last, and all the time."
+
+"You must think you are New Leeds," observed Bluffy.
+
+Plume laughed.
+
+"I've got nothing against him particularly, though he's injured me
+deeply. Hasn't he thrown all the men out of work!" He pushed the bottle
+over toward the other, and he poured out another drink and tossed it
+off. "You needn't be so easy about him. He's been mean enough to you.
+Wasn't it him that gave the description of you that night when you
+stopped the stage?"
+
+Bill Bluffy's face changed, and there was a flash in his eye.
+
+"Who says I done it?"
+
+Plume laughed. "I don't say you did it. You needn't get mad with me. He
+says you did it. Keith said he didn't know what sort of man it was.
+Wickersham described you so that everybody knew you. I reckon if Keith
+had back-stood him you'd have had a harder time than you did."
+
+The cloud had gathered deeper on Bluffy's brow. He took another drink.
+
+"---- him! I'll blow up his ---- mine and him, too!" he growled. "How
+did you say 'twas to be done?"
+
+Plume glanced around at the closed windows and lowered his voice as he
+made certain explanations.
+
+"I'll furnish the dynamite."
+
+"All right. Give me the money."
+
+But Plume demurred.
+
+"Not till it's done. I haven't any doubt about your doing it," he
+explained quickly, seeing a black look in Bluffy's eyes. "But you know
+yourself you're liable to get full, and you mayn't do it as well as you
+otherwise would."
+
+"Oh, if I say I'll do it, I'll do it."
+
+"You needn't be afraid of not getting your money."
+
+"I ain't afraid," said Bluffy, with an oath. "If I don't get it I'll get
+blood." His eyes as they rested on Plume had a sudden gleam in them.
+
+When Wickersham and Plume met that night the latter gave an account of
+his negotiation. "It's all fixed," he said, "but it costs more than I
+expected--a lot more," he said slowly, gauging Wickersham's views by
+his face.
+
+"How much more? I told you my limit."
+
+"We had to do it," said Mr. Plume, without stating the price.
+
+Wickersham swore.
+
+"He won't do it till he gets the cash," pursued Plume. "But I'll be
+responsible for him," he added quickly, noting the change in
+Wickersham's expression.
+
+Again Wickersham swore; and Plume changed the subject.
+
+"How'd you come out?" he asked.
+
+"When--what do you mean?"
+
+Plume jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "With the lady?"
+
+Wickersham sniffed. "All right." He drifted for a moment into
+reflection. "The little fool's got conscientious doubts," he said
+presently, with a half-smile. "Won't go unless--." His eyes rested on
+Plume's with a gauging expression in them.
+
+"Well, why not? That's natural enough. She's been brought up right.
+They're proud as anybody. Her grandfather--"
+
+"You're a fool!" said Wickersham, briefly.
+
+"You can get some one to go through a ceremony for you that would
+satisfy her and wouldn't peach afterwards--"
+
+"What a damned scoundrel you are, Plume!" said Mr. Wickersham, coldly.
+
+Plume's expression was between a smile and a scowl, but the smile was
+less pleasant than the frown.
+
+"Get her to go to New York--When you've got her there you've got her.
+She can't come back. Or I could perform it myself? I've been a
+preacher-am one now," said Plume, without noticing the interruption
+further than by a cold gleam in his eyes.
+
+Wickersham laughed derisively.
+
+"Oh, no, not that. I may be given to my own diversions somewhat
+recklessly, but I'm not so bad as to let you touch any one I--I take an
+interest in."
+
+"As you like," said Plume, curtly. "I just thought it might be a
+convenience to you. I'd help you out. I don't see 't you need be
+so--squeamish. What you're doing ain't so pure an' lofty 't you can set
+up for Marcus Aurelius and St. Anthony at once."
+
+"At least, it's better than it would be if I let you take a hand in it,"
+sneered Wickersham.
+
+The following afternoon Wickersham left New Leeds somewhat
+ostentatiously. A few strikers standing sullenly about the station
+jeered as he passed in. But he took no notice of them. He passed on to
+his train.
+
+A few nights later a tremendous explosion shook the town, rattling the
+windows, awakening people from their beds, and calling the timid and the
+curious into the streets.
+
+It was known next morning that some one had blown up the Great Gun Mine,
+opened at such immense cost. The dam that kept out the water was blown
+up; the machinery had been wrecked, and the mine was completely
+destroyed.
+
+The _Clarion_ denounced it as the deed of the strikers. The strikers
+held a meeting and denounced the charge as a foul slander; but the
+_Clarion_ continued to denounce them as _hostes humani generis_.
+
+It was, however, rumored around that it was not the strikers at all. One
+rumor even declared that it was done by the connivance of the company.
+It was said that Bill Bluffy had boasted of it in his cups, But when Mr.
+Bluffy was asked about it he denied the story in toto. He wasn't such
+a ---- fool as to do such a thing as that, he said. For the rest, he
+cursed Mr. Plume with bell, book, and candle.
+
+A rumor came to Keith one morning a few days later that Phrony Tripper
+had disappeared.
+
+She had left New Leeds more than a week before, as was supposed by her
+relatives, the Turleys, to pay a visit to friends in the adjoining State
+before returning home. To others she had said that she was going to the
+North for a visit, whilst yet others affirmed that she had given another
+destination. However this might be, she had left not long after
+Wickersham had taken his departure, and her leaving was soon coupled
+with his name. One man even declared that he had seen the two together
+in New York.
+
+Another name was connected with the girl's disappearance, though in a
+different way. Terpsichore suggested that Mr. Plume had had something to
+do with it, and that he could give information on the subject if he
+would. Mr. Plume had been away from New Leeds for several days about the
+time of Phrony's departure.
+
+"He did that Wickersham's dirty work for him; that is, what he didn't do
+for himself," declared the young woman.
+
+Plume's statement was that he had been off on private business and had
+met with an accident. The nature of this "accident" was evident in his
+appearance.
+
+Keith was hardly surprised when, a day or two after the rumor of the
+girl's disappearance reached him, a heavy step thumping outside his
+office door announced the arrival of Squire Rawson. When the old man
+opened the door, Keith was shocked to see the change in him. He was
+haggard and worn, but there was that in his face which made Keith feel
+that whoever might be concerned in his granddaughter's disappearance had
+reason to beware of meeting him.
+
+"You have heard the news?" he said, as he sank into the chair which
+Keith offered him.
+
+Keith said that he had heard it, and regretted it more than he could
+express. He had only waited, hoping that it might prove untrue, to
+write to him.
+
+"Yes, she has gone," added the old man, moodily. "She's gone off and
+married without sayin' a word to me or anybody. I didn't think she'd
+'a' done it."
+
+Keith gasped with astonishment. A load appeared to be lifted from him.
+After all, she was married. The next moment this hope was dashed by
+the squire.
+
+"I always thought," said the old man, "that that young fellow was
+hankerin' around her a good deal. I never liked him, because I didn't
+trust him. And I wouldn't 'a' liked him anyway," he added frankly; "and
+I certainly don't like him now. But--." He drifted off into reflection
+for a moment and then came back again--"Women-folks are curious
+creatures. Phrony's mother she appeared to like him, and I suppose we
+will have to make up with him. So I hev come up here to see if I can git
+his address."
+
+Keith's heart sank within him. He knew Ferdy Wickersham too well not to
+know on what a broken reed the old man leaned.
+
+"Some folks was a-hintin'," pursued the old fellow, speaking slowly,
+"as, maybe, that young man hadn't married her; but I knowed better then
+that, because, even if Phrony warn't a good girl,--which she is, though
+she ain't got much sense,--he knowed _me_. They ain't none of 'em ever
+intimated that to _me_," he added explanatorily.
+
+Keith was glad that he had not intimated it. As he looked at the squire,
+he knew how dangerous it would be. His face was settled into a grimness
+which showed how perilous it would be for the man who had deceived
+Phrony, if, as Keith feared, his apprehensions were well founded.
+
+But at that moment both Phrony and Wickersham were far beyond Squire
+Rawson's reach.
+
+The evening after Phrony Tripper left New Leeds, a young woman somewhat
+closely veiled descended from the train in Jersey City. Here she was
+joined on the platform a moment later by a tall man who had boarded the
+train at Washington, and who, but for his spruced appearance, might
+have been taken for Mr. J. Quincy Plume. The young woman having
+intrusted herself to his guidance, he conducted her across the ferry,
+and on the other side they were met by a gentleman, who wore the collar
+of his overcoat turned up. After a meeting more or less formal on one
+side and cordial on the other, the gentleman gave a brief direction to
+Mr. Plume, and, with the lady, entered a carriage which was waiting and
+drove off; Mr. Plume following a moment later in another vehicle.
+
+"Know who that is?" asked one of the ferry officials of another. "That's
+F.C. Wickersham, who has made such a pile of money. They say he owns a
+whole State down South."
+
+"Who is the lady?"
+
+The other laughed. "Don't ask me; you can't keep up with him. They say
+they can't resist him."
+
+An hour or two later, Mr. Plume, who had been waiting for some time in
+the cafe of a small hotel not very far up-town, was joined by Mr.
+Wickersham, whose countenance showed both irritation and disquietude.
+Plume, who had been consoling himself with the companionship of a
+decanter of rye whiskey, was in a more jovial mood, which further
+irritated the other.
+
+"You say she has balked? Jove! She has got more in her than I thought!"
+
+"She is a fool!" said Wickersham.
+
+Plume shut one eye. "Don't know about that. Madame de Maintenon said:
+'There is nothing so clever as a good woman.' Well, what are you
+going to do?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Take a drink," said Mr. Plume, to whom this was a frequent solvent of a
+difficulty.
+
+Wickersham followed his advice, but remained silent.
+
+In fact, Mr. Wickersham, after having laid most careful plans and
+reached the point for which he had striven, found himself, at the very
+moment of victory, in danger of being defeated. He had induced Phrony
+Tripper to come to New York. She was desperately in love with him, and
+would have gone to the ends of the earth for him. But he had promised to
+marry her; it was to marry him that she had come. As strong as was her
+passion for him, and as vain and foolish as she was, she had one
+principle which was stronger than any other feeling--a sense of modesty.
+This had been instilled in her from infancy. Among her people a woman's
+honor was ranked higher than any other feminine virtue. Her love for
+Wickersham but strengthened her resolution, for she believed that,
+unless he married her, his life would not be safe from her relatives.
+Now, after two hours, in which he had used every persuasion, Wickersham,
+to his unbounded astonishment, found himself facing defeat. He had not
+given her credit for so much resolution. Her answer to all his efforts
+to overcome her determination was that, unless he married her
+immediately, she would return home; she would not remain in the hotel a
+single night. "I know they will take me back," she said, weeping.
+
+This was the subject of his conversation, now, with his agent, and he
+was making up his mind what to do, aided by more or less frequent
+applications to the decanter which stood between them.
+
+"What she says is true," declared Plume, his courage stimulated by his
+liberal potations. "You won't be able to go back down there any more.
+There are a half-dozen men I know, would consider it their duty to blow
+your brains out."
+
+Wickersham filled his glass and tossed off a drink. "I am not going down
+there any more, anyhow."
+
+"I suppose not. But I don't believe you would be safe even up here.
+There is that devil, Dennison: he hates you worse than poison."
+
+"Oh--up here--they aren't going to trouble me up here."
+
+"I don't know--if he ever got a show at you--Why don't you let me
+perform the ceremony?" he began persuasively. "She knows I've been a
+preacher. That will satisfy her scruples, and then, if you ever had to
+make it known--? But no one would know then."
+
+Wickersham declined this with a show of virtue. He did not mention that
+he had suggested this to the girl but she had positively refused it. She
+would be married by a regular preacher or she would go home.
+
+"There must be some one in this big town," suggested Plume, "who will do
+such a job privately and keep it quiet? Where is that preacher you were
+talking about once that took flyers with you on the quiet? You can seal
+his mouth. And if the worst comes to the worst, there is Montana; you
+can always get out of it in six weeks with an order of publication. _I_
+did it," said Mr. Plume, quietly, "and never had any trouble about it."
+
+"You did! Well, that's one part of your rascality I didn't know about."
+
+"I guess there are a good many of us have little bits of history that we
+don't talk about much," observed Mr. Plume, calmly. "I wouldn't have
+told you now, but I wanted to help you out of the fix that--"
+
+"That you have helped me get into," said Wickersham, with a sneer.
+
+"There is no trouble about it," Plume went on. "You don't want to marry
+anybody else--now, and meantime it will give you the chance you want of
+controlling old Rawson's interest down there. The old fellow can't live
+long, and Phrony is his only heir. You will have it all your own way.
+You can keep it quiet if you wish, and if you don't, you can acknowledge
+it and bounce your friend Keith. If I had your hand I bet I'd know how
+to play it."
+
+"Well, by ----! I wish you had it," said Wickersham, angrily.
+
+Wickersham had been thinking hard during Plume's statement of the case,
+and what with his argument and an occasional application to the decanter
+of whiskey, he was beginning to yield. Just then a sealed note was
+handed him by a waiter. He tore it open and read:
+
+
+     "I am going home; my heart is broken. Good-by."
+
+                                            "PHRONY."
+
+
+With an oath under his breath, he wrote in pencil on a card: "Wait; I
+will be with you directly."
+
+"Take that to the lady," he said. Scribbling a few lines more on another
+card, he gave Plume some hasty directions and left him.
+
+When, five minutes afterwards, Mr. Plume finished the decanter, and left
+the hotel, his face had a crafty look on it. "This should be worth a
+good deal to you, J. Quincy," he said.
+
+An hour later the Rev. Mr. Rimmon performed in his private office a
+little ceremony, at which, besides himself, were present only the bride
+and groom and a witness who had come to him a half-hour before with a
+scribbled line in pencil requesting his services. If Mr. Rimmon was
+startled when he first read the request, the surprise had passed away.
+The groom, it is true, was, when he appeared, decidedly under the
+influence of liquor, and his insistence that the ceremony was to be kept
+entirely secret had somewhat disturbed Mr. Rimmon for a moment. But he
+remembered Mr. Plume's assurance that the bride was a great heiress in
+the South, and knowing that Ferdy Wickersham was a man who rarely lost
+his head,--a circumstance which the latter testified by handing him a
+roll of greenbacks amounting to exactly one hundred dollars,--and the
+bride being very pretty and shy, and manifestly most eager to be
+married, he gave his word to keep the matter a secret until they should
+authorize him to divulge it.
+
+When the ceremony was over, the bride requested Mr. Rimmon to give her
+her "marriage lines." This Mr. Rimmon promised to do; but as he would
+have to fill out the blanks, which would take a little time, the bride
+and groom, having signed the paper, took their departure without
+waiting for the certificate, leaving Mr. Plume to bring it.
+
+A day or two later a steamship of one of the less popular companies
+sailing to a Continental port had among its passengers a gentleman and a
+lady who, having secured their accommodations at the last moment, did
+not appear on the passenger list.
+
+It happened that they were unknown to any of the other passengers, and
+as they were very exclusive, they made no acquaintances during the
+voyage. If Mrs. Wagram, the name by which the lady was known on board,
+had one regret, it was that Mr. Plume had failed to send her her
+marriage certificate, as he had promised to do. Her husband, however,
+made so light of it that it reassured her, and she was too much taken up
+with her wedding-ring and new diamonds to think that anything else was
+necessary.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+MRS. LANCASTER'S WIDOWHOOD
+
+The first two years of her widowhood Alice Lancaster spent in
+retirement. Even the busy tongue of Mrs. Nailor could find little to
+criticise in the young widow. To be sure, that accomplished critic made
+the most of this little, and disseminated her opinion that Alice's grief
+for Mr. Lancaster could only be remorse for her indifference to him
+during his life. Every one knew, she said, how she had neglected him.
+
+The idea that Alice Lancaster was troubled with regrets was not as
+unfounded as the rest of Mrs. Nailor's ill-natured charge. She was
+attached to her husband, and had always meant to be a good wife to him.
+
+She was as good a wife as her mother and her friends would permit her to
+be. Gossip had not spared some of her best friends. Even as proud a
+woman as young Mrs. Wentworth had not escaped. But Gossip had never yet
+touched the name of Mrs. Lancaster, and Alice did not mean that it
+should. It was not unnatural that she should have accepted the liberty
+which her husband gave her and have gone out more and more, even though
+he could accompany her less and less.
+
+No maelstrom is more unrelenting in its grasp than is that of Society.
+Only those who sink, or are cast aside by its seething waves, escape.
+And before she knew it, Alice Lancaster had found herself drawn into the
+whirlpool.
+
+An attractive proposal had been made to her to go abroad and join some
+friends of hers for a London season a year or two before. Grinnell
+Rhodes had married Miss Creamer, who was fond of European society, and
+they had taken a house in London for the season, which promised to be
+very gay, and had suggested to Mrs. Lancaster to visit them. Mr.
+Lancaster had found himself unable to go. A good many matters of
+importance had been undertaken by him, and he must see them through, he
+said. Moreover, he had not been very well of late, and he had felt that
+he should be rather a drag amid the gayeties of the London season. Alice
+had offered to give up the trip, but he would not hear of it. She must
+go, he said, and he knew who would be the most charming woman in London.
+So, having extracted from him the promise that, when his business
+matters were all arranged, he would join her for a little run on the
+Continent, she had set off for Paris, where "awful beauty puts on all
+its arms," to make her preparations for the campaign.
+
+Mr. Lancaster had not told her of an interview which her mother had had
+with him, in which she had pointed out that Alice's health was suffering
+from her want of gayety and amusement. He was not one to talk
+of himself.
+
+Alice Lancaster was still in Paris when a cable message announced to her
+Mr. Lancaster's death. It was only after his death that she awoke to the
+unselfishness of his life and to the completeness of his devotion
+to her.
+
+His will, after making provision for certain charities with which he had
+been associated in his lifetime, left all his great fortune to her; and
+there was, besides, a sealed letter left for her in which he poured out
+his heart to her. From it she learned that he had suffered greatly and
+had known that he was liable to die at any time. He, however, would not
+send for her to come home, for fear of spoiling her holiday.
+
+"I will not say I have not been lonely," he wrote. "For God knows how
+lonely I have been since you left. The light went with you and will
+return only when you come home. Sometimes I have felt that I could not
+endure it and must send for you or go to you; but the first would have
+been selfishness and the latter a breach of duty. The times have been
+such that I have not felt it right to leave, as so many interests have
+been intrusted to me.... It is possible that I may never see your face
+again. I have made a will which I hope will please you. It will, at
+least, show you that I trust you entirely. I make no restrictions; for I
+wish you greater happiness than I fear I have been able to bring you....
+In business affairs I suggest that you consult with Norman Wentworth,
+who is a man of high integrity and of a conservative mind. Should you
+wish advice as to good charities, I can think of no better adviser than
+Dr. Templeton. He has long been my friend."
+
+In the first excess of her grief and remorse, Alice Lancaster came home
+and threw herself heart and soul into charitable work. As Mr. Lancaster
+had suggested, she consulted Dr. Templeton, the old rector of a small
+and unfashionable church on a side street. Under his guidance she found
+a world as new and as diverse from that in which she had always lived as
+another planet would have been.
+
+She found in some places a life where vice was esteemed more honorable
+than virtue, because it brought more bread. She found things of which
+she had never dreamed: things which appeared incredible after she had
+seen them. These things she found within a half-hour's walk of her
+sumptuous home; within a few blocks of the avenue and streets where
+Wealth and Plenty took their gay pleasure and where riches poured forth
+in a riot of splendid extravagance.
+
+She would have turned back, but for the old clergyman's inspiring
+courage; she would have poured out her wealth indiscriminately, but for
+his wisdom--but for his wisdom and Norman Wentworth's.
+
+"No, my dear," said the old man; "to give lavishly without
+discrimination is to put a premium on beggary and to subject yourself to
+imposture."
+
+This Norman indorsed, and under their direction she soon found ways to
+give of her great means toward charities which were far-reaching and
+enduring. She learned also what happiness comes from knowledge of others
+and knowledge of how to help them.
+
+It was surprising to her friends what a change came over the young
+woman. Her point of view, her manner, her face, her voice changed. Her
+expression, which had once been so proud as to mar somewhat her beauty,
+softened; her manner increased in cordiality and kindness; her voice
+acquired a new and sincerer tone.
+
+Even Mrs. Nailor observed that the enforced retirement appeared to have
+chastened the young widow, though she would not admit that it could be
+for anything than effect.
+
+"Black always was the most bewilderingly becoming thing to her that I
+ever saw. Don't you remember those effects she used to produce with
+black and just a dash of red? Well, she wears black so deep you might
+think it was poor Mr. Lancaster's pall; but I have observed that
+whenever I have seen her there is always something red very close at
+hand. She either sits in a red chair, or there is a red shawl just at
+her back, or a great bunch of red roses at her elbow. I am glad that
+great window has been put up in old Dr. Templeton's church to William
+Lancaster's memory, or I am afraid it would have been but a small one."
+
+Almost the first sign that the storm, which, as related, had struck New
+York would reach New Leeds was the shutting down of the Wickersham
+mines. The _Clarion_ stated that the shutting down was temporary and
+declared that in a very short time, when the men were brought to reason,
+they would be opened again; also that the Great Gun Mine, which had been
+flooded, would again be opened.
+
+The mines belonging to Keith's company did not appear for some time to
+be affected; but the breakers soon began to reach even the point on
+which Keith had stood so securely. The first "roller" that came to him
+was when orders arrived to cut down the force, and cut down also the
+wages of those who were retained. This was done. Letters, growing
+gradually more and more complaining, came from the general office in
+New York.
+
+Fortunately for Keith, Norman ran down at this time and looked over the
+properties again for himself. He did not tell Keith what bitter things
+were being said and that his visit down there was that he might be able
+to base his defence of Keith on facts in his own knowledge.
+
+"What has become of Mrs. Lancaster?" asked Keith, casually. "Is she
+still abroad?"
+
+"No; she came home immediately on hearing the news. You never saw any
+one so changed. She has gone in for charity."
+
+Keith looked a trifle grim.
+
+"If you thought her pretty as a girl, you ought to see her as a widow.
+She is ravishing."
+
+"You are enthusiastic. I see that Wickersham has returned?"
+
+Norman's brow clouded.
+
+"He'd better not come back here," said Keith.
+
+It is a trite saying that misfortunes rarely come singly, and it would
+not be so trite if there were not truth in it. Misfortunes are sometimes
+like blackbirds: they come in flocks.
+
+Keith was on his way from his office in the town to the mines one
+afternoon, when, turning the shoulder of the hill that shut the opening
+of the mine from view, he became aware that something unusual had
+occurred. A crowd was already assembled about the mouth of the mine,
+above the tipple, among them many women; and people were hurrying up
+from all directions.
+
+"What is it?" he demanded of the first person he came to.
+
+"Water. They have struck a pocket or something, and the drift over
+toward the Wickersham line is filling up."
+
+"Is everybody out?" Even as he inquired, Keith knew hey were not.
+
+"No, sir; all drowned."
+
+Keith knew this could not be true. He hurried forward and pushed his way
+into the throng that crowded about the entrance. A gasp of relief went
+up as he appeared.
+
+"Ah! Here's the boss." It was the expression of a vague hope that he
+might be able to do something. They gave way at his voice and stood
+back, many eyes turning on him in helpless appeal. Women, with blankets
+already in hand, were weeping aloud; children hanging to their skirts
+were whimpering in vague recognition of disaster; men were growling and
+swearing deeply.
+
+"Give way. Stand back, every one." The calm voice and tone of command
+had their effect, and as a path was opened through the crowd, Keith
+recognized a number of the men who had been in and had just come out.
+They were all talking to groups about them. One of them gave him the
+first intelligent account of the trouble. They were working near the
+entrance when they heard the cries of men farther in, and the first
+thing they knew there was a rush of water which poured down on them,
+sweeping everything before it.
+
+"It must have been a river," said one, in answer to a question from
+Keith. "It was rising a foot a minute. The lights were all put out, and
+we just managed to get out in time."
+
+According to their estimates, there were about forty men and boys still
+in the mine, most of them in the gallery off from the main drift. Keith
+was running over in his mind the levels. His face was a study, and the
+crowd about him watched him closely, as if to catch any ray of hope that
+he might hold out. As he reflected, his face grew whiter. Down the slant
+from the mine came the roar of the water. It was a desperate chance.
+
+Half turning, he glanced at the white, stricken faces about him.
+
+"It is barely possible some of the men may still be alive. There are two
+elevations. I am going down to see."
+
+At the words, the sound through the crowd hushed suddenly.
+
+"Na, th' ben't one alive," said an old miner, contentiously.
+
+The murmur began again.
+
+"I am going down to see," said Keith. "If one or two men will come with
+me, it will increase the chances of getting to them. If not, I am going
+alone. But I don't want any one who has a family."
+
+A dead silence fell, then three or four young fellows began to push
+their way through the crowd, amid expostulations of some of the women
+and the urging of others.
+
+Some of the women seized them and held on to them.
+
+"There are one or two places where men may have been able to keep their
+heads above water if it has not filled the drift, and that is what I am
+going to see," said Keith, preparing to descend.
+
+"My brother's down there and I'll go," said a young light-haired fellow
+with a pale face. He belonged to the night shift.
+
+"I ain't got any family," said a small, grizzled man. He had a thin
+black band on the sleeve of his rusty, brown coat.
+
+Several others now came forward, amid mingled expostulations and
+encouragement; but Keith took the first two, and they prepared to enter.
+The younger man took off his silver watch, with directions to a friend
+to send it to his sister if he did not come back. The older man said a
+few words to a bystander. They were about a woman's grave on the
+hillside. Keith took off his watch and gave it to one of the men, with a
+few words scribbled on a leaf from a memorandum-book, and the next
+moment the three volunteers, amid a deathly silence, entered the mine.
+
+Long before they reached the end of the ascent to the shaft they could
+hear the water gurgling and lapping against the sides as it whirled
+through the gallery below them. As they reached the water, Keith let
+himself down into it. The water took him to about his waist and
+was rising.
+
+"It has not filled the drift yet," he said, and started ahead. He gave a
+halloo; but there was no sound in answer, only the reverberation of his
+voice. The other men called to him to wait and talk it over. The
+strangeness of the situation appalled them. It might well have awed a
+strong man; but Keith waded on. The older man plunged after him, the
+younger clinging to the cage for a second in a panic. The lights were
+out in a moment. Wading and plunging forward through the water, which
+rose in places to his neck, and feeling his way by the sides of the
+drift, Keith waded forward through the pitch-darkness. He stopped at
+times to halloo; but there was no reply, only the strange hollow sound
+of his own voice as it was thrown back on him, or died almost before
+leaving his throat. He had almost made up his mind that further attempt
+was useless and that he might as well turn back, when he thought he
+heard a faint sound ahead. With another shout he plunged forward again,
+and the next time he called he heard a cry of joy, and he pushed ahead
+again, shouting to them to come to him.
+
+Keith found most of the men huddled together on the first level, in a
+state of panic. Some of them were whimpering and some were praying
+fervently, whilst a few were silent, in a sort of dazed bewilderment.
+All who were working in that part of the mine were there, they said,
+except three men, Bill Bluffy and a man named Hennson and his boy, who
+had been cut off in the far end of the gallery and who must have been
+drowned immediately, they told Keith.
+
+"They may not be," said Keith. "There is one point as high as this. I
+shall go on and see."
+
+The men endeavored to dissuade him. It was "a useless risk of life,"
+they assured him; "the others must have been swept away immediately. The
+water had come so sudden. Besides, the water was rising, and it might
+even now be too late to get out." But Keith was firm, and ordering them
+back in charge of the two men who had come in with him, he pushed on
+alone. He knew that the water was still rising, though, he hoped,
+slowly. He had no voice to shout now, but he prayed with all his might,
+and that soothed and helped him. Presently the water was a little
+shallower. It did not come so high up on him. He knew from this that he
+must be reaching the upper level. Now and then he spoke Bluffy's and
+Hennson's names, lest in the darkness he should pass them.
+
+Presently, as he stopped for a second to take breath, he thought he
+heard another sound besides the gurgling of the water as it swirled
+about the timbers. He listened intently.
+
+It was the boy's voice. "Hold me tight, father. Don't leave me."
+
+Then he heard another voice urging him to go. "You can't do any good
+staying; try it." But Hennson was refusing.
+
+"Hold on. I won't leave you."
+
+"Hennson! Bluffy!" shouted Keith, or tried to shout, for his voice went
+nowhere; but his heart was bounding now, and he plunged on. Presently he
+was near enough to catch their words. The father was praying, and the
+boy was following him.
+
+"'Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven,'" Keith heard him say.
+
+"Hennson!" he cried again.
+
+From the darkness he heard a voice.
+
+"Who is that? Is that any one?"
+
+"It is I,--Mr. Keith,--Hennson. Come quick, all of you; you can get out.
+Cheer up."
+
+A cry of joy went up.
+
+"I can't leave my boy," called the man.
+
+"Bring him on your back," said Keith. "Come on, Bluffy."
+
+"I can't," said Bluffy. "I'm hurt. My leg is broke."
+
+"God have mercy!" cried Keith, and waded on.
+
+After a moment more he was up with the man, feeling for him in the
+darkness, and asking how he was hurt.
+
+They told him that the rush of the water had thrown him against a timber
+and hurt his leg and side.
+
+"Take the boy," said Bluffy, "and go on; leave me here."
+
+The boy began to cry.
+
+"No," said Keith; "I will take you, too: Hennson can take the boy. Can
+you walk at all?"
+
+"I don't think so."
+
+Keith made Hennson take the boy and hold on to him on one side, and
+slipping his arm around the injured man, he lifted him and they started
+back. He had put new courage into them, and the force of the current was
+in their favor. They passed the first high level, where he had found the
+others. When they reached a point where the water was too deep for the
+boy, Keith made the father take him on his shoulder, and they waded on
+through the blackness. The water was now almost up to his chin, and he
+grew so tired under his burden that he began to think they should never
+get out; but he fought against it and kept on, steadying himself against
+the timbers. He knew that if he went down it was the end. Many thoughts
+came to him of the past. He banished them and tried to speak words of
+encouragement, though he could scarcely hear himself.
+
+"Shout," he said hoarsely; and the boy shouted, though it was somewhat
+feeble.
+
+A moment later, he gave a shout of an entirely different kind.
+
+"There is a light!" he cried.
+
+The sound revived Keith's fainting energies, and he tried to muster his
+flagging strength. The boy shouted again, and in response there came
+back, strangely flattened, the shrill cry of a woman. Keith staggered
+forward with Bluffy, at times holding himself up by the side-timbers. He
+was conscious of a light and of voices, but was too exhausted to know
+more. If he could only keep the man and the boy above water until
+assistance came! He summoned his last atom of strength.
+
+"Hold tight to the timbers, Hennson," he cried; "I am going."
+
+The rest was a confused dream. He was conscious for a moment of the
+weight being lifted from him, and he was sinking into the water as if
+into a soft couch. He thought some one clutched him, but he knew
+nothing more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Terpsichore was out on the street when the rumor of the accident reached
+her. Any accident always came home to her, and she was prompt to do what
+she could to help, in any case. But this was Mr. Keith's mine, and rumor
+had it that he was among the lost. Terpsichore was not attired for such
+an emergency; when she went on the streets, she still wore some of her
+old finery, though it was growing less and less of late. She always
+acted quickly. Calling to a barkeeper who had come to his front door on
+hearing the news, to bring her brandy immediately, she dashed into a
+dry-goods store near by and got an armful of blankets, and when the
+clerk, a stranger just engaged in the store, made some question about
+charging them to her, she tore off her jewelled watch and almost flung
+it at the man.
+
+"Take that, idiot! Men are dying," she said. "I have not time to box
+your jaws." And snatching up the blankets, she ran out, stopped a
+passing buggy, and flinging them into it, sprang in herself. With a nod
+of thanks to the barkeeper, who had brought out several bottles of
+brandy, she snatched the reins from the half-dazed driver, and heading
+the horse up the street that led out toward the mine, she lashed him
+into a gallop. She arrived at the scene of the accident just before the
+first men rescued reappeared. She learned of Keith's effort to save
+them. She would have gone into the mine herself had she not been
+restrained. Just then the men came out.
+
+The shouts and cries of joy that greeted so unexpected a deliverance
+drowned everything else for a few moments; but as man after man was met
+and received half dazed into the arms of his family and friends, the
+name of Keith began to be heard on all sides. One voice, however, was
+more imperative than the others; one figure pressed to the front--that
+of the gayly dressed woman who had just been comforting and encouraging
+the weeping women about the mine entrance.
+
+"Where is Mr. Keith?" she demanded of man after man.
+
+The men explained. "He went on to try and find three more men who are
+down there--Bluffy and Hennson and his boy."
+
+"Who went with him?"
+
+"No one. He went alone."
+
+"And you men let him go?"
+
+"We could not help it. He insisted. We tried to make him come with us."
+
+"You cowards!" she cried, tearing off her wrap. "Of course, he insisted,
+for he is a _man_. Had one woman been down there, she would not have let
+him go alone." She sprang over the fencing rope as lightly as a deer,
+and started toward the entrance. A cry broke from the crowd.
+
+"She's going! Stop her! She's crazy! Catch her!"
+
+Several men sprang over the rope and started after her. Hearing them,
+Terpsichore turned. With outstretched arms spread far apart and blazing
+eyes, she faced them.
+
+"If any man tries to stop me, I will kill him on the spot, as God
+lives!" she cried, snatching up a piece of iron bar that lay near by. "I
+am going to find that man, dead or alive. If there is one of you man
+enough to come with me, come on. If not, I will go alone."
+
+"I will go with you!" A tall, sallow-faced man who had just come up
+pushed through the throng and overtook her. "You stay here; I will go."
+It was Tib Drummond, the preacher. He was still panting. The girl hardly
+noticed him. She waved him aside and dashed on.
+
+A dozen men offered to go if she would come back.
+
+"No; I shall go with you," she said; and knowing that every moment was
+precious, and thinking that the only way to pacify her was to make the
+attempt, the men yielded, and a number of them entered the mine with
+her, the lank preacher among them.
+
+They had just reached the bottom when the faint outline of something
+black was seen in the glimmer that their lights threw in the distance.
+Terpy, with a cry, dashed forward, and was just in time to catch Keith
+as he sank beneath the black water.
+
+When the rescuing party with their burdens reached the surface once
+more, the scene was one to revive even a flagging heart; but Keith and
+Bluffy were both too far gone to know anything of it.
+
+The crowd, which up to this time had been buzzing with the excitement of
+the reaction following the first rescue, suddenly hushed down to an awed
+silence as Keith and Bluffy were brought out and were laid limp and
+unconscious on a blanket, which Terpsichore had snatched from a man in
+the front of the others. Many women pressed forward to offer assistance,
+but the girl waved them back.
+
+"A doctor!" she cried, and reaching for a brandy-bottle, she pressed it
+first to Keith's lips. Turning to Drummond, the preacher, who stood
+gaunt and dripping above her, she cried fiercely: "Pray, man; if you
+ever prayed, pray now. Pray, and if you save 'em, I'll leave town. I
+swear before God I will. Tell Him so."
+
+But the preacher needed no urging. Falling on his knees, he prayed as
+possibly he had never prayed before. In a few moments Keith began to
+come to. But Bluffy was still unconscious, and a half-hour later the
+Doctor pronounced him past hope.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was some time before Keith was able to rise from his bed, and during
+this period a number of events had taken place affecting him, and, more
+or less, affecting New Leeds. Among these was the sale of Mr. Plume's
+paper to a new rival which had recently been started in the place, and
+the departure of Mr. Plume (to give his own account of the matter) "to
+take a responsible position upon a great metropolitan journal." He was
+not a man, he said, "to waste his divine talents in the attempt to carry
+on his shoulders the blasted fortunes of a 'bursted boom,' when the
+world was pining for the benefit of his ripe experience." Another
+account of the same matter was that rumor had begun to connect Mr.
+Plume's name with the destruction of the Wickersham mine and the
+consequent disaster in the Rawson mine. His paper, with brazen
+effrontery, had declared that the accident in the latter was due to the
+negligence of the management. This was too much for the people of New
+Leeds in their excited condition. Bluffy was dead; but Hennson, the man
+whom Keith had rescued, had stated that they had cut through into a
+shaft when the water broke in on them, and an investigation having been
+begun, not only of this matter, but of the previous explosion in the
+Wickersham mine, Mr. Plume had sold out his paper hastily and shaken the
+dust of New Leeds from his feet.
+
+Keith knew nothing of this until it was all over. He was very ill for a
+time, and but for the ministrations of Dr. Balsam, who came up from
+Ridgely to look after him, and the care of a devoted nurse in the person
+of Terpsichore, this history might have ended then. Terpsichore had,
+immediately after Keith's accident, closed her establishment and devoted
+herself to his care. There were many other offers of similar service,
+for New Leeds was now a considerable town, and Keith might have had a
+fair proportion of the gentler sex to minister to him; but Dr. Balsam,
+to whom Terpsichore had telegraphed immediately after Keith's rescue,
+had, after his first interview with her in the sick-room, decided in
+favor of the young woman.
+
+"She has the true instinct," said the Doctor to himself. "She knows when
+to let well enough alone, and holds her tongue."
+
+Thus, when Keith was able to take notice again, he found himself in good
+hands.
+
+A few days after he was able to get up, Keith received a telegram
+summoning him to New York to meet the officers of the company. As weak
+as he was, he determined to go, and, against the protestations of doctor
+and nurse, he began to make his preparations.
+
+Just before Keith left, a visitor was announced, or rather announced
+himself; for Squire Rawson followed hard upon his knock at the door. His
+heavy boots, he declared, "were enough to let anybody know he was
+around, and give 'em time to stop anything they was ashamed o' doin'."
+
+The squire had come over, as he said, "to hear about things." It was the
+first time he had seen Keith since the accident, though, after he had
+heard of it, he had written and invited Keith to come "and rest up a bit
+at his house."
+
+When the old man learned of the summons that had come to Keith, he relit
+his pipe and puffed a moment in silence.
+
+"Reckon they'll want to know why they ain't been a realizin' of their
+dreams?" he said, with a twinkle in his half-shut eyes. "Ever notice,
+when a man is huntin', if he gits what he aims at, it's himself; but if
+he misses, it's the blamed old gun?"
+
+Keith smiled. He had observed that phenomenon.
+
+"Well, I suspicionate they'll be findin' fault with their gun. I have
+been a-watchin' o' the signs o' the times. If they do, don't you say
+nothin' to them about it; but I'm ready to take back my part of the
+property, and I've got a leetle money I might even increase my
+herd with."
+
+The sum he mentioned made Keith open his eyes.
+
+"When hard times comes," continued the old man, after enjoying Keith's
+surprise, "I had rather have my money in land than in one of these here
+banks. I has seen wild-cat money and Confederate money, and land's land.
+I don't know that it is much of a compliment to say that I has more
+confidence in you than I has in these here men what has come down from
+nobody-knows-where to open a bank on nobody-knows-what."
+
+Keith expressed his appreciation of the compliment, but thought that
+they must have something to bank on.
+
+"Oh, they've got something," admitted the capitalist. "But you know what
+it is. They bank on brass and credulity. That's what I calls it."
+
+The old man's face clouded. "I had been puttin' that by for Phrony," he
+said. "But she didn't want it. _My_ money warn't good enough for her.
+Some day she'll know better."
+
+Keith waited for his humor to pass.
+
+"I won't ever do nothin' for her; but if ever you see her, I'd like you
+to help her out if she needs it," he said huskily.
+
+Keith promised faithfully that he would.
+
+That afternoon Terpy knocked at his door, and came in with that mingled
+shyness and boldness which was characteristic of her.
+
+Keith offered her a chair and began to thank her for having saved his
+life.
+
+"Well, I am always becoming indebted to you anew for saving my life--"
+
+"I didn't come for that," declared the girl. "I didn't save your life. I
+just went down to do what I could to help you. You know how that mine
+got flooded?"
+
+"I do," said Keith.
+
+"They done it to do you," she said; "and they made Bill believe it was
+to hurt Wickersham. Bill's dead now, an' I don't want you to think he
+had anything against you." She began to cry.
+
+All this was new to Keith, and he said so.
+
+"Well, you won't say anything about what I said about Bill. J. Quincy
+made him think 'twas against Wickersham, and he was that drunk he didn't
+know what a fool they was makin' of him.--You are going away?" she
+said suddenly.
+
+"Oh, only for a very little while--I am going off about a little
+business for a short time. I expect to be back very soon."
+
+"Ah! I heard--I am glad to hear that you are coming back." She was
+manifestly embarrassed, and Keith was wondering more and more what she
+wanted of him. "I just wanted to say good-by. I am going away." She was
+fumbling at her wrap. "And to tell you I have changed my business. I'm
+not goin' to keep a dance-house any longer."
+
+"I am glad of that," said Keith, and then stuck fast again.
+
+"I don't think a girl ought to keep a dance-house or a bank?"
+
+"No; I agree with you. What are you going to do?"
+
+"I don't know; I thought of trying a milliner. I know right smart about
+hats; but I'd wear all the pretty ones and give all the ugly ones away,"
+she said, with a poor little smile. "And it might interfere with Mrs.
+Gaskins, and she is a widder. So I thought I'd go away. I thought of
+being a nurse--I know a little about that. I used to be about the
+hospital at my old home, and I've had some little experience since." She
+was evidently seeking his advice.
+
+"You saved my life," said Keith. "Dr. Balsam says you are a born nurse."
+
+She put this by without comment, and Keith went on.
+
+"Where was your home?"
+
+"Grofton."
+
+"Grofton? You mean in England? In the West Country?"
+
+She nodded. "Yes. I was the girl the little lady gave the doll to. You
+were there. Don't you remember? I ran away with it. I have it now--a
+part of it. They broke it up; but I saved the body."
+
+Keith's eyes opened wide.
+
+"That Lois Huntington gave it to?"
+
+"Yes. I heard you were going to be married?" she said suddenly.
+
+"I! Married! No! No such good luck for me." His laugh had an unexpected
+tone of bitterness in it. She gave him a searching glance in the dusk,
+and presently began again haltingly.
+
+"I want you to know I am never going back to that any more."
+
+"I am glad to hear it."
+
+"You were the first to set me to thinkin' about it."
+
+"I!"
+
+"Yes; I want to live straight, and I'm goin' to."
+
+"I am sure you are, and I cannot tell you how glad I am," he said
+cordially.
+
+"Yes, thankee." She was looking down, picking shyly at the fringe on her
+wrap. "And I want you to know 'twas you done it. I have had a hard
+life--you don't know how hard--ever since I was a little bit of a
+gal--till I run away from home. And then 'twas harder. And they all
+treated me's if I was just a--a dog, and the worst kind of a dog. So I
+lived like a dog. I learned how to bite, and then they treated me some
+better, because they found I would bite if they fooled with me. And then
+I learned what fools and cowards men were, and I used 'em. I used to
+love to play 'em, and I done it. I used to amuse 'em for money and hold
+'em off. But I knew sometime I'd die like a dog as I lived like one--and
+then you came--." She paused and looked away out of the window, and
+after a gulp went on again: "They preached at me for dancin'. But I
+don't think there's any harm dancin'. And I love it better'n anything
+else in the worl'."
+
+"I do not, either," said Keith.
+
+"You was the only one as treated me as if I was--some'n' I warn't. I
+fought against you and tried to drive you out, but you stuck, and I knew
+then I was beat. I didn't know 'twas you when I--made such a fool of
+myself that time--."
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"Well, I certainly did not know it was you."
+
+"No--I wanted you to know that," she went on gravely, "because--because,
+if I had, I wouldn' 'a' done it--for old times' sake." She felt for her
+handkerchief, and not finding it readily, suddenly caught up the bottom
+of her skirt and wiped her eyes with it as she might have done when a
+little girl.
+
+Keith tried to comfort her with words of assurance, the tone of which
+was at least consoling.
+
+"I always was a fool about crying--an' I was thinkin' about Bill," she
+said brokenly. "Good-by." She wrung his hand, turned, and walked rapidly
+out of the room, leaving Keith with a warm feeling about his heart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE DIRECTORS' MEETING
+
+Keith found, on his arrival in New York to meet his directors, that a
+great change had taken place in business circles since his visit there
+when he was getting up his company.
+
+Even Norman, at whose office Keith called immediately on his arrival,
+appeared more depressed than Keith had ever imagined he could be. He
+looked actually care-worn.
+
+As they started off to attend the meeting, Norman warned Keith that the
+meeting might be unpleasant for him, but urged him to keep cool, and not
+mind too much what might be said to him.
+
+"I told you once, you remember, that men are very unreasonable when they
+are losing." He smiled gloomily.
+
+Keith told him of old Rawson's offer.
+
+"You may need it," said Norman.
+
+When Keith and Norman arrived at the office of the company, they found
+the inner office closed. Norman, being a director, entered at once, and
+finally the door opened and "Mr. Keith" was invited in. As he entered, a
+director was showing two men out of the room by a side door, and Keith
+had a glimpse of the back of one of them. The tall, thin figure
+suggested to him Mr. J. Quincy Plume; but he was too well dressed to be
+Mr. Plume, and Keith put the matter from his mind as merely an odd
+resemblance. The other person he did not see.
+
+Keith's greeting was returned, as it struck him, somewhat coldly by
+most of them. Only two of the directors shook hands with him.
+
+It was a meeting which Keith never forgot. He soon found that he had
+need of all of his self-control. He was cross-examined by Mr. Kestrel.
+It was evident that it was believed that he had wasted their money, if
+he had not done worse. The director sat with a newspaper in his lap, to
+which, from time to time, he appeared to refer. From the line of the
+questioning, Keith soon recognized the source of his information.
+
+"You have been misled," Keith said coldly, in reply to a question. "I
+desire to know the authority for your statement."
+
+"I must decline," was the reply. "I think I may say that it is an
+authority which is unimpeachable. You observe that it is one who knows
+what he is speaking of?" He gave a half-glance about him at his
+colleagues.
+
+"A spy?" demanded Keith, coldly, his eye fixed on the other.
+
+"No, sir. A man of position, a man whose sources of knowledge even you
+would not question. Why, this has been charged in the public prints
+without denial!" he added triumphantly.
+
+"It has been charged in one paper," said Keith, "a paper which every one
+knows is for sale and has been bought--by your rival."
+
+"It is based not only on the statement of the person to whom I have
+alluded, but is corroborated by others."
+
+"By what others?" inquired Keith.
+
+"By another," corrected Mr. Kestrel.
+
+"That only proves that there are two men who are liars," said Keith,
+slowly. "I know but two men who I believe would have been guilty of such
+barefaced and brazen falsehoods. Shall I name them?"
+
+"If you choose."
+
+"They are F.C. Wickersham and a hireling of his, Mr. J. Quincy Plume."
+
+There was a stir among the directors. Keith had named both men. It was a
+fortunate shot.
+
+"By Jove! Brought down a bird with each barrel," said Mr. Yorke, who was
+one of the directors, to another in an undertone.
+
+Keith proceeded to give the history of the mine and of its rival mine,
+the Wickersham property.
+
+During the cross-examination Norman sat a silent witness. Beyond a look
+of satisfaction when Keith made his points clearly or countered on his
+antagonist with some unanswerable fact, he had taken no part in the
+colloquy. Up to this time Keith had not referred to him or even looked
+at him, but he glanced at him now, and the expression on his face
+decided Keith.
+
+"Mr. Wentworth, there, knows the facts. He knows F.C. Wickersham as well
+as I do, and he has been on the ground."
+
+There was a look of surprise on the face of nearly every one present.
+How could he dare to say it!
+
+"Oh, I guess we all know him," said one, to relieve the tension.
+
+Norman bowed his assent.
+
+Mr. Kestrel shifted his position.
+
+"Never mind Mr. Wentworth; it's _your_ part in the transaction that we
+are after," he said insolently.
+
+The blood rushed to Keith's face; but a barely perceptible glance from
+Norman helped him to hold himself in check. The director glanced down at
+the newspaper.
+
+"How about that accident in our mine? Some of us have thought that it
+was carelessness on the part of the local management. It has been
+charged that proper inspection would have indicated that the flooding of
+an adjacent mine should have given warning; in fact, had given warning."
+He half glanced around at his associates, and then fastened his eyes
+on Keith.
+
+Keith's eyes met his unflinchingly and held them. He drew in his breath
+with a sudden sound, as a man might who has received a slap full in the
+face. Beyond this, there was no sound. Keith sat for a moment in
+silence. The blow had dazed him. In the tumult of his thought, as it
+returned, it seemed as if the noise of the stricken crowd was once more
+about him, weeping women and moaning men; and he was descending into the
+blackness of death. Once more the roar of that rushing water was in his
+ears; he was once more plunging through the darkness; once more he was
+being borne down into its depths; again he was struggling, gasping,
+floundering toward the light; once more he returned to consciousness, to
+find himself surrounded by eyes full of sympathy--of devotion. The eyes
+changed suddenly. The present came back to him. Hostile eyes were
+about him.
+
+Keith rose from his chair slowly, and slowly turned from his questioner
+toward the others.
+
+"Gentlemen, I have nothing further to say to you. I have the honor to
+resign my position under you."
+
+"Resign!" exclaimed the director who had been badgering him. "Resign
+your position!" He leaned back in his chair and laughed.
+
+Keith turned on him so quickly that he pushed his chair back as if he
+were afraid he might spring across the table on him.
+
+"Yes. Resign!" Keith was leaning forward across the table now, resting
+his weight on one hand. "Anything to terminate our association. I am no
+longer in your employ, Mr. Kestrel." His eyes had suddenly blazed, and
+held Mr. Kestrel's eyes unflinchingly. His voice was calm, but had the
+coldness of a steel blade.
+
+There was a movement among the directors. They shifted uneasily in their
+chairs, and several of them pushed them back. They did not know what
+might happen. Keith was the incarnation of controlled passion. Mr.
+Kestrel seemed to shrink up within himself. Norman broke the silence.
+
+"I do not wonder that Mr. Keith should feel aggrieved," he said, with
+feeling. "I have held off from taking part in this interview up to the
+present, because I promised to do so, and because I felt that Mr. Keith
+was abundantly able to take care of himself; but I think that he has
+been unjustly dealt with and has been roughly handled."
+
+Keith's only answer was a slow wave of the arm in protest toward Norman
+to keep clear of the contest and leave it to him. He was standing quite
+straight now, his eyes still resting upon Mr. Kestrel's face, with a
+certain watchfulness in them, as if he were expecting him to stir again,
+and were ready to spring on him should he do so.
+
+Unheeding him, Norman went on.
+
+"I know that much that he says is true." Keith looked at him quickly,
+his form stiffening. "And I believe that _all_ that he says is true,"
+continued Norman; "and I am unwilling to stand by longer and see this
+method of procedure carried on."
+
+Keith bowed. There flashed across his mind the picture of a boy rushing
+up the hill to his rescue as he stood by a rock-pile on a hillside
+defending himself against overwhelming assailants, and his
+face softened.
+
+"Well, I don't propose to be dictated to as to how I shall conduct my
+own business," put in Mr. Kestrel, in a sneering voice. When the spell
+of Keith's gaze was lifted from him he had recovered.
+
+If Keith heard him now, he gave no sign of it, nor was it needed, for
+Norman turned upon him.
+
+"I think you will do whatever this board directs," he said, with almost
+as much contempt as Keith had shown.
+
+He took up the defence of the management to such good purpose that a
+number of the other directors went over to his side.
+
+They were willing to acquit Mr. Keith of blame, they said, and to show
+their confidence in him. They thought it would be necessary to have some
+one to look after the property and prevent further loss until better
+times should come, and they thought it would be best to get Mr. Keith to
+remain in charge for the present.
+
+During this time Keith had remained motionless and silent, except to bow
+his acknowledgments to Norman. He received their new expression of
+confidence in silence, until the discussion had ceased and the majority
+were on his side. Then he faced Mr. Yorke.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said, "I am obliged to you for your expression; but it
+comes too late. Nothing on earth could induce me ever again to assume a
+position in which I could be subjected to what I have gone through this
+morning. I will never again have any business association with--" he
+turned and looked at Mr. Kestrel--"Mr. Kestrel, or those who have
+sustained him."
+
+Mr. Kestrel shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, as to that," he laughed, "you need have no trouble. I shall get out
+as soon as I can. I have no more desire to associate with you than you
+have with me. All I want to do is to save what you mis--"
+
+Keith's eyes turned on him quietly.
+
+"--what I was misled into putting into your sink-hole down there. You
+may remember that you told me, when I went in, that you would guarantee
+me all I put in." His voice rose into a sneer.
+
+"Oh, no. None of that, none of that!" interrupted Norman, quickly. "You
+may remember, Mr. Kestrel,--?"
+
+But Keith interrupted him with a wave of his hand.
+
+"I do remember. I have a good memory, Mr. Kestrel."
+
+"That was all done away with," insisted Norman, his arm outstretched
+toward Mr. Kestrel. "You remember that an offer was made you of your
+input and interest, and you declined?"
+
+"I am speaking to _him_," said Mr. Kestrel, not turning his eyes from
+Keith.
+
+"I renew that offer now," said Keith, coldly.
+
+"Then that's all right." Mr. Kestrel sat back in his chair. "I accept
+your proposal, principal and interest."
+
+Protests and murmurs went around the board, but Mr. Kestrel did not heed
+them. Leaning forward, he seized a pen, and drawing a sheet of paper to
+him, began to scribble a memorandum of the terms, which, when finished,
+he pushed across the table to Keith.
+
+Keith took it against Norman's protest, and when he had read it, picked
+up a pen and signed his name firmly.
+
+"Here, witness it," said Mr. Kestrel to his next neighbor. "If any of
+the rest of you want to save your bones, you had better come in."
+
+Several of the directors agreed with him.
+
+Though Norman protested, Keith accepted their proposals, and a paper was
+drawn up which most of those present signed. It provided that a certain
+time should be given Keith in which to raise money to make good his
+offer, and arrangements were made provisionally to wind up the present
+company, and to sell out and transfer its rights to a new organization.
+Some of the directors prudently insisted on reserving the right to
+withdraw their proposals should they change their minds. It may be
+stated, however, that they had no temptation to do so. Times rapidly
+grew worse instead of better.
+
+But Keith had occasion to know how sound was Squire Rawson's judgment
+when, a little later, another of the recurrent waves of depression swept
+over the country, and several banks in New Leeds went down, among them
+the bank in which old Rawson had had his money. The old man came up to
+town to remind Keith of his wisdom.
+
+"Well, what do you think of brass and credulity now?" he demanded.
+
+"Let me know when you begin to prophesy against me," said Keith,
+laughing.
+
+"'Tain't no prophecy. It's jest plain sense. Some folks has it and some
+hasn't. When sense tells you a thing, hold on to it.
+
+"Well, you jest go ahead and git things in shape, and don't bother about
+me. No use bein' in a hurry, neither. I have observed that when times
+gits bad, they generally gits worse. It's sorter like a fever; you've
+got to wait for the crisis and jest kind o' nurse 'em along. But I don't
+reckon that coal is goin' to run away. It has been there some time,
+accordin' to what that young man used to say, and if it was worth what
+they gin for it a few years ago, it's goin' to be worth more a few years
+hence. When a wheel keeps turnin', the bottom's got to come up sometime,
+and if we can stick we'll be there. I think you and I make a pretty good
+team. You let me furnish the ideas and you do the work, and we'll come
+out ahead o' some o' these Yankees yet. Jest hold your horses; keep
+things in good shape, and be ready to start when the horn blows. It's
+goin' to blow sometime."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The clouds that had begun to rest in Norman Wentworth's eyes and the
+lines that had written themselves in his face were not those of business
+alone. Fate had brought him care of a deeper and sadder kind. Though
+Keith did not know it till later, the little rift within the lute, that
+he had felt, but had not understood, that first evening when he dined at
+Norman's house, had widened, and Norman's life was beginning to be
+overcast with the saddest of all clouds. Miss Abigail's keen intuition
+had discovered the flaw. Mrs. Wentworth had fallen a victim to her
+folly. Love of pleasure, love of admiration, love of display, had become
+a part of Mrs. Wentworth's life, and she was beginning to reap the
+fruits of her ambition.
+
+For a time it was mighty amusing to her. To shop all morning, make the
+costliest purchases; to drive on the avenue or in the Park of an
+afternoon with the latest and most stylish turnout, in the handsomest
+toilet; to give the finest dinners; to spend the evening in the most
+expensive box; to cause men to open their eyes with admiration, and to
+make women grave with envy: all this gave her delight for a time--so
+much delight that she could not forego it even for her husband. Norman
+was so occupied of late that he could not go about with her as much as
+he had done. His father's health had failed, and then he had died,
+throwing all the business on Norman.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham had returned home from abroad not long before--alone.
+Rumor had connected his name while abroad with some woman--an unknown
+and very pretty woman had "travelled with him." Ferdy, being rallied by
+his friends about it, shook his head. "Must have been some one else."
+Grinnell Rhodes, who had met him, said she declared herself his wife.
+Ferdy's denial was most conclusive--he simply laughed.
+
+To Mrs. Wentworth he had told a convincing tale. It was a slander.
+Norman was against him, he knew, but she, at least, would believe he had
+been maligned.
+
+Wickersham had waited for such a time in the affairs of Mrs. Wentworth.
+He had watched for it; striven to bring it about in many almost
+imperceptible ways; had tendered her sympathy; had been ready with help
+as she needed it; till he began to believe that he was making some
+impression. It was, of all the games he played, the dearest just now to
+his heart. It had a double zest. It had appeared to the world that
+Norman Wentworth had defeated him. He had always defeated him--first as
+a boy, then at college, and later when he had borne off the prize for
+which Ferdy had really striven. Ferdy would now show who was the real
+victor. If Louise Caldwell had passed him by for Norman Wentworth, he
+would prove that he still possessed her heart.
+
+It was not long, therefore, before society found a delightful topic of
+conversation,--that silken-clad portion of society which usually deals
+with such topics,--the increasing intimacy between Ferdy Wickersham and
+Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+Tales were told of late visits; of strolls in the dusk of evenings on
+unfrequented streets; of little suppers after the opera; of all the
+small things that deviltry can suggest and malignity distort. Wickersham
+cared little for having his name associated with that of any one, and he
+was certainly not going to be more careful for another's name than for
+his own. He had grown more reckless since his return, but it had not
+injured him with his set. It flattered his pride to be credited with
+the conquest of so cold and unapproachable a Diana as Louise Wentworth.
+
+"What was more natural?" said Mrs. Nailor. After all, Ferdy Wickersham
+was her real romance, and she was his, notwithstanding all the
+attentions he had paid Alice Yorke. "Besides," said the amiable lady,
+"though Norman Wentworth undoubtedly lavishes large sums on his wife,
+and gives her the means to gratify her extravagant tastes, I have
+observed that he is seen quite as much with Mrs. Lancaster as with her,
+and any woman of spirit will resent this. You need not tell me that he
+would be so complacent over all that driving and strolling and
+box-giving that Ferdy does for her if he did not find his divertisement
+elsewhere."
+
+Mrs. Nailor even went to the extent of rallying Ferdy on the subject.
+
+"You are a naughty boy. You have no right to go around here making women
+fall in love with you as you do," she said, with that pretended reproof
+which is a real encouragement.
+
+"One might suppose I was like David, who slew his tens of thousands,"
+answered Ferdy. "Which of my victims are you attempting to rescue?"
+
+"You know?"
+
+As Ferdy shook his head, she explained further.
+
+"I don't say that it isn't natural she should find you
+more--more--sympathetic than a man who is engrossed in business when he
+is not engrossed in dangling about a pair of blue eyes; but you ought
+not to do it. Think of her."
+
+"I thought you objected to my thinking of her?" said Mr. Wickersham,
+lightly.
+
+Mrs. Nailor tapped him with her fan to show her displeasure.
+
+"You are so provoking. Why won't you be serious?"
+
+"Serious? I never was more serious in my life. Suppose I tell you I
+think of her all the time?" He looked at her keenly, then broke into a
+laugh as he read her delight in the speech. "Don't you think I am
+competent to attend to my own affairs, even if Louise Caldwell is the
+soft and unsophisticated creature you would make her? I am glad you did
+not feel it necessary to caution me about her husband?" His eyes gave
+a flash.
+
+Mrs. Nailor hastened to put herself right--that is, on the side of the
+one present, for with her the absent was always in the wrong.
+
+Wickersham improved his opportunities with the ability of a veteran.
+Little by little he excited Mrs. Wentworth's jealousy. Norman, he said,
+necessarily saw a great deal of Alice Lancaster, for he was her business
+agent. It was, perhaps, not necessary for him to see her every day, but
+it was natural that he should. The arrow stuck and rankled. And later,
+at an entertainment, when she saw Norman laughing and enjoying himself
+in a group of old friends, among whom was Alice Lancaster, Mrs. Norman
+was on fire with suspicion, and her attitude toward Alice
+Lancaster changed.
+
+So, before Norman was aware of it, he found life completely changed for
+him. As a boatman on a strange shore in the night-time drifts without
+knowing of it, he, in the absorption of his business, drifted away from
+his old relation without marking the process. His wife had her life and
+friends, and he had his. He made at times an effort to recover the old
+relation, but she was too firmly held in the grip of the life she had
+chosen for him to get her back.
+
+His wife complained that he was out of sympathy with her, and he could
+not deny it. She resented this, and charged him with neglecting her. No
+man will stand such a charge, and Norman defended himself hotly.
+
+"I do not think it lies in your mouth to make such a charge," he said,
+with a flash in his eye. "I am nearly always at home when I am not
+necessarily absent. You can hardly say as much. I do not think my worst
+enemy would charge me with that. Even Ferdy Wickersham would not
+say that."
+
+She fired at the name.
+
+"You are always attacking my friends," she declared. "I think they are
+quite as good as yours."
+
+Norman turned away. He looked gloomily out of the window for a moment,
+and then faced his wife again.
+
+"Louise," he said gravely, "if I have been hard and unsympathetic, I
+have not meant to be. Why can't we start all over again? You are more
+than all the rest of the world to me. I will give up whatever you object
+to, and you give up what I object to. That is a good way to begin." His
+eyes had a look of longing in them, but Mrs. Wentworth did not respond.
+
+"You will insist on my giving up my friends," she said.
+
+"Your friends? I do not insist on your giving up any friend on earth.
+Mrs. Nailor and her like are not your friends. They spend their time
+tearing to pieces the characters of others when you are present, and
+your character when you are absent. Wickersham is incapable of being
+a friend."
+
+"You are always so unjust to him," said Mrs. Wentworth, warmly.
+
+"I am not unjust to him. I have known him all my life, and I tell you he
+would sacrifice any one and every one to his pleasure."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth began to defend him warmly, and so the quarrel ended
+worse than it had begun.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+MRS. CREAMER'S BALL
+
+The next few years passed as the experience of old Rawson had led him to
+predict. Fortunes went down; but Fortune's wheel is always turning, and,
+as the old countryman said, "those that could stick would come up on
+top again."
+
+Keith, however, had prospered. He had got the Rawson mine to running
+again, and even in the hardest times had been able to make it pay
+expenses. Other properties had failed and sold out, and had been bought
+in by Keith's supporters, when Wickersham once more appeared in New
+Leeds affairs. It was rumored that Wickersham was going to start again.
+Old Adam Rawson's face grew dark at the rumor. He said to Keith:
+
+"If that young man comes down here, it's him or me. I'm an old man, and
+I ain't got long to live; but I want to live to meet him once. If he's
+got any friends, they'd better tell him not to come." He sat glowering
+and puffing his pipe morosely.
+
+Keith tried to soothe him; but the old fellow had received a wound that
+knew no healing.
+
+"I know all you say, and I'm much obliged to you; but I can't accept it.
+It's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth with me. He has entered
+my home and struck me in the dark. Do you think I done all I have done
+jest for the money I was makin'! No; I wanted revenge. I have set on my
+porch of a night and seen her wanderin' about in them fureign cities,
+all alone, trampin' the streets--trampin', trampin', trampin'; tired,
+and, maybe, sick and hungry, not able to ask them outlandish folks for
+even a piece of bread--her that used to set on my knee and hug me with
+her little arms and call me granddad, and claim all the little calves
+for hers--jest the little ones; and that I've ridden many a mile over
+the mountains for, thinkin' how she was goin' to run out to meet me when
+I got home. And now even my old dog's dead--died after she went away.
+
+"No!" he broke out fiercely. "If he comes back here, it's him or me! By
+the Lord! if he comes back here, I'll pay him the debt I owe him. If
+she's his wife, I'll make her a widow, and if she ain't, I'll
+revenge her."
+
+He mopped the beads of sweat that had broken out on his brow, and
+without a word stalked out of the door.
+
+But Ferdy Wickersham had no idea of returning to New Leeds. He found New
+York quite interesting enough for him about this time.
+
+The breach between Norman and his wife had grown of late.
+
+Gossip divided the honors between them, and some said it was on Ferdy
+Wickersham's account; others declared that it was Mrs. Lancaster who had
+come between them. Yet others said it was a matter of money--that Norman
+had become tired of his wife's extravagance and had refused to stand it
+any longer.
+
+Keith knew vaguely of the trouble between Norman and his wife; but he
+did not know the extent of it, and he studiously kept up his friendly
+relations with her as well as with Norman. His business took him to New
+York from time to time, and he was sensible that the life there was
+growing more and more attractive for him. He was fitting into it too,
+and enjoying it more and more. He was like a strong swimmer who, used to
+battling in heavy waves, grows stronger with the struggle, and finds
+ever new enjoyment and courage in his endeavor. He felt that he was now
+quite a man of the world. He was aware that his point of view had
+changed and (a little) that he had changed. As flattering as was his
+growth in New Leeds, he had a much more infallible evidence of his
+success in the favor with which he was being received in New York.
+
+The favor that Mrs. Lancaster had shown Keith, and, much more, old Mrs.
+Wentworth's friendship, had a marked effect throughout their whole
+circle of acquaintance. That a man had been invited to these houses
+meant that he must be something. There were women who owned large
+houses, wore priceless jewels, cruised in their own yachts, had their
+own villas on ground as valuable as that which fronted the Roman Forum
+in old days, who would almost have licked the marble steps of those
+mansions to be admitted to sit at their dinner-tables and have their
+names appear in the Sunday issues of the newly established society
+journals among the blessed few. So, as soon as it appeared that Gordon
+was not only an acquaintance, but a friend of these critical leaders,
+women who had looked over his head as they drove up the avenue, and had
+just tucked their chins and lowered their eyelids when he had been
+presented, began to give him invitations. Among these was Mrs. Nailor.
+Truly, the world appeared warmer and kinder than Keith had thought.
+
+To be sure, it was at Mrs. Lancaster's that Mrs. Nailor met him, and
+Keith was manifestly on very friendly terms with the pretty widow. Even
+Mrs. Yorke, who was present on the occasion with her "heart," was
+impressively cordial to him. Mrs. Nailor had no idea of being left out.
+She almost gushed with affection, as she made a place beside her on
+a divan.
+
+"You do not come to see all your friends," she said, with her winningest
+smile and her most bird-like voice. "You appear to forget that you have
+other old friends in New York besides Mrs. Lancaster and Mrs. Yorke.
+Alice dear, you must not be selfish and engross all his time. You must
+let him come and see me, at least, sometimes. Yes?" This with a
+peculiarly innocent smile and tone.
+
+Keith declared that he was in New York very rarely, and Mrs. Lancaster,
+with a slightly heightened color, repudiated the idea that she had
+anything to do with his movements.
+
+"Oh, I hear of you here very often," declared Mrs. Nailor, roguishly. "I
+have a little bird that brings me all the news about my friends."
+
+"A little bird, indeed!" said Alice to herself, and to Keith later.
+"I'll be bound she has not. If she had a bird, the old cat would have
+eaten it."
+
+"You are going to the Creamers' ball, of course?" pursued Mrs. Nailor.
+
+No, Keith said: he was not going; he had been in New York only two days,
+and, somehow, his advent had been overlooked. He was always finding
+himself disappointed by discovering that New York was still a larger
+place than New Leeds.
+
+"Oh, but you must go! We must get you an invitation, mustn't we, Alice?"
+Mrs. Nailor was always ready to promise anything, provided she could
+make her engagement in partnership and then slip out and leave the
+performance to her friend.
+
+"Why, yes; there is not the least trouble about getting an invitation.
+Mrs. Nailor can get you one easily."
+
+Keith looked acquiescent.
+
+"No, my dear; you write the note. You know Mrs. Creamer every bit as
+well as I," protested Mrs. Nailor, "and I have already asked for at
+least a dozen. There are Mrs. Wyndham and Lady Stobbs, who were here
+last winter; and that charming Lord Huckster, who was at Newport last
+summer; and I don't know how many more--so you will have to get the
+invitation for Mr. Keith."
+
+Keith, with some amusement, declared that he did not wish any trouble
+taken; he had only said he would go because Mrs. Nailor had appeared to
+desire it so much.
+
+Next morning an invitation reached Keith,--he thought he knew through
+whose intervention,--and he accepted it.
+
+That evening, as Keith, about dusk, was going up the avenue on his way
+home, a young girl passed him, walking very briskly. She paused for a
+moment just ahead of him to give some money to a poor woman who, doubled
+up on the pavement in a black shawl, was grinding out from a wheezy
+little organ a thin, dirge-like strain.
+
+"Good evening. I hope you feel better to-day," Keith heard her say in a
+kind tone, though he lost all of the other's reply except the "God
+bless you."
+
+She was simply dressed in a plain, dark walking-suit, and something
+about her quick, elastic step and slim, trim figure as she sailed along,
+looking neither to the right nor to the left, attracted his attention.
+Her head was set on her shoulders in a way that gave her quite an air,
+and as she passed under a lamp the light showed the flash of a fine
+profile and an unusual face. She carried a parcel in her hand that might
+have been a roll of music, and from the lateness of the hour Keith
+fancied her a shop-girl on her way home, or possibly a music-teacher.
+
+Stirred by the glimpse of the refined face, and even more by the
+carriage of the little head under the dainty hat, Keith quickened his
+pace to obtain another glance at her. He had almost overtaken her when
+she stopped in front of a well-lighted window of a music-store. The
+light that fell on her face revealed to him a face of unusual beauty.
+Something about her graceful pose as, with her dark brows slightly
+knitted, she bent forward and scanned intently the pieces of music
+within, awakened old associations in Keith's mind, and sent him back to
+his boyhood at Elphinstone. And under an impulse, which he could better
+justify to himself than to her, he did a very audacious and improper
+thing. Taking off his hat, he spoke to her. She had been so absorbed
+that for a moment she did not comprehend that it was she he was
+addressing. Then, as it came to her that it was she to whom this
+stranger was speaking, she drew herself up and gave him a look of such
+withering scorn that Keith felt himself shrink. Next second, with her
+head high in the air, she had turned without a word and sped up the
+street, leaving Keith feeling very cheap and subdued.
+
+But that glance from dark eyes flashing with indignation had filled
+Keith with a sensation to which he had long been a stranger. Something
+about the simple dress, the high-bred face with its fine scorn;
+something about the patrician air of mingled horror and contempt, had
+suddenly cleaved through the worldly crust that had been encasing him
+for some time, and reaching his better self, awakened an emotion that he
+had thought gone forever. It was like a lightning-flash in the darkness.
+He knew that she had entered his life. His resolution was taken on the
+instant. He would meet her, and if she were what she looked to be--again
+Elphinstone and his youth swept into his mind. He already was conscious
+of a sense of protection; he felt curiously that he had the right to
+protect her. If he had addressed her, might not others do so? The
+thought made his blood boil. He almost wished that some one would
+attempt it, that he might assert his right to show her what he was, and
+thus retrieve himself in her eyes. Besides, he must know where she
+lived. So he followed her at a respectful distance till she ran up the
+steps of one of the better class of houses and disappeared within. He
+was too far off to be able to tell which house it was that she entered,
+but it was in the same block with Norman Wentworth's house.
+
+Keith walked the avenue that night for a long time, pondering how he
+should find and explain his conduct to the young music-teacher, for a
+music-teacher he had decided she must be. The next evening, too, he
+strolled for an hour on the avenue, scanning from a distance every fair
+passer-by, but he saw nothing of her.
+
+Mrs. Creamer's balls were, as Norman had once said, _the_ balls of the
+season. "Only the rich and the noble were expected."
+
+Mrs. Creamer's house was one of the great, new, brown-stone mansions
+which had been built within the past ten years upon "the avenue." It had
+cost a fortune. Within, it was so sumptuous that a special work has been
+"gotten up," printed, and published by subscription, of its "art
+treasures," furniture, and upholstery.
+
+Into this palatial residence--for flattery could not have called it a
+home--Keith was admitted, along with some hundreds of other guests.
+
+To-night it was filled with, not flowers exactly, but with floral
+decorations; for the roses and orchids were lost in the
+designs--garlands, circles, and banks formed of an infinite number
+of flowers.
+
+Mrs. Creamer, a large, handsome woman with good shoulders, stood just
+inside the great drawing-room. She was gorgeously attired and shone with
+diamonds until the eyes ached with her splendor. Behind her stood Mr.
+Creamer, looking generally mightily bored. Now and then he smiled and
+shook hands with the guests, at times drawing a friend out of the line
+back into the rear for a chat, then relapsing again into indifference
+or gloom.
+
+Keith was presented to Mrs. Creamer. She only nodded to him. Keith moved
+on. He soon discovered that a cordial greeting to a strange guest was no
+part of the convention in that society. One or two acquaintances spoke
+to him, but he was introduced to no one; so he sauntered about and
+entertained himself observing the people. The women were in their best,
+and it was good.
+
+Keith was passing from one room to another when he became aware that a
+man, who was standing quite still in the doorway, was, like himself,
+watching the crowd. His face was turned away; but something about the
+compact figure and firm chin was familiar to him. Keith moved to take a
+look at his face. It was Dave Dennison.
+
+He had a twinkle in his eye as he said: "Didn't expect to see me here?"
+
+"Didn't expect to see myself here," said Keith.
+
+"I'm one of the swells now"; and Dave glanced down at his expensive
+shirt-front and his evening suit with complacency. "Wouldn't Jake give a
+lot to have such a bosom as that? I think I look just as well as some of
+'em?" he queried, with a glance about him.
+
+Keith thought so too. "You are dressed for the part," he said. Keith's
+look of interest inspired him to go on.
+
+"You see, 'tain't like 'tis down with us, where you know everybody, and
+everything about him, to the number of drinks he can carry."
+
+"Well, what do you do here?" asked Keith, who was trying to follow Mr.
+Dennison's calm eye as, from time to time, it swept the rooms, resting
+here and there on a face or following a hand. He was evidently not
+merely a guest.
+
+"Detective."
+
+"A detective!" exclaimed Keith.
+
+Dave nodded. "Yes; watchin' the guests, to see they don't carry off each
+other. It is the new ones that puzzle us for a while," he added. "Now,
+there is a lady acting very mysteriously over there." His eye swept over
+the room and then visited, in that casual way it had, some one in the
+corner across the room. "I don't just seem to make her out. She looks
+all right--but--?"
+
+Keith followed the glance, and the blood rushed to his face and then
+surged back again to his heart, for there, standing against the wall,
+was the young girl whom he had spoken to on the street a few evenings
+before, who had given him so merited a rebuff. She was a
+patrician-looking creature and was standing quite alone, observing the
+scene with keen interest. Her girlish figure was slim; her eyes, under
+straight dark brows, were beautiful; and her mouth was almost perfect.
+Her fresh face expressed unfeigned interest, and though generally grave
+as she glanced about her, she smiled at times, evidently at her
+own thoughts.
+
+"I don't just make her out," repeated Mr. Dennison, softly. "I never saw
+her before, as I remember, and yet--!" He looked at her again.
+
+"Why, I do not see that she is acting at all mysteriously," said Keith.
+"I think she is a music-teacher. She is about the prettiest girl in the
+room. She may be a stranger, like myself, as no one is talking to her."
+
+"Don't no stranger git in here," said Mr. Dennison, decisively. "You see
+how different she is from the others. Most of them don't think about
+anything but themselves. She ain't thinkin' about herself at all; she is
+watchin' others. She may be a reporter--she appears mighty interested
+in clothes."
+
+"A reporter!"
+
+The surprise in Keith's tone amused his old pupil. "Yes, a sassiety
+reporter. They have curious ways here. Why, they pay money to git
+themselves in the paper."
+
+Just then so black a look came into his face for a second that Keith
+turned and followed his glance. It rested on Ferdy Wickersham, who was
+passing at a little distance, with Mrs. Wentworth on his arm.
+
+"There's one I am watchin' on my own account," said the detective. "I'm
+comin' up with him, and some day I'm goin' to light on him." His eye
+gave a flash and then became as calm and cold as usual. Presently he
+spoke again:
+
+"I don't forgit nothin'--'pears like I can't do it." His voice had a new
+subtone in it, which somehow sent Keith's memory back to the past. "I
+don't forgit a kindness, anyway," he said, laying his hand for a second
+on Keith's arm. "Well, see you later, sir." He moved slowly on. Keith
+was glad that patient enemy was not following him.
+
+Keith's inspection of the young girl had inflamed his interest. It was
+an unusual face--high-bred and fine. Humor lurked about the corners of
+her mouth; but resolution also might be read there. And Keith knew how
+those big, dark eyes could flash. And she was manifestly having a good
+time all to herself. She was dressed much more simply than any other
+woman he saw, in a plain muslin dress; but she made a charming picture
+as she stood against the wall, her dark eyes alight with interest. Her
+brown hair was drawn back from a brow of snowy whiteness, and her little
+head was set on her shoulders in a way that recalled to Keith an old
+picture. She would have had an air of distinction in any company. Here
+she shone like a jewel.
+
+Keith's heart went out to her. At sight of her his youth appeared to
+flood over him again. Keith fancied that she looked weary, for every now
+and then she lifted her head and glanced about the rooms as though
+looking for some one. A sense of protection swept over him. He must meet
+her. But how? She did not appear to know any one. Finally he determined
+on a bold expedient. If he succeeded it would give him a chance to
+recover himself as nothing else could; if he failed he could but fail.
+So he made his way over to her. But it was with a beating heart.
+
+"You look tired. Won't you let me get you a chair?" His voice sounded
+strange even to himself.
+
+"No, thank you; I am not tired." She thanked him civilly enough, but
+scarcely looked at him. "But I should like a glass of water."
+
+"It is the only liquid I believe I cannot get you," said Keith. "There
+are three places where water is scarce: the desert, a ball-room, and the
+other place where Dives was."
+
+She drew herself up a little.
+
+"But I will try," he added, and went off. On his return with a glass of
+water, she took it.
+
+As she handed the glass back to him, she glanced at him, and he caught
+her eye. Her head went up, and she flushed to the roots of her
+brown hair.
+
+"Oh!--I beg your pardon! I--I--really--I don't--Thank you very much. I
+am very sorry." She turned away stiffly.
+
+"Why?" said Keith, flushing in spite of himself. "You have done me a
+favor in enabling me to wait on you. May I introduce myself? And then I
+will get some one to do it in person--Mrs. Lancaster or Mrs. Wentworth.
+They will vouch for me."
+
+The girl looked up at him, at first with a hostile expression on her
+face, which changed suddenly to one of wonder.
+
+"Isn't this Gordon Keith?"
+
+Gordon's eyes opened wide. How could she know him?
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You don't know me?" Her eyes were dancing now, and two dimples were
+flitting about her mouth. Keith's memory began to stir. She put her head
+on one side.
+
+"'Lois, if you'll kiss me I'll let you ride my horse,'" she said
+cajolingly.
+
+"Lois Huntington! It can't be!" exclaimed Keith, delighted. "You are
+just so high." Keith measured a height just above his left watch-pocket.
+"And you have long hair down your back."
+
+With a little twist she turned her head and showed him a head of
+beautiful brown hair done up in a Grecian knot just above the nape of a
+shapely little neck.
+
+"--And you have the brightest--"
+
+She dropped her eyes before his, which were looking right into
+them--though not until she had given a little flash from them, perhaps
+to establish their identity.
+
+"--And you used to say I was your sw--"
+
+"Did I?" (this was very demurely said). "How old was I then?"
+
+"How old are you now?"
+
+"Eighteen," with a slight straightening of the slim figure.
+
+"Impossible!" exclaimed Keith, enjoying keenly the picture she made.
+
+"All of it," with a flash of the eyes.
+
+"For me you are just all of seven years old."
+
+"Do you know who I thought you were?" Her face dimpled.
+
+"Yes; a waiter!"
+
+She nodded brightly.
+
+"It was my good manners. The waiters have struck me much this evening,"
+said Keith.
+
+She smiled, and the dimples appeared again.
+
+"That is their business. They are paid for it."
+
+"Oh, I see. Is that the reason others are--what they are? Well, I am
+more than paid. My recompense is--you."
+
+She looked pleased. "You are the first person I have met!--Did you have
+any idea who I was the other evening?" she asked suddenly.
+
+Keith would have given five years of his life to be able to answer yes.
+But he said no. "I only knew you were some one who needed protection,"
+he said, trying to make the best of a bad situation. You are too young
+to be on the street so late."
+
+"So it appeared. I had been out for a walk to see old Dr. Templeton and
+to get a piece of music, and it was later than I thought."
+
+"Whom are you here with?" inquired Keith, to get off of delicate ground.
+"Where are you staying?"
+
+"With my cousin, Mrs. Norman Wentworth. It is my first introduction into
+New York life."
+
+Just then there was a movement toward the supper-room.
+
+Keith suggested that they should go and find Mrs. Norman. Miss
+Huntington said, however, she thought she had better remain where she
+was, as Mrs. Norman had promised to come back.
+
+"I hope she will invite you to join our party," she said naively.
+
+"If she does not, I will invite you both to join mine," declared Keith.
+"I have no idea of letting you escape for another dozen years."
+
+Just then, however, Mrs. Norman appeared. She was with Ferdy Wickersham,
+who, on seeing Keith, looked away coldly. She smiled, greatly surprised
+to find Keith there. "Why, where did you two know each other?"
+
+They explained.
+
+"I saw you were pleasantly engaged, so I did not think it necessary to
+hasten back," she said to Lois.
+
+Ferdy Wickersham said something to her in an undertone, and she held out
+her hand to the girl.
+
+"Come, we are to join a party in the supper-room. We shall see you after
+supper, Mr. Keith?"
+
+Keith said he hoped so. He was conscious of a sudden wave of
+disappointment sweeping over him as the three left him. The young girl
+gave him a bright smile.
+
+Later, as he passed by, he saw only Ferdy Wickersham with Mrs. Norman.
+Lois Huntington was at another table, so Keith joined her.
+
+After the supper there was to be a novel kind of entertainment: a sort
+of vaudeville show in which were to figure a palmist, a gentleman set
+down in the programme with its gilt printing as the "Celebrated
+Professor Cheireman"; several singers; a couple of acrobatic performers;
+and a danseuse: "Mlle. Terpsichore."
+
+The name struck Keith with something of sadness. It recalled old
+associations, some of them pleasant, some of them sad. And as he stood
+near Lois Huntington, on the edge of the throng that filled the large
+apartment where the stage had been constructed, during the first three
+or four numbers he was rather more in Gumbolt than in that gay company
+in that brilliant room.
+
+"Professor Cheireman" had shown the wonders of the trained hand and the
+untrained mind in a series of tricks that would certainly be wonderful
+did not so many men perform them. Mlle. de Voix performed hardly less
+wonders with her voice, running up and down the scale like a squirrel
+in a cage, introducing trills into songs where there were none, and
+making the simplest melodies appear as intricate as pieces of opera. The
+Burlystone Brothers jumped over and skipped under each other in a
+marvellous and "absolutely unrivalled manner." And presently the
+danseuse appeared.
+
+Keith was standing against the wall thinking of Terpy and the old hail
+with its paper hangings in Gumbolt, and its benches full of eager,
+jovial spectators, when suddenly there was a roll of applause, and he
+found himself in Gumbolt. From the side on which he stood walked out his
+old friend, Terpy herself. He had not been able to see her until she was
+well out on the stage and was making her bow. The next second she
+began to dance.
+
+After the first greeting given her, a silence fell on the room, the best
+tribute they could pay to her art, her grace, her abandon. Nothing so
+audacious had ever been seen by certainly half the assemblage. Casting
+aside the old tricks of the danseuse, the tipping and pirouetting and
+grimacing for applause, the dancer seemed oblivious of her audience and
+as though she were trying to excel herself. She swayed and swung and
+swept from side to side as though on wings.
+
+Round after round of applause swept over the room. Men were talking in
+undertones to each other; women buzzed behind their fans.
+
+She stopped, panting and flushed with pride, and with a certain scorn in
+her face and mien glanced over the audience. Just as she was poising
+herself for another effort, her eye reached the side of the room where
+Keith stood just beside Miss Huntington. A change passed over her face.
+She nodded, hesitated for a second, and then began again. She failed to
+catch the time of the music and danced out of time. A titter came from
+the rear of the room. She looked in that direction, and Keith did the
+same. Ferdy Wickersham, with a malevolent gleam in his eye, was
+laughing. The dancer flushed deeply, frowned, lost her self-possession,
+and stopped. A laugh of derision sounded at the rear.
+
+"For shame! It is shameful!" said Lois Huntington in a low voice to
+Keith.
+
+"It is. The cowardly scoundrel!" He turned and scowled at Ferdy.
+
+At the sound, Terpy took a step toward the front, and bending forward,
+swept the audience with her flashing eyes.
+
+"Put that man out."
+
+A buzz of astonishment and laughter greeted her outbreak.
+
+"Cackle, you fools!"
+
+She turned to the musicians.
+
+"Play that again and play it right, or I'll wring your necks!"
+
+She began to dance again, and soon danced as she had done at first.
+
+Applause was beginning again; but at the sound she stopped, looked over
+the audience disdainfully, and turning, walked coolly from the stage.
+
+"Who is she?" "Well, did you ever see anything like that!" "Well, I
+never did!" "The insolent creature!" "By Jove! she can dance if she
+chooses!" buzzed over the room.
+
+"Good for her," said Keith, his face full of admiration.
+
+"Did you know her?" asked Miss Huntington.
+
+"Well."
+
+The girl said nothing, but she stiffened and changed color slightly.
+
+"You know her, too," said Keith.
+
+"I! I do not."
+
+"Do you remember once, when you were a tot over in England, giving your
+doll to a little dancing-girl?--When your governess was in such
+a temper?"
+
+Lois nodded.
+
+"That is she. She used to live in New Leeds. She was almost the only
+woman in Gumbolt when I went there. Had a man laughed at her there then,
+he would never have left the room alive. Mr. Wickersham tried it once,
+and came near getting his neck broken for it. He is getting even
+with her now."
+
+As the girl glanced up at him, his face was full of suppressed feeling.
+A pang shot through her.
+
+Just then the entertainment broke up and the guests began to leave. Mrs.
+Wentworth beckoned to Lois. Wickersham was still with her.
+
+"I will not trust myself to go within speaking distance of him now,"
+said Keith; "so I will say good-by, here." He made his adieus somewhat
+hurriedly, and moved off as Mrs. Wentworth approached.
+
+Wickersham, who, so long as Keith remained with Miss Huntington, had
+kept aloof, and was about to say good night to Mrs. Wentworth, had, on
+seeing Keith turn away, followed Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+Every one was still chatting of the episode of the young virago.
+
+"Well, what did you think of your friend's friend?" asked Wickersham of
+Lois.
+
+"Of whom?"
+
+"Of your friend Mr. Keith's young lady. She is an old flame of his," he
+said, turning to Mrs. Wentworth and speaking in an undertone, just loud
+enough for Lois to hear. "They have run her out of New Leeds, and I
+think he is trying to force her on the people here. He has cheek enough
+to do anything; but I think to-night will about settle him."
+
+"I do not know very much about such things; but I think she dances very
+well," said Lois, with heightened color, moved to defend the girl under
+an instinct of opposition to Wickersham.
+
+"So your friend thinks, or thought some time ago," said Wickersham. "My
+dear girl, she can't dance at all. She is simply a disreputable young
+woman, who has been run out of her own town, as she ought to be run out
+of this, as an impostor, if nothing else." He turned to Mrs. Wentworth:
+"A man who brought such a woman to a place like this ought to be kicked
+out of town."
+
+"If you are speaking of Mr. Keith, I don't believe that of him," said
+Lois, coldly.
+
+Wickersham looked at her for a moment. A curious light was in his eyes
+as he said:
+
+"I am not referring to any one. I am simply generalizing." He shrugged
+his shoulders and turned away.
+
+As Mrs. Wentworth and Lois entered their carriage, a gentleman was
+helping some one into a hack just behind Mrs. Wentworth's carriage. The
+light fell on them at the moment that Lois stepped forward, and she
+recognized Mr. Keith and the dancer, Mile. Terpsichore. He was handing
+her in with all the deference that he would have shown the highest lady
+in the land.
+
+Lois Huntington drove home in a maze. Life appeared to have changed
+twice for her in a single evening. Out of that crowd of strangers had
+come one who seemed to be a part of her old life. They had taken each
+other up just where they had parted. The long breach in their lives had
+been bridged. He had seemed the old friend and champion of her
+childhood, who, since her aunt had revived her recollection of him, had
+been a sort of romantic hero in her dreams. Their meeting had been such
+as she had sometimes pictured to herself it would be. She believed him
+finer, higher, than others. Then, suddenly, she had found that the
+vision was but an idol of clay. All that her aunt had said of him had
+been dashed to pieces in a trice.
+
+He was not worthy of her notice. He was not a gentleman. He was what Mr.
+Wickersham had called him. He had boasted to her of his intimacy with a
+common dancing-girl. He had left her to fly to her and escort her home.
+
+As Keith had left the house, Terpsichore had come out of the side
+entrance, and they had met. Keith was just wondering how he could find
+her, and he considered the meeting a fortunate one. She was in a state
+of extreme agitation. It was the first time that she had undertaken to
+dance at such an entertainment. She had refused, but had been
+over-persuaded, and she declared it was all a plot between Wickersham
+and her manager to ruin her. She would be even with them both, if she
+had to take a pistol to right her wrongs.
+
+Keith had little idea that the chief motive of her acceptance had been
+the hope that she might find him among the company. He did what he could
+to soothe her, and having made a promise to call upon her, he bade her
+good-by, happily ignorant of the interpretation which she who had
+suddenly sprung uppermost in his thoughts had, upon Wickersham's
+instigation, put upon his action.
+
+Keith walked home with a feeling to which he had been long a stranger.
+He was somehow happier than he had been in years. A young girl had
+changed the whole entertainment for him--the whole city--almost his
+whole outlook on life. He had not felt this way for years--not since
+Alice Yorke had darkened life for him. Could love be for him again?
+
+The dial appeared to have turned back for him. He felt younger, fresher,
+more hopeful. He walked out into the street and tried to look up at the
+stars. The houses obscured them; they were hardly visible. The city
+streets were no place for stars and sentiment. He would go through the
+park and see them. So he strolled along and turned into a park. The
+gas-lamps shed a yellow glow on the trees, making circles of feeble
+light on the walks, and the shadows lay deep on the ground. Most of the
+benches were vacant; but here and there a waif or a belated homegoer sat
+in drowsy isolation. The stars were too dim even from this
+vantage-ground to afford Keith much satisfaction. His thoughts flew back
+to the mountains and the great blue canopy overhead, spangled with
+stars, and a blue-eyed girl amid pillows whom he used to worship. An
+arid waste of years cut them off from the present, and his thoughts
+came back to a sweet-faced girl with dark eyes, claiming him as her old
+friend. She appeared to be the old ideal rather than the former.
+
+All next day Keith thought of Lois Huntington. He wanted to go and see
+her but he waited until the day after. He would not appear too eager.
+
+He called at Norman's office for the pleasure of talking of her; but
+Norman was still absent. The following afternoon he called at Norman's
+house. The servant said Mrs. Norman was out.
+
+"Miss Huntington?"
+
+"She left this morning."
+
+Keith walked up the street feeling rather blank. That night he started
+for the South. But Lois Huntington was much in his thoughts. He wondered
+if life would open for him again. When a man wonders about this, life
+has already opened.
+
+By the time he reached New Leeds, he had already made up his mind to
+write and ask Miss Abby for an invitation to Brookford, and he wrote his
+father a full account of the girl he had known as a child, over which
+the old General beamed.
+
+He forgave people toward whom he had hard feelings. The world was better
+than he had been accounting it. He even considered more leniently than
+he had done Mrs. Wentworth's allowing Ferdy Wickersham to hang around
+her. It suddenly flashed on him that, perhaps, Ferdy was in love with
+Lois Huntington. Crash! went his kind feelings, his kind thoughts. The
+idea of Ferdy making love to that pure, sweet, innocent creature! It was
+horrible! Her innocence, her charming friendliness, her sweetness, all
+swept over him, and he thrilled with a sense of protection.
+
+Could he have known what Wickersham had done to poison her against him,
+he would have been yet more enraged. As it was, Lois was at that time
+back at her old home; but with how different feelings from those which
+she had had but a few days before! Sometimes she hated Keith, or, at
+least, declared to herself that she hated him; and at others she
+defended him against her own charge. And more and more she truly hated
+Wickersham.
+
+"So you met Mr. Keith?" said her aunt, abruptly, a day or two after her
+return. "How did you like him?"
+
+"I did not like him," said Lois, briefly, closing her lips with a snap,
+as if to keep the blood out of her cheeks.
+
+"What! you did not like him? Girls are strange creatures nowadays. In my
+time, a girl--a girl like you--would have thought him the very pink of a
+man. I suppose you liked that young Wickersham better?" she
+added grimly.
+
+"No, I did not like him either. But I think Mr. Keith is perfectly
+horrid."
+
+"Horrid!" The old lady's black eyes snapped. "Oh, he didn't ask you to
+dance! Well, I think, considering he knew you when you were a child, and
+knew you were my niece, he might--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I danced with him; but he is not very nice. He--ah--Something
+I saw prejudiced me."
+
+Miss Abby was so insistent that she should tell her what had happened
+that she yielded.
+
+"Well, I saw him on the street helping a woman into a carriage."
+
+"A woman? And why shouldn't he help her in? He probably was the only man
+you saw that would do it, if you saw the men I met."
+
+"A dis--reputable woman," said Lois, slowly.
+
+"And, pray, what do you know of disreputable women? Not that there are
+not enough of them to be seen!"
+
+"Some one told me--and she looked it," said Lois, blushing. The old lady
+unexpectedly whipped around and took her part so warmly that Lois
+suddenly found herself defending Gordon. She could not bear that others
+should attack him, though she took frequent occasion to tell herself
+that she hated him. In fact, she hated him so that she wanted to see him
+to show him how severe she would be.
+
+The occasion might have come sooner than she expected; but alas! Fate
+was unkind. Keith was not conscious until he found that Lois Huntington
+had left town how much he had thought of her. Her absence appeared
+suddenly to have emptied the city. By the time he had reached his room
+he had determined to follow her home. That rift of sunshine which had
+entered his life should not be shut out again. He sat down and wrote to
+her: a friendly letter, expressing warmly his pleasure at having met
+her, picturing jocularly his disappointment at having failed to find
+her. He made a single allusion to the Terpsichore episode. He had done
+what he could, he said, to soothe his friend's ruffled feelings; but,
+though he thought he had some influence with her, he could not boast of
+having had much success in this. In the light in which Lois read this
+letter, the allusion to the dancing-girl outweighed all the rest, and
+though her heart had given a leap when she first saw that she had a
+letter from Keith, when she laid it down her feeling had changed. She
+would show him that she was not a mere country chit to be treated as he
+had treated her. His "friend" indeed!
+
+When Keith, to his surprise, received no reply to his letter, he wrote
+again more briefly, asking if his former letter had been received; but
+this shared the fate of the first.
+
+Meantime Lois had gone off to visit a friend. Her mind was not quite as
+easy as it should have been. She felt that if she had it to go over, she
+would do just the same thing; but she began to fancy excuses for Keith.
+She even hunted up the letters he had written her as a boy.
+
+It is probable that Lois's failure to write did more to raise her in
+Keith's estimation and fix her image in his mind than anything else she
+could have done. Keith knew that something untoward had taken place, but
+what it was he could not conceive. At least, however, it proved to him
+that Lois Huntington was different from some of the young women he had
+met of late. So he sat down and wrote to Miss Brooke, saying that he was
+going abroad on a matter of importance, and asking leave to run down and
+spend Sunday with them before he left. Miss Brooke's reply nearly took
+his breath away. She not only refused his request, but intimated that
+there was a good reason why his former letters had not been acknowledged
+and why he would not be received by her.
+
+It was rather incoherent, but it had something to do with "inexplicable
+conduct." On this Keith wrote Miss Brooke, requesting a more explicit
+charge and demanding an opportunity to defend himself. Still he received
+no reply; and, angry that he had written, he took no further steps
+about it.
+
+By the time Lois reached home she had determined to answer his letter.
+She would write him a severe reply.
+
+Miss Abby, however, announced to Lois, the day of her return, that Mr.
+Keith had written asking her permission to come down and see them. The
+blood sprang into Lois's face, and if Miss Abby had had on her
+spectacles at that moment, she must have read the tale it told.
+
+"Oh, he did! And what--?" She gave a swallow to restrain her impatience.
+"What did you say to him, Aunt Abby? Have you answered the letter?" This
+was very demurely said.
+
+"Yes. Of course, I wrote him not to come. I preferred that he should not
+come."
+
+Could she have but seen Lois's face!
+
+"Oh, you did!"
+
+"Yes. I want no hypocrites around me." Her head was up and her cap was
+bristling. "I came very near telling him so, too. I told him that I had
+it from good authority that he had not behaved in altogether the most
+gentlemanly way--consorting openly with a hussy on the street! I think
+he knows whom I referred to."
+
+"But, Aunt Abby, I do not know that she was. I only heard she was,"
+defended Lois.
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Mr. Wickersham."
+
+"Well, _he_ knows," said Miss Abigail, with decision. "Though I think he
+had very little to do to discuss such matters with you."
+
+"But, Aunt Abby, I think you had better have let him come. We could have
+shown him our disapproval in our manner. And possibly he might have some
+explanations?"
+
+"I guess he won't make any mistake about that. The hypocrite! To sit up
+and talk to me as if he were a bishop! I have no doubt he would have
+explanation enough. They always do."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+GENERAL KEITH VISITS STRANGE LANDS
+
+Just then the wheel turned. Interest was awaking in England in American
+enterprises, and, fortunately for Keith, he had friends on that side.
+
+Grinnell Rhodes now lived in England, dancing attendance on his wife,
+the daughter of Mr. Creamer of Creamer, Crustback & Company, who was
+aspiring to be in the fashionable set there.
+
+Matheson, the former agent of the Wickershams, with whom Ferdy had
+quarrelled, had gone back to England, and had acquired a reputation as
+an expert. By one of the fortuitous happenings so hard to account for,
+about this time Keith wrote to Rhodes, and Rhodes consulted Matheson,
+who knew the properties. Ferdy had incurred the Scotchman's implacable
+hate, and the latter was urged on now by a double motive. To Rhodes, who
+was bored to death with the life he was leading, the story told by the
+Wickershams' old superintendent was like a trumpet to a war-horse.
+
+Out of the correspondence with Rhodes grew a suggestion to Keith to come
+over and try to place the Rawson properties with an English syndicate.
+Keith had, moreover, a further reason for going. He had not recovered
+from the blow of Miss Brooke's refusal to let him visit Lois. He knew
+that in some way it was connected with his attention to Terpsichore; he
+knew that there was a misunderstanding, and felt that Wickersham was
+somehow connected with it. But he was too proud to make any further
+attempt to explain it.
+
+Accordingly, armed with the necessary papers and powers, he arranged to
+go to England. He had control of and options on lands which were
+estimated to be worth several millions of dollars at any fair valuation.
+
+Keith had long been trying to persuade his father to accompany him to
+New York on some of his visits; but the old gentleman had never been
+able to make up his mind to do so.
+
+"I have grown too old to travel in strange lands," he said. "I tried to
+get there once, but they stopped me just in sight of a stone fence on
+the farther slope beyond Gettysburg." A faint flash glittered in his
+quiet eyes. "I think I had better restrain my ambition now to migrations
+from the blue bed to the brown, and confine my travels to 'the realms
+of gold'!"
+
+Now, after much urging, as Gordon was about to go abroad to try and
+place the Rawson properties there, the General consented to go to New
+York and see him off. It happened that Gordon was called to New York on
+business a day or two before his father was ready to go. So he exacted a
+promise that he would follow him, and went on ahead. Though General
+Keith would have liked to back out at the last moment, as he had given
+his word, he kept it. He wrote his son that he must not undertake to
+meet him, as he could not tell by what train he should arrive.
+
+"I shall travel slowly," he said, "for I wish to call by and see one or
+two old friends on my way, whom I have not seen for years."
+
+The fact was that he wished to see the child of his friend, General
+Huntington, and determined to avail himself of this opportunity to call
+by and visit her. Gordon's letter about her had opened a new vista
+in life.
+
+The General found Brookford a pleasant village, lying on the eastern
+slope of the Piedmont, and having written to ask permission to call and
+pay his respects, he was graciously received by Miss Abby, and more than
+graciously received by her niece. Miss Lois would probably have met any
+visitor at the train; but she might not have had so palpitating a heart
+and so rich a color in meeting many a young man.
+
+Few things captivate a person more than to be received with real
+cordiality by a friend immediately on alighting at a strange station
+from a train full of strangers. But when the traveller is an old and
+somewhat unsophisticated man, and when the friend is a young and very
+pretty girl, and when, after a single look, she throws her arms around
+his neck and kisses him, the capture is likely to be as complete as any
+that could take place in life. When Lois Huntington, after asking about
+his baggage, and exclaiming because he had sent his trunk on to New York
+and had brought only a valise, as if he were only stopping off between
+trains, finally settled herself down beside the General and took the
+reins of the little vehicle that she had come in, there was, perhaps,
+not a more pleased old gentleman in the world than the one who sat
+beside her.
+
+"How you have grown!" he said, gazing at her with admiration. "Somehow,
+I always thought of you as a little girl--a very pretty little girl."
+
+She thought of what his son had said at their meeting at the ball.
+
+"But you know one must grow some, and it has been eleven years since
+then. Think how long that has been!"
+
+"Eleven years! Does that appear so long to you?" said the old man,
+smiling. "So it is in our youth. Gordon wrote me of his meeting you and
+of how you had changed."
+
+I wonder what he meant by that, said Lois to herself, the color mounting
+to her cheek. "He thought I had changed, did he?" she asked tentatively,
+after a moment, a trace of grimness stealing into her face, where it lay
+like a little cloud in May.
+
+"Yes; he hardly knew you. You see, he did not have the greeting that I
+got."
+
+"I should think not!" exclaimed Lois. "If he had, I don't know what he
+might have thought!" She grew as grave as she could.
+
+"He said you were the sweetest and prettiest girl there, and that all
+the beauty of New York was there, even the beautiful Mrs.--what is her
+name? She was Miss Yorke."
+
+Lois's face relaxed suddenly with an effect of sunshine breaking through
+a cloud.
+
+"Did he say that?" she exclaimed.
+
+"He did, and more. He is a young man of some discernment," observed the
+old fellow, with a chuckle of gratification.
+
+"Oh, but he was only blinding you. He is in love with Mrs. Lancaster."
+
+"Not he."
+
+But Lois protested guilefully that he was.
+
+A little later she asked the General:
+
+"Did you ever hear of any one in New Leeds who was named Terpsichore?"
+
+"Terpsichore? Of course. Every one knows her there. I never saw her
+until she became a nurse, when she was nursing my son. She saved his
+life, you know?"
+
+"Saved his life!" Her face had grown almost grim. "No, I never heard of
+it. Tell me about it."
+
+"Saved his life twice, indeed," said the old General. "She has had a sad
+past, but she is a noble woman." And unheeding Lois's little sniff, he
+told the whole story of Terpsichore, and the brave part she had played.
+Spurred on by his feeling, he told it well, no less than did he the part
+that Keith had played. When he was through, there had been tears in
+Lois's eyes, and her bosom was still heaving.
+
+"Thank you," she said simply, and the rest of the drive was in silence.
+
+When General Keith left Brookford he was almost as much in love with his
+young hostess as his son could have been, and all the rest of his
+journey he was dreaming of what life might become if Gordon and she
+would but take a fancy to each other, and once more return to the old
+place. It would be like turning back the years and reversing the
+consequences of the war.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The General, on his arrival in New York, was full of his visit to
+Brookford and of Lois. "There is a girl after my own heart," he declared
+to Gordon, with enthusiasm. "Why don't you go down there and get
+that girl?"
+
+Gordon put the question aside with a somewhat grim look. He was very
+busy, he said. His plans were just ripening, and he had no time to think
+about marrying. Besides, "a green country girl" was not the most
+promising wife. There were many other women who, etc., etc.
+
+"Many other women!" exclaimed the General. "There may be; but I have not
+seen them lately. As to 'a green country girl'--why, they make the best
+wives in the world if you get the right kind. What do you want? One of
+these sophisticated, fashionable, strong-minded women--a woman's-rights
+woman? Heaven forbid! When a gentleman marries, he wants a lady and he
+wants a wife, a woman to love him; a lady to preside over his home, not
+over a woman's meeting."
+
+Gordon quite agreed with him as to the principle; but he did not know
+about the instance cited.
+
+"Why, I thought you had more discernment," said the old gentleman. "She
+is the sweetest creature I have seen in a long time. She has both sense
+and sensibility. If I were forty years younger, I should not be
+suggesting her to you, sir. I should be on my knees to her for myself."
+And the old fellow buttoned his coat, straightened his figure, and
+looked quite spirited and young.
+
+At the club, where Gordon introduced him, his father soon became quite a
+toast. Half the habitues of the "big room" came to know him, and he was
+nearly always surrounded by a group listening to his quaint observations
+of life, his stories of old times, his anecdotes, his quotations from
+Plutarch or from "Dr. Johnson, sir."
+
+An evening or two after his appearance at the club, Norman Wentworth
+came in, and when the first greetings were over, General Keith inquired
+warmly after his wife.
+
+"Pray present my compliments to her. I have never had the honor of
+meeting her, sir, but I have heard of her charms from my son, and I
+promise myself the pleasure of calling upon her as soon as I have called
+on your mother, which I am looking forward to doing this evening."
+
+Norman's countenance changed a little at the unexpected words, for half
+a dozen men were around. When, however, he spoke it was in a very
+natural voice.
+
+"Yes, my mother is expecting you," he said quietly. Mrs. Wentworth also
+would, he said, be very glad to see him. Her day was Thursday, but if
+General Keith thought of calling at any other time, and would be good
+enough to let him know, he thought he could guarantee her being at home.
+He strolled away.
+
+"By Jove! he did it well," said one of the General's other acquaintances
+when Norman was out of ear-shot.
+
+"You know, he and his wife have quarrelled," explained Stirling to the
+astonished General.
+
+"Great Heavens!" The old gentleman looked inexpressibly shocked.
+
+"Yes--Wickersham."
+
+"That scoundrel!"
+
+"Yes; he is the devil with the women."
+
+Next evening, as the General sat with Stirling among a group, sipping
+his toddy, some one approached behind him.
+
+Stirling, who had become a great friend of the General's, greeted the
+newcomer.
+
+"Hello, Ferdy! Come around; let me introduce you to General Keith,
+Gordon Keith's father."
+
+The General, with a pleasant smile on his face, rose from his chair and
+turned to greet the newcomer. As he did so he faced Ferdy Wickersham,
+who bowed coldly. The old gentleman stiffened, put his hand behind his
+back, and with uplifted head looked him full in the eyes for a second,
+and then turned his back on him.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Mr. Stirling, for declining to recognize any one
+whom you are good enough to wish to introduce to me, but that man I must
+decline to recognize. He is not a gentleman."
+
+"I doubt if you know one," said Ferdy, with a shrug, as he strolled away
+with affected indifference. But a dozen men had seen the cut.
+
+"I guess you are right enough about that, General," said one of them.
+
+When the General reflected on what he had done, he was overwhelmed with
+remorse. He apologized profusely to Stirling for having committed such
+a solecism.
+
+"I am nothing but an irascible old idiot, sir, and I hope you will
+excuse my constitutional weakness, but I really could not recognize
+that man."
+
+Stirling's inveterate amiability soon set him at ease again.
+
+"It is well for Wickersham to hear the truth now and then," he said. "I
+guess he hears it rarely enough. Most people feed him on lies."
+
+Some others appeared to take the same view of the matter, for the
+General was more popular than ever.
+
+Gordon found a new zest in showing his father about the city. Everything
+astonished him. He saw the world with the eyes of a child. The streets,
+the crowds, the shop-windows, the shimmering stream of carriages that
+rolled up and down the avenue, the elevated railways which had just been
+constructed, all were a marvel to him.
+
+"Where do these people get their wealth?" he asked.
+
+"Some of them get it from rural gentlemen who visit the town," said
+Gordon, laughing.
+
+The old fellow smiled. "I suspect a good many of them get it from us
+countrymen. In fact, at the last we furnish it all. It all comes out of
+the ground."
+
+"It is a pity that we did not hold on to some of it," said Gordon.
+
+The old gentleman glanced at him. "I do not want any of it. My son,
+Agar's standard was the best: 'neither poverty nor riches.' Riches
+cannot make a gentleman."
+
+Keith laughed and called him old-fashioned, but he knew in his heart
+that he was right.
+
+The beggars who accosted him on the street never turned away
+empty-handed. He had it not in his heart to refuse the outstretched
+hand of want.
+
+"Why, that man who pretended that he had a large family and was out of
+work is a fraud," said Gordon. "I'll bet that he has no family and
+never works."
+
+"Well, I didn't give him much," said the old man. "But remember what
+Lamb said: 'Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress.
+It is good to believe him. Give, and under the personate father of a
+family think, if thou pleasest, that thou hast relieved an indigent
+bachelor.'"
+
+A week later Gordon was on his way to England and the General had
+returned home.
+
+It was just after this that the final breach took place between Norman
+Wentworth and his wife. It was decided that for their children's sake
+there should be no open separation; at least, for the present. Norman
+had business which would take him away for a good part of the time, and
+the final separation could be left to the future. Meanwhile, to save
+appearances somewhat, it was arranged that Mrs. Wentworth should ask
+Lois Huntington to come up and spend the winter in New York, partly as
+her companion and partly as governess for the children. This might stop
+the mouths of some persons.
+
+When the proposal first reached Miss Abigail, she rejected it without
+hesitation; she would not hear of it. Curiously enough, Lois suddenly
+appeared violently anxious to go. But following the suggestion came an
+invitation from Norman's mother asking Miss Abigail to pay her a long
+visit. She needed her, she said, and she asked as a favor that she
+would let Lois accept her daughter-in-law's invitation. So Miss Abby
+consented. "The Lawns" was shut up for the winter, and the two ladies
+went up to New York.
+
+As Norman left for the West the very day that Lois was installed, she
+had no knowledge of the condition of affairs in that unhappy household,
+except what Gossip whispered about her. This would have been more than
+enough, but for the fact that the girl stiffened as soon as any one
+approached the subject, and froze even such veterans as Mrs. Nailor.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth was far too proud to refer to it. All Lois knew,
+therefore, was that there was trouble and she was there to help tide it
+over, and she meant, if she could, to make it up. Meanwhile, Mrs.
+Wentworth was very kind, if formal, to her, and the children, delighted
+to get rid of the former governess, whom they insisted in describing as
+an "old cat," were her devoted slaves.
+
+Yet Lois was not as contented as she had fondly expected to be.
+
+She learned soon after her arrival that one object of her visit to New
+York would be futile. She would not see Mr. Keith. He had gone
+abroad.--"In pursuit of Mrs. Lancaster," said Mrs. Nailor; for Lois was
+willing enough to hear all that lady had to say on this subject, and it
+was a good deal. "You know, I believe she is going to marry him. She
+will unless she can get a title."
+
+"I do not believe a title would make any difference to her," said Lois,
+rather sharply, glad to have any sound reason for attacking Mrs. Nailor.
+
+"Oh, don't you believe it! She'd snap one up quick enough if she had the
+chance."
+
+"She has had a plenty of chances," asserted Lois.
+
+"Well, it may serve Mr. Keith a good turn. He looked very low down for a
+while last Spring--just after that big Creamer ball. But he had quite
+perked up this Fall, and, next thing I heard, he had gone over to
+England after Alice Lancaster, who is spending the winter there. It was
+time she went, too, for people were beginning to talk a good deal of the
+way she ran after Norman Wentworth."
+
+"I must go," said Lois, suddenly rising; "I have to take the children
+out."
+
+"Poor dears!" sighed Mrs. Nailor. "I am glad they have some one to look
+after them." Lois's sudden change prevented any further condolence.
+Fortunately, Mrs. Nailor was too much delighted with the opportunity to
+pour her information into quite fresh ears to observe Lois's expression.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The story of the trouble between Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth was soon public
+property. Wickersham's plans appeared to him to be working out
+satisfactorily. Louise Wentworth must, he felt, care for him to
+sacrifice so much for him. In this assumption he let down the barriers
+of prudence which he had hitherto kept up, and, one evening when the
+opportunity offered, he openly declared himself. To his chagrin and
+amazement, she appeared to be shocked and even to resent it.
+
+Yes, she liked him--liked him better than almost any one, she admitted;
+but she did not, she could not, love him. She was married.
+
+Wickersham ridiculed the idea.
+
+Married! Well, what difference did that make? Did not many married women
+love other men than their husbands? Had not her husband gone
+after another?
+
+Her eyes closed suddenly; then her eyelids fluttered.
+
+"Yes; but I am not like that. I have children." She spoke slowly.
+
+"Nonsense," cried Wickersham. "Of course, we love each other and belong
+to each other. Send the children to your husband."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth recoiled in horror. There was that in his manner and look
+which astounded her. "Abandon her children?" How could she? Her whole
+manner changed. "You have misunderstood me."
+
+[Illustration: "Sit down. I want to talk to you."]
+
+Wickersham grew angry.
+
+"Don't be a fool, Louise. You have broken with your husband. Now, don't
+go and throw away happiness for a priest's figment. Get a divorce and
+marry me, if you want to; but at least accept my love."
+
+But he had overshot the mark. He had opened her eyes. Was this the man
+she had taken as her closest friend!--for whom she had quarrelled with
+her husband and defied the world!
+
+Wickersham watched her as her doubt worked its way in her mind. He could
+see the process in her face. He suddenly seized her and drew her to him.
+
+"Here, stop this! Your husband has abandoned you and gone after another
+woman."
+
+She gave a gasp, but made no answer.
+
+She pushed him away from her slowly, and after a moment rose and walked
+from the room as though dazed.
+
+It was so unexpected that Wickersham made no attempt to stop her.
+
+A moment later Lois entered the room. She walked straight up to him.
+Wickersham tried to greet her lightly, but she remained grave.
+
+"Mr. Wickersham, I do not think you--ought to come here--as often as you
+do."
+
+"And, pray, why not?" he demanded.
+
+Her brown eyes looked straight into his and held them steadily.
+
+"Because people talk about it."
+
+"I cannot help people talking. You know what they are," said Wickersham,
+amused.
+
+"You can prevent giving them occasion to talk. You are too good a friend
+of Cousin Louise to cause her unhappiness." The honesty of her words was
+undoubted. It spoke in every tone of her voice and glance of her eyes.
+"She is most unhappy."
+
+Wickersham conceived a new idea. How lovely she was in her soft blue
+dress!
+
+"Very well, I will do what you say There are few things I would not do
+for you." He stepped closer to her and gazed in her eyes. "Sit down. I
+want to talk to you."
+
+"Thank you; I must go now."
+
+Wickersham tried to detain her, but she backed away, her hands down and
+held a little back.
+
+"Good-by."
+
+"Miss Huntington--Lois--" he said; "one moment."
+
+But she opened the door and passed out.
+
+Wickersham walked down the street in a sort of maze.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+KEITH TRIES HIS FORTUNES IN ANOTHER LAND
+
+In fact, as usual, Mrs. Nailor's statement to Lois had some foundation,
+though very little. Mrs. Lancaster had gone abroad, and Keith had
+followed her.
+
+Keith, on his arrival in England, found Rhodes somewhat changed, at
+least in person. Years of high living and ease had rounded him, and he
+had lost something of his old spirit. At times an expression of
+weariness or discontent came into his eyes.
+
+He was as cordial as ever to Keith, and when Keith unfolded his plans he
+entered into them with earnestness.
+
+"You have come at a good time," he said. "They are beginning to think
+that America is all a bonanza."
+
+After talking over the matter, Rhodes invited Keith down to the country.
+
+"We have taken an old place in Warwickshire for the hunting. An old
+friend of yours is down there for a few days,"--his eyes twinkled,--"and
+we have some good fellows there. Think you will like them--some of
+them," he added.
+
+"Who is my friend?" asked Keith.
+
+"Her name was Alice Yorke," he replied, with his eyes on Keith's face.
+
+At the name another face sprang to Keith's mind. The eyes were brown,
+not blue, and the face was the fresh face of a young girl. Yet
+Keith accepted.
+
+Rhodes did not tell him that Mrs. Lancaster had not accepted their
+invitation until after she had heard that he was to be invited. Nor did
+he tell him that she had authorized him to subscribe largely to the
+stock of the new syndicate.
+
+On reaching the station they were met by a rich equipage with two
+liveried servants, and, after a short drive through beautiful country,
+they turned into a fine park, and presently drove up before an imposing
+old country house; for "The Keep" was one of the finest mansions in all
+that region. It was also one of the most expensive. It had broken its
+owners to run it. But this was nothing to Creamer of Creamer, Crustback
+& Company; at least, it was nothing to Mrs. Creamer, or to Mrs. Rhodes,
+who was her daughter. She had plans, and money was nothing to her.
+Rhodes was manifestly pleased at Keith's exclamations of appreciation as
+they drove through the park with its magnificent trees, its coppices and
+coverts, its stretches of emerald sward and roll of gracious hills, and
+drew up at the portal of the mansion. Yet he was inclined to be a little
+apologetic about it, too.
+
+"This is rather too rich for me," he said, between a smile and a sigh.
+"Somehow, I began too late."
+
+It was a noble old hall into which he ushered Keith, the wainscoting
+dark with age, and hung with trophies of many a chase and forgotten
+field. A number of modern easy-chairs and great rich rugs gave it an air
+of comfort, even if they were not altogether harmonious.
+
+Keith did not see Mrs. Rhodes till the company were all assembled in the
+drawing-room for dinner. She was a rather pretty woman, distinctly
+American in face and voice, but in speech more English than any one
+Keith had seen since landing. Her hair and speech were arranged in the
+extreme London fashion. She was "awfully keen on" everything she
+fancied, and found most things English "ripping." She greeted Keith with
+somewhat more formality than he had expected from Grinnell Rhodes's
+wife, and introduced him to Colonel Campbell, a handsome,
+broad-shouldered man, as "an American," which Keith thought rather
+unnecessary, since no one could have been in doubt about it.
+
+Keith found, on his arrival in the drawing-room, that the house was full
+of company, a sort of house-party assembled for the hunting.
+
+Suddenly there was a stir, followed by a hush in the conversation, and
+monocles and lorgnons went up.
+
+"Here she comes," said a man near Keith.
+
+"Who is she?" asked a thin woman with ugly hands, dropping her monocle
+with the air of a man.
+
+"La belle Americaine," replied the man beside her, "a friend of the
+host."
+
+"Oh! Not of the hostess?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know. I met her last night--"
+
+"Steepleton is ahead--wins in a walk."
+
+"Oh, she's rich? The castle needs a new roof? Will it be in time for
+next season?"
+
+The gentleman said he knew nothing about it.
+
+Keith turned and faced Alice Lancaster.
+
+She was dressed in a black gown that fitted perfectly her straight,
+supple figure, the soft folds clinging close enough to show the gracious
+curves, and falling away behind her in a train that, as she stood with
+her head uplifted, gave her an appearance almost of majesty. Her round
+arms and perfect shoulders were of dazzling whiteness; her abundant
+brown hair was coiled low on her snowy neck, showing the beauty of her
+head; and her single ornament was one rich red rose fastened in her
+bodice with a small diamond clasp. It was the little pin that Keith had
+found in the Ridgely woods and returned to her so long ago; though Keith
+did not recognize it. It was the only jewel about her, and was worn
+simply to hold the rose, as though that were the thing she valued.
+Keith's thoughts sprang to the first time he ever saw her with a red
+rose near her heart--the rose he had given her, which the humming-bird
+had sought as its chalice.
+
+The other ladies were all gowned in satin and velvet of rich colors,
+and were flaming in jewels, and as Mrs. Lancaster stood among them and
+they fell back a little on either side to look at her, they appeared, as
+it were, a setting for her.
+
+After the others were presented, Keith stepped forward to greet her, and
+her face lit up with a light that made it suddenly young.
+
+"I am so glad to see you." She clasped his hand warmly. "It is so good
+to see an old friend from our ain countree."
+
+"I do not need to say I am glad to see you," said Keith, looking her in
+the eyes. "You are my ain countree here."
+
+At that moment the rose fell at her feet. It had slipped somehow from
+the clasp that held it. A half-dozen men sprang forward to pick it up,
+but Keith was ahead of them. He took it up, and, with his eyes looking
+straight into hers, handed it to her.
+
+"It is your emblem; it is what I always think of you as being." The tone
+was too low for any one else to hear; but her mounting color and the
+light in her eyes told that she caught it.
+
+Still looking straight into his eyes without a word, she stuck the rose
+in her bodice just over her heart.
+
+Several women turned their gaze on Keith and scanned him with sudden
+interest, and one of them, addressing her companion, a broad-shouldered
+man with a pleasant, florid face, said in an undertone:
+
+"That is the man you have to look out for, Steepleton."
+
+"A good-looking fellow. Who is he?"
+
+"Somebody, I fancy, or our hostess wouldn't have him here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dinner that evening was a function. Mrs. Rhodes would rather have
+suffered a serious misfortune than fail in any of the social refinements
+of her adopted land. Rhodes had suggested that Keith be placed next to
+Mrs. Lancaster, but Mrs. Rhodes had another plan in mind. She liked
+Alice Lancaster, and she was trying to do by her as she would have been
+done by. She wanted her to make a brilliant match. Lord Steepleton
+appeared designed by Providence for this especial purpose: the
+representative of an old and distinguished house, owner of a
+famous--indeed, of an historic--estate, unhappily encumbered, but not
+too heavily to be relieved by a providential fortune. Hunting was his
+most serious occupation. At present he was engaged in the most serious
+hunt of his career: he was hunting an heiress.
+
+Mrs. Rhodes was his friend, and as his friend she had put him next to
+Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+Ordinarily, Mrs. Lancaster would have been extremely pleased to be
+placed next the lion of the occasion. But this evening she would have
+liked to be near another guest. He was on the other side of the board,
+and appeared to be, in the main, enjoying himself, though now and then
+his eyes strayed across in her direction, and presently, as he caught
+her glance, he lifted his glass and smiled. Her neighbor observed the
+act, and putting up his monocle, looked across the table; then glanced
+at Mrs. Lancaster, and then looked again at Keith more carefully.
+
+"Who is your friend?" he asked.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster smiled, with a pleasant light in her eyes.
+
+"An old friend of mine, Mr. Keith."
+
+"Ah! Fortunate man. Scotchman?"
+
+"No; an American."
+
+"Oh!--You have known him a long time?"
+
+"Since I was a little girl."
+
+"Oh!--What is he?"
+
+"A gentleman."
+
+"Yes." The Englishman took the trouble again to put up his monocle and
+take a fleeting glance across the table. "He looks it," he said. "I
+mean, what does he do? Is he a capitalist like--like our host? Or is he
+just getting to be a capitalist?"
+
+"I hope he is," replied Mrs. Lancaster, with a twinkle in her eyes that
+showed she enjoyed the Englishman's mystification. "He is engaged
+in mining."
+
+She gave a rosy picture of the wealth in the region from which Keith
+came.
+
+"All your men do something, I believe?" said the gentleman.
+
+"All who are worth anything," assented Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"No wonder you are a rich people."
+
+Something about his use of the adjective touched her.
+
+"Our people have a sense of duty, too, and as much courage as any
+others, only they do not make any to-do about it. I have a friend--a
+_gentleman_--who drove a stage-coach through the mountains for a while
+rather than do nothing, and who was held up one night and jumped from
+the stage on the robber, and chased him down the mountains and
+disarmed him."
+
+"Good!" exclaimed the gentleman. "Nervy thing!"
+
+"Rather," said Mrs. Lancaster, with mantling cheeks, stirred by what she
+considered a reflection on her people. And that was not all he did. "He
+had charge of a mine, and one day the mine was flooded while the men
+were at work, and he went in in the darkness and brought the men
+out safe."
+
+"Good!" said the gentleman. "But he had others with him? He did not go
+alone?"
+
+"He started alone, and two men volunteered to go with him. But he sent
+them back with the first group they found, and then, as there were
+others, he waded on by himself to where the others were, and brought
+them out, bringing on his shoulder the man who had attempted his life."
+
+"Fine!" exclaimed the gentleman. "I've been in some tight places myself;
+but I don't know about that. What was his name?"
+
+"Keith."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+Her eyes barely glanced his way; but the Earl of Steepleton saw in them
+what he had never been able to bring there.
+
+The Englishman put up his monocle and this time gazed long at Gordon.
+
+"Nervy chap!" he said quietly. "Won't you present me after dinner?"
+
+In his slow mind was dawning an idea that, perhaps, after all, this
+quiet American who had driven his way forward had found a baiting-place
+which he, with all his titles and long pedigrees, could not enter. His
+honest, outspoken admiration had, however, done more to make him a place
+in that guarded fortress than all Mrs. Rhodes's praises had effected.
+
+A little later the guests had all departed or scattered. Those who
+remained were playing cards and appeared settled for a good while.
+
+"Keith, we are out of it. Let's have a game of billiards," said the
+host, who had given his seat to a guest who had just come in after
+saying good night on the stair to one of the ladies.
+
+Keith followed him to the billiard-room, a big apartment finished in
+oak, with several large tables in it, and he and Rhodes began to play.
+The game, however, soon languished, for the two men had much to
+talk about.
+
+"Houghton, you may go," said Rhodes to the servant who attended to the
+table. "I will ring for you when I want you to shut up."
+
+"Thank you, sir"; and he was gone.
+
+"Now tell me all about everything," said Rhodes. "I want to hear
+everything that has happened since I came away--came into exile. I know
+about the property and the town that has grown up just as I knew it
+would. Tell me about the people--old Squire Rawson and Phrony, and
+Wickersham, and Norman and his wife."
+
+Keith told him about them. "Rhodes," he said, as he ended, "you started
+it and you ought to have stayed with it. Old Rawson says you foretold
+it all."
+
+Suddenly Rhodes flung his cue down on the table and straightened up.
+"Keith, this is killing me. Sometimes I think I can't stand it another
+day. I've a mind to chuck up the whole business and cut for it."
+
+Keith gazed at him in amazement. The clouded brow, the burning eyes, the
+drawn mouth, all told how real that explosion was and from what depths
+it came. Keith was quite startled.
+
+"It all seems to me so empty, so unreal, so puerile. I am bored to death
+with it. Do you think this is real?" He waved his arms impatiently about
+him. "It is all a sham and a fraud. I am nothing--nobody. I am a puppet
+on a hired stage, playing to amuse--not myself!--the Lord knows I am
+bored enough by it!--but a lot of people who don't care any more about
+me than I do about them. I can't stand this. D----n it! I don't want to
+make love to any other man's wife any more than I will have any of them
+making love to my wife. I think they are beginning to understand that. I
+showed a little puppy the front door not long ago--an earl, too, or next
+thing to it, an earl's eldest son--for doing what he would no more have
+dared to do in an Englishman's house than he would have tried to burn
+it. After that, I think, they began to see I might be something. Keith,
+do you remember what old Rawson said to us once about marrying?"
+
+Keith had been thinking of it all the evening.
+
+"Keith, I was not born for this; I was born to _do_ something. But for
+giving up I might have been like Stevenson or Eads or your man Maury,
+whom they are all belittling because he did it all himself instead of
+getting others to do it. By George! I hope to live till I build one more
+big bridge or run one more long tunnel. Jove! to stand once more up on
+the big girders, so high that the trees look small below you, and see
+the bridge growing under your eyes where the old croakers had said
+nothing would stand!"
+
+Keith's eyes sparkled, and he reached out his hand; and the other
+grasped it.
+
+When Keith returned home, he was already in sight of victory.
+
+The money had all been subscribed. His own interest in the venture was
+enough to make him rich, and he was to be general superintendent of the
+new company, with Matheson as his manager of the mines. All that was
+needed now was to complete the details of the transfer of the
+properties, perfect his organization, and set to work. This for a time
+required his presence more or less continuously in New York, and he
+opened an office in one of the office buildings down in the city, and
+took an apartment in a pleasant up-town hotel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Keith returned to New York that Autumn, it was no longer as a young
+man with eyes aflame with hope and expectation and face alight with
+enthusiasm. The eager recruit had changed to the veteran. He had had
+experience of a world where men lived and died for the most sordid of
+all rewards--money, mere money.
+
+The fight had left its mark upon him. The mouth had lost something of
+the smile that once lurked about its corners, but had gained in
+strength. The eyes, always direct and steady, had more depth. The
+shoulders had a squarer set, as though they had been braced against
+adversity. Experience of life had sobered him.
+
+Sometimes it had come to him that he might be caught by the current and
+might drift into the same spirit, but self-examination up to this time
+had reassured him. He knew that he had other motives: the trust reposed
+in him by his friends, the responsibility laid upon him, the resolve to
+justify that confidence, were still there, beside his eager desire
+for success.
+
+He called immediately to see Norman. He was surprised to find how much
+he had aged in this short time. His hair was sprinkled with gray. He had
+lost all his lightness. He was distrait and almost morose.
+
+"You men here work too hard," asserted Keith. "You ought to have run
+over to England with me. You'd have learned that men can work and live
+too. I spent some of the most profitable time I was over there in a
+deer forest, which may have been Burnam-wood, as all the trees had
+disappeared-gone somewhere, if not to Dunsinane."
+
+Norman half smiled, but he answered wearily: "I wish I had been anywhere
+else than where I was." He turned away while he was speaking and fumbled
+among the papers on his desk. Keith rose, and Norman rose also.
+
+"I will send you cards to the clubs. I shall not be in town to-night,
+but to-morrow night, or the evening after, suppose you dine with me at
+the University. I'll have two or three fellows to meet you--or, perhaps,
+we'll dine alone. What do you say? We can talk more freely."
+
+Keith said that this was just what he should prefer, and Norman gave him
+a warm handshake and, suddenly seating himself at his desk, dived
+quickly into his papers.
+
+Keith came out mystified. There was something he could not understand.
+He wondered if the trouble of which he had heard had grown.
+
+Next morning, looking over the financial page of a paper, Keith came on
+a paragraph in which Norman's name appeared. He was mentioned as one of
+the directors of a company which the paper declared was among those that
+had disappointed the expectations of investors. There was nothing very
+tangible about the article; but the general tone was critical, and to
+Keith's eye unfriendly.
+
+When, the next afternoon, Keith rang the door-bell at Norman's house,
+and asked if Mrs. Wentworth was at home, the servant who opened the door
+informed him that no one of that name lived there. They used to live
+there, but had moved. Mrs. Wentworth lived somewhere on Fifth Avenue
+near the Park. It was a large new house near such a street, right-hand
+side, second house from the corner.
+
+Keith had a feeling of disappointment. Somehow, he had hoped to hear
+something of Lois Huntington.
+
+Keith, having resolved to devote the afternoon to the call on his
+friend's wife, and partly in the hope of learning where Lois was, kept
+on, and presently found himself in front of a new double house, one of
+the largest on the block. Keith felt reassured.
+
+"Well, this does not look as if Wentworth were altogether broke," he
+thought.
+
+A strange servant opened the door. Mrs. Wentworth was not at home. The
+other lady was in--would the gentleman come in? There was the flutter of
+a dress at the top of the stair.
+
+Keith said no. He would call again. The servant looked puzzled, for the
+lady at the top of the stair had seen Mr. Keith cross the street and had
+just given orders that he should be admitted, as she would see him. Now,
+as Keith walked away, Miss Lois Huntington descended the stair.
+
+"Why didn't you let him in, Hucless?" she demanded.
+
+"I told him you were in, Miss; but he said he would not come in."
+
+Miss Huntington turned and walked slowly back up to her room. Her face
+was very grave; she was pondering deeply.
+
+A little later Lois Huntington put on her hat and went out.
+
+Lois had not found her position at Mrs. Wentworth's the most agreeable
+in the world. Mrs. Wentworth was moody and capricious, and at
+times exacting.
+
+She had little idea how often that quiet girl who took her complaints so
+calmly was tempted to break her vow of silence, answer her upbraidings,
+and return home. But her old friends were dropping away from her. And it
+was on this account and for Norman's sake that Lois put up with her
+capriciousness. She had promised Norman to stay with her, and she
+would do it.
+
+Mrs. Norman's quarrel with Alice Lancaster was a sore trial to Lois.
+Many of her friends treated Lois as if she were a sort of upper servant,
+with a mingled condescension and hauteur. Lois was rather amused at it,
+except when it became too apparent, and then she would show her little
+claws, which were sharp enough. But Mrs. Lancaster had always been
+sweet to her, and Lois had missed her sadly. She no longer came to Mrs.
+Wentworth's. Lois, however, was always urged to come and see her, and an
+intimacy had sprung up between the two. Lois, with her freshness, was
+like a breath of Spring to the society woman, who was a little jaded
+with her experience; and the elder lady, on her part, treated the young
+girl with a warmth that was half maternal, half the cordiality of an
+elder sister. What part Gordon Keith played in this friendship must be
+left to surmise.
+
+It was to Mrs. Lancaster's that Lois now took her way. Her greeting was
+a cordial one, and Lois was soon confiding to her her trouble; how she
+had met an old friend after many years, and then how a contretemps had
+occurred. She told of his writing her, and of her failure to answer his
+letters, and how her aunt had refused to allow him to come to Brookford
+to see them.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster listened with interest.
+
+"My dear, there was nothing in that. Yes, that was just one of Ferdy's
+little lies," she said, in a sort of reverie.
+
+"But it was so wicked in him to tell such falsehoods about a man,"
+exclaimed Lois, her color coming and going, her eyes flashing.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Ferdy does not like Mr. Keith, and he does like you, and he probably
+thought to prevent your liking him."
+
+"I detest him."
+
+The telltale color rushed up into her cheeks as Mrs. Lancaster's eyes
+rested on her, and as it mounted, those blue eyes grew a little more
+searching.
+
+"I can scarcely bear to see him when he comes there," said Lois.
+
+"Has he begun to go there again?" Mrs. Lancaster inquired, in some
+surprise.
+
+"Yes; and he pretends that he is coming to see me!" said the girl, with
+a flash in her eyes. "You know that is not true?"
+
+"Don't you believe him," said the other, gravely. Her eyes, as they
+rested on the girl's face, had a very soft light in them.
+
+"Well, we must make it up," she said presently. "You are going to Mrs.
+Wickersham's?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"Yes; Cousin Louise is going and says I must go. Mr. Wickersham will not
+be there, you know."
+
+"Yes." She drifted off into a reverie.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE DINNER AT MRS. WICKERSHAM'S
+
+Keith quickly discovered that Rumor was busy with Ferdy Wickersham's
+name in other places than gilded drawing-rooms. He had been dropped from
+the board of more than one big corporation in which he had once had a
+potent influence. Knowing men, like Stirling and his club friends, began
+to say that they did not see how he had kept up. But up-town he still
+held on-held on with a steady eye and stony face that showed a nerve
+worthy of a better man. His smile became more constant,--to be sure, It
+was belied by his eyes: that cold gleam was not mirth,--but his voice
+was as insolent as ever.
+
+Several other rumors soon began to float about. One was that he and Mrs.
+Wentworth had fallen out. As to the Cause of this the town was divided.
+One story was that the pretty governess at Mrs. Wentworth's was in some
+way concerned with it.
+
+However this was, the Wickersham house was mortgaged, and Rumor began to
+say even up-town that the Wickersham fortune had melted away.
+
+The news of Keith's success in England had reached home as soon as he
+had. His friends congratulated him, and his acquaintances greeted him
+with a warmth that, a few years before, would have cheered his heart and
+have made him their friend for life. Mrs. Nailor, when she met him,
+almost fell on his neck. She actually called him her "dear boy."
+
+"Oh, I have been hearing about you!" she said archly. "You must come
+and dine with us at once and tell us all about it."
+
+"About what?" inquired Keith.
+
+"About your great successes on the other side. You see, your friends
+keep up with you!"
+
+"They do, indeed, and sometimes get ahead of me," said Keith.
+
+"How would to-morrow suit you? No, not to-morrow--Saturday? No; we are
+going out Saturday. Let me see--we are so crowded with engagements I
+shall have to go home and look at my book. But you must come very soon.
+You have heard the news, of course? Isn't it dreadful?"
+
+"What news?" He knew perfectly what she meant.
+
+"About the Norman-Wentworths getting a divorce? Dreadful, isn't it?
+Perfectly dreadful! But, of course, it was to be expected. Any one could
+see that all along?"
+
+"I could not," said Keith, dryly; "but I do not claim to be any one."
+
+"Which side are you on? Norman's, I suppose?"
+
+"Neither," said Keith.
+
+"You know, Ferdy always was in love with her?" This with a glance to
+obtain Keith's views.
+
+"No; I know nothing about it."
+
+"Yes; always," she nodded oracularly. "Of course, he is making love to
+Alice Lancaster, too, and to the new governess at the Wentworths'."
+
+"Who is that?" asked Keith, moved by some sudden instinct to inquire.
+
+"That pretty country cousin of Norman's, whom they brought there to save
+appearances when Norman first left. Huntington is her name."
+
+Keith suddenly grew hot.
+
+"Yes, Ferdy is making love to her, too. Why, they say that is what they
+have quarrelled about. Louise is insanely jealous, and she is very
+pretty. Yes--you know, Ferdy is like some other men? Just gregarious!
+Yes? But Louise Wentworth was always his _grande passion_. He is just
+amusing himself with the governess, and she, poor little fool, supposes
+she has made a conquest. You know how it is?"
+
+"I really know nothing about it," declared Keith, in a flame.
+
+"Yes; and he was always her _grande passion_? Don't you think so?"
+
+"No, I do not," said Keith, firmly. "I know nothing about it; but I
+believe she and Norman were devoted,--as devoted a couple as I ever
+saw,--and I do not see why people cannot let them alone. I think none
+too well of Ferdy Wickersham, but I don't believe a word against her.
+She may be silly; but she is a hundred times better than some who
+calumniate her."
+
+"Oh, you dear boy! You were always so amiable. It's a pity the world is
+not like you; but it is not."
+
+"It is a pity people do not let others alone and attend to their own
+affairs," remarked Keith, grimly. "I believe more than half the trouble
+is made by the meddlers who go around gossiping."
+
+"Don't they! Why, every one is talking about it. I have not been in a
+drawing-room where it is not being discussed."
+
+"I suppose not," said Mr. Keith.
+
+"And, you know, they say Norman Wentworth has lost a lot of money, too.
+But, then, he has a large account to fall back on. Alice Lancaster has
+a plenty."
+
+"What's that?" Keith's voice had an unpleasant sharpness in it.
+
+"Oh, you know, he is her trustee, and they are great friends. Good-by.
+You must come and dine with us sometime--sometime soon, too."
+
+And Mrs. Nailor floated away, and in the first drawing-room she visited
+told of Keith's return and of his taking the story of Louise Wentworth
+and Ferdy Wickersham very seriously; adding, "And you know, I think he
+is a great admirer of Louise himself--a very great admirer. Of course,
+he would like to marry Alice Lancaster, just as Ferdy would. They all
+want to marry her; but Louise Wentworth is the one that has their
+hearts. She knows how to capture them. You keep your eyes open. You
+ought to have seen the way he looked when I mentioned Ferdy Wickersham
+and her. My dear, a man doesn't look that way unless he feels something
+here." She tapped solemnly the spot where she imagined her heart to be,
+that dry and desiccated organ that had long ceased to know any
+real warmth.
+
+A little time afterwards, Keith, to his great surprise, received an
+invitation to dine at Mrs. Wickersham's. He had never before received an
+invitation to her house, and when he had met her, she had always been
+stiff and repellent toward him. This he had regarded as perfectly
+natural; for he and Ferdy had never been friendly, and of late had not
+even kept up appearances.
+
+He wondered why he should be invited now. Could it be true, as Stirling
+had said, laughing, that now he had the key and would find all doors
+open to him?
+
+Keith had not yet written his reply when he called that evening at Mrs.
+Lancaster's. She asked him if he had received such an invitation. Keith
+said yes, but he did not intend to go. He almost thought it must have
+been sent by mistake.
+
+"Oh, no; now come. Ferdy won't be there, and Mrs. Wickersham wants to be
+friendly with you. You and Ferdy don't get along; but neither do she and
+Ferdy. You know they have fallen out? Poor old thing! She was talking
+about it the other day, and she burst out crying. She said he had been
+her idol."
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"Oh, Ferdy's selfishness."
+
+"He is a brute! Think of a man quarrelling with his mother! Why--!" He
+went into a reverie in which his face grew very soft, while Mrs.
+Lancaster watched him silently. Presently he started. "I have nothing
+against her except a sort of general animosity from boyhood, which I am
+sorry to have."
+
+"Oh, well, then, come. As people grow older they outgrow their
+animosities and wish to make friends."
+
+"You being so old as to have experienced it?" said Keith.
+
+"I am nearly thirty years old," she said. "Isn't it dreadful?"
+
+"Aurora is much older than that," said Keith.
+
+"Ah, Sir Flatterer, I have a mirror." But her eyes filled with a
+pleasant light as Keith said:
+
+"Then it will corroborate what needs no proof."
+
+She knew it was flattery, but she enjoyed it and dimpled.
+
+"Now, you will come? I want you to come." She looked at him with a soft
+glow in her face.
+
+"Yes. On your invitation."
+
+"Alice Lancaster, place one good deed to thy account: 'Blessed are the
+peacemakers,'" said Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+When Keith arrived at Mrs. Wickersham's he found the company assembled
+in her great drawing-room--the usual sort to be found in great
+drawing-rooms of large new chateau-like mansions in a great and
+commercial city.
+
+"Mr. Keats!" called out the prim servant. They always took this poetical
+view of his name.
+
+Mrs. Wickersham greeted him civilly and solemnly. She had aged much
+since Keith saw her last, and had also grown quite deaf. Her face showed
+traces of the desperate struggle she was making to keep up appearances.
+It was apparent that she had not the least idea who he was; but she
+shook hands with him much as she might have done at a funeral had he
+called to pay his respects. Among the late arrivals was Mrs. Wentworth.
+She was the richest-dressed woman in the room, and her jewels were the
+finest, but she had an expression on her face, as she entered, which
+Keith had never seen there. Her head was high, and there was an air of
+defiance about her which challenged the eye at once.
+
+"I don't think I shall speak to her," said a voice near Keith.
+
+"Well, I have known her all my life, and until it becomes a public
+scandal I don't feel authorized to cut her--"
+
+The speaker was Mrs. Nailor, who was in her most charitable mood.
+
+"Oh, of course, I shall speak to her here, but I mean--I certainly shall
+not visit her."
+
+"You know she has quarrelled with her friend, Mrs. Lancaster? About her
+husband." This was behind her fan.
+
+"Oh, yes. She is to be here to-night. Quite brazen, isn't it? We shall
+see how they meet. I met a remarkably pretty girl down in the
+dressing-room," she continued; "one of the guests. She has such pretty
+manners, too. Really, I thought, from her politeness to me in arranging
+my dress, she must be one of the maids until Mrs. Wentworth spoke to
+her. Young girls nowadays are so rude! They take up the mirror the whole
+time, and never think of letting you see yourself. I wonder who she
+can be?"
+
+"Possibly Mrs. Wentworth's companion. I think she is here. She has to
+have some one to do the proprieties, you know?" said Mrs. Nailor.
+
+"I should think it might be as well," assented the other, with a sniff.
+"But she would hardly be here!"
+
+"She is really her governess, a very ill-bred and rude young person,"
+said Mrs. Nailor.
+
+The other sighed.
+
+"Society is getting so democratic now, one might say, so mixed, that
+there is no telling whom one may meet nowadays."
+
+"No, indeed," pursued Mrs. Nailor. "I do not at all approve of
+governesses and such persons being invited out. I think the English way
+much the better. There the governess never dreams of coming to the table
+except to luncheon, and her friends are the housekeeper and the butler."
+
+Keith, wearied of the banalities at his ear, crossed over to where Mrs.
+Wentworth stood a little apart from the other ladies. One or two men
+were talking to her. She was evidently pleased to see him. She talked
+volubly, and with just that pitch in her voice that betrays a subcurrent
+of excitement.
+
+From time to time she glanced about her, appearing to Keith to search
+the faces of the other women. Keith wondered if it were a fancy of his
+that they were holding a little aloof from her. Presently Mrs. Nailor
+came up and spoke to her.
+
+Keith backed away a little, and found himself mixed up with the train of
+a lady behind him, a dainty thing of white muslin.
+
+He apologized in some confusion, and turning, found himself looking into
+Lois Huntington's eyes. For a bare moment he was in a sort of maze. Then
+the expression in her face dispelled it. She held out her hand, and he
+clasped it; and before he had withdrawn his eyes from hers, he knew that
+his peace was made, and Mrs. Wickersham's drawing-room had become
+another place. This, then, was what Alice Lancaster meant when she spoke
+of the peacemakers.
+
+"It does not in the least matter about the dress, I assure you," she
+said in reply to his apology. "My dressmaker, Lois Huntington, can
+repair it so that you will not know it has been torn. It was only a ruse
+of mine to attract your attention." She was trying to speak lightly. "I
+thought you were not going to speak to me at all. It seems to be a way
+you have of treating your old friends--your oldest friends,"
+she laughed.
+
+"Oh, the insolence of youth!" said Keith, wishing to keep away from a
+serious subject. "Let us settle this question of age here and now. I say
+you are seven years old."
+
+"You are a Bourbon," she said; "you neither forget nor learn. Look at
+me. How old do I look?"
+
+"Seven--"
+
+"No. Look."
+
+"I am looking-would I were Argus! You look like--perpetual Youth."
+
+And she did. She was dressed in pure white. Her dark eyes were soft and
+gentle, yet with mischief lurking in them, and her straight brows,
+almost black, added to their lustre. Her dark hair was brushed back from
+her white forehead, and as she turned, Keith noted again, as he had done
+the first time he met her, the fine profile and the beautiful lines of
+her round throat, with the curves below it, as white as snow. "Perpetual
+Youth," he murmured.
+
+"And do you know what you are?" she challenged him.
+
+"Yes; Age."
+
+"No. Flattery. But I am proof. I have learned that men are deceivers
+ever. You positively refused to see me when I had left word with the
+servant that I would see you if you called." She gave him a swift little
+glance to see how he took her charge.
+
+"I did nothing of the kind. I will admit that I should know where you
+are by instinct, as Sir John knew the Prince; but I did not expect you
+to insist on my doing so. How was I to know you were in the city?"
+
+"The servant told you."
+
+"The servant told me?"
+
+As Keith's brow puckered in the effort to unravel the mystery, she
+nodded.
+
+"Um-hum--I heard him. I was at the head of the stair."
+
+Keith tapped his head.
+
+"It's old age--sheer senility."
+
+"'No; I don't want to see the other lady,'" she said, mimicking him so
+exactly that he opened his eyes wide.
+
+"I am staying at Mrs. Wentworth's--Cousin Norman's," she continued, with
+a little change of expression and the least little lift of her head.
+
+Keith's expression, perhaps, changed slightly, too, for she added
+quietly: "Cousin Louise had to have some one with her, and I am teaching
+the children. I am the governess."
+
+"I have always said that children nowadays have all the best things,"
+said Keith, desirous to get off delicate ground. "You know, some one has
+said he never ate a ripe peach in his life: when he was a boy the
+grown-ups had them, and since he grew up the children have them all."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I am very severe, I assure you."
+
+"You look it. I should think you might be Herod himself."
+
+She smiled, and then the smile died out, and she glanced around her.
+
+"I owe you an apology," she said in a lowered voice.
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For--mis--for not answering your letters. But I mis--I don't know how
+to say what I wish. Won't you accept it without an explanation?" She
+held out her hand and gave him the least little flitting glance
+of appeal.
+
+"I will," said Keith. "With all my heart."
+
+"Thank you. I have been very unhappy about it." She breathed a little
+sigh of relief, which Keith caught.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster did not arrive until all the other guests had been there
+a little while. But when she entered she had never looked handsomer. As
+soon as she had greeted her hostess, her eyes swept around the room, and
+in their circuit rested for a moment on Keith, who was talking to Lois.
+She gave them a charming smile. The next moment, however, her eyes stole
+that way again, and this time they bore a graver expression. The
+admiration that filled the younger girl's eyes was unbounded and
+unfeigned.
+
+"Don't you think she is the handsomest woman in the room?" she asked,
+with a nod toward Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+Keith was suddenly conscious that he did not wish to commit himself to
+such praise. She was certainly very handsome, he admitted, but there
+were others who would pass muster, too, in a beauty show.
+
+"Oh, but I know you must think so; every one says you do," Lois urged,
+with a swift glance up at him, which, somehow, Keith would have liked
+to avoid.
+
+"Then, I suppose it must be so; for every one knows my innermost
+thoughts. But I think she was more beautiful when she was younger. I do
+not know what it is; but there is something in Society that, after a few
+years, takes away the bloom of ingenuousness and puts in its place just
+the least little shade of unreality."
+
+"I know what you mean; but she is so beautiful that one would never
+notice it. What a power such beauty is! I should be afraid of it." Lois
+was speaking almost to herself, and Keith, as she was deeply absorbed in
+observing Mrs. Lancaster, gazed at her with renewed interest.
+
+"I'd so much rather be loved for myself'," the girl went on earnestly.
+"I think it is one of the compensations that those who want such
+beauty have-"
+
+"Well, it is one of the things which you must always hold merely as a
+conjecture, for you can never know by experience."
+
+She glanced up at him with a smile, half pleased, half reproving.
+
+"Do you think I am the sort that likes flattery? I believe you think we
+are all silly. I thought you were too good a friend of mine to attempt
+that line with me."
+
+Keith declared that all women loved flattery, but protested, of course,
+that he was not flattering her.
+
+"Why should I?" he laughed.
+
+"Oh, just because you think it will please me, and because it is so
+easy. It is so much less trouble. It takes less intellect, and you don't
+think I am worth spending intellect on."
+
+This Keith stoutly denied.
+
+She gave him a fleeting glance out of her brown eyes. "She, however, is
+as good as she is handsome," she said, returning to Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"Yes; she is one of those who 'do good by stealth, and blush to find it
+fame.'"
+
+"There are not a great many like that around here," Lois smiled. "Here
+comes one now?" she added, as Mrs. Nailor moved up to them. She was "so
+glad" to see Miss Huntington out. "You must like your Winter in New
+York?" she said, smiling softly. "You have such opportunities for seeing
+interesting people-like Mr. Keith, here?" She turned her eyes on Keith.
+
+"Oh, yes. I do. I see so many entertaining people," said Lois,
+innocently.
+
+"They are very kind to you?" purred the elder lady.
+
+"Most condescending." Lois turned her eyes toward Keith with a little
+sparkle in them; but as she read his appreciation a smile stole
+into them.
+
+Dinner was solemnly announced, and the couples swept out in that stately
+manner appropriate to solemn occasions, such as marriages, funerals, and
+fashionable dinners.
+
+"Do you know your place?" asked Keith of Lois, to whom he had been
+assigned.
+
+"Don't I? A governess and not know her place! You must help me through."
+
+"Through what?"
+
+"The dinner. You do not understand what a tremendous responsibility you
+have. This is my first dinner."
+
+"I always said dinners were a part of the curse," said Keith, lightly,
+smiling down at her fresh face with sheer content. "I shall confine
+myself hereafter to breakfast and lunch-except when I receive
+invitations to Mrs. Wickersham's." he added.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster was on the other side of Keith; so he found the dinner
+much pleasanter than he had expected. She soon fell to talking of Lois,
+a subject which Keith found very agreeable.
+
+"You know, she is staying with Louise Wentworth? Louise had to have some
+one to stay with her, so she got her to come and teach the children this
+Winter. Louise says she is trying to make something of her."
+
+"From my slight observation, it seems to me as if the Creator has been
+rather successful in that direction already. How does she propose to
+help Him out?"
+
+Mrs. Lancaster bent forward and took a good look at the girl, who at the
+moment was carrying on an animated conversation with Stirling. Her color
+was coming and going, her eyes were sparkling, and her cheek was
+dimpling with fun.
+
+"She looks as if she came out of a country garden, doesn't she?" she
+said.
+
+"Yes, because she has, and has not yet been wired to a stick."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster's eyes grew graver at Keith's speech. Just then the
+conversation became more general. Some one told a story of a man
+travelling with his wife and meeting a former wife, and forgetting which
+one he then had.
+
+"Oh, that reminds me of a story I heard the other day. It was awfully
+good-but just a little wicked," exclaimed Mrs. Nailor.
+
+Keith's smile died out, and there was something very like a cloud
+lowering on his brow. Several others appeared surprised, and Mr. Nailor,
+a small bald-headed man, said across the table: "Hally, don't you tell
+that story." But Mrs. Nailor was not to be controlled.
+
+"Oh, I must tell it! It is not going to hurt any of you. Let me see if
+there is any one here very young and innocent?" She glanced about the
+table. "Oh, yes; there is little Miss Huntington. Miss Huntington, you
+can stop your ears while I tell it."
+
+"Thank you," said Lois, placidly. She leaned a little forward and put
+her fingers in her ears.
+
+A sort of gasp went around the table, and then a shout of laughter, led
+by Stirling. Mrs. Nailor joined in it, but her face was red and her eyes
+were angry. Mrs. Wentworth looked annoyed.
+
+"Good," said Mrs. Lancaster, in an undertone.
+
+"Divine," said Keith, his eyes snapping with satisfaction.
+
+"It was not so bad as that," said Mrs. Nailor, her face very red. "Miss
+Huntington, you can take your hands down now; I sha'n't tell it."
+
+"Thank you," said Lois, and sat quietly back in her chair, with her face
+as placid as a child's.
+
+Mrs. Nailor suddenly changed the conversation to Art. She was looking at
+a painting on the wall behind Keith, and after inspecting it a moment
+through her lorgnon, turned toward the head of the table.
+
+"Where did you get that picture, Mrs. Wickersham? Have I ever seen it
+before?"
+
+The hostess's gaze followed hers.
+
+"That? Oh, we have had it ever so long. It is a portrait of an ancestor
+of mine. It belonged to a relative, a distant relative--another branch,
+you know, in whose family it came down, though we had even more right to
+it, as we were an older branch," she said, gaining courage as she
+went on.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster turned and inspected the picture.
+
+"I, too, almost seem to have seen it before," she said presently, in a
+reflective way.
+
+"My dear, you have not seen it before," declared the hostess,
+positively. "Although we have had it for a good while, it was at our
+place in the country. Brush, the picture-dealer, says it is one of the
+finest 'old masters' in New York, quite in the best style of Sir
+Peter--What's his name?"
+
+"Then I have seen some one so like it--? Who can it be?" said Mrs.
+Lancaster, her mind still working along the lines of reminiscence.
+
+Nearly every one was looking now.
+
+"Why, I know who it is!" said Lois Huntington, who had turned to look at
+it, to Mrs. Lancaster. "It is Mr. Keith." Her clear voice was heard
+distinctly.
+
+"Of course, it is," said Mrs. Lancaster. Others agreed with her.
+
+Keith, too, had turned and looked over his shoulder at the picture
+behind him, and for a moment he seemed in a dream. His father was
+gazing down at him out of the frame. The next moment he came to himself.
+It was the man-in-armor that used to hang in the library at Elphinstone.
+As he turned back, he glanced at Mrs. Lancaster, and her eyes gazed into
+his. The next moment he addressed Mrs. Wickersham and started a new
+subject of conversation.
+
+"That is it," said Mrs. Lancaster to herself. Then turning to her
+hostess, she said: "No, I never saw it before; I was mistaken."
+
+But Lois knew that she herself had seen it before, and remembered where
+it was.
+
+Mrs. Wickersham looked extremely uncomfortable, but Keith's calm
+courtesy set her at ease again.
+
+When the gentlemen, after their cigars, followed the ladies into the
+drawing-room, Keith found Mrs. Lancaster and Lois sitting together, a
+little apart from the others, talking earnestly. He walked over and
+joined them.
+
+They had been talking of the incident of the picture, but stopped as he
+came up.
+
+"Now, Lois," said Mrs. Lancaster, gayly, "I have known Mr. Keith a long
+time, and I give you one standing piece of advice. Don't believe one
+word that he tells you; for he is the most insidious flatterer
+that lives."
+
+"On the contrary," said Keith, bowing and speaking gravely to the
+younger girl, "I assure you that you may believe implicitly every word
+that I tell you. I promise you in the beginning that I shall never tell
+you anything but the truth as long as I live. It shall be my claim upon
+your friendship."
+
+"Thank you," said Lois, lifting her eyes to his face. Her color had
+deepened a little at his earnest manner. "I love a palpable truth."
+
+"You do not get it often in Society," said Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"I promise you that you shall always have it from me," said Keith.
+
+"Thank you," she said again, quite earnestly, looking him calmly in the
+eyes. "Then we shall always be friends."
+
+"Always."
+
+Just then Stirling came up and with a very flattering speech asked Miss
+Huntington to sing.
+
+"I hear you sing like a seraph," he declared.
+
+"I thought they always cried," she said, smiling; then, with a
+half-frightened look across toward her cousin, she sobered and declared
+that she could not.
+
+"I have been meaning to have her take lessons," said Mrs. Wentworth,
+condescendingly, from her seat near by; "but I have not had time to
+attend to it. She will sing very well when she takes lessons." She
+resumed her conversation. Stirling was still pressing Miss Huntington,
+and she was still excusing herself; declaring that she had no one to
+play her accompaniments.
+
+"Please help me," she said in an undertone to Keith. "I used to play
+them myself, but Cousin Louise said I must not do that; that I must
+always stand up to sing."
+
+"Nonsense," said Keith. "You sha'n't sing if you do not wish to do so;
+but let me tell you: there is a deed of record in my State conveying a
+tract of land to a girl from an old gentleman on the expressed
+consideration that she had sung 'Annie Laurie' for him when he asked her
+to do it, without being begged."
+
+She looked at him as if she had not heard, and then glanced at her
+cousin.
+
+"Either sing or don't sing, my dear," said Mrs. Wentworth, with a slight
+frown. "You are keeping every one waiting."
+
+Keith glanced over at her, and was about to say to Lois, "Don't sing";
+but he was too late. Folding her hands before her, and without moving
+from where she stood near the wall, she began to sing "Annie Laurie."
+She had a lovely voice, and she sang as simply and unaffectedly as if
+she had been singing in her own room for her own pleasure.
+
+When she got through, there was a round of applause throughout the
+company. Even Mrs. Wentworth joined in it; but she came over and said:
+
+"That was well done; but next time, my dear, let some one play your
+accompaniment."
+
+"Next time, don't you do any such thing," said Keith, stoutly. "You can
+never sing it so well again if you do. Please accept this from a man who
+would rather have heard you sing that song that way than have heard
+Albani sing in 'Lohengrin.'" He took the rosebud out of his buttonhole
+and gave it to her, looking her straight in the eyes.
+
+"Is this the truth?" she asked, with her gaze quite steady on his face.
+
+"The palpable truth," he said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+A MISUNDERSTANDING
+
+Miss Lois Huntington, as she sank back in the corner of her cousin's
+carriage, on their way home, was far away from the rattling New York
+street. Mrs. Wentworth's occasional recurrence to the unfortunate
+incidents of stopping her ears and of singing the song without an
+accompaniment did not ruffle her. She knew she had pleased one man--the
+one she at that moment would rather have pleased than all the rest of
+New York. Her heart was eased of a load that had made it heavy for many
+a day. They were once more friends. Mrs. Wentworth's chiding sounded as
+if it were far away on some alien shore, while Lois floated serenely on
+a tide that appeared to begin away back in her childhood, and was
+bearing her gently, still gently, she knew not whither. If she tried to
+look forward she was lost in a mist that hung like a soft haze over the
+horizon. Might there be a haven yonder in that rosy distance? Or were
+those still the billows of the wide and trackless sea? She did not know
+or care. She would drift and meantime think of him, the old friend who
+had turned the evening for her into a real delight. Was he in love with
+Mrs. Lancaster? she wondered. Every one said he was, and it would not be
+unnatural if he were. It was on her account he had gone to Mrs.
+Wickersham's. She undoubtedly liked him. Many men were after her. If Mr.
+Keith was trying to marry her, as every one said, he must be in love
+with her. He would never marry any one whom he did not love. If he were
+in love with Mrs. Lancaster, would she marry him? Her belief was that
+she would.
+
+At the thought she for one moment had a pang of envy.
+
+Her reverie was broken in on by Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"Why are you so pensive? You have not said a word since we started."
+
+"Why, I do not know. I was just thinking. You know, such a dinner is
+quite an episode with me."
+
+"Did you have a pleasant time? Was Mr. Keith agreeable? I was glad to
+see you had him; for he is a very agreeable man when he chooses, but
+quite moody, and you never know what he is going to say."
+
+"I think that is one of his--of his charms--that you don't know what he
+is going to say. I get so tired of talking to people who say just what
+you know they are going to say--just what some one else has just said
+and what some one else will say to-morrow. It is like reading an
+advertisement."
+
+"Lois, you must not be so unconventional," said Mrs. Wentworth. "I must
+beg you not to repeat such a thing as your performance this evening. I
+don't like it."
+
+"Very well, Cousin Louise, I will not," said the girl, a little stiffly.
+"I shall recognize your wishes; but I must tell you that I do not agree
+with you. I hate conventionality. We all get machine-made. I see not the
+least objection to what I did, except your wishes, of course, and
+neither did Mr. Keith."
+
+"Well, while you are with me, you must conform to my wishes. Mr. Keith
+is not responsible for you. Mr. Keith is like other men--ready to
+flatter a young and unsophisticated girl."
+
+"No; Mr. Keith is not like other men. He does not have to wait and see
+what others think and say before he forms an opinion. I am so tired of
+hearing people say what they think others think. Even Mr. Rimmon, at
+church, says what he thinks his congregation likes--just as when he
+meets them he flatters them and tells them what dear ladies they are,
+and how well they look, and how good their wine is. Why can't people
+think for themselves?"
+
+"Well, on my word, Lois, you appear to be thinking for yourself! And you
+also appear to think very highly of Mr. Keith," said Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"I do. I have known Mr. Keith all my life," said the girl, gravely. "He
+is associated in my mind with all that I loved."
+
+"There, I did not mean to call up sorrowful thoughts," said Mrs.
+Wentworth. "I wanted you to have a good time."
+
+Next day Mr. Keith gave himself the pleasure of calling promptly at Mrs.
+Norman's. He remembered the time when he had waited a day or two before
+calling on Miss Huntington and had found her gone, with its train of
+misunderstandings. So he had no intention of repeating the error. In
+Love as in War, Success attends Celerity.
+
+Miss Huntington was not at home, the servant said in answer to Keith's
+inquiries for the ladies; she had taken the children out to see Madam
+Wentworth. But Mrs. Wentworth would see Mr. Keith.
+
+Mrs. Wentworth was more than usually cordial. She was undoubtedly more
+nervous than she used to be. She soon spoke of Norman, and for a moment
+grew quite excited.
+
+"I know what people say about me," she exclaimed. "I know they say I
+ought to have borne everything and have gone on smiling and pretending I
+was happy even when I had the proof that he was--was--that he no longer
+cared for me, or for my--my happiness. But I could not--I was not
+constituted so. And if I have refused to submit to it I had
+good reason."
+
+"Mrs. Wentworth," said Keith, "will you please tell me what you are
+talking about?"
+
+"You will hear about it soon enough," she said, with a bitter laugh.
+"All you have to do is to call on Mrs. Nailor or Mrs. Any-one-else for
+five minutes."
+
+"If I hear what I understand you to believe, that Norman cares for some
+one else, I shall not believe it."
+
+She laughed bitterly.
+
+"Oh, you and Norman always swore by each other. I guess that you are no
+better than other men."
+
+"We are, at least, better than some other men," said Keith, "and Norman
+is better than most other men."
+
+She simply shrugged her shoulders and drifted into a reverie. It was
+evidently not a pleasant one.
+
+Keith rose to go. And a half-hour later he quite casually called at old
+Mrs. Wentworth's, where he found the children having a romp. Miss
+Huntington looked as sweet as a rose, and Keith thought, or at least
+hoped, she was pleased to see him.
+
+Keith promptly availed himself of Mrs. Wentworth's permission, and was
+soon calling every day or two at her house, and even on those days when
+he did not call he found himself sauntering up the avenue or in the
+Park, watching for the slim, straight, trim little figure he now knew so
+well. He was not in love with Lois. He said this to himself quite
+positively. He only admired her, and had a feeling of protection and
+warm friendship for a young and fatherless girl who had once had every
+promise of a life of ease and joy, and was by the hap of ill fortune
+thrown out on the cold world and into a relation of dependence. He had
+about given up any idea of falling in love. Love, such as he had once
+known it, was not for him. Love for love's sake--love that created a new
+world and peopled it with one woman--was over for him. At least, so
+he said.
+
+And when he had reasoned thus, he would find himself hurrying along the
+avenue or in the Park, straining his eyes to see if he could distinguish
+her among the crowd of walkers and loungers that thronged the sidewalk
+or the foot-path a quarter of a mile away. And if he could not, he was
+conscious of disappointment; and if he did distinguish her, his heart
+would give a bound, and he would go racing along till he was at
+her side.
+
+Oftenest, though, he visited her at Mrs. Wentworth's, where he could
+talk to her without the continual interruption of the children's busy
+tongues, and could get her to sing those old-fashioned songs that,
+somehow, sounded to him sweeter than all the music in the world.
+
+In fact, he went there so often to visit her that he began to neglect
+his other friends. Even Norman he did not see as much of as formerly.
+
+Once, when he was praising her voice to Mrs. Wentworth, she said to him:
+"Yes, I think she would do well in concert. I am urging her to prepare
+herself for that; not at present, of course, for I need her just now
+with the children; but in a year or two the boys will go to school and
+the two girls will require a good French governess, or I may take them
+to France. Then I shall advise her to try concert. Of course, Miss
+Brooke cannot take care of her always. Besides, she is too independent
+to allow her to do it."
+
+Keith was angry in a moment. He had never liked Mrs. Wentworth so
+little. "I shall advise her to do nothing of the kind," he said firmly.
+"Miss Huntington is a lady, and to have her patronized and treated as an
+inferior by a lot of _nouveaux riches_ is more than I could stand."
+
+"I see no chance of her marrying," said Mrs. Wentworth. "She has not a
+cent, and you know men don't marry penniless girls these days."
+
+"Oh, they do if they fall in love. There are a great many men in the
+world and even in New York, besides the small tuft-hunting, money-loving
+parasites that one meets at the so-called swell houses. If those you and
+I know were all, New York would be a very insignificant place. The
+brains and the character and the heart; the makers and leaders, are not
+found at the dinners and balls we are honored with invitations to by
+Mrs. Nailor and her like. Alice Lancaster was saying the other day--"
+
+Mrs. Wentworth froze up.
+
+"Alice Lancaster!" Her eyes flashed. "Do not quote her to me!" Her lips
+choked with the words.
+
+"She is a friend of yours, and a good friend of yours," declared Keith,
+boldly.
+
+"I do not want such friends as that," she said, flaming suddenly. "Who
+do you suppose has come between my husband and me?"
+
+"Not Mrs. Lancaster."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No," said Keith, firmly; "you wrong them both. You have been misled."
+
+She rose and walked up and down the room in an excitement like that of
+an angry lioness.
+
+"You are the only friend that would say that to me."
+
+"Then I am a better friend than others." He went on to defend Mrs.
+Lancaster warmly.
+
+When Keith left he wondered if that outburst meant that she still loved
+Norman.
+
+It is not to be supposed that Mr. Keith's visits to the house of Mrs.
+Wentworth had gone unobserved or unchronicled. That portion of the set
+that knew Mrs. Wentworth best, which is most given to the discussion of
+such important questions as who visits whom too often, and who has
+stopped visiting whom altogether, with the reasons therefor, was soon
+busy over Keith's visits.
+
+They were referred to in the society column of a certain journal
+recently started, known by some as "The Scandal-monger's Own," and some
+kind friend was considerate enough to send Norman Wentworth a
+marked copy.
+
+Some suggested timidly that they had heard that Mr. Keith's visits were
+due to his opinion of the governess; but they were immediately
+suppressed.
+
+Mrs. Nailor expressed the more general opinion when she declared that
+even a debutante would know that men like Ferdy Wickersham and Mr. Keith
+did not fall in love with unknown governesses. That sort of thing would
+do to put in books; but it did not happen in real life. They might
+visit them, but--! After which she proceeded to say as many ill-natured
+things about Miss Lois as she could think of; for the story of Lois's
+stopping her ears had also gotten abroad.
+
+Meantime, Keith pursued his way, happily ignorant of the motives
+attributed to him by some of those who smiled on him and invited him to
+their teas. A half-hour with Lois Huntington was reward enough to him
+for much waiting. To see her eyes brighten and to hear her voice grow
+softer and more musical as she spoke his name; to feel that she was in
+sympathy with him, that she understood him without explanation, that she
+was interested in his work: these were the rewards which lit up life for
+him and sent him to his rooms cheered and refreshed. He knew that she
+had no idea of taking him otherwise than as a friend. She looked on him
+almost as a contemporary of her father. But life was growing very sweet
+for him again.
+
+It was not long before the truth was presented to him.
+
+One of his club friends rallied him on his frequent visits in a certain
+quarter and the conquest which they portended. Keith flushed warmly. He
+had that moment been thinking of Lois Huntington. He had just been to
+see her, and her voice was still in his ears; so, though he thought it
+unusual in Tom Trimmer to refer to the matter, it was not unnatural. He
+attempted to turn the subject lightly by pretending to misunderstand
+him.
+
+"I mean, I hear you have cut Wickersham out. Ferdy thought he had a
+little corner there."
+
+Again Keith reddened. He, too, had sometimes thought that Ferdy was
+beginning to be attentive to Lois Huntington. Others manifestly
+thought so too.
+
+"I don't know that I understand you," he said.
+
+"Don't you?" laughed the other. "Haven't you seen the papers lately?"
+
+Keith chilled instantly.
+
+"Norman Wentworth is my friend," he said quietly.
+
+"So they say is Mrs. Norm--" began Mr. Trimmer, with a laugh.
+
+Before he had quite pronounced the name, Keith leaned forward, his eyes
+levelled right into the other's.
+
+"Don't say that, Trimmer. I want to be friends with you," he said
+earnestly. "Don't you ever couple my name with that lady's. Her husband
+is my friend, and any man that says I am paying her any attention other
+than such as her husband would have me pay her says what is false."
+
+"I know nothing about that," said Tom, half surlily. "I am only giving
+what others say."
+
+"Well, don't you even do that." He rose to his feet, and stood very
+straight. "Do me the favor to say to any one you may hear intimate such
+a lie that I will hold any man responsible who says it."
+
+"Jove!" said Mr. Trimmer, afterwards, to his friend Minturn, "must be
+some fire there. He was as hot as pepper in a minute. Wanted to fight
+any one who mentioned the matter. He'll have his hands full if he fights
+all who are talking about him and Ferdy's old flame. I heard half a
+roomful buzzing about it at Mrs. Nailor's. But it was none of my affair.
+If he wants to fight about another man's wife, let him. It's not the
+best way to stop the scandal."
+
+"You know, I think Ferdy is a little relieved to get out of that," added
+Mr. Minturn. "Ferdy wants money, and big money. He can't expect to get
+money there. They say the chief cause of the trouble was Wentworth would
+not put up money enough for her. He has got his eye on the
+Lancaster-Yorke combine, and he is all devotion to the widow now."
+
+"She won't look at him. She has too much sense. Besides, she likes
+Keith," said Stirling.
+
+As Mr. Trimmer and his friend said, if Keith expected to silence all the
+tongues that were clacking with his name and affairs, he was likely to
+be disappointed. There are some people to whose minds the distribution
+of scandal is as great a delight as the sweetest morsel is to the
+tongue. Besides, there was one person who had a reason for spreading the
+report. Ferdy Wickersham had returned and was doing his best to give it
+circulation.
+
+Norman Wentworth received in his mail, one morning, a thin letter over
+which a frown clouded his brow. The address was in a backhand. He had
+received a letter in the same handwriting not long previously--an
+anonymous letter. It related to his wife and to one whom he had held in
+high esteem. He had torn it up furiously in little bits, and had dashed
+them into the waste-basket as he had dashed the matter from his mind. He
+was near tearing this letter up without reading it; but after a moment
+he opened the envelope. A society notice in a paper the day before had
+contained the name of his wife and that of Mr. Gordon Keith, and this
+was not the only time he had seen the two names together. As his eye
+glanced over the single page of disguised writing, a deeper frown grew
+on his brow. It was only a few lines; but it contained a barbed arrow
+that struck and rankled:
+
+     "When the cat's away
+     The mice will play.
+     If you have cut your wisdom-teeth,
+     You'll know your mouse. His name is ----"
+
+It was signed, "_A True Friend_."
+
+Norman crushed the paper in his band, in a rage for having read it. But
+it was too late. He could not banish it from his mind: so many things
+tallied with it. He had heard that Keith was there a great deal. Why had
+he ceased speaking of it of late?
+
+When Keith next met Norman there was a change in the latter. He was cold
+and almost morose; answered Keith absently, and after a little while
+rose and left him rather curtly.
+
+When this had occurred once or twice Keith determined to see Norman and
+have a full explanation. Accordingly, one day he went to his office.
+Mr. Wentworth was out, but Keith said he would wait for him in his
+private office.
+
+On the table lay a newspaper. Keith picked it up to glance over it. His
+eye fell on a marked passage. It was a notice of a dinner to which he
+had been a few evenings before. Mrs. Wentworth's name was marked with a
+blue pencil, and a line or two below it was his own name
+similarly marked.
+
+Keith felt the hot blood surge into his face, then a grip came about his
+throat. Could this be the cause? Could this be the reason for Norman's
+curtness? Could Norman have this opinion of him? After all these years!
+
+He rose and walked from the office and out into the street. It was a
+blow such as he had not had in years. The friendship of a lifetime
+seemed to have toppled down in a moment.
+
+Keith walked home in deep reflection. That Norman could treat him so was
+impossible except on one theory: that he believed the story which
+concerned him and Mrs. Wentworth. That he could believe such a story
+seemed absolutely impossible. He passed through every phase of regret,
+wounded pride, and anger. Then it came to him clearly enough that if
+Norman were laboring under any such hallucination it was his duty to
+dispel it. He should go to him and clear his mind. The next morning he
+went again to Norman's office. To his sorrow, he learned that he had
+left town the evening before for the West to see about some business
+matters. He would be gone some days. Keith determined to see him as soon
+as he returned.
+
+Keith had little difficulty in assigning the scandalous story to its
+true source, though he did Ferdy Wickersham an injustice in laying the
+whole blame on him.
+
+Meantime, Keith determined that he would not go to Mrs. Wentworth's
+again until after he had seen Norman, even though it deprived him of the
+chance of seeing Lois. It was easier to him, as he was very busy now
+pushing through the final steps of his deal with the English syndicate.
+This he was the more zealous in as his last visit South had shown him
+that old Mr. Rawson was beginning to fail.
+
+"I am just livin' now to hear about Phrony," said the old man, "--and to
+settle with that man," he added, his deep eyes burning under his
+shaggy brows.
+
+Keith had little idea that the old man would ever live to hear of her
+again, and he had told him so as gently as he could.
+
+"Then I shall kill him," said the old man, quietly.
+
+Keith was in his office one morning when his attention was arrested by a
+heavy step outside his door. It had something familiar in it. Then he
+heard his name spoken in a loud voice. Some one was asking for him, and
+the next moment the door opened and Squire Rawson stood on the
+threshold. He looked worn; but his face was serene. Keith's intuition
+told him why he had come; and the old man did not leave it in any doubt.
+His greeting was brief.
+
+He had gotten to New York only that morning, and had already been to
+Wickersham's office; but the office was shut.
+
+"I have come to find her," he said, "and I'll find her, or I'll drag him
+through this town by his neck." He took out a pistol and laid it by him
+on the table.
+
+Keith was aghast. He knew the old man's resolution. His face showed that
+he was not to be moved from it. Keith began to argue with him. They did
+not do things that way in New York, he said. The police would arrest
+him. Or if he should shoot a man he would be tried, and it would go hard
+with him. He had better give up his pistol. "Let me keep it for you,"
+he urged.
+
+The old man took up the pistol and felt for his pocket.
+
+"I'll find her or I'll kill him," he said stolidly. "I have come to do
+one or the other. If I do that, I don't much keer what they do with me.
+But I reckon some of 'em would take the side of a woman what's been
+treated so. Well, I'll go on an' wait for him. How do you find this here
+place?" He took out a piece of paper and, carefully adjusting his
+spectacles, read a number. It was the number of Wickersham's office.
+
+Keith began to argue again; but the other's face was set like a rock. He
+simply put up his pistol carefully. "I'll kill him if I don't find her.
+Well, I reckon somebody will show me the way. Good day." He went out.
+
+The moment his footsteps had died away, Keith seized his hat and dashed
+out.
+
+The bulky figure was going slowly down the street, and Keith saw him
+stop a man and show him his bit of paper. Keith crossed the street and
+hurried on ahead of him. Wickersham's office was only a few blocks away,
+and a minute later Keith rushed into the front office. The clerks hooked
+up in surprise at his haste. Keith demanded of one of them if Mr.
+Wickersham was in. The clerk addressed turned and looked at another man
+nearer the door of the private office, who shook his head warningly. No,
+Mr. Wickersham was not in.
+
+Keith, however, had seen the signal, and he walked boldly up to the door
+of the private office.
+
+"Mr. Wickersham is in, but he is engaged," said the man, rising hastily.
+
+"I must see him immediately," said Keith, and opening the door, walked
+straight in.
+
+Wickersham was sitting at his desk poring over a ledger, and at the
+sudden entrance he looked up, startled. When he saw who it was he sprang
+to his feet, his face changing slightly. Just then one of the clerks
+followed Keith.
+
+As Keith, however, spoke quietly, Wickersham's expression changed, and
+the next second he had recovered his composure and with it his
+insolence.
+
+"To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit?" he demanded, with
+a curl of his lip.
+
+Keith gave a little wave of his arm, as if he would sweep away his
+insolence.
+
+"I have come to warn you that old Adam Rawson is in town hunting you."
+
+Wickersham's self-contained face paled suddenly, and he stepped a little
+back. Then his eye fell on the clerk, who stood just inside the door.
+"What do you want?" he demanded angrily. "---- you! can't you keep out
+when a gentleman wants to see me on private business?"
+
+The clerk hastily withdrew.
+
+"What does he want?" he asked of Keith, with a dry voice.
+
+"He is hunting for you. He wants to find his granddaughter, and he is
+coming after you."
+
+"What the ---- do I know about his granddaughter!" cried Wickersham.
+
+"That is for you to say. He swears that he will kill you unless you
+produce her. He is on his way here now, and I have hurried ahead to
+warn you."
+
+Wickersham's face, already pale, grew as white as death, for he read
+conviction in Keith's tone. With an oath he turned to a bell and
+rang it.
+
+"Ring for a cab for me at once," he said to the clerk who appeared.
+"Have it at my side entrance."
+
+As Keith passed out he heard him say to the clerk:
+
+"Tell any one who calls I have left town. I won't see a soul."
+
+A little later an old man entered Wickersham & Company's office and
+demanded to see F.C. Wickersham.
+
+There was a flurry among the men there, for they all knew that something
+unusual had occurred; and there was that about the massive, grim old
+man, with his fierce eyes, that demanded attention.
+
+On learning that Wickersham was not in, he said he would wait for him
+and started to take a seat.
+
+There was a whispered colloquy between two clerks, and then one of them
+told him that Mr. Wickersham was not in the city. He had been called
+away from town the day before, and would be gone for a month or two.
+Would the visitor leave his name?
+
+"Tell him Adam Rawson has been to see him, and that he will come
+again." He paused a moment, then said slowly: "Tell him I'm huntin' for
+him and I'm goin' to stay here till I find him."
+
+He walked slowly out, followed by the eyes of every man in the office.
+
+The squire spent his time between watching for Wickersham and hunting
+for his granddaughter. He would roam about the streets and inquire for
+her of policemen and strangers, quite as if New York were a small
+village like Ridgely instead of a great hive in which hundreds of
+thousands were swarming, their identity hardly known to any but
+themselves. Most of those to whom he applied treated him as a harmless
+old lunatic. But he was not always so fortunate. One night, when he was
+tired out with tramping the streets, he wandered into one of the parks
+and sat down on a bench, where he finally fell asleep. He was awakened
+by some one feeling in his pocket. He had just been dreaming that Phrony
+had found him and hail sat down beside him and was fondling him, and
+when he first came back to consciousness her name was on his lips. He
+still thought it was she who sat beside him, and he called her by name,
+"Phrony." The girl, a poor, painted, bedizened creature, was quick
+enough to answer to the name.
+
+"I am Phrony; go to sleep again."
+
+The joy of getting back his lost one aroused the old man, and he sat up
+with an exclamation of delight. The next second, at sight of the
+strange, painted face, he recoiled.
+
+"You Phrony?"
+
+"Yes. Don't you know me?" She snuggled closer beside him, and worked
+quietly at his big watch, which somehow had caught in his tight
+vest pocket.
+
+"No, you ain't! Who are you, girl? What are you doin'?"
+
+The young woman put her arms around his neck, and began to talk
+cajolingly. He was "such a dear old fellow," etc., etc. But the old
+man's wit had now returned to him. His disappointment had angered him.
+
+"Get away from me, woman. What are you doin' to me?" he demanded
+roughly.
+
+She still clung to him, using her poor blandishments. But the squire was
+angry. He pushed her off. "Go away from me, I say. What do you want? You
+ought to be ashamed of yourself. You don't know who I am. I am a deacon
+in the church, a trustee of Ridge College, and I have a granddaughter
+who is older than you. If you don't go away, I will tap you with
+my stick."
+
+The girl, having secured his watch, with something between a curse and a
+laugh, went off, calling him "an old drunk fool."
+
+Next moment the squire put his hand in his pocket to take out his watch,
+but it was gone. He felt in his other pockets, but they were empty, too.
+The young woman had clung to him long enough to rob him of everything.
+The squire rose and hurried down the walk, calling lustily after her;
+but it was an officer who answered the call. When the squire told his
+story he simply laughed and told him he was drunk, and threatened, if he
+made any disturbance, to "run him in."
+
+The old countryman flamed out.
+
+"Run who in?" he demanded. "Do you know who I am, young man?"
+
+"No, I don't, and I don't keer a ----."
+
+"Well, I'm Squire Rawson of Ridgely, and I know more law than a hundred
+consarned blue-bellied thief-hiders like you. Whoever says I am drunk is
+a liar. But if I was drunk is that any reason for you to let a thief rob
+me? What is your name? I've a mind to arrest you and run you in myself.
+I've run many a better man in."
+
+It happened that the officer's record was not quite clear enough to
+allow him to take the chance of a contest with so bold an antagonist as
+the squire of Ridgely. He did not know just who he was, or what he might
+be able to do. So he was willing to "break even," and he walked off
+threatning, but leaving the squire master of the field.
+
+The next day the old man applied to Keith, who placed the matter in Dave
+Dennison's hands and persuaded the squire to return home.
+
+Keith was very unhappy over the misunderstanding between Norman and
+himself. He wrote Norman a letter asking an interview as soon as he
+returned. But he received no reply. Then, having heard of his return, he
+went to his office one day to see him.
+
+Yes, Mr. Wentworth was in. Some one was with him, but would Mr. Keith
+walk in? said the clerk, who knew of the friendship between the two. But
+Keith sent in his name.
+
+The clerk came out with a surprised look on his face. Mr. Wentworth was
+"engaged."
+
+Keith went home and wrote a letter, but his letter was returned
+unopened, and on it was the indorsement, "Mr. Norman Wentworth declines
+to hold any communication with Mr. Gordon Keith."
+
+After this, Keith, growing angry, swore that he would take no further
+steps.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+PHRONY TRIPPER AND THE REV. MR. RIMMON
+
+As Keith stepped from his office one afternoon, he thought he heard his
+name called--called somewhat timidly. When, however, he turned and
+glanced around among the hurrying throng that filled the street, he saw
+no one whom he knew. Men and women were bustling along with that
+ceaseless haste that always struck him in New York--haste to go, haste
+to return, haste to hasten: the trade-mark of New York life: the hope of
+outstripping in the race.
+
+A moment later he was conscious of a woman's step close behind him. He
+turned as the woman came up beside him, and faced--Phrony Tripper. She
+was so worn and bedraggled and aged that for a moment he did not
+recognize her. Then, as she spoke, he knew her.
+
+"Why, Phrony!" He held out his hand. She seized it almost hungrily.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Keith! Is it really you? I hardly dared hope it was. I have not
+seen any one I knew for so long--so long!" Her face worked, and she
+began to whimper; but Keith soothed her.
+
+He drew her away from the crowded thoroughfare into a side street.
+
+"You knew--?" she said, and gazed at him with a silent appeal.
+
+"Yes, I knew. He deceived you and deluded you into running away with
+him."
+
+"I thought he loved me, and he did when he married me. I am sure he did.
+But when he met that lady--"
+
+"When he did what?" asked Keith, who could scarcely believe his own
+ears. "Did he marry you? Ferdy Wickersham? Who married you? When? Where
+was it? Who was present?"
+
+"Yes; I would not come until he promised--"
+
+"Yes, I knew he would promise. But did he marry you afterwards? Who was
+present? Have you any witnesses?"
+
+"Yes. Oh, yes. I was married here in New York--one night--about ten
+o'clock--the night we got here. Mr. Plume was our only witness. Mr.
+Plume had a paper the preacher gave him; but he lost it."
+
+"He did! Who married you? Where was it?"
+
+"His name was Rimm--Rimm-something--I cannot remember much; my memory is
+all gone. He was a young man. He married us in his room. Mr. Plume got
+him for me. He offered to marry us himself--said he was a preacher; but
+I wouldn't have him, and said I would go home or kill myself if they
+didn't have a preacher. Then Mr. Plume went and came back, and we all
+got in a carriage and drove a little way, and got out and went into a
+house, and after some talk we were married. I don't know the street. But
+I would know him if I saw him. He was a young, fat man, that smiled and
+stood on his toes." The picture brought up to Keith the fat and
+unctuous Rimmon.
+
+"Well, then you went abroad, and your husband left you over there?"
+
+"Yes; I was in heaven for--for a little while, and then he left me--for
+another woman. I am sure he cared for me, and he did not mean to treat
+me so; but she was rich and so beautiful, and--what was I?" She gave an
+expressive gesture of self-abnegation.
+
+"Poor fool!" said Keith to himself. "Poor girl!" he said aloud.
+
+"I have written; but, maybe, he never got my letter. He would not have
+let me suffer so."
+
+Keith's mouth shut closer.
+
+She went on to tell of Wickersham's leaving her; of her hopes that after
+her child was born he would come back to her. But the child was born and
+died. Then of her despair; of how she had spent everything, and sold
+everything she had to come home.
+
+"I think if I could see him and tell him what I have been through, maybe
+he would--be different. I know he cared for me for a while.--But I can't
+find him," she went on hopelessly. "I don't want to go to him where
+there are others to see me, for I'm not fit to see even if they'd let me
+in--which they wouldn't." (She glanced down at her worn and shabby
+frock.) "I have watched for him 'most all day, but I haven't seen him,
+and the police ordered me away."
+
+"I will find him for you," said Keith, grimly.
+
+"Oh, no! You mustn't--you mustn't say anything to him. It would make
+him--it wouldn't do any good, and he'd never forgive me." She
+coughed deeply.
+
+"Phrony, you must go home," said Keith.
+
+For a second a spasm shot over her face; then a ray of light seemed to
+flit across it, and then it died out.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, I'll never go back there," she said.
+
+"Oh, yes, you will--you must. I will take you back. The mountain air
+will restore you, and--" She was shaking her head, but the look in her
+eyes showed that she was thinking of something far off.
+
+"No--no!"
+
+"I will take you," repeated Keith. "Your grandfather will be--he will be
+all right. He has just been here hunting for you."
+
+The expression on her face was so singular that Keith put his hand on
+her arm. To his horror, she burst into a laugh. It was so unreal that
+men passing glanced at her quickly, and, as they passed on, turned and
+looked back again.
+
+"Well, good-by; I must find my husband," she said, holding out her hand
+nervously and speaking in a hurried manner. "He's got the baby with him.
+Tell 'em at home I'm right well, and the baby is exactly like
+grandmother, but prettier, of course." She laughed again as she turned
+away and started off hastily.
+
+Keith caught up with her.
+
+"But, Phrony--" But she hurried on, shaking her head, and talking to
+herself about finding her baby and about its beauty. Keith kept up with
+her, put his hand in his pocket, and taking out several bills, handed
+them to her.
+
+"Here, you must take this, and tell me where you are staying."
+
+She took the money mechanically.
+
+"Where am I? Oh!--where am I staying? Sixteen Himmelstrasse, third
+floor--yes, that's it. No:--18 Rue Petits Champs, troisieme etage. Oh,
+no:--241 Hill Street. I'll show you the baby. I must get it now." And
+she sped away, coughing.
+
+Keith, having watched her till she disappeared, walked on in deep
+reflection, hardly knowing what course to take. Presently his brow
+cleared. He turned and went rapidly back to the great office building
+where Wickersham had his offices on the first floor. He asked for Mr.
+Wickersham. A clerk came forward. Mr. Wickersham was not in town. No, he
+did not know when he would be back.
+
+After a few more questions as to the possible time of his return, Keith
+left his card.
+
+That evening Keith went to the address that Phrony had given him. It was
+a small lodging-house of, perhaps, the tenth rate. The dowdy woman in
+charge remembered a young woman such as he described. She was ill and
+rather crazy and had left several weeks before. She had no idea where
+she had gone. She did not know her name. Sometimes she called herself
+"Miss Tripper," sometimes "Mrs. Wickersham."
+
+Keith took a cab and drove to the detective agency where Dave Dennison
+had his office. Keith told him why he had come, and Dave listened with
+tightened lips and eyes in which the flame burned deeper and deeper.
+
+"I'll find her," he said.
+
+Having set Dennison to work, Keith next directed his steps toward the
+commodious house to which the Rev. William H. Rimmon had succeeded,
+along with the fashionable church and the fashionable congregation which
+his uncle had left.
+
+He was almost sure, from the name she had mentioned, that Mr. Rimmon had
+performed the ceremony. Rimmon had from time to time connected his name
+with matrimonial affairs which reflected little credit on him.
+
+From the time Mr. Rimmon had found his flattery and patience rewarded,
+the pulpit from which Dr. Little had for years delivered a well-weighed,
+if a somewhat dry, spiritual pabulum had changed.
+
+Mr. Rimmon knew his congregation too well to tax their patience with any
+such doctrinal sermons as his uncle had been given to. He treated his
+people instead to pleasant little discourses which were as much like
+Epictetus and Seneca as St. John or St. Paul.
+
+Fifteen minutes was his limit,--eighteen at the outside,--weighed out
+like a ration. Doubtless, Mr. Rimmon had his own idea of doing good. His
+assistants worked hard in back streets and trod the dusty byways,
+succoring the small fry, while he stepped on velvet carpets and cast his
+net for the larger fish.
+
+Was not Dives as well worth saving as Lazarus--and better worth it for
+Rimmon's purposes! And surely he was a more agreeable dinner-companion.
+Besides, nothing was really proved against Dives; and the crumbs from
+his table fed many a Lazarus.
+
+But there were times when the Rev. William H. Rimmon had a vision of
+other things: when the Rev. Mr. Rimmon, with his plump cheeks and plump
+stomach, with his embroidered stoles and fine surplices, his rich
+cassocks and hand-worked slippers, had a vision of another life. He
+remembered the brief period when, thrown with a number of earnest young
+men who had consecrated their lives to the work of their Divine Master,
+he had had aspirations for something essentially different from the life
+he now led. Sometimes, as he would meet some hard-working, threadbare
+brother toiling among the poor, who yet, for all his toil and narrowness
+of means, had in his face that light that comes only from feasting on
+the living bread, he envied him for a moment, and would gladly have
+exchanged for a brief time the "good things" that he had fallen heir to
+for that look of peace. These moments, however, were rare, and were
+generally those that followed some evening of even greater conviviality
+than usual, or some report that the stocks he had gotten Ferdy
+Wickersham to buy for him had unexpectedly gone down, so that he must
+make up his margins. When the margins had been made up and the stocks
+had reacted, Mr. Rimmon was sufficiently well satisfied with his
+own lot.
+
+And of late Mr. Rimmon had determined to settle down. There were those
+who said that Mr. Rimmon's voice took on a peculiarly unctuous tone when
+a certain young widow, as noted for her wealth as for her good looks and
+good nature entered the portals of his church.
+
+Keith now having rung the bell at Mr. Rimmon's pleasant rectory and
+asked if he was at home, the servant said he would see. It is
+astonishing how little servants in the city know of the movements of
+their employers. How much better they must know their characters!
+
+A moment later the servant returned.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Rimmon is in. He will be down directly; will the gentleman
+wait?"
+
+Keith took his seat and inspected the books on the table--a number of
+magazines, a large work on Exegesis, several volumes of poetry, the
+Social Register, and a society journal that contained the gossip and
+scandal of the town.
+
+Presently Mr. Rimmon was heard descending the stair. He had a light
+footfall, extraordinarily light in one so stout; for he had grown
+rounder with the years.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Keith. I believe we have met before. What can I do for you?" He
+held Keith's card in his hand, and was not only civil, but almost
+cordial. But he did not ask Keith to sit down.
+
+Keith said he had come to him hoping to obtain a little information
+which he was seeking for a friend. He was almost certain that Mr. Rimmon
+could give it to him.
+
+"Oh, yes. Well? I shall be very glad, I am sure, if I can be of service
+to you. It is a part of our profession, you know. What is it?"
+
+"Why," said Keith, "it is in regard to a marriage ceremony--a marriage
+that took place in this city three or four years ago, about the middle
+of November three years ago. I think you possibly performed the
+ceremony."
+
+"Yes, yes. What are the names of the contracting parties? You see, I
+solemnize a good many marriage ceremonies. For some reason, a good many
+persons come to me. My church is rather--popular, you see. I hate to
+have 'fashionable' applied to holy things. I cannot tell without
+their names."
+
+"Why, of course," said Keith, struck by the sudden assumption of a
+business manner. "The parties were Ferdinand C. Wickersham and a young
+girl, named Euphronia Tripper."
+
+Keith was not consciously watching Mr. Rimmon, but the change in him was
+so remarkable that it astonished him. His round jaw actually dropped for
+a second. Keith knew instantly that he was the man. His inquiry had
+struck home. The next moment, however, Mr. Rimmon had recovered himself.
+A single glance shot out of his eyes, so keen and suspicious that Keith
+was startled. Then his eyes half closed again, veiling their flash of
+hostility.
+
+"F.C. Wickershaw and Euphronia Trimmer?" he repeated half aloud, shaking
+his head. "No, I don't remember any such names. No, I never united in
+the bonds of matrimony any persons of those names. I am quite positive."
+He spoke decisively.
+
+"No, not Wicker_shaw_--F.C. Wicker_sham_ and Euphronia Tripper. Ferdy
+Wickersham--you know him. And the girl was named Tripper; she might have
+called herself 'Phrony' Tripper."
+
+"My dear sir, I cannot undertake to remember the names of all the
+persons whom I happen to come in contact with in the performance of my
+sacred functions," began Mr. Rimmon. His voice had changed, and a
+certain querulousness had crept into it.
+
+"No, I know that," said Keith, calmly; "but you must at least remember
+whether within four years you performed a marriage ceremony for a man
+whom you know as well as you know Ferdy Wickersham--?"
+
+"Ferdy Wickersham! Why don't you go and ask him?" demanded the other,
+suddenly. "You appear to know him quite as well as I, and certainly Mr.
+Wickersham knows quite as well as I whether or not he is married. I know
+nothing of your reasons for persisting in this investigation. It is
+quite irregular, I assure you. I don't know that ever in the course of
+my life I knew quite such a case. A clergyman performs many functions
+simply as a ministerial official. I should think that the most natural
+way of procedure would be to ask Mr. Wickersham."
+
+"Certainly it might be. But whatever my reason may be, I have come to
+ask you. As a matter of fact, Mr. Wickersham took this young girl away
+from her home. I taught her when she was a school-girl. Her grandfather,
+who brought her up, is a friend of mine. I wish to clear her good name.
+I have reason to think that she was legally married here in New York,
+and that you performed the ceremony, and I came to ask you whether you
+did so or not. It is a simple question. You can at least say whether you
+did so or did not. I assumed that as a minister you would be glad to
+help clear a young woman's good name."
+
+"And I have already answered you," said Mr. Rimmon, who, while Keith was
+speaking, had been forming his reply.
+
+Keith flushed.
+
+"Why, you have not answered me at all. If you have, you can certainly
+have no objection to doing me the favor of repeating it. Will you do me
+the favor to repeat it? Did you or did you not marry Ferdy Wickersham to
+a young girl about three years ago?"
+
+"My dear sir, I have told you that I do not recognize your right to
+interrogate me in this manner. I know nothing about your authority to
+pursue this investigation, and I refuse to continue this conversation
+any longer."
+
+"Then you refuse to give me any information whatever?" Keith was now
+very angry, and, as usual, very quiet, with a certain line about his
+mouth, and his eyes very keen.
+
+"I do most emphatically refuse to give you any information whatever. I
+decline, indeed, to hold any further communication with you," (Keith was
+yet quieter,) "and I may add that I consider your entrance here an
+intrusion and your manner little short of an impertinence." He rose on
+his toes and fell on his heels, with, the motion which Keith had
+remarked the first time he met him.
+
+Keith fastened his eye on him.
+
+"You do?" he said. "You think all that? You consider even my entrance to
+ask you, a minister of the Gospel, a question that any good man would
+have been glad to answer, 'an intrusion'? Now I am going; but before I
+go I wish to tell you one or two things. I have heard reports about you,
+but I did not believe them. I have known men of your cloth, the holiest
+men on earth, saints of God, who devoted their lives to doing good. I
+was brought up to believe that a clergyman must be a good man. I could
+not credit the stories I have heard coupled with your name. I now
+believe them true, or, at least, possible."
+
+Mr. Riminon's face was purple with rage. He stepped forward with
+uplifted hand.
+
+"How dare you, sir!" he began.
+
+"I dare much more," said Keith, quietly.
+
+"You take advantage of my cloth--!"
+
+"Oh, no; I do not. I have one more thing to say to you before I go. I
+wish to tell you that one of the shrewdest detectives in New York is at
+work on this case. I advise you to be careful, for when you fall you
+will fall far. Good day."
+
+He left Mr. Rimmon shaken and white. His indefinite threats had struck
+him more deeply than any direct charge could have done. For Mr. Rimmon
+knew of acts of which Keith could not have dreamed.
+
+When he rose he went to his sideboard, and, taking out a bottle, poured
+out a stiff drink and tossed it off. "I feel badly," he said to himself:
+"I have allowed that--that fellow to excite me, and Dr. Splint said I
+must not get excited. I did pretty well, though; I gave him not the
+least information, and yet I did not tell a falsehood, an actual
+falsehood."
+
+With the composure that the stimulant brought, a thought occurred to
+him. He sat down and wrote a note to Wickersham, and, marking it,
+"Private," sent it by a messenger.
+
+The note read:
+
+"DEAR FERDY: I must see you without an hour's delay on a matter of the
+greatest possible importance. Tripper-business. Your friend K. has
+started investigation; claims to have inside facts. I shall wait at my
+house for reply. If impossible for you to come immediately, I will run
+down to your office.
+
+"Yours, RIMMON."
+
+When Mr. Wickersham received this note, he was in his office. He frowned
+as he glanced at the handwriting. He said to himself:
+
+"He wants more money, I suppose. He is always after money, curse him. He
+must deal in some other office as well as in this." He started to toss
+the note aside, but on second thought he tore it open. For a moment he
+looked puzzled, then a blank expression passed over his face.
+
+He turned to the messenger-boy, who was waiting and chewing gum with the
+stolidity of an automaton.
+
+"Did they tell you to wait for an answer?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+He leant over and scribbled a line and sealed it. "Take that back."
+
+"Yes, sir." The automaton departed, glancing from side to side and
+chewing diligently.
+
+The note read: "Will meet you at club at five."
+
+As the messenger passed up the street, a smallish man who had come
+down-town on the same car with him, and had been reading a newspaper on
+the street for some little time, crossed over and accosted him.
+
+"Can you take a note for me?"
+
+"Where to?"
+
+"Up-town. Where are you going?"
+
+The boy showed his note.
+
+"Um--hum! Well, my note will be right on your way." He scribbled a line.
+It read: "Can't be back till eight. Look out for Shepherd. Pay boy 25 if
+delivered before four."
+
+"You drop this at that number before four o'clock and you'll get a
+quarter."
+
+Then he passed on.
+
+That afternoon Keith walked up toward the Park. All day he had been
+trying to find Phrony, and laying plans for her relief when she should
+be found. The avenue was thronged with gay equipages and richly dressed
+women, yet among all his friends in New York there was but one woman to
+whom he could apply in such a case--Alice Lancaster. Old Mrs. Wentworth
+would have been another, but he could not go to her now, since his
+breach with Norman. He knew that there were hundreds of good, kind
+women; they were all about him, but he did not know them. He had chosen
+his friends in another set. The fact that he knew no others to whom he
+could apply struck a sort of chill to his heart. He felt lonely and
+depressed. He determined to go to Dr. Templeton. There, at least, he was
+sure of sympathy.
+
+He turned to go back down-town, and at a little distance caught sight of
+Lois Huntington. Suddenly a light appeared to break in on his gloom.
+Here was a woman to whom he could confide his trouble with the certainty
+of sympathy. As they walked along he told her of Phrony; of her
+elopement; of her being deserted; and of his chance meeting with her and
+her disappearance again. He did not mention Wickersham, for he felt that
+until he had the proof of his marriage he had no right to do so.
+
+"Why, I remember that old, man, Mr. Rawson," said Lois. "It was where my
+father stayed for a while?" Her voice was full of tenderness.
+
+"Yes. It is his granddaughter."
+
+"I remember her kindness to me. We must find her. I will help you." Her
+face was sweet with tender sympathy, her eyes luminous with
+firm resolve.
+
+Keith gazed at her with a warm feeling surging about his heart. Suddenly
+the color deepened in her cheeks; her expression changed; a sudden flame
+seemed to dart into her eyes.
+
+"I wish I knew that man!"
+
+"What would you do?" demanded Keith, smiling at her fierceness.
+
+"I'd make him suffer all his life." She looked the incarnation of
+vengeance.
+
+"Such a man would be hard to make suffer," hazarded Keith.
+
+"Not if I could find him."
+
+Keith soon left her to carry out his determination, and Lois went to see
+Mrs. Lancaster, and told her the story she had heard. It found
+sympathetic ears, and the next day Lois and Mrs. Lancaster were hard at
+work quietly trying to find the unfortunate woman. They went to Dr.
+Templeton; but, unfortunately, the old man was ill in bed.
+
+The next afternoon, Keith caught sight of Lois walking up the street
+with some one; and when he got nearer her it was Wickersham. They were
+so absorbed that Keith passed without either of them seeing him. He
+walked on with more than wonder in his heart. The meeting, however, had
+been wholly accidental on Lois's part.
+
+Wickersham of late had frequently fallen in with Lois when she was out
+walking. And this afternoon he had hardly joined her when she began to
+speak of the subject that had been uppermost in her mind all day. She
+did not mention any names, but told the story just as she had heard it.
+
+Fortunately for Wickersham, she was so much engrossed in her recital
+that she did not observe her companion's face until he had recovered
+himself. He had fallen a little behind her and did not interrupt her
+until he had quite mastered himself. Then he asked quietly:
+
+"Where did you get that story?"
+
+"Mr. Keith told me."
+
+"And he said the man who did that was a 'gentleman'?"
+
+"No, he did not say that; he did not give me the least idea who it was.
+Do you know who it was?"
+
+The question was so unexpected that Wickersham for a moment was
+confounded. Then he saw that she was quite innocent. He almost gasped.
+
+"I? How could I? I have heard that story--that is, something of it. It
+is not as Mr. Keith related it. He has some of the facts wrong. I will
+tell you the true story if you will promise not to say anything
+about it."
+
+Lois promised.
+
+"Well, the truth is that the poor creature was crazy; she took it into
+her head that she was married to some one, and ran away from home to
+try and find him. At one time she said it was a Mr. Wagram; then it was
+a man named Plume, a drunken sot; then I think she for a time fancied it
+was Mr. Keith himself; and"--he glanced at her quickly--"I am not sure
+she did not claim me once. I knew her slightly. Poor thing! she was
+quite insane."
+
+"Poor thing!" sighed Lois, softly. She felt more kindly toward
+Wickersham than she had ever done before.
+
+"I shall do what I can to help you find her," he added.
+
+"Thank you. I hope you may be successful."
+
+"I hope so," said Wickersham, sincerely.
+
+That evening Wickersham called on Mr. Rimmon, and the two were together
+for some time. The meeting was not wholly an amicable one. Wickersham
+demanded something that Mr. Rimmon was unwilling to comply with, though
+the former made him an offer at which his eyes glistened. He had offered
+to carry his stock for him as long as he wanted it carried. Mr. Rimmon
+showed him his register to satisfy him that no entry had been made there
+of the ceremony he had performed that night a few years before; but he
+was unwilling to write him a certificate that he had not performed such
+a ceremony. He was not willing to write a falsehood.
+
+Wickersham grew angry.
+
+"Now look here, Rimmon," he said, "you know perfectly well that I never
+meant to marry that--to marry any one. You know that I was drunk that
+night, and did not know what I was doing, and that what I did was out of
+kindness of heart to quiet the poor little fool."
+
+"But you married her in the presence of a witness," said Mr. Rimmon,
+slowly. "And I gave him her certificate."
+
+"You must have been mistaken. I have the affidavit of the man that he
+signed nothing of the kind. I give you my word of honor as to that.
+Write me the letter I want." He pushed the decanter on the table nearer
+to Rimmon, who poured out a drink and took it slowly. It appeared to
+give him courage, for after a moment he shook his head.
+
+"I cannot."
+
+Wickersham looked at him with level eyes.
+
+"You will do it, or I will sell you out," he said coldly.
+
+"You cannot. You promised to carry that stock for me till I could pay up
+the margins."
+
+"Write me that letter, or I will turn you out of your pulpit. You know
+what will happen if I tell what I know of you."
+
+The other man's face turned white.
+
+"You would not be so base."
+
+Wickersham rose and buttoned up his coat.
+
+"It will be in the papers day after to-morrow."
+
+"Wait," gasped Rimmon. "I will see what I can say." He poured a drink
+out of the decanter, and gulped it down. Then he seized a pen and a
+sheet of paper and began to write. He wrote with care.
+
+"Will this do?" he asked tremulously.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You promise not to use it unless you have to?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And to carry the stock for me till it reacts and lets me out?"
+
+"I will make no more promises."
+
+"But you did promise--," began Mr. Rimmon.
+
+Wickersham put the letter in his pocket, and taking up his hat, walked
+out without a word. But his eyes glinted with a curious light.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+ALICE LANCASTER FINDS PHRONY
+
+Mr. Rimmon was calling at Mrs. Lancaster's a few days after his
+interview with Keith and the day following the interview with
+Wickersham. Mr. Rimmon called at Mrs. Lancaster's quite frequently of
+late. They had known each other a long time, almost ever since Mr.
+Rimmon had been an acolyte at his uncle Dr. Little's church, when the
+stout young man had first discovered the slim, straight figure and
+pretty face, with its blue eyes and rosy mouth, in one of the best pews,
+with a richly dressed lady beside her. He had soon learned that this was
+Miss Alice Yorke, the only daughter of one of the wealthiest men in
+town. Miss Alice was then very devout: just at the age and stage when
+she bent particularly low on all the occasions when such bowing is held
+seemly. And the mind of the young man was not unnaturally affected by
+her devoutness.
+
+Since then Mr. Rimmon had never quite banished her from his mind,
+except, of course, during the brief interval when she had been a wife.
+When she became a widow she resumed her place with renewed power. And of
+late Mr. Rimmon had begun to have hope.
+
+Now Mr. Rimmon was far from easy in his mind. He knew something of
+Keith's attention to Mrs. Lancaster; but it had never occurred to him
+until lately that he might be successful. Wickersham he had feared at
+times; but Wickersham's habits had reassured him. Mrs. Lancaster would
+hardly marry him. Now, however, he had an uneasy feeling that Keith
+might injure him, and he called partly to ascertain how the ground lay,
+and partly to forestall any possible injury Keith might do. To his
+relief, he found Mrs. Lancaster more cordial than usual. The line of
+conversation he adopted was quite spiritual, and he felt elevated by it.
+Mrs. Lancaster also was visibly impressed. Presently she said: "Mr.
+Rimmon, I want you to do me a favor."
+
+"Even to the half of my kingdom," said Mr. Rimmon, bowing with his plump
+hand on his plump bosom.
+
+"It is not so much as that; it is only a little of your time and, maybe,
+a little of your company. I have just heard of a poor young woman here
+who seems to be in quite a desperate way. She has been abandoned by her
+husband, and is now quite ill. The person who told me, one of those good
+women who are always seeking out such cases, tells me that she has
+rarely seen a more pitiable case. The poor thing is absolutely
+destitute. Mrs. King tells me she has seen better days."
+
+For some reason, perhaps, that the circumstances called up not wholly
+pleasant associations, Mr. Rimmon's face fell a little at the picture
+drawn. He did not respond with the alacrity Mrs. Lancaster had expected.
+
+"Of course, I will do it, if you wish it--or I could have some of our
+workers look up the case, and, if the facts warrant it, could apply some
+of our alms to its relief. I should think, however, the woman is rather
+a fit subject for a hospital. Why hasn't she been sent to a hospital,
+I wonder?"
+
+"I don't know. No, that is not exactly what I meant," declared Mrs.
+Lancaster. "I thought I would go myself and that, as Dr. Templeton is
+ill, perhaps you would go with me. She seems to be in great distress of
+mind, and possibly you might be able to comfort her. I have never
+forgotten what an unspeakable comfort your uncle was when we were in
+trouble years ago."
+
+"Oh, of course, I will go with you," said the divine. "There is no
+place, dear lady, where I would not go in such company," he added, his
+head as much on one side as his stout neck would allow, and his eyes as
+languishing as he dared make them.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster, however, did not appear to notice this. Her face did not
+change.
+
+"Very well, then: we will go to-morrow. I will come around and pick you
+up. I will get the address."
+
+So the following morning Mrs. Lancaster's carriage stopped in front of
+the comfortable house which adjoined Mr. Rimmon's church, and after a
+little while that gentleman came down the steps. He was not in a happy
+frame of mind, for stocks had fallen heavily the day before, and he had
+just received a note from Ferdy Wickersham. However, as he settled his
+plump person beside the lady, the Rev. William H. Rimmon was as
+well-satisfied-looking as any man on earth could be. Who can blame him
+if he thought how sweet it would be if he could drive thus always!
+
+The carriage presently stopped at the entrance of a narrow street that
+ran down toward the river. The coachman appeared unwilling to drive down
+so wretched an alley, and waited for further instructions. After a few
+words the clergyman and Mrs. Lancaster got out.
+
+"You wait here, James; we will walk." They made their way down the
+street, through a multitude of curious children with one common
+attribute, dirt, examining the numbers on either side, and commiserating
+the poor creatures who had to live in such squalor.
+
+Presently Mrs. Lancaster stopped.
+
+"This is the number."
+
+It was an old house between two other old houses.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster made some inquiries of a slatternly woman who sat sewing
+just inside the doorway, and the latter said there was such a person as
+she asked for in a room on the fourth floor. She knew nothing about her
+except that she was very sick and mostly out of her head. The
+health-doctor had been to see her, and talked about sending her to
+a hospital.
+
+The three made their way up the narrow stairs and through the dark
+passages, so dark that matches had to be lighted to show them the way.
+Several times Mr. Rimmon protested against Mrs. Lancaster going farther.
+Such holes were abominable; some one ought to be prosecuted for it.
+Finally the woman stopped at a door.
+
+"She's in here." She pushed the door open without knocking, and walked
+in, followed by Mrs. Lancaster and Mr. Rimmon. It was a cupboard hardly
+more than ten feet square, with a little window that looked out on a
+dead-wall not more than an arm's-length away.
+
+A bed, a table made of an old box, and another box which served as a
+stool, constituted most of the furniture, and in the bed, under a ragged
+coverlid, lay the form of the sick woman.
+
+"There's a lady and a priest come to see you," said the guide, not
+unkindly. She turned to Mrs. Lancaster. "I don't know as you can make
+much of her. Sometimes she's right flighty."
+
+The sick woman turned her head a little and looked at them out of her
+sunken eyes.
+
+"Thank you. Won't you be seated?" she said, with a politeness and a
+softness of tone that sounded almost uncanny coming from such a source.
+
+"We heard that you were sick, and have come to see if we could not help
+you," said Mrs. Lancaster, in a tone of sympathy, leaning over the bed.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Rimmon, in his full, rich voice, which made the little
+room resound; "it is our high province to minister to the sick, and
+through the kindness of this dear lady we may be able to remove you to
+more commodious quarters--to some one of the charitable institutions
+which noble people like our friend here have endowed for such persons as
+yourself?"
+
+[Illustration: "It is he! 'Tis he!" she cried.]
+
+Something about the full-toned voice with its rising inflection caught
+the invalid's attention, and she turned her eyes on him with a quick
+glance, and, half raising her head, scanned his face closely.
+
+"Mr. Rimmon, here, may be able to help you in other ways too," Mrs.
+Lancaster again began; but she got no further. The name appeared to
+electrify the woman.
+
+With a shriek she sat up in bed.
+
+"It is he! 'Tis he!" she cried. "You are the very one. You will help me,
+won't you? You will find him and bring him back to me?" She reached out
+her thin arms to him in an agony of supplication.
+
+"I will help you,--I shall be glad to do so,--but whom am I to bring
+back? How can I help you?"
+
+"My husband--Ferdy--Mr. Wickersham. I am the girl you married that night
+to Ferdy Wickersham. Don't you remember? You will bring him back to me?
+I know he would come if he knew."
+
+The effect that her words, and even more her earnestness, produced was
+remarkable. Mrs. Lancaster stood in speechless astonishment.
+
+Mr. Rimmon for a moment turned ashy pale. Then he recovered himself.
+
+"She is quite mad," he said in a low tone to Mrs. Lancaster. "I think we
+had better go. She should be removed to an asylum."
+
+But Mrs. Lancaster could not go. Just then the woman stretched out her
+arms to her.
+
+"You will help me? You are a lady. I loved him so. I gave up all for
+him. He married me. Didn't you marry us, sir? Say you did. Mr. Plume
+lost the paper, but you will give me another, won't you?"
+
+The commiseration in Mr. Rimmon's pale face grew deeper and deeper. He
+rolled his eyes and shook his head sadly.
+
+"Quite mad--quite mad," he said in an undertone. And, indeed, the next
+moment it appeared but too true, for with a laugh the poor creature
+began a babble of her child and its beauty. "Just like its father. Dark
+eyes and brown hair. Won't he be glad to see it when he comes? Have you
+children?" she suddenly asked Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"No." She shook her head.
+
+Then a strange thing happened.
+
+"I am so sorry for you," the poor woman said. And the next second she
+added: "I want to show mine to Alice Yorke. She is the only lady I know
+in New York. I used to know her when I was a young girl, and I used to
+be jealous of her, because I thought Ferdy was in love with her. But he
+was not, never a bit."
+
+"Come away," said Mr. Rimmon to Mrs. Lancaster. "She is crazy and may
+become violent."
+
+But he was too late; the whole truth was dawning on Mrs. Lancaster. A
+faint likeness had come to her, a memory of a far-back time. She ignored
+him, and stepped closer to the bed.
+
+"What is your name?" she asked in a kind voice, bending toward the woman
+and taking her hand.
+
+"Euphronia Tripper; but I am now Mrs. Wickersham. He married us." She
+turned her deep eyes on Mr. Rimmon. At sight of him a change came
+over her face.
+
+"Where is my husband?" she demanded. "I wrote to you to bring him. Won't
+you bring him?"
+
+"Quite mad--quite mad!" repeated Mr. Rimmon, shaking his head solemnly,
+and turning his gaze on Mrs. Lancaster. But he saw his peril. Mrs.
+Lancaster took no notice of him. She began to talk to the woman at the
+door, and gave her a few directions, together with some money. Then she
+advanced once more to the bed.
+
+"I want to make you comfortable. I will send some one to take care of
+you." She shook hands with her softly, pulled down her veil, and then,
+half turning to Mr. Rimmon, said quietly, "I am ready."
+
+As they stepped into the street, Mr. Rimmon observed at a little
+distance a man who had something familiar about him, but the next second
+he passed out of sight.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster walked silently down the dirty street without turning
+her head or speaking to the preacher, who stepped along a little behind
+her, his mind full of misgiving.
+
+Mr. Rimmon, perhaps, did as hard thinking in those few minutes as he had
+ever done during the whole course of his life. It was a serious and
+delicate position. His reputation, his position, perhaps even his
+profession, depended on the result. He must sound his companion and
+placate her at any cost.
+
+"That is one of the saddest spectacles I ever saw," he began.
+
+To this Mrs. Lancaster vouchsafed no reply.
+
+"She is quite mad."
+
+"No wonder!"
+
+"Ah, yes. What do you think of her?"
+
+"That she is Ferdy Wickersham's wife--or ought to be."
+
+"Ah, yes." Here was a gleam of light. "But she is so insane that very
+little reliance should be placed on anything that she says. In such
+instances, you know, women make the most preposterous statements and
+believe them. In her condition, she might just as well have claimed me
+for her husband."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster recognized this, and looked just a little relieved. She
+turned as if about to speak, but shut her lips tightly and walked on to
+the waiting carriage. And during the rest of the return home she
+scarcely uttered a word.
+
+An hour later Ferdy Wickersham was seated in his private office, when
+Mr. Rimmon walked in.
+
+Wickersham greeted him with more courtesy than he usually showed him.
+
+"Well," he said, "what is it?"
+
+"Well, it's come."
+
+Wickersham laughed unmirthfully. "What? You have been found out? Which
+commandment have you been caught violating?"
+
+"No; it's you," said Mr. Rimmon, his eyes on Wickersham, with a gleam of
+retaliation in them. "Your wife has turned up." He was gratified to see
+Wickersham's cold face turn white. It was a sweet revenge.
+
+"My wife! I have no wife." Wickersham looked him steadily in the eyes.
+
+"You had one, and she is in town."
+
+"I have no wife," repeated Wickersham, firmly, not taking his eyes from
+the clergyman's face. What he saw there did not satisfy him. "I have
+your statement."
+
+The other hesitated and reflected.
+
+"I wish you would give me that back. I was in great distress of mind
+when I gave you that."
+
+"You did not give it," said Wickersham. "You sold it." His lip curled.
+
+"I was--what you said you were when it occurred," said Mr. Rimmon. "I
+was not altogether responsible."
+
+"You were sober enough to make me carry a thousand shares of weak stock
+for you till yesterday, when it fell twenty points," said Wickersham.
+"Oh, I guess you were sober enough."
+
+"She is in town," said Rimmon, in a dull voice.
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"I have seen her."
+
+"Where is she?"--indifferently.
+
+"She is ill. She is mad."
+
+Wickersham's face settled a little. His eyes blinked as if a blow had
+been aimed at him nearly. Then he recovered his poise.
+
+"How mad?"
+
+"As mad as a March hare."
+
+"You can attend to it," he said, looking the clergyman full in the face.
+"I don't want her to suffer. There will be some expense. Can you get her
+into a comfortable place for--for a thousand dollars?"
+
+"I will try. The poor creature would be better off," said the other,
+persuading himself. "She cannot last long. She is a very ill woman."
+
+Wickersham either did not hear or pretended not to hear.
+
+"You go ahead and do it. I will send you the money the day after it is
+done," he said. "Money is very tight to-day, almost a panic at
+the board."
+
+"That stock? You will not trouble me about it?"
+
+Wickersham growled something about being very busy, and rose and bowed
+the visitor out. The two men shook hands formally at the door of the
+inner office; but it was a malevolent look that Wickersham shot at the
+other's stout back as he walked out.
+
+As Mr. Rimmon came out of the office he caught sight of the short, stout
+man he had seen in the street to which he had gone with Mrs. Lancaster.
+Suddenly the association of ideas brought to him Keith's threat. He was
+shadowed. A perspiration broke out over him.
+
+Wickersham went back to his private office, and began once more on his
+books. What he saw there was what he began to see on all sides: ruin. He
+sat back in his chair and reflected. His face, which had begun to grow
+thinner of late, as well as harder, settled more and more until it
+looked like gray stone. Presently he rose, and locking his desk
+carefully, left his office.
+
+As he reached the street, a man, who had evidently been waiting for him,
+walked up and spoke to him. He was a tall, thin, shabby man, with a face
+and figure on which drink was written ineffaceably. Wickersham, without
+looking at him, made an angry gesture and hastened his step. The other,
+however, did the same, and at his shoulder began to whine.
+
+"Mr. Wickersham, just a word."
+
+"Get out," said Wickersham, still walking on. "I told you never to speak
+to me again."
+
+"I have a paper that you'd give a million dollars to get hold of."
+
+Wickersham's countenance showed not the least change.
+
+"If you don't keep away from here, I'll hand you over to the police."
+
+"If you'll just give me a dollar I'll swear never to trouble you again.
+I have not had a mouthful to eat to-day. You won't let me starve?"
+
+"Yes, I will. Starve and be ---- to you!" He suddenly stopped and faced
+the other. "Plume, I wouldn't give you a cent if you were actually
+starving. Do you see that policeman? If you don't leave me this minute,
+I'll hand you over to him. And if you ever speak to me again or write to
+me again, or if I find you on the street about here, I'll arrest you and
+send you down for blackmail and stealing. Now do you understand?"
+
+The man turned and silently shuffled away, his face working and a glint
+in his bleared eye.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An evening or two later Dave Dennison reported to Keith that he had
+found Phrony. Dave's face was black with hate, and his voice was tense
+with suppressed feeling.
+
+"How did you find her?" inquired Keith.
+
+"Shadowed the preacher. Knew he and that man had been confabbin'. She's
+clean gone," he added. "They've destroyed her. She didn't know me." His
+face worked, and an ominous fire burned in his eyes.
+
+"We must get her home."
+
+"She can't go. You'd never know her. We'll have to put her in an
+asylum."
+
+Something in his voice made Keith look at him. He met his gaze.
+
+"They're getting ready to do it--that man and the preacher. But I don't
+mean 'em to have anything more to do with her. They've done their worst.
+Now let 'em keep away from her."
+
+Keith nodded his acquiescence.
+
+That evening Keith went to see a doctor he knew, and next day, through
+his intervention, Phrony was removed to the private ward of an asylum,
+where she was made as comfortable as possible.
+
+It was evident that she had not much longer to stay. But God had been
+merciful to her. She babbled of her baby and her happiness at seeing it
+soon. And a small, strongly built man with grave eyes sat by her in the
+ambulance, and told her stories of it with a fertility of invention that
+amazed the doctor who had her in charge.
+
+When Mr. Rimmon's agents called next day to make the preliminary
+arrangements for carrying out his agreement with Wickersham, they found
+the room empty. The woman who had charge of the house had been duly
+"fixed" by Dave, and she told a story sufficiently plausible to pass
+muster. The sick woman had disappeared at night and had gone she did not
+know where. She was afraid she might have made away with herself, as she
+was out of her head. This was verified, and this was the story that went
+back to Mr. Rimmon and finally to Ferdy Wickersham. A little later the
+body of a woman was found in the river, and though there was nothing to
+identify her, it was stated in one of the papers that there was good
+ground for believing that she was the demented woman whose disappearance
+had been reported the week before.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE
+
+One day after Phrony was removed, Keith was sitting in the office he had
+taken in New York, working on the final papers which were to be
+exchanged when his deal should be completed, when there was a tap at the
+door. A knock at the door is almost as individual as a voice. There was
+something about this knock that awakened associations in Keith's mind.
+It was not a woman's tap, yet Terpy and Phrony Tripper both sprang into
+Keith's mind.
+
+Almost at the same moment the door opened slowly, and pausing on the
+threshold stood J. Quincy Plume. But how changed from the Mr. Plume of
+yore, the jovial and jocund manager of the Gumbolt _Whistle_, or the
+florid and flowery editor of the New Leeds _Clarion_!
+
+The apparition in the door was a shabby representation of what J. Quincy
+Plume had been in his palmy days. He bore the last marks of extreme
+dissipation; his eyes were dull, his face bloated, and his hair thin and
+long. His clothes looked as if they had served him by night as well as
+by day for a long time. His shoes were broken, and his hat, once the
+emblem of his station and high spirits, was battered and rusty.
+
+"How are you, Mr. Keith?" he began boldly enough. But his assumption of
+something of his old air of bravado died out under Keith's icy and
+steady gaze, and he stepped only inside of the room, and, taking off his
+hat, waited uneasily.
+
+"What do you want of me?" demanded Keith, leaning back in his chair and
+looking at him coldly.
+
+"Well, I thought I would like to have a little talk with you about a
+matter--"
+
+Keith, without taking his eyes from his face, shook his head slowly.
+
+"About a friend of yours," continued Plume.
+
+Again Keith shook his head very slowly.
+
+"I have a little information that might be of use to you--that you'd
+like to have."
+
+"I don't want it."
+
+"You would if you knew what it was."
+
+"No."
+
+"Yes, you would. It's about Squire Rawson's granddaughter--about her
+marriage to that man Wickersham."
+
+"How much do you want for it?" demanded Keith.
+
+Plume advanced slowly into the room and looked at a chair.
+
+"Don't sit down. How much do you want for it?" repeated Keith.
+
+"Well, you are a rich man now, and--"
+
+"I thought so." Keith rose. "However rich I am, I will not pay you a
+cent." He motioned Plume to the door.
+
+"Oh, well, if that's the way you take it!" Plume drew himself up and
+stalked to the door. Keith reseated himself and again took up his pen.
+
+At the door Plume turned and saw that Keith had put him out of his mind
+and was at work again.
+
+"Yes, Keith, if you knew what information I have--"
+
+Keith sat up suddenly.
+
+"Go out of here!"
+
+"If you'd only listen--"
+
+Keith stood up, with a sudden flame in his eyes.
+
+"Go on, I say. If you do not, I will put you out. It is as much as I can
+do to keep my hands off you. You could not say a word that I would
+believe on any subject."
+
+"I will swear to this."
+
+"Your oath would add nothing to it."
+
+Plume waited, and after a moment's reflection began in a different key.
+
+"Mr. Keith, I did not come here to sell you anything--"
+
+"Yes, you did."
+
+"No, I did not. I did not come--only for that. If I could have sold it,
+I don't say I wouldn't, for I need money--the Lord knows how much I need
+it! I have not a cent in the world to buy me a mouthful to eat--or
+drink. I came to tell you something that only _I_ know--"
+
+"I have told you that I would not believe you on oath," began Keith,
+impatiently.
+
+"But you will, for it is true; and I tell it not out of love for you
+(though I never disliked--I always liked you--would have liked you if
+you'd have let me), but out of hate for that--. That man has treated me
+shamefully--worse than a yellow dog! I've done for that man what I
+wouldn't have done for my brother. You know what I've done for him, Mr.
+Keith, and now when he's got no further use for me, he kicks me out into
+the street and threatens to give me to the police if I come to
+him again."
+
+Keith's expression changed. There was no doubt now that for once Quincy
+Plume was sincere. The hate in his bleared eyes and bloated face was
+unfeigned.
+
+"Give me to the police! I'll give him to the police!" he broke out in a
+sudden flame at Keith's glance of inspection. "He thinks he has been
+very smart in taking from me all the papers. He thinks no one will
+believe me on my mere word, but I've got a paper he don't know of."
+
+His hand went to the breast of his threadbare coat with an angry clutch.
+"I've got the marriage lines of his wife."
+
+One word caught Keith, and his interest awoke.
+
+"What wife?" he asked as indifferently as he could.
+
+"His wife,--his lawful wife,--Squire Rawson's granddaughter, Phrony
+Tripper. I was at the weddin'--I was a witness. He thought he could get
+out of it, and he was half drunk; but he married her."
+
+"Where? When? You were present?"
+
+"Yes. They were married by a preacher named Rimmon, and he gave me her
+certificate, and I swore to her I had lost it: _he_ got me to do it--the
+scoundrel! He wanted me to give it to him; but I swore to him I had lost
+it, too. I thought it would be of use some of these days." A gleam of
+the old craftiness shone in his eyes.
+
+Keith gazed at the man in amazement. His unblushing effrontery staggered
+him.
+
+"Would you mind letting me see that certificate?"
+
+Plume hesitated and licked his ups like a dog held back from a bone.
+Keith noted it.
+
+"I do not want you to think that I will give you any money for it, for I
+will not," he added quietly, his gray eyes on him.
+
+For a moment Plume was so taken aback that his face became a blank.
+Then, whether it was that the very frankness of the speech struck home
+to him or that he wished to secure a fragment of esteem from Keith, he
+recovered himself.
+
+"I don't expect any money for it, Mr. Keith. I don't want any money for
+it. I will not only show you this paper, I will give it to you."
+
+"It is not yours to give," said Keith. "It belongs to Mrs. Wickersham. I
+will see that she gets it if you deliver it to me."
+
+"That's so," ejaculated Plume, as if the thought had never occurred to
+him before. "I want her to have it, but you'd better keep it for her.
+That man will get it away from her. You don't know him as I do. You
+don't know what he'd do on a pinch. I tell you he is a gambler for life.
+I have seen him sit at the board and stake sums that would have made me
+rich for life. Besides," he added, as if he needed some other reason for
+giving it up, "I am afraid if he knew I had it he'd get it from me in
+some way."
+
+He walked forward and handed the paper to Keith, who saw at a glance
+that it was what Plume had declared it to be: a marriage certificate,
+dirty and worn, but still with signatures that appeared to be genuine.
+Keith's eyes flashed with satisfaction as he read the name of the Rev.
+William H. Rimmon and Plume's name, evidently written with the same ink
+at the same time.
+
+"Now," said Keith, looking up from the paper, "I will see that Mrs.
+Wickersham's family is put in possession of this paper."
+
+"Couldn't you lend me a small sum, Mr. Keith," asked Plume, wheedlingly,
+"just for old times' sake? I know I have done you wrong and given you
+good cause to hate me, but it wasn't my fault, an' I've done you a favor
+to-day, anyhow."
+
+Keith looked at him for a second, and put his hand in his pocket.
+
+"I'll pay you back, as sure as I live--" began Plume, cajolingly.
+
+"No, you will not," said Keith, sharply. "You could not if you would,
+and would not if you could, and I would not lend you a cent or have a
+business transaction with you for all the money in New York. I will give
+you this--for the person you have most injured in life. Now, don't thank
+me for it, but go."
+
+Plume took, with glistening eyes and profuse thanks, the bills that were
+handed out to him, and shambled out of the room.
+
+That night Keith, having shown the signatures to a good expert, who
+pronounced them genuine, telegraphed Dr. Balsam to notify Squire Rawson
+that he had the proof of Phrony's marriage. The Doctor went over to see
+the old squire. He mentioned the matter casually, for he knew his man.
+But as well as he knew him, he found himself mistaken in him.
+
+"I know that," he said quietly, "but what I want is to find Phrony." His
+deep eyes glowed for a while and suddenly flamed. "I'm a rich man," he
+broke out, "but I'd give every dollar I ever owned to get her back, and
+to get my hand once on that man."
+
+The deep fire glowed for a while and then grew dull again, and the old
+man sank back into his former grim silence.
+
+The Doctor looked at him commiseratingly. Keith had written him fully of
+Phrony and her condition, and he had decided to say nothing to the old
+grandfather.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+"SNUGGLERS' ROOST"
+
+Wickersham began to renew his visits to Mrs. Wentworth, which he had
+discontinued for a time when he had found himself repulsed. The repulse
+had stimulated his desire to win her; but he had a further motive. Among
+other things, she might ask for an accounting of the money he had had of
+her, and he wanted more money. He must keep up appearances, or others
+might pounce upon him.
+
+When he began again, it was on a new line. He appealed to her sympathy.
+If he had forgotten himself so far as to ask for more than friendship,
+she would, he hoped, forgive him. She could not find a truer friend. He
+would never offend her so again; but he must have her friendship, or he
+might do something desperate.
+
+Fortunately for him, Wickersham had a good advocate at court. Mrs.
+Wentworth was very lonely and unhappy just then, and the plea prevailed.
+She forgave him, and Wickersham again began to be a visitor at
+the house.
+
+But deeper than these lay another motive. While following Mrs. Wentworth
+he had been thrown with Lois Huntington. Her freshness, her beauty, the
+charm of her girlish figure, the unaffected gayety of her spirits,
+attracted him, and he had paused in his other pursuit to captivate her,
+as he might have stepped aside to pluck a flower beside the way. To his
+astonishment, she declined the honor; more, she laughed at him. It
+teased him to find himself balked by a mere country girl, and from this
+moment he looked on her with new eyes. The unexpected revelation of a
+deeper nature than most he had known astonished him. Since their
+interview on the street Lois received him with more friendliness than
+she had hitherto shown him. In fact, the house was a sad one these days,
+and any diversion was welcome. The discontinuance of Keith's visits had
+been so sudden that Lois had felt it all the more. She had no idea of
+the reason, and set it down to the score of his rumored success with
+Mrs. Lancaster. She, too, could play the game of pique, and she did it
+well. She accordingly showed Wickersham more favor than she had ever
+shown him before. While, therefore, he kept up his visits to Mrs.
+Norman, he was playing all the time his other game with her cousin,
+knowing the world well enough to be sure that it would not believe his
+attentions to the latter had any serious object. In this he was not
+mistaken. The buzz that coupled his name with Mrs. Wentworth's was soon
+as loud as ever.
+
+Finally Lois decided to take matters in her own hands. She would appeal
+to Mr. Wickersham himself. He had talked to her of late in a manner
+quite different from the sneering cynicism which he aired when she first
+met him. In fact, no one could hold higher sentiments than he had
+expressed about women or about life. Mr. Keith himself had never held
+loftier ideals than Mr. Wickersham had declared to her. She began to
+think that the tittle-tattle that she got bits of whenever she saw Mrs.
+Nailor or some others was, perhaps, after all, slander, and that Mr.
+Wickersham was not aware of the injury he was doing Mrs. Wentworth. She
+would appeal to his better nature. She lay in wait several times without
+being able to meet him in a way that would not attract attention. At
+length she wrote him a note, asking him to meet her on the street, as
+she wished to speak to him privately.
+
+When Wickersham met her that afternoon at the point she had designated,
+not far from the Park, he had a curious expression on his cold face.
+
+She was dressed in a perfectly simple, dark street costume which fitted
+without a wrinkle her willowy figure, and a big black hat with a single
+large feather shaded her face and lent a shadow to her eyes which gave
+them an added witchery. Wickersham thought he had never known her so
+pretty or so chic. He had not seen as handsome a figure that day, and he
+had sat at the club window and scanned the avenue with an eye for
+fine figures.
+
+She held out her hand in the friendliest way, and looking into his eyes
+quite frankly, said, with the most natural of voices:
+
+"Well, I know you think I have gone crazy, and are consumed with
+curiosity to know what I wanted with you?"
+
+"I don't know about the curiosity," he said, smiling at her. "Suppose we
+call it interest. You don't have to be told now that I shall be only too
+delighted if I am fortunate enough to be of any service to you." He bent
+down and looked so deep into her eyes that she drew a little back.
+
+"The fact is, I am plotting a little treason," she said, with a blush,
+slightly embarrassed.
+
+"By Jove! she is a real beauty," thought Wickersham, noting, with the
+eye of a connoisseur, the white, round throat, the dainty curves of the
+slim figure, and the purity of the oval face, in which the delicate
+color came and went under his gaze.
+
+"Well, if this be treason, I'll make the most of it," he said, with his
+most fascinating smile. "Treasons, stratagems, and spoils are my game."
+
+"But this may be treason partly against yourself?" She gave a
+half-glance up at him to see how he took this.
+
+"I am quite used to this, too, my dear girl, I assure you," he said,
+wondering more and more. She drew back a little at the familiarity.
+
+"Come and let us stroll in the Park," he suggested, and though she
+demurred a little, he pressed her, saying it was quieter there, and she
+would have a better opportunity of showing him how he could help her.
+
+They walked along talking, he dealing in light badinage of a flattering
+kind, which both amused and disturbed her a little, and presently he
+turned into a somewhat secluded alley, where he found a bench sheltered
+and shadowed by the overhanging boughs of a tree.
+
+"Well, here is a good place for confidences." He took her hand and,
+seating himself, drew her down beside him. "I will pretend that you are
+a charming dryad, and I--what shall I be?"
+
+"My friend," she said calmly, and drew her hand away from him.
+
+"_Votre ami? Avec tout mon coeur_. I will be your best friend." He held
+out his hand.
+
+"Then you will do what I ask? You are also a good friend of Mrs.
+Wentworth?"
+
+A little cloud flitted over his face but she did not see it.
+
+"We do not speak of the absent when the present holds all we care for,"
+he said lightly.
+
+She took no notice of this, but went on: "I do not think you would
+wittingly injure any one."
+
+He laughed softly. "Injure any one? Why, of course I would not--I could
+not. My life is spent in making people have a pleasant time--though some
+are wicked enough to malign me."
+
+"Well," she said slowly, "I do not think you ought to come to Cousin
+Louise's so often. You ought not to pay Cousin Louise as much attention
+as you do."
+
+"What!" He threw back his head and laughed.
+
+"You do not know what an injury you are doing her," she continued
+gravely. "You cannot know how people are talking about it?"
+
+"Oh, don't I?" he laughed. Then, as out of the tail of his eye he saw
+her troubled face, he stopped and made his face grave. "And you think I
+am injuring her!" She did notice the covert cynicism.
+
+"I am sure you are--unwittingly. You do not know how unhappy she is."
+
+An expression very like content stole into his dark eyes.
+
+Lois continued:
+
+"She has not been wise. She has been foolish and unyielding and--oh, I
+hate to say anything against her, for she has been very kind to me!--She
+has allowed others to make trouble between her and her husband; but she
+loves him dearly for all that--and--"
+
+"Oh, she does! You think so!" said Wickersham, with an ugly little gleam
+under his half-closed lids and a shrewd glance at Lois.
+
+"Yes. Oh, yes, I am sure of it. I know it. She adores him."
+
+"She does, eh?"
+
+"Yes. She would give the world to undo what she has done and win him
+back."
+
+"She would, eh?" Again that gleam in Wickersham's dark eyes as they
+slanted a glance at the girl's earnest face.
+
+"I think she had no idea till--till lately how people talked about her,
+and it was a great shock to her. She is a very proud woman, you know?"
+
+"Yes," he assented, "quite proud."
+
+"She esteems you--your friendship--and likes you ever so much, and all
+that." She was speaking rapidly now, her sober eyes on Wickersham's face
+with an appealing look in them. "And she doesn't want to do anything
+to--to wound you; but I think you ought not to come so often or see her
+in a way to make people talk--and I thought I'd say so to you." A smile
+that was a plea for sympathy flickered in her eyes.
+
+Wickersham's mind had been busy. This explained the change in Louise
+Wentworth's manner of late--ever since he had made the bold declaration
+of his intention to conquer her. Another idea suggested itself. Could
+the girl be jealous of his attentions to Mrs. Wentworth? He had had
+women play such a part; but none was like this girl. If it was a game
+it was a deep one. He took his line, and when she ended composed his
+voice to a low tone as he leant toward her.
+
+"My dear girl, I have listened to every word you said. I am shocked to
+hear what you tell me. Of course I know people have talked about
+me,--curse them! they always will talk,--but I had no idea it had gone
+so far. As you know, I have always taken Mrs. Wentworth's side in the
+unhappy differences between her and her husband. This has been no
+secret. I cannot help taking the side of the woman in any controversy. I
+have tried to stand her friend, notwithstanding what people said.
+Sometimes I have been able to help her. But--" He paused and took a long
+breath, his eyes on the ground. Then, leaning forward, he gazed into
+her face.
+
+"What would you say if I should tell you that my frequent visits to Mrs.
+Wentworth's house were not to see her--entirely?" He felt his way
+slowly, watching the effect on her. It had no effect. She did not
+understand him.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+He leant over, and taking hold of her wrist with one hand, he put his
+other arm around her. "Lois, can you doubt what I mean?" He threw an
+unexpected passion into his eyes and into his voice,--he had done it
+often with success,--and drew her suddenly to him.
+
+Taken by surprise, she, with a little exclamation, tried to draw away
+from him, but he held her firmly.
+
+"Do you think I went there to see her? Do you give me no credit for
+having eyes--for knowing the prettiest, sweetest, dearest little girl in
+New York? I must have concealed my secret better than I thought. Why,
+Lois, it is you I have been after." His eyes were close to hers and
+looked deep into them.
+
+She gave an exclamation of dismay and tried to rise. "Oh, Mr.
+Wickersham, please let me go!" But he held her fast.
+
+"Why, of course, it is yourself."
+
+"Let me go--please let me go, Mr. Wickersham," she exclaimed as she
+struggled.
+
+"Oh, now don't get so excited," he said, drawing her all the closer to
+him, and holding her all the tighter. "It is not becoming to your
+beautiful eyes. Listen to me, my darling. I am not going to hurt you. I
+love you too much, little girl, and I want your love. Sit down. Listen
+to me." He tried to kiss her, but his lips just touched her face.
+
+"No; I will not listen." She struggled to her feet, flushed and panting,
+but Wickersham rose too.
+
+"I will kiss you, you little fool." He caught her, and clasping her with
+both arms, kissed her twice violently; then, as she gave a little
+scream, released her. "There!" he said. As he did so she straightened
+herself and gave him a ringing box on his ear.
+
+"There!" She faced him with blazing eyes.
+
+Angry, and with his cheek stinging, Wickersham seized her again.
+
+"You little devil!" he growled, and kissed her on her cheek again and
+again.
+
+As he let her go, she faced him. She was now perfectly calm.
+
+"You are not a gentleman," she said in a low, level tone, tears of shame
+standing in her eyes.
+
+For answer he caught her again.
+
+Then the unexpected happened. At that moment Keith turned a clump of
+shrubbery a few paces off, that shut out the alley from the bench which
+Wickersham had selected. For a second he paused, amazed. Then, as he
+took in the situation, a black look came into his face.
+
+The next second he had sprung to where Wickersham stood, and seizing him
+by the collar, jerked him around and slapped him full in the face.
+
+"You hound!" He caught him again, the light of fury in his eyes, the
+primal love of fight that has burned there when men have fought for a
+woman since the days of Adam, and with a fierce oath hurled him spinning
+back across the walk, where he measured his length on the ground.
+
+Then Keith turned to the girl:
+
+"Come; I will see you home."
+
+The noise had attracted the attention of others besides Gordon Keith.
+Just at this juncture a stout policeman turned the curve at a
+double-quick.
+
+As he did so, Wickersham rose and slipped away.
+
+"What th' devil 'rre ye doin'?" the officer demanded in a rich brogue
+before he came to a halt. "I'll stop this racket. I'll run ye ivery wan
+in. I've got ye now, me foine leddy; I've been waitin' for ye for some
+time." He seized Lois by the arm roughly.
+
+"Let her go. Take your hand off that lady, sir. Don't you dare to touch
+her." Keith stepped up to him with his eyes flashing and hand raised.
+
+"And you too. I'll tache you to turn this park into--"
+
+"Take your hand off her, or I'll make you sorry for it."
+
+"Oh, you will!" But at the tone of authority he released Lois.
+
+"What is your name? Give me your number. I'll have you discharged for
+insulting a lady," said Keith.
+
+"Oh, me name's aall right. Me name's Mike Doherty--Sergeant Doherty. I
+guess ye'll find it on the rolls right enough. And as for insultin' a
+leddy, that's what I'm goin' to charrge against ye--that and--"
+
+"Why, Mike Doherty!" exclaimed Keith. "I am Mr. Keith--Gordon Keith."
+
+"Mr. Keith! Gordon Keith!" The big officer leant over and looked at
+Keith in the gathering dusk. "Be jabbers, and so it is! Who's your leddy
+friend?" he asked in a low voice. "Be George, she's a daisy!"
+
+Keith stiffened. The blood rushed to his face, and he started to speak
+sharply. He, however, turned to Lois.
+
+"Miss Huntington, this is an old friend of mine. This is Mike Doherty,
+who used to be the best man on the ship when I ran the blockade as
+a boy."
+
+"The verry same," said Mike.
+
+"He used to teach me boxing," continued Keith.
+
+"I taaught him the left upper-cut," nodded the sergeant.
+
+Keith went on and told the story of his coming on a man who was annoying
+Miss Huntington, but he did not give his name.
+
+"Did ye give him the left upper-cut?" demanded Sergeant Doherty.
+
+"I am not sure that I did not," laughed Keith. "I know he went down over
+there where you saw him lying--and I have ended one or two
+misunderstandings with it very satisfactorily."
+
+"Ah, well, then, I'm glad I taaught ye. I'm glad ye've got such a good
+defender, ma'am. Ye'll pardon what I said when I first coomed up. But I
+was a little over-het. Ye see, this place is kind o' noted
+for--for--This place is called 'Snugglers' Roost.' Nobody comes here
+this time 'thout they'rre a little aff, and we has arders to look
+out for 'em."
+
+"I am glad I had two such defenders," said Lois, innocently.
+
+"I'm always glad to meet Mr. Keith's friends--and his inimies too," said
+the sergeant, taking off his helmet and bowing. "If I can sarve ye any
+time, sind worrd to Precin't XX, and I'll be proud to do it."
+
+As Keith and Lois walked slowly homeward, Lois gave him an account of
+her interview with Wickersham. Only she did not tell him of his kissing
+her the first time. She tried to minimize the insult now, for she did
+not know what Keith might do. He had suddenly grown so quiet.
+
+What she said to Keith, however, was enough to make him very grave. And
+when he left her at Mrs. Wentworth's house the gravity on his face
+deepened to grimness. That Wickersham should have dared to insult this
+young girl as he had done stirred Keith's deepest anger. What Keith did
+was, perhaps, a very foolish thing. He tried to find him, but failing in
+this, he wrote him a note in which he told him what he thought of him,
+and added that if he felt aggrieved he would be glad to send a friend to
+him and arrange to give him any satisfaction which he might desire.
+
+Wickersham, however, had left town. He had gone West on business, and
+would not return for some weeks, the report from his office stated.
+
+On reaching home, Lois went straight to her room and thought over the
+whole matter. It certainly appeared grave enough to her. She determined
+that she would never meet Wickersham again, and, further, that she would
+not remain in the house if she had to do so. Her cheeks burned with
+shame as she thought of him, and then her heart sank at the thought that
+Keith might at that moment be seeking him.
+
+Having reached her decision, she sought Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+As soon as she entered the room, Mrs. Wentworth saw that something
+serious had occurred, and in reply to her question Lois sat down and
+quietly told the story of having met Mr. Wickersham and of his
+attempting to kiss her, though she did not repeat what Wickersham had
+said to her. To her surprise, Mrs. Wentworth burst out laughing.
+
+"On my word, you were so tragic when you came in that I feared something
+terrible had occurred. Why, you silly creature, do you suppose that
+Ferdy meant anything by what he did?"
+
+"He meant to insult me--and you," said Lois, with a lift of her head and
+a flash in her eye.
+
+"Nonsense! He has probably kissed a hundred girls, and will kiss a
+hundred more if they give him the chance to do so."
+
+"I gave him no chance," said Lois, sitting very straight and stiff, and
+with a proud dignity which the other might well have heeded.
+
+"Now, don't be silly," said Mrs. Wentworth, with a little hauteur. "Why
+did you walk in a secluded part of the Park with him?"
+
+"I thought I could help a friend of mine," said Lois.
+
+"Mr. Keith, I suppose!"
+
+"No; _not_ Mr. Keith."
+
+"A woman, perhaps?"
+
+"Yes; a woman." She spoke with a hauteur which Mrs. Wentworth had never
+seen in her.
+
+"Cousin Louise," she said suddenly, after a moment's reflection, "I
+think I ought to say to you that I will never speak to Mr.
+Wickersham again."
+
+The color rushed to Mrs. Wentworth's face, and her eyes gave a flash.
+"You will never do what?" she demanded coldly, looking at her with
+lifted head.
+
+"I will never meet Mr. Wickersham again."
+
+"You appear to have met him once too often already. I think you do not
+know what you are saying or whom you are speaking to."
+
+"I do perfectly," said Lois, looking her full in the eyes.
+
+"I think you had better go to your room," said Mrs. Wentworth, angrily.
+
+The color rose to Lois's face, and her eyes were sparkling. Then the
+color ebbed back again as she restrained herself.
+
+"You mean you wish me to go?" Her voice was calm.
+
+"I do. You have evidently forgotten your place."
+
+"I will go home," she said. She walked slowly to the door. As she
+reached it she turned and faced Mrs. Wentworth. "I wish to thank you for
+all your kindness to me; for you have been very kind to me at times, and
+I wish--" Her voice broke a little, but she recovered herself, and
+walking back to Mrs. Wentworth, held out her hand. "Good-by."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth, without rising, shook hands with her coldly. "Good-by."
+
+Lois turned and walked slowly from the room.
+
+As soon as she had closed the door she rushed up-stairs, and, locking
+herself in, threw herself on the bed and burst out crying. The strain
+had been too great, and the bent bow at last snapped.
+
+An hour or two later there was a knock on her door. Lois opened it, and
+Mrs. Wentworth entered. She appeared rather surprised to find Lois
+packing her trunk.
+
+"Are you really going away?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, Cousin Louise."
+
+"I think I spoke hastily to you. I said one or two things that I regret.
+I had no right to speak to you as I did," said Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+"No, I do not think you had," said Lois, gravely; "but I will try and
+never think of it again, but only of your kindness to me."
+
+Suddenly, to her astonishment, Mrs. Wentworth burst out weeping. "You
+are all against me," she exclaimed--"all! You are all so hard on me!"
+
+Lois sprang toward her, her face full of sudden pity. "Why, Cousin
+Louise!"
+
+"You are all deserting me. What shall I do! I am so wretched! I am so
+lonely--so lonely! Oh, I wish I were dead!" sobbed the unhappy woman.
+"Then, maybe, some one might be sorry for me even if they did not
+love me."
+
+Lois slipped her arm around her and drew her to her, as if their ages
+had been reversed. "Don't cry, Cousin Louise. Calm yourself."
+
+Lois drew her down to a sofa, and kneeling beside her, tried to comfort
+her with tender words and assurances of her affection. "There, Cousin
+Louise, I do love you--we all love you. Cousin Norman loves you."
+
+Mrs. Wentworth only sobbed her dissent.
+
+"I will stay. I will not go," said Lois. "If you want me."
+
+The unhappy woman caught her in her arms and thanked her with a humility
+which was new to the girl. And out of the reconciliation came a view of
+her which Lois had never seen, and which hardly any one had seen often.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+TERPY'S LAST DANCE AND WICKERSHAM'S FINAL THROW
+
+Curiously enough, the interview between Mrs. Lancaster and Lois brought
+them closer together than before. The older woman seemed to find a new
+pleasure in the young girl's society, and as often as she could she had
+the girl at her house. Sometimes, too, Keith was of the party. He held
+himself in leash, and hardly dared face the fact that he had once more
+entered on the lane which, beginning among flowers, had proved so thorny
+in the end. Yet more and more he let himself drift into that sweet
+atmosphere whose light was the presence of Lois Huntington.
+
+One evening they all went together to see a vaudeville performance that
+was being much talked about.
+
+Keith had secured a box next the stage. The theatre was crowded.
+Wickersham sat in another box with several women, and Keith was aware
+that he was covertly watching his party. He had never appeared gayer or
+been handsomer.
+
+The last number but one was a dance by a new danseuse, who, it was
+stated in the playbills, had just come over from Russia. According to
+the reports, the Russian court was wild about her, and she had left
+Europe at the personal request of the Czar. However this might be, it
+appeared that she could dance. The theatre was packed nightly, and she
+was the drawing-card.
+
+As the curtain rose, the danseuse made her way to the centre of the
+stage. She had raven-black hair and brows; but even as she stood, there
+was something in the pose that seemed familiar to Keith, and as she
+stepped forward and bowed with a little jerk of her head, and then, with
+a nod to the orchestra, began to dance, Keith recognized Terpy. That
+abandon was her own.
+
+As she swept the boxes with her eyes, they fell on Keith, and she
+started, hesitated, then went on. Next moment she glanced at the box
+again, and as her eye caught Keith's she gave him a glance of
+recognition. She was not to be disconcerted now, however. She had never
+danced so well. And she was greeted with raptures of applause. The crowd
+was wild with delight.
+
+At that moment, from one of the wings, a thin curl of smoke rose and
+floated up alongside a painted tamarind-tree. It might at first have
+been only the smoke of a cigar. Next moment, however, a flick of flame
+stole out and moved up the tree, and a draught of air blew the smoke
+across the stage. There were a few excited whispers, a rush in the
+wings; some one in the gallery shouted "Fire!" and just then a shower of
+sparks from the flaming scenery fell on the stage.
+
+In a second the whole audience was on its feet. In a second more there
+would have been a panic which must have cost many lives. Keith saw the
+danger. "Stay in this box," he said. "The best way out is over the
+stage. I will come for you if necessary." He sprang on the stage, and,
+with a wave of his arm to the audience, shouted: "Down in your seats! It
+is all right."
+
+Those nearest the stage, seeing a man stand between them and the fire,
+had paused, and the hubbub for a moment had ceased. Keith took
+advantage of it.
+
+"This theatre can be emptied in three minutes if you take your time," he
+cried; "but the fire is under control."
+
+Terpy had seized the burning piece of scenery and torn it down, and was
+tearing off the flaming edges with her naked hands. He sprang to Terpy's
+side. Her filmy dress caught fire, but Keith jerked off his coat and
+smothered the flame. Just then the water came, and the fire
+was subdued.
+
+"Strike up that music again," Keith said to the musicians. Then to Terpy
+he said: "Begin dancing. Dance for your life!" The girl obeyed, and, all
+blackened as she was, began to dance again. She danced as she had never
+danced before, and as she danced the people at the rear filed out, while
+most of those in the body of the house stood and watched her. As the
+last spark of flame was extinguished the girl stopped, breathless.
+Thunders of applause broke out, but ceased as Terpy suddenly sank to the
+floor, clutching with her blackened hands at her throat. Keith caught
+her, and lowering her gently, straightened her dress. The next moment a
+woman sprang out of her box and knelt beside him; a woman's arm slipped
+under the dancer's head, and Lois Huntington, on her knees, was
+loosening Terpy's bodice as if she had been a sister.
+
+A doctor came up out of the audience and bent over her, and the curtain
+rang down.
+
+That night Keith and Lois and Mrs. Lancaster all spent in the
+waiting-room of the Emergency Hospital. They knew that Terpy's life was
+ebbing fast. She had swallowed the flame, the doctor said. During the
+night a nurse came and called for Keith. The dying woman wanted to see
+him. When Keith reached her bedside, the doctor, in reply to a look of
+inquiry from him, said: "You can say anything to her; it will not hurt
+her." He turned away, and Keith seated himself beside her. Her face and
+hands were swathed in bandages.
+
+"I want to say good-by," she said feebly. "You don't mind now what I
+said to you that time?" Keith, for answer, stroked the coverlid beside
+her. "I want to go back home--to Gumbolt.--Tell the boys good-by
+for me."
+
+Keith said he would--as well as he could, for he had little voice left.
+
+"I want to see _her_," she said presently.
+
+"Whom?" asked Keith.
+
+"The younger one. The one you looked at all the time. I want to thank
+her for the doll. I ran away."
+
+Lois was sent for, but when she reached the bedside Terpy was too far
+gone to speak so that she could be understood. But she was conscious
+enough to know that Lois was at her side and that it was her voice that
+repeated the Lord's Prayer.
+
+The newspapers the next day rang with her praises, and that night Keith
+went South with her body to lay it on the hillside among her friends,
+and all of old Gumbolt was there to meet her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wickersham, on finding his attempt at explanation to Mrs. Wentworth
+received with coldness, turned his attentions in another direction. It
+was necessary. His affairs had all gone wrong of late. He had seen his
+great fortune disappear under his hands. Men who had not half his
+ability were succeeding where he had failed. Men who once followed him
+now held aloof, and refused to be drawn into his most tempting schemes.
+His enemies were working against him. He would overthrow them yet.
+Norman Wentworth and Gordon Keith especially he hated.
+
+He began to try his fortune with Mrs. Lancaster again. Now, if ever,
+appeared a good time. She was indifferent to every man--unless she cared
+for Keith. He had sometimes thought she might; but he did not believe
+it. Keith, of course, would like to marry her; but Wickersham did not
+believe Keith stood any chance. Though she had refused Wickersham, she
+had never shown any one else any special favor. He would try new tactics
+and bear her off before she knew it. He began with a dash. He was quite
+a different man from what he had been. He even was seen in church,
+turning on Rimmon a sphinx-like face that a little disconcerted that
+eloquent person.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster received him with the serene and unruffled indifference
+with which she received all her admirers, and there were many. She
+treated him, however, with the easy indulgence with which old friends
+are likely to be treated for old times' sake; and Wickersham was
+deceived. Fortune appeared suddenly to smile on him again. Hope sprang
+up once more.
+
+Mrs. Nailor one day met Lois, and informed her that Mr. Wickersham was
+now a rival of Mr. Keith's with Mrs. Lancaster, and, what was more, that
+Norman Wentworth had learned that it was not Wickersham at all, but Mr.
+Keith who had really caused the trouble between Norman and his wife.
+
+Lois was aghast. She denied vehemently that it was true; but Mrs. Nailor
+received her denial with amused indulgence.
+
+"Oh, every one knows it," she said. "Mr. Keith long ago cut Fredy out;
+and Norman knows it."
+
+Lois went home in a maze. This, then, explained why Mr. Keith had
+suddenly stopped coming to the house. When he had met her he had
+appeared as glad as ever to see her, but he had also appeared
+constrained. He had begun to talk of going away. He was almost the only
+man in New York that she could call her friend. To think of New York
+without him made her lonely. He was in love with Mrs. Lancaster, she
+knew--of that she was sure, notwithstanding Mrs. Nailor's statement.
+Could Mrs. Lancaster have treated him badly? She had not even cared for
+her husband, so people said; would she be cruel to Keith?
+
+The more she pondered over it the more unhappy Lois became. Finally it
+appeared to her that her duty was plain. If Mrs. Lancaster had rejected
+Keith for Wickersham, she might set her right. She could, at least, set
+her right as to the story about him and Mrs. Wentworth.
+
+That afternoon she called on Mrs. Lancaster. It was in the Spring, and
+she put on a dainty gown she had just made.
+
+She was received with the sincere cordiality that Alice Lancaster always
+showed her. She was taken up to her boudoir, a nest of blue satin and
+sunshine. And there, of all occupations in the world, Mrs. Lancaster,
+clad in a soft lavender tea-gown, was engaged in mending old clothes.
+"For my orphans," she said, with a laugh and a blush that made her look
+charming.
+
+A photograph of Keith stood on the table in a silver frame. When,
+however, Lois would have brought up the subject of Mr. Keith, his name
+stuck in her throat.
+
+"I have what the children call 'a swap' for you," said the girl,
+smiling.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster smiled acquiescingly as she bit off a thread.
+
+"I heard some one say the other day that you were one of those who 'do
+good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.'"
+
+"Oh, how nice! I am not, at all, you know. Still, it is pleasant to
+deceive people that way. Who said it?"
+
+"Mr. Keith." Lois could not help blushing a little; but she had broken
+the ice.
+
+"And I have one to return to you. I heard some one say that you had 'the
+rare gift of an absolutely direct mind.' That you were like George
+Washington: you couldn't tell a lie--that truth had its home in your
+eyes." Her eyes were twinkling.
+
+"My! Who said that?" asked the girl.
+
+"Mr. Keith."
+
+Lois turned quickly under pretence of picking up something, but she was
+not quick enough to hide her face from her friend. The red that burned
+in her cheeks flamed down and made her throat rosy.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster looked at the young girl. She made a pretty picture as
+she sat leaning forward, the curves of her slim, light-gowned figure
+showing against the background of blue. Her face was pensive, and she
+was evidently thinking deeply.
+
+"What are you puzzling over so?"
+
+At the question the color mounted into her cheeks, and the next second a
+smile lit up her face as she turned her eyes frankly on Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"You would be amused to know. I was wondering how long you had known Mr.
+Keith, and what he was like when he was young."
+
+"When he was young! Do you call him old now? Why, he is only a little
+over thirty."
+
+"Is that all! He always seems much older to me, I do not know why. But
+he has seen so much--done so much. Why, he appears to have had so many
+experiences! I feel as if no matter what might happen, he would know
+just what to do. For instance, that story that Cousin Norman told me
+once of his going down into the flooded mine, and that night at the
+theatre, when there was the fire--why, he just took charge. I felt as if
+he would take charge no matter what might happen."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster at first had smiled at the girl's enthusiasm, but before
+Lois had finished, she had drifted away.
+
+"He would--he would," she repeated, pensively.
+
+"Then that poor girl--what he did for her. I just--" Lois paused,
+seeking for a word--"trust him!"
+
+Mrs. Lancaster smiled.
+
+"You may," she said. "That is exactly the word."
+
+"Tell me, what was he like when--you first knew him?"
+
+"I don't know--why, he was--he was just what he is now--you could have
+trusted him--"
+
+"Why didn't you marry him?" asked Lois, her eyes on the other's face.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster looked at her with almost a gasp.
+
+"Why, Lois! What are you talking about? Who says--?"
+
+"He says so. He said he was desperately in love with you."
+
+"Why, Lois--!" began Mrs. Lancaster, with the color mounting to her
+cheeks. "Well, he has gotten bravely over it," she laughed.
+
+"He has not. He is in love with you now," the young girl said calmly.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster turned and faced her with her mouth open to speak, and
+read the girl's sincerity in her face. "With me!" She clasped her hands
+with a pretty gesture over her bosom. A warm feeling suddenly surged to
+her heart.
+
+The younger woman nodded.
+
+"Yes--and, oh, Mrs. Lancaster, don't treat him badly!" She laid both
+hands on her arm and looked at her earnestly. "He has loved you always,"
+she continued.
+
+"Loved me! Lois, you are dreaming." But as she said it, Alice's heart
+was beating.
+
+"Yes, he was talking to me one evening, and he began to tell me of his
+love for a girl,--a young girl,--and what a part it had played in
+his life--"
+
+"But I was married," put in Mrs. Lancaster, seeking for further proof
+rather than renouncing this.
+
+"Yes, he said she did not care for him; but he had always striven to
+keep her image in his heart--her image as she was when he knew her and
+as he imagined her."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster's face for a moment was a study.
+
+"Do you know whom he is in love with now?" she said presently.
+
+"Yes; with you."
+
+"No--not with me; with you." She put her hand on Lois's cheek
+caressingly, and gazed into her eyes.
+
+The girl's eyes sank into her lap. Her face, which had been growing
+white and pink by turns, suddenly flamed.
+
+"Mrs. Lancaster, I believe I--" she began in low tones. She raised her
+eyes, and they met for a moment Mrs. Lancaster's. Something in their
+depths, some look of sympathy, of almost maternal kindness, struck her,
+passed through to her long-stilled heart. With a little cry she threw
+herself into the other's arms and buried her burning face in her lap.
+
+The expression on the face of the young widow changed. She glanced down
+for a moment at the little head in her lap, then bending down, she
+buried her face in the brown tresses, and drew her form close to
+her heart.
+
+In a moment the young girl was pouring out her soul to her as if she had
+been her daughter.
+
+The expression in Alice Lancaster's eyes was softer than it had been for
+a long time, for it was the light of self-sacrifice that shone in them.
+
+"You have your happiness in your hands," she said tenderly.
+
+Lois looked up with dissent in her eyes.
+
+Mrs. Lancaster shook her head.
+
+"No. He will never be in love with me again."
+
+The girl gave a quick intaking of her breath, her hand clutching at her
+throat.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Lancaster!" She was thinking aloud rather than speaking. "I
+thought that you cared for him."
+
+Alice Lancaster shook her head. She tried to meet frankly the other's
+eyes, but as they gazed deep into hers with an inquiry not to be put
+aside, hers failed and fell.
+
+"No," she said, but it was with a gasp.
+
+Lois's eyes opened wide, and her face changed.
+
+"Oh!" she murmured, as the sense of what she had done swept over her.
+She rose to her feet and, bending down, kissed Mrs. Lancaster tenderly.
+One might have thought she was the elder of the two.
+
+Lois returned home in deep thought. She had surprised Mrs. Lancaster's
+secret, and the end was plain. She allowed herself no delusions. The
+dream that for a moment had shed its radiance on her was broken. Keith
+was in love with Mrs. Lancaster, and Alice loved him. She prayed that
+they might be happy--especially Keith. She was angry with herself that
+she had allowed herself to become so interested in him. She would forget
+him. This was easier said than done. But she could at least avoid seeing
+him. And having made her decision, she held to it firmly. She avoided
+him in every way possible.
+
+The strain, however, had been too much for Lois, and her strength began
+to go. The doctor advised Mrs. Wentworth to send her home. "She is
+breaking down, and you will have her ill on your hands," he said. Lois,
+too, was pining to get away. She felt that she could not stand the city
+another week. And so, one day, she disappeared from town.
+
+When Wickersham met Mrs. Lancaster after her talk with Lois, he was
+conscious of the change in her. The old easy, indulgent attitude was
+gone; and in her eye, instead of the lazy, half-amused smile, was
+something very like scorn. Something had happened, he knew.
+
+His thoughts flew to Keith, Norman, Rimmon, also to several ladies of
+his acquaintance. What had they told her? Could it be the fact that he
+had lost nearly everything--that he had spent Mrs. Wentworth's money?
+That he had written anonymous letters? Whatever it was, he would brave
+it out. He had been in some hard places lately, and had won out by his
+nerve. He assumed an injured and a virtuous air, and no man could do
+it better.
+
+"What has happened? You are so strange to me. Has some one been
+prejudicing you against me? Some one has slandered me," he said, with an
+air of virtue.
+
+"No. No one." Mrs. Lancaster turned her rings with a little
+embarrassment. She was trying to muster the courage to speak plainly to
+him. He gave it to her.
+
+"Oh, yes; some one has. I think I have a right to demand who it is. Is
+it that man Keith?"
+
+"No." She glanced at him with a swift flash in her eye. "Mr. Keith has
+not mentioned your name to me since I came home."
+
+Her tone fired him with jealousy.
+
+"Well, who was it, then? He is not above it. He hates me enough to say
+anything. He has never got over our buying his old place, and has never
+lost an opportunity to malign me since."
+
+She looked him in the face, for the first time, quite steadily.
+
+"Let me tell you, Mr. Keith has never said a word against you to me--and
+that is much more than I can say for you; so you need not be
+maligning him now."
+
+A faint flush stole into Wickersham's face.
+
+"You appear to be championing his cause very warmly."
+
+"Because he is a friend of mine and an honorable gentleman."
+
+He gave a hard, bitter laugh.
+
+"Women are innocent!"
+
+"It is more than men are" she said, fired, as women always are, by a
+fleer at the sex.
+
+"Who has been slandering me?" he demanded, angered suddenly by her
+retort. "I have stood in a relation to you which gives me a right to
+demand the name."
+
+"What relation to me?--Where is your wife?"
+
+His face whitened, and he drew in his breath as if struck a blow,--a
+long breath,--but in a second he had recovered himself, and he burst
+into a laugh.
+
+"So you have heard that old story--and believe it?" he said, with his
+eyes looking straight into hers. As she made no answer, he went on.
+"Now, as you have heard it, I will explain the whole thing to you. I
+have always wanted to do it; but--but--I hardly knew whether it were
+better to do it or leave it alone. I thought if you had heard it you
+would mention it to me--"
+
+"I have done so now," she said coldly.
+
+"I thought our relation--or, as you object to that word, our
+friendship--entitled me to that much from you."
+
+"I never heard it till--till just now," she defended, rather shaken by
+his tone and air of candor.
+
+"When?
+
+"Oh--very recently."
+
+"Won't you tell me who told you?"
+
+"No--o. Go on."
+
+"Well, that woman--that poor girl--her name was--her name is--Phrony
+Tripper--or Trimmer. I think that was her name--she called herself
+Euphronia Tripper." He was trying with puckered brow to recall exactly.
+"I suppose that is the woman you are referring to?" he said suddenly.
+
+"It is. You have not had more than one, have you?"
+
+He laughed, pleased to give the subject a lighter tone.
+
+"Well, this poor creature I used to know in the South when I was a
+boy--when I first went down there, you know? She was the daughter of an
+old farmer at whose house we stayed. I used to talk to her. You know how
+a boy talks to a pretty girl whom he is thrown with in a lonesome old
+country place, far from any amusement." Her eyes showed that she knew,
+and he was satisfied and proceeded.
+
+"But heavens! the idea of being in love with her! Why, she was the
+daughter of a farmer. Well, then I fell in with her afterwards--once or
+twice, to be accurate--when I went down there on business, and she was a
+pretty, vain country girl--"
+
+"I used to know her," assented Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+"You did!" His face fell.
+
+"Yes; when I went there to a little Winter resort for my throat--when I
+was seventeen. She used to go to the school taught by Mr. Keith."
+
+"She did? Oh, then you know her name? It was Tripper, wasn't it?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"I thought it was. Well, she was quite pretty, you remember; and, as I
+say, I fell in with her again, and having been old friends--" He shifted
+in his seat a little as if embarrassed--"Why--oh, you know how it is. I
+began to talk nonsense to her to pass away the time,--told her she was
+pretty and all that,--and made her a few presents--and--" He paused and
+took a long breath. "I thought she was very queer. The first thing I
+knew, I found she was--out of her mind. Well, I stopped and soon came
+away, and, to my horror, she took it into her head that she was my wife.
+She followed me here. I had to go abroad, and I heard no more of her
+until, not long ago, I heard she had gone completely crazy and was
+hunting me up as her husband. You know how such poor creatures are?" He
+paused, well satisfied with his recital, for first surprise and then a
+certain sympathy took the place of incredulity in Mrs. Lancaster's face.
+
+"She is absolutely mad, poor thing, I understand," he sighed, with
+unmistakable sympathy in his voice.
+
+"Yes," Mrs. Lancaster assented, her thoughts drifting away.
+
+He watched her keenly, and next moment began again.
+
+"I heard she had got hold of Mr. Rimmon's name and declares that he
+married us."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster returned to the present, and he went on:
+
+"I don't know how she got hold of it. I suppose his being the
+fashionable preacher, or his name being in the papers frequently,
+suggested the idea. But if you have any doubt on the subject, ask him."
+
+Mrs. Lancaster looked assent.
+
+"Here--Having heard the story, and thinking it might be as well to stop
+it at once, I wrote to Mr. Rimmon to give me a statement to set the
+matter at rest, and I have it in my pocket." He took from his
+pocket-book a letter and spread it before Mrs. Lancaster. It read:
+
+     "DEAR MR. WICKERSHAM: I am sorry you are being annoyed. I
+     cannot imagine that you should need any such statement as you
+     request. The records of marriages are kept in the proper
+     office here. Any one who will take the trouble to inspect
+     those records will see that I have never made any such
+     report. This should be more than sufficient.
+
+     "I feel sure this will answer your purpose.
+
+          "Yours sincerely,
+
+               "W.H. RIMMON."
+
+"I think that settles the matter," said Wickersham, with his eyes on her
+face.
+
+"It would seem so," said Mrs. Lancaster, gravely.
+
+As she spoke slowly, Wickersham put in one more nail.
+
+"Of course, you know there must be a witness to a marriage," he said.
+"If there be such a witness, let K---- let those who are engaged in
+defaming me produce him."
+
+"No, no," said Mrs. Lancaster, quickly. "Mr. Rimmon's statement--I think
+I owe you an apology for what I said. Of course, it appeared incredible;
+but something occurred--I can't tell you--I don't want to tell you
+what--that shocked me very much, and I suppose I judged too hastily and
+harshly. You must forget what I said, and forgive me for my injustice."
+
+"Certainly I will," he said earnestly.
+
+The revulsion in her belief inclined her to be kinder toward him than
+she had been in a long time.
+
+The change in her manner toward him made Wickersham's heart begin to
+beat. He leant over and took her hand.
+
+"Won't you give me more than justice, Alice?" he began. "If you knew how
+long I have waited--how I have hoped even against hope--how I have
+always loved you--" She was so taken aback by his declaration that for a
+moment she did not find words to reply, and he swept on: "--you would
+not be so cold--so cruel to me. I have always thought you the most
+beautiful--the most charming woman in New York."
+
+She shook her head. "No, you have not."
+
+"I have; I swear I have! Even when I have hung around--around other
+women, I have done so because I saw you were taken up with--some one
+else. I thought I might find some one else to supplant you, but never
+for one moment have I failed to acknowledge your superiority--"
+
+"Oh, no; you have not. How can you dare to tell me that!" she smiled,
+recovering her self-possession.
+
+"I have, Alice, ever since you were a girl--even when you
+were--were--when you were beyond me--I loved you more than ever--I--"
+Her face changed, and she recoiled from him.
+
+"Don't," she said.
+
+"I will." He seized her hand and held it tightly. "I loved you even then
+better than I ever loved in my life--better than your--than any one else
+did." Her face whitened.
+
+"Stop!" she cried. "Not another word. I will not listen. Release my
+hand." She pulled it from him forcibly, and, as he began again, she,
+with a gesture, stopped him.
+
+"No--no--no! It is impossible. I will not listen."
+
+His face changed as he looked into her face. She rose from her seat and
+turned away from him, taking two or three steps up and down, trying to
+regain control of herself.
+
+He waited and watched her, an angry light coming into his eyes. He
+misread her feelings. He had made love to married women before and had
+not been repulsed.
+
+She turned to him now, and with level eyes looked into his.
+
+"You never loved me in your life. I have had men in love with me, and
+know when they are; but you are not one of them."
+
+"I was--I am--" he began, stepping closer to her; but she stopped him.
+
+"Not for a minute," she went on, without heeding him. "And you had no
+right to say that to me."
+
+"What?" he demanded.
+
+"What you said. My husband loved me with all the strength of a noble,
+high-minded man, and notwithstanding the difference in our ages, treated
+me as his equal; and I loved him--yes, loved him devotedly," she said,
+as she saw a spark come into his eyes.
+
+"You love some one else now," he said coolly.
+
+It might have been anger that brought the rush of color to her face. She
+turned and looked him full in the face.
+
+"If I do, it is not you."
+
+The arrow went home. His eyes snapped with anger.
+
+"You took such lofty ground just now that I should hardly have supposed
+the attentions of Mr. Wentworth meant anything so serious. I thought
+that was mere friendship."
+
+This time there was no doubt that the color meant anger.
+
+"What do you mean?" she demanded, looking him once more full in the
+eyes.
+
+"I refer to what the world says, especially as he himself is such a
+model of all the Christian virtues."
+
+"What the world says? What do you mean?" she persisted, never taking her
+eyes from his face.
+
+He simply shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"So I assume Mr. Keith is the fortunate suitor for the remnant of your
+affections: Keith the immaculate--Keith the pure and pious gentleman who
+trades on his affections. I wish you good luck."
+
+At his insolence Mrs. Lancaster's patience suddenly snapped.
+
+"Go," she said, pointing to the door. "Go."
+
+When Wickersham walked out into the street, his face was white and
+drawn, and a strange light was in his eyes. He had played one of his
+last cards, and had played it like a fool. Luck had gone against him,
+and he had lost his head. His heart--that heart that had never known
+remorse and rarely dismay--began to sink. Luck had been going against
+him now for a long time, so long that it had swept away his fortune and
+most of his credit. What was worse to him, he was conscious that he had
+lost his nerve. Where should he turn? Unless luck turned or he could get
+help he would go down. He canvassed the various means of escape. Man
+after man had fallen away from him. Every scheme had failed.
+
+He attributed it all to Norman--to Norman and Keith. Norman had ruined
+him in New York; Keith had blocked him and balked him in the South. But
+one resource remained to him. He would make one more supreme effort.
+Then, if he failed? He thought of a locked drawer in his desk, and a
+black pistol under the papers there. His cheek blanched at the thought,
+but his lips closed tight. He would not survive disgrace. His disgrace
+meant the known loss of his fortune. One thing he would do. Keith had
+escaped him, had succeeded, but Norman he could overthrow. Norman had
+been struck hard; he would now complete his ruin. With this mental tonic
+he straightened up and walked rapidly down the street.
+
+That evening Wickersham was closeted for some time with a man who had of
+late come into especial notice as a strong and merciless
+financier--Mr. Kestrel.
+
+Mr. Kestrel received him at first with a coldness which might have
+repelled a less determined man. He had no delusions about Wickersham;
+but Wickersham knew this, and unfolded to him, with plausible frankness,
+a scheme which had much reason in it. He had at the same time played on
+the older man's foibles with great astuteness, and had awakened one or
+two of his dormant animosities. He knew that Mr. Kestrel had had a
+strong feeling against Norman for several years.
+
+"You are one of the few men who do not have to fall down and worship the
+name of Wentworth," he said.
+
+"Well, I rather think not," said Mr. Kestrel, with a glint in his eyes,
+as he recalled Norman Wentworth's scorn of him at the board-meeting
+years before, when Norman had defended Keith against him.
+
+"--Or this new man, Keith, who is undertaking to teach New York
+finance?"
+
+Mr. Kestrel gave a hard little laugh, which was more like a cough than
+an expression of mirth, but which meant that he was amused.
+
+"Well, neither do I," said Wickersham. "To tell you frankly, I hate them
+both, though there is money, and big money, in this, as you can see for
+yourself from what I have said. This is my real reason for wanting you
+in it. If you jump in and hammer down those things, you will clean them
+out. I have the old patents to all the lands that Keith sold those
+people. They antedate the titles under which Rawson claims. If you can
+break up the deal now, we will go in and recover the lands from Rawson.
+Wentworth is so deep in that he'll never pull through, and his friend
+Keith has staked everything on this one toss."
+
+Old Kestrel's parchment face was inscrutable as he gazed at Wickersham
+and declared that he did not know about that. He did not believe in
+having animosities in business matters, as it marred one's judgment.
+But Wickersham knew enough to be sure that the seed he had planted would
+bear fruit, and that Kestrel would stake something on the chance.
+
+In this he was not deceived. The next day Mr. Kestrel acceded to his
+plan.
+
+For some days after that there appeared in a certain paper a series of
+attacks on various lines of property holdings, that was characterized by
+other papers as a "strong bearish movement." The same paper contained a
+vicious article about the attempt to unload worthless coal-lands on
+gullible Englishmen. Meantime Wickersham, foreseeing failure, acted
+independently.
+
+The attack might not have amounted to a great deal but for one of those
+untimely accidents that sometimes overthrow all calculations. One of the
+keenest and oldest financiers in the city suddenly dropped dead, and a
+stampede started on the Stock Exchange. It was stayed in a little while,
+but meantime a number of men had been hard hit, and among these was
+Norman Wentworth. The papers next day announced the names of those who
+had suffered, and much space was given in one of them to the decline of
+the old firm of Wentworth & Son, whose history was almost contemporary
+with that of New York.
+
+By noon it was extensively rumored that Wentworth & Son would close
+their doors. The firm which had lasted for three generations, and whose
+name had been the synonym for honor and for philanthropy, which had
+stood as the type of the highest that can exist in commerce, would go
+down. Men spoke of it with a regret which did them honor--hard men who
+rarely expressed regret for the losses of another.
+
+It was rumored, too, that Wickersham & Company must assign; but this
+caused little surprise and less regret. Aaron Wickersham had had
+friends, but his son had not succeeded to them.
+
+Keith, having determined to talk to Alice Lancaster about Lois, was
+calling on the former a day or two after her interview with Wickersham.
+She was still somewhat disturbed over it, and showed it in her manner so
+clearly that Keith asked what was the trouble.
+
+It was nothing very much, she said. Only she had broken finally with a
+friend she had known a long time, and such things upset her.
+
+Keith was sympathetic, and suddenly, to his surprise, she broke down and
+began to cry. He had never seen her weep before since she sat, as a
+girl, in the pine-woods and he lent her his handkerchief to dry her
+tears. Something in the association gave him a feeling of unwonted
+tenderness. She had not appeared to him so soft, so feminine, in a long
+time. He essayed to comfort her. He, too, had broken with an old friend,
+the friend of a lifetime, and he would never get over it.
+
+"Mine was such a blow to me," she said, wiping her eyes; "such cruel
+things were said to me. I did not think any one but a woman would have
+said such biting things to a woman."
+
+"It was Ferdy Wickersham, I know," said Keith, his eyes contracting;
+"but what on earth could he have said? What could he have dared to say
+to wound you so?"
+
+"He said all the town was talking about me and Norman." She began to cry
+again. "Norman, dear old Norman, who has been more like a brother to me
+than any one I have ever known, and whom I would give the world to bring
+back happiness to."
+
+"He is a scoundrel!" exclaimed Keith. "I have stood all--more than I
+ever expected to stand from any man living; but if he is attacking
+women"--he was speaking to himself rather than to her--"I will unmask
+him. He is not worth your notice," he said kindly, addressing her again.
+"Women have been his prey ever since I knew him, when he was but a young
+boy." Mrs. Lancaster dried her eyes.
+
+"You refer to the story that he had married that poor girl and abandoned
+her?"
+
+"Yes--partly that. That is the worst thing I know of him."
+
+"But that is not true. However cruel he is, that accusation is
+unfounded. I know that myself."
+
+"How do you know it?" asked Keith, in surprise.
+
+"He told me the whole story: explained the thing to my satisfaction. It
+was a poor crazy girl who claimed that he married her; said Mr. Rimmon
+had performed the ceremony She was crazy. I saw Mr. Rimmon's letter
+denying the whole thing."
+
+"Do you know his handwriting?" inquired Keith, grimly.
+
+"Whose?"
+
+"Well, that of both of them?"
+
+She nodded, and Keith, taking out his pocket-book, opened it and took
+therefrom a slip of paper. "Look at that. I got that a few days ago from
+the witness who was present."
+
+"Why, what is this?" She sprang up in her excitement.
+
+"It is incredible!" she said slowly. "Why, he told me the story with the
+utmost circumstantiality."
+
+"He lied to you," said Keith, grimly. "And Rimmon lied. That is their
+handwriting. I have had it examined by the best expert in New York City.
+I had not intended to use that against him, but only to clear the
+character of that poor young creature whom he deceived and then
+abandoned; but as he is defaming her here, and is at his old trade of
+trying to deceive women, it is time he was shown up in his true colors."
+
+She gave a shudder of horror, and wiped her right hand with her left.
+"Oh, to think that he dared!" She wiped her hand on her handkerchief.
+
+At that moment a servant brought in a card. As Mrs. Lancaster gazed at
+it, her eyes flashed and her lip curled.
+
+"Say that Mrs. Lancaster begs to be excused."
+
+"Yes, madam." The servant hesitated. "I think he heard you talking,
+madam."
+
+"Say that Mrs. Lancaster begs to be excused," she said firmly.
+
+The servant, with a bow, withdrew.
+
+She handed the card to Keith. On it was the name of the Rev. William H.
+Rimmon.
+
+Mr. Rimmon, as he stood in the hall, was in unusually good spirits,
+though slightly perturbed. He had determined to carry through a plan
+that he had long pondered over. He had decided to ask Mrs. Lancaster to
+become Mrs. Rimmon.
+
+As Keith glanced toward the door, he caught Mr. Rimmon's eye. He was
+waiting on the threshold and rubbing his hands with eager expectancy.
+Just then the servant gave him the message. Keith saw his countenance
+fall and his face blanch. He turned, picked up his hat, and slipped out
+of the door, with a step that was almost a slink.
+
+As Mr. Rimmon passed down the street he knew that he had reached a
+crisis in his life. He went to see Wickersham, but that gentleman was in
+no mood for condolences. Everything had gone against him. He was facing
+utter ruin. Rimmon's upbraiding angered him.
+
+"By the way, you are the very man I wanted to see," he said grimly. "I
+want you to sign a note for that twenty thousand I lost by you when you
+insisted on my holding that stock."
+
+Rimmon's jaw fell. "That you held for me? Sign a note! Twenty-six
+thousand!"
+
+"Yes. Don't pretend innocence--not on me. Save that for the pulpit. I
+know you," said the other, with a chilling laugh.
+
+"But you were to carry that. That was a part of our agreement. Why,
+twenty thousand would take everything I have."
+
+"Don't play that on me," said Wickersham, coldly. "It won't work. You
+can make it up when you get your widow."
+
+Rimmon groaned helplessly.
+
+"Come; there is the note. Sign."
+
+Rimmon began to expostulate, and finally refused pointblank to sign.
+Wickersham gazed at him with amusement.
+
+"You sign that, or I will serve suit on you in a half-hour, and we will
+see how the Rev. Mr. Rimmmon stands when my lawyers are through with
+him. You will believe in hell then, sure enough."
+
+"You won't dare do it. Your marriage would come out. Mrs. Lancaster
+would--"
+
+"She knows it," said Wickersham, calmly. And, as Rimmon looked
+sceptical, "I told her myself to spare you the trouble. Sign." He rose
+and touched a bell.
+
+Rimmon, with a groan, signed the paper.
+
+"You must have showed her my letter!"
+
+"Of course, I did."
+
+"But you promised me not to. I am ruined!"
+
+"What have I to do with that? 'See thou to that,'" said Wickersham, with
+a bitter laugh.
+
+Rimmon's face paled at the quotation. He, too, had betrayed his Lord.
+
+"Now go." Wickersham pointed to the door.
+
+Mr. Rimmon went home and tried to write a letter to Mrs. Lancaster, but
+he could not master his thoughts. That pen that usually flowed so glibly
+failed to obey him. He was in darkness. He saw himself dishonored,
+displaced. Wickersham was capable of anything. He did not know where to
+turn. He thought of his brother clergymen. He knew many good men who
+spent their lives helping others. But something deterred him from
+applying to them now. To some he had been indifferent, others he had
+known only socially. Yet others had withdrawn themselves from him more
+and more of late. He had attributed it to their envy or their folly. He
+suddenly thought of old Dr. Templeton. He had always ignored that old
+man as a sort of crack-brained creature who had not been able to keep up
+with the world, and had been left stranded, doing the work that properly
+belonged to the unsuccessful. Curiously enough, he was the one to whom
+the unhappy man now turned. Besides, he was a friend of Mrs. Lancaster.
+
+A half-hour later the Rev. Mr. Rimmon was in Dr. Templeton's simple
+study, and was finding a singular sense of relief in pouring out his
+troubles to the old clergyman. He told him something of his unhappy
+situation--not all, it is true, but enough to enable the other to see
+how grave it was, as much from what he inferred as from what Rimmon
+explained. He even began to hope again. If the Doctor would undertake to
+straighten out the complications he might yet pull through. To his
+dismay, this phase of the matter did not appear to present itself to the
+old man's mind. It was the sin that he had committed that had
+touched him.
+
+"Let us carry it where only we can find relief;" he said. "Let us take
+it to the Throne of Grace, where we can lay all our burdens"; and before
+Rimmon knew it, he was on his knees, praying for him as if he had been a
+very outcast.
+
+When the Rev. Mr. Rimmon came out of the shabby little study, though he
+had not gotten the relief he had sought, he, somehow, felt a little
+comforted, while at the same time he felt humble. He had one of those
+brief intervals of feeling that, perhaps, there was, after all,
+something that that old man had found which he had missed, and he
+determined to find it. But Mr. Rimmon had wandered far out of the way.
+He had had a glimpse of the pearl, but the price was great, and he had
+not been able to pay it all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Wickersham discounted the note; but the amount was only a bagatelle to
+him: a bucket-shop had swallowed it within an hour. He had lost his
+instinct. It was only the love of gambling that remained.
+
+Only one chance appeared to remain for him. He had made up with Louise
+Wentworth after a fashion. He must get hold of her in some way. He might
+obtain more money from her. The method he selected was a desperate one;
+but he was a desperate man.
+
+After long pondering, he sat down and wrote her a note, asking her "to
+meet some friends of his, a Count and Countess Torelli, at supper"
+next evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE RUN ON THE BANK
+
+It was the day after the events just recorded that Keith's deal was
+concluded. The attack on him and the attempt made by Wickersham and
+Kestrel to break up his deal had failed, and the deeds and money
+were passed.
+
+Keith was on his way back to his office from his final interview with
+the representative of the syndicate that had bought the properties. He
+was conscious of a curious sensation, partly of exhilaration, partly of
+almost awe, as he walked through the crowded streets, where every one
+was bent on the same quest: gold. At last he had won. He was rich. He
+wondered, as he walked along, if any of the men he shouldered were as
+rich as he. Norman and Ferdy Wickersham recurred to him. Both had been
+much wealthier; but Wickersham, he knew, was in straits, and Norman was
+in some trouble. He was unfeignedly glad about Wickersham; but the
+recollection of Norman clouded his face.
+
+It was with a pang that he recalled Norman's recent conduct to him--a
+pang that one who had always been his friend should have changed so; but
+that was the way of the world. This reflection, however, was not
+consoling.
+
+He reached his office and seated himself at his desk, to take another
+look at his papers. Before he opened them he rose and locked the door,
+and opening a large envelope, spread the papers out on the desk
+before him.
+
+He thought of his father. He must write and tell him of his success.
+Then he thought of his old home. He remembered his resolution to restore
+it and make it what it used to be. But how much he could do with the
+money it would take to fit up the old place in the manner he had
+contemplated! By investing it judiciously he could double it.
+
+Suddenly there was a step outside and a knock at his door, followed by
+voices in the outer office. Keith rose, and putting his papers back in
+his pocket, opened the door. For a second he had a mingled sensation of
+pleasure and surprise. His father stood there, his bag clutched in his
+hand. He looked tired, and had aged some since Keith saw him last; but
+his face wore the old smile that always illumined it when it rested
+on his son.
+
+Keith greeted him warmly and drew him inside. "I was just thinking of
+you, sir."
+
+"You would not come to see me, so I have come to see you. I have heard
+from you so rarely that I was afraid you were sick." His eyes rested
+fondly on Gordon's face.
+
+"No; I have been so busy; that is all. Well, sir, I have won." His eyes
+were sparkling.
+
+The old gentleman's face lit up.
+
+"You have? Found Phrony, have you? I am so glad. It will give old Rawson
+a new lease of life. I saw him after he got back. He has failed a good
+deal lately."
+
+"No, sir. I have found her, too; but I mean I have won out at last."
+
+"Ah, you have won her? I congratulate you. I hope she will make you
+happy."
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"I don't mean that. I mean I have sold my lands at last. I closed this
+morning with the Englishmen, and received the money."
+
+The General smiled.
+
+"Ah, you have, have you? That's very good. I am glad for old Adam
+Rawson's sake."
+
+"I was afraid he would die before the deeds passed," said Keith. "But
+see, here are the drafts to my order." He spread them out. "This one is
+my commission. And I have the same amount of common stock."
+
+His father made no comment on this, but presently said: "You will have
+enough to restore the old place a little."
+
+"How much would it cost to fix up the place as you think it ought to be
+fixed up?"
+
+"Oh, some thousands of dollars. You see, the house is much out of
+repair, and the quarters ought really all to be rebuilt. Old Charlotte's
+house I have kept in repair, and Richard now sleeps in the house, as he
+has gotten so rheumatic. I should think five or six thousand dollars
+might do it."
+
+"I can certainly spare that much," said Keith, laughing.
+
+"How is Norman?" asked the General.
+
+Keith was conscious of a feeling of discontent. His countenance fell.
+
+"Why, I don't know. I don't see much of him these days."
+
+"Ah! I want to go to see him."
+
+"The fact is, we have--er--had--. There has been an unfortunate
+misunderstanding between us. No one regrets it more than I; but I think
+I can say it was not at all my fault, and I have done all and more than
+was required of me."
+
+"Ah, I am very sorry for that. It's a pity--a pity!" said the old
+General. "What was it about?"
+
+"Well, I don't care to talk about it, sir. But I can assure you, I was
+not in the least to blame. It was caused mainly, I believe, by that
+fellow, Wickersham."
+
+"He's a scoundrel!" said the General, with sudden vehemence.
+
+"He is, sir!"
+
+"I will go and see Norman. I see by the papers he is in some trouble."
+
+"I fear he is, sir. His bank has been declining."
+
+"Perhaps you can help him?" His face lit up. "You remember, he once
+wrote you--a long time ago?"
+
+"I remember; I have repaid that," said Keith, quickly. "He has treated
+me very badly." He gave a brief account of the trouble between them.
+
+The old General leant back and looked at his son intently. His face was
+very grave and showed that he was reflecting deeply.
+
+"Gordon," he said presently, "the Devil is standing very close to you. A
+real misunderstanding should always be cleared up. You must go to him."
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" asked his son, in some confusion.
+
+"You are at the parting of the ways. A gentleman cannot hesitate. Such a
+debt never can be paid by a gentleman," he said calmly. "You must help
+him, even if you cannot restore the old place. Elphinstone has gone for
+a debt before." He rose as if there was nothing more to be said. "Well,
+I will go and wait for you at your rooms." He walked out.
+
+Keith sat and reflected. How different he was from his father! How
+different from what he had been years ago! Then he had had an affection
+for the old home and all that it represented. He had worked with the
+idea of winning it back some day. It had been an inspiration to him. But
+now it was wealth that he had begun to seek.
+
+It came to him clearly how much he had changed. The process all lay
+before him. It had grown with his success, and had kept pace with it in
+an almost steady ratio since he had set success before him as a goal. He
+was angry with himself to find that he was thinking now of success
+merely as Wealth. Once he had thought of Honor and Achievement, even of
+Duty. He remembered when he had not hesitated to descend into what
+appeared the very jaws of death, because it seemed to him his duty. He
+wondered if he would do the same now.
+
+He felt that this was a practical view which he was now taking of life.
+He was now a practical man; yes, practical like old Kestrel, said his
+better self. He felt that he was not as much of a gentleman as he used
+to be. He was further from his father; further from what Norman was.
+This again brought Norman to his mind. If the rumors which he had heard
+were true, Norman was now in a tight place.
+
+As his father had said, perhaps he might be able to help him. But why
+should he do it? If Norman had helped him in the past, had he not
+already paid him back? And had not Norman treated him badly of late
+without the least cause--met his advances with a rebuff? No; he would
+show him that he was not to be treated so. He still had a small account
+in Norman's bank, which he had not drawn out because he had not wished
+to let Norman see that he thought enough of his coldness to make any
+change; but he would put his money now into old Creamer's bank. After
+looking at his drafts again, he unlocked his door and went out on
+the street.
+
+There was more commotion on the street than he had seen in some days.
+Men were hurrying at a quicker pace than the rapid gait which was always
+noticeable in that thoroughfare. Groups occasionally formed and, after a
+word or two, dispersed. Newsboys were crying extras and announcing some
+important news in an unintelligible jargon. Messengers were dashing
+about, rushing in and out of the big buildings. Something unusual was
+evidently going on. As Keith, on his way to the bank of which Mr.
+Creamer was president, passed the mouth of the street in which Norman's
+office was situated, he looked down and saw quite a crowd assembled. The
+street was full. He passed on, however, and went into the big building,
+on the first floor of which Creamer's bank had its offices. He walked
+through to the rear of the office, to the door of Mr. Creamer's private
+office, and casually asked the nearest clerk for Mr. Creamer. The young
+man said he was engaged. Keith, however, walked up to the door, and was
+about to knock, when, at a word spoken by his informant, another clerk
+came hastily forward and said that Mr. Creamer was very busily engaged
+and could see no one.
+
+"Well, he will see me," said Keith, feeling suddenly the courage that
+the possession of over a quarter of a million dollars gave, and he
+boldly knocked on the door, and, without waiting to be invited in,
+opened it.
+
+Mr. Creamer was sitting at his desk, and two or three other men, one or
+two of whom Keith had seen before, were seated in front of him in close
+conference. They stared at the intruder.
+
+"Mr. Keith." Mr. Creamer's tone conveyed not the least feeling, gave no
+idea either of welcome or surprise.
+
+"Excuse me for interrupting you for a moment," said Keith. "I want to
+open an account here. I have a draft on London, which I should like to
+deposit and have you collect for me."
+
+The effect was immediate; indeed, one might almost say magical. The
+atmosphere of the room as suddenly changed as if May should be dropped
+into the lap of December. The old banker's face relaxed. He touched a
+bell under the lid of his desk, and at the same moment pushed back
+his chair.
+
+"Gentlemen, let me introduce my friend, Mr. Keith." He presented Keith
+in turn to each of his companions, who greeted him with that degree of
+mingled reserve and civility which is due to a man who has placed a
+paper capable of effecting such a marked change in the hands of the most
+self-contained banker in Bankers' Row.
+
+A tap at the door announced an answer to the bell, and the next moment a
+clerk came in.
+
+"Ask Mr. Penwell to come here," said Mr. Creamer. "Mr. Penwell is the
+head of our foreign department," he added in gracious explanation
+to Keith.
+
+"Mr. Keith, gentlemen, is largely interested in some of those Southern
+mining properties that you have heard me speak of; and has just put
+through a very fine deal with an English syndicate."
+
+The door opened, and a cool-looking, slender man of fifty-odd, with a
+thin gray face, thin gray hair very smoothly brushed, and keen gray
+eyes, entered. He was introduced to Mr. Keith. After Mr. Creamer had
+stated the purpose of Keith's visit and had placed the drafts in Mr.
+Penwell's hands, the latter stated, as an interesting item just off the
+ticker, that he understood Wentworth was in trouble. Some one had just
+come and said that there was a run on his bank.
+
+"Those attacks on him in the newspapers must have hurt him
+considerably," observed one of the visitors.
+
+"Yes, he has been a good deal hurt," said Mr. Creamer. "We are all
+right, Penwell?" He glanced at his subordinate.
+
+Mr. Penwell nodded with deep satisfaction.
+
+"So are we," said one of the visitors. "This is the end of Wentworth &
+Son. He will go down."
+
+"He has been going down for some time. Wife too extravagant."
+
+This appeared to be the general opinion. But Keith scarcely heard the
+speakers. He stood in a maze.
+
+The announcement of Norman's trouble had come to him like a
+thunder-clap. And he was standing now as in a dream. Could it be
+possible that Norman was going to fail? And if he failed, would this be
+all it meant to these men who had known him always?
+
+The vision of an old gentleman sitting in his home, which he had lost,
+came back to him across the years.
+
+"That young man is a gentleman," he heard him say. "It takes a gentleman
+to write such a letter to a friend in misfortune. Write to him and say
+we will never forget his kindness." He heard the same old gentleman say,
+after years of poverty, "You must pay your debt though I give up
+Elphinstone."
+
+Was he not now forgetting Norman's kindness? But was it not too late?
+Could he save him? Would he not simply be throwing away his money to
+offer it to him? Suddenly again, he seemed to hear his father's voice:
+
+"The Devil is standing close behind you. You are at the parting of the
+ways. A gentleman cannot hesitate."
+
+"Mr. Creamer," he said suddenly, "why don't Norman Wentworth's friends
+come to his rescue and help him out of his difficulties?"
+
+The question might have come from the sky, it was so unexpected. It
+evidently caught the others unprepared with an answer. They simply
+smiled vaguely. Mr. Creamer said presently, rubbing his chin:
+
+"Why, I don't suppose they know the extent of his difficulties."
+
+"And I guess he has no collateral to offer?" said another.
+
+"Collateral! No; everything he has is pledged."
+
+"But I mean, why don't they lend him money without collateral, if
+necessary, to tide him over his trouble? He is a man of probity. He has
+lived here all his life. He must have many friends able to help him.
+They know that if he had time to realize on his properties he would
+probably pull through."
+
+With one accord the other occupants of the room turned and looked at
+Keith.
+
+"Did you say you had made a fortune in mining deals?" asked one of the
+gentlemen across the table, gazing at Keith through his gold-rimmed
+glasses with a wintry little smile.
+
+"No, I did not. Whatever was said on that subject Mr. Creamer said."
+
+"Oh! That's so. He did. Well, you are the sort of a man we want about
+here."
+
+This remark was received with some amusement by the others; but Keith
+passed it by, and turned to Mr. Creamer.
+
+"Mr. Creamer, how much money will you give me on this draft? This is
+mine. The other I wish to deposit here."
+
+"Why, I don't know just what the exchange would be. What is the exchange
+on this, Penwell?"
+
+"Will you cash this draft for me?" asked Keith.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well, will you do me a further favor? It might make very little
+difference if I were to make a deposit in Norman's bank; but if you were
+to make such a deposit there, it would probably reassure people, and the
+run might be stopped. I have known of one or two instances."
+
+Mr. Creamer agreed, and the result was a sort of reaction in Norman's
+favor, in sentiment if not in action. It was arranged that Keith should
+go and make a deposit, and that Mr. Creamer should send a man to make a
+further one and offer Wentworth aid.
+
+When Gordon Keith reached the block on which stood Norman's bank, the
+street was already filled with a dense crowd, pushing, growling,
+complaining, swearing, threatening. It was evidently a serious affair,
+and Keith, trying to make his way through the mob, heard many things
+about Norman which he never could have believed it would have been
+possible to hear. The crowd was in an ugly mood, and was growing uglier.
+A number of policemen were trying to keep the people in line so that
+they could take their turn. Keith found it impossible to make his way to
+the front. His explanation that he wished to make a deposit was greeted
+with shouts of derision.
+
+"Stand back there, young man. We've heard that before; you can't work
+that on us. We would all like to make deposits--somewhere else."
+
+"Except them what's already made 'em," some one added, at which there
+was a laugh.
+
+Keith applied to a policeman with hardly more success, until he opened
+the satchel he carried, and mentioned the name of the banker who was to
+follow him. On this the officer called another, and after a hurried word
+the two began to force their way through the crowd, with Keith between
+them. By dint of commanding, pushing, and explaining, they at length
+reached the entrance to the bank, and finally made their way, hot and
+perspiring, to the counter. A clerk was at work at every window counting
+out money as fast as checks were presented.
+
+Just before Keith reached the counter, on glancing through an open door,
+he saw Norman sitting at his desk, white and grim. His burning eyes
+seemed deeper than ever. He glanced up, and Keith thought he caught his
+gaze on him, but he was not sure, for he looked away so quickly. The
+next moment he walked around inside the counter and spoke to a clerk,
+who opened a ledger and gave him a memorandum. Then he came forward and
+spoke to a teller at the receiving-window.
+
+"Do you know that man with the two policemen? That is Mr. Gordon Keith.
+Here is his balance; pay it to him as soon as he reaches the window."
+
+The teller, bending forward, gazed earnestly out of the small grated
+window over the heads of those nearest him. Keith met his gaze, and the
+teller nodded. Norman turned away without looking, and seated himself on
+a chair in the rear of the bank.
+
+When Keith reached the window, the white-faced teller said immediately:
+
+"Your balance, Mr. Keith, is so much; you have a check?" He extended his
+hand to take it.
+
+"No," said Keith; "I have not come to draw out any money. I have come to
+make a deposit."
+
+The teller was so much astonished that he simply ejaculated:
+
+"Sir--?"
+
+"I wish to make a deposit," said Keith, raising his voice a little, and
+speaking with great distinctness.
+
+His voice had the quality of carrying, and a silence settled on the
+crowd,--one of those silences that sometimes fall, even on a mob, when
+the wholly unexpected happens,--so that every word that was spoken was
+heard distinctly.
+
+"Ah--we are not taking deposits to-day," said the astonished teller,
+doubtfully.
+
+Keith smiled.
+
+"Well, I suppose there is no objection to doing so? I have an account in
+this bank, and I wish to add to it. I am not afraid of it."
+
+The teller gazed at him in blank amazement; he evidently thought that
+Keith was a little mad. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but said
+nothing from sheer astonishment.
+
+"I have confidence enough in this bank," pursued Keith, "to put my money
+here, and here I propose to put it, and I am not the only one; there
+will be others here in a little while."
+
+"I shall--really, I shall have to ask Mr. Wentworth," faltered the
+clerk.
+
+"Mr. Wentworth has nothing to do with it," said Keith, positively, and
+to close the discussion, he lifted his satchel through the window, and,
+turning it upside down, emptied before the astonished teller a pile of
+bills which made him gasp. "Enter that to my credit," said Keith.
+
+"How much is it?"
+
+The sum that Keith mentioned made him gasp yet more. It was up in the
+hundreds of thousands.
+
+"There will be more here in a little while." He turned his head and
+glanced toward the door. "Ah, here comes some one now," he said, as he
+recognized one of the men whom he had recently left at the council
+board, who was then pushing his way forward, under the guidance of
+several policemen.
+
+The amount deposited by the banker was much larger than Keith had
+expected, and a few well-timed words to those about him had a marked
+effect upon the depositors. He said their apprehension was simply
+absurd. They, of course, had the right to draw out their money, if they
+wished it, and they would get it, but he advised them to go home and
+wait to do so until the crowd dispersed. The bank was perfectly sound,
+and they could not break it unless they could also break its friends.
+
+A few of the struggling depositors dropped out of line, some of the
+others saying that, as they had waited so long, they guessed they would
+get their money now.
+
+The advice given, perhaps, had an added effect, as at that moment a
+shriek arose from a woman near the door, who declared that her pocket
+had been picked of the money she had just drawn.
+
+The arrival of the new depositors, and the spreading through the crowd
+of the information that they represented several of the strongest banks
+in the city, quieted the apprehensions of the depositors, and a
+considerable number of them abandoned the idea of drawing out their
+money and went off. Though many of them remained, it was evident that
+the dangerous run had subsided. A notice was posted on the front door of
+the bank that the bank would remain open until eight o'clock and would
+be open the following morning at eight, which had something to do with
+allaying the excitement of the depositors.
+
+That afternoon Keith went back to the bank. Though depositors were still
+drawing out their money, the scene outside was very different from that
+which he had witnessed earlier in the day. Keith asked for Mr.
+Wentworth, and was shown to his room. When Keith entered, Norman was
+sitting at his desk figuring busily. Keith closed the door behind him
+and waited. The lines were deep on Norman's face; but the hunted look it
+had borne in the morning had passed away, and grim resolution had taken
+its place. When at length he glanced up, his already white face grew yet
+whiter. The next second a flush sprang to his cheeks; he pushed back his
+chair and rose, and, taking one step forward, stretched out his hand.
+
+"Keith!"
+
+Keith took his hand with a grip that drove the blood from the ends of
+Norman's fingers.
+
+"Norman!"
+
+Norman drew a chair close to his desk, and Keith sat down. Norman sank
+into his, looked down on the floor for a second, then, raising his eyes,
+looked full into Keith's eyes.
+
+"Keith--?" His voice failed him; he glanced away, reached over, and took
+up a paper lying near, and the next instant leant forward, and folding
+his arms on the desk, dropped his head on them, shaken with emotion.
+
+Keith rose from his chair, and bending over him, laid his hand on his
+head, as he might have done to a younger brother.
+
+"Don't, Norman," he said helplessly; "it is all right." He moved his
+hand down Norman's arm with a touch as caressing as if he had been a
+little child, but all he said was: "Don't, Norman; it is all right."
+
+Suddenly Norman sat up.
+
+"It is all wrong!" he said bitterly. "I have been a fool. I had no
+right--. But I was mad! I have wrecked my life. But I was insane. I was
+deceived. I do not know even now how it happened. I ought to have known,
+but--I learned only just now. I can never explain. I ask your
+pardon humbly."
+
+Keith leant forward and laid his hand upon him affectionately.
+
+"There, there! You owe me no apology, and I ask no explanation; it was
+all a great mistake."
+
+"Yes, and all my fault. She was not to blame; it was my folly. I drove
+her to--desperation."
+
+"I want to ask just one thing. Was it Ferdy Wickersham who made you
+believe I had deceived you?" asked Keith, standing straight above him.
+
+"In part--mainly. But I was mad." He drew his hand across his forehead,
+sat back in his chair, and, with eyes averted, sighed deeply. His
+thoughts were evidently far from Keith. Keith's eyes rested on him, and
+his face paled a little with growing resolution.
+
+"One question, Norman. Pardon me for asking it. My only reason is that
+I would give my life, a worthless life you once saved, to see you as you
+once were. I know more than you think I know. You love her still? I know
+you must."
+
+Norman turned his eyes and let them rest on Keith's face. They were
+filled with anguish.
+
+"Better than my life. I adore her."
+
+Keith drew in his breath with a long sigh of relief and of content.
+
+"Oh, I have no hope," Norman went on despairingly. "I gave her every
+right to doubt it. I killed her love. I do not blame her. It was all my
+fault. I know it now, when it is too late."
+
+"It is not too late."
+
+Norman shook his head, without even looking at Keith.
+
+"Too late," he said, speaking to himself.
+
+Keith rose to his feet.
+
+"It is not too late," he declared, with a sudden ring in his voice; "she
+loves you."
+
+Norman shook his head.
+
+"She hates me; I deserve it."
+
+"In her heart she adores you," said Keith, in a tone of conviction.
+
+Norman turned away with a half-bitter laugh.
+
+"You don't know."
+
+"I do know, and you will know it, too. How long shall you be here?"
+
+"I shall spend the night here," said Norman. "I must be ready for
+whatever may happen to-morrow morning.--I have not thanked you yet." He
+extended his hand to Keith. "You stemmed the tide for me to-day. I know
+what it must have cost you. I cannot regret it, and I know you never
+will; and I beg you to believe that, though I go down to-morrow, I shall
+never forget it, and if God spares me, I will repay you."
+
+Keith's eyes rested on him calmly.
+
+"You paid me long ago, Norman. I was paying a debt to-day, or trying to
+pay one, in a small way. It was not I who made that deposit to-day, but
+a better man and a finer gentleman than I can ever hope to be--my
+father. It was he who inspired me to do that; he paid that debt."
+
+From what Keith had heard, he felt that he was justified in going to see
+Mrs. Wentworth. Possibly, it was not too late; possibly, he might be
+able to do something to clear away the misapprehension under which she
+labored, and to make up the trouble between her and Norman. Norman still
+loved her dearly, and Keith believed that she cared for him. Lois
+Huntington always declared that she did, and she could not have
+been deceived.
+
+That she had been foolish Keith knew; that she had been wicked he did
+not believe. She was self-willed, vain, extravagant; but deep under her
+cold exterior burned fires of which she had once or twice given him a
+glimpse; and he believed that her deepest feeling was ever for Norman.
+
+When he reached Mrs. Wentworth's house he was fortunate enough to find
+her at home. He was shown into the drawing-room.
+
+When Mrs. Wentworth entered the room, Keith was conscious of a change in
+her since he had seen her last. She, too, had heard the clangor of the
+evil tongues that had connected their names. She greeted him with
+cordial words, but her manner was constrained, and her expression was
+almost suspicious.
+
+She changed, however, under Keith's imperturbable and unfeigned
+friendliness, and suddenly asked him if he had seen Norman. For the
+first time real interest spoke in her voice and shone in her face. Keith
+said he had seen him.
+
+"I have come to see if I could not help you. Perhaps, I may be able to
+do something to set things right."
+
+"No--it is too late. Things have gone too far. We have just
+drifted--drifted!" She flung up her hands and tossed them apart with a
+gesture of despair. "Drifted!" she repeated. She put her handkerchief to
+her eyes.
+
+Keith watched her in silence for a moment, and then rising, he seated
+himself beside her.
+
+"Come--this is all wrong--all wrong!" He caught her by the wrist and
+firmly took her hand down from her eyes, much as an older brother might
+have done. "I want to talk to you. Perhaps, I can help you--I may have
+been sent here for the purpose--who knows? At least, I want to help you.
+Now tell me." He looked into her face with grave, kind eyes. "You do not
+care for Ferdy Wickersham? That would be impossible."
+
+"No, of course not,--except as a friend,--and Norman liked another
+woman--your friend!" Her eyes flashed a sudden flame.
+
+"Never! never!" repeated Keith, after a pause. "Norman is not that
+sort."
+
+His absolute certainty daunted her.
+
+"He did. I have reason to think--" she began. But Keith put her down.
+
+"Never! I would stake my salvation on it."
+
+"He is going to get a--try to get a divorce. He is willing to blacken my
+name."
+
+"What! Never."
+
+"But you do not know the reasons I have for saying so," she protested.
+"If I could tell you--"
+
+"No, and I do not care. Doubt your own senses rather than believe that.
+Ferdy Wickersham is your authority for that."
+
+"No, he is not--not my only authority. You are all so hard on Ferdy. He
+is a good friend of mine."
+
+"He is not," asserted Keith. "He is your worst enemy--your very worst.
+He is incapable of being a friend."
+
+"What have you against him?" she demanded. "I know you and he don't like
+each other, but--"
+
+"Well, for one thing, he deceived a poor girl, and then abandoned
+her--and--"
+
+"Perhaps, your information is incorrect? You know how easy it is to get
+up a slander, and such women are--not to be believed. They always
+pretend that they have been deceived."
+
+"She was not one of 'such women,'" said Keith, calmly. "She was a
+perfectly respectable woman, and the granddaughter of an old friend
+of mine."
+
+"Well, perhaps, you may have been misinformed?"
+
+"No; I have the evidence that Wickersham married her--and--"
+
+"Oh, come now--that is absurd! Ferdy married! Why, Ferdy never cared
+enough for any one to marry her--unless she had money. He has paid
+attention to a rich woman, but--You must not strain my credulity too
+far. I really thought you had something to show against him. Of course,
+I know he is not a saint,--in fact, very far from it,--but he does not
+pretend to be. But, at least, he is not a hypocrite."
+
+"He is a hypocrite and a scoundrel," declared Keith, firmly. "He is
+married, and his wife is living now. He abandoned her, and she is
+insane. I know her."
+
+"You know her! Ferdy married!" She paused in wonder. His certainty
+carried conviction with it.
+
+"I have his marriage certificate."
+
+"You have?" A sort of amaze passed over her face.
+
+He took out the paper and gave it to her. She gazed at it with staring
+eyes. "That is his hand." She rose with a blank face, and walked to the
+window; then, after a moment, came back and sat down. She had the
+expression of a person lost. "Tell me about it."
+
+Keith told her. He also told her of Norman's losses.
+
+Again that look of amazement crossed her face; her eyes became almost
+blank.
+
+"Norman's fortune impaired! I cannot understand it--_he_ told me--Oh,
+there must be some mistake!" she broke out vehemently. "You are
+deceiving me. No! I don't mean that, of course,--I know you would
+not,--but you have been deceived yourself." Her face was a
+sudden white.
+
+Keith shook his head. "No!"
+
+"Why, look here. He cannot be hard up. He has kept up my allowance and
+met every demand--almost every demand--I have made on him." She was
+grasping at straws.
+
+"And Ferdy Wickersham has spent it in Wall Street."
+
+"What! No, he has not! There, at least, you do him an injustice. What he
+has got from me he has invested securely. I have all the papers--at
+least, some of them."
+
+"How has he invested it?"
+
+"Partly in a mine called the 'Great Gun Mine,' in New Leeds. Partly in
+Colorado.--I can help Norman with it." Her face brightened as the
+thought came to her.
+
+Keith shook his head.
+
+"The Great Gun Mine is a fraud--at least, it is worthless, not worth
+five cents on the dollar of what has been put in it. It was flooded
+years ago. Wickersham has used it as a mask for his gambling operations
+in Wall Street, but has not put a dollar into it for years; and now he
+does not even own it. His creditors have it."
+
+Her face had turned perfectly white.
+
+A look, partly of pity for her, partly of scorn for Wickersham, crossed
+Keith's face. He rose and strode up and down the room in perplexity.
+
+"He is a common thief," he said sternly--"beneath contempt!"
+
+His conviction suddenly extended to her. When he looked at her, she
+showed in her face that she believed him. Her last prop had fallen. The
+calamity had made her quiet.
+
+"What shall I do?" she asked hopelessly.
+
+"You must tell Norman."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"Make a clean breast of it."
+
+"You do not know Norman! How can I? He would despise me so! You do not
+know how proud he is. He--!" Words failed her, and she stared at Keith
+helplessly.
+
+"If I do not know Norman, I know no one on earth. Go to him and tell
+him everything. It will be the happiest day of his life--your
+salvation and his."
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I know it."
+
+She relapsed into thought, and Keith waited.
+
+"I was to see Fer--Mr. Wickersham to-night," she began presently. "He
+asked me to supper to meet some friends--the Count and Countess
+Torelli."
+
+Keith smiled. A fine scorn came into his eyes.
+
+"Where does he give the dinner? At what hour?"
+
+She named the place--a fashionable restaurant up-town. The time was
+still several hours away.
+
+"You must go to Norman."
+
+She sat in deep reflection.
+
+"It is your only chance--your only hope. Give me authority to act for
+you, and go to him. He needs you."
+
+"If I thought he would forgive me?" she said in a low tone.
+
+"He will. I have just come from him. Write me the authority and go at
+once."
+
+A light appeared to dawn in her face.
+
+She rose suddenly.
+
+"What shall I write?"
+
+"Write simply that I have full authority to act for you--and that you
+have gone to Norman."
+
+She walked into the next room, and seating herself at an escritoire, she
+wrote for a short time. When she handed the paper to Keith it contained
+just what he had requested: a simple statement to F.C. Wickersham that
+Mr. Keith had full authority to represent her and act for her as he
+deemed best.
+
+"Will that do?" she asked.
+
+"I think so," said Keith. "Now go. Norman is waiting."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+RECONCILIATION
+
+For some time after Keith left her Mrs. Wentworth sat absolutely
+motionless, her eyes half closed, her lips drawn tight, in deep
+reflection. Presently she changed her seat and ensconced herself in the
+corner of a divan, leaning her head on her hand; but her expression did
+not change. Her mind was evidently working in the same channel. A tumult
+raged within her breast, but her face was set sphinx-like, inscrutable.
+Just then there was a scurry up-stairs; a boy's voice was
+heard shouting:
+
+"See here, what papa sent us."
+
+There was an answering shout, and then an uproar of childish delight. A
+sudden change swept over her. Light appeared to break upon her.
+Something like courage came into her face, not unmingled with
+tenderness, softening it and dispelling the gloom which had clouded it.
+She rose suddenly and walked with a swift, decisive step out of the room
+and up the richly carpeted stairs. To a maid on the upper floor she said
+hurriedly: "Tell Fenderson to order the brougham--at once," and passed
+into her chamber.
+
+Closing the door, she locked it. She opened a safe built in the wall; a
+package of letters fell out into the room. A spasm almost of loathing
+crossed her face. She picked up the letters and began to tear them up
+with almost violence, throwing the fragments into the grate as though
+they soiled her hands. Going back to the safe, she took out box after
+box of jewelry, opening them to glance in and see that the jewels were
+there. Yes, they were there: a pearl necklace; bracelets which had been
+the wonder of her set, and which her pretended friend and admirer had
+once said were worth as much as her home. She put them all into a bag,
+together with several large envelopes containing papers.
+
+Then she went to a dress-closet, and began to search through it,
+choosing, finally, a simple, dark street dress, by no means one of the
+newest. A gorgeous robe, which had been laid out for her to wear, she
+picked up and flung on the floor with sudden loathing. It was the gown
+she had intended to wear that night.
+
+A tap at the door, and the maid's mild voice announced the carriage; and
+a few minutes later Mrs. Wentworth descended the stairs.
+
+"Tell Mademoiselle Clarisse that Mr. Wentworth will be here this evening
+to see the children."
+
+"Yes, madam." The maid's quiet voice was too well trained to express the
+slightest surprise, but as soon as the outer door had closed on her
+mistress, and she had heard the carriage drive away, she rushed down to
+the lower storey to convey the astounding intelligence, and to gossip
+over it for half an hour before she deemed it necessary to give the
+message to the governess who had succeeded Lois when the latter
+went home.
+
+It was just eight o'clock that evening when the carriage drove up to the
+door of Norman Wentworth's bank, and a lady enveloped in a long wrap,
+her dark veil pulled down over her face, sprang out and ran up the
+steps. The crowd had long ago dispersed, though now and then a few timid
+depositors still made their way into the bank, to be on the safe side.
+
+The intervention of the banks and the loans they had made that afternoon
+had stayed the run and saved the bank from closing; but Norman Wentworth
+knew that if he was not ruined, his bank had received a shock from which
+it would not recover in a long time, and his fortune was crippled, he
+feared, almost beyond repair. The tired clerks looked up as the lady
+entered the bank, and, with glances at the clock, muttered a few words
+to each other about her right to draw money after the closing-hour had
+passed. When, however, she walked past their windows and went straight
+to Mr. Wentworth's door, their interest increased.
+
+Norman, with his books before him, was sitting back in his chair, his
+head leaning back and resting in his clasped hands, deep in thought upon
+the gloom of the present and the perplexities of the future, when there
+was a tap at the door.
+
+With some impatience he called to the person to enter.
+
+The door opened, and Norman could scarcely believe his senses. For a
+second he did not even sit forward. He did not stir; he simply remained
+sitting back in his chair, his face turned to the door, his eyes resting
+on the figure before him in vague amazement. The next second, with a
+half-cry, his wife was on her knees beside him, her arms about him, her
+form shaken with sobs. He sat forward slowly, and his arm rested on her
+shoulders.
+
+"There! don't cry," he said slowly; "it might be worse."
+
+But all she said was:
+
+"Oh, Norman! Norman!"
+
+He tried to raise her, with grave words to calm her; but she resisted,
+and clung to him closer.
+
+"It is not so bad; it might be worse," he repeated.
+
+She rose suddenly to her feet and flung back her veil.
+
+"Can you forgive me? I have come to beg your forgiveness on my knees. I
+have been mad--mad. I was deceived. No! I will not say that--I was
+crazy--a fool! But I loved you always, you only. You will forgive me?
+Say you will."
+
+"There, there! Of course I will--I do. I have been to blame quite as
+much--more than you. I was a fool."
+
+"Oh, no, no! You shall not say that; but you will believe that I loved
+you--you only--always! You will believe this? I was mad."
+
+He raised her up gently, and with earnest words reassured her, blaming
+himself for his harshness and folly.
+
+She suddenly opened her bag and emptied the contents out on his desk.
+
+"There! I have brought you these."
+
+Her husband gazed in silent astonishment.
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"They are for you," she said--"for us. To pay _our_ debts. To help you."
+She pulled off her glove and began to take off her diamond rings.
+
+"They will not go a great way," said Norman, with a smile of indulgence.
+
+"Well, as far as they will go they shall go. Do you think I will keep
+anything I have when you are in trouble--when your good name is at
+stake? The house--everything shall go. It is all my fault. I have been a
+wicked, silly fool; but I did not know--I ought to have known; but I did
+not. I do not see how I could have been so blind and selfish."
+
+"Oh, don't blame yourself. I have not blamed you," said Norman,
+soothingly. "Of course, you did not know. How could you? Women are not
+expected to know about those things."
+
+"Yes, they are," insisted Mrs. Wentworth. "If I had not been such a fool
+I might have seen. It is all plain to me now. Your harassment--my
+folly--it came to me like a stroke of lightning."
+
+Norman's eyes were on her with a strange inquiring look in them.
+
+"How did you hear?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Keith--he came to me and told me."
+
+"I wish he had not done it. I mean, I did not want you troubled. You
+were not to blame. You were deceived."
+
+"Oh, don't say that! I shall never cease to thank him. He tore the veil
+away, and I saw what a heartless, vain, silly fool I have been." Norman
+put his hand on her soothingly. "But I have never forgotten that I was
+your wife, nor ceased to love you," she went on vehemently.
+
+"I believe it."
+
+"I have come to confess everything to you--all my folly--all my
+extravagance--my insane folly. But what I said just now is true: I have
+never forgotten that I was your wife."
+
+Norman, with his arm supporting her, reassured her with comforting
+words, and, sustained by his confidence, she told him of her folly in
+trusting Ferdy Wickersham: of her giving him her money--of everything.
+
+"Can you forgive me?" she asked after her shamefaced recital.
+
+"I will never think of that again," said Norman, "and if I do, it will
+be with gratitude that they have played their part in doing away with
+the one great sorrow of my life and bringing back the happiness of my
+youth, the one great blessing that life holds for me."
+
+"I have come to take you home," she said; "to ask you to come back, if
+you will but forgive me." She spoke humbly.
+
+Norman's face gave answer even before he could master himself to speak.
+He stretched out his hand, and drew her to him. "I am at home now.
+Wherever you are is my home."
+
+When Norman came out of his private office, there was such a change in
+him that the clerks who had remained at the bank thought that he must
+have received some great aid from the lady who had been closeted with
+him so long. He had a few brief words with the cashier, explaining that
+he would be back at the bank before eight o'clock in the morning, and
+saying good night, hurried to the door after Mrs. Wentworth. Handing her
+into the carriage, he ordered the coachman to drive home, and, springing
+in after her, he closed the door behind him, and they drove off.
+
+Keith, meantime, had not been idle. After leaving Mrs. Wentworth, he
+drove straight to a detective agency. Fortunately the chief was in, and
+Keith was ushered into his private office immediately. He was a
+quiet-looking, stout man, with a gray moustache and keen dark eyes. He
+might have been a moderately successful merchant or official, but for
+the calmness of his manner and the low tones of his voice. Keith came
+immediately to the point.
+
+"I have a piece of important work on hand this evening," he said, "of a
+private and delicate nature." The detective's look was acquiescent.
+"Could I get Dennison?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+Keith stated his case. At the mention of Wickersham's name a slight
+change--the very slightest--flickered across the detective's calm face.
+Keith could not tell whether it was mere surprise or whether it was
+gratification.
+
+"Now you see precisely what I wish," he said, as he finished stating the
+case and unfolding his plan. "It may not be necessary for him even to
+appear, but I wish him to be on hand in case I should need his service.
+If Wickersham does not accede to my demand, I shall arrest him for the
+fraud I have mentioned. If he does accede, I wish Dennison to accompany
+him to the boat of the South American Line that sails to-morrow morning,
+and not leave him until the pilot comes off. I do not apprehend that he
+will refuse when he knows the hand that I hold."
+
+"No, he will not. He knows what would happen if proceedings were
+started," said the detective. "Excuse me a moment." He walked out of the
+office, closing the door behind him, and a few minutes later returned
+with David Dennison.
+
+"Mr. Keith, this is Mr. John Dimm. I have explained to him the nature of
+the service you require of him." He looked at Mr. Dimm, who simply
+nodded his acquiescence. "You will take your orders from Mr. Keith,
+should anything arise to change his plans, and act accordingly."
+
+"I know him," said Keith, amused at the cool professional air with which
+his old friend greeted him in the presence of his principal.
+
+Dave simply blinked; but his eyes had a fire in them.
+
+It was arranged that Dennison should precede Keith to the place he had
+mentioned and order a supper there, while Keith should get the ticket at
+the steamship office and then follow him. So when Keith had completed
+his arrangements, he found Dennison at supper at a table near the
+ladies' entrance, a view of which he commanded in a mirror just before
+him. Mr. Dimm's manner had entirely changed. He was a man of the world
+and a host as he handed Keith to his seat.
+
+"A supper for two has been ordered in private dining-room 21, for 9:45,"
+he said in an undertone as the waiter moved off. "They do not know
+whether it is for a gentleman and a lady, or two gentlemen; but I
+suppose it is for a lady, as he has been here a number of times with
+ladies. If you are sure that the lady will not come, you might wait for
+him there. I will remain here until he comes, and follow him up, in case
+you need me."
+
+Keith feared that the waiter might mention his presence.
+
+"Oh, no; he knows us," said Dave, with a faint smile at the bare
+suggestion.
+
+Mr. Dimm called the head-waiter and spoke to him in an undertone. The
+waiter himself showed Keith up to the room, where he found a table
+daintily set with two covers.
+
+The champagne-cooler, filled with ice, was already on the floor beside
+the table. Keith looked at it grimly. The curtains of the window were
+down, and Keith walked over to see on what street the window looked. It
+was a deep embrasure. The shade was drawn down, and he raised it, to
+find that the window faced on a dead-wall. At the moment the door opened
+and he heard Wickersham's voice.
+
+"No one has come yet?"
+
+"No, sir, not as I knows of," stammered the waiter. "I have just come
+on."
+
+"Where is Jacques, the man who usually waits on me?" demanded
+Wickersham, half angrily.
+
+"Jacques est souffrant. Il est tres malade."
+
+Wickersham grunted. "Well, take this," he said, "and remember that if
+you serve me properly there will be a good deal more to follow."
+
+The waiter thanked him profusely.
+
+"Now, get down and be on the lookout, and when a lady comes and asks for
+21, show her up immediately. If she asks who is here, tell her two
+gentlemen and a lady. You understand?"
+
+The waiter bowed his assent and retired. Wickersham came in and closed
+the door behind him.
+
+He had just thrown his coat on a chair, laid his hat on the mantelpiece,
+and was twirling his moustache at the mirror above it, when he caught
+sight in the mirror of Keith. Keith had stepped out behind him from the
+recess, and was standing by the table, quietly looking at him. He gave
+an exclamation and turned quickly.
+
+"Hah! What is this? You here! What are you doing here? There is some
+mistake." He glanced at the door.
+
+"No, there is no mistake," said Keith, advancing; "I am waiting for
+you."
+
+"For me! Waiting for me?" he demanded, mystified.
+
+"Yes. Did you not tell the waiter just now a gentleman was here? I
+confess you do not seem very pleased to see me."
+
+"You have read my looks correctly," said Wickersham, who was beginning
+to recover himself, and with it his scornful manner. "You are the last
+person on earth I wish to see--ever. I do not know that I should weep if
+I never had that pleasure again."
+
+Keith bowed.
+
+"I think it probable. You may, hereafter, have even less cause for joy
+at meeting me."
+
+"Impossible," said Wickersham.
+
+Keith put his hand on a chair, and prepared to sit down, motioning
+Wickersham to take the other seat.
+
+"The lady you are waiting for will not be here this evening," he said,
+"and it may be that our interview will be protracted."
+
+Wickersham passed by the last words.
+
+"What lady? Who says I am waiting for a lady?"
+
+"You said so at the door just now. Besides, I say so."
+
+"Oh! You were listening, were you?" he sneered.
+
+"Yes; I heard it."
+
+"How do you know she will not be here? What do you know about it?"
+
+"I know that she will no more be here than the Countess Torelli will,"
+said Keith. He was looking Wickersham full in the face and saw that the
+shot went home.
+
+"What do you want?" demanded Wickersham. "Why are you here? Are you
+after money or a row?"
+
+"I want you--I want you, first, to secure all of Mrs. Wentworth's money
+that you have had, or as much as you can."
+
+Wickersham was so taken aback that his dark face turned almost white,
+but he recovered himself quickly.
+
+"You are a madman, or some one has been deceiving you. You are the
+victim of a delusion."
+
+Keith, with his eyes fastened on him, shook his head.
+
+"Oh, no; I am not."
+
+A look of perplexed innocence came over Wickersham's face.
+
+"Yes, you are," he said, in an almost friendly tone. "You are the victim
+of some hallucination. I give you my word, I do not know even what you
+are talking about. I should say you were engaged in blackmail--" The
+expression in his eyes changed like a flash, but something in Keith's
+eyes, as they met his, caused him to add, "if I did not know that you
+were a man of character. I, too, am a man of character, Mr. Keith. I
+want you to know it." Keith's eyes remained calm and cold as steel.
+Wickersham faltered. "I am a man of means--of large means. I am worth--.
+My balance in bank this moment is--is more than you will ever be worth.
+Now I want to ask you why, in the name of Heaven, should I want anything
+to do with Mrs. Wentworth's money?"
+
+"If you have such a balance in bank," said Keith, "it will simplify my
+mission, for you will doubtless be glad to return Mr. Wentworth's money
+that you have had from Mrs. Wentworth. I happen to know that his money
+will come in very conveniently for Norman just now."
+
+"Oh, you come from Wentworth, do you?" demanded Wickersham.
+
+"No; from Mrs. Wentworth," returned Keith.
+
+"Did she send you?" Wickersham shot at Keith a level glance from under
+his half-closed lids.
+
+"I offered to come. She knows I am here."
+
+"What proof have I of that?"
+
+"My statement."
+
+"And suppose I do not please to accept your statement?"
+
+Keith leant a little toward him over the table.
+
+"You will accept it."
+
+"He must hold a strong hand," thought Wickersham. He shifted his ground
+suddenly. "What, in the name of Heaven, are you driving at, Keith? What
+are you after? Come to the point."
+
+"I will," said Keith, rising. "Let us drop our masks; they are not
+becoming to you, and I am not accustomed to them. I have come for
+several things: one of them is Mrs. Wentworth's money, which you got
+from her under false pretences." He spoke slowly, and his eyes were
+looking in the other's eyes.
+
+Wickersham sprang to his feet.
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" he demanded, with an oath. "I have already told
+you--! I will let no man speak to me in that way."
+
+Keith did not stir. Wickersham paused to get his breath.
+
+"You would not dare to speak so if a lady's name were not involved, and
+you did not know that I cannot act as I would, for fear of
+compromising her."
+
+An expression of contempt swept across Keith's face.
+
+"Sit down," he said. "I will relieve your mind. Mrs. Wentworth is quite
+ready to meet any disclosures that may come. I have her power of
+attorney. She has gone to her husband and told him everything."
+
+Wickersham's face whitened, and he could not repress the look of mingled
+astonishment and fear that stole into his eyes.
+
+"Now, having given you that information," continued Keith, "I say that
+you stole Mrs. Wentworth's money, and I have come to recover it, if
+possible."
+
+Wickersham rose to his feet. With a furious oath he sprang for his
+overcoat, and, snatching it up, began to feel for the pocket.
+
+"I'll blow your brains out."
+
+"No, you will not," said Keith, "and I advise you to make less noise. An
+officer is outside, and I have but to whistle to place you where nothing
+will help you. A warrant is out for your arrest, and I have the proof to
+convict you."
+
+Wickersham, with his coat still held in one hand, and the other in the
+pocket, shot a glance at Keith. He was daunted by his coolness.
+
+"You must think you hold a strong hand," he said. "But I have known them
+to fail."
+
+Keith bowed.
+
+"No doubt. This one will not fail. I have taken pains that it shall not,
+and I have other cards which I have not shown you. Sit down and listen
+to me, and you shall judge for yourself."
+
+With a muttered oath, Wickersham walked back to his seat; but before he
+did so, he slipped quietly into his pocket a pistol which he took from
+his overcoat.
+
+Quickly as the act was done, Keith saw it.
+
+"Don't you think you had better put your pistol back?" he said quietly.
+"An officer is waiting just outside that door, a man that can neither be
+bullied nor bought. Perhaps, you will agree with me when I tell you
+that, though called Dimm, his real name is David Dennison. He has orders
+at the least disturbance to place you under arrest. Judge for yourself
+what chance you will have."
+
+"What do you wish me to do?" asked Wickersham, sullenly.
+
+"I wish you, first, to execute some papers which will secure to Norman
+Wentworth, as far as can possibly be done, the amount of money that you
+have gotten from Mrs. Wentworth under the pretence of investing it for
+her in mines. Mrs. Wentworth's name will not be mentioned in this
+instrument. The money was her husband's, and you knew it, and you knew
+it was impairing his estate to furnish it. Secondly, I require that you
+shall leave the country to-morrow morning. I have arranged for passage
+for you, on a steamer sailing before sunrise."
+
+"Thank you," sneered Wickersham. "Really, you are very kind."
+
+"Thirdly, you will sign a paper which contains only a few of the facts,
+but enough, perhaps, to prevent your returning to this country for some
+years to come."
+
+Wickersham leant across the table and burst out laughing.
+
+"And you really think I will do that? How old do you think I am? Why did
+you not bring me a milk-bottle and a rattle? You do my intellect a great
+deal of honor."
+
+For answer Keith tapped twice on a glass with the back of a knife. The
+next second the door opened, and Dave Dennison entered, impassive, but
+calmly observant, and with a face set like rock.
+
+At sight of him Wickersham's face whitened.
+
+"One moment, Dave," said Keith; "wait outside a moment more."
+
+Dennison bowed and closed the door. The latch clicked, but the knob did
+not settle back.
+
+"I will give you one minute in which to decide," said Keith. He drew
+from his pocket and threw on the table two papers. "There are the
+papers." He took out his watch and waited.
+
+Wickersham picked up the papers mechanically and glanced over them. His
+face settled. Gambler that he was with the fortunes of men and the
+reputations of women, he knew that he had lost. He tried one more
+card--it was a poor one.
+
+"Why are you so hard on me?" he asked, with something like a whine--a
+faint whine--in his voice. "You, who I used to think--whom I have known
+from boyhood, you have always been so hard on me! What did I ever do to
+you that you should have hounded me so?"
+
+Keith's face showed that the charge had reached him, but it failed of
+the effect that Wickersham had hoped for. His lip curled slightly.
+
+"I am not hard on you; I am easy on you--but not for your sake," he
+added vehemently. "You have betrayed every trust reposed in you. You
+have deceived men and betrayed women. No vow has been sacred enough to
+restrain you; no tie strong enough to hold you. Affection, friendship,
+faith, have all been trampled under your feet. You have deliberately
+attempted to destroy the happiness of one of the best friends you have
+ever had; have betrayed his trust and tried to ruin his life. If I
+served you right I would place you beyond the power to injure any one,
+forever. The reason I do not is not on your account, but because I
+played with you when we were boys, and because I do not know how far my
+personal feeling might influence me in carrying out what I still
+recognize as mere justice." He closed his watch. "Your time is up. Do
+you agree?"
+
+"I will sign the papers," said Wickersham, sullenly.
+
+Keith drew out a pen and handed it to him. Wickersham signed the papers
+slowly and deliberately.
+
+"When did you take to writing backhand?" asked Keith.
+
+"I have done it for several years," declared Wickersham. "I had writer's
+cramp once."
+
+The expression on Keith's face was very like a sneer, but he tried to
+suppress it.
+
+"It will do," he said, as he folded the papers and took another envelope
+from his pocket. "This is your ticket for the steamer for Buenos Ayres,
+which sails to-morrow morning at high tide. Dennison will go with you to
+a notary to acknowledge these papers, and then will show you aboard of
+her and will see that you remain aboard until the pilot leaves her.
+To-morrow a warrant will be put in the hands of an officer and an
+application will be made for a receiver for your property."
+
+Wickersham leant back in his chair, with hate speaking from every line
+of his face.
+
+"You will administer on my effects? I suppose you are also going to be
+administrator, _de bonis non_, of the lady in whose behalf you have
+exhibited such sudden interest?"
+
+Keith's face paled and his nostrils dilated for a moment. He leant
+slightly forward and spoke slowly, his burning eyes fastened on
+Wickersham's face.
+
+"Your statement would be equally infamous whether it were true or false.
+You know that it is a lie, and you know that I know it is a lie. I will
+let that suffice. I have nothing further to say to you." He tapped on
+the edge of the glass again, and Dennison walked in. "Dennison," he
+said, "Mr. Wickersham has agreed to my plans. He will go aboard the
+Buenos Ayres boat to-night. You will go with him to the office I spoke
+of, where he will acknowledge these papers; then you will accompany him
+to his home and get whatever clothes he may require, and you will not
+lose sight of him until you come off with the pilot."
+
+Dennison bowed without a word; but his eyes snapped.
+
+"If he makes any attempt to evade, or gives you any cause to think he is
+trying to evade, his agreement, you have your instructions."
+
+Dennison bowed again, silently.
+
+"I now leave you." Keith rose and inclined his head slightly toward
+Wickersham.
+
+As he turned, Wickersham shot at him a Parthian arrow:
+
+"I hope you understand, Mr. Keith, that the obligations I have signed
+are not the only obligations I recognize. I owe you a personal debt,
+and I mean to live to pay it. I shall pay it, somehow."
+
+Keith turned and looked at him steadily.
+
+"I understand perfectly. It is the only kind of debt, as far as I know,
+that you recognize. Your statement has added nothing to what I knew. It
+matters little what you do to me. I have, at least, saved two friends
+from you."
+
+He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him.
+
+As Wickersham pulled on his gloves, he glanced at Dave Dennison. But
+what he saw in his face deterred him from speaking. His eyes were like
+coals of fire.
+
+"I am waiting," he said. "Hurry."
+
+Wickersham walked out in silence.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following afternoon, when Dave Dennison reported that he had left
+his charge on board the outgoing steamer, bound for a far South American
+port, Keith felt as if the atmosphere had in some sort cleared.
+
+A few days later Phrony's worn spirit found rest. Keith, as he had
+already arranged, telegraphed Dr. Balsam of her death, and the Doctor
+went over and told Squire Rawson, at the same time, that she had been
+found and lost.
+
+The next day Keith and Dave Dennison took back to the South all that
+remained of the poor creature who had left there a few years before in
+such high hopes.
+
+One lady, closely veiled, attended the little service that old Dr.
+Templeton conducted in the chapel of the hospital where Phrony had
+passed away, before the body was taken South. Alice Lancaster had been
+faithful to the end in looking after her.
+
+Phrony was buried in the Rawson lot in the little burying-ground at
+Ridgely, not far from the spot where lay the body of General Huntington.
+As Keith passed this grave he saw that flowers had been laid on it
+recently, but they had withered.
+
+All the Ridge-neighborhood gathered to do honor to Phrony and to
+testify their sympathy for her grandfather. It was an exhibition of
+feeling such as Keith had not seen since he left the country. The old
+man appeared stronger than he had seemed for some time. He took charge
+and gave directions in a clear and steady voice.
+
+When the services were over and the last word had been said, he stepped
+forward and raised his hand.
+
+"I've got her back," he said. "I've got her back where nobody can take
+her from me again. I was mighty harsh on her; but I've done forgive her
+long ago--and I hope she knows it now. I heard once that the man that
+took her away said he didn't marry her. But--". He paused for a moment,
+then went on: "He was a liar. I've got the proof.--But I want you all to
+witness that if I ever meet him, in this world or the next, the Lord do
+so to me, and more also! if I don't kill him!" He paused again, and his
+breathing was the only sound that was heard in the deathly stillness
+that had fallen on the listening crowd.
+
+"--And if any man interferes and balks me in my right," he continued
+slowly, "I'll have his blood. Good-by. I thank you for her." He turned
+back to the grave and began to smooth the sides.
+
+Keith's eyes fell on Dave Dennison, where he stood on the outer edge of
+the crowd. His face was sphinx-like; but his bosom heaved twice, and
+Keith knew that two men waited to meet Wickersham.
+
+As the crowd melted away, whispering among themselves, Keith crossed
+over and laid a rose on General Huntington's grave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE CONSULTATION
+
+Keith had been making up his mind for some time to go to Brookford. New
+York had changed utterly for him since Lois left. The whole world seemed
+to have changed. The day after he reached New York, Keith received a
+letter from Miss Brooke. She wrote that her niece was ill and had asked
+her to write and request him to see Mrs. Lancaster, who would explain
+something to him. She did not say what it was. She added that she wished
+she had never heard of New York. It was a cry of anguish.
+
+Keith's heart sank like lead. For the first time in his life he had a
+presentiment. Lois Huntington would die, and he would never see her
+again. Despair took hold of him. Keith could stand it no longer. He went
+to Brookford.
+
+The Lawns was one of those old-fashioned country places, a few miles
+outside of the town, such as our people of means used to have a few
+generations ago, before they had lost the landholding instinct of their
+English ancestors and gained the herding proclivity of modern life. The
+extensive yard and grounds were filled with shrubbery--lilacs,
+rose-bushes, and evergreens--and shaded by fine old trees, among which
+the birds were singing as Keith drove up the curving road, and over all
+was an air of quietude and peace which filled his heart with tenderness.
+
+"This is the bower she came from," he thought to himself, gazing around.
+"Here is the country garden where the rose grew."
+
+Miss Brooke was unfeignedly surprised to see Keith.
+
+She greeted him most civilly. Lois had long since explained everything
+to her, and she made Keith a more than ample apology for her letter.
+"But you must admit," she said, "that your actions were very
+suspicious.--When a New York man is handing dancing-women to their
+carriages!" A gesture and nod completed the sentence.
+
+"But I am not a New York man," said Keith.
+
+"Oh, you are getting to be a very fair counterfeit," said the old lady,
+half grimly.
+
+Lois was very ill. She had been under a great strain in New York, and
+had finally broken down.
+
+Among other items of interest that Keith gleaned was that Dr. Locaman,
+the resident physician at Brookford, was a suitor of Lois. Keith asked
+leave to send for a friend who was a man of large experience and a
+capital doctor.
+
+"Well, I should be glad to have him sent for. These men here are
+dividing her up into separate pieces, and meantime she is going down the
+hill every day. Send for any one who will treat her as a whole human
+being and get her well."
+
+So Keith telegraphed that day for Dr. Balsam, saying that he wanted him
+badly, and would be under lasting obligations if he would come to
+Brookford at once.
+
+Brookford! The name called up many associations to the old physician. It
+was from Brookford that that young girl with her brown eyes and dark
+hair had walked into his life so long ago. It was from Brookford that
+the decree had come that had doomed him to a life of loneliness and
+exile. A desire seized him to see the place. Abby Brooke had been living
+a few years before. She might be living now.
+
+As the Doctor descended from the cars, he was met by Keith, who told him
+that the patient was the daughter of General Huntington--the little girl
+he had known so long ago.
+
+"I thought, perhaps, it was your widow," said the Doctor.
+
+A little dash of color stole into Keith's grave face, then flickered
+out.
+
+"No." He changed the subject, and went on to say that the other
+physicians had arranged to meet him at the house. Then he gave him a
+little history of the case.
+
+"You are very much interested in her?"
+
+"I have known her a long time, you see. Yes. Her aunt is a friend of
+mine."
+
+"He is in love with her," said the old man to himself. "She has cut the
+widow out."
+
+As they entered the hall, Miss Abby came out of a room. She looked worn
+and ill.
+
+"Ah!" said Keith. "Here she is." He turned to present the Doctor, but
+stopped with his lips half opened. The two stood fronting each, other,
+their amazed eyes on each other's faces, as it were across the space of
+a whole generation.
+
+"Theophilus!"
+
+"Abby!"
+
+This was all. The next moment they were shaking hands as if they had
+parted the week before instead of thirty-odd years ago. "I told you I
+would come if you ever needed me," said the Doctor. "I have come."
+
+"And I never needed you more, and I have needed you often. It was good
+in you to come--for my little girl." Her voice suddenly broke, and she
+turned away, her handkerchief at her eyes.
+
+The Doctor's expression settled into one of deep concern. "There--there.
+Don't distress yourself. We must reserve our powers. We may need them.
+Now, if you will show me to my room for a moment, I would like to get
+myself ready before going in to see your little girl."
+
+Just as the Doctor reappeared, the other doctors came out of the
+sick-room, the local physician, a simple young man, following the city
+specialist with mingled pride and awe. The latter was a silent,
+self-reliant man with a keen eye, thin lips, and a dry, business manner.
+They were presented to the Doctor as Dr. Memberly and Dr. Locaman, and
+looked him over. There was a certain change of manner in each of them:
+the younger man, after a glance, increased perceptibly his show of
+respect toward the city man; the latter treated the Doctor with
+civility, but talked in an ex-cathedra way. He understood the case and
+had no question as to its treatment. As for Dr. Balsam, his manner was
+the same to both, and had not changed a particle. He said not a word
+except to ask questions as to symptoms and the treatment that had been
+followed. The Doctor's face changed during the recital, and when it was
+ended his expression was one of deep thoughtfulness.
+
+The consultation ended, they all went into the sick-room, Dr. Memberly,
+the specialist, first, the young doctor next, and Dr. Balsam last. Dr.
+Memberly addressed the nurse, and Dr. Locaman followed him like his
+shadow, enforcing his words and copying insensibly his manner. Dr.
+Balsam walked over to the bedside, and leaning over, took the patient's
+thin, wan hand.
+
+"My dear, I am Dr. Balsam. Do you remember me?"
+
+She glanced at him, at first languidly, then with more interest, and
+then, as recollection returned to her, with a faint smile.
+
+"Now we must get well."
+
+Again she smiled faintly.
+
+The Doctor drew up a chair, and, without speaking further, began to
+stroke her hand, his eyes resting on her face.
+
+One who had seen the old physician before he entered that house could
+scarcely have known him as the same man who sat by the bed holding the
+hand of the wan figure lying so placid before him. At a distance he
+appeared a plain countryman; on nearer view his eyes and mouth and set
+chin gave him a look of unexpected determination. When he entered a
+sick-room he was like a king coming to his own. He took command and
+fought disease as an arch-enemy. So now.
+
+Dr. Memberly came to the bedside and began to talk in a low,
+professional tone. Lois shut her eyes, but her fingers closed slightly
+on Dr. Balsam's hand.
+
+"The medicine appears to have quieted her somewhat. I have directed the
+nurse to continue it," observed Dr. Memberly.
+
+"Quite so. By all means continue it," assented Dr. Locaman. "She is
+decidedly quieter."
+
+Dr. Balsam's head inclined just enough to show that he heard him, and he
+went on stroking her hand.
+
+"Is there anything you would suggest further than has already been
+done?" inquired the city physician of Dr. Balsam.
+
+"No. I think not."
+
+"I must catch the 4:30 train," said the former to the younger man.
+"Doctor, will you drive me down to the station?"
+
+"Yes, certainly. With pleasure."
+
+"Doctor, you say you are going away to-night?" This from the city
+physician to Dr. Balsam.
+
+"No, sir; I shall stay for a day or two." The fingers of the sleeper
+quite closed on his hand. "I have several old friends here. In fact,
+this little girl is one of them, and I want to get her up."
+
+The look of the other changed, and he cleared his throat with a dry,
+metallic cough.
+
+"You may rest satisfied that everything has been done for the patient
+that science can do," he said stiffly.
+
+"I think so. We won't rest till we get the little girl up," said the
+older doctor. "Now we will take off our coats and work."
+
+Once more the fingers of the sleeper almost clutched his.
+
+When the door closed, Lois turned her head and opened her eyes, and when
+the wheels were heard driving away she looked at the Doctor with a wan
+little smile, which he answered with a twinkle.
+
+"When did you come?" she asked faintly. It was the first sign of
+interest she had shown in anything for days.
+
+"A young friend of mine, Gordon Keith, told me you were sick, and asked
+me to come, and I have just arrived. He brought me up." He watched the
+change in her face.
+
+"I am so much obliged to you. Where is he now?"
+
+"He is here. Now we must get well," he said encouragingly. "And to do
+that we must get a little sleep."
+
+"Very well. You are going to stay with me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Thank you"; and she closed her eyes tranquilly and, after a little,
+fell into a doze.
+
+When the Doctor came out of the sick-room he had done what the other
+physicians had not done and could not do. He had fathomed the case, and,
+understanding the cause, he was able to prescribe the cure.
+
+"With the help of God we will get your little girl well," he said to
+Miss Abby.
+
+"I begin to hope, and I had begun to despair," she said. "It was good of
+you to come."
+
+"I am glad I came, and I will come whenever you want me, Abby," replied
+the old Doctor, simply.
+
+From this time, as he promised, so he performed. He took off his coat,
+and using the means which the city specialist had suggested, he studied
+his patient's case and applied all his powers to the struggle.
+
+The great city doctor recorded the case among his cures; but in his
+treatment he did not reckon the sleepless hours that that country doctor
+had sat by the patient's bedside, the unremitting struggle he had made,
+holding Death at bay, inspiring hope, and holding desperately every
+inch gained.
+
+When the Doctor saw Keith he held out his hand to him. "I am glad you
+sent for me."
+
+"How is she, Doctor? Will she get well?"
+
+"I trust so. She has been under some strain. It is almost as if she had
+had a shock."
+
+Keith's mind sprang back to that evening in the Park, and he cursed
+Wickersham in his heart.
+
+"Possibly she has had some strain on her emotions?"
+
+Keith did not know.
+
+"I understand that there is a young man here who has been in love with
+her for some time, and her aunt thinks she returned the sentiment."
+
+Keith did not know. But the Doctor's words were like a dagger in his
+heart.
+
+Keith went back to work; but he seemed to himself to live in darkness.
+As soon as a gleam of light appeared, it was suddenly quenched. Love was
+not for him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE MISTRESS OF THE LAWNS
+
+Strange to say, the episode in which Keith had figured as the reliever
+of Norman Wentworth's embarrassment had a very different effect upon
+those among whom he had moved, from what he had expected. Keith's part
+in the transaction was well known.
+
+His part, too, in the Wickersham matter was understood by his
+acquaintances. Wickersham had as good as absconded, some said; and there
+were many to tell how long they had prophesied this very thing, and how
+well they had known his villany. Mrs. Nailor was particularly
+vindictive. She had recently put some money in his mining scheme, and
+she could have hanged him. She did the next thing: she damned him. She
+even extended her rage to old Mrs. Wickersham, who, poor lady, had lost
+her home and everything she had in the world through Ferdy.
+
+The Norman-Wentworths, who had moved out of the splendid residence that
+Mrs. Norman's extravagance had formerly demanded, into the old house on
+Washington Square, which was still occupied by old Mrs. Wentworth, were,
+if anything, drawn closer than ever to their real friends; but they were
+distinctly deposed from the position which Mrs. Wentworth had formerly
+occupied in the gay set, who to her had hitherto been New York. They
+were far happier than they had ever been. A new light had come into
+Norman's face, and a softness began to dawn in hers which Keith had
+never seen there before. Around them, too, began to gather friends whom
+Keith had never known of, who had the charm that breeding and kindness
+give, and opened his eyes to a life there of which he had hitherto
+hardly dreamed. Keith, however, to his surprise, when he was in New
+York, found himself more sought after by his former acquaintances than
+ever before. The cause was a simple one. He was believed to be very
+rich. He must have made a large fortune. The mystery in which it was
+involved but added to its magnitude. No man but one of immense wealth
+could have done what Keith did the day he stopped the run on Wentworth &
+Son. Any other supposition was incredible. Moreover, it was now plain
+that in a little while he would marry Mrs. Lancaster, and then he would
+be one of the wealthiest men in New York. He was undoubtedly a coming
+man. Men who, a short time ago, would not have wasted a moment's thought
+on him, now greeted him with cordiality and spoke of him with respect;
+women who, a year or two before, would not have seen him in a ball-room,
+now smiled to him on the street, invited him among their "best
+companies," and treated him with distinguished favor. Mrs. Nailor
+actually pursued him. Even Mr. Kestrel, pale, thin-lipped, and frosty as
+ever in appearance, thawed into something like cordiality when he met
+him, and held out an icy hand as with a wintry smile he congratulated
+him on his success.
+
+"Well, we Yankees used to think we had the monopoly of business ability,
+but we shall have to admit that some of you young fellows at the South
+know your business. You have done what cost the Wickershams some
+millions. If you want any help at any time, come in and talk to me. We
+had a little difference once; but I don't let a little thing like that
+stand in the way with a friend."
+
+Keith felt his jaws lock as he thought of the same man on the other side
+of a long table sneering at him.
+
+"Thank you," said he. "My success has been greatly exaggerated. You'd
+better not count too much on it."
+
+Keith knew that he was considered rich, and it disturbed him. For the
+first time in his life he felt that he was sailing under false colors.
+
+Often the fair face, handsome figure, and cordial, friendly air of Alice
+Lancaster came to him; not so often, it is true, as another, a younger
+and gentler face, but still often enough. He admired her greatly. He
+trusted her. Why should he not try his fortune there, and be happy?
+Alice Lancaster was good enough for him. Yes, that was the trouble. She
+was far too good for him if he addressed her without loving her utterly.
+Other reasons, too, suggested themselves. He began to find himself
+fitting more and more into the city life. He had the chance possibly to
+become rich, richer than ever, and with it to secure a charming
+companion. Why should he not avail himself of it? Amid the glitter and
+gayety of his surroundings in the city, this temptation grew stronger
+and stronger. Miss Abby's sharp speech recurred to him. He was becoming
+"a fair counterfeit" of the men he had once despised. Then came a new
+form of temptation. What power this wealth would give him! How much good
+he could accomplish with it!
+
+When the temptation grew too overpowering he left his office and went
+down into the country. It always did him good to go there. To be there
+was like a plunge in a cool, limpid pool. He had been so long in the
+turmoil and strife of the struggle for success--for wealth; had been so
+wholly surrounded by those who strove as he strove, tearing and
+trampling and rending those who were in their way, that he had almost
+lost sight of the life that lay outside of the dust and din of that
+arena. He had almost forgotten that life held other rewards than riches.
+He had forgotten the calm and tranquil region that stretched beyond the
+moil and anguish of the strife for gain.
+
+Here his father walked with him again, calm, serene, and elevated, his
+thoughts high above all commercial matters, ranging the fields of lofty
+speculation with statesmen, philosophers, and poets, holding up to his
+gaze again lofty ideals; practising, without a thought of reward, the
+very gospel of universal gentleness and kindness.
+
+There his mother, too, moved in spirit once more beside him with her
+angelic smile, breathing the purity of heaven. How far away it seemed
+from that world in which he had been living!--as far as they were from
+the worldlings who made it.
+
+Curiously, when he was in New York he found himself under the allurement
+of Alice Lancaster. When he was in the country he found that he was in
+love with Lois Huntington.
+
+It was this that mystified him and worried him. He believed--that is, he
+almost believed--that Alice Lancaster would marry him. His friends
+thought that she would. Several of them had told him so. Many of them
+acted on this belief. And this had something to do with his retirement.
+As much as he liked Alice Lancaster, as clearly as he felt how but for
+one fact it would have suited that they should marry, one fact changed
+everything: he was not in love with her.
+
+He was in love with a young girl who had never given him a thought
+except as a sort of hereditary friend. Turning from one door at which
+the light of happiness had shone, he had found himself caught at another
+from which a radiance shone that dimmed all other lights. Yet it was
+fast shut. At length he determined to cut the knot. He would put his
+fate to the test.
+
+Two days after he formed this resolve he walked into the hotel at
+Brookford and registered. As he turned, he stood face to face with Mrs.
+Nailor. Mrs. Nailor of late had been all cordiality to him.
+
+"Why, you dear boy, where did you come from?" she asked him in pleased
+surprise. "I thought you were stretched at Mrs. Wentworth's feet in
+the--Where has she been this summer?"
+
+Keith's brow clouded. He remembered when Wickersham was her "dear boy."
+
+"It is a position I am not in the habit of occupying--at least, toward
+ladies who have husbands to occupy it. You are thinking of some one
+else," he added coldly, wishing devoutly that Mrs. Nailor were
+in Halifax.
+
+"Well, I am glad you have come here. You remember, our friendship began
+in the country? Yes? My husband had to go and get sick, and I got really
+frightened about him, and so we determined to come here, where we should
+be perfectly quiet. We got here last Saturday. There is not a man here."
+
+"Isn't there?" asked Keith, wishing there were not a woman either. "How
+long are you going to stay?" he asked absently.
+
+"Oh, perhaps a month. How long shall you be here?"
+
+"Not very long," said Keith.
+
+"I tell you who is here; that little governess of Mrs. Wentworth's she
+was so disagreeable to last winter. She has been very ill. I think it
+was the way she was treated in New York. She was in love with Ferdy
+Wickersham, you know? She lives here, in a lovely old place just outside
+of town, with her old aunt or cousin. I had no idea she had such a nice
+old home. We saw her yesterday. We met her on the street."
+
+"I remember her; I shall go and see her," said Keith, recalling Mrs.
+Nailor's speech at Mrs. Wickersham's dinner, and Lois's revenge.
+
+"I tell you what we will do. She invited us to call, and we will go
+together," said Mrs. Nailor.
+
+Keith paused a moment in reflection, and then said casually:
+
+"When are you going?"
+
+"Oh, this afternoon."
+
+"Very well; I will go."
+
+Mrs. Nailor drove Keith out to The Lawns that afternoon.
+
+In a little while Miss Huntington came in. Keith observed that she was
+dressed as she had been that evening at dinner, in white, but he did
+not dream that it was the result of thought. He did not know with what
+care every touch had been made to reproduce just what he had praised, or
+with what sparkling eyes she had surveyed the slim, dainty figure in the
+old cheval-glass. She greeted Mrs. Nailor civilly and Keith warmly.
+
+"I am very glad to see you. What in the world brought you here to this
+out-of-the-way place?" she said, turning to the latter and giving him
+her cool, soft hand, and looking up at him with unfeigned pleasure, a
+softer and deeper glow coming into her cheek as she gazed into his eyes.
+
+"A sudden fit of insanity," said Keith, taking in the sweet, girlish
+figure in his glance. "I wanted to see some roses that I knew bloomed in
+an old garden about here."
+
+"He, perhaps, thought that, as Brookford is growing so fashionable now,
+he might find a mutual friend of ours here?" Mrs. Nailor said.
+
+"As whom, for instance?" queried Keith, unwilling to commit himself.
+
+"You know, Alice Lancaster has been talking of coming here? Now, don't
+pretend that you don't know. Whom does every one say you are--all in
+pursuit of?"
+
+"I am sure I do not know," said Keith, calmly. "I suppose that you are
+referring to Mrs. Lancaster, but I happened to know that she was not
+here. No; I came to see Miss Huntington." His face wore an expression of
+amusement.
+
+Mrs. Nailor made some smiling reply. She did not see the expression in
+Keith's eyes as they, for a second, caught Lois's glance.
+
+Just then Miss Abigail came in. She had grown whiter since Keith had
+seen her last, and looked older. She greeted Mrs. Nailor graciously, and
+Keith cordially. Miss Lois, for some reason of her own, was plying Mrs.
+Nailor with questions, and Keith fell to talking with Miss Abigail,
+though his eyes were on Lois most of the time.
+
+The old lady was watching her too, and the girl, under the influence of
+the earnest gaze, glanced around and, catching her aunt's eye upon her,
+flashed her a little answering smile full of affection and tenderness,
+and then went on listening intently to Mrs. Nailor; though, had Keith
+read aright the color rising in her cheeks, he might have guessed that
+she was giving at least half her attention to his side of the room,
+where Miss Abigail was talking of her. Keith, however, was just then
+much interested in Miss Abigail's account of Dr. Locaman, who, it
+seemed, was more attentive to Lois than ever.
+
+"I don't know what she will do," she said. "I suppose she will decide
+soon. It is an affair of long standing."
+
+Keith's throat had grown dry.
+
+"I had hoped that my cousin Norman might prove a protector for her; but
+his wife is not a good person. I was mad to let her go there. But she
+would go. She thought she could be of some service. But that woman is
+such a fool!"
+
+"Oh, she is not a bad woman," interrupted Keith.
+
+"I do not know how bad she is," said Miss Abigail. "She is a fool. No
+good woman would ever have allowed such an intimacy as she allowed to
+come between her and her husband; and none but a fool would have
+permitted a man to make her his dupe. She did not even have the excuse
+of a temptation; for she is as cold as a tombstone."
+
+"I assure you that you are mistaken," defended Keith. "I know her, and I
+believe that she has far more depth than you give her credit for--"
+
+"I give her credit for none," said Miss Abigail, decisively. "You men
+are all alike. You think a woman with a pretty face who does not talk
+much is deep, when she is only dull. On my word, I think it is almost
+worse to bring about such a scandal without cause than to give a real
+cause for it. In the latter case there is at least the time-worn excuse
+of woman's frailty."
+
+Keith laughed.
+
+"They are all so stupid," asserted Miss Abigail, fiercely. "They are
+giving up their privileges to be--what? I blushed for my sex when I was
+there. They are beginning to mistake civility for servility. I found a
+plenty of old ladies tottering on the edge of the grave, like myself,
+and I found a number of ladies in the shops and in the churches; but in
+that set that you go with--! They all want to be 'women'; next thing
+they'll want to be like men. I sha'n't be surprised to see them come to
+wearing men's clothes and drinking whiskey and smoking tobacco--the
+little fools! As if they thought that a woman who has to curl her hair
+and spend a half-hour over her dress to look decent could ever be on a
+level with a man who can handle a trunk or drive a wagon or add up a
+column of figures, and can wash his face and hands and put on a clean
+collar and look like--a gentleman!"
+
+"Oh, not so bad as that," said Keith.
+
+"Yes; there is no limit to their folly. I know them. I am one myself."
+
+"But you do not want to be a man?"
+
+"No, not now. I am too old and dependent. But I'll let you into a
+secret. I am secretly envious of them. I'd like to be able to put them
+down under my heel and make them--squeal."
+
+Mrs. Nailor turned and spoke to the old lady. She was evidently about to
+take her leave. Keith moved over, and for the first time addressed Miss
+Huntington.
+
+"I want you to show me about these grounds," he said, speaking so that
+both ladies could hear him. He rose, and both walked out of the parlor.
+When Mrs. Nailor came out, Keith and his guide were nowhere to be found,
+so she had to wait; but a half-hour afterwards he and Miss Huntington
+came back from the stables.
+
+As they drove out of the grounds they passed a good-looking young fellow
+just going in. Keith recognized Dr. Locaman.
+
+"That is the young man who is so attentive to your young friend," said
+Mrs. Nailor; "Dr. Locaman. He saved her life and now is going to
+marry her."
+
+It gave Keith a pang.
+
+"I know him. He did not save her life. If anybody did that, it was an
+old country doctor, Dr. Balsam."
+
+"That old man! I thought he was dead years ago."
+
+"Well, he is not. He is very much alive."
+
+A few evenings later Keith found Mrs. Lancaster in the hotel. He had
+just arrived from The Lawns when Mrs. Lancaster came down to dinner. Her
+greeting was perfect. Even Mrs. Nailor was mystified. She had never
+looked handsomer. Her black gown fitted perfectly her trim figure, and a
+single red rose, half-blown, caught in her bodice was her only ornament.
+She possessed the gift of simplicity. She was a beautiful walker, and as
+she moved slowly down the long dining-room as smoothly as a piece of
+perfect machinery, every eye was upon her. She knew that she was being
+generally observed, and the color deepened in her cheeks and added the
+charm of freshness to her beauty.
+
+"By Jove! what a stunning woman!" exclaimed a man at a table near by to
+his wife.
+
+"It is not difficult to be 'a stunning woman' in a Worth gown, my dear,"
+she said sweetly. "May I trouble you for the Worcestershire?"
+
+Keith's attitude toward Mrs. Lancaster puzzled even so old a veteran as
+Mrs. Nailor.
+
+Mrs. Nailor was an adept in the art of inquisition. To know about her
+friends' affairs was one of the objects of her life, and it was not only
+the general facts that she insisted on knowing: she proposed to be
+acquainted with their deepest secrets and the smallest particulars. She
+knew Alice Lancaster's views, or believed she did; but she had never
+ventured to speak on the subject to Gordon Keith. In fact, she stood in
+awe of Keith, and now he had mystified her by his action. Finally, she
+could stand it no longer, and so next evening she opened fire on Keith.
+Having screwed her courage to the sticking-point, she attacked boldly.
+She caught him on the verandah, smoking alone, and watching him closely
+to catch the effect of her attack, said suddenly:
+
+"I want to ask you a question: are you in love with Alice Lancaster?"
+
+Keith turned slowly and looked at her, looked at her so long that she
+began to blush.
+
+"Don't you think, if I am, I had better inform her first?" he said
+quietly.
+
+Mrs. Nailor was staggered; but she was in for it, and she had to fight
+her way through. "I was scared to death, my dear," she said when she
+repeated this part of the conversation, "for I never know just how he is
+going to take anything; but he was so quiet, I went on."
+
+"Well, yes, I think you had," she said; "Alice can take care of herself;
+but I tell you that you have no right to be carrying on with that sweet,
+innocent young girl here. You know what people say of you?"
+
+"No; I do not," said Keith. "I was not aware that I was of sufficient
+importance here for people to say anything, except perhaps a few persons
+who know me."
+
+"They say you have come here to see Miss Huntington?"
+
+"Do they?" asked Keith, so carelessly that Mrs. Nailor was just thinking
+that she must be mistaken, when he added: "Well, will you ask people if
+they ever heard what Andrew Jackson said to Mr. Buchanan once when he
+told him it was time to go and dress to receive Lady Wellesley?"
+
+"What did he say?" asked Mrs. Nailor.
+
+"He said he knew a man in Tennessee who had made a fortune by attending
+to his own business."
+
+Having failed with Keith, Mrs. Nailor, the next afternoon, called on
+Miss Huntington. Lois was in, and her aunt was not well; so Mrs. Nailor
+had a fair field for her research. She decided to test the young girl,
+and she selected the only mode which could have been successful with
+herself. She proposed a surprise. She spoke of Keith and noticed the
+increased interest with which the girl listened. This was promising.
+
+"By the way," she said, "you know the report is that Mr. Keith has at
+last really surrendered?"
+
+"Has he? I am so glad. If ever a man deserved happiness it is he. Who is
+it?"
+
+The entire absence of self-consciousness in Lois's expression and voice
+surprised Mrs. Nailor.
+
+"Mrs. Lancaster," she said, watching for the effect of her answer. "Of
+course, you know he has always been in love with her?"
+
+The girl's expression of unfeigned admiration of Mrs. Lancaster gave
+Mrs. Nailor another surprise. She decided that she had been mistaken in
+suspecting her of caring for Keith.
+
+"He has evidently not proposed yet. If she were a little older I should
+be certain of it," she said to herself as she drove away; "but these
+girls are so secretive one can never tell about them. Even I could not
+look as innocent as that to save my life if I were interested."
+
+That evening Keith called at The Lawns. He did not take with him a
+placid spirit. Mrs. Nailor's shaft had gone home, and it rankled. He
+tried to assure himself that what people were thinking had nothing to do
+with him. But suppose Miss Abigail took this view of the matter? He
+determined to ascertain. One solution of the difficulty lay plain before
+him: he could go away. Another presented itself, but it was
+preposterous. Of all the women he knew Lois Huntington was the least
+affected by him in the way that flatters a man. She liked him, he knew;
+but if he could read women at all, and he thought he could, she liked
+him only as a friend, and had not a particle of sentiment about him. He
+was easy, then, as to the point Mrs. Nailor had raised; but had he the
+right to subject Lois to gossip? This was the main thing that troubled
+him. He was half angry with himself that it kept rising in his mind. He
+determined to find out what her aunt thought of it, and decided that he
+could let that direct his course. This salved his conscience. Once or
+twice the question dimly presented itself whether it were possible that
+Lois could care for him. He banished it resolutely.
+
+When he reached The Lawns, he found that Miss Abigail was sick, so the
+virtuous plan he had formed fell through. He was trying to fancy himself
+sorry; but when Lois came out on the verandah in dainty blue gown which
+fell softly about her girlish figure, and seated herself with
+unconscious grace in the easy-chair he pushed up for her, he knew that
+he was glad to have her all to himself. They fell to talking about
+her aunt.
+
+"I am dreadfully uneasy about her," the girl said. "Once or twice of
+late she has had something like fainting spells, and the last one was
+very alarming. You don't know what she has been to me." She looked up at
+him with a silent appeal for sympathy which made his heart beat. "She is
+the only mother I ever knew, and she is all I have in the world." Her
+voice faltered, and she turned away her head. A tear stole down her
+cheek and dropped in her lap. "I am so glad you like each other. I hear
+you are engaged," she said suddenly.
+
+He was startled; it chimed in so with the thought in his mind at the
+moment.
+
+"No, I am not; but I would like to be."
+
+He came near saying a great deal more; but the girl's eyes were fixed on
+him so innocently that he for a moment hesitated. He felt it would be
+folly, if not sacrilege, to go further.
+
+Just then there was a step on the walk, and the young man Keith had
+seen, Dr. Locaman, came up the steps. He was a handsome man, stout, well
+dressed, and well satisfied.
+
+Keith could have consigned him and all his class to a distant and torrid
+clime.
+
+He came up the steps cheerily and began talking at once. He was so glad
+to see Keith, and had he heard lately from Dr. Balsam?--"such a fine
+type of the old country doctor," etc.
+
+No, Keith said; he had not heard lately. His manner had stiffened at
+the young man's condescension, and he rose to go.
+
+He said casually to Lois, as he shook hands, "How did you hear the piece
+of news you mentioned?"
+
+"Mrs. Nailor told me. You must tell me all about it."
+
+"I will sometime."
+
+"I hope you will be very happy," she said earnestly; "you deserve to
+be." Her eyes were very soft.
+
+"No, I do not," said Keith, almost angrily. "I am not at all what you
+suppose me to be."
+
+"I will not allow you to say such things of yourself," she said,
+smiling. "I will not stand my friends being abused even by themselves."
+
+Keith felt his courage waning. Her beauty, her sincerity, her
+tenderness, her innocence, her sweetness thrilled him. He turned back to
+her abruptly.
+
+"I hope you will always think that of me," he said earnestly. "I promise
+to try to deserve it. Good-by."
+
+"Good-by. Don't forget me." She held out her hand.
+
+Keith took it and held it for a second.
+
+"Never," he said, looking her straight in the eyes. "Good-by"; and with
+a muttered good-by to Dr. Locaman, who stood with wide-open eyes gazing
+at him, he turned and went down the steps.
+
+"I don't like that man," said the young Doctor. This speech sealed his
+fate.
+
+"Don't you? I do," said Lois, half dreamily. Her thoughts were far from
+the young physician at that moment; and when they returned to him, she
+knew that she would never marry him. A half-hour later, he knew it.
+
+The next morning Lois received a note from Keith, saying he had left for
+his home.
+
+When he bade Mrs. Lancaster good-by that evening, she looked as if she
+were really sorry that he was going. She walked with him down the
+verandah toward where his carriage awaited him, and Keith thought she
+had never looked sweeter.
+
+He had never had a confidante,--at least, since he was a college
+boy,--and a little of the old feeling came to him. He lingered a little;
+but just then Mrs. Nailor came out of the door near him. For a moment
+Keith could almost have fancied he was back on the verandah at Gates's.
+Her mousing around had turned back the dial a dozen years.
+
+Just what brought it about, perhaps, no one of the participants in the
+little drama could have told; but from this time the relations between
+the two ladies whom Keith left at the hotel that Summer night somehow
+changed. Not outwardly, for they still sat and talked together; but they
+were both conscious of a difference. They rather fenced with each other
+after that. Mrs. Nailor set it down to a simple cause. Mrs. Lancaster
+was in love with Gordon Keith, and he had not addressed her. Of this she
+was satisfied. Yet she was a little mystified. Mrs. Lancaster hardly
+defined the reason to herself. She simply shut up on the side toward
+Mrs. Nailor, and barred her out. A strange thing was that she and Miss
+Huntington became great friends. They took to riding together, walking
+together, and seeing a great deal of each other, the elder lady spending
+much of her time up at Miss Huntington's home, among the shrubbery and
+flowers of the old place. It was a mystification to Mrs. Nailor, who
+frankly confessed that she could only account for it on the ground that
+Mrs. Lancaster wanted to find out how far matters had gone between Keith
+and Miss Huntington. "That girl is a sly minx," she said. "These
+governesses learn to be deceptive. I would not have her in my house."
+
+If there was a more dissatisfied mortal in the world than Gordon Keith
+that Autumn Keith did not know him. He worked hard, but it did not ease
+his mind. He tried retiring to his old home, as he had done in the
+Summer; but it was even worse than it had been then. Rumor came to him
+that Lois Huntington was engaged. It came through Mrs. Nailor, and he
+could not verify it; but, at least, she was lost to him. He cursed
+himself for a fool.
+
+The picture of Mrs. Lancaster began to come to him oftener and oftener
+as she had appeared to him that night on the verandah--handsome,
+dignified, serene, sympathetic. Why should he not seek release by this
+way? He had always admired, liked her. He felt her sympathy; he
+recognized her charm; he appreciated her--yes, her advantage. Curse it!
+that was the trouble. If he were only in love with her! If she were not
+so manifestly advantageous, then he might think his feeling was more
+than friendship; for she was everything that he admired.
+
+He was just in this frame of mind when a letter came from Rhodes, who
+had come home soon after Keith's visit to him. He had not been very
+well, and they had decided to take a yacht-cruise in Southern waters,
+and would he not come along? He could join them at either Hampton Roads
+or Savannah, and they were going to run over to the Bermudas.
+
+Keith telegraphed that he would join them, and two days later turned his
+face to the South. Twenty-four hours afterwards he was stepping up the
+gangway and being welcomed by as gay a group as ever fluttered
+handkerchiefs to cheer a friend. Among them the first object that had
+caught his eye as he rowed out was the straight, lithe figure of Mrs.
+Lancaster. A man is always ready to think Providence interferes
+specially in his, case, provided the interpretation accords with his own
+views, and this looked to Keith very much as if it were Providence. For
+one thing, it saved him the trouble of thinking further of a matter
+which, the more he thought of it, the more he was perplexed. She came
+forward with the others, and welcomed him with her old frank, cordial
+grasp of the hand and gracious air. When he was comfortably settled, he
+felt a distinct self-content that he had decided to come.
+
+A yacht-cruise is dependent on three things: the yacht itself, the
+company on board, and the weather. Keith had no cause to complain of
+any of these.
+
+The "Virginia Dare" was a beautiful boat, and the weather was
+perfect--just the weather for a cruise in Southern waters. The company
+were all friends of Keith; and Keith found himself sailing in Summer
+seas, with Summer airs breathing about him. Keith was at his best. He
+was richly tanned by exposure, and as hard as a nail from work in the
+open air. Command of men had given him that calm assurance which is the
+mark of the captain. Ambition--ambition to be, not merely to
+possess--was once more calling to him with her inspiring voice, and as
+he hearkened his face grew more and more distinguished. Providence,
+indeed, or Grinnell Rhodes was working his way, and it seemed to him--he
+admitted it with a pang of contempt for himself at the admission--that
+Mrs. Lancaster was at least acquiescent in their hands. Morning after
+morning they sat together in the shadow of the sail, and evening after
+evening together watched the moon with an ever-rounder golden circle
+steal up the cloudless sky. Keith was pleased to find how much
+interested he was becoming. Each day he admired her more and more; and
+each day he found her sweeter than she had been before. Once or twice
+she spoke to him of Lois Huntington, but each time she mentioned her,
+Keith turned the subject. She said that they had expected to have her
+join them; but she could not leave her aunt.
+
+"I hear she is engaged," said Keith.
+
+"Yes, I heard that. I do not believe it. Whom did you hear it from?"
+
+"Mrs. Nailor."
+
+"So did I."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+THE OLD IDEAL
+
+One evening they sat on deck. Alice Lancaster had never appeared so
+sweet. It happened that Mrs. Rhodes had a headache and was down below,
+and Rhodes declared that he had some writing to do. So Mrs. Lancaster
+and Keith had the deck to themselves.
+
+They had been sailing for weeks among emerald isles and through waters
+as blue as heaven. Even the "still-vex'd Bermoothes" had lent them their
+gentlest airs.
+
+They had left the Indies and were now approaching the American shore.
+Their cruise was almost at an end, and possibly a little sadness had
+crept over them both. As she had learned more and more of his life and
+more and more of his character, she had found herself ready to give up
+everything for him if he only gave her what she craved. But one thing
+had made itself plain to Alice: Keith was not in love with her as she
+knew he could be in love. If he were in love, it was with an ideal. And
+her woman's intuition told her that she was not that ideal.
+
+This evening she was unusually pensive. She had never looked lovelier or
+been more gracious and charming, and as Keith thought of the past and of
+the future,--the long past in which they had been friends, the long
+future in which he would live alone,--his thought took the form of
+resolve. Why should they not always be together? She knew that he liked
+her, so he had not much to do to go further. The moon was just above the
+horizon, making a broad golden pathway to them. The soft lapping of the
+waves against the boat seemed to be a lullaby suited to the peacefulness
+of the scene; and the lovely form before him, clad in soft raiment that
+set it off; the fair face and gentle voice, appeared to fill everything
+with graciousness. Keith had more than once, in the past few weeks,
+considered how he would bring the subject up, and what he would say if
+he ever addressed her. He did not, however, go about it in the way he
+had planned. It seemed to him to come up spontaneously. Under the spell
+of the Summer night they had drifted into talking of old times, and they
+both softened as their memory went back to their youth and their
+friendship that had begun among the Southern woods and had lasted so
+many years.
+
+She had spoken of the influence his opinions had had with her.
+
+"Do you know," he said presently, "I think you have exerted more
+influence on my life than any one else I ever knew after I grew up?"
+
+She smiled, and her face was softer than usual.
+
+"I should be very glad to think that, for I think there are few men who
+set out in life with such ideals as you had and afterwards
+realize them."
+
+Keith thought of his father and of how steadily that old man had held to
+his ideals through everything. "I have not realized them," he said
+firmly. "I fear I have lost most of them. I set out in life with high
+ideals, which I got from my father; but, somehow, I seem to have
+changed them."
+
+She shook her head, with a pleasant light in her eyes.
+
+"I do not think you have. Do you remember what you said to me once about
+your ideal?"
+
+He turned and faced her. There was an expression of such softness and
+such sweetness in her face that a kind of anticipatory happiness fell
+on him.
+
+"Yes; and I have always been in love with that ideal," he said gravely.
+
+She said gently: "Yes, I knew it."
+
+"Did you?" asked Keith, in some surprise. "I scarcely knew it myself,
+though I believe I have been for some time."
+
+"Yes?" she said. "I knew that too."
+
+Keith bent over her and took both her hands in his. "I love and want
+love in return--more than I can ever tell you."
+
+A change came over her face, and she drew in her breath suddenly,
+glanced at him for a second, and then looked away, her eyes resting at
+last on the distance where a ship lay, her sails hanging idly in the dim
+haze. It might have been a dream-ship. At Keith's words a picture came
+to her out of the past. A young man was seated on the ground, with a
+fresh-budding bush behind him. Spring was all about them. He was young
+and slender and sun-browned, with deep-burning eyes and close-drawn
+mouth, with the future before him; whatever befell, with the hope and
+the courage to conquer. He had conquered, as he then said he would to
+the young girl seated beside him.
+
+"When I love," he was saying, "she must fill full the measure of my
+dreams. She must uplift me. She must have beauty and sweetness; she must
+choose the truth as that bird chooses the flowers. And to such an one I
+will give worship without end."
+
+Years after, she had come across the phrase again in a poem. And at the
+words the same picture had come to her, and a sudden hunger for love,
+for such love,--the love she had missed in life,--had seized her. But it
+was then too late. She had taken in its place respect and companionship,
+a great establishment and social prominence.
+
+For a moment her mother, sitting calm and calculating in the little room
+at Ridgely, foretelling her future and teaching, with commercial
+exactness, the advantages of such a union, flashed before her; and then
+once more for a moment came the heart-hunger for what she had missed.
+
+Why should she not take the gift thus held out to her? She liked him and
+he liked her. She trusted him. It was the best chance of happiness she
+would ever have. Besides, she could help him. He had powers, and she
+could give him the opportunity to develop them. Love would come. Who
+could tell? Perhaps, the other happiness might yet be hers. Why should
+she throw it away? Would not life bring the old dream yet? Could it
+bring it? Here was this man whom she had known all her life, who filled
+almost the measure of her old dream, at her feet again. But was this
+love? Was this the "worship with out end"? As her heart asked the
+question, and she lifted her eyes to his face, the answer came with it:
+No. He was too cool, too calm. This was but friendship and respect, that
+same "safe foundation" she had tried. This might do for some, but not
+for him. She had seen him, and she knew what he could feel. She had
+caught a glimpse of him that evening when Ferdy Wickersham was so
+attentive to the little Huntington girl. She had seen him that night in
+the theatre when the fire occurred. He was in love; but it was with Lois
+Huntington, and happiness might yet be his.
+
+The next moment Alice's better nature reasserted itself. The picture of
+the young girl sitting with her serious face and her trustful eyes came
+back to her. Lois, moved by her sympathy and friendship, had given her a
+glimpse of her true heart, which she knew she would have died before she
+would have shown another. She had confided in her absolutely. She heard
+the tones of her voice:
+
+"Why, Mrs. Lancaster, I dream of him. He seems to me so real, so true.
+For such a man I could--I could worship him!" Then came the sudden
+lifting of the veil; the straight, confiding, appealing glance, the
+opening of the soul, and the rush to her knees as she appealed for him.
+
+It all passed through Mrs. Lancaster's mind as she looked far away over
+the slumbering sea, while Keith waited for her answer.
+
+When she glanced up at Keith he was leaning over the rail, looking far
+away, his face calm and serious. What was he thinking of? Certainly
+not of her.
+
+"No, you are not--not in love with me," she said firmly.
+
+Keith started, and looked down on her with a changed expression.
+
+She raised her hand with a gesture of protest, rose and stood beside
+him, facing him frankly.
+
+"You are in love, but not with me."
+
+Keith took her hand. She did not take it from him; indeed, she caught
+his hand with a firm clasp.
+
+"Oh, no; you are not," she smiled. "I have had men in love with me--"
+
+"You have had one, I know--" he began.
+
+"Yes, once, a long time ago--and I know the difference. I told you once
+that I was not what you thought me."
+
+"And I told you--" began Keith; but she did not pause.
+
+"I am still less so now. I am not in the least what you think me--or you
+are not what I think you."
+
+"You are just what I think you," began Keith. "You are the most charming
+woman in the world--you are my--" He hesitated as she looked straight
+into his eyes and shook her head.
+
+"What? No, I am not. I am a worldly, world-worn woman. Oh, yes, I am,"
+as dissent spoke in his face. "I know the world and am a part of it and
+depend upon it. Yes, I am. I am not so far gone that I cannot recognize
+and admire what is better, higher, and nobler than the world of which I
+speak; but I am bound to the wheel--Is not that the illustration you
+wrote me once? I thought then it was absurd. I know now how true it is."
+
+"I do not think you are," declared Keith. "If you were, I would claim
+the right to release you--to save you for--yourself and--"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"No, no. I have become accustomed to my Sybarite's couch of which you
+used to tell me. Would you be willing to give up all you have striven
+for and won--your life--the honors you have won and hope to win?"
+
+"They are nothing--those I have won! Those I hope to win, I would win
+for us both. You should help me. They would be for you, Alice." His eyes
+were deep in hers.
+
+She fetched a long sigh.
+
+"No, no; once, perhaps, I might have--but now it is too late. I chose my
+path and must follow it. You would not like to give up all you--hope
+for--and become like--some we know?"
+
+"God forbid!"
+
+"And I say, 'Amen.' And if you would, I would not be willing to have you
+do it. You are too much to me--I honor you too much," she corrected
+quickly, as she caught the expression in his face. "I could not let you
+sink into a--society man--like--some of those I sit next to and dance
+with and drive with and--enjoy and despise. Do I not know that if you
+loved me you would have convinced me of it in a moment? You have not
+convinced me. You are in love,--as you said just now,--but not with me.
+You are in love with Lois Huntington."
+
+Keith almost staggered. It was so direct and so exactly what his thought
+had been just now. But he said:
+
+"Oh, nonsense! Lois Huntington considers me old enough to be her
+grandfather. Why, she--she is engaged to or in love with Dr. Locaman."
+
+"She is not," said Mrs. Lancaster, firmly, "and she never will be. If
+you go about it right she will marry you." She added calmly: "I hope she
+will, with all my heart."
+
+"Marry me! Lois Huntington! Why--"
+
+"She considers me her grandmother, perhaps; but not you her grandfather.
+She thinks you are much too young for me. She thinks you are the most
+wonderful and the best and most charming man in the world."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!"
+
+"I do not know where she got such an idea--unless you told her so
+yourself," she said, with a smile.
+
+"I would like her to think it," said Keith, smiling; "but I have
+studiously avoided divulging myself in my real and fatal character."
+
+"Then she must have got it from the only other person who knows you in
+your true character."
+
+"And that is--?"
+
+She looked into his eyes with so amused and so friendly a light in her
+own that Keith lifted her hand to his lips.
+
+"I do not deserve such friendship."
+
+"Yes, you do; you taught it to me."
+
+He sat back in his chair, trying to think. But all he could think of was
+how immeasurably he was below both these women.
+
+"Will you forgive me?" he said suddenly, almost miserably. He meant to
+say more, but she rose, and at the moment he heard a step behind him. He
+thought her hand touched his head for a second, and that he heard her
+answer, "Yes"; but he was not sure, for just then Mrs. Rhodes spoke to
+them, and they all three had to pretend that they thought nothing
+unusual had been going on.
+
+They received their mail next day, and were all busy reading letters,
+when Mrs. Rhodes gave an exclamation of surprise.
+
+"Oh, just hear this! Little Miss Huntington's old aunt is dead."
+
+There was an exclamation from every one.
+
+"Yes," she went on reading, with a faint little conventional tone of
+sympathy in her voice; "she died ten days ago--very suddenly, of
+heart-disease."
+
+"Oh, poor little Lois! I am so sorry for her!" It was Alice Lancaster's
+voice.
+
+But Keith did not hear any more. His heart was aching, and he was back
+among the shrubbery of The Lawns. All that he knew was that Rhodes and
+Mrs. Rhodes were expressing sympathy, and that Mrs. Lancaster, who had
+not said a word after the first exclamation, excused herself and left
+the saloon. Keith made up his mind promptly. He went up on deck. Mrs.
+Lancaster was sitting alone far aft in the shadow. Her back was toward
+him, and her hand was to her eyes. He went up to her. She did not look
+up; but Keith felt that she knew it was he.
+
+"You must go to her," she said.
+
+"Yes," said Keith. "I shall. I wish you would come."
+
+"Oh, I wish I could! Poor little thing!" she sighed.
+
+Two days after that Keith walked into the hotel at Brookford. The clerk
+recognized him as he appeared, and greeted him cordially. Something in
+Keith's look or manner, perhaps, recalled his former association with
+the family at The Lawns, for, as Keith signed his name, he said:
+
+"Sad thing, that, up on the hill."
+
+"What?" said Keith, absently.
+
+"The old lady's death and the breaking up of the old place," he said.
+
+"Oh!--yes, it is," said Keith; and then, thinking that he could learn if
+Miss Huntington were there without appearing to do so, except
+casually, he said:
+
+"Who is there now?"
+
+"There is not any one there at all, I believe."
+
+Keith ordered a room, and a half-hour later went out.
+
+Instead of taking a carriage, he walked There had been a change in the
+weather. The snow covered everything, and the grounds looked wintry and
+deserted. The gate was unlocked, but had not been opened lately, and
+Keith had hard work to open it wide enough to let himself through. He
+tramped along through the snow, and turning the curve in the road, was
+in front of the house. It was shut up. Every shutter was closed, as well
+as the door, and a sudden chill struck him. Still he went on; climbed
+the wide, unswept steps, crossed the portico, and rang the bell, and
+finally knocked. The sound made him start. How lonesome it seemed! He
+knocked again, but no one came. Only the snowbirds on the portico
+stopped and looked at him curiously. Finally, he thought he heard some
+one in the snow. He turned as a man came around the house. It was the
+old coachman and factotum. He seemed glad enough to see Keith, and Keith
+was, at least, glad to see him.
+
+"It's a bad business, it is, Mr. Kathe," he said sadly.
+
+"Yes, it is, John. Where is Miss Huntington?"
+
+"Gone, sir," said John, with surprise in his voice that Keith should not
+know.
+
+"Gone where?"
+
+"An' that no one knows," said John.
+
+"What! What do you mean?"
+
+"Just that, sir," said the old fellow. "She went away two days after the
+funeral, an' not a worrd of her since."
+
+"But she's at some relative's?" said Keith, seeking information at the
+same time he gave it.
+
+"No, sir; not a relative in the world she has, except Mr. Wentworth in
+New York, and she has not been there."
+
+Keith learned, in the conversation which followed, that Miss Abigail had
+died very suddenly, and that two days after the funeral Miss Lois had
+had the house shut up, and taking only a small trunk, had left by train
+for New York. They had expected to hear from her, though she had said
+they would not do so for some time; and when no letter had come they had
+sent to New York, but had failed to find her. This all seemed natural
+enough. Lois was abundantly able to take care of herself, and, no doubt,
+desired for the present to be in some place of retirement. Keith
+decided, therefore, that he would simply go to the city and ascertain
+where she was. He thought of going to see Dr. Locaman, but something
+restrained him. The snow was deep, and he was anxious to find Lois; so
+he went straight down to the city that evening. The next day he
+discovered that it was not quite so easy to find one who wished to be
+lost. Norman knew nothing of her.
+
+Norman and his wife were now living with old Mrs. Wentworth, and they
+had all invited her to come to them; but she had declined. Keith was
+much disturbed.
+
+Lois, however, was nearer than Keith dreamed.
+
+Her aunt's death had stricken Lois deeply. She could not bear to go to
+New York. It stood to her only for hardness and isolation.
+
+Just then a letter came from Dr. Balsam. She must come to him, he said.
+He was sick, or he would come for her. An impulse seized her to go to
+him. She would go back to the scenes of her childhood: the memories of
+her father drew her; the memory also of her aunt in some way urged her.
+Dr. Balsam appeared just then nearer to her than any one else. She could
+help him. It seemed a haven of refuge to her.
+
+Twenty-four hours later the old Doctor was sitting in his room. He
+looked worn and old and dispirited. The death of an old friend had left
+a void in his life.
+
+There was a light step outside and a rap at the door.
+
+"It's the servant," thought the Doctor, and called somewhat gruffly,
+"Come in."
+
+When the door opened it was not the servant. For a moment the old man
+scarcely took in who it was. She seemed to be almost a vision. He had
+never thought of Lois in black. She was so like a girl he had known
+long, long ago.
+
+Then she ran forward, and as the old man rose to his feet she threw her
+arms about his neck, and the world suddenly changed for him--changed as
+much as if it had been new-created.
+
+From New York Keith went down to the old plantation to see his father.
+The old gentleman was renewing his youth among his books. He was much
+interested in Keith's account of his yachting-trip. While there Keith
+got word of important business which required his presence in New Leeds
+immediately. Ferdy Wickersham had returned, and had brought suit against
+his company, claiming title to all the lands they had bought from
+Adam Rawson.
+
+On his arrival at New Leeds, Keith learned that Wickersham had been
+there just long enough to institute his suit, the papers in which had
+been already prepared before he came. There was much excitement in the
+place. Wickersham had boasted that he had made a great deal of money in
+South America.
+
+"He claims now," said Keith's informant, Captain Turley, "that he owns
+all of Squire Rawson's lands. He says you knew it was all his when you
+sold it to them Englishmen, and that Mr. Rhodes, the president of the
+company, knew it was his, and he has been defrauded."
+
+"Well, we will see about that," said Keith, grimly.
+
+"That's what old Squire Rawson said. The old man came up as soon as he
+heard he was here; but Wickersham didn't stay but one night. He had
+lighted out."
+
+"What did the squire come for?" inquired Keith, moved by his old
+friend's expression.
+
+"He said he came to kill him. And he'd have done it. If Wickersham's got
+any friends they'd better keep him out of his way." His face testified
+his earnestness.
+
+Keith had a curious feeling. Wickersham's return meant that he was
+desperate. In some way, too, Keith felt that Lois Huntington was
+concerned in his movements. He was glad to think that she was abroad.
+
+But Lois was being drawn again into his life in a way that he little
+knew.
+
+In the seclusion and quietude of Ridgely at that season, Lois soon felt
+as if she had reached, at last, a safe harbor. The care of the old
+Doctor gave her employment, and her mind, after a while, began to
+recover its healthy tone. She knew that the happiness of which she had
+once dreamed would never be hers; but she was sustained by the
+reflection that she had tried to do her duty: she had sacrificed herself
+for others. She spent her time trying to help those about her. She had
+made friends with Squire Rawson, and the old man found much comfort in
+talking to her of Phrony.
+
+Sometimes, in the afternoon, when she was lonely, she climbed the hill
+and looked after the little plot in which lay the grave of her father.
+She remembered her mother but vaguely: as a beautiful vision, blurred by
+the years; but her father was clear in her memory. His smile, his
+cheeriness, his devotion to her remained with her. And the memory of him
+who had been her friend in her childhood came to her sometimes,
+saddening her, till she would arouse herself and by an effort banish him
+from her thoughts.
+
+Often when she went up to the cemetery she would see others there: women
+in black, with a fresher sorrow than hers; and sometimes the squire, who
+was beginning now to grow feeble and shaky with age, would be sitting on
+a bench among the shrubbery beside a grave on which he had placed
+flowers. The grave was Phrony's. Once he spoke to her of Wickersham. He
+had brought a suit against the old man, claiming that he had a title to
+all of the latter's property. The old fellow was greatly stirred up by
+it. He denounced him furiously.
+
+"He has robbed me of her," he said "Let him beware. If he ever comes
+across my path I shall kill him."
+
+So the Winter passed, and Spring was beginning to come. Its harbingers,
+in their livery of red and green, were already showing on the hillsides.
+The redbud was burning on the Southern slopes; the turf was springing,
+fresh and green; dandelions were dappling the grass like golden coins
+sown by a prodigal; violets were beginning to peep from the shelter of
+leaves caught along the fence-rows; and some favored peach-trees were
+blushing into pink.
+
+For some reason the season made Lois sad. Was it that it was Nature's
+season for mating; the season for Youth to burst its restraining bonds
+and blossom into love? She tried to fight the feeling, but it clung to
+her. Dr Balsam, watching her with quickened eyes, grew graver, and
+prescribed a tonic. Once he had spoken to her of Keith, and she had told
+him that he was to marry Mrs. Lancaster. But the old man had made a
+discovery. And he never spoke to her of him again.
+
+Lois, to her surprise and indignation, received one morning a letter
+from Wickersham asking her to make an appointment with him on a matter
+of mutual interest. He wished, he said, to make friends with old Mr.
+Rawson and she could help him. He mentioned Keith and casually spoke of
+his engagement. She took no notice of this letter; but one afternoon
+she was lonelier than usual, and she went up the hill to her father's
+grave. Adam Rawson's horse was tied to the fence, and across the lots
+she saw him among the rose-bushes at Phrony's grave. She sat down and
+gave herself up to reflection. Gradually the whole of her life in New
+York passed before her: its unhappiness; its promise of joy for a
+moment; and then the shutting of it out, as if the windows of her soul
+had been closed.
+
+She heard the gate click, and presently heard a step behind her. As it
+approached she turned and faced Ferdy Wickersham. She seemed to be
+almost in a dream. He had aged somewhat, and his dark face had hardened.
+Otherwise he had not changed. He was still very handsome. She felt as if
+a chill blast had struck her. She caught his eye on her, and knew that
+he had recognized her. As he came up the path toward her, she rose and
+moved away; but he cut across to intercept her, and she heard him
+speak her name.
+
+She took no notice, but walked on.
+
+"Miss Huntington." He stepped in front of her.
+
+Her head went up, and she looked him in the eyes with a scorn in hers
+that stung him. "Move, if you please."
+
+His face flushed, then paled again.
+
+"I heard you were here, and I have come to see you, to talk with you,"
+he began. "I wish to be friends with you."
+
+She waved him aside.
+
+"Let me pass, if you please."
+
+"Not until you have heard what I have to say. You have done me a great
+injustice; but I put that by. I have been robbed by persons you know,
+persons who are no friends of yours, whom I understand you have
+influence with, and you can help to right matters. It will be worth your
+while to do it."
+
+She attempted to pass around him; but he stepped before her.
+
+"You might as well listen; for I have come here to talk to you, and I
+mean to do it. I can show you how important it is for you to aid me--to
+advise your friends to settle. Now, will you listen?"
+
+"No." She looked him straight in the eyes.
+
+"Oh, I guess you will," he sneered. "It concerns your friend, Mr. Keith,
+whom you thought so much of. Your friend Keith has placed himself in a
+very equivocal position. I will have him behind bars before I am done.
+Wait until I have shown that when he got all that money from the English
+people he knew that that land was mine, and that he had run the lines
+falsely on which he got the money."
+
+"Let me pass," said Lois. With her head held high she started again to
+walk by him; but he seized her by the wrist.
+
+"This is not Central Park. You shall hear me."
+
+"Let me go, Mr. Wickersham," she said imperiously. But he held her
+firmly.
+
+At that moment she heard an oath behind her, and a voice exclaimed:
+
+"It is you, at last! And still troubling women!"
+
+Wickersham's countenance suddenly changed. He released her wrist and
+fell back a step, his face blanching. The next second, as she turned
+quickly, old Adam Rawson's bulky figure was before her. He was hurrying
+toward her: the very apotheosis of wrath. His face was purple; his eyes
+blazed; his massive form was erect, and quivering with fury. His heavy
+stick was gripped in his left hand, and with the other he was drawing a
+pistol from his pocket.
+
+"I have waited for you, you dog, and you have come at last!" he cried.
+
+Wickersham, falling back before his advance, was trying, as Lois looked,
+to get out a pistol. His face was as white as death. Lois had no time
+for thought. It was simply instinct. Old Rawson's pistol was already
+levelled. With a cry she threw herself between them; but it was
+too late.
+
+She was only conscious of a roar and blinding smoke in her eyes and of
+something like a hot iron at her side; then, as she sank down, of
+Squire Rawson's stepping over her. Her sacrifice was in vain, for the
+old man was not to be turned from his revenge. As he had sworn, so he
+performed. And the next moment Wickersham, with two bullets in his body,
+had paid to him his long-piled-up debt.
+
+When Lois came to, she was in bed, and Dr. Balsam was leaning over her
+with a white, set face.
+
+"I am all right," she said, with a faint smile. "Was he hurt?"
+
+"Don't talk now," said the Doctor, quietly. "Thank God, you are not hurt
+much."
+
+Keith was sitting in his office in New Leeds alone that afternoon. He
+had just received a telegram from Dave Dennison that Wickersham had left
+New York. Dennison had learned that he was going to Ridgely to try to
+make up with old Rawson. Just then the paper from Ridgely was brought
+in. Keith's eye fell on the head-lines of the first column, and he
+almost fell from his chair as he read the words:
+
+     DOUBLE TRAGEDY--FATAL SHOOTING
+
+     F.C. WICKERSHAM SHOOTS MISS LOIS HUNTINGTON AND IS KILLED BY
+     SQUIRE RAWSON
+
+The account of the shooting was in accordance with the heading, and was
+followed by the story of the Wickersham-Rawson trouble.
+
+Keith snatched out his watch, and the next second was dashing down the
+street on his way to the station. A train was to start for the east in
+five minutes. He caught it as it ran out of the station, and swung
+himself up to the rear platform.
+
+Curiously enough, in his confused thoughts of Lois Huntington and what
+she had meant to him was mingled the constant recollection of old Tim
+Gilsey and his lumbering stage running through the pass.
+
+It was late in the evening when he reached Ridgely; but he hastened at
+once to Dr. Balsam's office. The moon was shining, and it brought back
+to him the evenings on the verandah at Gates's so long ago. But it
+seemed to him that it was Lois Huntington who had been there among the
+pillows; that it was Lois Huntington who had always been there in his
+memory. He wondered if she would be as she was then, as she lay dead.
+And once or twice he wondered if he could be losing his wits; then he
+gripped himself and cleared his mind.
+
+In ten minutes he was in Dr. Balsam's office. The Doctor greeted him
+with more coldness than he had ever shown him. Keith felt his suspicion.
+
+"Where is Lois--Miss Lois Huntington? Is she--?" He could not frame the
+question.
+
+"She is doing very well."
+
+Keith's heart gave a bound of hope. The blood surged back and forth in
+his veins. Life seemed to revive for him.
+
+"Is she alive? Will she live?" he faltered.
+
+"Yes. Who says she will not?" demanded the Doctor, testily.
+
+"The paper--the despatch."
+
+"No thanks to you that she does!" He faced Keith, and suddenly flamed
+out: "I want to tell you that I think you have acted like a
+damned rascal!"
+
+Keith's jaw dropped, and he actually staggered with amazement. "What!
+What do you mean? I do not understand!"
+
+"You are not a bit better than that dog that you turned her over to, who
+got his deserts yesterday."
+
+"But I do not understand!" gasped Keith, white and hot.
+
+"Then I will tell you. You led that innocent girl to believe that you
+were in love with her, and then when she was fool enough to believe you
+and let herself become--interested, you left her to run, like a little
+puppy, after a rich woman."
+
+"Where did you hear this?" asked Keith, still amazed, but recovering
+himself. "What have you heard? Who told you?"
+
+"Not from her." He was blazing with wrath.
+
+"No; but from whom?"
+
+"Never mind. From some one who knew the facts. It is the truth."
+
+"But it is not the truth. I have been in love with Lois Huntington since
+I first met her."
+
+"Then why in the name of heaven did you treat her so?"
+
+"How? I did not tell her so because I heard she was in love with some
+one else--and engaged to him. God knows I have suffered enough over it.
+I would die for her." His expression left no room for doubt as to his
+sincerity.
+
+The old man's face gradually relaxed, and presently something that was
+almost a smile came into his eyes. He held out his hand.
+
+"I owe you an apology. You are a d----d fool!"
+
+"Can I see her?" asked Keith.
+
+"I don't know that you can see anything. But I could, if I were in your
+place. She is on the side verandah at my hospital--where Gates's tavern
+stood. She is not much hurt, though it was a close thing. The ball
+struck a button and glanced around. She is sitting up. I shall bring her
+home as soon as she can be moved."
+
+Keith paused and reflected a moment, then held out his hand.
+
+"Doctor, if I win her will you make our house your home?"
+
+The old man's face softened, and he held out his hand again.
+
+"You will have to come and see me sometimes."
+
+Five minutes later Keith turned up the walk that led to the side
+verandah of the building that Dr. Balsam had put up for his sanatorium
+on the site of Gates's hotel. The moon was slowly sinking toward the
+western mountain-tops, flooding with soft light the valley below, and
+touching to silver the fleecy clouds that, shepherded by the gentle
+wind, wreathed the highest peaks beyond. How well Keith remembered it
+all: the old house with its long verandah; the moonlight flooding it;
+the white figure reclining there; and the boy that talked of his ideal
+of loveliness and love. She was there now; it seemed to him that she had
+been there always, and the rest was merely a dream. He walked up on the
+turf, but strode rapidly. He could not wait. As he mounted the steps, he
+took off his hat.
+
+"Good evening." He spoke as if she must expect him.
+
+She had not heard him before. She was reclining among pillows, and her
+face was turned toward the western sky. Her black dress gave him a pang.
+He had never thought of her in black, except as a little girl. And such
+she almost seemed to him now.
+
+She turned toward him and gave a gasp.
+
+"Mr. Keith!"
+
+"Lois--I have come--" he began, and stopped.
+
+She held out her hand and tried to sit up. Keith took her hand softly,
+as if it were a rose, and closing his firmly over it, fell on one knee
+beside her chair.
+
+"Don't try to sit up," he said gently. "I went to Brookford as soon as I
+heard of it--" he began, and then placed his other hand on hers,
+covering it with his firm grasp.
+
+"I thought you would," she said simply.
+
+Keith lifted her hand and held it against his cheek. He was silent a
+moment. What should he say to her? Not only all other women, but all the
+rest of the world, had disappeared.
+
+"I have come, and I shall not go away again until you go with me."
+
+For answer she hid her face and began to cry softly. Keith knelt with
+her hand to his lips, murmuring his love.
+
+"I am so glad you have come. I don't know what to do," she said
+presently.
+
+"You do not have to know. I know. It is decided. I love you--I have
+always loved you. And no one shall ever come between us. You are
+mine--mine only." He went on pouring out his soul to her.
+
+[Illustration: "Lois--I have come"--he began]
+
+"My old Doctor--?" she began presently, and looked up at him with eyes
+"like stars half-quenched in mists of silver dew."
+
+"He agrees. We will make him live with us."
+
+"Your father-?"
+
+"Him, too. You shall be their daughter."
+
+She gave him her hands.
+
+"Well, on that condition."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The first person Keith sought to tell of his new happiness was his
+father. The old gentleman was sitting on the porch at Elphinstone in the
+sun, enjoying the physical sensation of warmth that means so much to
+extreme youth and extreme age. He held a copy of Virgil in his hand, but
+he was not reading; he was repeating passages of it by heart. They
+related to the quiet life. His son heard him saying softly:
+
+     "'O Fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint,
+     Agricolas!'"
+
+His mind was possibly far back in the past.
+
+His placid face lit up with the smile that always shone there when his
+son appeared.
+
+"Well, what's the news?" he asked. "I know it must be good."
+
+"It is," smiled Keith. "I am engaged to be married."
+
+The old gentleman's book fell to the floor.
+
+"You don't say so! Ah, that's very good! Very good! I am glad of that;
+every young man ought to marry. There is no happiness like it in this
+world, whatever there may be in the next.
+
+     "'Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati.'
+
+"I will come and see you," he smiled.
+
+"Come and see me!"
+
+"But I am not very much at home in New York," he pursued rather
+wistfully; "it is too noisy for me. I am too old-fashioned for it."
+
+"New York? But I'm not going to live in New York!"
+
+A slight shadow swept over the General's face.
+
+"Well, you must live where she will be happiest," he said thoughtfully.
+"A gentleman owes that to his wife.--Do you think she will be willing to
+live elsewhere?"
+
+"Who do you think it is, sir!"
+
+"Mrs. Lancaster, isn't it?"
+
+"Why, no; it is Lois Huntington. I am engaged to her. She has promised
+to marry me."
+
+"To her!--to Lois Huntington--my little girl!" The old gentleman rose to
+his feet, his face alight with absolute joy. "That is something like it!
+Where is she? When is it to be? I will come and live with you."
+
+"Of course, you must. It is on that condition that she agrees to marry
+me," said Keith, smiling with new happiness at his pleasure.
+
+"'In her tongue is the law of kindness,'" quoted the old gentleman. "God
+bless you both. 'Her price is far above rubies.'" And after a pause he
+added gently: "I hope your mother knows of this. I think she must: she
+seems so close to me to-day."
+
+
+
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