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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Double Trouble, by Herbert Quick, Illustrated
+by Orson Lowell
+
+
+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: Double Trouble
+       Or, Every Hero His Own Villain
+
+
+Author: Herbert Quick
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 3, 2006  [eBook #19451]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOUBLE TROUBLE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 19451-h.htm or 19451-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/4/5/19451/19451-h/19451-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/4/5/19451/19451-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+DOUBLE TROUBLE
+Or, Every Hero His Own Villain
+
+by
+
+HERBERT QUICK
+
+Author of Aladdin & Co., In the Fairyland of America
+
+With Illustrations by Orson Lowell
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Instantly he was aware of the descent upon him of a
+fiery comet of femininity]
+
+
+
+
+  Pervasive Woman!  In our hours of ease,
+  Our cloud-dispeller, tempering storm to breeze!
+  But when our dual selves the pot sets bubbling,
+  Our cares providing, and our doubles troubling!
+      --_Secret Ritual of the A.O.C.M._
+
+
+
+
+Indianapolis
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+Publishers
+Copyright 1906
+The Bobbs-Merrill Company
+January
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I  A SLEEP AND A FORGETTING
+    II  THE RIDDLE OF RAIMENT AND DATES
+   III  ANY PORT IN A STORM
+    IV  AN ADVENTURE IN BENARES
+     V  SUBLIMINAL ENGINEERING
+    VI  THE JONES PLANE OF MENTALITY
+   VII  ENTER THE LEGAL MIND
+  VIII  POISING FOR THE PLUNGE
+    IX  IN DARKEST PENNSYLVANIA
+     X  THE WRONG HOUSE
+    XI  THE FIRST BATTLE, AND DEFEAT
+   XII  ON THE FIRM GROUND OF BUSINESS
+  XIII  THE MARTYRDOM OF MR. STEVENS
+   XIV  THE TREASON OF ISEGRIM THE WOLF
+    XV  THE TURPITUDE OF BRASSFIELD
+   XVI  THE OFFICE GOES IN QUEST OF THE MAX
+  XVII  THE HONOR NEARS ITS QUARRY
+ XVIII  A GLORIOUS VICTORY
+   XIX  THE ENTRAPPING OF MR. BRASSFIELD
+    XX  THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE
+   XXI  SOME ALTERNATIONS IN THE CURRENT
+  XXII  A REVIVAL OF BELSHAZZAR
+ XXIII  THE MOVING FINGER WRITES
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Instantly he was aware of the descent upon him of a fiery comet of
+femininity . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+She seemed to emanate from the tiger-skin as a butterfly from the
+chrysalis
+
+A new thrill ran through the man and a new light came into his eyes.
+
+Vast and complete was the system of notes built up by the professor and
+the judge
+
+There she sits so attentive to her book that his entrance has not
+attracted her notice
+
+Soon their heads were close together over plans
+
+"Those red ones," said the judge, "are the very devil for showing on
+black!"
+
+"I am taking Miss Waldron home," said Mr. Amidon
+
+
+
+
+_The Persons of the Story_:
+
+
+FLORIAN AMIDON, a respectable young banker of literary and artistic
+tastes.
+
+EUGENE BRASSFIELD, for a description of whose peculiarities the reader
+is referred to the text.
+
+ELIZABETH WALDRON, a young woman just out of school.
+
+JUDGE BLODGETT, an elderly lawyer.
+
+MADAME LE CLAIRE, a professional occultist.
+
+PROFESSOR BLATHERWICK, her father, a German scientist.
+
+DAISY SCARLETT, a young woman of fervid complexion and a character to
+match.
+
+EDGINGTON AND COX, lawyers.
+
+ALVORD, a man about a small town.
+
+AARON, a Sudanese serving-man.
+
+  MRS. PUMPHREY,       )
+  MISS SMITH,          )
+  DOCTOR JULIA BROWN,  )   Members of the elite of Bellevale.
+  MRS. ALVORD,         )
+  MRS. MEYER,          )
+
+MRS. HUNTER, of Hazelhurst.
+
+  MR. SLATER,          )
+  MR. BULLIWINKLE,     )   Prominent male residents of Bellevale.
+  MR. STEVENS,         )
+  MR. KNAGGS,          )
+
+  SHEEHAN,             )   Labor leaders.
+  ZALINSKY,            )
+
+CONLON, a contractor.
+
+CLERKS, STENOGRAPHERS, SERVANTS, POLITICIANS, WAITERS, MEMBERS OF THE
+A. O. C. M., PORTERS, AND CITIZENS ON FOOT AND IN CARRIAGES.
+
+SCENE: In Hazelhurst, Wisconsin; New York City, and Bellevale,
+Pennsylvania. [N. B.--It might be anywhere else in these states, east
+or west.]
+
+TIME: From June, 1896, to March, 1901--but this is not insisted upon.
+
+
+
+
+DOUBLE TROUBLE
+
+
+I
+
+A SLEEP AND A FORGETTING
+
+  Deep in the Well where blushing hides the shrinking
+      and Naked Truth,
+  I have dived, and dared to fetch ensnared this Fragment
+      of tested Sooth;
+  And one of the purblind Race of Men peered with a curious Eye
+  Over the Curb as I fetched it forth, and besought me
+      to drop that Lie:
+  But all ye who long for Certitude, and who yearn for the
+      Ultimate Fact,
+  Who know the Truth and in spite of Ruth tear piecemeal
+      the Inexact,
+  Come list to my Lay that I sing to-day, and choose betwixt
+      him and me,
+  And choosing show that ye always know the Lie from the Veritee!
+            --_The Rime of the Sheeted Spoorn_.
+
+"Baggs," said Mr. Amidon, "take things entirely into your own hands.
+I'm off."
+
+"All right," said Baggs.  "It's only a day's run to Canada; but in case
+I should prove honest, and need to hear from you, you'll leave your
+address?"
+
+Mr. Amidon[1] frowned and made a gesture expressive of nervousness.
+
+"No," said he, in a high-pitched and querulous tone.  "No!  I want to
+see if this business owns me, or if I own it.  Why should you need to
+communicate with me?  Whenever I'm off a day you always sign
+everything; and I shall be gone but a day on any given date this time;
+so it's only the usual thing, after all.  I shall not leave any
+address; and don't look for me until I step in at that door!  Good-by."
+
+And he walked out of the bank, went home, and began looking over for
+the last time his cameras, films, tripods and the other paraphernalia
+of his fad.
+
+"This habit of running off alone, Florian," said Mrs. Baggs, his
+sister, housekeeper, general manager, and the wife of Baggs--his
+confidential clerk and silent partner--"gives me an uneasy feeling.  If
+you had only done as I wanted you to do, you'd have had some one----"
+
+"Now, Jennie," said he, "we have settled that question a dozen times,
+and we can't go over it again if I am to catch the 4:48 train.  Keep
+your eye on the men, and keep Baggs up in the collar, and see that
+Wilkes and Ranger get their just dues.  I must have rest, Jennie; and
+as for the wife, why, there'll be more some day for this purely
+speculative family of yours if we----  By the way, there's the whistle
+at Anderson's crossing.  Good-by, my dear!"
+
+On the 4:48 train, at least until it had aged into the 7:30 or 8:00,
+Mr. Florian Amidon, banker, and most attractive unmarried man of
+Hazelhurst, was not permitted to forget that his going away was an
+important event.  The fact that he was rich, from the viewpoint of the
+little mid-western town, unmarried and attractive, easily made his
+doings important, had nothing remarkable followed.  But he had
+exceptional points as a person of consequence, aside from these.  His
+father had been a scholar, and his mother so much of a _grande dame_ as
+to have old worm-eaten silks and laces with histories.  The Daughters
+of the American Revolution always went to the Amidons for ancient
+toggery for their eighteenth-century costumes--and checks for their
+deficits.  The family even had a printed genealogy.  Moreover, Florian
+had been at the head of his class in the high school, had gone through
+the family _alma mater_ in New England, and been finished in Germany.
+Hazelhurst, therefore, looked on him as a possession, and thought it
+knew him.
+
+We, however, may confide to the world that Hazelhurst knew only his
+outer husk, and that Mr. Amidon was inwardly proud of his psychological
+hinterland whereof his townsmen knew nothing.  To Hazelhurst his
+celibacy was the banker's caution, waiting for something of value in
+the matrimonial market: to him it was a bashful and palpitant--almost
+maidenly--expectancy of the approach of some radiant companion of his
+soul, like those which spoke to him from the pages of his favorite
+poets.
+
+This was silly in a mere business man!  If found out it would have
+justified a run on the bank.
+
+To Hazelhurst he was a fixed and integral part of their society: to
+himself he was a galley-slave chained to the sweep of percentages,
+interest-tables, cash-balances, and lines of credit, to whom there came
+daily the vision of a native Arcadia of art, letters and travel.  It
+was good business to allow Hazelhurst to harbor its illusions; it was
+excellent pastime and good spiritual nourishment for Amidon to harbor
+his; and one can see how it may have been with some quixotic sense of
+seeking adventure that he boarded the train.
+
+What followed was so extraordinary that everything he said or did was
+remembered, and the record is tolerably complete.  He talked with
+Simeon Woolaver, one of his tenants, about the delinquent rent, and
+gave Simeon a note to Baggs relative to taking some steers in
+settlement.  This was before 5:17, at which time Mr. Woolaver got off
+at Duxbury.
+
+"He was entirely normal," said Simeon during the course of his
+examination--"more normal than I ever seen him; an' figgered the shrink
+on them steers most correct from his standp'int, on a business card
+with a indelible pencil.  He done me out of about eight dollars an' a
+half.  He was exceedin'ly normal--up to 5:17!"
+
+Mr. Amidon also encountered Mrs. Hunter and Miss Hunter in the
+parlor-car, immediately after leaving Duxbury.  Miss Hunter was on her
+way to the Maine summer resorts with the Senator Fowlers, to whom Mrs.
+Hunter was taking her.  Mrs. Hunter noticed nothing peculiar in his
+behavior, except the pointed manner in which he passed the chair by
+Minnie's side, and took the one by herself.  This seemed abnormal to
+Mrs. Hunter, whose egotism had its center in her daughter; but those
+who remembered the respectful terror with which he regarded women
+between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five failed to see exceptional
+conduct in this.  His lawyer, Judge Blodgett, with whom he went into
+the buffet at about seven, found him in conversation with these two
+ladies.
+
+"He seemed embarrassed," said the judge, "and was blushing.  Mrs.
+Hunter was explaining the new style in ladies' figures, and asking him
+if he didn't think Minnie was getting much plumper.  As soon as he saw
+me he yelled: 'Hello, Blodgett!  Come into the buffet!  I want to see
+you about some legal matters.'  He excused himself to the ladies, and
+we went into the buffet."
+
+"What legal matters did he place before you?" said his interlocutor.
+
+"Two bottles of beer," said the judge, "and a box of cigars.  Then he
+talked Browning to me until 9:03, when he got off at Elm Springs
+Junction, to take the Limited north.  He was wrong on Browning, but
+otherwise all right."
+
+It was, therefore, at 9:03, or 9:05 (for the engineer's report showed
+the train two minutes late out of Elm Springs Junction), that Florian
+Amidon became the sole occupant of this remote country railway
+platform.  He sat on a trunkful of photographer's supplies, with a
+suit-case and a leather bag at his back.  It was the evening of June
+twenty-seventh, 1896.  All about the lonely station the trees crowded
+down to the right of way, and rustled in a gentle evening breeze.
+Somewhere off in the wood, his ear discerned the faint hoot of an owl.
+Across the track in a pool under the shadow of the semaphore, he heard
+the full orchestra of the frogs, and saw reflected in the water the
+last exquisite glories of expiring day lamped by one bright star.
+Leaning back, he partly closed his eyelids, and wondered why so many
+rays came from the star--with the vague wonder of drowsiness, which
+comes because it has been in the habit of coming from one's earliest
+childhood.  The star divided into two, and all its beams swam about
+while his gaze remained fixed, and nothing seemed quite in the focus of
+his vision.
+
+Putting out his hand, presently, he touched a window, damp with vapor
+and very cold.  On the other side he felt a coarse curtain, and where
+the semaphore stood, appeared a perpendicular bar of dim light.  A
+vibratory sound somewhere near made him think that the owls and frogs
+had begun snoring.  He heard horrible hissings and the distant clangor
+of a bell; and then all the platform heaved and quaked under him as if
+it were being dragged off into the woods.  He sprang upward, received a
+blow upon his head, rolled off to the floor, and----
+
+Stood in the middle of a sleeping-car, clad only in pajamas; and a
+scholarly-looking negro porter looked down in his face, laying gentle
+hands upon him, and addressing him in soothing tones.
+
+"Huht yo' haid, Mr. Brassfield?  Kind o' dreamin', wasn't yo', suh?"
+said the porter.  "Bettah tuhn in again, suh.  I'll wake yo' fo'
+N'Yohk.  Yo' kin sleep late on account of the snow holdin' us back.
+Jes' lay down, Mr. Brassfield; it's only 3:35."
+
+A lady's eye peeped forth from the curtain of a near-by berth, and
+vanished instantly.  Mr. Amidon, seeing it, plunged back into the
+shelter from which he had tumbled, and lay there trembling--trembling,
+forsooth, because, instead of summer, it seemed winter; for Elm Springs
+Junction, it appeared to be a moving train on some unknown road, going
+God knew where; and for Florian Amidon, in his outing suit, it had the
+appearance of a somnambulistic wretch in his night-clothes, who was
+addressed by the unfamiliar porter as Mr. Brassfield!
+
+
+
+[1] Editorial Note: As reflecting light on the personal characteristics
+of Mr. Florian Amidon, whose remarkable history is the turning-point of
+this narrative, we append a brief note by his college classmate and
+lifelong acquaintance, the well-known Doctor J. Galen Urquhart, of
+Hazelhurst, Wisconsin.  The note follows:
+
+"At the time when the following story opens, Mr. Florian Amidon was
+about thirty years of age.  Height, five feet ten and three-quarters
+inches; weight, one hundred and seventy-eight pounds.  For general
+constitutional and pathological facts, see Sheets 2 to 7, inclusive,
+attached hereto.  Subject well educated, having achieved distinction in
+linguistic, philological and literary studies in his university.  (See
+Sheet 1, attached.)  Neurologically considered, family history of
+subject (see Sheets 8 and 10) shows nothing abnormal, except that his
+father, a chemist, wrote an essay opposing the atomic theory, and a
+cousin is an epileptic.  I regard these facts as significant.
+Volitional and inhibitory faculties largely developed; may be said to
+be a man of strong will-power end self-control.  The following facts
+may be noted as possibly symptomatic of neurasthenia; fondness for the
+poetry of Whitman and Browning (see Nordau); tendency to dabble in
+irregular systems of medical practice; pronounced nervous and emotional
+irritability during adolescence; aversion to young women in society;
+stubborn clinging to celibacy.  In posture, gait and general movements,
+the following may be noted: vivacious in conversation; possessed of
+great mobility of facial expression; anteroposterior sway marked and
+occasionally anterosinistral, and greatly augmented so as to approach
+Romberg symptom on closure of eyes, but no ataxic evidences in
+locomotion.  Taking the external malleolus as the datum, the vertical
+and lateral pedal oscillation----"
+
+The editor regrets to say that space forbids any further incorporation
+of Doctor Urquhart's very illuminating note at this place.  It may
+appear at some time as a separate essay or volume.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE RIDDLE OF RAIMENT AND DATES
+
+  From his eyne did the glamour of Faerie pass
+  And the Rymour lay on Eildon grass.
+  He lay in the heather on Eildon Hill;
+  He gazed on the dour Scots sky his fill.
+  His staff beside him was brash with rot;
+  The weed grew rank in his unthatch'd cot:
+  "Syne gloaming yestreen, my shepherd kind,
+  What hath happ'd this cot we ruin'd find?"
+  "Syne gloaming yestreen, and years twice three,
+  Hath wind and rain therein made free;
+  Ye sure will a stranger to Eildon be,
+  And ye know not the Rymour's in Faerie!"
+            --_The Trewe Tale of Trewe Thomas_.
+
+As Mr. Amidon sensed the forward movement of the train in which he so
+strangely found himself, he had fits of impulse to leap out and take
+the next train back.  But, back where?  He had the assurance of his
+colored friend and brother that forward was New York.  Backward was the
+void conjectural.  Slowly the dawn whitened at the window.  He raised
+the curtain and saw the rocks and fences and snow of a winter's
+landscape--saw them with a shock which, lying prone as he was, gave him
+the sensation of staggering.  It was true, then: the thing he had still
+suspected as a nightmare was true.  Where were all the weeks of summer
+and autumn?  And (question of some pertinency!) where was Florian
+Amidon?
+
+He groped about for his clothes.  They were strange in color and
+texture, but, in such judgment as he could form while dressing in his
+berth, they fitted.  He never could bear to go half-dressed to the
+toilet-room as most men do, and stepped out of his berth fully
+appareled--in a natty business sack-suit of Scots-gray, a high
+turn-down collar, fine enamel shoes and a rather noticeable tie.
+Florian Amidon had always worn a decent buttoned-up frock and a
+polka-dot cravat of modest blue, which his haberdasher kept in stock
+especially for him.  He felt as if, in getting lost, he had got into
+the clothes of some other man--and that other one of much less quiet
+and old-fashioned tastes in dress.   It made him feel as if it were he
+who had made the run to Canada with the bank's funds--furtive,
+disguised, slinking.
+
+He looked in the pockets of the coat like an amateur pickpocket, and
+found some letters.  He gazed at them askance, turning them over and
+over, wondering if he ought to peep at their contents.  Then he put
+them back, and went into the smoking-room, where, finding himself
+alone, he turned up his vest as if it had been worn by somebody else
+whom he was afraid of disturbing, and looked at the initials on the
+shirt-front.  They were not "F. A.," as they ought to have been, but
+"E. B."!  He wondered which of the bags were his.  Pressing the button,
+he summoned the porter.
+
+"George," said he, "bring my luggage in here."
+
+And then he wondered at his addressing the porter in that drummer-like
+way--he was already acting up to the smart suit--or down; he was in
+doubt as to which it was.
+
+The bags, when produced, showed those metal slides, sometimes seen,
+concealing the owner's name.  Sweat stood on Florian's brow as he
+slipped the plate back and found the name of Eugene Brassfield,
+Bellevale, Pennsylvania!  A card-case, his pocketbook, all his linen
+and his hat--all articles of expensive and gentlemanly quality, but
+strange to him--disclosed the same name or initials, none of them his
+own.  In the valise he found some business letterheads, finely
+engraved, of the Brassfield Oil Company, and Eugene Brassfield's name
+was there set forth as president and general manager.
+
+"Great heaven!" exclaimed Florian, "am I insane?  Am I a robber and a
+murderer?  During this time which has dropped out of my life, have I
+destroyed and despoiled this gentleman, and--and run off in his
+clothes?  I must denounce myself!"
+
+The porter came, and, by way of denouncing himself, Mr. Amidon clapped
+his waistcoat shut and buttoned it, snapped the catches of the bags,
+and pretended to busy himself with the letters in his pockets; and in
+doing so, he found in an inside vest-pocket a long thin pocket-book
+filled with hundred-dollar bills, and a dainty-looking letter.  It was
+addressed to Mr. Eugene Brassfield, was unstamped, and marked, "To be
+Read En Route."
+
+There was invitation, there was allurement, in the very superscription.
+Clearly, it seemed, he ought to open and examine these letters.  They
+might serve to clear up this mystery.  He would begin with this.
+
+"My darling!" it began, without any other form of address--and was not
+this enough, beloved?--
+
+
+"My own darling!  I write this so that you may have something of me,
+which you can see and touch and kiss as you are borne farther and
+farther from me.  Distance unbridged is such a terrible thing--any long
+distance; and more than our hands may reach and clasp across is
+interstellar space to me.  You said last night that all beauty, all
+sweetness, all things delectable and enticing and fair, all things
+which allure and enrapture, are so bound up in little me, that surely
+the very giants of steam and steel would be drawn back to me, instead
+of bearing you away.  Ah, my Eugene!  You wondered why I put my hands
+behind me, and would not see your out-stretched arms!  Now that you are
+gone, and will not return for so long--until so near the day when I may
+be all that I am capable of becoming to you, let me tell you--I was
+afraid!
+
+"Not of you, dearest, not of you--for with all your ardor of wooing
+(and no girl ever had a more perfect lover--I shall always thank God
+for that mixture of Lancelot and Sir Galahad in you which makes every
+moment in your presence a delight), I always knew that you could leave
+me like a sensible boy, and, while longing for me, stay away.  But
+I--whom you have sometimes complained of a little for my coldness--had
+I not looked above your eyes, and put my hands behind me, I should have
+clung to you, dear, I was afraid, and never have allowed you to go as
+you are now going, and made you feel that I am not the perfect woman
+that you describe to me, as me.  Even now, I fear that this letter will
+do me harm in your heart; but all the lover in me--and girls inherit
+from their fathers as well as from their mothers--cries out in me to
+woo you; and you must forget this, only at such times of tenderness as
+you will sometimes have while you are gone, when one embrace would be
+worth a world.  Then read or remember this, as my return-clasp for such
+thoughts.
+
+"Besides, may I not, now that you are away from me, give you a glimpse
+of that side of my soul which a girl is taught to hide?  This was the
+'swan's nest among the reeds' which Little Ellie meant to show to that
+lover who, maybe, never came.  Ah, Mrs. Browning was a woman, and knew!
+(Mind, dear, it's Mrs. Browning I speak of!)
+
+"Sometimes, when the Knight has come, and the wife wishes to show the
+glories of her soul, 'the wild swan has deserted, and a rat has gnawed
+the reed.'  Let the wild and flowery little pool of womanhood which is
+yours--yours, dearest--grow somewhat less strange to you than it would
+have been--last evening--so that when you see me again you will see it
+as a part of me, and, without a word or look from me, know me, even
+more than you now do,
+
+"Yours,
+
+"Elizabeth."
+
+
+Florian read it again and again.  Sometimes he blushed--not with shame,
+but with the embarrassment of a girl--at the fervid eloquence.  And
+then he would feel a twinge of envy for this Eugene Brassfield who
+could be to such a girl "a perfect lover."
+
+"From one soon to be a bride," said he to himself, "to the man she
+loves: it's the sweetest letter ever written.  I wonder how long ago
+she wrote it!  Here's the date: 7th January, 1901.  Odd, that she
+should mistake the year!  But it was the 7th, no doubt.  By the way, I
+don't know the day of the week or month, or what month it is!  Here,
+boy!  Is that the morning paper?"
+
+He seized the paper feverishly, held it crushed in his hand until the
+boy left him, and then spread it out, looking for the date.  It was
+January the 8th, 1901!  The letter had been written the preceding
+evening.  Whatever had happened to this man Brassfield, had occurred
+within the past sixteen hours.  And, great God! where had Florian
+Amidon been since June, 1896?  All was dark; and, in sympathy with it,
+blackness came over his eyes, and he rode into New York in a dead faint.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+ANY PORT IN A STORM
+
+    _Cosimo_: Join us, Ludovico!  Our plans are ripe,
+  Our enterprise as fairly lamped with promise
+  As yon steep headland, based, 'tis true, with cliff,
+  But crowned with waving palms, and holding high
+  Its beaconing light, as holds its jewel up,
+  Your lady's tolling finger!  Come, the stage
+  Is set, your cue is spoke.
+
+    _Ludovico_: And all the lines
+  Are stranger to my lips, and alien quite
+  To car and eye and mind.  I tell thee, Cosimo,
+  This play of thine is one in which no man
+  Should swagger on, trusting the prompter's voice;
+  For mountains tipped with fire back up the scene,
+  Out of the coppice roars the tiger's voice:
+  The lightning's touch is death; the thunder rends
+  The very rocks whereon its anger lights,
+  The paths are mined with gins; and giants wait
+  To slay me should I speak with faltering tongue
+  Their crafty shibboleth!  Most dearest coz,
+  This part you offer bids me play with death!
+  I'll none of it.
+            --_Vision of Cosimo_.
+
+"Comin' round all right, now, suh?" said the learned-looking porter.
+"Will you go to the Calumet House, as usual, suh?  Ca'iage waitin', if
+you feel well enough to move, suh."
+
+"I'm quite well," said Mr. Amidon, though he did not look it, "and will
+go to the--what hotel did you say?"
+
+"Calumet, suh; I know you make it yo' headquahtahs thah."
+
+"Quite right," said Mr. Amidon; "of course.  Where's the carriage and
+my grips?"
+
+He had never heard of the Calumet; but he wanted, more than anything
+else then, privacy in which he might collect his faculties and get
+himself in hand, for his whole being was in something like chaos.  On
+the way, he stopped the cab several times to buy papers.  All showed
+the fatal date.  He arrived at the palatial hotel in a cab filled with
+papers, from which his bewildered countenance peered forth like that of
+a canary-bird in the nesting-season.  He was scarcely within the door,
+when obsequious servants seized his luggage, and vied with one another
+for the privilege of waiting on him.
+
+"Why, how do you do?" said the clerk, in a manner eloquent of delighted
+recognition.  "Your old room, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, I think so," said Mr. Amidon.
+
+The clerk whirled the register around, and pointing with his pen, said:
+
+"Right there, Mr. Brassfield."
+
+Mr. Amidon's pen stopped midway in the downward stroke of a capital F.
+
+"I think," said he, "that I'll not register at present.  Let me have
+checks for my luggage, please--I may not stay more than an hour or so."
+
+"As you please," said the clerk.  "But the room is entirely at your
+service, always, you know.  Here are some telegrams, sir.  Came this
+morning."
+
+He took and eyed the yellow envelopes with "E. Brassfield" scrawled on
+them, as if they had been infernal machines; but he made no movement
+toward opening them.  Something in the clerk's look admonished him that
+his own was extraordinary.  He felt that he must seek solitude.  To be
+called by this new and strange name; to have thrust on him the acting
+of a part in which he knew none of the lines and dared not refuse the
+character; and all these circumstances made dark and sinister by the
+mysterious maladjustment of time and place; the possession of another
+man's property; the haunting fear that in it somewhere were crime and
+peril--these things, he thought, would drive him out of his senses,
+unless he could be alone.
+
+"I think I'll take the room," said he.
+
+"If any one calls?" queried the clerk.
+
+"I'm not in," said Amidon, gathering up the telegrams.  "I do not wish
+to be disturbed on any account."
+
+Five years!  What did it mean?  There must be some mistake.  But the
+break in the endless chain of time, the change from summer to winter,
+and from the dropping to sleep at Elm Springs Junction to the awakening
+in the car--there could be no mistake about these.  He sat in the room
+to which he had been shown, buried in the immense pile in the strange
+city, as quiet as a heron in a pool, perhaps the most solitary man on
+earth, these thoughts running in a bewildering circle through his mind.
+The dates of the papers--might they not have been changed by some silly
+trick of new journalism, some straining for effect, like the agreement
+of all the people in the world (as fancied by Doctor Holmes) to say
+"Boo!" all at once to the moon?  He ran his eyes over the news columns
+and found them full of matter which was real news, indeed, to him.
+President Kruger was reported as about to visit President McKinley for
+the purpose of securing mediation in some South African war; and
+Senator Lodge had made a speech asking for an army of one hundred
+thousand men in, of all places, the Philippine Islands.  The twentieth
+century, and with it some wonderful events, had stolen on him as he
+slept--if, indeed, he had slept--there could be no doubt of that.
+
+He found his hands trembling again, and, fearing another collapse,
+threw himself upon the bed.  Then, as drowsiness stole on him, he
+thought of the five years gone since last he had yielded to that
+feeling, and started up, afraid to sleep.  He saw lying on the table
+the unopened telegrams, and tore them open.  Some referred to sales of
+oil, and other business transactions; one was to inform Brassfield that
+a man named Alvord would not meet him in New York as promised, and one
+was in cipher, and signed "Stevens."
+
+He took from his pocket the letters of Brassfield, and read them.  One
+or two were invitations to social functions in Bellevale.  One was a
+bill for dues in a boating-club; another contained the tabulated
+pedigree of a horse owned in Kentucky.  A very brief one was in the
+same handwriting as the missive he had first read, was signed "E. W.,"
+and merely said that she would be at home in the evening.  But most of
+them related to the business of the Brassfield Oil Company, and
+referred to transactions in oil.
+
+He lay back on the bed again, and thought, thought, thought, beginning
+with the furthest stretch of memory, and coming down carefully and
+consecutively--to the yawning chasm which had opened in his life and
+swallowed up five years.  Time and again, he worked down to this abyss,
+and was forced to stop.  He had heard of loss of memory from illness,
+but this was nothing of the sort.  He had been tired and nervous that
+night at Elm Springs Junction, but not ill; and now he was in robust
+health.  Perhaps some great fit of passion had torn that obliterating
+furrow through his mind.  Perhaps in those five years he had become
+changed from the man of strict integrity who had so well managed the
+Hazelhurst Bank, into the monster who had robbed Eugene Brassfield
+of--his clothes, his property, the most dearly personal of his
+possessions--these, certainly (for Amidon knew the rule of evidence
+which brands as a thief the possessor of stolen goods); and who could
+tell of what else?  Letters, bags, purses, money--these any vulgar
+criminal might have, and bear no deeper guilt than that of theft; but,
+the clothes!  Mr. Amidon shuddered as his logic carried him on from
+deduction to reduction--to murder, and the ghastly putting away of
+murder's fruit.  Imagination threw its limelight over the horrid
+scene--the deep pool or tarn sending up oilily its bubbles of
+accusation; the shadowy wood with its bulging mound of earth and leaves
+swept by revealing rains and winds; the moldy vat of corrosive liquid
+eating away the damning evidence; the box with its accursed stains,
+shipped anywhere away from the fatal spot, by boat or ship, to be
+relentlessly traced back--and he shivered in fearful wonder as to how
+the crime had been committed.  In some way, he felt sure, Eugene
+Brassfield's body must have been removed from those natty clothes of
+his, before Florian Amidon could have put them on, and with them donned
+the personality of their former owner.
+
+And here entered a mystery deeper still--the strange deception he
+seemed to impose on the dead man's acquaintances.  And this filled him,
+somehow, with the most abject dread and fear.  Brassfield seemed to
+have been a well-known man; for porters and clerks in New York do not
+call the obscure countryman by name.  To step out on the street was,
+perhaps, to run into the very arms of some one who would penetrate the
+disguise.  Yet he could not long remain in this room; his very
+retirement--any extraordinary behavior (and how did he know
+Brassfield's ordinary courses?)--would soon advertise his presence.
+Amidon walked to the window and peered down into the street.  His eyes
+traveled to the opposite windows, and finally in the blind stare of
+absent-mindedness became fixed on a gold-and-black sign which he began
+stupidly spelling out, over and over.  "Madame le Claire," it read,
+"Clairvoyant and Occultist."  Not an idea was associated in his mind
+with the sign until the word "mystery," "mystery," began sounding in
+his ears--naturally enough, one would say, in the circumstances.  Then
+the letters of the word floated before his eyes; and finally he
+consciously saw the full sign stretching across two windows: "Madame le
+Claire, Clairvoyant and Occultist.  All Mysteries Solved."
+
+Florian stared at this sign, until he became conscious of deep
+weariness at so long standing on his feet.  Then he saw, blossoming,
+the multiplying lights of an early winter's dusk--so numbly had the
+time slipped by.  And in the gruesome close of this dreadful day, the
+desperate and perplexed man stole timidly down the stairways--avoiding
+the elevator--and across the street to the place of the occultist.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+AN ADVENTURE IN BENARES
+
+  The silly world shrieks madly after Fact,
+    Thinking, forsooth, to find therein the Truth;
+  But we, my love, will leave our brains unracked,
+    And glean our learning from these dreams of youth:
+  Should any charge us with a childish act
+    And bid us track out knowledge like a sleuth,
+  We'll lightly laugh to scorn the wraiths of History,
+    And, hand in hand, seek certitude in Mystery.
+          --_When the Halcyon Broods_.
+
+The house of the occultist was one of a long row, all alike, which
+reminds the observer of an exercise in perspective, as one glances down
+the stretch of balustraded piazzas.  Amidon walked straight across the
+street from the hotel, and counted the flights of stairs up to the
+fourth floor.  There was no elevator.  The denizens of the place gave
+him a vague impression of being engaged in the fine arts.  A glimpse of
+an interior hung with Navajo blankets, Pueblo pottery, Dakota beadwork,
+and barbaric arms; the sound of a soprano practising Marchesi
+exercises; an easel seen through an open door and flanked by a Grand
+Rapids folding-bed with a plaster bust atop; and a pervasive scent of
+cigarettes, accounted for, and may or may not have justified, the
+impression.  On the fourth floor the scent shaded off toward
+sandalwood, the sounds toward silence, Bohemia toward Benares.  He
+walked in twilight, on inch-deep nap, to a door on which glowed in
+soft, purple, self-emitted radiance, the words:
+
+    MADAME Le CLAIRE
+         ENTER
+
+
+The invitation was plain, and he opened the door.  As he did so, the
+deep, mellow note of a gong filled the place with a gentle alarum.  It
+was sound with noise eliminated, and matched, to the ear, the velvet of
+the carpet.
+
+The room into which he looked was dark, save for light reflected from a
+marble ball set in a high recess in the ceiling.  None of the lamps,
+whose rays illuminated the ball, could be seen, and the white globe
+itself was hung so high in the recess that none of its direct rays
+reached the corners of the apartment.  A Persian rug lay in the center,
+and took the fullest light.  There were no sharp edges of shadow, but
+instead there was a softly graduated penumbra, deepening into murk.
+Straight across was a doorway with a portiere, beyond was another, and
+still farther, a third, all made visible in silhouette by the light in
+a fourth room, seen as at the end of a tunnel.
+
+Across this gossamer-barred arch of light, a black figure was
+projected, and swelled as it neared in silent approach.  It came
+through the last portiere, on into the circle of light, and stood, a
+turbaned negro, bowing low toward the visitor.
+
+"Madame le Claire," said Amidon feebly, "may I speak with her?"
+
+There was no reply, unless a respectful scrutiny might be taken for
+one.  Then the dumb Sudanese, carrying with him the atmosphere of a
+Bedouin tent, disappeared, lingered, reappeared, and beckoned Amidon to
+follow.  As they passed the first portiere, that mellow and gentle
+gong-note welled softly again from some remote distance.  At the second
+archway, it sounded nearer, if not louder.  At the third, as Amidon
+stepped into the lighted room, it filled the air with a golden
+vibrancy.  It was as if invisible ministers had gone before to announce
+him.
+
+Amidon took one long look at the scene in the fourth room, and a great
+wave of unbelief rolled across his mind.  Through this long day of
+shocks and surprises, he had reached that stage of amazedness where the
+evidential value of sensory impressions is destroyed.  He covered his
+eyes with his hands, expecting that the phantasms before him might pass
+with vision, and that with vision's return might come the dear,
+familiar commonplaces of his commonplace life.
+
+The room seemed to have no windows, and the roar of the New York street
+outside was gone, or faint as the hum of a hive.  The walls were hung
+with fabrics of wool or silk, in dull greens and reds, and the floor
+was spread with rugs.  With mouth redly ravening at him, and eyes
+emitting opalescent gleams, lay a great tiger-skin rug, upon which, on
+a kind of dais, sat a woman--a woman whose eyes sought his in a steady
+regard which flashed a thrill through his whole body as he gazed.  For
+she seemed to emanate from the tiger-skin, as a butterfly from the
+chrysalis.
+
+[Illustration: She seemed to emanate from the tiger-skin, as a
+butterfly from the chrysalis.]
+
+Her dress was of some combination of black and yellow which carried
+upward the tones of the great rug.  Her bare arms--long, and tapering
+to lithe wrists and hands--were clasped by dull-gold bracelets of
+twisted serpents.  Over shapely shoulders, the flesh of which looked
+white and young, there was thrown a wrap like feathery snow, from under
+which drooped down over the girlish bosom a necklace that seemed of
+pearl.  The face was fair, its pallor tinged with red at lips, and rose
+on cheeks.  The eyes, luminous and steady, shone out through heavy dark
+lashes, from under brows of black, and seemed, at that first glance, of
+oriental darkness.  A great mass of dark-brown hair encircled the
+rather small face, and even in his first look, he noted at the temples
+twin strands of golden-blond which, carried out like rays in the fluffy
+halo about her brow, reappeared in all the twistings and turnings of
+the involved pile which crowned the graceful head.  The
+yellow-and-black of the tiger appeared thus, from head to foot.  It was
+afterward that he found out something of the secret of the peculiar
+fascination in the great dark eyes.  One of them was gray, with that
+greenish tinge which has been regarded as the token of genius.  The
+other was of a mottled golden-brown, with lights like those in the
+tiger's eye.  In both, in any but strong light, the velvet-black pupils
+spread out, and pushed the iris back to a thin margin; and thus they
+varied, from gray or brown, to that liquid night, which Amidon now saw
+in them, as he stepped within the doorway, and looked so long on her,
+as she sat like a model for the Queen of the Jungle, that under other
+circumstances the gaze would have seemed rude.  Some sense of this,
+breaking through his bewilderment, made him bow.
+
+"Madame le Claire?" said he.
+
+"The same," said she.  "How can I serve you, sir?"
+
+The voice, a soft contralto, was the complement of the steady regard of
+the eyes.  As she spoke, she rose and stepped toward him, down from the
+little dais to the rug.  She rose, not with the effort which marks the
+act in most, but lightly, as a flower rises from the touch of a breeze.
+She was tall and lithe, and all the curves of her figure were long and
+low--once more suggesting the soft strength of the tigress.  But when
+speech parted the lips, the smile which overspread her face won him.
+
+"How can I serve you, my friend?" she repeated.
+
+"I am in great trouble," said he.
+
+"Yes," she purred.
+
+"I saw your sign," he went on.  "And I want you to tell me where I have
+been since June, 1896--and who is Eugene Brassfield?  Did I kill
+him--or only rob him?  And who is Elizabeth?"
+
+She had stepped close to him now, as if to catch the scent of some
+disturbing influence which might account for such incoherence; but
+Amidon's breath was innocent of taint.
+
+"Yes!" said she, "I think we shall be able to tell you all.  But, are
+you well?"
+
+"I have had no breakfast," said he.  "When I found that I had lost five
+years--I forgot.  And--once--I fainted.  I'm not quite--well, I'm
+afraid!"
+
+Madame le Claire stepped to the wall and pushed a button.  The turbaned
+Sudanese reappeared at once.
+
+"Aaron," said she, "tell Professor Blatherwick that Mr.--Mr.----"
+
+"Amidon," said Florian hastily--"Amidon is my name."
+
+"--Amidon will dine with us," Madame le Clair continued smoothly.  "He
+has some very interesting things for us to look into.  And have dinner
+served at once."
+
+Aaron! and dinner! and Blatherwick!  The delicious vulgarity of the
+names was sweet music.  For be it remembered that Florian was a banker,
+and a man of position; and sandalwood, Sudanese, Bedouins and illusions
+were ill for the green wound of his mystery--which, in all conscience,
+was bad enough in and of itself!  Some confidence in the realities of
+things returned to him, but he followed Madame le Claire like a
+faithful hound.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+SUBLIMINAL ENGINEERING
+
+  Now, Red-Neck Johnson's right hand never knew his left hand's game;
+  And most diverse were the meanings of the gestures of the same.
+  For, benedictions to send forth, his left hand seemed to strive,
+  While his right hand rested lightly on his ready forty-five.
+  "Mr. Chairman and Committee," Mr. Johnson said, said he,
+  "It is true, I'm tangled up some with this person's property;
+  It is true that growin' out therefrom and therewith to arrive,
+  Was some most egregious shootin' with this harmless forty-five:
+  But list to my defense, and weep for my disease," said he;
+  "I am double," half-sobbed Red-Neck, "in my personality!"
+            --_The Affliction of Red-Neck Johnson_.
+
+Madame le Claire led Mr. Amidon to the next room, turned him over to
+Aaron (now wonderfully healed of his dumbness) with a gesture of
+dismissal; and he was ushered by the negro into a most modern-looking
+chamber, in which was a brass bedstead with a snowy counterpane.
+
+"Dinner will be suhved in ten minutes, suh," said Aaron.
+
+They were waiting for him in the little dining-room, when he was wafted
+through the door by Aaron's obsequious bow.  The tigrine Le Claire
+advanced from a bay-window, bringing a slender man with stooped
+shoulders.
+
+"Papa," she said, "this is Mr. Amidon, whom I have induced to dine with
+us; Mr. Amidon, Professor Blatherwick."
+
+Professor Blatherwick was bent, and much bleached, faded and wrinkled.
+His eyes seemed both enormous in size and sunk almost to his occiput,
+by reason of being seen through the thickest of glasses.  His lank,
+grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside
+grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled
+dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip--a beard which any
+absent-minded man might well be supposed to have failed to observe, and
+therefore to have neglected to shave.  When Madame le Claire stopped in
+leading him forward, he halted, and feeling blindly forward into the
+air as if for Amidon's hand, though quite ten feet from him, he
+murmured:
+
+"I am bleaced to meet you, sir."
+
+"Evidently German," thought Amidon.
+
+"I understandt," said the professor, opening the conversation, as
+Madame le Claire poured the tea, "that you haf hadt some interesding
+experiences in te realm of te supliminal."
+
+Amidon's tension of mind, which had left him under the compulsion of
+the woman's mastery of him, returned at the professor's remark.
+
+"I have been dead," said he, "since the twenty-seventh of June, 1896!"
+
+Madame le Claire stared at him in unconcealed amazement.  The professor
+calmly dipped toast in his tea.
+
+"So!" said he.  "Fife years.  Goot!  Dis case vill estaplish some
+important brinciples.  Vill you be so kindt as to dell us te
+saircumstances?"
+
+"Oh, papa!" broke in the lady.  "You must wait until after dinner.  I
+saw Mr. Amidon was weak and disturbed, and, I thought--hungry.  So I
+asked him to stay."
+
+"I have eaten nothing but this," said Mr. Amidon, "since June
+twenty-seventh, 1896----"
+
+"So," said the professor calmly.  "Dis vill brofe an important case."
+
+"I saw the sign," said Amidon, "'All Mysteries Solved,' and I came
+here----"
+
+"De sign," said the professor, "iss our goncession to te spirit of
+gommercialism, and te gompetitife system.  It vas Clara's itea.  But
+some mysteries ve do not attempt.  In te realm of te supliminal,
+howefer, ve go up against almost any broposition.  I am Cheneral
+Superintendent of Supliminal Enchineering; Clara is te executant.  I
+make blance, and Clara does as she bleaces aboudt following dem.  You
+vill, at your gonfenience, dell us all you can of your case.  I vill
+analyze, glassify, and tiagnose; she vill unrafel."
+
+It was late in the evening when the professor was through with his
+diagnosis.  He made copious notes of Amidon's story.  Several times his
+daughter called him away from some book in which he had lost himself
+while on an excursion in search of parallel cases.  At last he paused,
+his face expressing the triumph of a naturalist at the discovery of a
+new beetle.
+
+"You are not in te least insane!" said he, with the air of telling
+Florian something hard to believe; "ant you haf none of te stigmata of
+techeneration.  I vould say that you are not a griminal--not much of a
+griminal anyhow, ant bropaply not at all!"
+
+"Thank you!  Oh, thank you!" fervently exclaimed Amidon.
+
+"It iss a case," went on the professor, "of dual pairsonality.  For
+fife years you haf bropaply been absent from Hazelhurst.  You haf been
+someveres!"
+
+"Where, where?" cried Amidon.
+
+"Do not fear," said Madame le Claire, laying her hand on his arm.  "If
+it is a case of dual personality, we shall soon find out all about it.
+You have mysteriously disappeared.  Many men do.  There was Lieutenant
+Rogers, of the navy; and Ansel Burns, of Ohio, who woke up in Kentucky
+in his own store, under the name of Brooks--Brooks' store, you know."
+
+"And Ellis, of Bergen," said the professor, "who vas lost for a year,
+ant tiscofered himself in te pairson of a cook in a lumber-gamp in
+Minnesota, unter te name of Chamison.  Oh, dere are many such!  Te
+supchectife mind, te operations of vich are normally below te threshold
+of gonsciousness, suddenly dakes gontrol.  Pouf! you are anodder man!
+You haf been Smidt; you are now Chones.  As Chones you remember notting
+of Smidt.  You go on, guided by instinct, ant te preacquired
+semi-intellichence of auto-hypnotismus----"
+
+"Oh, papa!" said the tiger-lady, "those are awful words--for a sick
+man!"
+
+"Vell," resumed Blatherwick, dropping into what he regarded as the
+vernacular, "you go on as Chones, all right all right.  Some day,
+someveres--in dis case in a sleeping-car--you vake as Smidt again.  You
+now do not remember Chones or te Chones life.  You are all vorked
+up--vat you call it--flabbergasted.  You come to Madame le Claire.  Vat
+does she do?  She calls te supchectife mind up abofe te threshold of
+gonsciousness, ant you are restored to te Chones blane of mentality.
+Hypnotismus, hypnotismus: that is vat does it!"
+
+"And shall I stay--Jones?"
+
+"No, no!" said Madame le Claire.  "I will restore you.  But while you
+are--Jones--I shall find out all you want to know about
+the--Jones--life, and I will tell you when you become yourself again.
+You will learn all about Bellevale, and Brassfield, and----"
+
+"And Elizabeth?" asked Amidon.
+
+Madame le Claire paused.
+
+"Yes," said she, with much less cordiality, "I suppose so, if you want
+to know--about Elizabeth."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE JONES PLANE OF MENTALITY
+
+    My lady's eyes
+    Ensphere the skies,
+  Abound in lovely mysteries:
+    Behind their bars
+    Are pent the stars,
+  Warm Venus' glow, the shafts of Mars.
+
+    Once, murky night
+    Shut in my sight:
+  One glance revealed the source of light!
+    Now, to be wise
+    Or gay, I rise,
+  By gazing in my lady's eyes!
+            --_Song from The Oculist_.
+
+The process of bringing the "Jones plane of mentality" uppermost in Mr.
+Amidon would not have been regarded by the masculine reader of the
+unregenerate sort (though to such far be it from me to appeal!) as an
+operation at all painful.  But Mr. Amidon, I must declare, was not of
+the unregenerate sort.
+
+"Now," said Madame le Claire, "sit down in the arm-chair, and in a few
+minutes you will feel a sensation of drowsiness.  Soon you will sleep.
+Think with all your power that you are to sleep."
+
+She was sitting in a very high chair, he in a low one, so that her eyes
+were above his.  The professor was blent with the shadows of some
+corner, in silent self-effacement, with a note-book in his hand.
+
+Amidon tried to think with all his power that he was to sleep; but the
+lights and shadows and depths of the woman's eyes drew all thoughts to
+them.  Uncle Toby, looking for the mote in the eye of the Widow Wadman,
+must have felt as did our wandering Florian.  Never before had he noted
+for more than a fleeting glance the light that lies in woman's eyes.
+Now those limpid orbs met his in a regard, kindly, steady, eloquent of
+unutterable things.  He noted the dark, arched, ebon sweep of the
+eyebrow, the long dark lashes curved daintily upward, the shining
+whiteness in the corners, and the wondrous irises.  The one which was
+gray was dark like a moonlit sky; the other, like the same sky necked
+with clouds, and filled with the golden smoke of some far-off
+conflagration; and at the inner margin of both, the black of the
+dilated pupils seemed to spread out into the iris in rays of feathery
+blackness.  They seemed to him like twin worlds--great, capacious,
+mysterious, alluring, absorbing.  Behind the feathery curtains of those
+irises lay all the lovely things of which he had ever thought or
+dreamed--the things which sculptors and poets and painters see, and
+seek to express.  And without changing his gaze, he saw below the eyes
+the downy cheek, and the red lips so sweetly curved.  A new thrill ran
+through the man, and a new light came into his eyes.  Madame le Claire
+blushed.
+
+[Illustration: A new thrill ran through the man and a new light came
+into his eyes]
+
+"Are you thinking of going to sleep?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said he; "I was thinking--I am afraid I was not!"
+
+"Try again," said she; "and please control your thoughts.  Think that
+you--are--going--to sleep.  To sleep----Sleep!  Sleep!----
+Slee--ee--eep!"
+
+Now Amidon's eyes sought hers again, and held there; and the twin
+worlds, sphered in some slowly-turning orbit, seemed swinging in their
+native space.  Now the cheeks and hair and mouth came out in their
+places, returning to distinctness like features of a face on a screen.
+Now the eyes became twin stars again, casting on him once more the
+effulgence of their binary glow.
+
+And now eyes and face and hair, and Madame le Claire--all passed away;
+and Florian Amidon became as naught, and the tigrine lady and the faded
+professor played with the thing which had been he, as upon a machine.
+The pillar of Hazelhurst society, the banker now five years lost, the
+bewildered wretch of the sleeping-car, was now, by his own act, given
+over as passively as some inert instrument, body and soul, to the
+guidance and manipulation of this shady occultist, not four hours known
+to him--while outside droned the muffled roar of the human cyclone
+which sweeps and whirls and eddies through Manhattan.  So stripped of
+stability was the pillar, that he was now a mere feather of humanity,
+self-abandoned to the clasp of the storm of the modern Babylon.  Madame
+le Claire questioned, Amidon answered (or Something answered for him),
+and Professor Blatherwick wrote in his book--wrote the data, of "te
+Chones blane of mentality."
+
+"Dis iss enough," said the professor, "for vunce.  Pring him to!"
+
+Madame le Claire leaned back, gave her subject a long look, and then,
+walking to him, took his head tenderly in her hands.  With the left,
+she held his forehead; the fingers of the right crept insinuatingly
+among the curls resting on his neck, swept thence over to his brow, and
+down across his eyelids, closing them; and Amidon sat, senseless as a
+statue, and almost as still.
+
+"Right!" said Madame le Claire sharply.  "Wake!"
+
+Amidon opened his eyes wearily.
+
+"When are you going to begin?" said he.
+
+"Ve are t'rough," said the professor.  "Ve know it all."
+
+"And Brassfield?  Did I----?"
+
+"You have done him notting," said the professor.  "You are all recht.
+You need not fear----"
+
+"And the lady--Elizabeth?" suggested Amidon, as passing to the thing of
+next importance.
+
+"It is near morning," said Madame le Claire, "and you are prostrated.
+We are all very tired.  Aaron must take you to your hotel.  You must
+sleep.  Never fear, no harm is coming to you.  When you wake, come to
+me, and I will tell you all about it--'All Mysteries Solved,' you know.
+Good night.  You will sleep late in the morning."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+ENTER THE LEGAL MIND
+
+  The need of lucre never looms so large
+    As when 'tis gotten in some devious way:
+  It mitigates the blackness of the charge
+    That every nether level yielded pay.
+
+  The man who dares e'en to the prison's marge
+    Should bring back what he went for--or should stay!
+  The need of lucre never looms so large
+    As when 'tis gotten in some devious way.
+
+  Men can o'erlook the stain upon the targe,
+    If from its boss the jewel shoots its ray;
+  Or blood upon the pirate's sable barge
+    Covered by silks' and satins' bright array--
+  The need of lucre never looms so large
+    As when 'tis gotten in some devious way.
+            --_Rondels of the Curb_.
+
+Morning passed to noon, and the day aged into afternoon, before Amidon
+rose from the deep sleep which (according to Le Claire's prediction)
+followed his evening with her and the professor.  With that odd sense
+of bewilderment which the early riser feels at this violation of habit,
+he went into the cafe for his belated breakfast.  Impatient to finish
+the meal so that he might haste to the promised interview, he studied
+the menu, and with his eye scouted the room for a waiter--failing to
+bestow even the slightest glance on a man seated opposite.  This fact,
+however, did not prevent the stranger from scrutinizing Amidon's face,
+his dress, and even his hands, as if each minutest detail were vitally
+important.  He even dropped his napkin so as to make an excuse for
+looking under the table, and thus getting a good view of Florian's
+boots.  Finally he spoke, as if continuing a broken-off conversation.
+
+"As I said a while ago," he remarked, "Browning falls short of being a
+poet, just as a marble-cutter falls short of being a sculptor.  You
+were quoting _Love Among the Ruins_, as the train stopped at Elm
+Springs Junction; or was it _Evelyn_----"
+
+Amidon's eyes, during this apparently aimless disquisition, had been
+drawn from his meal to the speaker.  He saw an elderly gentleman,
+clothed in the black frock-coat and black tie of the rural lawyer of
+the old school.  His eyes shot keen and kindly glances from the deep
+ambush of great white brows, and his mouth was hidden under a snowy
+mustache.  His features made up for a somewhat marked poverty of shape
+by a luxuriance of ruddy color, the culminating point of which was
+to be found in the broad and fleshy nose.  His voice, soft and gentle
+when he began, swelled out, as he spoke, into something of the
+orator's orotund.  When Amidon looked at him, the speaker returned
+the gaze in full measure, and leaning across the table, pointed his
+finger at his auditor, and slowly uttered the words, "--as--the
+train--stopped--at--Elm Springs Junction!"
+
+"Why, Judge Blodgett!" exclaimed Amidon, "can this be you?"
+
+"Can it be I?" exclaimed the judge.  "Can it be me!  No difficulty
+about that.  Never mind the handshaking just yet--after a while, maybe.
+When it comes to the can-it-be part, how about you?  How about the past
+five years, and Jennie Baggs keeping a place for you every meal for all
+this time, up to the present hour?  I tell you, Florian, letting me
+down in that case of Amidon versus Cattermole, without a scrap of
+evidence, and getting me licked by a young practitioner who studied in
+my office, was bad--was damnable; but an only sister, Florian! and not
+one word in five years!"
+
+"She's well, then, Jennie is?"
+
+"She's as well, Florian, as a woman with the sorrow you've brought to
+her, and the mother of two infants, can be.  But why do you ask?--why
+do you ask?--why is it necessary to go through the work of surplusage
+of asking?"
+
+"Children, eh?" said Florian.  "Good for Jennie!  And how's Baggs?"
+
+"Oh, Baggs, yes--why, Baggs has come through it all with his health
+about unimpaired, Baggs has!  But no Baggs court of inquiry is going to
+switch me off the examination I'm now conducting; and I tell you, Mr.
+Amidon, you can't dodge me.  What double life took you away from home,
+and property, and everything?"
+
+"Judge Blodgett," said Mr. Amidon, in that low voice which, with the
+English language as the medium of communication, is known as the
+danger-signal the world over, "the term 'double life' has a meaning
+which is insulting.  Don't use it again."
+
+"Well, well, Florian," said the judge, evidently pleased, "sustaining
+the motion to strike that out, the question remains.  You aren't
+obliged to answer, you know; but you know, too, what not answering it
+means."
+
+"Judge," said Amidon, after a long pause, "to say that I don't know
+where I have been, or what I have been doing, since June
+twenty-seventh, 1896, until yesterday morning when I came to my senses
+in a moving sleeping-car, won't satisfy you; but it's the truth."
+
+The judge looked off toward the ceiling in the manner of a jurist
+considering some complex argument, but was silent.
+
+"Now I have found a way," said Amidon, "of having all this explained.
+Come with me, and let's find out.  There may be complications; I may
+need your help.  You are the one man in all the world that I was just
+wishing for."
+
+"Complications, eh?" said the judge.  "Well, well!  Let us see!"
+
+And now he dropped into the old manner so well known to his companion
+as his office style.  Piece by piece, he drew from Amidon his story.
+He dropped back to previous parts of the narrative, and elicited
+repetitions.  He slurred over crucial points as if he did not see their
+bearing, and then artfully assumed minute variations of the tale, but
+was always corrected.
+
+"The prosecution is obliged to rest its case," said he, at last.
+"You're not crazy, or all my studies in diseases of the mind have done
+me no good.  Your story hangs together as no fiction could.  To believe
+you, brands us both as lunatics.  Come on and let's see what your
+mesmerist frauds have to say.  As a specialist in facts, I'm a drowning
+man catching at a straw.  Come on: mesmerism, or astrology, or Moqui
+snake-dance, it's all one to me!"
+
+Up the stairs again, this time with Judge Blodgett, warily snuffing the
+air, and shy of both Bohemia and Benares.  Into the presence of Madame
+le Claire, now gowned appropriately for the morning, and
+looking--extraordinary, it is true, with her party-colored hair and
+luminous eyes--but not so jungly as when she greeted the despairing
+sight of Amidon the night before.
+
+"Madame, and sir," said the judge, "as Mr. Amidon's friend and legal
+adviser, I am here to protect his interests."
+
+"So!  Goot!" said the professor.  "Bud te matter under gonsideration is
+psychical, nod beguniary.  Howefer, if you are interested in te realm
+of te supliminal, if you care for mental science----"
+
+"Sir," said the judge, "I may almost claim to be a specialist (so far
+as a country practitioner is permitted to specialize) in senile and
+paretic dementia, since I had the honor to represent the proponents in
+the will case of Snoke versus Snoke.  But it's only fair to say that I
+regard hypnotism as humbug--only fair."
+
+"Goot, goot!" said the professor delightedly.  "To temonstrate to an
+honest ant indellichent skeptic, is te rarest of brifileches.  Ve vill
+now broceed to temonstrate.  Here is our friendt Herr Amidon avokened
+in a car after fife years of lostness; he has anodder man's dotes,
+anodder man's dicket, letters--unt all.  He gomes to Madame le Claire
+ant Blatherwick.  He is hypnotized out of te Amidon blane of being, ant
+into anodder.  He is mate to gife himself avay.  Now ve vill broceed to
+dell aboudt his life since he vas lost--is it a dest, no?"
+
+"Huh!" snorted the judge.
+
+"Go on," cried Amidon; "tell me the story!"
+
+"Vell," said the professor, "for four veeks after you left Elm Springs
+Chunction, you vandered--not, Clara?"
+
+"Wandered," said Clara, "and to so many places that I can't remember
+them.  Then you found oil, or traces of it--I can't get that very
+plainly--on a farm at Bunn's Ferry, Pennsylvania; and bought an option
+on the farm.  Then you opened an office in Bellevale, and have been
+there in the oil business ever since.
+
+"How's he been doin' financially?" interjected the judge.
+
+"He has made a fortune," said Clara.  "I believe him to be one of the
+principal men of the town, socially and in a business way.  He didn't
+tell me this, but we think the circumstances seem to indicate it."
+
+"Te saircumstances," said the professor, filling a pause, "show it."
+
+"How is it," said the judge, "that no one has ever heard of his
+Bellevale career out in Hazelhurst, if he's so prominent?  We read, out
+there, and once in a while one of us goes outside the corporation."
+
+"His name," said Madame le Claire, "in Bellevale is not Florian Amidon."
+
+"What is it?" cried Amidon.  "Tell it to me!"
+
+Madame le Claire restrained him with a calm glance.
+
+"It is Eugene Brassfield," said she.
+
+"It is your own dotes," cried the professor gleefully, "your own
+dicket, your own gorrespondence!"
+
+Amidon was feeling in his breast-pocket for something.  He withdrew his
+hand, holding in it a letter, and looked from it to Madame le Claire
+questioningly.
+
+"Oh, yes!" said she, not quite in her usual manner, "it's yours.  It's
+from Miss Elizabeth Waldron, of Bellevale, your affianced wife."
+
+"Aha!" said the judge.  "Now will you get mad when I speak of a double
+life?  Engaged, hey?"
+
+"I never saw the--the lady in my life," was the reply; "so how can I
+be--can I be--engaged to her?"
+
+"In te Amidon blane of gonsciousness," said the professor, "you are
+stranchers.  In te Brassfield pairsonality, you are:--_Gott im Himmel_,
+you are stuck on her, stuck on her--not, Clara?  Vas he not gracey?
+Only Clara cut it short in te temonstration; but as a luffer, in te
+Brassfield blane, you are vot you call hot stuff."
+
+"You had better read the gentlemen your notes," said Madame le Claire
+coldly.  "And please excuse me.  I hope to see you both again."  And
+with a sinuous bow, she swept from the room.
+
+Blodgett, keenly analytical, lost no word of the professor's notes.
+Florian sat with the letter from Miss Waldron in his hand, lost in
+thought.  Sometimes his face burned with blushes, sometimes it paled
+with anxiety.  His eyes ran over the letter full of sweet ardors; and
+when he thought of replying to them--or leaving them unanswered--his
+brow went moist and his heart sick.  What should he do?  What could he
+do?
+
+When they returned to the hotel, the judge was in a fever of excitement.
+
+"I tell you, Florian," said he, "I believe the professor is right about
+this.  It seems that there are precedents, you know--cases on all-fours
+with yours.  When I went to the telephone, up there, I called up Stacy
+and Stacy's and asked 'em to get me Dun's and Bradstreet's report on
+your Bellevale business.  It ought to be up here pretty soon.  There
+may be something down there worth looking after, and needing attention."
+
+"Perhaps," groaned Amidon.  "Do you know that I'm engaged----"
+
+"One of the things I referred to," said the judge.
+
+"--to a lady, down there, whom I shouldn't know if I were to meet her
+out in the hall?  If I go back to Hazelhurst, she is put under a cloud
+as a deserted woman--to say nothing of her feelings.  And if I go back
+to Bellevale--my God, Judge, how can I go back, and take my place in a
+society where every one knows me, and I know nobody; and be a lover to
+a girl who may be--anything, you know; but who has the highest sort of
+claims on me, and a nature, I'm sure, capable of the keenest suffering
+or pleasure--how can I?"
+
+"Message, sir, from Stacy and Stacy," said a messenger boy at the door.
+
+Judge Blodgett tore open the envelope, and read the telegraphic reports.
+
+"M--m--m----Y--e--es," said he.  "It'll take diplomacy, Florian,
+diplomacy.  But, if these reports are to be trusted, and I guess they
+are, you've got about ten times as much at Bellevale as you have at
+Hazelhurst.  And, as you say, the lady has claims.  As an honorable
+man--an engaged man, who has received the plighted troth of a pure
+young heart--and a good financier, this Bellevale life demands
+resumption at your hands.  Prepare, fellow citizen, to meet the
+difficulties of the situation."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+POISING FOR THE PLUNGE
+
+  Yea, all her words are sweet and fair,
+    And so, mayhap, is she;
+  But words are naught but molded air,
+    And air and molds are free.
+  Belike, the youth in charmed hall
+    Some fardels sore might miss,
+  Scanning his Beauty's household all,
+    Or ere he gave the kiss!
+            --_The Knyghte's Discourse to his Page_.
+
+Now it happened that at Bellevale, the young woman whom we--with the
+sweet familiarity of art--have had the joy to know as Elizabeth, moved
+about in unconsciousness, mostly blissful, of the annihilation of Eugene
+Brassfield.  The mails might take to Mrs. Baggs at Hazelhurst vague
+letters from Judge Blodgett hinting at clues and traces of Florian,
+preparatory to the restoration of the lost brother; but Brassfield, never
+anything but a wraith from the mysterious caves of the subconsciousness,
+was non-existent for evermore, except through the magic of Le Claire.
+But Elizabeth Waldron, just home from college, full of the wise unwisdom
+of Smith and twenty-three, and palpitating with the shock which had
+broken the cables by which she had so long, long ago moored herself in
+the safe and deep waters of the harbor of a literary and intellectual
+celibacy, still dreamed of the bubble personality which had vanished,
+although at times waves of anxious unrest swept across her bosom.
+
+For one thing, that epistle of hers, made for his reading on the
+train--how could she have written it!  Elizabeth's cheeks burned when she
+remembered it.  Then she thought of the weeks of chaste dalliance between
+her acceptance of him and his departure, and of the _elan_ with which he
+had entered that safe harbor of hers, and swept her from those moorings;
+and the letter seemed slight return for the rites of adoration he had
+performed before her.
+
+But (and now the cheeks burned once more) why, why had he not written to
+her as soon as he reached New York?  Was he one with whom it was out of
+sight, out of mind?  Or was he one of those business men who can not
+place anything more delicate than price-quotations on paper?   Or--and
+here the cheeks paled--was he suddenly ill?  She wished, after all, that
+she had not written it!
+
+And one day, when a special-delivery letter came and surprised her, she
+ran out in the winter sun to the summer-house where she had sat so much
+with him, and read it in quiet.  Whereupon the unrest increased, because
+the letter seemed as unlike Eugene as if he had copied it from some
+_Complete Letter Writer_.
+
+Florian had agonized over this letter--had even tried the experiment of
+writing one while in the "Chones blane" under the influence of Madame le
+Claire; but it was too incoherent for any use--and he had done the best
+he could.  Professor Blatherwick and Judge Blodgett were working out a
+code of behavior for Mr. Amidon when he should return to Bellevale.  They
+kept him in the Brassfield personality for hours every day; but such a
+matter as this letter to Elizabeth, he could not intrust to them.  Every
+day, though, he looked into the varicolored eyes of Clara and willed to
+sleep; and every day the operation grew less and less painful to him.
+
+Vast and complex was the system of notes built up by the professor and
+the judge.  They told him all about his various properties and holdings
+of stock; they listed the clubs and social organizations to which he
+belonged, and the offices he held in each.  They made a directory of
+names mentioned by him in his abnormal state, and compiled facts about
+each person.  It must have been very much like the copious information
+that we think we have about historical characters--elaborate, and the
+best thing possible in the absence of the real facts; but only the
+reflection of these people in the mind of some one else, after all.
+Finally the judge brought the whole to his friend, neatly typewritten,
+paragraphs numbered, facts tabulated, and all provided with a splendid
+index and system of elaborate cross-references.
+
+[Illustration: Vast and complete was the system of notes built up by the
+professor and the judge]
+
+"You see, my boy," said Judge Blodgett, "all any one really needs to know
+of his surroundings is actually very little.  Otherwise, most people
+never could get along at all.  Neander couldn't find his way to
+market--the greatest philosopher of his time.  Now these notes tell you
+more--actually more--of your Bellevale life, than some folks ever find
+out about themselves--with a little filling in, on the spot, you know,
+why, they'll do first rate.  For instance, under 'S' we have a man named
+Stevens, 'Old Stevens' you playfully call him.  I figure him out to be an
+elderly man in some position of authority--he seems to sort of govern
+things, even you.  The professor thinks he's your banker, but his
+intellectual domination leads me to the conclusion that he's your lawyer.
+There is a Miss Strong, evidently an important person.  I venture the
+assertion that she's a literary woman, as you speak about asking her to
+'look at her notes.'  I shouldn't wonder if she's a rival of Miss
+Waldron's, eh, Professor?"
+
+"Well," said Amidon impatiently, "who else?"
+
+"Oh, lots of 'em," answered the judge.  "Here's 'A' for instance, and
+under it a man named Alvord--a close friend of yours----"
+
+"The one this telegram is from," said Amidon.  "And I suppose this one in
+cipher is from Stevens, the lawyer or banker.  It must be important."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," said Judge Blodgett; "and this Mr. Alvord I take to
+be a minister, for you connect him with some topic relating to 'Christian
+Martyrs' and 'rituals.'  He must be a close friend, for you sometimes
+call him 'Jim,' in strict privacy, I presume.  Oh, there's a regular
+directory of 'em here.  I've even discovered that you have a little
+friend, a child of say seven or eight years--tell by the tone, you
+know--that you call 'Daisy' and 'Daise' and sometimes 'Strawberry.'
+These fondnesses for children and clergymen prove to me, Florian, that an
+Amidon is good goods on any confounded plane of consciousness you can
+throw 'em into--conservative, respectable, and all that, you know."
+
+Amidon looked suspiciously at the notes, unappeased by this flattery.
+What justification there was for suspicion we shall be better able to say
+when we meet these Bellevale acquaintances of his.
+
+"Is this the guide by which I am to regulate my conduct in Bellevale?"
+asked he, after looking it over.
+
+"Well," said the judge, "it may not be quite like remembering all about
+things; but anyhow it will help some, won't it?"
+
+"I suppose I'm to carry it with me, and when an acquaintance accosts me
+on the street, I'm to look him up in the index and find out who he is,
+before I decide whether to shake hands with him or cut him, am I?"
+
+"Not exactly that way," said the judge; "that wouldn't be practicable,
+you know; but it's ten to one you'll find his name there.  I tell you,
+that compilation----"
+
+"Te tifision into gategories," broke in the professor, "according to te
+brinciples of lotchik was te chutche's itea.  A vonderfully inchenious
+blan.  It vill enaple you----"
+
+"Has it any plan of reference," interrupted Amidon, "by which I shall be
+enabled to find out about a man when I don't know who he is?"
+
+"N--no."
+
+"Or, in such a case, to give me knowledge of my past relations with him,
+or whether I like him or hate him?"
+
+"Of course," said the judge, "we only try to do the possible.  The law
+requires no man to do more."
+
+"Does this thing," said Amidon, shaking it in evident disgust, "tell
+where I live in Bellevale, whether in lodgings or at a hotel, or in my
+own house?  Could I take it and find my home?"
+
+"Damn it, Florian!" said the judge, "I'm not here to be jumped on, am I?
+No one can remember everything all the time.  We'll get those things and
+put them into a supplement, you know."
+
+"Not for me," said Florian.  "I've made up my mind definitely about this.
+I'll not depend on it.  If I go back to Bellevale, I must have at hand at
+all times the means of connecting things as I find them with the life of
+this Brassfield.  I must take with me the bridge which spans the chasm
+between Brassfield and Amidon--I mean our friend Clara.  Without her, I
+shall never go back.  I haven't the nerve.  I should soon find myself in
+a tangle of mistakes from which I could never extricate myself--I've
+thought it all out.  The Cretan Labyrinth would be like going home from
+school, in comparison."
+
+"Pshaw!" said the judge, looking lovingly at Blodgett's _Notes on the
+Compiled Statements of Brassfield_, "you could feel your way along very
+well--with these."
+
+"Would you go into the trial of a case," said Florian, "no matter how
+simple, in which not only your own future, but the happiness of others,
+might be involved, without even a speaking acquaintance with any of the
+parties, or one of the witnesses?  I tell you, Judge, we must have Madame
+le Claire."
+
+The judge rolled up the notes and snapped a rubber band about the roll.
+He said no more until evening.
+
+"Then," said he, as if he had only just made up his mind to concede the
+point, "let's see if it can be arranged at once.  Come over to the
+Blatherwicks' with me."
+
+"I think," said Amidon slowly, "that I'll see her alone."
+
+"Alone, yes--yes!" said the judge, changing an interjection into an
+assent.  "By all means; by all means.  Only don't you think there may be
+things down there needing attention, Florian--money matters--and--and
+other things, you know, my boy--and that we ought to be moving in the
+matter?  I would respectfully urge," he concluded, using his orator's
+chest-tones to drown Amidon's protest against his joking, "that no time
+be lost in deciding on our course."
+
+The judge had noted the increasing dependence of his client on the fair
+hypnotist, and the growing interest that she seemed to feel in him, and
+therefore showed some coolness toward the proposal to take her to
+Bellevale.  The eyes inured to the perusal of dusty commentaries and
+reports were still sharp enough to see the mutual tenderness exchanged in
+the unwavering, eye-to-eye encounters whereby Amidon was converted into
+Brassfield, and to note the softness of the feline strokings by which
+Florian's catalepsy was induced or dispelled.  He rather favored dropping
+the Blatherwick acquaintance: but he could not answer Amidon's arguments
+as to their need for its continuance.
+
+So it was that, about the time when Elizabeth Waldron sat in the
+summer-house at Bellevale, with tears of disappointment in her pretty
+eyes, holding poor Florian's best-he-could-do but ineffective letter all
+crumpled up in her hand, the tigrine Le Claire rested her elbows upon a
+window-ledge in the attitude of gazing into the street (it was all
+attitude, for she saw nothing), and was disturbed by Aaron, who brought
+in Mr. Florian Amidon's penciled card.  She gave a few pokes to her hair,
+of course, turned once or twice about before her mirror, and went into
+the parlor.
+
+"The judge and your father," said Amidon, "have got up a wonderful guide
+from notes of this man Brassfield's talk."
+
+"Yes," said she with a smile; "they are wonderful."
+
+"And perfectly useless," he continued, "so far as my steering by them in
+Bellevale is concerned."
+
+"As useless," she admitted, "as can be."
+
+"You knew that?" he inquired.  "Then why did you let them go on with it?"
+
+"That's good," said she.  "I like that!  I was nicely situated to mention
+it, wasn't I?"
+
+"The fact is, Clara," said he, "as you can see, that I've got to have you
+at Bellevale.  I shall not go down there without you.  I can't do it.
+I've thought it all out----"
+
+"So have I," said she.  "I knew that you'd have to have me--for a little
+while; knew it all the time.  I was just thinking about it as you came
+up."
+
+"Then can you--will you go?"
+
+"Can I stay, Florian?" she inquired steadily.  "Can I leave you like a
+just-cured blind and deaf man, and my work for you only begun?  I must
+go!  We were just talking about our going to Bellevale, as you came in,
+papa.  Mr. Amidon will need us for a while when he first gets there."
+
+"Surely, surely," said the professor.  "Te most inderesting phaces of dis
+case vill arise in Bellevale.  I grave te brifiletche of geeping you
+unter my opsairfation until--until to last dog is hunk!  Let us despatch
+Chutche Blotchett to spy out te landt.  In a day or two he can tiscofer
+vere dis man Brassfield lifes, vere te fair Fraulein Elizabeth resides,
+and chenerally get on to te logal skitivation.  He vill meet up with us
+at te train, and see that ve don't put our foots in it.  Ve vill dus be
+safed te mortification of hafing Alderman Brassfield, chairman of te
+street committee, asking te boliceman te vay to his lotchings; or te
+fiance of Miss Valdering bassing her on te street vit a coldt, coldt
+stare of unrecognition or embracing her young laty friendt py mistake.
+Goot!  Let te chutche dake his tebarture fortwith.  Clara and I vill be
+charmed and habby, my friendt, to aggompany you.  Supliminally
+gonsidered, it vill be great stuff!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+IN DARKEST PENNSYLVANIA
+
+  The good God gave hands, left and right,
+  To deal with divers foes in fight;
+  And eyes He gave all sights to hold;
+  And limbs for pacings manifold;
+  Gave tongue to taste both sour and sweet,
+  Gave gust for salad, fish and meat;
+  But, Christian Sir, whoe'er thou art,
+  Trust not thy many-chambered heart!
+  Give not one bow'r to Blonde, and yet
+  Retain a room for the Brunette:
+  Whoever gave each other part,
+  The devil planned and built the heart!
+            --_In a Double Locket_.
+
+Clara, Amidon and Blatherwick were on their way to Bellevale.  The
+professor was in the smoking-car, his daughter and Florian in the
+parlor-car.  Amidon, his nerves strained to the point of agony, sat
+dreading the end of the journey, as one falling from an air-ship might
+shrink from the termination of his.  Madame le Claire brooded over him
+maternally.
+
+"Of course," said Amidon, "this Brassfield must have adopted some
+course of behavior toward Miss Waldron, when----"
+
+"You must call her Elizabeth," said Madame le Claire, "and----"
+
+"And what?" he inquired, as she failed to break the pause.  "Have you
+found out--much--about it--from him?"
+
+"Not so very much," she replied, "only she'll expect such things as
+'dearest' and 'darling' at times.  And occasionally 'pet' and
+'sweetheart'--and 'dearie.'  I can't give them all; you must
+extemporize a little, can't you?"
+
+"Merciful heaven!" groaned Amidon; "I can't do it!"
+
+"You have," said Madame le Claire; "and more--a good deal more."
+
+"It was that scoundrel Brassfield," said he, in perfect seriousness.
+"More?  What do you mean by 'more'?"
+
+"Well, sometimes you----"
+
+"He, not I!"
+
+"You, I think we had better say--sometimes, when you were alone, your
+arm went about her waist; her head was drawn down upon your bosom; and
+with your hand, you turned her face to yours, and----"
+
+"Clara, stop!"  Amidon's bashful being was wrung to the sweating-point
+as he uttered the cry.  "I never could have done it!  And do you mean
+to say I must now act up to a record of that kind--and with a strange
+woman?  She--she won't permit it----  Oh, you must be mistaken!  How do
+you know this?"
+
+Madame le Claire blushed, and seemed to want words for a reply.  Amidon
+repeated the question.
+
+"I want to know if you are sure," said he.  "To make a mistake in that
+direction would be worse than the other, you know."
+
+"Ah, would it?" said Clara; "I didn't know that!"
+
+"Oh!  I think we may take that for granted."
+
+"You really don't get a grain of good from your Brassfield experience,"
+said she, "or you'd know better."  Here ensued a long silence, during
+which Amidon appeared to be pondering on her extraordinary remark.
+
+"But, as to the fact," urged he at last, "how can you guess out any
+such state of things as you describe?"
+
+"Can't _you_ guess a little bit more once in a while?  I know about it,
+from Mr. Brassfield's treatment--of--of me--when I made him think--that
+I--was Elizabeth!  Oh, don't you see that I had to do it, so as to
+know, and tell you?  Oh, I wish I had never, never begun this!  I do, I
+do!"
+
+A parlor-car has no conveniences whatever for heroics, hysterics or
+weeping, so miserably are our American railways managed; and Clara
+winked back into her eyes the tears which filled them, and Amidon
+looked at her tenderly.
+
+"Did I, really," said he confusedly--"to you?"
+
+"M'h'm," said Madame le Claire, nodding affirmatively; "I couldn't stop
+you!"
+
+"It must have been dreadful--for you," said Amidon.
+
+"Awful," said she; "but the work had to be done, you know."
+
+"Oh, if it were you, now," said he, laying his hand on hers, "I could
+do it, if you didn't mind.  I--I should like to, you know."
+
+"Now see here," said Clara; "if you're just practising this, as a sort
+of rehearsal, you must go further and faster than a public place like
+this allows, or you'll seem cold by comparison with what has passed.
+If you mean what you say, let me remind you that you're engaged!"
+
+Mr. Amidon swore softly, but sincerely.  Somehow, the pitiful case of
+the girl who had written that letter with which he had fallen in love,
+had less and less of appeal to him as the days drifted by.  And now,
+while the duty of which he had assured himself still impelled him to
+her side, he confessed that this other girl with the variegated hair
+and eyes, and the power to annihilate and restore him, the occultist
+with the thrilling gaze and the strong, supple figure, was calling more
+and more to the aboriginal man within him.  So, while he took
+Elizabeth's letters from his pocket and read them, to get, if possible,
+some new light on her character, it was Clara's face that his eyes
+sought, as he glanced over the top of the sheet.  Ah, Florian, with one
+girl's love-letter in your hands, and the face of another held in that
+avid gaze, can you be the bashful banker-bachelor who could not discuss
+the new style of ladies' figures with Mrs. Hunter!  And as we thus
+moralize, the train sweeps on and on, and into Bellevale, where Judge
+Blodgett waits upon the platform for our arrival.
+
+The judge stood by the steps to seize upon Amidon as he alighted.  That
+gentleman and Madame le Claire, however, perversely got off at the
+other end of the car.  As they walked down the platform, Florian met
+his first test, in the salutation of a young woman in a tailor-made
+gown, who nodded and smiled to him from a smart trap at a short
+distance from the station, where she seemed to be waiting for some one.
+
+"Any baggage, Mr. Brassfield?" said a drayman.
+
+"Yes," said Amidon; "take the checks."
+
+"Do these go to the hotel, or----"  The man waited for directions.
+
+"I don't--that is," said the poor fellow, "I really----  Just wait a
+minute!  Judge," this in a whisper to his friend, who had reached his
+side, "this is terrible!  Where do I want to go?--and for the love of
+Heaven, where does this hound take my luggage?"
+
+"Your lodgings at the Bellevale House!" returned the judge.
+
+"To my lodgings at the Bellevale House," announced Amidon.
+
+"And say," said the judge, "don't look that way; but the young woman in
+the one-horse trap across the way is your intended."
+
+"No!" said Amidon.  "I lifted my hat to her--she nodded to me, you
+know!"
+
+"The devil!" said the judge; "I'll bet you didn't put any more warmth
+than a clam into your manner.  Well, you'll have to go over, and she'll
+take you up-town, I suppose.  Don't stay with her long, if you can help
+it, and come to me at the hotel as soon as you can.  She's been driving
+over to see who got off every New York train ever since I came.  Go to
+her, and may the Lord be merciful to you!  Here are these notes, if you
+think they'll help you any--I've added some to 'em since I got down
+here."
+
+Amidon waved a contemptuous rejection of the notes, and, casting a
+despairing glance at Madame le Claire, walked over toward his fate.  He
+could have envied the lot of the bull-fighter advancing into the
+fearful radius of action of a pair of gory horns.  He would gladly have
+changed places with the gladiator who hears the gnashing of bared teeth
+behind the slowly-opening cage doors.  To walk up to the mouths of a
+battery of hostile Gatlings would have seemed easy, as compared with
+this present act of his, which was nothing more than stepping to the
+side of a carriage in which sat a girl, for a place near whom any
+unattached young man in Bellevale would willingly have placed his
+eternal welfare in jeopardy.
+
+Point by point, the girl's outward seeming met Amidon's eyes as he
+neared her.  From the platform, it was an impressionistic view of a
+well-kept trap and horse, and a young woman wearing a picture-hat with
+a sweeping plume, habited in a gown of modish tailoring, and holding
+the reins in well-gauntleted hands.  As he reached the middle of the
+street-crossing, the face, surmounted by dark hair, began to show its
+salient features--great dark eyes, strongly-marked brows, and a strong,
+sweet mouth with vivid lips.  Then came the impression of a form held
+erect, with the strong shoulders and arms which come from athletics,
+and the roundnesses which denote that superb animal, the well-developed
+woman.  But it was only as he stood by the side of the carriage that he
+saw and felt the mingled dignity and frankness, the sureness and
+lightness of touch, with which she acted or refrained from acting; the
+lack of haste, the temperateness of gesture and intonation, which
+bespoke in a moment that type of woman which is society's finished
+product.
+
+Her lips were parted in a half-smile; the great dark eyes sought his in
+the calling glance which seeks its companion; and in the face and voice
+there was something tremulous, vibrant and pleadingly anxious.  Yet she
+did and said only commonplaces.  She gave him her hand, and threw over
+the lap-robe as an invitation for him to take the seat beside her.
+
+"I am glad to see you back, dear," said she, "and a little surprised."
+
+"I hardly expected to come on this train," he answered, "until the very
+hour of starting.  I can--hardly say--how glad I am--to be here."
+
+She was silent, as she drove among the drays and omnibuses, out into
+the open street.  He looked searchingly, though furtively, at her, and
+blushed as if he had been detected in staring at a girl in the street
+as she suddenly looked him straight in the face.
+
+"Have you been ill, Eugene?" said she.  "You look so worn and tired."
+
+"I have had a very hard time of it since I left," said he; "and have
+been far from well."
+
+She patted him lightly with her glove.
+
+"You must be careful of yourself," said she, and paused as if to let
+him supply her reasons for so saying.  "I hope your trouble is over,
+dear."
+
+"Thank you," said he.  "I am sure that after a few hours in my rooms, I
+shall be quite refreshed.  Will you please put me down at the Bellevale
+House?  I shall beg the privilege of calling soon."
+
+"Why!"  She looked swiftly at him, looked at the horse, and again at
+him.  "Soon?" she went on, as if astonished.  "I shall be alone this
+evening--if you care about it!"
+
+"Oh, yes!" said he confusedly, "this evening, yes!  I meant sooner--in
+a few minutes, you know!"
+
+"No," said she, in that tone which surely denotes the raising of the
+drawbridge of pique; "you must rest until this evening.  Who is the old
+gentleman who has been waiting two or three days to see you?"
+
+"Judge Blodgett, an old friend," said he, relieved to find some matter
+with reference to which he could tell the truth.
+
+"And the queer-looking lady--do you know her?"
+
+"Oh, yes!" said Amidon; "she is a good friend, too."
+
+"Ah!" the girl answered, in a tone which said almost anything, but was
+not by any means without significance.  "And who is she?"
+
+"Her professional name is Madame le Claire; in private life, she is
+Miss Blatherwick."
+
+"I didn't see the rest of the troupe," said Miss Waldron icily; "or
+perhaps she's an elocutionist."
+
+"No," said Amidon, "she's an occultist--a sort of--well, a hypnotist."
+
+There was a long pause here, during which they drew near to the big
+brick building on the side of which Amidon saw the sign of the
+Bellevale House.
+
+"Also an old friend?" inquired Miss Waldron.
+
+"Oh, no!" said Florian; "I met her only a week or two ago."
+
+"She must be very charming," said Elizabeth, "to have inspired so much
+friendship in so short a time.  Here we are at the hotel.  Do you
+really think you'll call this evening?  _Au revoir_, then."
+
+Even the unsophisticated Amidon could perceive, now, that the
+drawbridge was up, the portcullis down, and all the bars and shutters
+of the castle in place.  Moreover, in the outer darkness in which he
+moved, he imagined there roamed lions and wolves and ravening
+beasts--and he with no guide but Judge Blodgett, who stands there in
+the lobby, so wildly beckoning to him.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE WRONG HOUSE
+
+  When Adam strayed
+    In Eden's bow'rs,
+  One little maid
+    Amused his hours.
+  He fell!  But, friend,
+    I leave to you
+  Where he'd have dropped
+    Had there been two!
+            --_Paradise Rehypothecated_.
+
+"Now, Florian," said Judge Blodgett, as they sat in Amidon's rooms,
+"search yourself, and see if you don't feel a dreamy sense of
+familiarity here in these rooms--the feeling that the long-lost heir
+has when he crawls down the chimney as a sweep and finds himself in his
+ancestral halls, you know."
+
+"Never saw a thing here before," said Amidon, "and have no feeling
+except surprise at the elegance about me, and a sneaking fear that
+Brassfield may come in at any time and eject us.  The fellow had taste,
+anyhow!"
+
+"Didn't you recognize anything," went on the judge, "in the streets or
+buildings or the general landscape?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Nor in the young lady?  Wasn't there a sort of--of music in her voice,
+like long-forgotten melodies, you understand--like what the said heir
+notices in after years when his mother blunders on to him?"
+
+"Well," said Florian, "her voice is musical, if that's what you
+mean--musical and low, and reminds one of the sounds made by a great
+master playing his heart out in the lowest notes of the flute; but it
+is so far from being familiar to me that I'm quite sure I never heard a
+voice like it before."
+
+The judge strode up and down the room perturbedly.
+
+"Why," said he, "it's enough to make a man's hair stand!"
+
+"It does," said Amidon.  "What can I say to her?"
+
+"You haven't a piece of property here," said the judge, going on with
+the matters uppermost in his mind, "that you could successfully
+maintain replevin for, if anybody converted it.  They'd ask you on
+cross-examination if it was yours, and you'd have to say you didn't
+know!  And there's a world of property, I find.  They could take it all
+away from you without your knowing it, if they only knew.  Have you any
+course mapped out--any plans?"
+
+"To a certain extent, yes," said Florian.  "I shall call on her this
+evening."
+
+"For help, yes," said the judge.  "She must bring Brassfield up, so
+that we can find out about some property matters."
+
+"I don't mean that," said Amidon.  "I must call on Miss
+Waldron--Elizabeth."
+
+"And neglect----" began the judge.
+
+"Everything," said Florian firmly.  "This is something that concerns my
+honor as a gentleman.  While it remains in its present state, I can't
+bother with these property matters.  Have I an office?"
+
+"Have you!" said the judge.  "Well, just wait until you see them."
+
+"And an office force?"
+
+"Confidential manager named Stevens, as per the notes,"; said Judge
+Blodgett.  "Bookkeeper, assistant bookkeeper and stenographer.  Tried
+to pump 'em and got frozen out.  Yes, you've got an office force."
+
+"Well, then," said Amidon, "we'll go down there in the morning, and
+I'll tell this man Stevens--is that what you call him?--to show you all
+through the books and things--going to buy or take a partnership, or
+something.  Then we can go through the business together.  We can do it
+that way, without being suspected, can't we?"
+
+"Maybe," meditatively, "maybe we can.  Take a sort of invoice, hey?
+But don't you think we'd better have Brassfield on the witness-stand
+for a while this evening?  A sort of cramming--coaching--review, on the
+eve of trial, you know?"
+
+"No, no!" answered Florian.  "No more of that, if it can be avoided."
+
+The judge stroked his mustache in silence for a time.
+
+"See here," asked he finally, "what did we bring madame and the
+professor down here for, anyway, I'd like to know?"
+
+"I know," said Amidon, "but, somehow, I feel like getting along without
+it if I can.  As little of her--of their--services as possible, Judge,
+from now on."
+
+"Oh!" said the judge, in a tone of one who suddenly sees the situation;
+"all right, Florian, all right.  Maybe it's best, maybe it's best.
+Abnormal condition, as the professor says, and all that; effect on the
+mind, and one thing and another.  Yes--yes--yes!"
+
+"If I have any duties to perform here, Judge, you must help me to keep
+straight.  I've never had much tendency to go wrong, you know, but that
+was for lack of temptation, don't you think, Blodgett?"
+
+"Well, well, Florian, I can't say as to that; can't say.  Yes--and say!
+You'll want to go over to the Waldron residence this evening.  I'll
+take you out and show you the house.  By George!  It must seem
+extraordinarily odd to walk about among things you are supposed to know
+like a book, and to be, in fact, a perfect stranger.  Dante could have
+used that idea, if it had occurred to him."
+
+"An idea for Dante, indeed!" thought Amidon, as he walked toward the
+house, which, from afar, the judge had pointed out to him.  "For the
+_Inferno_: a soul thrown into a realm full of its friends and enemies,
+its loves and hates, shorn of memory, of all sense of familiarity, of
+all its habits, stripped of all the protection of habitude.  For the
+_Inferno_, indeed!--Now this must be the house, with the white columns
+running up to the top of the second story; crossing the ravine and
+losing sight of it for a few minutes makes even the house look
+different.  Outside, I can get accustomed to it, in this five-minute
+inspection.  But, inside--oh, to be invisible while I get used to it!
+Well, here goes!"
+
+"Ding-a-ling-ting-ting!" rang the bell somewhere back in the recesses
+of the house, and the footsteps of a man approached the door.  Amidon
+was frightened.  He had expected either Elizabeth herself, or a maid to
+take his card, and was prepared for such an encounter only.  A little
+dark, bright-eyed man opened the door and seized his hand.
+
+"Why, Brassfield, how are you?" he exclaimed.  "Heard you'd got back.
+Sorry I couldn't meet you in New York.  Got my telegram, I suppose?"
+
+"I just called," said Amidon, "to see Miss Waldron."
+
+"Oh, yes!" said the little man; "nothing but her, now.  But she isn't
+here.  Hasn't been for over a week.  Nobody here but me.  Can't you
+stay a while?  Say, 'Gene, we put Slater through the lodge while you
+were gone, and he knows he's in, all right enough.  Bulliwinkle took
+that part of yours in the catacombs scene, and you ought to have heard
+the bones of the early Christians rattle when he bellered out the
+lecture.  'Here, among the eternal shades of the deep caves of death,
+walked once the great exemplars of our Ancient Order!'  Why, it would
+raise the hair on a bronze statue.  And when, in the second, they
+condemned him to the Tarpeian Rock, and swung him off into space in the
+Chest of the Clanking Chains, he howled so that the Sovereign Pontiff
+made 'em saw off on it, and take him out--and he could hardly stand to
+receive the Grand and Awful Secret.  Limp as a rag!  But impressed?
+Well, he said it was the greatest piece of ritualistic work he ever
+saw, and he's seen most of 'em.  Go to any lodges in New York?"
+
+"No," said Amidon, who had never joined a secret order in his life,
+"and do you think we ought to talk these things out here?"
+
+"No, maybe not," said the Joiner; "but nobody's about, you know.  Come
+in, can't you?"
+
+"No, I must really go, thank you.  By the way," said Florian, "where
+does Miss--er--I must go, at once, I think!"
+
+"Oh, I know how it is," went on his unknown intimate; "nothing but
+Bess, now.  Might as well bid you good-by, and give you a dimit from
+all the clubs and lodges, until six months after the wedding.  You'll
+be back by that time, thirstier than ever.  By the way, that reminds
+me: the gang's going to give you a blow-out at the club.  Kind of an
+_Auld lang syne_ business, 'champagny-vather an' cracked ice,' chimes
+at midnight, won't go home till morning, all good fellows and the rest
+of it.  Edgington spoke to you about it, I s'pose?"
+
+"Only in a general way," replied Amidon, wondering who and what
+Edgington would turn out to be.  "I don't know yet how my engagements
+will be----"
+
+"Oh, nothing must stand in the way of that, you know," the little man
+went on.  "Why, gad!  the tenderest feelings of brotherly----  Oh, you
+don't mean it!  But I mustn't keep you.  Bessie told me that the plans
+for your house have come.  She's got 'em over there, now.  I say, old
+man, I envy you your evening.  Like two birds arranging the nest.
+Sorry you can't come in; but, good night.  And, say!  Your little
+strawberry blonde is in town!  Wouldn't that jar you?"
+
+"Heavens!" ejaculated Amidon.  "How am I ever to get through with this?"
+
+The genuine agony in Florian's tones fixed the attention of the little
+man, and seemed to arouse some terrible suspicion.
+
+"Why, 'Gene," said he, "you don't mean that there's anything in this
+blonde matter, do you, that will----  By George!  And she's a sister of
+one of the most prominent A. O. C. M.'s of Pittsburg--and you remember
+our solemn obligation!"
+
+"No," said Amidon, "I don't!"
+
+"What!  You don't!"
+
+"No!" said Florian.  "I've forgotten it!"
+
+"Forgotten it!" said his questioner, recoiling as if in horror.
+"Forgotten it!  And with the sister of the Past Sovereign Pontiff of
+Pittsburg Lodge No. 863!  I tell you, Brassfield, I don't believe it.
+I prefer to think you're bughouse!  Cracked!  Out of your head!  But,
+'Gene," added his unknown brother, in a stage-whisper, "if there has
+been anything between you and anything comes up, you know, Jim Alvord,
+for one, knowing and understanding your temptations--for the strawberry
+blondes are the very devil--will stand by you until the frost gathers
+six inches deep on the very hinges of----  Say, Mary's coming in at the
+side door.  Good night!  Keep a stiff upper lip; stay by Bess, and I'll
+stay by you, obligation or no obligation.  'F. D. and B.', you know:
+death, perhaps, but no desertion!  So long!  See you to-morrow."
+
+And Amidon walked from the house of his unfamiliar chum, knowing that
+his sweetheart but once seen was waiting in her unknown home for him to
+come to her, and had as a basis for conversation the plans for their
+house.  He could imagine her with the blue-prints unrolled, examining
+them with all a woman's interest in such things, and himself discussing
+with her this house in which she expected him to place her as mistress.
+And the position she thought she held in his heart--vacant, or----  He
+leaned against a fence, in bewilderment approaching despair.  His mind
+dwelt with horror on the woman whom he could think of only under the
+coarse appellation of the strawberry blonde.  Was there a real crime
+here to take the place of the imagined putting away of Brassfield?
+Brassfield!  The very name sickened him.  "Strawberry blondes, indeed!"
+thought Florian; and "Brassfield, the perjured villain!"  Certain names
+used by the little man in the wrong house came to him as having been
+mentioned in the notes of the professor and the judge.  Alvord, the
+slangy little chap who took so familiar an attitude toward him--this
+was the judge's "ministerial" friend!  Yet, had there not been mention
+of "ritualistic work" and "Early Christians" in his conversation?  And
+this woman of whom he spoke,--it took no great keenness of perception
+to see that the "strawberry blonde" must be the "child of six or eight
+years" whom he had called "Daisy," and sometimes "Strawberry!"  Here
+was confirmation of Alvord's suspicion, if his allusion to the
+violation of an "obligation" expressed suspicion.  Here was a situation
+from which every fiber of Amidon's nature revolted, seen from any
+angle, whether the viewpoint of the careful banker and pillar of
+society, or that of the poetic dreamer waiting for his predestined mate.
+
+In a paroxysm of dread, he started for the hotel.  Then he walked down
+the street toward the railway station, with the thought of boarding the
+first train out of town.  This resolve, however, he changed, and I am
+glad to say that it was not the thought of the fortune of which Judge
+Blodgett had spoken that altered his resolution, but that of the letter
+which greeted his return to consciousness as Florian Amidon, and the
+image of the dark-eyed girl with the low voice and the strong figure,
+who had written it, and who waited for him, somewhere, with the roll of
+plans.  So he began searching again for the house with the white
+columns; and found it on the next corner beyond the one he had first
+tried.
+
+Elizabeth sat in a fit of depression at the strangeness of Mr.
+Brassfield's conduct--a depression which deepened as the evening wore
+on with no visit from him.  She sprang to her feet and pressed both
+hands to her bosom, at the ring of the door-bell, ran lightly to the
+door and listened as the servant greeted Mr. Brassfield, and then
+hurried back to her seat by the grate, and became so absorbed in her
+book that she was oblivious of his being shown into the room, until the
+maid had retired, leaving him standing at gaze, his brow beaded with
+sweat, his face pale and his hands unsteady.  The early Christian had
+entered on his martyrdom.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+THE FIRST BATTLE, AND DEFEAT
+
+  From Camelot to Cameliard
+  The way by bright pavilions starred,
+  In arms and armor all unmarred,
+  To Guinevere rode Lancelot to claim for Arthur
+      his reward.
+
+  Down from her window look't the maid
+  To see her bridegroom, half afraid--
+  In him saw kingliness arrayed:
+  And summoned by the herald Love to yield, her woman's
+      heart obeyed.
+
+  From Cameliard to Camelot
+  Rode Guinevere and Lancelot--
+  Ye bright pavilions, babble not!
+  The king she took, she keeps for king, in spite of
+      shame, in spite of blot!
+            --_From Cameliard to Camelot_.
+
+It is a disagreeable duty (one, however, which you and I, madam,
+discharge with a conscientiousness which the unthinking are sometimes
+unable to distinguish from zeal) to criticize one's friends.  The task
+is doubly hard when the animadversion is committed to paper, with a
+more or less definite idea of ultimate publication.  I trust, beloved,
+that we may call Mr. Florian Amidon a friend.  He is an honest fellow
+as the world goes, in spite of the testimony of Simeon Woolaver
+regarding the steers; and he wishes to do the right thing.  In a matter
+of business, now, or on any question of films, plates or lenses, we
+should find him full of decision, just and prompt in action.  But (and
+the disagreeable duty of censure comes in here) there he stands like a
+Stoughton-bottle in a most abject state of woe, because, forsooth, he
+possesses the love of that budding Juno over there by the grate, and
+knows not what to do with it!  What if he _doesn't_ feel as if he had
+the slightest personal acquaintance with her?  What if the image of
+another, and the thought----?  But look with me, for a moment, at the
+situation.
+
+There she sits, so attentive to her book (is it the _Rubaiyat_?  Yes!)
+that his entrance has not attracted her notice--not at all!  One
+shapely patent-leather is stretched out to the fender, and the creamy
+silk of the gown happens to be drawn back so as to show the slender
+ankle, and a glimpse of black above the leather.  The desire for
+exactness alone compels a reference to the fact that the boundary lines
+of this silhouetted black area diverge perceptibly as they recede from
+the shoe.  It is only a detail, but even Florian notices it, and thinks
+about it afterward.  Her face is turned toward the shadows up there
+by the window, her eyes looking at space, as if in quest of Iram and
+his Rose, or Jamshyd and his Sev'n-ring'd Cup, or the solution of
+the Master-knot of Human Fate.  The unconscious pose showing the
+incurved spine, and the arms and shoulders glimpsing through falls
+of lace at sleeve and corsage, would make the fortune of the
+photographer-in-ordinary to a professional beauty.  And yet that man
+Amidon stands there like a graven image, and fears to rush in where an
+angel has folded her wings for him and rests!
+
+[Illustration: There she sits so attentive to her book that his
+entrance has not attracted her notice]
+
+He knows that he is expected to claim some of the privileges of the
+long-absent lover.  He has some information as to their nature.  His
+eyes ought to apprise him (as they do us, my boy!) of their
+preciousness.  He is not without knowledge concerning past conduct of
+that type which, beginning in hard-won privileges, ripens into
+priceless duties, not to discharge which is insult all the more bitter
+because it is not to be mentioned.  It is not to be denied that the
+tableau appeals to him; and because another woman has lately touched
+him in a similar way, he stands there and condemns himself for that!
+There is small excuse for him, I admit, sir.  Her first token of his
+presence should have been a kiss on the snowy shoulder.  You suggest
+the hair?  Well, the hair, then, though for my part, I have always
+felt----  But never mind!  Had it been you or I in his place----
+
+Yes, my dear, this digression is becoming tedious.  Let us proceed with
+the story.
+
+Elizabeth rose with a little start of surprise, a little flutter of the
+bosom, and came forward with extended hands.  He took them with a
+trembling grasp which might well have passed as evidence of fervor.
+
+"Ah, Eugene," said she, holding him away, "it has seemed an age!"
+
+"Yes," said he truthfully, "an eternity, almost."
+
+"Sit down by the fire," said she, in that low voice which means so
+much.  "You are cold."
+
+"I am a little cold," he replied.  "I must have remained outside too
+long."
+
+"Y-e-s?" she returned; and after a long pause: "It doesn't seem to take
+long--sometimes.  And the wind is in the east."
+
+Now, when a bride-elect begins to deal in double meanings of this sort
+with her fiance, the course of true love is likely to be entering on a
+piece of rough road-bed.
+
+"How did you find Estelle when you called?"
+
+Estelle?  Estelle?  Estelle!  Nothing in Blodgett and Blatherwick's
+notes about Estelle.  "A whole directory of names," as Judge Blodgett
+had said, but no Estelle.  The world full of useless people--a billion
+and a half of them--and not an Estelle at poor Amidon's call in this
+time of need.  Hence this long hiatus in the conversation.
+
+"Really, Miss--er--a--my dear, I haven't had time to call on any one."
+
+"It will be a little hard to explain," said she after a silence, "to my
+prospective bridesmaid and dearest friend, that you were so long in New
+York and could not call.  It is not quite like you, Eugene."
+
+He was sitting where he could see her well, and because she looked into
+the fire a good deal, he found himself gazing fixedly at her.  Her
+manifold perfections filled him with the same feeling of astonishment
+experienced by that beggar who awoke in the prince's chamber, clothed
+in splendor, and with a royal domain in fee.
+
+(Personally, I regard the domain which spread itself before Amidon, as
+imperial.)
+
+As she pronounced her gentle reproof, her eyes turned to his, and he
+started guiltily.
+
+"No," he confessed, "it was not the right thing.  You must forgive me,
+won't you?"
+
+"I hope," said she, smiling, "I may be able to do more than that: maybe
+I shall be so fortunate as to get you Estelle's forgiveness."
+
+"Thank you," he said; and then seeking for safer ground: "Haven't you
+something for us to look over--some plans or something?"
+
+"'Or something'!" she repeated with a ripple of laughter.
+
+It was the first time he had heard this laugh; and Marot's lines ran
+through his mind:
+
+  "Good God! 'twould make the very streets and ways
+  Through which she passes, burst into a pleasure!
+        *      *      *      *      *      *
+  No spell were wanting from the dead to raise me,
+  But only that sweet laugh wherewith she slays me!"
+
+
+"'Or something!'" she repeated, I say; "it might just as well be the
+profiles of a new pipe-line survey, for all the interest you take in
+it.  I oughtn't to look at them with you; but come, they're over here
+on the table."
+
+Somehow, this lady's air required the deferential offer of his arm; and
+somehow, the deference seemed to please her.  So he felt that the
+tension was lessened as she turned over the blue-prints.  Moreover, in
+matters of architecture he felt at home--if he could only steer clear
+of any discussion of the grounds.  He had no idea of the location of
+these.
+
+Soon their heads were close together over the plans.  A dozen times her
+hair brushed his lips, two or three times his fingers touched the satin
+skin of her arms and shoulders, and all the time he felt himself within
+the magic atmosphere which enwraps so divine a maiden, as odorous
+breezes clothe the shores of Ceylon.  Her breath, the faint sweet
+perfume in her hair, the soft frou-frou of her skirts, the appealing
+lowness of her voice--all these wrought strongly on Florian; and when
+she leaned lightly upon him as she reached past him for one of the
+sheets, he felt (I record it to his credit) as if he must take her to
+his arms, and complete the embrace she had involuntarily half begun.
+But the feeling that she was, after all, a strange young girl, and was
+revealing herself to him altogether under a mistake as to his identity,
+restrained him.
+
+[Illustration: Soon their heads were close together over the plans]
+
+She did not lean against him any more.  There were some little
+improvements in the plans which had occurred to Elizabeth, especially
+in the arrangement of kitchen, pantry and laundry.
+
+"I'll have the architect come and see you about these," said Amidon.
+
+"What!" said she, in apparent astonishment--"from Boston?"
+
+"Ah--well," he stammered, "I didn't know--that is----  Yes, from
+Boston!  We want these matters as you want them, you know, if it were
+from Paris or Calcutta.  And I think there should be some provision for
+prism-glass to light up the library.  It could be cut in right there on
+that north exposure; don't you think so?"
+
+"Oh, yes, and what an improvement it will be!" she replied.  "And may I
+have all the editions of Browning I want, even if I couldn't explain
+what _Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came_ means?"
+
+"Oh, does that point puzzle you?" exclaimed Florian, greeting the
+allusion to Browning as the war-horse welcomes the battle.  "Then you
+have never chanced to run across the first edition of Child's _Scottish
+Ballads_.  You get the story there, of Childe Roland following up the
+quest for his sister, shut up by enchantment in the Dark Tower, in
+searching for which his brothers--Cuthbert and Giles, you remember, and
+the rest of 'The Band'--had been lost.  He must blow a certain horn
+before it, in a certain way--you know how it goes, 'Dauntless the
+slug-horn to my lips I set!'  It's quite obvious when you know the
+story, and not a bit of an enigma.  The line in _Lear_ shows that the
+verses must have been commonly sung in Shakespeare's time----"
+
+The girl was looking at him with something like amazement; but her
+answer referred to the matter of his discourse.
+
+"Yes," said she, "I can see now how the 'Dark Tower' lightens up.  I
+must read it again in the light of this explanation of yours.  Shall we
+read it together, soon?"
+
+"Oh, by all means!" said he.  "Only I warn you I never tire when I find
+any one who will study Browning with me.  I tried to read _The Ring and
+the Book_ with a dear friend once, and reading my favorite part,
+'Giuseppe Caponsacchi,' as I raised my eyes after that heartbreaking
+finale, 'O, great, just, good God!  Miserable me!' I saw she was
+dozing.  Since then, I read Browning with his lovers only----"
+
+"Yes, you are right in that.  But, Eugene," she exclaimed, "you said to
+me many times that his verse was rot, that Nordau ought to have
+included him in his gallery of degenerates, that he is muddy, and that
+there isn't a line of poetry in his works so far as you have been able
+to dig into them.  And you cited _Childe Roland_ as proof of all of
+this!  And you never would listen to any of Browning, even when we
+almost quarreled about it!  Now, if that was because----  Why, it
+was----!"
+
+She paused as if afraid she might say too much.  Florian, who had
+rallied in his literary enthusiasm, collapsed into his chronic state of
+terror.  Even in so impersonal a thing as Browning, the man who does
+not know what his habits are takes every step at his peril.
+
+"Oh, _that_ that I said!" he stammered.  "Yes--yes.  Well, there _are_
+obscurities, you know.  Even Mr. Birrell admits that.  But on the
+whole, don't you agree with me?"
+
+"Quite," said she dryly; "if I understand you."
+
+There was an implied doubt as to her understanding of his position, and
+the only thing made clear was that the drawbridge was up again.  So
+Florian began talking of the plans.  He grew eloquent on ventilators,
+bath-rooms, and plumbing.  He drew fine and learned distinctions
+between styles.
+
+"The colonial," said he, "is not good unless indulged in in great
+moderation.  Now, what I like about this is the way in which
+ultra-colonialism is held in check, and modified in the direction of
+the Greek ideal.  Those columns, supporting the broad portico, hark
+back to the Parthenon, don't they?  I like that taste and flavor of the
+classic."
+
+She listened in much the same wondering way in which she had regarded
+him at the beginning of his outburst on Browning.  Was it possible
+that, after all, this lover of hers, whose antecedents were so little
+known, but whose five years of successful life in Bellevale had won for
+him that confidence of his townsmen in which she had partaken, was,
+after all, possessed of some of those tastes in art and literature, the
+absence of which had been the one thing lacking in his character, as it
+appeared to her?  It would seem so.  And yet, why had he concealed
+these things from her, who so passionately longed for intellectual
+companionship?  Somehow, resentment crept into her heart as she looked
+at him, and there was something in his attitude which was not frank and
+bold, as she liked to see a man--but this would not do.  He was so
+lovely in his provision for the future, and surely his conversation
+disclosed that he had those tastes and that knowledge!
+
+"I think the moon must be letting me look at its other side to-night,"
+said she.  "Have you been saving up the artist and poet in you, to show
+them to me now?"
+
+"Oh, no," said he, "not at all--why, any one knows these little things.
+Now let's go through the arrangement of the chambers; shall we?"
+
+"Not to-night, if you please.  Let us sit by the fire again.  It will
+be a grand house, dear.  Sometimes I think, too grand for Bellevale;
+and quite often I feel, too grand, too elegant--for me."
+
+"Who then," answered Florian, who saw his conversational duty, a
+dead-sure thing, and went for it there and then, "who then could have
+such a house, or ought to have it, if not you?"
+
+The girl looked questioningly, pathetically at him, as if she missed
+something of the convincing in his words.
+
+"To deny that you feel so--felt so about it when you gave orders for
+the building, would be foolish," said she at last.  "And it was very
+dear of you to do it.  But once a man, having a little gem which he
+thought of perfect water, placed it in a setting so large and so
+cunningly wrought that nobody ever saw the little stone, unless it was
+pointed out to them."
+
+"He saw it," said Florian, "whenever he wanted to--and no setting can
+be too beautiful for a moon-stone."
+
+He felt that he was rallying nobly.
+
+"Really," he thought, "I am getting quite ardent.  And under different
+circumstances, I could be so in the utmost good faith; for I know she's
+as good and true as she is queenly and beautiful.  But after all, it is
+duty, only, and----"
+
+"In such a house," she went on, "people may live a little closer than
+acquaintances, or not quite so close, as the case may be, with their
+lives diluted by their many possessions."
+
+"Yes?" said he expectantly.
+
+"Before it comes to that," she burst forth, her eyes wide and her hands
+clasped in her lap, "I want to die!  I could gather the fagots for the
+fire, and cuddle down by it on a heap of straw by the roadside, with
+the man I love; and if I knew he loved me, he might beat me, and I
+would bear it, and be happy in his strength--far happier than in those
+chambers you spoke of a moment ago, with an acquaintance who merely
+happened to be called a husband!  I would rather walk the streets than
+that!"
+
+Now, a lovers' quarrel requires lovers on both sides.  Had Amidon
+really been one, this crisis would have passed naturally on to
+protestation, counter-protestation, tears, kisses, embraces,
+reconciliation.  But all these things take place through the interplay
+of instincts, none of which was awakened in Florian.  So he sat
+forlorn, and said nothing.
+
+"I am going to let you go home, now," said she, rising.  "I gave out
+the date of the wedding, as you requested, the day after you went away.
+If it were not for that, I should ask you to wait a while--until the
+house is finished--or even longer.  As it is, you mustn't be surprised
+if I say something surprising to you soon."
+
+"I--I assure you----" began Amidon.  "Good night, my----"
+
+He had schooled himself for this farewell, and remembering what Madame
+le Claire had told him, had decided on a course of action.  The two had
+walked out into the hall and he had put on his top-coat.  Now he went
+bravely up to her and stooped to kiss her.
+
+She raised her face to his, and again the feeling that this man was
+only a mere acquaintance passed into her being, as she looked into his
+eyes.  She turned her lips away.  But Florian, as the feeling of
+strangeness impressed her, lost it himself in the contemplation, brief
+but irresistible, of the upturned lips with their momentary invitation
+so soon withdrawn.  The primal man in him awoke.  His arm tightened
+about the lissome waist; the divine form in the creamy silk, on which
+he had only now almost feared to look, he drew to him so tightly as
+almost to crush her; and with one palm he raised the averted face to
+his, and made deliberate conquest of the lips of vivid red.  Once,
+twice, three times--and then she put her hands against his shoulders
+and pushed him away.  Her face flamed.
+
+"Eugene!" she exclaimed, "how----"
+
+"Good night!" he answered, "my dearest, my darling, good night!"
+
+And he ran down the street, in such a conflict of emotions that he
+hardly knew whither he went.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+ON THE FIRM GROUND OF BUSINESS
+
+  O merry it was in the good greenwood when the goblin and
+      sprite ranged free,
+  When the kelpie haunted the shadowed flood, and the dryad
+      dwelt in the tree;
+  But merrier far is the trolley-car as it routs the witch from
+      the wold,
+  And the din of the hammer and the cartridges' clamor as
+      they banish the swart kobold!
+  O, a sovran cure for psychic dizziness
+  Is a breath of the air of the world of business!
+            --_Idyls of a Sky-Scraper_.
+
+It is recorded in the last chapter that Mr. Amidon ran from Miss
+Waldron's presence in such a state of agitation that he hardly knew
+whither he went.  To the reader who wonders why he was agitated, I have
+only to hint that he was wretchedly inexperienced.  And as it was, he
+soon got his bearings and walked briskly toward his hotel; still,
+however, in a state of mind entirely new to him.
+
+Gradually he lessened his gait, absorbed in mental reconstructions of
+his parting with Elizabeth.  The pet lion which, while affectionately
+licking the hand which caresses it, brings the blood, and at the taste
+reverts instantly to its normal savagery, is acted on by impulses much
+like those of Amidon.  His thoughts were successions of moving pictures
+of the splendid girl whom he had held in his arms and kissed.  He saw
+her sitting by the fire as he entered.  His mind's eye dwelt on the
+image of the strong, full figure and the lovely head and wondrous eyes.
+He felt her lean against him as they stood by the table, and his arms
+fairly ached with the thrill of that parting embrace.  His lips
+throbbed still with the half-ravished kisses, and he stopped with an
+insane impulse to return and repeat the tender robbery.  Then,
+wondering at the turbulence of his thoughts, he walked on.
+
+During this pause, he was dimly conscious that a person whom he had
+seen approaching had neared the point of meeting, and after a moment's
+halt, had passed on.  As he resumed his walk, he heard rapid steps
+behind him, and was passed by a man who strongly resembled the
+passenger whom he had just met.  This figure turned a corner a few rods
+in advance of Florian, and almost immediately reemerged; having turned,
+apparently, for the purpose of encountering Amidon once more.  This
+time, he walked up, and halted, facing Amidon.
+
+"You'll be at the office in the morning, I suppose, Mr. Brassfield?"
+said the man.
+
+"At the office?" said Amidon.  "My office?  Yes."
+
+"Well," this new acquaintance proceeded, in tones which indicated a
+profound sense of personal injury, "you'd better come prepared to fill
+my place in the establishment as soon as possible."
+
+This statement was followed by a pause of the sort usually adopted for
+the purpose of noting the effect of some startling utterance.  Amidon
+was feeling in his pocket for Elizabeth's first-found letter, and the
+affairs of the Brassfield Oil Company had little interest for him.  Yet
+he dimly realized that some one was resigning something.
+
+"Let me see," said he musingly; "what--what do you do?"
+
+The man gave a sort of hop, of the kind we have been taught to expect
+of the stag when the bullet strikes him.
+
+"Do?" he snorted.  "What do I _do_?  What do _I_ do?  Do you mean
+to----  I'll tell what I do!  I get together options for you and send
+you cipher telegrams about 'em, and don't get any answers!  I attend
+stock-holders' meetings and get whipsawed by minorities because you are
+dead to the world off there in New York, or the Lord knows where, and
+don't furnish me with proxies!  I stay here and try to protect your
+interests when you desert 'em, and you send some white-headed old
+reprobate of a Pinkerton man to shadow me for a week and try to pry
+into my work!  And when you get home you never show up at the
+counting-room, though you know what a pickle things are in; and when I
+meet you on the street, I get cut dead: that's what I do!  And I stand
+it, do I?  Ha, ha, ha!  Not if J. B. Stevens knows himself, I don't!
+Good night, Mr. Brassfield.  Come round in the morning, and I'll _show_
+you what I do!"
+
+After the speaker had rushed away, which he incontinently did following
+this outburst, Amidon's mind reverted to Elizabeth; and not until he
+had reached his room did his thoughts return to his encounter in the
+street; and then it was only to wonder if this man Stevens was really
+of any importance, and if a breach with him was a matter of any
+consequence.
+
+His mind soon drifted off from this, however, and he got out of bed to
+turn on the lights and read the above-mentioned letter.  And as he read
+it, he grew ashamed.  That embrace, those kisses, now seemed an outrage
+to him.  Was this his return for the sweet confidences, the revelations
+of hidden things, with which she had honored him?  "You must forget
+this," she had written, "only at such times of tenderness as you will
+sometimes have when you are gone," and: "When you see me again, . . .
+without a word or look from me, know me, even more than you now do,
+yours."  And after this, he had permitted her allurement to fly to his
+brain, and had given her reason to think that because she had lowered
+her guard, he had struck her a dastard's blow.  His eyes grew soft with
+pity, and they moistened, as he repeated to himself, "Poor little girl!
+poor little girl!"
+
+Oh, yes! doubtless it was silly of him; but please to remember that he
+was quite as far from being blase as--as we used to be; and that he was
+just now becoming really in love with Elizabeth.  And love is much
+nearer kin to pity than pity is to love.  So he lay there and pitied
+Elizabeth, and wondered when the wedding was to be.  He must have Clara
+find this out from Brassfield.  And he thought regretfully of Madame le
+Claire.  His reflections thus touched on the two most unhappy women in
+Bellevale.
+
+To the hypnotist he had become so much more than a "case," merely, that
+a revulsion of feeling was setting in against bringing him here to be
+turned over to a woman for whom he cared nothing.  It was a shame, she
+thought.  It was something which no one had a right to expect of any
+girl.
+
+And Elizabeth Waldron still sat by the dying fire, her heart full of a
+fighting which would not let her sleep.  She felt humbled and insulted,
+and her face burned as did her heart.  But all the time she felt angry
+with herself for her inconsistency.  She had longed for Eugene's
+letters, and when they came, so few and cold, she was grieved.  She had
+expected a dozen little caresses, even before he left her carriage; and
+she was saddened because she missed them.  She had thought of his
+coming in on her in a manner quite different from that in which he had
+actually crept into her presence--and when he had only pressed her
+hands, she had felt defrauded and robbed.  And when at parting he had
+done (somewhat forcibly, it is true) what she had many times allowed,
+and what she had all the time wanted of him, she felt outraged and
+offended!
+
+These thoughts kept her long by the fire, and accompanied her to her
+chamber.  "Elizabeth Waldron," said she to her mirror, "you are going
+insane!  Aren't you ashamed that now, when he has shown his love and
+understanding of the things you love and try to understand, and
+surprised you by the possession of the very qualities you have felt
+secretly regretful on account of his not having--that you feel--that
+way?  What ails you, that you begin to feel toward the dearest man in
+all the world as if he were a stranger?--Ah, but you do, you do!  And
+you'll never be happy with him, nor even make him happy!--And, oh, that
+letter, that letter!  That awful letter for him to read on the cars!
+If you had never written that!"
+
+
+"What's my manager's name--Stevens?" asked Mr. Amidon of Judge
+Blodgett.  "Yes?  Well, I'm going to have trouble with him!  I won't be
+bullied by my clerks.  And who is the next man?"
+
+"Alderson," said the judge.  "It's all in the notes, you know."
+
+"And very convenient, too," said Amidon.  "And who is the stenographer?"
+
+"Miss Strong," answered the judge.
+
+"Strong, Strong," said Amidon musingly.  "The author, I believe, by the
+notes?"
+
+"I never said she was!" protested the judge.  "Not positively, but
+only----"
+
+"Well, let's go down--or perhaps I had better go alone," said Florian.
+"Please come down in an hour or so, won't you?"
+
+The judge noted for the first time the decision of returning confidence
+in Amidon's manner.  Two things contributed to this: the first was the
+sense of something tangible and intelligible in this going down to
+business in the morning like an ordinary American; and the other was
+rising anger at the attack made on him by this man Stevens in the
+street last night.  What sort of discipline can there be in the
+business, thought he, when an employee dares use such language toward
+his employer?  A good towering passion is a great steadier of the
+nerves, sometimes.  He walked into the counting-room, saw his name and
+the word "Private" on the glass of a certain door, went boldly beyond
+it, and was followed by a young woman with a note-book and pencil.
+Presently, in came Mr. Stevens without knocking.
+
+"Here's another pretty how-de-do!" he exclaimed, without any greeting
+except an angry snort.  "You promised to sign that contract for the
+output of the Bunn's Ferry wells while you were in New York, and
+didn't!  The papers are back with a notice that the deal is off except
+at a lower price.  How'm I to make anything of this business, I'd like
+to know, if you----"
+
+Amidon was surprised that Stevens was ignoring his threat to resign;
+but he was firm in his resolution to enforce discipline.  The fact that
+he himself had been so long in a state of fear and under control, made
+the luxury of assuming the attitude of command an irresistible
+temptation.
+
+"Mr. Stevens," said he sternly, "have the kindness to read what is
+painted on that door!"
+
+Though he had no need, Mr. Stevens gazed in astonishment at the word
+"Private."
+
+"Kindly ask Mr. Alderson to step here a moment," went on Mr. Amidon.
+
+Stevens stood mute, but Alderson overheard and came.
+
+"You may draw Mr. Stevens a salary check to date, and a month in
+advance, in lieu of notice," said Mr. Amidon.  "Mr. Stevens, you are no
+longer in the employ of this concern.  Mr. Alderson, you may take
+charge until a successor to Mr. Stevens is found.  I should now regard
+it as a favor if I might have my private office to myself and my
+stenographer!"
+
+Alderson took the paralyzed Stevens by the shoulders and walked him out
+into the main office.  Amidon's spirits rose, as he waited for the
+check to come in for his signature.  He stabbed his letters with the
+paper-knife, and felt in a blissful state of general insurrection.  The
+subjection of the past fortnight seemed to fall from him.  After he had
+signed the check, he turned to Miss Strong.
+
+"If you please," said he, in a voice of tense stridency, "I will give
+you a few letters."
+
+The stenographer, who seemed to regard the events of the past few
+minutes as nothing short of a cataclysm, flutteringly leafed over her
+book, and just as Amidon began wondering what he could think of to put
+into a letter, she burst into tears.  Amidon closed his desk with a
+bang, and giving Alderson orders covering his absence, walked out into
+the streets, full of the joy of gratified destructiveness.  He met
+Alvord, and temerariously agreed to go with him to the lodge that
+evening.  He finally found Blodgett, and informed him of what had been
+the result of his first morning in the office.
+
+"Well, it's your business, Florian," said he, "but you'll need somebody
+who knows something about your affairs.  And if you go on attending
+lodge meetings where you don't know the passwords, and nosing into
+houses where you don't intend to go, and discharging all the trusted
+men in your employ, you'll soon have more things to attend to than a
+couple of mesmerists and an elderly lawyer can take care of!  But it's
+your affair; I've known you too long to try to turn you when you get
+one of your tantrums on.  The smash-up ought to be worth seeing,
+anyhow!"
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE MARTYRDOM OF MR. STEVENS
+
+      _Pietro_:  Th' offense, it seemeth me,
+  Is one that by mercy's extremest stretch
+  Might be o'erpassed.
+
+      _Cosimo_:  Never, Pietro, never!
+  The Brotherhood's honour untouchable
+  Is touch'd thereby.  We build our labyrinth
+  Of sacred words and potent spells, and all
+  The deep-involved horrors of our craft--
+  Its entrance hedg'd about with dreadful oaths,
+  And every step in thridding it made dank
+  By dripping terror and out-seeping awe.
+  Shall it be said that e'en Ludovico
+  May break our faith and live?  Never, say I!
+            --_Vision of Cosimo_.
+
+The Bellevale lodge of the Ancient Order of Christian Martyrs held its
+meetings in the upper story of a tall building.  Mr. Alvord called for
+Amidon at eight, and took him up, all his boldness in the world of
+business replaced by wariness in the atmosphere of mystery.  As he and
+his companion went into an anteroom and were given broad collars from
+which were suspended metal badges called "jewels," he felt a good deal
+like a spy.  They walked into the lodgeroom where twenty-five or thirty
+men with similar "jewels" sat smoking and chatting.  All seemed to know
+him, but (much to his relief) before he could be included in the
+conversation, the gavel fell; certain ones with more elaborate "jewels"
+and more ornate collars than the rest took higher-backed and more
+highly upholstered chairs at the four sides of the room, another stood
+at the door; and still another, in complete uniform, with sword and
+belt, began hustling the members to seats.
+
+"The Deacon Militant," said the wielder of the gavel, "will report if
+all present are known and tested members of our Dread and Mystic
+Conclave."
+
+"All, Most Sovereign Pontiff," responded the Deacon Militant, who
+proved to be the man in the uniform, "save certain strangers who appear
+within the confines of our sacred basilica."
+
+"Let them be tested," commanded the Sovereign Pontiff, "and, if
+brethren, welcomed; if spies, executed!"
+
+Amidon started, and looked about for aid or avenue of escape.  Seeing
+none, he warily watched the Deacon Militant.  That officer, walking in
+the military fashion which, as patristic literature teaches, was
+adopted by the early Christians, and turning square corners as was the
+habit of St. Paul and the Apostles, received whispered passwords from
+the two or three strangers, and, with a military salute, announced that
+all present had been put to the test and welcomed.  Then, for the first
+time remembering that he was not among the strangers, so far as known
+to the lodge, Amidon breathed freely, and rather regretted the absence
+of executions.
+
+"Bring forth the Mystic Symbols of the Order!" was the next command.
+The Mystic Symbols were placed on a stand in the middle of the room,
+and turned out to be a gilt fish about the size of a four-pound bass, a
+jar of human bones, and a rolled-up scroll said to contain the Gospels.
+The fish, as explained by the Deacon Militant, typified a great many
+things connected with early Christianity, and served always as a
+reminder of the password of the order.  The relics in the jar were the
+bones of martyrs.  The scroll was the Book of the Law.  Amidon was
+becoming impressed: the solemn and ornate ritual and the dreadful
+symbols sent shivers down his inexperienced and unfraternal spine.
+Breaking in with uninitiated eyes, as he had done, now seemed more and
+more a crime.
+
+There was an "Opening Ode" which was so badly sung as to mitigate the
+awe; and an "order of business" solemnly gone through.  Under the head
+"Good of the Order" the visiting brethren spoke as if it were a
+class-meeting and they giving "testimony," one of them very volubly
+reminding the assembly of the great principles of the order, and the
+mighty work it had already accomplished in ameliorating the condition
+of a lost and wandering world.  Amidon felt that he must have been very
+blind in failing to note this work until it was thus forced on his
+notice; but he made a mental apology.
+
+"By the way, Brassfield," said Mr. Slater during a recess preceding the
+initiation of candidates, "you want to give Stevens the best you've got
+in the Catacombs scene.  Will you make it just straight ritual, or
+throw in some of those specialties of yours?"
+
+"Stevens!  Catacombs!" gasped Amidon, "specialties!  I----"
+
+"I wish you could have been here when I was put through," went on Mr.
+Slater.  "I don't see how any one but a professional actor, or a person
+with your dramatic gifts, can do that part at all--it's so sort of
+ripping and--and intense, you know.  I look forward to your rendition
+of it with a good deal of pleasurable anticipation."
+
+"You don't expect me to do it, do you?" asked Amidon.
+
+"Why, who else?" was the counter-question.  "We can't be expected to
+play on the bench the best man in Pennsylvania in that part, can we?"
+
+"Come, Brassfield," said the Sovereign Pontiff, "get on your regalia
+for the Catacombs.  We are about to begin."
+
+"Oh, say, now!" said Amidon, trying to be off-hand about it, "you must
+get somebody else."
+
+"What's that!  Some one else?  Very likely we shall!  Very likely!"
+thus the Sovereign Pontiff with fine scorn.  "Come, the regalia, and no
+nonsense!"
+
+"I--I may be called out at any moment," urged Amidon, amidst an outcry
+that seemed to indicate a breach with the Martyrs then and there.
+"There are reasons why----"
+
+Edgington took him aside.  "Is there any truth in this story," said he,
+"that you have had some trouble with Stevens, and discharged him?"
+
+"Oh, that Stevens!" gasped Amidon, as if the whole discussion had
+hinged on picking out the right one among an army of Stevenses.  "Yes,
+it's true, and I can't help confer this----"
+
+Edgington whispered to the Sovereign Pontiff; and the announcement was
+made that in the Catacombs scene Brother Brassfield would be excused
+and Brother Bulliwinkle substituted.
+
+"I know I never, in any plane of consciousness, saw any of this, or
+knew any of these things," thought Florian.  "It is incredible!"
+
+Conviction, however, was forced on him by the fact that he was now made
+to don a black domino and mask, and to march, carrying a tin-headed
+spear, with a file of similar figures to examine the candidate, who
+turned out to be the discharged Stevens, sitting in an anteroom,
+foolish and apprehensive, and looking withal much as he had done in the
+counting-room.  He was now asked by the leader of the file, in a
+sepulchral tone, several formal questions, among others whether he
+believed in a Supreme Being.  Stevens gulped, and said "Yes."  He was
+then asked if he was prepared to endure any ordeal to which he might be
+subjected, and warned that unless he possessed nerves of steel, he had
+better turn back--for which measure there was yet time.  Stevens, in a
+faint voice, indicated that he was ready for the worst, and desired to
+go on.  Then all (except Amidon) in awesome accents intoned, "Be brave
+and obedient, and all may yet be well!" and they passed back into the
+lodge-room.  Amidon was now thoroughly impressed, and wondered whether
+Stevens would be able to endure the terrible trials hinted at.
+
+Clad in a white robe "typifying innocence," and marching to minor music
+played upon a piano, Stevens was escorted several times around the
+darkened room, stopping from time to time at the station of some
+officer, to receive highly improving lectures.  Every time he was asked
+if he were willing to do anything, or believed anything, he said "Yes."
+Finally, with the Scroll of the Law in one hand, and with the other
+resting on the Bones of Martyrs, surrounded by the brethren whose drawn
+swords and leveled spears threatened death, he repeated an obligation
+which bound him not to do a great many things, and to keep the secrets
+of the order.  To Amidon it seemed really awful--albeit somewhat florid
+in style; and when Alvord nudged him at one passage in the obligation,
+he resented it as an irreverence.  Then he noted that it was a pledge
+to maintain the sanctity of the family circle of brother Martyrs, and
+Alvord's reference of the night before to the obligation as affecting
+his association with the "strawberry blonde" took on new and fearful
+meaning.
+
+Stevens seemed to be vibrating between fright and a tendency to laugh,
+as the voice of some well-known fellow citizen rumbled out from behind
+a deadly weapon.  He was marched out, to the same minor music, and the
+first act was ended.
+
+The really esoteric part of it, Amidon felt, was to come, as he could
+see no reason for making a secret of these very solemn and edifying
+matters.  Stevens felt very much the same way about it, and was full of
+expectancy when informed that the next degree would test his obedience.
+He highly resolved to obey to the letter.
+
+The next act disclosed Stevens hoodwinked, and the room light.  He was
+informed that he was in the Catacombs, familiar to the early
+Christians, and must make his way alone and in darkness, following the
+Clue of Faith which was placed in his hands.  This Clue was a white
+cord similar to the sort used by masons (in the building-trades).  He
+groped his way along by it to the station of the next officer, who
+warned him of the deadly consequences of disobedience.  Thence he made
+his way onward, holding to the Clue of Faith--until he touched a
+trigger of some sort, which let down upon him an avalanche of tinware
+and such light and noisy articles, which frightened him so that he
+started to run, and was dexterously tripped by the Deacon Militant and
+a spearman, and caught in a net held by two others.  A titter ran about
+the room.
+
+"Obey," thundered the Vice-Pontiff, "and all will be well!"
+
+Stevens resumed the Clue.  At the station of the next officer to whom
+it brought him, the nature of faith was explained to him, and he was
+given the password, "Ichthus," whispered so that all in that part of
+the room could hear the interdicted syllables.  But he was adjured
+never, never to utter it, unless to the Guardian of the Portal on
+entering the lodge, to the Deacon Militant on the opening thereof, or
+to a member, when he, Stevens, should become Sovereign Pontiff.  Then
+he was faced toward the Vice-Pontiff, and told to answer loudly and
+distinctly the questions asked him.
+
+"What is the lesson inculcated in this Degree?" asked the Vice-Pontiff
+from the other end of the room.
+
+"Obedience!" shouted Stevens in reply.
+
+"What is the password of this Degree?"
+
+"Ichthus!" responded Stevens.
+
+A roll of stage-thunder sounded deafeningly over his head.  The piano
+was swept by a storm of bass passion; and deep cries of "Treason!
+Treason!" echoed from every side.  Poor Stevens tottered, and fell into
+a chair placed by the Deacon Militant.  He saw the enormity of the deed
+of shame he had committed.  He had told the password!
+
+"You have all heard this treason," said the Sovereign Pontiff, in the
+deepest of chest-tones--"a treason unknown in all the centuries of the
+past!  What is the will of the conclave?"
+
+"I would imprecate on the traitor's head," said a voice from one of the
+high-backed chairs, "the ancient doom of the Law!"
+
+"Doom, doom!" said all in unison, holding the "oo" in a most
+blood-curdling way.  "Pronounce doom!"
+
+"One fate, and one alone," pronounced the Sovereign Pontiff, "can be
+yours.  Brethren, let him forthwith be encased in the Chest of the
+Clanking Chains, and hurled from the Tarpeian Rock, to be dashed in
+fragments at its stony base!"
+
+Amidon's horror was modified by the evidences of repressed glee with
+which this sentence was received.  Yet he felt a good deal of concern
+as they brought out a great chest, threw the struggling Stevens into
+it, slammed down the ponderous lid and locked it.  Stevens kicked at
+the lid, but said nothing.  The members leaped with joy.  A great chain
+was brought and wrapped clankingly about the chest.
+
+"Let me out," now yelled the Christian Martyr.  "Let me out, damn you!"
+
+"Doom, do-o-o-oom!" roared the voices; and said the Sovereign Pontiff
+in impressive tones, "Proceed with the execution!"
+
+Now the chest was slung up to a hook in the ceiling, and gradually
+drawn back by a pulley until it was far above the heads of the men, the
+chains meanwhile clanking continually against the receptacle, from
+which came forth a stream of smothered profanity.
+
+"Hurl him down to the traitor's death!" shouted the Sovereign Pontiff.
+The chest was loosed, and swung like a pendulum lengthwise of the room,
+down almost to the floor and up nearly to the ceiling.  The profanity
+now turned into a yell of terror.  The Martyrs slapped one another's
+backs and grew blue in the face with laughter.  At a signal, a light
+box was placed where the chest would crush it (which it did with a
+sound like a small railway collision); the chest was stopped and the
+lid raised.
+
+"Let the body receive Christian burial," said the Sovereign Pontiff.
+"Our vengeance ceases with death."
+
+This truly Christian sentiment was received with universal approval.
+Death seemed to all a good place at which to stop.
+
+"Brethren," said the Deacon Militant, as he struggled with the
+resurgent Stevens, "there seems some life here!  Methinks the heart
+beats, and----"
+
+The remainder of the passage from the ritual was lost to Amidon by
+reason of the fact that Stevens had placed one foot against the
+Deacon's stomach and hurled that august officer violently to the floor.
+
+"Let every test of life be applied," said the Sovereign Pontiff.
+"Perchance some higher will than ours decrees his preservation.  Take
+the body hence for a time; if possible, restore him to life, and we
+will consider his fate."
+
+The recess which followed was clearly necessary to afford an
+opportunity for the calming of the risibilities of the Martyrs.  The
+stage, too, had to be reset.  Amidon's ethnological studies had not
+equaled his reading in _belles-lettres_, and he was unable to see the
+deep significance of these rites from an historical standpoint, and
+that here was a survival of those orgies to which our painted and
+skin-clad ancestors devoted themselves in spasms of religious frenzy,
+gazed at by the cave-bear and the mammoth.  The uninstructed Amidon
+regarded them as inconceivable horse-play.  While thus he mused,
+Stevens, who was still hoodwinked and being greatly belectured on the
+virtue of Faith and the duty of Obedience, reentered on his ordeal.
+
+He was now informed by the officer at the other end of the room, that
+every man must ascend into the Mountains of Temptation and be tested,
+before he could be pronounced fit for companionship with Martyrs.
+Therefore, a weary climb heavenward was before him, and a great trial
+of his fidelity.  On his patience, daring and fortitude depended all
+his future in the Order.  He was marched to a ladder and bidden to
+ascend.
+
+"I," said the Deacon Militant, "upon this companion stair will
+accompany you."
+
+But there was no other ladder and the Deacon Militant had to stand upon
+a chair.
+
+Up the ladder labored Stevens, but, though he climbed manfully, he
+remained less than a foot above the floor.  The ladder went down like a
+treadmill, as Stevens climbed--it was an endless ladder rolled down on
+Stevens' side and up on the other.  The Deacon Militant, from his perch
+on the chair, encouraged Stevens to climb faster so as not to be
+out-stripped.  With labored breath and straining muscles he climbed,
+the Martyrs rolling on the floor in merriment all the more violent
+because silent.  Amidon himself laughed to see this strenuous climb, so
+strikingly like human endeavor, which puts the climber out of breath,
+and raises him not a whit--except in temperature.  At the end of
+perhaps five minutes, when Stevens might well have believed himself a
+hundred feet above the roof, he had achieved a dizzy height of perhaps
+six feet, on the summit of a stage-property mountain, where he stood
+beside the Deacon Militant, his view of the surrounding plain cut off
+by papier-mache clouds, and facing a foul fiend to whom the Deacon
+Militant confided that here was a candidate to be tested and qualified.
+Whereupon the foul fiend remarked "Ha, ha!" and bade them bind him to
+the Plutonian Thunderbolt and hurl him down to the nether world.  The
+thunderbolt was a sort of toboggan on rollers, for which there was a
+slide running down presumably to the nether world, above mentioned.
+
+The hoodwink was removed, and Stevens looked about him, treading
+warily, like one on the top of a tower; the great height of the
+mountain made him giddy.  Obediently he lay face downward on the
+thunderbolt, and yielded up his wrists and ankles to fastenings
+provided for them.
+
+"They're not going to lower him with those cords, are they?"
+
+It was a stage-whisper from the darkness which spake thus.
+
+"Oh, I guess it's safe enough!" said another, in the same sort of
+agitated whisper.
+
+"Safe!" was the reply.  "I tell you, it's sure to break!  Some one stop
+'em----"
+
+To the heart of the martyred Stevens these words struck panic.  But as
+he opened his mouth to protest, the catastrophe occurred.  There was a
+snap, and the toboggan shot downward.  Bound as he was, the victim
+could see below him a brick wall right across the path of his descent.
+He was helpless to move; it was useless to cry out.  For all that, as
+he felt in imagination the crushing shock of his head driven like a
+battering-ram against this wall, he uttered a roar such as from
+Achilles might have roused armed nations to battle.  And even as he did
+so, his head touched the wall, there was a crash, and Stevens lay safe
+on a mattress after his ten-foot slide, surrounded by fragments of
+red-and-white paper which had lately been a wall.  He was pale and
+agitated, and generally done for; but tremendously relieved when he had
+assured himself of the integrity of his cranium.  This he did by
+repeatedly feeling of his head, and looking at his fingers for
+sanguinary results.  As Amidon looked at him, he repented of what he
+had done to this thoroughly maltreated fellow man.  After the Catacombs
+scene, which was supposed to be impressive, and some more of the
+"secret" work, everybody crowded about Stevens, now invested with the
+collar and "jewel" of Martyrhood, and laughed, and congratulated him as
+on some great achievement, while he looked half-pleased and half-bored.
+Amidon with the rest greeted him, and told him that after his vacation
+was over, he hoped to see him back at the office.
+
+"That was a fine exemplification of the principles of the Order," said
+Alvord as they went home.
+
+"What was?" asked Amidon.
+
+"Hiring old Stevens back," answered Alvord.  "You've got to live your
+principles, or they don't amount to much."
+
+"Suppose some fellow should get into a lodge," asked Amidon, "who had
+never been initiated?"
+
+"Well," said Alvord, "there isn't much chance of that.  I shouldn't
+dare to say.  You can't tell what the fellows would do when such sacred
+things were profaned, you know.  You couldn't tell what they might do!"
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE TREASON OF ISEGRIM THE WOLF
+
+  Then up and spake Reynard, the Fox, King Leo's throne before:
+  "My clients, haled before you, Sire, deserve not frown nor roar!
+  These flocks and herds and sties, dread lord, should thanks
+      give for our care--
+  The care of Isegrim the Wolf, and Bruin strong, the Bear!
+  Its usefulness, its innocence, our Syndicate protests.
+  We crave the Court's support for our legitimate interests!"
+            --_An Appeal to King Leo_.
+
+  The sifting of St. Peter
+    Seems quite credible to me,
+  When I see what's done to absentees
+    At our Society!
+            --_Annals of Sorosis_.
+
+Any business man will be able to appreciate the difficulties which
+beset the president of the Brassfield Oil Company, on the discharge of
+Mr. Stevens.  On the morning after the lodge meeting, behold Mr. Amidon
+at his desk, contemplating a rising pile of unanswered letters.  His
+countenance expresses defeat, despair and aversion.  His politeness
+toward Miss Strong is never-failing; but that he is not himself grows
+more and more apparent to that clear-headed young woman.
+
+"Here's the third letter from the Bayonne refinery," she said.  "An
+immediate reply is demanded."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Amidon; "certainly; that has gone too long!  We must
+get at that matter at once: let me see the contracts and
+correspondence."
+
+"That is the business," said Miss Strong, "which they claim to have
+arranged with you in a conversation over the long-distance 'phone.
+That's what seems to be the matter with them--they want to make a
+record of it."
+
+"I don't remember----  Well," said Amidon, "lay that by for a moment.
+And this piece of business with the A. B. & C. Railway.  Who knows
+anything about this claim for demurrage?"
+
+"Mr. Stevens," said Miss Strong, "had that in hand, and said he told
+you all about it before you went away, and that you were going to see
+about it in----"
+
+"In New York, I suppose!" exclaimed Amidon.  "Well, I didn't.  Can't
+you and Mr. Alderson take up this pile of letters and bring 'em to me
+with the correspondence, and--and papers--and things?  I've been too
+lax in the past, in not referring to the records.  I must have the
+records, Miss Strong, in every case."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Miss Strong; "but since we adopted that new system of
+filing, I don't see how the records can be made any fuller, or how you
+can be more fully acquainted with them than you now are----"
+
+"Not at all," asseverated Mr. Amidon.  "I find myself uncertain as to a
+great many things.  Let's have the records constantly."
+
+"Yes, sir, but these are cases where there isn't anything.  Nobody but
+you and Mr. Stevens knows anything about them."
+
+"Well, I can't answer them now," protested Mr. Amidon.  "I've a
+headache!  My--my mind isn't clear--is confused on some of these
+things; and they'll all have to wait a while.  Who's that tapping?  Oh,
+it's you, is it, Mr. Alderson--you startled me so that I----  Mr.
+Edgington here?  Well, why don't you show him in?  After luncheon, Miss
+Strong, you may come in again."
+
+Mr. Edgington had a tightly-curled mustache, a pink flush on his
+cheeks, wore an obviously new sack suit, had a carnation in his
+buttonhole, came in with an air of marked hurry, and carried a roll of
+papers.
+
+"I thought I must have a talk with you," said he, "on the evidence in
+that Bunn's Ferry land case.  The time for taking evidence is rapidly
+passing, and the court warned us that it wouldn't be extended again.
+That proof you must furnish, or we shall be beaten."
+
+"Yes--yes, I see," said Amidon, who knew absolutely nothing about the
+matter.  "We should feel really annoyed by such a termination!"
+
+"Annoyed!" exclaimed the lawyer.  "Say, Brassfield, that reminds me of
+Artemus Ward's statement that he was 'ashamed' when some one died!
+You'd lose the best wells you've got.  And it would involve those
+transfers to the Waldrons, and might carry them down."
+
+"The Waldrons!" exclaimed Florian.
+
+"Why, I mean Miss Bessie and her aunt," said Edgington.  "I mean
+bankruptcy----  But we've gone all over that before."
+
+Amidon nodded, with an air of knowing all about the matter.
+
+"Lots of times," said he.  "And this evidence is----?  Please give me
+the exact requirements--er, again."
+
+"The exact requirements," said Edgington, "as I have frequently shown
+you, and without its doing much good, are to prove that some time in
+March, 1896, you did not make a partnership agreement with this man
+Corkery by which you were to share with him the proceeds of your
+oil-prospecting, and under which he went into possession of this tract
+of land.  He has a line of testimony which shows that you did.  Proving
+a negative is rather unusual, but about the only thing which will save
+you is an alibi.  Now you must pardon the expression, but you've always
+evaded my questions as to your whereabouts prior to June of that year.
+You've never flatly denied Corkery's story, but if it weren't for the
+inherent improbability of it, I'd have given up the fight long ago, for
+you have not helped as a client should.  You haven't confided----"
+
+"But I will!" said Amidon energetically.  "The man's a perjurer, and
+I'll prove it!  All that time I was in Wisconsin.  I was--I'll prove
+where I was----"
+
+"Good!" cried Edgington, noting a tendency to falter.  "And now for the
+names and addresses of a few witnesses, and we'll go after them!"
+
+"Witnesses--yes, yes--we shall need witnesses, won't we?" faltered
+Amidon.  "Say, Mr. Edgington, I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll turn you
+over to Blodgett."
+
+"The old gentleman at the hotel?"
+
+"The same," replied Amidon.  "He was my lawyer, years ago.  I'll send
+him to you directly this afternoon."
+
+Edgington made some notes in a book.
+
+"Very well," said he.  "I'm glad that puzzle is in process of solution.
+And now one thing further, and I am done.  This is a question of local
+politics.  You know the talks we've had with the fellows about this
+trolley franchise, and the advisability of making you mayor.  We all
+agree that your interests and mine and those of all our crowd demand
+your election to the place----"
+
+"Me mayor!" shouted Amidon.  "Me run for office!  Why, Mr. Edgington,
+you must be crazy!"
+
+"Well, this--certainly--is refreshing!" expostulated Edgington, in
+apparent amazement.  "When can anything be supposed to be settled,
+between gentlemen, if that isn't?  Why, confound it, didn't we make up
+the complete slate, including control of the Common Council?  And
+aren't we to have an exclusive franchise on all the streets, with your
+signature as mayor?  Of course, you're joking now.  Why, we're right on
+the eve of the caucuses, and with Conlon in line everything will go as
+it ought.  I mean Barney Conlon, the labor leader.  Since you've come
+back from this trip of yours, everything seems to be going in
+unexpected ways--and somehow you've given offense to Conlon.  Do you
+know what it was?"
+
+"No," answered Amidon, with some heat.  "I don't know what it was!  I
+don't know Conlon, and I don't know anything about this business except
+this: that if you think I'm going to sneak into office for the purpose
+of stealing the streets of this town, you don't know Florian Amidon,
+that's all!"
+
+"Don't know what?  Don't know whom?"
+
+"Don't know Flo--ah--me!  Me!"
+
+"Then you won't see Barney Conlon?"
+
+"I won't foul my hands with the dirty mess!  I won't----"
+
+"Dirty mess, indeed!" retorted Edgington, "when the best business
+men----  Oh, well, if that's the way you feel----  Why didn't you say
+so, instead of----  I think we'd best not discuss the thing any
+further, Mr. Brassfield; and returning to legal matters, where we are
+happily at one, let me remind you that you are to send Judge Blodgett
+up to see me regarding the Corkery case this afternoon.  Good day, Mr.
+Brassfield!"
+
+Mr. Edgington went forth from Amidon's presence in a state of mind
+which can be appreciated by no one but some "good" citizen who has
+perfected all the preliminaries for securing a particularly fat
+financial prize by the cheap and simple device of a popular vote, and
+finds the man on whom he relies going off into a fanciful ism induced
+by some maggot of so-called conscientiousness.  Any one ought to be
+able to see that there is nothing wrong in accepting gifts from those
+able to give: and who is more able than the public?  Everybody would be
+better off for the arrangement contemplated, and no one the worse.  So
+reasoned Mr. Edgington as he saw with chagrin the Bellevale franchise
+slipping away, and with it the core of their ambitious project of
+interurban lines connecting half a dozen cities.  Bellevale, with its
+water-power, was the hub of it; and to lose here by such a sudden
+exhibition of so-called "civic patriotism"--Edgington knew the patter
+of these reformers--was disgusting, and all the more so from the fact
+that the one to blame was Brassfield, whose ethical attitude had always
+been so "safe and sane" in business matters.
+
+He must find some way of re-forming the lines, and adjusting the action
+of the machine--now engaged in grinding out Brassfield's nomination--so
+as to produce other grist just as good, if that were possible.  It was
+ticklish business, but it must be done.  The time was short, but before
+the caucuses met a new candidate must be found, and the word passed
+down the line that the dear people had changed their minds over night
+on the subject of the next mayor.
+
+To decide, with Mr. Edgington (who fancied that he resembled the first
+Napoleon), was to act, and almost instantly, his forces, hastily
+mobilized, began an enveloping movement for the purpose of surrounding
+and bringing into camp a proper candidate for the local chief
+magistracy.
+
+Mr. Amidon was flushed after this encounter.  Mr. Edgington's cool
+manner of approaching him with this questionable and shady political
+job had generated some heat in Florian--a man always possessed of
+strong convictions concerning civic purity.  He was offended; yet he
+knew that it was to the turpitude of Brassfield that he owed this,
+rather than to any fault of Edgington's.
+
+"How could such a fellow as Brassfield reap such success!" was Amidon's
+mental ejaculation.  "Ready to rob the community, he enjoys the
+confidence of all; full of the propensities of Don Juan, he wins the
+respect and love of Elizabeth Waldron!  Shameful commentary upon
+society, and----  Yes, Miss Strong, who is there?  Judge Blodgett: send
+him right in. . . .  Judge, I'm glad you came in.  I'm very glad!  I
+need your advice and aid."
+
+"All right," said the judge, biting a cigar.  "What's up, Florian?"
+
+"You've seen a Mr. Edgington?"
+
+"Your lawyer," replied the judge.  "The _Notes_ tell all about him."
+
+"Well," resumed Amidon, "he's been here, and I learn that there is some
+very important litigation pending, which we've got to win, because it
+involves others--Miss Waldron and her aunt--and this man Brassfield
+never could give Edgington the evidence he needed in order to win."
+
+"Why couldn't he?"
+
+"Because," said Amidon, with the air of a man uttering something of the
+deepest significance, "it involves matters happening before June, 1896,
+and Brassfield was not in existence until the twenty-seventh of June!
+I've promised Edgington that you will get him the evidence he wants."
+
+"What's the nub of the case?" asked the judge.
+
+"A man claims I gave him some rights--or that Brassfield did--you
+understand?--"
+
+"I see."
+
+"--in March, 1896."
+
+"H'm!" exclaimed the judge contemptuously.  "March, eh?  Why, we can
+subpoena the whole town of Hazelhurst, and show that you were at that
+time acting as a pillar of society there, every day in that year, up to
+June twenty-seventh!"
+
+"But don't you see," said Amidon, "that proving this makes my whole
+story public?"
+
+Judge Blodgett thoughtfully gazed into space.
+
+"Yes, it would appear that way," said he, at last; "but is it
+necessarily so?  You can testify that you were in Hazelhurst at that
+time, and legally, that's the same thing as saying that Brassfield
+was--I guess; and I'll swear to it, too; and if they aren't too
+searching on cross-examination, we may slide through--but there'll be
+some ticklish spots.  I'll see Mr. Edgington, and find out just how
+strong a fabric of perjury we've got to go against.  We may have to get
+more witnesses--and that'll be thin ice, too.  I'll look in again this
+afternoon."
+
+"Please do so," replied Mr. Amidon.  "Look at these letters!  Do you
+suppose your _Notes_ would shed any light on what they're driving at?"
+
+The judge looked them over.
+
+"I don't remember anything in the _Notes_," said he, "regarding these
+matters.  But you could take 'em up to the hotel, and Madame le Claire
+could put you to sleep and talk it out of you in five minutes."
+
+"I'll do it!" said Amidon.  "I'll get Brassfield's views on them,
+confound him.  I'll do this while you're with Edgington.  Good-by until
+after luncheon."
+
+
+Madame le Claire was examining Mr. Brassfield with reference to the
+unanswered letters.  Professor Blatherwick was engaged in taking down
+his answers.  In a disastrous moment, Mr. Alderson knocked at the door,
+and, following his knocking, delivered a breathless message to
+Brassfield that an important telegram demanded instant attention.
+
+"All right," replied Mr. Brassfield cheerily, "I'll toddle right down
+to the office with you, my boy.  Excuse me, Madame; you may rely on my
+seeking a resumption of this pleasant interview at the earliest
+possible moment.  _Au revoir_!"
+
+Madame le Claire was perplexed.  Should she allow him to go out in this
+hypnotic state?  Could she exercise her art in Alderson's presence?
+While she debated, Mr. Brassfield airily bowed himself out, and was
+gone!
+
+
+Brassfield was gone, that was clear: but no system of Subliminal
+Engineering had any rule for calculating the results of his escape back
+into the world from which he had for a fortnight or so been absent.
+What would he be, and what would he do?  Would he return the same
+hard-headed man of business who had won riches in five short years?  Or
+would he be changed by the return to the normal--his equilibrium made
+unstable by the tendency to revert to his older self?  How would he
+adjust himself to the things done by Amidon?  How would the change
+affect his relations with Miss Waldron and this bright-haired inamorata
+so balefully nearing the foreground, like an approaching comet?  How
+would the professor and Judge Blodgett stand with this new factor in
+the problem?  Would he continue to care for her, his rescuer?  Owing to
+some things which had taken place in the Brassfield intervals, her
+heart fluttered at the thought of a possibly permanent Eugene.
+
+For be it remembered, that many things had taken place in these days of
+Bellevale life.  The situation had, of course, been changing daily by
+subsurface mutations which the intelligent student of this history will
+not need to have explained to him.  For instance (and herein the
+explanation of that fluttering of Madame le Claire's heart) such things
+as these:
+
+Bellevale is not so large a place that neighbors' affairs are not
+observed of neighbor.  Prior to the elaboration of the law of
+thought-transference, there was no way of accounting for the
+universality of knowledge of other people's affairs which certain
+Bellevale circles enjoyed.  The good gossiping housewives along the
+highways leading into the town are often able to tell the exact
+contents of the packages brought home by their neighbors, under the
+seats of their buggies and farm-wagons and late at night; but this is a
+phenomenon not at all unusual.  Neither is it in the least strange
+that, in town or country, John and Sarah could not sit out an evening
+together in the parlor or settin'-room without all that occurred being
+talked over, with perfect certainty as to facts, in the next day's
+meeting of the Missionary Society or the Monday Club.  But what Phyllis
+thought, what were the plans of Thestylis, and how Jane felt when
+William jilted her, and why William did it--all of which difficult
+circumstances were canvassed with equal certitude--are things, the
+knowledge of which, as I said above, was not to be accounted for on any
+theory at all consistent with respect for the people possessing it,
+until thought-transference came into fashion.  Now all is clear, and
+our debt to science is increased by another large item.
+
+Mr. Brassfield and his affairs were as a city set upon a hill, and
+could not be hid.  There was a maid in Elizabeth's home, and a maiden
+aunt who had confidential friends.  A stenographer and bookkeepers were
+employed in the counting-room of the Brassfield Oil Company, and the
+stenographer had a friend in the milliner's shop, and an admirer who
+was a clerk in one of the banks.  There were clubs and other
+organizations, social, religious and literary; and the people in all of
+them had tongues wherewith to talk, and ears for hearing.
+
+Hence:
+
+At the meeting of the Society for Ethical Research, Mrs. Meyer read an
+essay on "What _Parsifal_ Has Taught Me," during the reading of which
+Mrs. Alvord described Miss Waldron's trousseau to Miss Finch and Doctor
+Julia Brown.  Because of the conversation among these three, the
+president asked Doctor Brown, first of all, to discuss the paper.  And
+Doctor Julia, who talked bass and had coquettish fluffy blond bangs and
+a greatly overtaxed corsage, said that she fully agreed with the many
+and deeply beautiful thoughts expressed in the paper.
+
+"I'm sincerely glad _Parsifal_ taught her something!" said the fair
+M.D. to her companions, as she resumed her seat.  Mrs. Meyer was the
+only woman in the town who had ever been to Bayreuth, she added
+short-windedly in explanation of her remarks, and had lobbied herself
+into a place on the program on the strength of that fact.
+
+"Does Bess know," asked Miss Finch, "about this mesmerist person?"
+
+"Oh, there isn't anything there," said Doctor Brown, "I feel sure.
+Though his inti--ah, friendship with this Le Claire woman is, just at
+this time, in bad taste.  But all men are natural polygamists, you
+know."
+
+"They say," said the voice of a member from across the room, "that it
+will be quite a palace--throw everything else in Bellevale in the
+shade--entirely so."
+
+"They are all talking of it," said Mrs. Alvord.  "Jim says it seems odd
+to have this Mr. Blodgett looking into the Brassfield business.  But
+everything is odd, now--the hypnotist and Mr. Blodgett, and Daisy
+Scarlett; she's still here."
+
+"O----o!" said Doctor Brown, in a sinuous barytone circumflex.
+
+"Really," said Miss Finch, who wore her dress high about the neck, and
+whose form was a symphony in angles, "such promiscuous associations may
+be shocking, but as to surprise--who knows anything of his life before
+he came here?"
+
+"Judge Blodgett," said Doctor Brown, "told a friend of mine that he had
+known Brassfield from infancy."
+
+"The first light Bellevale has ever received on a dark past," said Miss
+Finch, "if it is light.  And how strangely he acts!  Everybody notices
+it.  Always so chatty and almost voluble before, and now--why, he's
+dreadfully boorish.  You know how he treated you, Miss Brown!"
+
+"Yes, and he knows how I treated him for it!" said Doctor Brown.  "I
+propose to call people down when they act so with me!"
+
+"Quite right," said Mrs. Alvord, "quite correct, Doctor.  Oh, what a
+change!  And who has changed for the worse lately more than Bessie
+Waldron?  Pale, silent and clearly unhappy.  I can't attach any
+importance to that affair of the strange woman with the striped hair;
+but that Miss Scarlett matter--that's quite different.  Jim and I saw
+the beginning of that up in the mountains last summer.  Daisy Scarlett
+is a queer girl, so wild and hoidenish--but the people who know her in
+Allentown just think the world of her, the same as do the people in
+Bellevale--and her appearance here right after the announcement of the
+engagement means something.  Poor Bess!  Hush!  There she comes.  Oh,
+Bessie, it's so sweet of you to come, even if you are late!  Everybody
+has been saying such sweet things of you!"
+
+"How kind of them!" said Elizabeth.  "Has _Parsifal_ received any
+attention?"
+
+
+At the club, of course, no such gossip as that uttered at the meeting
+of the Society for Ethical Research was heard.  Men are above such
+things.  To be sure Alvord and Slater and Edgington and the rest of the
+"the gang" did exchange views on some matters involving the welfare of
+the club--and in the course of duty.
+
+"I tell you," said Slater, "Brass has been practising that French
+doctrine about hunting for the woman--a little too industriously.
+They're getting to be something--something----"
+
+"Fierce," suggested Alvord.
+
+"Well, that isn't quite what I meant to say," said Slater, "but pretty
+near.  'Terrible as an army with banners,' you know, and condemned near
+as numerous."
+
+"It's changed Brassfield like a coat of paint, this engagement," said
+Edgington.  "I saw something last week that showed me more than you
+could print in a book as big as the Annual Digest.  You see, he went
+sort of gravitating down by where the sewer gang was at work, like a
+man in a strange country full of hostiles, and although he must have
+been conscious of the fact that he's slated for mayor in the spring, he
+never showed that he knew of the presence of a human being, to say
+nothing of a voter, in the whole gang, and Barney Conlon's gang, too.
+Why, he'd better have done anything than ignore 'em!  He'd better a
+darn sight have stood and sung _Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill!_ as a
+political move.  Now that shows a revolution in his nature.  It's
+uncanny, and it'll play the very deuce with the slate if it goes on."
+
+"Well, you all know what took place at his counting-room," asked
+Slater, "the day after he got back from New York?  Old Stevens
+resigned, on the street the night before, and Brass didn't seem to know
+any more than to accept his resignation.  Hired him back since, I've
+heard, but he ought not to have noticed it.  He certainly has gone off
+badly."
+
+"I knew a fellow once," said Edgington, "who went sort of crazy on the
+girl question--batty.  D'ye s'pose this engagement----"
+
+"They change to their lady friends," said Slater, "sometimes.  But
+he--why, he passed me a dozen times with a cold stare!"
+
+"Me, too," said Edgington, "and he didn't seem to know Flossie Smith
+when he met her, and Doctor Julia Brown gave him a calling-down on the
+street--a public lecture on etiquette.  Colonel McCorkle claims to have
+been insulted by him, and won't serve any longer on the same committees
+with him in the Commercial Association.  And he stays at the hotel all
+the time, and seems afraid to leave this old judge, and collogues with
+the German professor and the occultist--and, let me say, I've seen
+cripples in the hospital that were worse-looking than she is!--and what
+in thunder it means beats me."
+
+"He wants the judge and the professor at our supper next week," added
+Slater.
+
+"I've sent 'em invitations," said Alvord.  "Anything to please the
+patient.  I could tell you a good deal about this, fellows; but 'Gene
+and I are brothers and closer than brothers; and F. D. and B. goes with
+me; but it won't hurt anything for you to know that he's got carloads
+of trouble, and you haven't any of you come within a mile of the mark.
+He told me all about it the night he got back from New York.  I think
+it will blow over if things can be kept from blowing up instead, for a
+few days--slumbering volcano--woman scorned--hell's fury, you know;
+don't ask me any more.  But this hiding out won't do."
+
+"Well, I should think not," said Slater.  "We've got to get him going
+about as usual or there'll be questions asked and publicity--those
+red-headed women are pretty vivacious conversationalists when they get
+mad, and you can't tell what may be pulled off, even if he acts as
+natural as life."
+
+"This supper ought to help some," said Edgington.
+
+"It will," said Alvord.  "We must make it a hum-dinger.  And we must
+see that he shows himself of tenor at the club and lodge meetings and
+hops.  Why, it's shameful, the way we've let him drop out."
+
+And men being above gossip, at this point the meeting dissolved.
+
+
+At the hotel, conference after conference had taken place in the parlor
+of Professor Blatherwick, and Blodgett and Blatherwick's _Notes_ had
+been studied out most assiduously.  Judge Blodgett and Florian Amidon
+had spent their days at the counting-house, and an increased force of
+clerks worked ceaselessly in making up statements and balances showing
+the condition of the business.  Amidon could now draw checks in the
+name of Brassfield with no more than a dim sense of committing forgery.
+The banks, however, refused to honor them at first, and the tellers
+noted the fact that after his return from New York Mr. Brassfield
+adopted a new style of signature, and wondered at it.  Some noticed a
+change in all his handwriting, but in these days of the typewriter such
+a thing makes little difference.  His abstention from bowling (to the
+playing of which Brassfield had been devoted), and his absolute failure
+at billiards, were discussed in sporting circles, and accounted for on
+the theory that he had "gone stale" since this love-affair had become
+the absorbing business of his life.  No one understood, however, his
+sudden interest in photography, and his marvelous skill in it.  He
+seemed to be altogether a transformed man.
+
+"I am beginning to see through this," said Amidon, referring to the
+business.
+
+"Yes," said the judge, "this side of the affair is assuming a pretty
+satisfactory aspect.  But your reputation is suffering by the sort of
+constraint you've been under.  These things are important.  A man's
+behavior is worth money to him.  Many a man gets credit at the bank on
+the strength of the safe and conservative vices he practises.  Business
+requires you to act more like Brassfield.  A man who uses a good deal
+of money must be like other people who use a good deal of money.  He
+mustn't have isms, and he mustn't be for any reforms except impractical
+ones, and he mustn't have the reputation of being 'queer.'  Isn't that
+so, Professor?"
+
+"Kvite uncontrofertible," said the professor.  "You must minkle up vit
+more beople."
+
+"And in other matters besides business," said the judge; "boxes of
+flowers every few minutes are all right, but some things require
+personal attention."
+
+Amidon blushed.
+
+"You see," said he, "if every one were not so strange; if part of the
+people were as familiar to me as I am to them, it wouldn't be so
+trying.  I suppose these receptions, and other functions to follow, I
+must attend alone.  But you two are going to that banquet with me?"
+
+"Oh, certainly," said the judge.  "I want to see just what sort of a
+gang you've been forgathering with here.  The folks at Hazelhurst----"
+
+"Must never know, Judge!  And you, Professor?"
+
+"I shall be more tan bleaced.  Supliminally gonsidered, I rekard it as
+te shance of a lifetime."
+
+"Well," said Amidon, "you are very good, and I am glad that's settled.
+Now I want you to grant me another favor--or Clara, rather.  I should
+be more than glad if she would ask Brassfield about some things that
+there's no need for you people to hear.  It's nothing about the
+business.  Won't you see if she will give me a--a--demonstration?"
+
+The judge and the professor disappeared, and soon word came that Madame
+le Claire would give him audience.  Amidon's heart beat stiflingly as
+he came into her presence.  For this man's conscience was a most
+insubordinate conscience, and held as wrong the things felt and
+thought, as well as things said and done; and his remorse was as that
+of an abandoned but repentant jilt.  But when he saw how cheerfully she
+smiled, he grew easier in his mind.  The women always have such a
+matter fully under control--I mean the other party's mind.
+
+"Well?" said she interrogatively--"at last?  I have been wondering why
+I was brought down here?"
+
+"It must have been very dull and lonesome----"
+
+"Oh, no!" she answered.  "I am a business woman, you know, and I
+haven't been idle.  And now, there is something you need, my friend?
+Let us begin at once."
+
+There were definite repudiation of claims to tenderness, clear denial
+of resentment, in her tone.  Amidon brightened and reddened.  He
+stammered like a boy teased by reference to his first love-affair.
+
+"You are wonderfully kind," he said.  "I wanted to ask you to have this
+Brassfield tell you all he will about the wedding--the date, and
+everything you can get out of the fellow.  And have him act as
+naturally as you can, so as to see more clearly how he carries himself.
+You see what I want, don't you?"
+
+"I think so," she returned.  "Conversation must be a little difficult,
+isn't it?  You remembered some of the things I told you about?"
+
+"Difficult?" he exclaimed.  "Oh, Clara, it's impossible!  It's so much
+so, that I hardly dare go back any more.  I'm sending flowers and notes
+and doing the best I can; but it won't do at all: I must call
+oftener--must!  And I'm afraid I have spoiled everything."
+
+"Then you find the lady quite--quite endurable?"
+
+"She's adorable," went on Florian, with the gush which comes at the
+first opportunity to discuss the dear one with a sympathetic third
+party.  "She's perfectly exquisite!  I have thought of nothing, dreamed
+of nothing, since I left her, except, except----"
+
+"Ah!" said Clara, "the situation must be perfectly lovely--for
+you--both----  And I'm sure you got along nicely."
+
+"No, no!  I spoiled everything, I know I did.  But bring this fellow up
+and ask him those things, please; and also about a Miss Scarlett----
+No, leave that out.  Just about the wedding, and about--I was going to
+ask about our house; but the judge found that out, where it is, and
+all.  Just about the--the things between her and me, a little more, you
+know!"
+
+The hypnotic subject yields to control more and more readily by
+repeated surrender.  So there was little of gazing into the
+party-colored eyes now.
+
+"You will soon sleep," said Madame le Claire, in that dominating way of
+hers; "and when you wake you will be Eugene Brassfield just as he used
+to be, and the room and all the surroundings, and myself--all will seem
+familiar, and you will be quite at home with me.  Sleep, sleep!"
+
+Her hand swept down and closed his eyes, and he lay back in his chair
+entranced.  Madame le Claire sat long and looked at him yearningly.
+She smoothed back the hair from his brow with many soft touches, and
+stooped and softly kissed his forehead.  Then she lightly tapped his
+wrist, and sharply said, "Wake!"
+
+Eugene Brassfield opened his eyes with a smile.  There was something
+still faintly suggestive of tenderness in the look with which Madame le
+Claire regarded him, and he returned it with the air of a man to whom
+such looks are neither unusual nor repugnant.
+
+"We were just talking," said she, with the air of reminding him of a
+topic from which he had wandered, "about your wedding.  When is it to
+be?"
+
+"The appointed date," said he, "is April the fifth; but, of course, I
+shall move for an earlier one if possible."
+
+"I should think," remarked Madame le Claire, "that the date fixed would
+give Miss Waldron all too short a time for preparation."
+
+"From a woman's standpoint," said Mr. Brassfield, "it probably seems
+so.  But you and I can surely find matters of more mutual interest to
+talk about, can't we?"
+
+"Perhaps," said the girl, "but I don't think of anything just now.  Do
+you?"
+
+"Well, for one thing," said he, "I have just found out what makes your
+eyes so beautiful."
+
+"Wouldn't it be just as well to cease discovering things of that kind?
+It's so short a time to the fifth of April, you know."
+
+"I've made all my money," said Brassfield, "by never quitting
+discovering.  I like it.  And this last find especially."
+
+"I think there are other lines of investigation," said she, "which
+demand your time and attention."
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said he.  "Don't be so prudish.  You know that your eyes
+are beautiful, and you are not really offended when I tell you so.
+Such eyes are the books in which I like to read--I can understand them
+better than Browning, or the old Persian soak.  It's not unpleasant to
+get a volume you understand--at times."
+
+"Why, Mr. Amidon--Brassfield, I mean--aren't you ashamed of yourself!"
+
+"A little," said he; "not much, though.  And who is this 'Mr. Amman,'
+or whatever the name is, that is so much in your mind that you call me
+by his name when you speak without thinking?"
+
+"A dear friend of mine!"
+
+"Well, now, if you should happen to see something agreeable in me, and
+should let me know about it, I shouldn't throw your Mr. Amden, or
+Amidon, at your head.  Why not forget about the rest of the world for a
+while?  We can be in only one place at a time, and so, really, our
+whole world just now has only us two.  You oughtn't to repel the only
+person in the wide, wide world; you won't, will you?"
+
+"Don't be foolish!"
+
+"Don't be wasteful!  This may be the only world of this kind we shall
+be allowed to have.  Come over and sit by me and be nice to me, won't
+you?"
+
+"I certainly shall do nothing of the kind!"
+
+"No?  Ah, how wasteful of opportunity!  Well, then, I shall have to
+come to you!"
+
+Oh, the depravity of society in these days, and oh, the unpleasantness
+of setting these things down!  But, on the other hand, what a comfort
+it is to think that men as base as Brassfield are so rare that you and
+I, my boy, have probably never met a specimen.  And if you ever find,
+my love, that any person in whom you have any tender interest has ever
+behaved in a way similar to the conduct of Brassfield, you should give
+the prisoner the benefit of every doubt, and accord full weight to the
+precedent contained in this history, and to the fact that it was
+Brassfield and not Amidon who did this.  A man can not be blamed for
+lapsing into the Brassfield state.  A man should be acquitted--eh?
+Defending some one?  Why, certainly not!  And how long this paragraph
+is growing!  Yes, I feel sure Clara Blatherwick repulsed these advances
+as she should, and that Brassfield, being fully under "control," did
+not--why, of course not, as you say!
+
+But I am going no further with the matter now; except to say that in
+something like an hour Mr. Amidon departed much perturbed by the
+prospect of the nearness of his happiness, fully convinced of his
+unworthiness, and quakingly uncertain as to many things, but most of
+all, just then, as to his clothes!
+
+"This man Brassfield," said he to himself, "seems to have been a good
+deal of a dude, and Elizabeth--the darling!--will expect me to be fully
+up to vogue in this regard--as she will be in all things.  And I don't
+believe a thing has been done about clothes."
+
+Meantime, Madame le Claire walked up and down in a locked chamber,
+struggling with her grief.
+
+"Oh, it is hopeless, hopeless!" said the poor girl to herself, over and
+over again.  "Florian, my darling Florian, whom I found blind and
+wandering in the wilderness, and took by the hand and guided to the
+light--Florian has gone from me!  She has taken him, just as she took
+him before.  But the man she thinks loves her--her Eugene--I'm sure
+he's coming to love me; and to be tired of her!  And I could keep him
+Brassfield, if I chose--if I chose!  I wonder--I wonder if it would be
+wrong?  What would she do if she had my power?  Twice I had to try,
+before I could restore him.  I could!  I could!"
+
+
+Small wonder, therefore, that Madame le Claire sat wild-eyed and
+excited, and flew fearfully to Judge Blodgett and the professor, when
+Mr. Brassfield went free, with Alderson at heel.  And all the time, as
+the crew of a ship carry on the routine of drill while the torpedo is
+speeding for her hull, these social amenities went on all unconscious
+of the explosion now imminent.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+THE TURPITUDE OF BRASSFIELD
+
+  Man to black Misfortune beckons
+  When upon himself he reckons,
+  Marshals Faith among his assets,
+  Blinks his nature's many facets.
+  This dull gem is an ascetic,
+  Bloodless, pulseless, apathetic:
+  Shift the light--a trifling matter--
+  Fra Anselmo turns a satyr!
+            --_The Kaleidoscope_.
+
+Airily, Mr. Brassfield preceded his clerk down the stairway, and out
+into the street.  There, something in the air--the balm of advancing
+spring; a faint chill, the Parthian shot of retreating winter; some
+psychic apprehension of the rising sap; the slight northing of the sun;
+or some subconscious clutch at knowledge of minute alterations in the
+landscape--apprised Mr. Brassfield's strangely circumscribed mind of
+the maladjustment with time resulting from the reign of Amidon.  But
+however bewildered Florian's mentality might become at such things, it
+was different with Brassfield.  The plane of consciousness in which he
+had so long moved, with a memory running back five years and there
+ending in a blank wall of nescience, had made him cunning and
+shifty--necessarily so.  The struggle for existence had had its
+inevitable effect--the faculty paralyzed had been compensated for by
+the development of others.  So he was not at all at a loss now, when
+this little hiatus in time struck on his mind in the form of a
+suspicion.  He turned to Alderson with a smile.
+
+"Do you remember what date this is, my boy?" he inquired.
+
+Alderson named the date.  Brassfield nodded, as if he were pleased to
+find Alderson correct in his exercises.
+
+"Of course you know what we've arranged for to-day, don't you?" he went
+on.
+
+"The deferred annual meeting of the Construction Company?" asked
+Alderson.  "If that's it, it's all attended to.  I took the proxies to
+Mr. Smith yesterday."
+
+"Good!" was Brassfield's hearty response.  "You'll do for an animated
+'office tickler' if you continue to improve.  You used to forget all
+these things."
+
+They had now come to a certain turning, down which Brassfield gazed, to
+a place where the highway was torn up and excavated.  A center line of
+bowed backs, fringed by flying dirt.  Indicated that the work was still
+in progress.
+
+"You may go on to the office," said Brassfield, "and I'll be up
+immediately.  I'm going down to see Barney Conlon a moment."
+
+He walked down among the men, nodding to the busy ones, and stopping
+for a handshake or a joke with others.
+
+"Hello, Barney," he shouted to the man who seemed to be in charge.
+"How long are you going to keep people jumping sideways to prevent
+themselves from being buried alive?  You old Fenian!"
+
+Conlon looked at him for a moment with an air of distinct disfavor.
+
+"Look out there!" he shouted to a teamster who was unloading pipe.
+"D'ye want to kill the min in the trinch?  Ah, is thot you, Mr.
+Brassfield?"
+
+"What's left of me," replied Brassfield, quickly aware of the coolness
+of the reception--the politician's sensitiveness to danger.  "By the
+way, Conlon, can't you come up to the office soon?  I've got some
+specifications I want you to see.  Pipe-line.  Can you do that sort of
+work?"
+
+"Do it!" gushed Conlon, thawing.  "Do it!  Ah, Mr. Brassfield, d'ye ask
+me thot, whin ye mind 'twas me thot done the Rogers job!"
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember now, you did have that," said Brassfield.  "Well,
+that was fairly well done.  Come up and figure with me, and I believe
+we can make a deal."
+
+"Thank ye kindly, Mr. Brassfield," said Conlon, all his obsequiousness
+returning.  "Thank ye!  Annything new in politics, Mr. Brassfield?"
+
+"I don't know a thing," said Brassfield.  "I'm so busy with other
+things, you know----"
+
+"It'll be a great honor," said Conlon, "or so I should take it, to be
+the mare of the city, an' the master of the fine new house an' all
+that'll be in it, all this same spring!"
+
+"Yes, Conlon, yes--but as to the office--I don't know about that."
+
+"They can't bate you," asseverated Conlon promptly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," demurred Brassfield.  "You can't always tell."
+
+"We're wid ye, to a man," asserted Conlon unhesitatingly, growing
+warmer.  "The common people are wid ye!"
+
+"I'm glad to hear that," said Brassfield, "very glad.  But business
+first; and this pipe-line is business.  Of course, if the people demand
+it----"
+
+"They will!"
+
+"--why, I may----  I'll see, Conlon.  Anyhow, I appreciate your
+friendship.  Come up and see me."
+
+And the candidate for mayor walked away, wondering how he could have
+offended Conlon, and rejoiced that he had "fixed" him in time.
+
+"Where's the telegram?" he asked, as he entered his private office.
+"Why, Stevens might have attended to this.   Where's Mr. Stevens?  Miss
+Strong, send Mr. Stevens in!"
+
+"Mr. Stevens!" gasped Miss Strong.  "Mr. Stevens--why----"
+
+"Oh, I mean where does he live now?  I heard he was moving.  And by
+sending him in, I mean, if you happen to meet him," hastily amended Mr.
+Brassfield, noting some error.  "I want to see him.  And show me his
+account, please; and kindly ring for a boy to take this message."
+
+The books showed the discharge of Mr. Stevens, and the closing of his
+account.  Brassfield frowned over it, but resumed his smile at Miss
+Strong's re-entrance.
+
+"Let's see," said he.  "What have we for this afternoon?  These
+unanswered--Why, Miss Strong, these must be attended to at once!
+Please take some letters for me."
+
+He had dropped into his rut.  For an hour or more Miss Strong's fingers
+flew as she noted down his dictation, and at the end of that time the
+letters were answered, and the communications which had so perplexed
+Amidon were filed away among other things done.  The office force
+breathed freely once more, with the freedom of returning efficiency in
+management.
+
+The man who had brought this relief to his employees now looked at his
+watch, rose, went out, and walking briskly down the main street,
+nodding to an acquaintance here, and speaking to another there, made
+his way out among the homes of the town.
+
+Here his brisk walk gradually slowed down to a saunter.  He was
+strolling toward the house with the white columns.  Suddenly coming
+into view, as she turned a corner and walked on before him, appeared a
+young lady.  Not much ability in the detective line would be necessary
+for the recognition of her by any of this girl's acquaintances, within
+any ordinary range of vision.  If there were no certain revelation in
+the short, smartly-attired, quick-moving figure, there could be no
+mistake concerning the vividly brilliant hair, which glowed under the
+saucily-turned fabric of felt, feathers and velvet which crowned it,
+like a brilliant cloud display over a red sunset.  Mr. Brassfield
+seemed to recognize her, for he quickened his pace so as to overtake
+her before she could come to a gateway, into which her glance and
+movements indicated that she was about to turn.  He walked up by her
+side, and manifested to her his presence by falling into step and
+lightly pinching her shapely elbow.
+
+"How-de-do, Daisy-daise!" said he, with the utmost assurance.  "When
+did you bring the town the blessing of your presence?"
+
+The lady gave a little scream.
+
+"'Gene Brassfield!" she ejaculated; and then, with a little quivering
+emphasis, "You!  How you frightened me!"
+
+"I know, I know!" replied Brassfield, peeping under the big hat into
+her eyes.  "Almost scared to death, as is quite proper.  But, to my
+question: how long, how long hast been here?"
+
+"Oh, several days--before you came back.  Aunty wanted me to be here
+when her sister, my Aunt Hunter from Hazelhurst--that's up in
+Wisconsin--visits her.  There's to be a reception.  Of course you'll be
+there, and----"
+
+"Of course," responded Brassfield.  "Did I ever absent myself from any
+social affair in which your charming aunt, Mrs. Pumphrey, is
+interested?  Nay, nay; but don't dodge.  Why this throw-down?  Why
+didn't you let me know----"
+
+"'Gene," said the girl, "you can't deceive me.  I'm ashamed that I
+wrote the note, and your telling a fib about getting it won't make it
+any better.  But it was wicked of you not to answer.  I only wanted you
+to come to me and--and talk it all over, and say good-by for ever.  It
+wasn't necessary to----"
+
+"I have never received any note," said Brassfield, totally unconscious
+of the missive which Amidon had promptly waste-basketed.  "What was it?"
+
+"Really?  Didn't you?" she queried, pouting her red lips most kissably.
+"A little note, unsigned, with some--some verses?  No?  Then I'll
+forgive you--for that.  But--go on, 'Gene, up to the house yonder--go
+on!"
+
+"You oughtn't to be permitted to run at large," said he, "with that
+hat, and those lips.  I wonder if any one's looking?"
+
+"You mustn't talk that way," she said, "nor look at me like that!  Go
+on, or I shall cry--or something quite as bad!  Or, maybe you'll come
+in?  Billy Cox is in there waiting for me, and watching, I dare say."
+
+"Some other time," replied Brassfield, "I shall be delighted.  But Miss
+Waldron has just been driven out into the street, and if she comes this
+way, I must exhibit myself to her, and maybe she'll pick me up.  She's
+turning this way----  Billy, eh?  Happy Billy; nice boy, too, since he
+stopped drinking.  By-by, Daisy-daise!"
+
+Elizabeth came driving down the road, and walking up it came Aaron,
+sable messenger of the anxious Madame le Claire, who had enlisted Aaron
+in her service to bring Brassfield again within her magic realm.  He
+reached the object of his search before the carriage passed, and
+delivered a note.
+
+"Tell Madame le Claire," said Brassfield, whose ideas with reference to
+that person must have been very hazy, "that such an invitation is a
+command.  I'll be with her immediately."
+
+He stood smiling, hat in hand, at the crossing, as Elizabeth drove by.
+She halted, and looked questioningly at him.  This smile, this
+confident aspect--all these were so different from his recent bearing
+that she was surprised, and not more than half pleased.  The element of
+assurance in his attitude toward the other girl was not seen in his
+treatment of Elizabeth, to whom it would have been offensive.  Perhaps
+the cunning of the consciously abnormal intellect was the cause of
+this; or it may have been some emanation of dignity from the woman
+herself acting on a mind in a state chronically hypnotic.  Be the cause
+what it may, to Elizabeth, with all his confidence and ardor, he was
+most deferential and correct in manners, and, to her, these manners had
+undergone no change.  Confidently, as if no shadow had ever come over
+their relations, he put his foot upon the step of the carriage.
+
+"Won't you give me a lift," said he, "and put me down at my home?"
+
+She made room for him with scarcely more than a word.  "To the
+Bellevale House," said she to the coachman.
+
+Brassfield looked at her, so grave, so _distinguee_, so coolly sweet,
+and forgot apparently that there was any one else in the world.  He
+slipped his hand under the lap-robe, and gave hers a gentle pressure.
+
+"Dearest!" he half-whispered, caring very little whether he was
+overheard or not.
+
+She returned the caress by the slightest possible compression, and put
+her hand outside the robe.  Whether the one action was incited by a
+desire to avoid complete unresponsiveness, and from a sense of duty
+only, the other left undecided.
+
+The circumscribed mind of Brassfield which, with the intensity of
+observation rendered necessary and inevitable by its narrow field, had
+noted, as he stepped out in the street, the intangible shifting of
+relations in his surroundings incident to the mere passage of time in
+the few days of his obliteration, now felt, as a blind man feels the
+mountain in his approach, or as the steersman in a Newfoundland fog
+apprehends the nearing of the iceberg, some subtle alteration in the
+attitude toward him of the young woman by his side.  Instantly he was
+on guard and keenly alert.
+
+"This is a case," said he, "of the prophet coming to the mountain.  I
+was on my way to you, and lo, I met you coming my way--let me hope
+coming to me--after seeing me!"
+
+"The mountain is at liberty to draw his own conclusions," said Miss
+Waldron.  "One may be reasonably charged with the design of meeting
+every one in Bellevale when one goes out."
+
+"The mountain, then," said he, "must be content with its place as a
+portion of the landscape--happy if it pleases the prophet's eye."
+
+"The prophet did not foresee--but let's have mercy on the poor hunted
+figure.  I was about to say that your occupation--or preoccupation--as
+I drove down the street brought to my attention a new phase of our
+scenery--a brilliant one.  Is this the girl I used to know as Daisy
+Scarlett?"
+
+"It must be," said Brassfield, "and it surprises me that you speak of
+knowing her as of the past.  How does it happen?"
+
+"The exile of school," she answered, "and the fact that her visits to
+Bellevale have not been during such vacations as the girls would let me
+spend with Auntie.  It's my loss--I have lived too tame a life."
+
+"I, too; let's take the trail for sensations."
+
+"Let me begin with a mild one," said Elizabeth.  "Estelle writes me
+that she has been away from New York for the past month.  So you are
+not a convicted criminal, at least."
+
+Brassfield scanned her face to get the revelation of every turn of
+expression, as an aid to this mysterious reference to Estelle as
+related to his visit to New York.
+
+"That's good," said he promptly, and with marvelous luck, "even a
+verdict of 'not proven' is a glad surprise on returning from New York.
+By the way, Bessie dear, won't you drive over by that gang of men?  The
+foreman seems to want to speak to me."
+
+Entirely oblivious of this dexterous turn, Miss Waldron complied, and
+drew up to the place where Barney Conlon's gang still labored in the
+trench.
+
+"What is it, Conlon?" asked Brassfield.
+
+"I was wonderin', sir," said Conlon, hat in hand, "if I could see you
+at your office in a half-hour or so.  I'd not ask it, sir, if it wasn't
+important.  It's about the business you was speakin' to me about this
+marnin'."
+
+"Ah, yes: the pipe-line," said Brassfield.  "Be at the office in half
+an hour, Conlon.  Drive to the top of the hill, William.  So goes our
+search for new thrills--road runs slap into pipe-lines and business,
+dearie."
+
+"Well, we mustn't find fault with it for that," said she.  "I've wanted
+to say to you--since the other evening--that I can see widening vistas
+showing oceans of good things I never reckoned on in the least.  And
+when I get unreasonable and generally brutal and abusive, I am not
+really and fundamentally so any more than I am now!"
+
+"I know, dearest; I know, Bessie.  And, now, don't give yourself a
+minute's uneasiness about anything that took place.  I apologize for
+everything out of the proper which I said----"
+
+"Which you _said_?"
+
+"Yes--yes!  You were quite right, and I never loved you more than
+then--except now.  Let's not allude to it again, but just go on as
+before."
+
+"Not quite as before," said she.  "I'll not ask you why you kept back
+so many of your--your _my_--qualities from me--_must_ you get down here
+at this old counting-room?--and I'll only ask you two questions--cramp
+the carriage a little more, William!  One is, where can I get a copy of
+the first edition of Child's _Scottish Ballads_--wasn't that the name
+of the 'Dark Tower' book?"
+
+"You may search me, Bessie," said he, standing by the curb in front of
+his office.  "Don't think I ever heard of it."
+
+"Oh, Eugene!" cried Elizabeth, "don't take that attitude again!  But
+bring it up to me when you come to begin our readings in _Pippa
+Passes_!"
+
+"Ah!  Now you are joking!  Good-by, Bess.  Unless I'm run over between
+now and eight-thirty, you may look for me.  By-by!"
+
+Not quite so fortunate, this last five minutes of conversation.  But
+all unaware of that fact, Brassfield went back into the private office,
+and found Conlon awaiting him.  Brassfield opened a drawer and drew out
+a roll of drawings and typewritten specifications.
+
+"Now as to this contract, Conlon----" he began.
+
+"Ixcuse me, Misther Brassfield," interrupted Conlon, "but the contract
+may wait: some things won't.  What's the matther with Edgington?"
+
+"Edgington?  The matter?  What do you mean?"
+
+Conlon leaned over the shelf of the roll-top desk, and pressed upon a
+paper-weight with his knobby thumb.
+
+"Thin ye don't know," said he impressively, "that he's out pluggin' up
+a dale to bate you an' nominate McCorkle!"
+
+Brassfield faced him smilingly.
+
+"Oh, that notion of Edgington's!" said he.  "That amounts to nothing!
+If you and my other strong friends stay by me, there's nothing to fear.
+I'm glad you know of that little whim of Edgington's.  But about this
+contract.  Now, I usually look after these things myself, and do them
+by days' work.  But if I am forced to take this office of mayor, I
+sha'n't be able to do this--won't have the time; and I'll want you to
+do it.  Perhaps I'd better give you a check on account now--say on the
+terms of the Rogers' job?  All right, there's five hundred.  That
+settles the contract.  Now with that off our minds, let's talk of the
+political situation.  You can see that, being forced into this, I don't
+want to be skinned.  Now, what can you do, Conlon?"
+
+"Do?" said Conlon.  "Ask anny of the byes that've got things in the
+past!  Wait till the carkuses an' ye'll see.  But mind, Misther
+Brassfield, don't be too unconscious.  Edgington an' McCorkle, startin'
+in on the run the day of carkuses, may have good cards.  Watch thim!"
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE OFFICE GOES IN QUEST OF THE MAN
+
+  Victory brings peace without;
+    Amity conquers within.
+  How can my thought hide a doubt?
+    Doubt in the mighty is sin!
+  Yet, as I watch from my height,
+    Rearing his spears like a wood,
+  On swarms the dun Muscovite--
+    Slavish, inebriate, rude!
+  Dim-seen, within the profound,
+    Shapeless, insensate, malign,
+  Fold within dragon-fold wound,
+    Opes the dread Mongol his eyne!
+      _One waking, one in the field--
+      Foe after foe still I see.
+      Last of them all, half-revealed
+      Prophecy's eye rests on--Me!_
+            --_A Racial Reverie_.
+
+Mr. Brassfield sat alone, listening to Barney Conlon's retreating
+footsteps.  A few years ago I could have described the solitude of the
+deserted counting-house, and made a really effective scene of it.  Now,
+however, telephones exist to deny us the boon.  No sooner do we find
+ourselves a moment alone, than we think of some one to whom we imagine
+we have something to say, and call him up over the wire; or,
+conversely, he thinks of us with like results.  Conlon's back was
+scarcely turned before Brassfield took down the receiver and asked for
+Alvord's residence.
+
+"Jim," said he, "I've just found out that Sheol is popping about
+town. . . .  Yes, it's Edgington.  Conlon tells me he's out for
+McCorkle and against me. . . .  Well, maybe not, but Conlon generally
+knows.  You must go out and run it down.  We can't have McCorkle
+nominated--you can see why. . . .  All right.  I'll wait for you
+somewhere out of sight. . . .  In the Turkish room at Tony's? . . .
+Very well: I had another engagement, but I must call that off.  Thanks,
+old man.  I shall rely on you!  Good-by!"
+
+Up went the receiver, and then, almost at once was lifted to
+Brassfield's ear again as he sent in a call for Miss Waldron's
+residence.
+
+"Is this 758?  Is Miss Waldron at home? . . .  Yes, if you
+please. . . .  This you, Bess?  Well, I'm in the hardest of hard luck.
+Things have come up which will keep me cooped up all the evening. . . .
+You're awfully good to say so!  Good night, dearest!"
+
+The lock clicked behind him, and he was out on the street once more.
+Came into view a figure which was clearly that of a stranger to
+Bellevale, and yet had an oddly familiar air to Brassfield, as it moved
+uncertainly along the darkening highway.  It came to the point of
+meeting and halted, facing Brassfield squarely.
+
+"I peg bardon," it said, "but haf I the honor of attressing Herr
+Brassfield, or Herr Amidon?"
+
+"My name is Brassfield," was the reply.  "What can I do for you?"
+
+"I am stopping at the Bellevale House," said the professor.
+"Blatherwick is my name.  I hat hoped that you might rekonice me,
+as----"
+
+"I am sorry to dispel your hope," said Brassfield.  "What do you want
+with me?"
+
+"I should pe klad to haf you aggompany me to my rooms," said the
+professor, "vere I shouldt esdeem it a brifiliche to bresent you to my
+daughter, and show you some dests in occult phenomena.  As the shief
+citizen of the city----"
+
+"My good man," said Brassfield, "whatever would be my attitude
+ordinarily toward your very kind, if rather unlooked-for, invitation,
+permit me now to decline on account of pressure of business.
+Ordinarily I should be curious to know just what kind of game you've
+got, as I haven't enough in my pockets to be worth your while to
+flimflam me.  Pardon me, if I seem abrupt."
+
+And he hurried down the street, leaving the professor drifting
+aimlessly in his wake, vibrating between anger and perplexity.
+
+"I wonder where I've seen that man?" thought Brassfield.  Dim
+reminiscences of such a figure sitting in shadowy background, while a
+glorious tigrine woman ruled over some realm only half-cognized, vexed
+the crepuscular and terror-breeding reaches of his mind.  He met a
+policeman, who respectfully saluted him.  Brassfield stopped as if for
+a chat with the officer.
+
+"A fine evening, Mallory," said he.
+
+"Fine, indeed, sir," said the officer.
+
+"Who is the old gentleman whom you just passed?" asked Brassfield.
+"The one with the glasses."
+
+"That?" asked the policeman.  "Why, didn't you recognize him?  That's
+your friend the hypnotist, up at the hotel--Professor Blatherwick."
+
+"Oh," said Brassfield as he walked on, "I didn't know him in the dusk.
+We'll have to have better street lighting, eh, Mallory?"
+
+"No bad idea!" said Mallory.  "Well, it'll be for you to say, I'm
+thinking."
+
+"You don't think there's anything in this new movement, do you?" asked
+Brassfield.
+
+"Oh, no, sir," said the officer.  "And yet, in politics you never know.
+But I feel sure it'll be all right.  They can't do much this evening
+and to-morrow.  Time's too short."
+
+Brassfield hurried on with an air of anxiety.  The policeman's words
+were not reassuring.  He turned down a side street and entered a
+restaurant, the proprietor of which at once placed himself and his
+establishment at Mr. Brassfield's command.
+
+"Give me the Turkish room, Tony," said Brassfield.
+
+"Yes, sir, the Turkish room: and Charles to wait?"
+
+"Yes," said Brassfield.  "Cook me a tenderloin; and don't let any one
+come into the room."
+
+"Certainly, Mr. Brassfield!  The Turkish room, and a steak, and no one
+admitted----"
+
+"Except such people as Mr. Alvord may bring.  We shall want some good
+cigars, and a few bottles of that blue seal."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Tony.  "Will you speak to this gentleman before you go
+up, sir?"
+
+Brassfield turned and confronted an elderly man of florid countenance,
+whose white mustache and frock-coat presented a most respectable
+appearance.  Mr. Brassfield bent on him a piercing look, and strove
+mentally to account for the impression that he had met this man before,
+wondering again at that hazy association with the mystical, dreamy
+region of the woman in yellow and black.  It was as if he saw
+everything that evening through some medium capable of imparting this
+mystic coloring.  The stranger faced him steadily.
+
+"I presume you remember me, Mr. Brassfield," said he.  "Blodgett of
+Hazelhurst."
+
+"Of course it's unpardonable in me," said Brassfield, "but I don't
+remember you, and I fear I've never heard of the place."
+
+"Well," said Judge Blodgett, "it's entirely immaterial.  I merely
+wanted to say that I've some matters of very great importance to
+communicate to you, if you'll just step up to my rooms at the Bellevale
+House."
+
+"I can hardly conceive of anything you may have to say," said
+Brassfield guardedly, "which can not be as well said here.  We are
+quite alone."
+
+"I--the fact is," said the judge, floundering, "what I have to say must
+be communicated in the presence of a person who is there, a person----"
+
+"May I ask whom?"
+
+"A lady--Madame--Miss Blatherwick."
+
+The cunning of mental limitation again served Brassfield.  He
+recognized the name as the one mentioned by the professor on the
+street.  Why this conspiracy to bring him to this strange woman at the
+hotel?  Was it a plot?  Was it blackmail or political trickery, or what?
+
+"I am very much engaged to-night," said he.  "Whatever you have to say,
+say here, and at once."
+
+The judge felt like seizing his man forcibly, and taking him to Madame
+le Claire for restoration.  The Brassfield cunning was an impenetrable
+defense.  Bellevale's chief business man seemed to be himself again, a
+keen, cool man of affairs, to whom Judge Blodgett, Professor
+Blatherwick and Clara were, except for the brief and troubled intervals
+during which the Amidon personality had been brought uppermost,
+strangers,--until she could once more bring him within the magic ring
+of her occult power.  Brought within it he must be, but how?  The judge
+felt beaten and baffled.  Yet he would try one more device.
+
+"The matter can hardly be discussed here," said he, "but I may say that
+it relates to the evidence you lack in the Bunn's Ferry well cases.  I
+happen to know of your desire for proof of certain facts in the spring
+of 1896, and----"
+
+Mr. Brassfield started and changed color.
+
+"You know--this woman knows," he said, "something to my advantage in
+the matter?"
+
+Judge Blodgett nodded.  Brassfield looked at his watch, paced back and
+forth, and made as if to follow Blodgett to the door.  Blodgett's heart
+beat stiflingly.
+
+"You are coming?" said he.
+
+Something in the tone betrayed his anxiety.  Again suspicion rose to
+dominance in the mind of Brassfield; and entering at the door came Jim
+Alvord, and one or two hulking, mustachioed citizens of the ward-heeler
+type.  He turned on the judge.
+
+"No," said he, "it is impossible for me to go now.  But I am much
+interested in what you say, and to-morrow----  No, not to-morrow, for I
+shall be very busy; but the day after we will take it up with you, if
+quite convenient to you.  In the meantime, if you will be so kind as to
+call on my lawyer, Mr. Edgington, I shall be very glad.  He is
+authorized to make terms--anything reasonable, you know.  Good night,
+Mr. Blodgett.  I hope we shall meet again!"
+
+"Your old friend Blodgett seems agitated to-night," said Alvord, as
+they sat alone in the Turkish room.  "He's got to be quite a fellow
+here on the strength of your friendship.  Wish he was a voter.  We
+could use him.  Maybe he can help in a quiet, way.  Anything wrong with
+him?  Seemed worked up."
+
+Smilingly, as if Alvord's remarks had been as plain to him as they were
+charged with mystery, Brassfield replied that so far as he knew
+Blodgett was all right, and that he might be of use further along in
+the campaign.
+
+"And now," said he, "tell me what on earth has sent Edgington off on
+this tangent.  He's the man who first suggested to me that I ought to
+run.  It was his scheme.  He's my lawyer and my friend.  What does it
+mean?"
+
+"Well, I saw Edge, and he's got a list of reasons longer'n an
+anaconda's dream.  He says that since your return from your New York
+trip you've seemed different.  I don't mind saying that there's others
+say the same thing."
+
+"Different?" said Brassfield, in an anxiety rendered painful by the
+missing time and these strangers whom he was accused of knowing, but
+who behaved as strangers to him.  "How?"
+
+"Well," said Alvord, "kind of not the same in manner--offish with the
+gang, an' sort of addicted to the professor and the hypnotist--no kick
+from me, old chap, you understand, but I'm filing a kind of bill of
+exceptions, an' these things go in."
+
+"I see," said Brassfield.  "Go on!"
+
+"Then you'll have to own you've done some funny stunts," continued
+Alvord.  "You've fired old Stevens, and you've been going over your
+books with this man Blodgett, and talking of selling him an
+interest----"
+
+"Talking of what?" exclaimed Brassfield.
+
+"Oh, it's your own business, you know, but a sort of shock to the
+feelings and finances of the community all the same.  Not that it
+affects me, or that many know of it, but the inner circle is
+disturbed--and, mind, I'm leading up to Edgington's flop."
+
+"I see," said Brassfield.  "Go on!"
+
+"Well," said Alvord, "the mystery comes in right here.  He says he went
+up to see you and you flew up and took a high moral attitude and said
+it was a dirty mess, and you wouldn't touch it.  He thought it was some
+of Bess's isms that she brought home from college--civic purity, and
+all that impractical rot that these intellectual women get, and he says
+he began hunting for some one to run in to fill the vacancy caused by
+the declination of E. Brassfield.  He was knocked numb when he found
+out that you were out for the place.  You must have said _something_ to
+him, you know.  Now what in the name of Dodd was it?"
+
+Brassfield walked up and down the room for a few moments, wringing his
+hands and alternately hardening and relaxing the muscles of his arms as
+if engaged in some physical culture exercise, but saying never a word.
+This blank Cimmeria of his past, into which he had stared vainly for
+five years, seemed about to deliver up its secret, or a part of it.
+Already, it was clear, it had disgorged this man Blodgett, and these
+other questionable characters at the inn.  But they would find him
+ready for them.  This man that was looking over his books would
+discover that what Eugene Brassfield wanted he took, and what he took
+he held.  They were after his money, no doubt.  Well, he would see.
+And in the meantime, Edgington's defection should not be allowed to
+disarrange matters.  The business interests involved were too great.
+When he turned to answer Alvord, he was pale as death, but calm as ever.
+
+"Oh, Edgington misconstrued entirely what I said," he answered.  "I
+can't just repeat it--we had some talk along the lines he mentioned,
+but I never said anything that he ought to have understood in that way.
+Is he on the square, do you think?"
+
+"On the dead square," said Alvord.  "I'll stake my life on that."
+
+"Well, what has he done?"
+
+"He's got McCorkle out for the nomination."
+
+"To stay?" asked Brassfield.  "Can't we give Mac something else, later?"
+
+"No, Edgington says not: you see, the colonel has wanted to be mayor a
+long time.  Edgington can't pull him off, and as long as he sticks,
+Edge's got to stick by him.  Edgington's for you as hard as ever after
+the caucuses--if you win."
+
+"Yes," said Brassfield, "most everybody will be.  You've run your eye
+over the line-up: can we win?"
+
+"It depends," said Alvord, "on the two men down in the
+restaurant--Sheehan and Zalinsky.  You know their following, and what
+they want.  Our crowd stands in with the better element.  McCorkle
+can't hold more than half his own church, and we're as strong as
+horseradish with the other gospel plants.  The A. O. C. M. gang
+Edgington won't try to split, but will leave to us, and through them
+we'll get the liberal element in line--the saloons, and the seamy side
+generally, I mean, of course.  The labor vote we need help with, and
+I've brought in Sheehan and Zalinsky to sort of arrange a line of
+policy that'll round 'em up.  With their help we'll control the
+caucuses.  After the caucuses, it's plain sailing."
+
+Brassfield made a few figures on a card, and handed it to Alvord, who
+looked at it attentively and nodded approvingly.
+
+"That ought to be an elegant sufficiency," said he.
+
+"All right," said Brassfield, "you handle that end of it, and I'll
+discuss the interests of labor.  We'll show Colonel McCorkle what a
+fight without interests means in this town.  Are the wine and cigars
+here?  Then go down and bring the patriots up, Jim."
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+THE HONOR NEARS ITS QUARRY
+
+  And every man, and woman, too, was forged at Birmingham,
+  And mounted all in batteries, each on a separate cam;
+  And when one showed, in love or war or politics or fever,
+  A sign of maladjustment, why you just pulled on his lever,
+  And upside down and inside out and front side back he stood;
+  And the Inspector saw which one was evil, which was good.
+
+    Chorus:
+
+      On the other side!
+      On the other side!
+    Oh, you must somehow see the other side!
+      If you'd repair or clean
+      This delicate old machine,
+    You must have a way to see the other side!
+            --_The Inventor's Song in, "Bedlam."_
+
+Messrs. Sheehan and Zalinsky, before being ushered into the Turkish
+room where Mr. Brassfield sat awaiting them, were told by Mr. Alvord
+that, should Mr. Brassfield's position on the labor question be found
+satisfactory to them, he would like to have their good offices in the
+matter of getting a fair attendance at the caucuses the next evening.
+As this is always an expensive thing for the patriot who engages to do
+it, he, Mr. Alvord, would beg to place at their disposal funds in an
+amount named by him, for use in the transportation of distant and
+enfeebled voters and for such refreshment as might be thought necessary.
+
+"Weh-ull," said Sheehan, "Fr th' carkuses only it may do.  What say,
+Zalinsky?"
+
+Mr. Zalinsky, his eyes gleaming with gratification, thought the sum
+named might possibly suffice.
+
+"Good!" said Alvord.  "And now come up and see the next mayor."
+
+"What's de use?" asked Zalinsky.  "Don't we know him all right?  Ain't
+it all fixed?  I want to git busy wit me end of deliverin' de goods."
+
+"Mr. Brassfield's views on labor----" began Alvord, but Sheehan
+interrupted him.
+
+"Your word goes wid us!" said he.  "Ye've convinced us Brassfield's the
+laborin' man's frind.  What say, Zalinsky?"
+
+"So!" said Zalinsky.  "Ve better git to work over in de fourt' ward."
+
+"They didn't come up," said Alvord, returning to the Turkish room.
+"The figures on that card seemed to convince 'em.  Now for the saloons
+and their end of the vote."
+
+"What do _they_ want?" asked Brassfield.
+
+"Why," said Alvord, "it's the policy of the office more'n anything else
+they want assurances on.  I've sent for Fatty Pierson and his fellow
+members of the retail liquor dealers' association, and they'll be here
+by the time we dispose of this steak.  I must be counted in on the
+dinner--I forgot mine."
+
+While Alvord, greatly rejoiced at the sudden restoration of his friend
+to the possession of those qualities which made him so useful and
+reliable in all business projects, and promised so well for the future
+of Bellevale under his wise, conservative and liberal administration as
+mayor, was cozily discussing the dinner in the Turkish room at Tony's,
+awaiting the arrival of Mr. Fatty Pierson and his committee, there was
+a council of the hypnotic board of strategy at the Bellevale House.
+The board consisted of Judge Blodgett, Professor Blatherwick, and
+Madame le Claire.  The matter under consideration was how to return
+Brassfield to his much-to-be-desired nihility: how to recover Amidon
+from his relapse into occultation.
+
+"I can never forgive myself for allowing it!" cried Madame le Claire.
+"And yet, how could I help it?  His clerk came running in with a
+telegram, or something of the sort, and Mr. Amidon rushed away with
+him.  What would this man have thought and said, if I had subjected his
+employer to the treatment necessary to restore him--put him into the
+cataleptic state, and then into the normal, by passes and
+manipulations!"
+
+"Just now," answered the judge, "when he seems to be doing the meteor
+act in local politics, such an occurrence in public might be
+misconstrued in non-hypnotic circles, and commented on.  Passes and
+manipulations are not thoroughly understood in politics--except in a
+different sense!  I guess you had to let him go.  How to get him back,
+is the question.  He's certainly off the map as Amidon: turned me down
+when I tried to get him up here, with the air of a bank president
+dealing with a check-raiser; and yet, the way he rose to the lure of
+getting evidence in this lawsuit of his shows that he's as sharp as
+ever in business.  What's likely to be the result if he's allowed to go
+in this way, Professor?"
+
+"Nopody gan say," said the professor.  "He may go on as Brassfield for
+anodder fife years or more.  He may vake up as Amidon to-morrow
+morning.  Propoply he vill geep on intefinitely, aggumulating
+spondulix, and smashing hearts, unless ve gan pinch him some vay."
+
+"Oh, we must get him back!" said Madame le Claire.  "We _must_!"
+
+"In te interests off science," said the professor, "id vould pe
+tesiraple to allow him to go on as Brassfield ant note results.  Ve haf
+alreaty optained some faluaple data in the fact of his attempt to buy
+the destimony of our frient the chutche, and his gontemptuous treatment
+of me as a con man.  He didn't seem to remember us at all.  Should ve
+not allow de gase to go on a vile?  Supliminally gonsidered, it vill be
+great stuff!"
+
+"No!" exclaimed the judge.  "It ain't safe.  He'll be running for
+mayor, and doing a lot of things to make him trouble when he does come
+to.  We've got to surround him somehow; and he's a wary bird."
+
+"Anyway," said the professor, "I should like to opsairve the result of
+a meeting with Clara.  In his short Brassfield states he saw her, ant
+her only.  Vill he remember her clearly, or how?  How vill dis mind of
+his coordinate te tisgonnected views of her, with te rest of his vorld?
+It ought to pe vorked out."
+
+"Well," said the judge, "I don't owe science much.  I'm against any
+experiments.  Can't some one suggest something to do?  Is it feasible
+to kidnap him?"
+
+"Let me suggest something," said Madame le Claire hesitatingly.  "In
+his Brassfield state he seemed to--to like me very much.  In affairs
+concerning--that is, affairs relating to women--he seems less wary, to
+use Judge Blodgett's word, than he is on other lines.  Maybe I
+could--could induce him to come.  It seems a sort of--of questionable
+thing to do; but----"
+
+"Questionable!" cried the judge, "questionable!  Why, not at all.  We
+must try it.  I'll risk it!"
+
+"If ve are to gif up te itea of vorking out the gase," acquiesced the
+professor, "vy I agree vith the chutche."
+
+"That is," said the girl, "like the judge, you'll 'risk it.'  Very
+brave of you both to 'risk' so much!  As for me, I must ask for time to
+think over my own proposal, before I undertake to entrap this prominent
+business man at my apartments.  I'm not so sure that I'll 'risk' it.
+And yet it seems the only way!"
+
+
+Speaking of traps: The emissaries of the retail liquor dealers'
+association were engaged in a trapping enterprise of their own in the
+Turkish room at Tony's, at this very crucial moment.  Fatty Pierson,
+and two fellow retailers, gentlemen of smooth-shaven face, ample girth,
+and that peculiar physiognomy which seems fitted to no artistic setting
+except a background of mirrors and glasses, and a plain foreground of
+polished wood, were arranging for a police policy to their liking,
+during the Brassfield administration.
+
+"Colonel McCorkle," said Fatty, "is a mighty good man, and, while a
+church member, seems to be liberal.  On the other hand, you're well
+known to be broad in your views, and you do things"--here Fatty's arm
+took in the bottles and the cigars with a sweeping gesture--"that he
+don't.  You've got property rented for saloon purposes.  We know you're
+a good man, Mr. Brassfield, but in such matters we saloon men have
+learned to be careful.  A police force can make our business profitable
+or put us all dead losers, just as they're steered by the mayor.  Now,
+what would be your policy?"
+
+"I should expect," said Mr. Brassfield, "to give the city a good,
+conservative, business administration, and to make my oath of office my
+guide."
+
+"Good!" said Fatty.  "But we've all heard that before.  Colonel
+McCorkle, or the Reverend Absalom McCosh, would say _that_."
+
+"Well," said Brassfield, "now, definitely, what do you want?  Anything
+reasonable and not contrary to law, you have only to ask for."
+
+I wonder if burglars, in arranging their business, stipulate that
+nothing "contrary to law" is to be done!
+
+"Exactly," replied Fatty.  "But now as to reasonableness: when the hour
+for closing comes, our customers bein' gathered for social purposes, it
+seems abrupt to fire 'em all out when the clock strikes.  Now, when a
+policeman comes along after hours an' finds one of us with a roomful of
+customers discussin' public questions, we don't want to turn up in
+court next morning.  See?"
+
+"I see," said Brassfield.  "My view of the function of the saloon is
+that it is a sort of club for those too poor to belong to the more
+exclusive organizations.  As long as they are performing these
+functions in an orderly way, why inquire as to the hour?"
+
+"That seems reasonable," said Fatty.  "And about how long ought a man
+to have to slow up an' stop performin' functions, do you think?"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Brassfield, "there isn't much doing in the way of
+business, say from two to five A. M., is there?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Pierson, "not much.  But on special occasions----?"
+
+"I shall do the right thing," said Brassfield.
+
+"An' you wouldn't feel obliged," queried Pierson, "to start any
+detectives out spyin' upon the uses we put our second stories to, or
+the kind of tenants we have?"
+
+"Not at all," said Brassfield.  "I shan't disturb things.  Alvord can
+tell you that.  What I want is the policy that is best for the property
+owners; and things as they are are good enough for me.  Is that
+satisfactory?"
+
+"Well, I should smile!" said Mr. Pierson.  "And now, gentlemen, before
+we go an' begin work for the caucuses to-morrow, in the interests of
+our friend here, I propose a toast to Mr. Eugene Brassfield, who will
+be the best mayor Bellevale ever had!"
+
+"You've got to give me a bed to-night," said Brassfield, as the last of
+the delegations Alvord had brought to the Turkish room retired in
+apparent satisfaction.  "I don't care to go to my rooms--there are too
+many folks up there at the hotel who seem anxious to see me.  And I
+want to be where I can talk the situation over with you."
+
+"Glad to have you," said Alvord.  "Come on, and we'll turn in.  As for
+the situation, how can you improve it?  If Conlon and Sheehan and
+Zalinsky can't control these caucuses, I'm mistaken.  Put them along
+with the saloons and the others that depend on police permission for
+existence, and you've got a dead open-and-shut."
+
+As they walked along the street they noticed a motley crowd emerging
+from a public house and moving in a body to another, seemingly under
+the leadership of a little man with Jewish features.  Alvord took
+Brassfield's arm and hurried him on.
+
+"You see what Edgington's up to?" asked Brassfield.  "He's got Abe
+Meyer out taking the crowd down the line in McCorkle's interest.  I
+wonder if they won't turn things over somewhat."
+
+"Turn nothing!" said Alvord.  "They'll make the noise to-night; we'll
+have the votes to-morrow night.  The boys'll rake in McCorkle's money
+now, and in the morning the word will be passed that the best interests
+of the town require every one to boost for you.  They won't know what
+hit 'em!"
+
+"I hope you're right," answered Brassfield, "but Edgington's no fool.
+I wouldn't have him for my lawyer if he was."
+
+"Of course he's no fool," was Alvord's reply, "but he's handicapped by
+the personality of his man.  Edge's doing pretty well, considering.  He
+probably is wise to the situation.  He didn't expect anything like a
+contest, you know, owing to that confounded blunder one of you two
+made.  Now he's doing the best he can; but his man's been too strong in
+the God-and-morality way in years gone by to wipe out the stain by one
+evening of free booze.  On the other hand, your life has been
+perfect--always careful and sound in business, no isms or reform
+sentiments on any line, a free spender, a paying attendant of the
+richest church, but not a member, and no wife full of wild ideas for
+the uplifting of folks that don't want to be uplifted.  Why, Mrs.
+McCorkle's advanced ideas alone are enough to make him lose out."
+
+"I don't know about that," said Brassfield.  "McCorkle and his wife are
+not the same in these affairs."
+
+"Well, don't you fall down and forget it," said Alvord, "that the
+fellows on the seamy side won't see it your way.  They've got good
+imaginations, and they can see the colonel on one side of the table and
+his wife, the president of the Social Purity League, pouring tea on the
+other, and they can see the position it would put the mayor in to do
+the right thing along liberal lines--and he sort of strict in habits
+himself.  No, sir, my boy, you go to bed and sleep sweetly.  You are
+about to reap the reward of living the right kind of a life."
+
+And sweetly Mr. Brassfield slept, with none of the anxiety felt by
+Judge Blodgett as to whether he would awake as Brassfield or Amidon.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+A GLORIOUS VICTORY
+
+  Narcissus saw his image, and fell in love with it,
+  But jilted pretty Echo, who wailed and never quit.
+  This beauteous youth was far less kind than I,
+      my friend, or you:
+  For we adore our own good looks and love our echoes, too.
+            --_Adventures in Egoism_.
+
+I really shrink from giving an account of the result of the Bellevale
+caucuses next evening, for fear of imparting to the general reader--who
+is, of course, a violent patriot--the idea that I am narrating facts
+showing an exceptionally bad condition in municipal affairs, in the
+triumph of one or the other of two bad men.  This impression I should
+be loath to give.  Colonel McCorkle, whom we know by hearsay only,
+seems to be so good a citizen that his belated attempt to be "broad"
+and "liberal" excites laughter in some quarters.  As for Mr.
+Brassfield, there are at least nine chances in ten that he is the man
+who would have received the support of the gentle reader had it been
+his own city's campaign.
+
+In fact, Mr. Brassfield is psychologically incapable of deviating much
+from the course marked out by the average ethics of his surroundings.
+This subconscious mind which--as Professor Blatherwick so clearly
+explained to us--normally operates below the plane of consciousness,
+happens, in his case, to be abnormally acting consciously; but it is
+still controlled by suggestion.  The money-making mania being in all
+minds, he becomes a money-maker.  The usual attitude of society toward
+all things--including, let us say, women, poetry, politics and public
+duty--is the one into which the Brassfield mind inevitably fell.  The
+men on whom any age bestows the accolade of greatness, are those who
+embody the qualities--virtues and vices--of that age.  Your popular
+statesman and hero is merely the incarnate Now.  Every president is to
+his supporters "fit to rank with Washington and Lincoln."  Future ages
+may accord to him only respectable mediocrity; but the generation which
+sees itself reflected in him, sees beauty and greatness in the
+reflection.  Bellevale was psychically reflected in Brassfield.
+Therefore Bellevale raised him on the shield of popularity.  One may
+see this reflected in the conversation of Major Pumphrey, one of
+Bellevale's solid citizens, with Mr. Smith, who owned the department
+store, on the morning after the caucuses.
+
+"Rather lively times, I hear," said Major Pumphrey, catching step with
+Mr. Smith on their walk down town.  "Rather lively times at the
+caucuses last evening."
+
+"Really," answered Mr. Smith, "I don't know.  I never attend caucuses.
+Every one has his friends, you know, and by not taking sides one saves
+many enmities."
+
+"I don't agree with you," said the major.  "Every one should attend his
+party primaries, as a matter of duty."
+
+"You were out last night?" said the merchant interrogatively.
+
+"Why, no," said the major, "not last night.  The fact is, Colonel
+McCorkle and I served in the same regiment, and belong to the post
+here, and he expected me to support him.  At the same time, the
+nomination of Mr. Brassfield appeared to be the only right thing from
+the standpoint of party expediency or business wisdom.  Brassfield can
+be elected.  He is strong in business circles.  His integrity is
+unquestioned, and there'll be no graft or shady deals under him.  He
+stands well in society, too.  I just saw Doctor Bulkon, who expressed
+himself as thoroughly delighted with the nomination of so good a man as
+Brassfield, and intends to preach next Sunday on 'The Christian's
+Vote,' handling the subject in such a way as to point to Brassfield as
+the right man.  I couldn't consistently oppose Brassfield, and so I
+stayed at home."
+
+"Oh, you're quite right!" exclaimed Mr. Smith.  "My attendance would
+not have made any difference in the result.  Colonel McCorkle is a good
+man, but after Mr. Brassfield made us a present of the money to pay off
+our church debt recently none of us could decently have gone out and
+worked against him even for the colonel.  They say that McCorkle is a
+good deal chagrined by the small showing he made--claims that the
+saloons and the lower classes ran the caucuses, and that the decent
+element stayed away altogether."
+
+"Pooh!" scoffed Mr. Pumphrey.  "A little sore is all--soon get over it.
+I only hope Brassfield will be able to get us that trolley line he
+promises.  That would bring Bellevale abreast of the times."
+
+"That's certainly true," was Mr. Smith's answer.  "Mr. Brassfield is an
+enterprising citizen, broad and liberal, safe and sane, and fully in
+touch with the great business interests of the country.  His nomination
+will reflect credit on Bellevale."
+
+Inasmuch as such citizens as Conlon, Pierson, Sheehan and Zalinsky were
+equally well contented, no one, it would seem, ought to have been
+dissatisfied.  The fact that Mr. Brassfield's success meant the giving
+away of Bellevale's streets to Brassfield's interurban trolley line
+must be considered in connection with the fact that Bellevale seemed
+only too anxious to give them away.
+
+One must look at such things from all sides, if one is to come to a
+satisfactory conclusion.  Miss Waldron, having a keenly personal
+interest in the matter, and being a member of the cultured and leisure
+class, endeavored to do this.  Her conclusions, both personal and
+political, seem to be fully set forth in a letter which she wrote to
+her friend Estelle in New York.
+
+"You know I always was a queer little beast," said this letter, after a
+few pages in which such words as "chiffon," "corsage," "lingerie,"
+"full ritual," and similar expressions occur with some frequency, but
+the contents of which are quite obscure in their bearing on the course
+of this history--"and was ever finding happiness where others saw
+misery, and _vice versa_.  Well, I am doing something of the same sort
+now in turning over and over in my mind the question as to whether I
+should ever marry any one or not.  I know perfectly well that no one
+can ever be the One for me if Eugene is not--but is there a One?  Don't
+say that I am a little--goose, but listen and ponder.
+
+"You remember the sort of literary friendship I had with George L----?
+Well, of course George was a veritable Miss Nancy, and perfectly
+absurd, but there was something basically likeable about him.  Now, I
+always have thought that if one could grind George and Eugene to a pulp
+and mix them, the compromise would be my ideal.  I like men who do
+things, and Eugene is the most forceful man I ever knew.  Owing to your
+absence when he was in New York you missed seeing him, but his pictures
+must have shown you how handsome and strong and masterly he is.  Well,
+this phase of a man must please any girl.
+
+"Is it possible for such qualities to subsist in the same personality
+with those I loved (there's no use denying it--in a platonic sense) in
+George?  In other words, can one reasonably expect to find a man who
+can win battles in the world's life of this twentieth century, who will
+not stare at one in utter lack of comprehension when he finds one
+dropping tears on the pages of _Charmides_, or _McAndrew's Prayer_, or
+Omar, and perhaps try to comfort one--at the moment when the divine
+despair wrought by poignant beauty fills one with divine happiness?
+It's horribly clumsy as I put it; but you'll know.
+
+"He's just as good and kind and considerate as a man can be, and as
+little spoiled by the fierce battles which he has fought--_and
+won!_--as could possibly be expected--in fact, not at all spoiled.
+Even this suspicion of a lack of the gift of seeing that the violet
+'neath a mossy stone is a good deal more than that--the chief good
+quality George had--around which I have been writing in these pages,
+seems to be more a suspicion than a reality; for recently he has once
+or twice ventured on discussions of such matters with a confidence and
+an insight which put me--me, who have plumed myself on my mental St.
+Simeon's tower, like a detestable intellectual cockatoo (you must
+untwist the metaphors!)--at his feet in the attitude of a humble
+learner.  It took some of the conceit out of me; and yet, with true
+Elizabethan inconsistency I turned this new view of his character
+against him, and because he--well, it doesn't matter what--I gave him a
+pre-nuptial instalment of 'cruel and inhuman treatment.'
+
+"Then he became timid and over-respectful, and not at all like himself,
+and I all the time just longing to make up to him all the arrears of
+kindness which were due.  It seemed as if I had a new lover, one who
+needed encouragement, one who made a goddess of me, in the place of the
+almost too bold gallant who had been mine; and lo! when he suddenly
+comes on me with all his pristine assurance and seeming contempt for
+the weepful things I mentioned above, I don't like it at all.  I feel
+as if two men in the same mask are courting me, and I without
+discernment enough to tell one from the other.
+
+"Now, if I am so shilly-shallying as this before marriage, what shall I
+be after?  Can I go on with so much of doubt in my own mind?
+
+"Oh, if I could only be sure of the Eugene I think I sometimes see,
+strong to do, tender to feel, and with the uplift of insight----
+
+"To show how thoroughly insane my state of mind is, I have only to say
+to you that by the exercise of the most tremendous pressure on the part
+of our very best men, Eugene, much against his will, has been put in
+nomination for mayor.  He will purify the civic life of our town, and,
+I am assured, will, if he will enter public life to that extent, be
+sent to Washington.
+
+"I have always thought that I'd like Washington society----"
+
+Here Elizabeth's letter came to an end.  She read it over carefully,
+tore it up, threw the fragments in the grate, and wrote her friend
+another and maybe a wiser one.  Then she wrote to Mr. Brassfield a note
+which Mr. Amidon found in his room when he returned to being.
+
+
+One can easily see from that which has gone before, what happened to
+Colonel McCorkle.  Edgington and Alvord and Brassfield talked it over
+in the Turkish room at Tony's after the caucuses.
+
+"Of course you've made an ass of yourself, Edgington," said Mr.
+Brassfield, "but you've gone through with it consistently, and it's all
+right.  I could have explained all that idiotic talk of mine about not
+running--but why go over that now?  Fill your glasses, and let's forget
+it!"
+
+"That's the talk!" said Alvord.  "Forget it and all pull together in
+this campaign you've made me the manager of."
+
+"Well, as for forgetting it and pulling together," said Edgington, "I,
+as the originator of the Brassfield idea, am not likely to hang back in
+the harness.  So, here's to success!  But----"
+
+"There's no 'but' in this," said Alvord.  "The 'buts' are postponed
+until after election."
+
+"There's nothing to the election," said Edgington.  "You have things
+lined up----"
+
+"_We_ have things lined up----" suggested Alvord.
+
+"Yes, that's right," acquiesced Edgington.  "It's '_we_,' with all my
+heart since the decision.  I was saying that the way you have the
+different interests working together is perfectly ideal, the wets and
+the drys, the wide-opens and the closed-lids, the saloons and the dives
+and the churches--all shouting for Brassfield; and each class thinks
+he's for its policy.  The other man has about as much show--well, the
+next is on me.  Would you mind pressing the button, Jim?"
+
+The waiter came, bringing a penciled note to Mr. Brassfield.
+
+"One of your constituents," it read, "would like a moment's
+conversation with you in the lobby."
+
+Brassfield drew the waiter aside.
+
+"Who is this, George?" asked he, tapping the note.  "A woman?"
+
+"A young lady, suh," was the answer.  "A mahty hahnsome young lady,
+suh."
+
+"Bright auburn hair?" asked Brassfield, "and short?"
+
+"Er--no, suh," answered the waiter, "sutn'y not that kin' o' haiah; an'
+tall, suh."
+
+"Make mine the same," said Brassfield, "and excuse me a moment, boys.
+I'll be right back."
+
+The note had said in the lobby, but the waiter guided him to a private
+room.  Brassfield, cautious as usual, by a gesture commanded the waiter
+to precede him into the room, and himself halted at the entrance,
+looking about the room for the young woman.  She sat near the window,
+and rose to greet him as he entered--a tall and graceful girl with
+wonderful eyes and variegated hair.
+
+"I could not wait to give you my congratulations," said she, offering
+him her hand, "until you came home.  We at the hotel are wondering why
+we have lost you.  Let me rejoice with you in your great triumph."
+
+Brassfield's eyes sought hers.  His soul recognized this as the queen
+of those hazy recollections which he could scarcely believe more than
+dreams, and felt her dominance.
+
+"Thank you, ever so much," said he.  "I was just coming up to see you."
+
+"How nice of you," said she.  "And in that case, why not go up with me
+and join me at my supper, which will be served in ten minutes?"
+
+"Why not, indeed!" said Brassfield.  "George, tell Mr. Alvord and Mr.
+Edgington that I'll see them in the morning!"
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+THE ENTRAPPING OF MR. BRASSFIELD
+
+  Ol' Mistah Wolf is a smaht ol' man,
+    An' a raght smaht man is he;
+  He take all the meat fum the trap an' he eat
+    Not a mossel dat poisoned be!
+  He laff at the snaiah, an' he nevah caiah
+    When de niggah wake fum his nap;
+        _But he foller the trail o' little Miss Wolf
+        Raght inter the jaws o' the trap!
+        But he foller the scent o' little Miss Wolf
+        Kerslap in the deadfall trap!_
+            --_"Hidin'-Out" Songs_.
+
+From a room adjoining that in which Madame le Claire had won her
+seeming victory over Mr. Brassfield's caution, emerged hastily that
+young woman's accomplices--her father and Judge Blodgett--who had
+shamelessly listened to the whole conversation.  With more of haste
+than seemliness they sped before Le Claire and her captive, and by
+vigorous expletives put the patient Aaron into unwonted motion in the
+procuring of the "little supper" which they had heard Clara promise to
+the candidate for mayor.  Then, in a chamber farthest from the door,
+and well sheltered by draperies, they sat them down and waited for
+their prey.
+
+"He's hooked!" said the judge, "hooked well; and I'll gamble she lands
+him.  She's a brick, Professor."
+
+"So!" answered the other.  "Ant now, if she vill only--what you call:
+reel him, blay him--until ve can get the data ve vant----"
+
+"To blazes with the data!" exclaimed the judge.  "I'm for getting him
+back into the Amidon state and respectability, data or no data, before
+some one else tolls him off into the poisonous swamp of popularity.
+Why, I tell you, Professor--hark!  There they come!  Lay low, now!"
+
+The professor grasped his note-book, the judge the arms of his chair,
+as the door opened, and in the front room they heard Madame le Claire's
+voice joining in companionable chat with that of Brassfield.
+
+"Oh, how slow Aaron is!" she said.  "And I'm so hungry.  Aren't you?"
+
+"Not so much so as I was," said he.  "Sweets take away the appetite.
+I'd rather call the supper off, and exclude Abraham--or whatever his
+name is: much rather."
+
+"Selfish!" she reproved very severely.  "And I just in from a two
+hours' walk.  _I_ haven't eaten any sweets----"
+
+"Nor I," said he.  "May I have just a little taste?"
+
+"Mr. Brassfield!  Don't make me sorry I invited you here!  Aaron's
+likely to come in at any moment.  Do you know when you were here last?"
+
+Brassfield's brow wrinkled, as he looked about him.
+
+"Ye-e-es," said he slowly, as if in doubt; and then in his ordinary
+manner: "Well, I should think I did.  The day that donkey, Alderson,
+came with the telegram.  My faith, and so much has happened in the two
+or three days since!  But to suggest that I could forget!"
+
+"Why not?" said she, slipping close to him as he sat in a broad-armed
+easy chair.  "I'll wager anything you say you can't remember half the
+times you've been in my presence.  Come now, the first time!"
+
+"Pshaw!" said he, "I'm not going into ancient history, further than to
+say it was in a room with hangings like these, and a roar of traffic in
+the street below.  Come, dear, let's not talk of that----"
+
+Her hand, straying near his hair, he took in his, and, crushing it to
+his lips, kissed it passionately.  She sank down on the side of his
+chair, and his arm crept insinuatingly about her waist.  Her arms went
+round his neck, and she drew his head to her breast, softly, tenderly,
+and her lips met his--so many times that for years she blushed when the
+memory returned to her.
+
+"Darling!" he whispered, "do you love me?"
+
+"Love you?" said she.  "Look in my eyes and see!"
+
+Slowly, with her left hand in the curls on his neck, she drew her face
+from his, and, as if fascinated, his eyes sought hers in a long, long,
+hungry look.
+
+"You do!" he began gaspingly.  "Yes----"
+
+The slender fingers moved upward over his head, the commanding eyes
+held his, the other hand, as if for a caress, swept his eyes shut, and
+he lay back in the chair, inert as a corpse.  Madame le Claire untwined
+his arms from her waist, and knelt on the floor before him, her hands
+clasped on his knees, her head pillowed in his senseless lap.
+
+Their unseen auditors heard no more conversation, and the judge moved
+softly out to a place where he could see.  Clara was sobbing as she
+groveled at the feet of the man she had obliterated, rescued and
+restored, and as she sobbed she pressed his hands to her lips.  Judge
+Blodgett went back to the window, lifted it noisily and lowered it with
+a crash.  Then he walked into the front room, and found Madame le
+Claire sitting in a chair across the room from her subject, smilingly
+and triumphantly regarding the result of the exercise of her mystic
+power.
+
+"Is he all right?" queried the judge, looking at the inert form.
+Madame waved her hand at their prisoner, in answer.
+
+"Cataleptic," said the professor, peering at him through his glasses.
+"Bulse feeble, preath imberceptible.  Yes, he is reeled in."
+
+"Well, give him the gaff," said Blodgett.  "In other words, fetch him
+to."
+
+Madame le Claire stretched vibrant hands toward the entranced man, and
+again uttered the sharp command, "Awake!"
+
+Amidon smilingly opened his eyes, and looked about him.
+
+"Where are the letters?" said he, looking about for those vexing
+communications, to find the meaning of which had been the object of the
+inquiry from which Alderson had drawn him with the telegram.  "Did you
+note on them the information we wanted?  Why, is it night?  How long
+have you had me under the influence?  Is anything the matter, Clara?"
+
+"Not now," said Le Claire.
+
+"Now eferyding is recht," added the professor.
+
+"But you have given us the devil's own chase," said the judge.
+
+"It is nearly midnight," said Mr. Amidon.  "Have I been out all the
+afternoon?"
+
+"All the afternoon!" exclaimed Blodgett.  "Yes, and all day, and all
+yesterday, and the day before, and other days!  You've been raising
+merry Ned, Florian, in your Brassfield capacity.  Do you want to know
+what you've done?"
+
+"_Do_ I?" he cried.  "Tell me all at once!"
+
+"Well, for one thing," said the old lawyer, "Edgington's long-incubated
+scheme has hatched, and you've been through a strenuous mayoralty
+contest with Colonel McCorkle, and have swept the board.  Your friends
+insisted on it, you know, and you couldn't decline."
+
+"Friends!" sneered Amidon.  "I tell you, the whole thing is hypocrisy
+and graft.  That villain Brassfield has a scheme for stealing the
+streets.  I told Edgington I wouldn't----"
+
+"Yes," said the judge, "and he took you at your word and trotted
+McCorkle out, and you trimmed them up.  But it's all made up with him,
+now, and you and he and Alvord are as thick as thieves.  You've got a
+jewel of a campaign manager in that man Alvord----"
+
+"Judge," cried Amidon, "I want you to get up a letter of
+withdrawal--you have watched the miserable business, and know more of
+it than I do--one that will make me as little ridiculous as possible,
+you know.  I don't care for the people in general, but there are some
+whose good opinion I prize----"
+
+"I know, Florian," said the judge.  "I know.  But you can't expect to
+cut a very good figure, you know."
+
+"Well, manage it as well as you can, and--I suppose you've watched me?"
+he continued.  "Why did you let me go this way!  Have I been up to Miss
+Waldron's?"
+
+"Once or twice for a few minutes," answered Madame le Claire.  "You
+have been very busy indeed; and yesterday Miss Waldron went out of
+town."
+
+"I think," said Judge Blodgett, "that you will find a letter from her
+in your room.  Alderson brought it up from the counting-house."
+
+"Well, you must excuse me," said Mr. Amidon.  "I want to talk this all
+over with you early in the morning; but I must go to my room now.  No,
+thank you, Clara, I really can not stay to your supper.  To-morrow you
+must tell me how you kidnapped me--I never can repay you for your
+faithful service to me.  Good night!"
+
+The discerning reader has already anticipated that Mr. Amidon went
+straight to the letter and opened it.
+
+
+"Dearest Eugene," it said, "I want to give you a word to say that I am
+proud of the love and confidence which every one has for you, and to
+say that I do not regard the place to which you are to be elected as
+unimportant, or one which you should decline.  Of all men you are best
+able to protect our town against corruption, and to lift its civic life
+to a higher plane.  I wish I might help your fellow townsmen to confer
+_you_ upon _it_.  Maybe I can help in cheering you along the way after
+this is done.
+
+"I have all sorts of pride in and ambition for you.  Hitherto, you have
+confined yourself too closely to the practical and productively
+utilitarian.  I shall watch with all the interest you can desire me to
+feel, this new career of yours, beginning so modestly and so much
+against your will; but reaching, I feel sure, to the state and national
+capitals.
+
+"Do you know, I have always imagined myself capable of founding
+Primrose Leagues, and becoming a real political force?  Spend the
+afternoon with me Sunday, and we'll talk it over--come early.
+
+"Yours in loving partizanship,
+
+"Elizabeth."
+
+
+Florian sat for a long time pondering over this letter.  It was the
+thing about which his thought centered the next morning.  When the
+judge said that he was at work on the letter of withdrawal, Amidon
+remarked that there was no hurry, as he should not use the letter until
+after a conference with Miss Waldron.  Then he went to spend his Sunday
+afternoon with his fiancee, according to her invitation.
+
+The "dear Eugene," and the tone of co-proprietorship in this new
+"career" of his which seemed so deliciously intimate in her letter,
+faded from his memory as he faced her in her home, so stately, so kind,
+so far from fond.  Her rebellion from those mad kisses of his on his
+first visit had thoroughly intimidated him.  He felt, now, that he must
+win his way to such blisses by slow degrees, as if the Brassfield life
+had never been for her more than for him.  So they talked over the cool
+and sensible things they might have discussed had she been his
+grandmother; among others, the campaign.
+
+She had tremendously good ideas as to city government.  Amidon had long
+entertained similar notions, and that their unity of sentiment might
+appear, each wrote answers to a list of questions which they made up,
+and Amidon was hugely delighted to find that they agreed precisely.
+
+"Why not make it your platform?" she asked.
+
+"You mean, a public manifesto?" he queried.
+
+"Surely," said she.  "The people ought to know what we represent.
+Print it, so all may be well informed."
+
+"But that would be an acceptance of the nomination," said he.
+
+"Hardly," she replied.  "We have already accepted, and that's settled.
+But it will raise the contest to one of principle.  The best elements
+of society are with you--Doctor Bulkon might as well have mentioned
+your name as he described the ideal candidate to-day--and such a noble
+declaration from you will fill them with joy.  Oh, don't you think so?"
+
+"Elizabeth," said he, "if I take this office, it will be for your sake.
+I shall withdraw, or run on your platform."
+
+"Oh, you can't withdraw," she asseverated.  "Not now!"
+
+The adoring glances, in which she constantly surprised him, mitigated
+somewhat the pique which his ceremoniously respectful parting raised in
+her heart.  She stood looking at the hand he had kissed, and wondering
+if this was the Eugene of days gone by, but was not quite able to think
+him cold to her.  This was true at all events, she thought, the
+offensiveness--half-reserve, half-familiarity--the curious impression
+of strangeness which so nearly caused a breach between them on his
+return from New York--that was gone, at least.  This new attitude of
+his--well, that was to be considered.  In some respects, the change had
+its element of piquancy--like a love affair with an innocent boy where
+the wiles of experience had been expected.
+
+
+In the meantime, Mr. Alvord was happy.  He had opened "Brassfield
+Headquarters," over which he presided with a force of clerks who were
+busy with poll-books and other clerkly-looking properties.  "But," said
+he to Slater, who called to see him about funds for putting in order
+the links of the Bellevale Golf and Boating Club against the coming of
+spring, "there's nothing to it.  With the preachers exhorting for us
+and the wet-goods push and sports plugging enthusiastically, and not a
+drop of water spilling from either shoulder, the outlook couldn't be
+better.  Of course, we have to go through the form of a contest, but
+there's no real fight in it."
+
+"I don't see how there can be," said Mr. Slater.  "But what's all this
+work for?"
+
+"Well," said Alvord, "we've got to keep up the organization, and so we
+poll the town.  It gives some men employment for a few days that would
+be sore if they didn't get it.  Then we have to send out the _piece de
+resistance_ for keg parties of evenings.  The way the petitions come in
+for kegs is surprising.  A man calls and says his name's Pat Burke, or
+Karl Schmidt, and that they've organized a club for the study of public
+questions, meeting every night at Jones' Coke Ovens or Webber's Chicken
+House, and they expect to have up the mayoralty question for debate
+to-night--only he generally calls it the 'morality' question--and could
+we send them a barrel of beer?  We know that there's only a corporal's
+guard, mostly aliens, but we send 'em a pony.  Another puts up a spiel
+that he's been spending his own money electioneering for Brassfield--he
+never had over fifty cents in the world, but he's spent forty
+dollars--and he can't stand the financial strain any longer.  He's
+palpitating with love for Brassfield.  He knows where there's
+twenty-five votes he can get, if he can have say ten dollars for
+booze--he'll leave it entirely to us.  We know he's a fake, of course,
+but we give him a V.  We've got to spend Brass's roll somehow."
+
+"Where's he keeping himself?" asked Slater.  "I haven't seen him since
+Saturday.  Isn't he out shaking hands?"
+
+"No," was the answer.  "He'd rather buy what he wants, and not do any
+canvassing.  It isn't necessary, anyhow.  That supper we arranged for
+before he was put up will bring him into contact with some of the
+strongest lines of influence, and will finish the reconciliation with
+Edgington.  Then Mrs. Pumphrey's reception and some other affairs will
+be all the publicity we'll need.  No noise for ours, anyhow.  The
+gum-shoe is our emblem, and we don't let our right hand know what our
+left wing is driving at.  'Gene leaves it all to me, and don't ever
+show up here.  That girl business--the strawberry blonde, you
+know--seems all lost sight of, and there ain't a cloud in the sky."
+
+A clerk entered and informed Alvord that a man named Amidon wanted to
+speak to him at the telephone.
+
+"Another debating society wants irrigating, I s'pose," said he.
+"Hello!  This is headquarters. . .  Yes, it's Alvord speaking to
+you. . . .  Oh, is it you, Brass?  They said it was a man named Amidon.
+Wire's crossed, I s'pose.  Worst telephone service I ever saw.  All
+right, go ahead."
+
+Here followed a long pause broken occasionally by "yes," and "I know,"
+and "no," from Alvord.  At last, in tones of amazement, he broke forth
+in a storm of protest.
+
+"What!  Publish a platform?" he shouted.  "Are you crazy?  No, I most
+emphatically don't think so.  Why--now listen a moment, 'Gene,--I've
+got the best still hunt framed up you ever saw.  We're winning in a
+walk. . . .  Well, if you want to make your position clear, I know I
+can trust you to make your manifesto the right thing.  But mind, I
+advise against it! . . .  Yes, sure, as many things as you want to talk
+about, old man. . . .  Yes, I've heard about the idea; but never saw it
+indorsed by any practical people. . . .  Yes. . . .  No.  No! . . .
+_No!_ . . .  I tell you NO! . . .  Why, you know we've spent sums that
+we couldn't possibly publish.  What have you been drinking, 'Gene?
+Here, damn you, this is all a josh!  Come down here and I'll buy. . . .
+What's that?  You really want to publish a schedule of your election
+expenses?  Well, I'll keep the schedule, and you can print 'em if you
+want to.  Come up to headquarters, and I'll show 'em to you.  Good-by!"
+
+Alvord hung up the receiver, and went back to his inner office.
+
+"By George, Slater," said he, "Brassfield is absolutely the most
+deceptive josher I ever saw.  He had me going just now by pretending
+that he was about to publish a platform of principles, and a statement
+of campaign disbursements.  So blooming solemn it gave me the shivers
+for a minute.  List of disbursements: think of it, Slater!  And a
+platform, in our kind of politics!"
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE
+
+  The year will all be summer weather
+  When speech and action go together;
+  When Aucassin's sage words are met
+  In all his deeds with Nicolette;
+  And though fair Daphne's words be free,
+  Look not too soon her swain to be:
+  The year will all be summer weather,
+  When speech and action go together.
+            --_Song from The Monarch of Nil_.
+
+The reader of this history may have been conscious, from time to time,
+of a mysterious glow--now baleful, now rather cheerful, like the light
+from the tap-room of an inn--which has illuminated the horizon of the
+narrative.  It appeared in certain allusions found in Mr. Alvord's
+conversation with Mr. Amidon during the episode of the Wrong House, and
+so terrified him as to give him thoughts of flight from Bellevale.  It
+glared more brightly in the chat at the Club.  It flamed concretely on
+our sight when Mr. Brassfield met its source on the street that day he
+made his fatal escape.  Mr. Alvord slangily called it "the Strawberry
+Blonde."  Mr. Brassfield very improperly pinched its elbow, and called
+it "Daise."  It is high time that we put on our smoked glasses and look
+it in the face in such a formal introduction as will enable us to do it
+tardy justice--for we may have been guilty of misjudgment!
+
+Miss Daisy Scarlett, sitting on a piano-stool, with one foot curled up
+under her, was entertaining Doctor Julia Brown and Miss Flossie Smith,
+who had called on her at the home of Major Pumphrey, her uncle.  Miss
+Scarlett was well and shiveringly known in Bellevale, where she visited
+often, and was generally esteemed for her many good qualities of heart
+and mind, and for the infinite variety of her contributions to the
+sensations of a not over-turbulent social swim.  Her entertainment in
+this instance consisted in readings from a certain book which must be
+regarded as an early literary imprudence of a most estimable and
+industrious, as well as improving writer--_Poems of Passion_.  The
+particular selection rendered by Miss Scarlett was the one (unknown, I
+presume, to my readers--no, my dear, we haven't it) which informs us
+what the first person singular feminine, being invited into Paradise,
+would do if the third person singular masculine, down in the regions
+infernal, should open his beautiful arms and smile.  Miss Scarlett read
+ill sentiments very well, and Miss Smith laid violent hands on herself
+and looked shocked.
+
+"Oh, Daisy!" she exclaimed, "don't, please don't!"
+
+"Oh, Flossie!" said Miss Daisy imitatively, "don't pretend!  That poem
+is simply great!"
+
+Doctor Brown laughed, quite in the manner of the bass villain in the
+comic opera.
+
+"The dissecting table," said she, "brings all these beautiful arms and
+brows to the same dead level of tissue--unpoetical, but real."
+
+Miss Scarlett liberated her foot, spun about, and dashed into a stormy
+prelude, modulating into the accompaniment to the refrain of Sullivan's
+_Once Again_, which she sang with much fervor.
+
+She was about the height of a well-grown girl of twelve or thirteen,
+and had appealing eyes of delf blue, and a round face of peachy
+softness.  Her hair was undeniably red, of a shade which put to shame
+such verbal mitigations as "auburn" or "golden," and was of tropic
+luxuriance and anarchistic disposition.  It curled and uncurled and
+strayed all about her brow and neck like an explosion of spun lava.
+For the rest, had she really been a little girl of twelve, one would
+feel free to describe her as fat and roly-poly; but in the case of a
+young spinster of somewhere in her third decade, well-gowned and stayed
+and otherwise in physical subjection to the modiste, and singing of
+love like a diva, what can one say?  No more than this, perhaps, that
+the fortunate man who carries her off the field a prize, will realize
+before he has got very far that he has captured something.
+
+  "Love, once again, meet me once again!
+  Old love is waking; shall it wake in vain!"
+
+
+Thus sang Miss Scarlett, ending with a fervid trill.  Then she turned
+about, sitting with her feet very wide apart, and faced Doctor Brown.
+
+"Dissecting table, indeed!" she burst forth.  "I tell you, it's
+blasphemy to speak of making such use of a nice man!  But, if I could
+pick 'em out, so as to be sure the right ones were dissected, I don't
+know but I'd agree."
+
+Flossie Smith said that some of them ought to be put to _some_ use; and
+Doctor Brown, having reminded the company of her profession, merely
+laughed again.
+
+"Here I am down from Allentown," Miss Scarlett proceeded, "on purpose
+to be stayed with flagons and comforted with apples, as I have been
+here in the past.  I wanted to have a good sort of lackadaisical time
+with the nice boys here, and I've had to stay--I don't know how
+long--on a famine diet of women and girls, with Ella Wheeler for sauce.
+It makes me swearing mad!"
+
+"I like that now!" said Flossie.  "I really like that!"
+
+"Well, I don't," Miss Scarlett went on.  "I'm not used to it.  To be
+left alone--oh, of course Billy Cox has been trying to butt in, but
+what good is he?  My Hercules, my Roman Antony, who won my trusting
+heart last summer, at a time when I had just got it back from what I
+had thought a final and total loss--I find him away, and when he gets
+back, because, forsooth, he happens to be newly engaged, he's so
+wrapped up in a little thing like that, that he might as well have
+stayed in New York.  He doesn't respond when I ring up his office on
+the telephone; he doesn't see me on the street---or, at least, only
+once--he seems scared.  I've a good mind to give him something to _be_
+scared about!"
+
+"Your condition," said the doctor, "is verging on the pathological."
+
+"I don't know what path it's verging on," was the reply, "but it isn't
+the primrose path of dalliance.  There's some mystery in it."
+
+"Go to Madame What's-Her-Name down at the hotel," said Flossie.  "She
+has solved almost all the mysteries we used to have--for a
+consideration.  And she is said to have superior facilities for
+observing this Great Brassfield Mystery of yours."
+
+"I must!" replied Miss Scarlett, looking out of the window.  "There's
+Billy Cox just going into his house!  What a pity for a bachelor to
+have such a big house all to himself--it has filled me with sighs for
+the past week, that thought!  Oh, girls, I've an idea!  Let's call him
+over and have him take us down to her!  Central!  Give me 432, please.
+Is that you, Billy?  This is Daisy.  Don't you want to do something for
+me?--Oh, you behave, now!  We want you to take us somewhere down town,
+so don't take off your coat.  We'll explain when you come over.
+Good-by!"
+
+"Well, of all things!" exclaimed Flossie.  "_I_ don't care about Mr.
+Cox, nor his big house!  And the doctor and I have just started----"
+
+"Oh, we can't go," said the doctor, "but that won't break Daisy's
+heart; she didn't expect we would, did you?"
+
+"Well, I shall be sorry not to have you go, of course," said Miss
+Scarlett.  "But if you must go, how would it do for you to slip away
+before Billy, comes in, so as to leave him to me?  I may be able to
+make something of Billy, if I'm allowed to have my way with him.
+_Must_ you go?  So glad you called.  Of course, we shall meet at our
+reception?  Good-by!"
+
+
+Madame le Claire looked amusedly down on Miss Scarlett.  The
+bright-haired one was questioning her concerning her mystic art.
+
+Could she see into the future?
+
+Sometimes, when the conditions were right.
+
+Could she read thoughts?
+
+Let the lady judge, on the statement that two men, one with brown and
+the other with gray eyes, had been much in the lady's thoughts lately.
+
+Marvelous!  And could she tell what her thoughts in that connection had
+been?  Well, never mind about that!  Did she know about palmistry?  And
+could she _really_ put people under her influence so that they must do
+as she willed?  How nice that must be!  And would she and the professor
+come up to the Pumphreys' reception and arrange to give a program of
+occult feats for the entertainment of the guests?  Surely; they should
+be very glad; that was a part of their profession.
+
+During these negotiations Mr. Cox waited outside, and Florian Amidon,
+meeting him in the lobby and being accosted as 'Gene, stopped for a
+talk, fearing to slight some dear but unknown friend.  The word "'Gene"
+was becoming a sort of round shot across the bows in his Bellevale
+cruises.  The parley (concerning wells and tanks) he cut as short as
+possible, and, passing on, started up the stairway.
+
+Half-way up there was a broad landing, and as Florian turned on this,
+he saw at the head of the flight the blast-furnace of hair, the
+striking hat and the pleasantly rounded figure of Clara's visitor--a
+person to him quite unknown.  Fate, however, seemed to have in store
+for him an extraordinary introduction, for instantly he was aware of
+the descent upon him of a fiery comet of femininity.  The lady seemed
+to be falling down stairs.  With a little cry she descended, partly
+flying, partly falling, partly sliding flown the baluster--a whirl of
+superheated hair, swirling skirts, and wide, appealing eyes of delf
+blue.  Amidon caught her in his arms, and sought to place her gently on
+her feet: but in the pure chance and accident of the encounter, her
+arms had fallen about his neck, and she hung upon him in something like
+a hug.
+
+"Oh! oh!" said she, "the idea of your flying to me like that!  But it's
+nice of you!"
+
+Amidon bowed distantly, and in evident embarrassment.  Miss Scarlett
+drew herself up, as at an undeserved rebuke.
+
+"I am very glad," said he, "to have been of any service, even at the
+risk of seeming familiarity, in saving you from a fall.  I hope you
+will pardon me, a stranger, for so far----"
+
+"A stranger!" she ejaculated; "oh, heavens!  Leave me, 'Gene!  Go away!"
+
+The "Go away" was pronounced as Mr. Cox appeared at the foot of the
+stairs.  Amidon passed on, now fully aware of having committed a _faux
+pas_.  Looking back, he saw Miss Scarlett leaning against a newel-post
+as if in agitation; saw Mr. Cox come up and lead her down; and as she
+disappeared, leaning weakly on her escort's arm, the mop of rumpled
+hair faded from his sight like a receding fire-ship.  Who could she be?
+Suddenly Alvord's whispered caution flashed on his mind, and he knew
+that he had encountered, embraced and repudiated the Strawberry Blonde.
+He paused for a moment to think over the situation--considerations of
+policy were coming more and more to appeal to him as guides, and he
+found himself feeling vulpine and furtive.  But here, thought he, would
+it not really have been best to temporize with the situation, and not
+to have terminated all relations with Miss Scarlett in this public way?
+Would it not----
+
+Then rolled over his heart the consciousness of the manifold glories of
+his Elizabeth's womanhood.  Temporize with another woman?  The very
+thought repelled him.  He involuntarily brushed his coat where it had
+supported and encircled Miss Scarlett.  He felt a sense of unworthiness
+in having, even of necessity and for a proper purpose, embraced this
+other girl.  Looking up, he saw Judge Blodgett regarding him like a
+portly accusing angel from the head of the stairway.  He made a feint
+at assisting Amidon in brushing his coat.
+
+"Those red ones," said he, "are the very devil for showing on black!
+I'd carry a whisk-broom, if I were you!"
+
+[Illustration: "Those red ones," said the judge, "are the very devil
+for showing on black!"]
+
+"Blodgett," said Amidon, "I don't care to be chaffed about an accident
+of that sort."
+
+"Oh, certainly not!" said the judge.  "But pick off the ringlets all
+the same.  And say, Florian, of course I don't count, but there was
+another fellow at the foot of the stairs, the junior in the firm of
+Fuller and Cox, my fellow practitioners; and in accidents of this sort
+one sometimes does as much damage as a regular cloud of witnesses.  And
+remember, if you won't use the letter of withdrawal, you're to be a
+good deal in the public eye, now."
+
+Amidon moved on in disgust.  And the poor faithful fellow, that his
+spiritual tone might be restored, sat down and read once more his
+Bible--the letter superscribed in the large, scrawly hand, "To be Read
+En Route."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+SOME ALTERNATIONS IN THE CURRENT
+
+  One made himself a name for skill to trace
+  To its last hiding-place,
+    Each secret Mother Earth engaged to save,
+    Of jungle, sea or cave.
+  No path so devious but he mastered it;
+  And, bit by bit,
+    From off the face of mystery, he tore
+    The veil she wore;
+  Then, turning inward all his skill in seeing,
+  To solve the knot of Being,
+    In the deep crypts of Self fordone he lay,
+    Quite cast away.
+            --_Adventures in Egoism_.
+
+Every morning, now, a box of flowers went up to Elizabeth, at the house
+with the white columns; and every evening Mr. Amidon bravely followed.
+The terror he felt of women was overpowered by the greater terror of
+losing this woman, and the fortitude and resolution he possessed in all
+other fields of action were returning to him.  His violets and
+carnations she always wore for him, and all the roses except the red
+ones, which she put in vases and kept near her, but did not wear.  She
+was ineffably kind and sweet, in a high and pure and far-off way fit
+for Olympus, but all the intimate little coquetries and tricks of charm
+with which she had at first received and disconcerted him were gone.
+She talked to him in that low voice of hers, but oftener she sat
+silent, and seemed to desire him to talk to her.
+
+Since that first night, he could not bring himself to act a part,
+further than to assume the name and place of Eugene Brassfield.  He
+stood afar off, looked at his divinity and worshiped.  He read to her
+her favorite books, and ventured somewhat, out of his exceptional
+knowledge, to expound them--whereat she looked away and listened with
+something of the astonishment with which she had received his
+disquisitions on poetry and art on that first unlucky evening.  For the
+most part, however, he, too, was inclined to silences, in which he
+looked at Elizabeth in the happiness of a lover's wretchedness.  The
+love she had given to Brassfield seemed to him based on the deceitful
+pretensions of that wretch, and in any case it was not his, and he felt
+repelled from accepting it.  He yearned to show her the soul of Florian
+Amidon, purified, adorned, and dedicated to her.
+
+Once or twice she had hinted at something fateful which she wanted to
+say to him; but he had begged her to wait.  After a few days of this
+slavish devotion of his, she seemed less aloof, not quite so much the
+unattainable goddess.
+
+She gave him her hand, as usual, one evening at parting.
+
+"I shall not expect to see you to-morrow," said she, "until we meet at
+the Pumphreys' reception.  Until then, good-by."
+
+"I thought," said he, "that if you would permit, I should like to call
+in the afternoon--say at three or four.  May I?"
+
+He looked so pleadingly at her, holding the little hand in both of his,
+that it is no wonder her color rose.  It was like the worshipful
+inception of a new courtship.
+
+"I shall be invisible," said she, "all day--so you must wait.  You
+haven't any time to bother with me, anyhow.  Haven't you your platform
+to complete?  A public man must attend to public matters first, and,
+anyhow, I shall be denied to all my friends, and you must wait with the
+rest!"
+
+"It is hard to wait," he answered, "when you are so near."
+
+"I shall try to make amends," said she, "by endeavoring to be as
+beautiful as--as you used to describe me--at the reception.  Good
+night!  Good night!"
+
+He once more violated the Brassfield traditions; he simply raised her
+hand to his lips and kissed it.  To do more, he felt, would spoil all.
+She went in, more nearly happy than at any time since his return, but
+sorely puzzled.  "I shall never understand him," she thought.
+
+Mrs. Major Pumphrey, standing in line with Miss Scarlett and Mrs.
+Pumphrey's sister from Wisconsin; a procession of people coming in by
+twos and threes, and steered by attendants into rooms for doffing
+wraps; a chain of de-wrapped human beings circulating past the
+receiving line and listening to Mrs. Pumphrey's assurances that she was
+delighted to welcome them that she might have the pleasure of
+introducing them to her sister--and of course they knew Miss Scarlett;
+an Italian harper who played ceaselessly among palms; a punch-bowl
+presided over by Flossie Smith and Mrs. Alvord; a melange of black
+coats, pretty frocks and white arms and shoulders; a glare of lights; a
+hum like a hive's--in short, a reception.  Such was the function to
+which Florian made his way, waiting until he could arrive concomitantly
+with the Waldron carriage so that he might hand the ladies therefrom,
+and receive from his divinity a little, uncertain pressure of the hand.
+Then came his respects to Mrs. Pumphrey.  Amidon started as he
+recognized in the bright-haired second person in line his fairy of the
+balustrade.
+
+"So delighted to see you here, Mr. Brassfield!" said Mrs. Pumphrey.
+"It gives me the opportunity of presenting you to--why, Daisy, where's
+your auntie gone?  She was here just now!"
+
+"She was called away for a few moments," said Miss Scarlett.  "Yes, I
+believe Mr. Brassfield and I have met"--this with an icy bow--"and
+please, Mr. Cox, don't go, until I have told you the end of the story!"
+And she went on vivaciously chatting to Billy Cox, who had moored
+himself as close to her as the tide of guests sweeping by her would
+permit.  Which current swept Mr. Amidon onward as he was in the act of
+assuring his hostess of his sense of loss in her sister's
+absence--until an eddy left him in a quiet corner, where he found
+absorbing occupation in trying to imagine again as vividly as possible
+that pressure of the hand.  Was it meant as an evidence of
+affection?--or did her foot slip, so that she clung to his hand to
+prevent a fall?  This question seemed of the most transcendent
+importance to him, and he debated it mentally all the evening, as he
+talked the set conversation of such an occasion.  He knew no one; but
+every one knew him; yet he had no difficulty in getting on, because
+there was no sense in any of the conversation.  He could answer all the
+remarks regarding his new role of political leader without committing
+himself to anything serious.  Bright eyes flashed meaning and soulful
+glances into his, as sweet lips said things which he could answer quite
+as well as if the context of the conversation had been as familiar to
+him as it was supposed to be.  Platitudes, generalities, inanities; and
+inanities, platitudes and generalities in reply.  Amidon looked the
+part of Brassfield perfectly, and on occasions of this sort, to look
+the part is quite enough.
+
+He found Elizabeth again, surrounded by a circle of admirers--men and
+women--an oasis of intelligence, it seemed to him as he listened, in a
+desert of twaddle.  She smiled at him with her eyes, as he looked at
+her through the press, and just as he had won to a place by her side,
+the tide was sent flooding into a large room where, it was announced,
+Professor Blatherwick and Madame le Claire were doing feats of
+occultism.
+
+"Laties ant shentlemen,"--it was the professor who spoke, "you are at
+liperty, of gourse, to adopt any t'eory vich seems to you goot to
+eggsblain dese phenomena.  Madame le Claire offers none.  Ven she hass
+broduced te phenomena, she iss--she iss all in!  If dey seem to you to
+be de vork of tisempodied spirits, fery well--goot!  Somedimes it seems
+so to her.  If you rekard letchertemain as a sufficient vorking
+hypot'esis, vy, letchertemain goes, and upon dat hypot'esis ve vill
+gontinue to vork de miracles ant de public.  Id iss kvite de same to
+Madame le Claire.  It iss only fair to say, howefer, dat she hass nefer
+yet detected herself in any fraut.  Bud she offers no eggsblanation;
+she chust gifes dese tests for your gonsiteration."
+
+A ripple of laughter and a buzz of interested comment ran through the
+room.
+
+"But how was it possible for her to get her hands loose?" said one.
+
+"I assure you," said Mrs. Meyer, she of the _Parsifal_ impressions, and
+the wife of the Hebrew leader of the Gentile mob who went "down the
+line" for McCorkle the night before the caucuses, "I assure you that
+what she told me was unknown not only to every one else, but to me
+also; but it turned out true.  It's uncanny!"
+
+"It's humbug," said the bass voice of Doctor Brown, "and until you show
+me the source of this 'occult' energy, I shall so contend.  Animal
+magnetism and sleight-of-hand!  What do you think, Mrs. Hunter?"
+
+Amidon looked across and saw--Mrs. Hunter, of Hazelhurst!  It was she
+and her daughter from whom he had bashfully flown to the buffet, just
+before he alighted from the train at Elm Springs Junction.  As he
+looked at her all the old life returned to him!  He saw himself sitting
+with her and Minnie in the car, as she talked fashions to him and
+chattered her anticipations of the lovely time Minnie was to have with
+the family of Senator Fowler on the Maine coast.  He saw Blodgett come
+in, and himself seize the opportunity to escape with his lawyer to the
+buffet.  Then he saw the rural railway platform, the fading glory of
+the west--and then the waking in the sleeping-car!  Could it all be
+possible?
+
+"Do you know the lady talking with Doctor Brown?" he asked of Miss
+Waldron.
+
+"Mrs. Hunter?" said Elizabeth questioningly.  "Why, didn't you meet her
+when you came in?  She is Mrs. Pumphrey's sister, of Hazelhurst,
+Wisconsin.  She receives with Mrs. Pumphrey to-night."
+
+"I thought it was Mrs. Hunter, as soon as I saw her," answered Amidon;
+"she is an old acquaintance of mine."
+
+And it was some little time, so far had he forgotten his peculiar
+position, before the baleful possibilities of this innocent and
+truthful remark occurred to him.  When he thought of it, any observing
+friend might well have inquired after his health, so gray with pallor
+and moist with sweat had his face become.  Not that he felt hanging
+over him any such danger as he had feared when he found himself in the
+shoes of another man, with that other man unaccounted for.  He really
+cared very little about _that_, now.  The people of Bellevale, and
+Hazelhurst, too, might think what they pleased about this mystery of
+disappearance and reappearance: he was independent of them all, and
+those he really cared about would understand.
+
+But Elizabeth!  Everything now revolved about her.  Now that she had
+grown so dear--that she had come to smile on him in his new
+character--how could he let her know that this Eugene Brassfield whom
+she so admired and loved, was no more for ever; and that Florian Amidon
+had never seen her, never loved her, never wooed her until these past
+few days!  Would she ever see him again?  Could she regard him as
+anything else than an interloper and an impostor?  His right to
+Brassfield's clothes and Brassfield's fortune might be as clear as
+Judge Blodgett said; but would not Elizabeth feel that as to her he had
+attempted the very deed of which he had first suspected himself--fraud
+and robbery?  And her "perfect lover," whom Amidon habitually thought
+of as "that fellow Brassfield"--all the perfections which Elizabeth had
+learned to attribute to him, would no longer be credited to Amidon.  It
+was tragic!
+
+As a matter of fact, beloved, any man would have been a perfect lover,
+or none at all, to Elizabeth.  A perfect lover is the noblest work of
+woman.
+
+"Te autience," went on the professor, "vill haf te eggstreme gourtesy
+to assist in a temonstration of Madame le Claire's power as a
+hypnotist.  Not effery vun gan pe hypnoticed te fairst dime; bud ve
+vill try.  Vill te autience bleace suchest te name of a laty or
+shentleman as a supchect?"
+
+"Doctor Brown!" said many voices.  "Alvord!" said others, but most of
+the votes appeared to be for Brassfield--a name which the professor
+hailed joyfully as insuring against failure.  It is not often that the
+audience will hit on the only practised sensitive in the room.
+
+Madame le Claire started, as there was thus presented to her the
+thought of bringing her power to bear on Amidon.  The serious results
+of her last exercise of it came vividly to her mind.  Yet, here she was
+openly hypnotizing him.  Here she could keep him under control.  She
+could limit his Brassfield state as to time, or she could keep him in a
+state of automatism.
+
+"Mr. Brassfield vill greatly obliche by goming forvart," said the
+professor; and, as he had learned to do, Amidon obeyed his request.
+
+Elizabeth, standing near Mrs. Hunter, heard an agitated exclamation
+from that lady as Mr. Amidon went forward.
+
+"For heaven's sake," said she, "it's Florian Amidon!"
+
+"Who?" inquired Mrs. Pumphrey, "that?  Why, that's our chief citizen,
+soon to be our chief magistrate, Mr. Eugene Brassfield."
+
+Elizabeth heard no more, but in spite of perplexity at what she
+regarded as Mrs. Hunter's recognition of her lover's face and
+forgetfulness of his name, she could not help noticing her excited talk
+to her sister, and the meaning glances finally directed toward her,
+Elizabeth.  Whereat, to hide a little rosy flush, Miss Waldron turned
+more completely toward the place of the hypnotist.
+
+Madame le Claire stood in the little curtained alcove, empty save for
+the great tiger-skin rug, the dais, and a chair or two.  She was gowned
+once more in the yellow and black, and stood in tigrine splendor
+cap-a-pie.  Amidon felt her old power over him, as he approached her
+and looked into those mysterious eyes, and knew that he should do her
+bidding.  She looked at his troubled countenance, and pitied him for
+his long evening of mental strain.  She had seen his devotion to
+Elizabeth, and, be it confessed, was jealous in spite of herself.  Pity
+and jealousy inspired the resolution which now formed in her mind: she
+would for an interval--an interval definitely limited--restore Eugene
+Brassfield to this company in which he was so completely at home, and
+lay the troubled ghost, Amidon.  He would appear to better advantage
+altogether and do himself more credit; he would, in fact, be more
+convincingly Bellevale's "chief citizen."
+
+She bowed deeply and waved him to the chair.  Then she performed the
+charm of "woven paces and of waving arms," and he slept, "lost to life
+and use and name and fame."
+
+"When he opens his eyes," said she, "he will know nothing, think
+nothing, do nothing, except what I suggest."
+
+"Make him dance with the broom," suggested Cox.
+
+"Let's have his inaugural address," petitioned Edgington.
+
+"Give him this," said Alvord, offering a coin, "and make him think it's
+hot.  People in this neighborhood would go farther to see Brassfield
+drop a piece of money, than to interview a live dinosaur!"
+
+The laughter at this sally was lost on Madame le Claire.  She was
+looking down on the unconscious Amidon, and wondering how any one could
+think of making him the instrument of buffoonery.
+
+"I will perform only one simple, yet very difficult, lest," said she.
+"This gentleman will soon wake as Mr. Brassfield, and will be his old
+and usual self among you until a certain hour, which I will write on
+this card, and seal up in this envelope, so that no one will know, and
+inform Mr. Brassfield by suggestion.  When that particular moment
+arrives, wherever he may be, whatever he may be doing, he will enter
+the cataleptic state.  The test is regarded as a severe and perfect
+one.  The card will remain in the possession of Major Pumphrey until it
+succeeds or fails, and the envelope will then be opened."
+
+Kneeling on the dais, she seemed whispering in the subject's ear.
+Then, tapping his wrist, she said, decisively, "Wake!"
+
+It was Eugene Brassfield who opened his eyes on a circle of his
+friends, associates and cronies.  He rose lightly and confidently, and
+laughed at the chaffing of his friends.  He bowed to Madame le Claire,
+and moved across the room to Elizabeth's side, with an air of incipient
+proprietorship.
+
+"No true lover of carnations," he confided to her, "could wish you to
+wear them as you do to-night."
+
+"Really?  I suppose I ought to ask why?"
+
+"It isn't fair to the flowers," said he.  "Flowers have rights, you
+know, and to be outdone in sweetness----  Ah, Jim!  Go away, and don't
+bother me!  Don't you see I'm very busy?"
+
+"Old man," said Alvord, answering to the name of "Jim," "it's good to
+see you as you are to-night--your old self.  You'll make a hit, my boy.
+This will make it more than ever a cinch!"
+
+Self-possessed, masterful, Mr. Brassfield moved through the assembly
+like a conqueror.  Those who, a short time ago, found him dull and
+moody, rejoiced now in his confident persiflage pitched safely in the
+restful key of mediocrity, but possessed withal of a species of
+brilliancy, like the skilful playing of scales.  Elizabeth noted the
+return of that dash and abandon which she had lately so missed--but for
+the first time the Brassfield music had a hollow ring in her ears.  The
+subtler melody of last night--after all, it was best!
+
+Madame le Claire, immensely popular, gave readings in palmistry.  Miss
+Smith was to have a husband with dark eyes.  Mr. Brassfield offered to
+cross her palm with any gold coin she might name, if she would promise
+him a sweetheart with party-colored eyes, who would meet him for a long
+talk next day.  Madame le Claire blushed and dropped the hand.
+
+Mr. Brassfield adroitly overtook Miss Scarlett, who seemed endeavoring
+to retreat.  He stood by her, chatting lightly, using two voices, a
+distinct and conversational tone, and one so low as to be for her ear
+alone.
+
+"Oh, isn't it a crush?" said he.  "(_Daise, what's the matter?_)  A
+perfect evening, though.  (_Are you running away from me?_)  And such
+delightful people!  (_The east room in ten minutes; is it yes?_)"
+
+Miss Scarlett nodded, and Brassfield moved on.  Mrs. Pumphrey, Mrs.
+Hunter and Elizabeth Waldron were sipping punch.
+
+"May I have some?" said he.  "And, please, Mrs. Pumphrey, may I be
+presented to the guest of the evening?"
+
+Mrs. Hunter received the introduction with a gasp.
+
+"Is it possible," said she, "that you don't know me?  Can the possessor
+of that voice and face be any one but Florian Amidon?"
+
+"Amidon, Amidon?" he repeated.  "Pardon me, but some one else spoke
+that name to me lately, and I was trying to recall the circumstances.
+It is in every way on my part to be regretted, as the fact has deprived
+me of the happiness of knowing you, that I am not Mr. Amidon.  Am I so
+like him?"
+
+"Oh, it isn't a matter of resemblance, but of identity!" replied Mrs.
+Hunter.  "Were you never in Hazelhurst, Wisconsin?"
+
+"Never," said Mr. Brassfield; "but I am beginning to see its beauties
+as a place of residence.  And I hope to know more of this other Dromio
+before the evening is past."
+
+Mrs. Hunter bowed in acknowledgment of the compliment, and Mr.
+Brassfield took himself gracefully from their presence.  In the fashion
+of one pressed for time, he moved on.
+
+Elizabeth had grown suddenly very grave.  What did this conduct of her
+lover mean?  A little while ago he had recognized Mrs. Hunter, at a
+distance, as an old acquaintance.  Now he had audaciously outfaced her,
+and denied that he ever knew her.  Could this be the man she had
+trusted with her all?  Again her doubts and fears and scruples
+rose--rose instantly in full strength.  The new impressions she had
+lately received of him vanished, and all the subtle suggestions of
+sordid lightness which the diplomacy of Brassfield, even, had not
+entirely kept from her mind, came back with multiplied distinctness.
+These transformations of character, these curious duplicities, and now
+this lie.  She must think it over: it impressed her, and she must act.
+
+"Auntie," said she, "let us go."
+
+As down the stairway they came, robed for departure, they were
+conscious of a hum of excitement running through the assembly.
+
+"Where is he?  The envelope has been opened and the time is up!  Where
+is he?" were the cries.  "It's eleven: it's a minute past eleven!
+Where's Mr. Brassfield?"
+
+At this moment, a scream, a soprano scream, high, long-drawn and
+piercing, the scream of a woman in terror, came echoing from the
+deserted east room.  A body of guests rushed through the portieres,
+Madame le Claire, pale with fright, at their head, and Elizabeth borne
+with them, all looking to see what violence had provoked that scream.
+They saw Mr. Brassfield, seated on a sofa in a shadowy corner, holding
+both Miss Scarlett's hands in his; saw the girl frantically, but in
+vain, trying to take them from his grasp.  He sat like a statue, with
+his eyes set wide and unwinking like a corpse's, every limb and muscle
+rigid, his body tense and immovable as a stone image.  The sight was
+terrible.  It was as if the living man had been transformed in an
+instant into a ghastly trap, to catch those soft, warm, pretty hands!
+She ceased her efforts to break away, but stood white and almost
+fainting, and begging hysterically for help.
+
+Madame le Claire leaped forward like a tigress, so light was her step,
+and passed her hand over his eyes, so as to close them.  Then, bending
+her gaze one moment piercingly on his face, she sharply tapped his
+wrist and uttered the single word, "Wake!"
+
+Florian Amidon opened his eyes.  He saw that something extraordinary
+was taking place, for, in the act of opening his eyes, he had seen Miss
+Scarlett fall back into the arms of Mr. Cox, and knew that she was
+being conveyed rapidly away.
+
+"It iss now," said the professor, "vun minute past eleven.  Te test,
+you vill atmit, hass peen a gomplete success.  Dis sairgumsdance vill
+pe noted as exdablishing to a sairtain eggstent an important brinciple,
+ant hass peen in effery vay bleasant ant a success: not?"
+
+A laugh or two was heard, then more laughter, then a little hum of
+reviving talk, and one could observe that the affair was to be passed
+off as one of the mysteries of occultism.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Amidon, "if I have contributed my share to the gaiety
+of the occasion, I shall beg now to be permitted to depart."
+
+The Waldrons were waiting for their carriage as he came down.
+
+"There will be plenty of assistance," said the aunty "and we shall not
+need to detain you."
+
+"Oh, auntie, auntie!" wept Elizabeth, when they were safely alone,
+"there was a spell upon him, as you say, there in the east room, but
+the spell that took him there was none of the hypnotist's working!  I
+am shamed, and humiliated, and robbed of all I have to live for!  He
+went there, auntie, of his own accord, _and left me_!"
+
+Mr. Alvord passed the thing off more lightly.
+
+"Confound it!" said he, "I wish they were in Hades with their mesmeric
+stunts!  I shan't tell Brass what happened, for it won't do any good;
+and the less notice there's taken of it the better.  But carrying
+things before him as he was--it was hard luck to have that occur.  Puts
+him in an undignified position, to say the least.  I wish I could think
+there was nothing more to it!"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+A REVIVAL OF BELSHAZZAR
+
+  We are but Sitters at the Table, Guests,
+  Where each drinks more, the more that he protests,
+    Sees, One by One, his Fellows slip from Sight,
+  And then himself beneath the Table rests.
+        *      *      *      *      *      *
+  Some walk the Sinuous Crack for Test, and Some
+  Judge by the throbbing Fullness of the Thumb--
+    But lo! the Fool continues till the Guests
+  Are changed to Pairs of Twins as in they come!
+            --_Imitations of Immorality_.
+
+Barring the somewhat equivocal episode of the east room at Major
+Pumphrey's, everything had gone to Mr. Alvord's liking since Mr.
+Brassfield had placed the campaign in his hands.  And, as a matter of
+fact, that affair was so susceptible of plausible explanation, and so
+fenced about by the sanctities of private hospitality, that Alvord was
+reassured after a day or two had passed with no public scandal.  Amidon
+stayed away from headquarters, and Alvord, acting under the unlimited
+authority granted by Brassfield, took all responsibility and proceeded
+most effectively in his own way.  Amidon's instructions by telephone,
+to prepare a statement of disbursements to be made public, he regarded
+as one of Brassfield's jokes.  His suggestion that he meant to stand on
+a platform of principles seemed equally humorous.  To propose such
+ridiculous things in a perfectly serious way, and laugh at the victim's
+credulity in "biting" on the hoax, was quite in harmony with the
+relations among the members of the set to which they belonged, where
+practical jokes, merciless chaffing and perpetual efforts to get the
+best of one another had given the group a more than local celebrity.
+
+Having, therefore, no suspicion that his candidate's platform of
+principles was in the hands of the reporters, and would appear in the
+next morning's papers, Alvord took his way to the annual supper of the
+A. O. C. M. feeling that all was well in the world, and that here, at
+least, his candidate would acquit himself well.
+
+Messrs. Bulliwinkle and Cox were absent when the time came for sitting
+down to supper, and Mr. Simpson, the Master of the Revels, decreed that
+no one was to be waited for.  So the chairs of the absentees were
+shoved up, and reminded Mr. Slater, who was quite high in spirits, of
+_The Vacant Chair_, which he sang to the bass of Judge Blodgett, and a
+humming accompaniment by Alvord and Edgington.  Professor Blatherwick
+listened with rapt attention and was much affected.
+
+"Dis iss Heidelberg unt stutent tays," said he.  "Strong and luffing
+hearts, ant veak hets ant stomachs!  Oh, te svorts ant steins ant songs
+ant scraps!  It iss brotuctife of tears ant schmiles!"
+
+"Especially smiles," said Mr. Simpson; "and right in that connection,
+these cocktails are supposed to go in ahead of the refection.
+Gentlemen, a good time to all!"
+
+Now, after some courses of soup and fish and _entrees_, Mr. Alvord
+noted the cocktails and the unconsumed glasses of wine at the plates of
+Bulliwinkle and Cox, and with a sense of equity truly Anglo-Saxon, he
+raised the point that it was an injustice to those who had been prompt,
+to have these two fresh competitors come in late and entirely sober in
+the middle of the feast.
+
+"Point seems to be well taken," said Judge Blodgett.  "I move, your
+Honor, that the wet goods apportionable to our absent friends be set
+aside for them."
+
+"Sustained!" roared Simpson.  "Let the booze of Bulliwinkle and Cox be
+filed away for future reference, in the sideboard!"
+
+So their glasses stood in two rows, lengthening course by course,
+awaiting the coming of the absentees.  And thus it was that when Mr.
+Bulliwinkle, fat, bald, and rubicund, made his appearance, the
+proceedings were suspended until he had imbibed his share, glass by
+glass, beginning with the cocktails and ending temporarily with
+Madeira.  Then Mr. Bulliwinkle suddenly became profoundly grave, and
+was soon detected by Alvord in the act of stealthily endeavoring to
+place his finger accurately upon certain small round spots in the
+table-cloth.  Whereupon, Mr. Bulliwinkle, to show how entirely he had
+himself in hand, proposed a toast in verse beginning,
+
+  "Now here's to the girl with the auburn hair,
+  And the shoulders whiter than snow,"
+
+and drank it off in a bumper.  All seemed to forget Bulliwinkle at this
+and transferred their attention to Amidon, and pounded on the table and
+called for a response from him.  Blodgett nodded for him to yield, and
+in order that he might be fully in character, Florian began by saying
+that they, who knew him so well were quite well aware that he could
+respond to a toast in honor of the girl with the auburn hair----
+
+"Or any other old color!" shouted Edgington.
+
+"Or all colors at once!" roared a nameless wight at the foot of the
+table.
+
+At which gaucherie, the nameless wight was the recipient of nudges and
+scowls in the direction of the professor (who was probably unaware of
+the color of the hair on his own head, to say nothing of his
+daughter's) and Edgington filled the gap caused by the unexpected
+collapse of Amidon's response by charging that Cox was absent because
+of his having recently taken passage upon the water-wagon, and was
+traitorously staying away.  Alvord proposed that a messenger be sent
+for him, and when the A. D. T. boy came, a written summons was penned
+on a menu card, on which progress to date was checked, and instructions
+given that the document be presented to Cox at his home every twenty
+minutes until he came--Cox to pay the charges; and the messenger to
+return between trips to report, and to have the menu checked up so that
+Cox might note the forward movement of events, and see how far he was
+behind.
+
+When Mr. Simpson rose to make a few general observations ushering in
+that part of the program usually devoted to speech-making, Mr.
+Bulliwinkle, whose vision was slightly impaired, took him for the tardy
+Cox and some friend whom Cox had brought, and greeted them with a
+strident "How-de-do!"  After this blunder, of course, Mr. Bulliwinkle
+was logically bound to show that the exclamation was uttered by virtue
+of a deliberate plan, and so he repeated it from time to time all the
+evening, until the ordeal of mixed drinks, to which his late arrival
+had subjected him, proved too much for his endurance and robbed him of
+speech.  But this is anticipating.
+
+A dozen matches were burning and a dozen Havanas sending forth their
+first cloudlets of blue over the sparkling glasses of champagne, as Mr.
+Simpson began his remarks.
+
+"To most of those present," he said, "I don't need to say that this is
+a sort of annual affair.  To our new friends I will explain that this
+club is an institution of Bellevale Lodge, Number 689, of the Ancient
+Order of Christian Martyrs, of which noble fraternity we are all
+devoted members.  Present company are members, ex or incumbent, of the
+Board of Control, and a system of fines for absence at board meetings
+accumulates a fund which has to be spent, and we are now engaged in
+spending it.  Beyond the logic of the situation, which points
+unerringly to the blowing-in of this fund, the impending happy event in
+the life of our treasurer, Brother Brassfield, together with the public
+honors already and about to be conferred on him, render it fitting that
+this banquet be in his honor.  What the devil is that racket?  Oh, the
+boy----!  Let the wandering caitiff enter!  What says the recreant
+invader of our Mystic Circle?"
+
+"He said he'd hev' me 'rested 'f I came there any more, an' the whole
+bunch pulled," said the boy.  "An' he chucked the paper out o' the
+winder."
+
+"Let another scroll be prepared," roared Simpson, "and go back to him
+as per schedule."
+
+"But," said the boy, "he said----"
+
+"We hold the police force in the hollow of our hands!" shouted Simpson.
+"We will protect you."
+
+"I should say we would!"  "You trust us!"  "To the death!" chorused the
+roisterers.
+
+"I'll collect damages from him for your death!" said Judge Blodgett.
+"Whom do you want 'em paid to?"
+
+"D'vide the boodle," said the boy, "among my grandchildren--ekally.  Do
+I go back?"
+
+"You do," said Simpson, "as soon as another Exhibit A is prepared."
+
+"It's ready, most noble Potentate," said Edgington ritualistically.
+
+"Then let the messenger depart.  Where's that menu I had?  Hang it,
+you've used it for the kid, and it had my remarks on it.  As I was
+saying, this is Brassfield's night.  Everybody tells a story, sings a
+song or dances."
+
+Edgington told a story which, he said, was "on Brassfield," and showed
+what regular devil that gentleman had been.  It seemed that he and
+"Brass" were at one time fly-fishing in the mountains, and Eugene had
+so wrought on the fancy of the schoolmistress that she had let school
+out at three, and gone to learn casting of Brassfield.
+
+"And when they came to the house at suppertime," he went on, "the whole
+family were laying for them.  'Ketch anything?' said the old lady,
+'anythin' more'n a bullhead?'  'I c'n see,' said the hired man, 'that
+she's been castin' purty hard, by the way her dress is kinder pressed
+around the waist.  It allers fixes mine that way!'"
+
+And so on, to the narration of the outbreak of hostilities with the
+hired man, and the flight of Brassfield and Edgington.  At every point
+Amidon winced, as he got views of Brassfield's character which
+hypnotism could not yield, and the assembly roared the louder at his
+embarrassment.
+
+The messenger boy returned again by this time, still unsuccessful, and
+was provided with a bunch of cannon fire-crackers to be exploded in
+Cox's front yard so that the invitation to the banquet might not be
+overlooked.  Then Slater told of Mr. Brassfield's adventures at the
+Mardi Gras, the story consisting mostly of the account of Eugene's
+wonderful series of winnings at the race course, where he adopted the
+system of always finding what horse was given the longest odds, and
+playing him.
+
+"Our friend," said Slater, "on that last day, was too full of
+mint-juleps and enthusiasm to tell the field from the judges' stand.
+Said he never saw the judges' stand run with the horses before
+(laughter); thought it was a good idea--judges could always tell
+whether the riding was fair (cheers); and put his money on Azim at
+about one hundred to one; and when Azim romped in a winner, they
+stuffed all his pockets full of money, and the reporters came with
+cameras to get shots at the northern millionaire who had such a
+thundering run of luck, and you ought to have seen 'Gene when he saw
+the papers in the morning!  Had to take him to Pass Christian next day.
+It was too strenuous for your humble servant at New Orleans.  All the
+sports knew him by this time, and wanted to run into him so as to touch
+him for luck, and 'Gene wanted to fight every guy that touched him, and
+about half the time was getting accommodated and taking second money in
+every fight!"  (Great laughter and applause.)
+
+Amidon was unable to tell as to the absolute truth of these tales, but
+they had such verisimilitude that they impressed and shocked him.  He
+was doubly astounded at the evident enjoyment with which they were
+received by his friends, and especially at the fact of the hearty and
+unrestrained manner in which Blodgett and even Blatherwick joined in
+the applause.  Every shot from the quiver of horse-play (except those
+aimed at the luckless Cox) seemed directed at him, Amidon the
+dignified.  Here, it seemed, he was known to have been guilty of
+gambling, drunkenness and libertinism--the three vices that he most
+detested.  His face burned with shame.  How had Elizabeth ever cared
+for such a man as that villain Brassfield?  Where was the Sir Galahad,
+or Lancelot either, in this life?  He must somehow, some time, find a
+way to tell her that it was Brassfield, not Amidon, who had done these
+things, and that he, Amidon, reared by a doting mother and cared for by
+a solicitous sister, and all his life the model of the moral town of
+Hazelhurst, was as innocent of these things as she was.
+
+These thoughts so filled his mind that he heard very little of Judge
+Blodgett's dialect story.  Professor Blatherwick began a German song
+full of trilled r's, achs and hochs; but became offended at
+Bulliwinkle's strident "How-de-do!" at the end of the first stanza, and
+quit.  Whereupon Bulliwinkle, for the first time sensing the fact that
+something was wrong, in the goodness of his heart began singing, _Dot's
+How Poor Yacob Found It Oudt_, in seeming compliment to the nationality
+of the professor; but, owing to the subtlety of the reasoning, the
+professor failed to take it as such.  He took mortal umbrage instead,
+and hurled his card down on the table with a bang, at which Bulliwinkle
+slipped under the mahogany,
+
+  "Gently as a skylark settles down
+  Upon the clustered treasures of her nest."
+
+
+Meantime, Mr. Simpson had called on Mr. Knaggs to do a dance, as he
+alleged himself unable to do anything else.  Mr. Knaggs responded, and
+did pretty well considering the lateness of the hour, but insisted that
+he ought to have a better surface than the carpet.  Amidon dimly
+resented as an impropriety Mr. Knaggs' brilliant proof of the
+correctness of his position regarding the carpet, by a tumultuously
+successful clog-dance on the table.
+
+By this time, it being past the hour for retiring, according to the
+habit of most, several of the guests were asleep, and most of the rest
+were indulging in monologues under the impression that they were
+conversing with their neighbors.  Edgington was on his feet proposing a
+series of interrogatories in strictly legal form requiring Amidon to
+say how he got the support of Barney Conlon, what there was in his
+labor record to win the support of Sheehan and Zalinsky, and various
+other matters.  At Alvord's request, Judge Blodgett was moving that
+these be "struck out," while Slater insisted that it ought to be a
+"base on balls."  It was a new experience for Amidon.  He was surprised
+to find a something in it which he enjoyed.  The very hubbub was
+interesting.
+
+No wonder, such being the conditions, that the A. D. T. boy rapped long
+and was not heard.  No wonder that the ultimate opening of the door was
+unnoted by those present, or that no one observed the tall man with
+whisker extensions to a mustache naturally too large, who came in after
+the messenger.  Observed or not, however, he entered and walked heavily
+down the banqueting-hall.
+
+"Brassfield, a summons for you," said he fiercely.  "Here's the copy;
+this is the 'rig'nal.  Waive the readin', I s'pose?  Sorry to
+interrupt.  So long."
+
+Amidon looked at the stiff document as if it had been a Gila monster on
+toast.  He saw such words as "State of Pennsylvania, County of Rockoil,
+ss," and "Default will be taken against you, and judgment rendered
+thereon," and sundry dates and figures.  Instinctively he turned to
+Judge Blodgett, saying:
+
+"What's this, Blodgett?"
+
+A tremor of panic seized on Amidon, and a wave of sobriety passed over
+the guests.  Much the same thing must have marked the breaking up of
+the feast of Belshazzar.  The roisterers gazed at the paper, or began
+their preparations for departure.
+
+"What is it?" asked Amidon.
+
+"I don't know enough about the practice here," said the judge slowly,
+"to be able to say whether it's good or not--seems to have been hastily
+and rather slovenly gotten up----"
+
+"But what is the damned thing?" shouted Alvord; "cut it short and tell
+us."
+
+"Seems perfectly regular, though," went on the judge deliberately.
+"It's a summons in the case of Daisy Scarlett versus Eugene Brassfield
+in a suit for twenty-five thousand dollars for breach of promise of
+marriage."
+
+Amidon sank back in a collapse which was almost a faint.  The little
+nervous Alvord rose to command.
+
+"Now," said he, standing in his place, "I want to say a few words
+before a man leaves this room.  I know something of this case, and I
+want you to take my word that there's no more foundation for it than
+there would be if it were brought against any one of us.  And
+furthermore, there must be nothing said about this.  These papers are
+not on record yet, and I believe something can be done.  Why, confound
+it, something shall be done!  Every man must pledge me his word that he
+won't breathe a word of this, and will deny it if asked about it."
+
+"We promise!" came the unanimous shout.
+
+Alvord walked toward the guest of honor, tripping over the legs of
+Bulliwinkle as he went, and offered his hand to Amidon.
+
+"I say, old man, I warned you that you were carrying on a little
+strong; and now here's a--"
+
+"How-de-do!" said Bulliwinkle.
+
+_In vino veritas_!  Truly, most bibulous Bulliwinkle, thou hast
+supplied the very word to convey the meaning for which we at this
+moment desire expression!  Here's a how-de-do indeed!  Just as our
+friend Amidon has made a successful lodgment in the outworks of Port
+Waldron--a citadel which he had taken by stratagem, abandoned for
+conscience' sake, and re-invested on lines of fairer warfare, to say
+nothing of the investment of the mayoralty--the hope of victory is
+swallowed up in a sea of disasters.  The meeting on the stairway, the
+repudiation of Mrs. Hunter, the arrested flirtation in the east room:
+all these--any of these--were enough: but what hope for us remains,
+after this sensational summons, served in the small hours of a
+bacchanalian revel, in a breach-of-promise action at the suit of the
+dreadful "Strawberry Blonde"?  Verily, Bulliwinkle, here is indeed a
+how-de-do!
+
+"Old man," said Mr. Alvord, in private communication to Mr. Amidon at
+parting, "we're none of us in condition to discuss this calmly now; but
+don't give up.  It's a blow, but with our pull with the press, and our
+personal relations with Cox, can be squelched, I believe.  Until after
+election----"
+
+"Until when?" asked Amidon dazedly.
+
+"After election," answered Alvord.  "After that, while it will be a
+blow, of course, it won't wreck things quite so completely, you know.
+And even if it does sort of leak out, it's one of those mix-ups that
+lots of voters'll rather admire you for, you know.  It may react in
+your favor, if we can----"
+
+"Mr. Alvord," said Amidon, "please to understand that I don't care a
+rush, one way or the other, about this election!"
+
+"Now, now, don't say that!" said Alvord soothingly.  "I can see how you
+feel, 'Gene--pride, and affection, and Bessie, and the wedding coming
+on--but, pshaw, we lots of us have things kind of tangle up on us
+coming in on the home stretch of a pretty swift heat!  Go home, and
+don't worry too much.  I'm with you, and we'll win.  F. D. and B., you
+know.  Keep the other strings pulling right--it's only a day or so now.
+Good night, old man, and brace up!  See you to-morrow."
+
+One rather likes the optimistic fighter--purely as a fighter--of the
+Alvord stripe.  He was so occupied with plans for the next day's battle
+that the dubious features of the contest were already clearing up in
+his mind with the forming of plans for attacking the situation.  A few
+hours of sleep, and he was up and at them.  His telephone called up the
+editors of the town with the morning star.  Long before the enemy could
+have known of the breach in his works, his trusty troops were busy
+filling it up.  He was almost happy again, when Edgington rushed into
+his presence with a newspaper crushed in his clenched fist, and all
+sorts of disaster depicted in his expression.
+
+"Jim," he cried, "have you seen this?"
+
+"No," answered Alvord.  "It ain't that Scarlett business?  I thought
+I'd got that----"
+
+"No, no!  It isn't that!" groaned Edgington.  "But we're done, all the
+same!  Done to a finish!  You might as well close the headquarters and
+go home, for if we win, on this platform, we lose, and all the money
+we've put in is lost!  I tell you, Jim, 'Gene Brassfield is either
+insane--and I believe it's that--or he's the damnedest traitor and
+sneak and two-faced hound that ever stepped, and I'll have it out with
+him!  Some way, if I wait ten years, I'll have it out with him, if I
+have to do it with a gun!  His business leaves my office at once.  Why,
+there aren't words fit for me to use, to describe the miserable, false,
+lying----"
+
+"See here, Edge!" said Alvord.  "We may be done, as you say, but Eugene
+Brassfield has made you, and he's my friend, and you'd better not go on
+like that, here!  Let me see that paper!"
+
+Edgington threw it to him.  In heavy type he saw the fateful platform
+summarized in a black-bordered panel on the first page:
+
+
+BRASSFIELD'S PLATFORM
+
+1. Strict enforcement of early closing regulations for saloons.
+
+2. No franchises except on public bidding, and ample provision for
+subsequent acquisition by the city.
+
+3. Gambling laws to be strictly enforced.
+
+4. Segregation of vice.
+
+5. Vote of the people on all important measures.
+
+6. Appointments non-partizan on the merit system.
+
+7. Publication of all items of campaign expenses.
+
+
+Alvord fell back in utter dismay.  Then he read in full the manifesto
+which Amidon and Elizabeth had prepared; and, folding up the paper, he
+stuck it in a drawer, which he locked, as if thereby to seal up the
+direful news.  For a moment he felt betrayed and utterly defeated.
+Then he straightened himself for a resumption of the battle.
+
+"See here, Edge," he said insinuatingly, "this is pretty bad, I admit.
+I think, myself, that Brass is off his head.  He 'phoned me once about
+this, but he's such a josher, and it was such wild-eyed lunacy that I
+thought he was kidding.  You'd have thought so, too, in my place.  But
+we can pull through yet.  We can convince the sports that this
+high-moral business is only for the church people, and the civic purity
+push.  Why, Brassfield himself couldn't make Fatty Pierson believe he
+stands for this stuff.  It's so out of reason,--the safe and sane life
+he's lived.  And I'll undertake to keep the God-and-morality folks
+lined up, because these are really the things they say they want.  This
+ain't going to be so very bad, after all, Edge!"
+
+"Bad!" ejaculated Edgington.  "Why, Alvord, you're so wrapped up in
+Brassfield that you're ready to go crazy with him!"
+
+"Well, I want to say right here," shouted Alvord, "that if you think
+I'm going to quit on a man I've eaten with and slept with and sworn to
+stay by--By gad, I won't!"
+
+"Well, stay by him, then!" cried Edgington.  "Go on and butt your
+brains out on this stone wall of ism, and see where you come out.
+You're already beaten.  The other side knew about this last night, and
+you'll be blown out of water before to-morrow morning.  Doctor Bulkon
+and his crowd are already lined up against you: the doctor will take
+the position that Brassfield's proposal to segregate vice is a
+compromise with sin, and that that's the paramount issue.  Why,
+Pumphrey and Johnson and the Williams set are all among his best-paying
+parishioners, and they've put the screws to Bulkon--who doesn't see the
+point, anyhow.  I tell you that there are too many pillars of the
+church with downtown property to rent, for you to keep either them or
+their pastors in line.  They'll find moral issues to fight the ten
+commandments on, if they have to.  You ought to know this, Jim."
+
+"Well," said Alvord, "let the Pharisees oppose us!  I'll appeal to the
+liberal element.  I'll convince 'em that Brassfield don't mean this
+stuff.  They like him, and they'll stick!"
+
+"Stick!" sneered Edgington.  "Like him!  You make me tired, Jim!  How
+long will they 'stick' against the influence of their landlords and
+bankers?  Why, they've all read this platform, and the story has gone
+down the line that Brassfield is so infatuated with Miss Waldron that
+he's allowing her to write his platform, and that she'll be the mayor.
+Don't you think that that won't cut the ground from under you, either!
+A saloon man or gambler fears a good woman's influence as a wolf fears
+fire.  Why, Jim, when this 'advanced thought' platform of yours comes
+to be voted on, there won't be any one for it except thick-and-thin
+party men who 'never scratch.'  Now I'm not going down with any such
+sinking scow.  I shall make terms for my financial interests with the
+other side."
+
+"Go, then!" shouted Alvord, "and find you've hopped out of the frying
+pan into the fire!  By George, I tell you we've got the money to buy
+this election!"
+
+"Oh!" said Edgington, "_have_ you!  And how about your publishing an
+itemized account of campaign expenses?"
+
+Alvord, his last card played, fell back beaten, every vestige of
+optimistic pugnacity gone from his face.  Edgington laid his hand on
+the other's shoulder, in sympathy.
+
+"I tell you, Jim," said he, as he departed, "this is no place nor time
+to run a reform campaign.  Brassfield isn't the candidate for it, and
+you're not the manager.  You're simply fish trying to fly.  Come with
+me and we'll get into our natural element."
+
+"Not by a good deal," said Alvord stubbornly.  "I don't know anything
+in this but Brassfield, and to him I'll stick!"
+
+"As you please," said Edgington.  "But keep the lid on the Scarlett
+business!"
+
+Alvord made no reply.  But when Edgington was gone he took up his work
+with a groan of real distress.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+THE MOVING FINGER WRITES
+
+  To the Queen came the guard full of zeal:
+    Haled in bonds the Pretender:
+  "Shall it be noose or knout, rack or wheel?"
+    But her proud face grew tender.
+  Down she stepped from her throne--made him free;
+    "Love," she said, with a sigh,
+  "What is rank?  You are you, we are we, I am I!"
+            --_The Cheating of Zenobia_.
+
+I should like to write, just here, a little disquisition on Crises.  I
+should show how all nature moves ever on and on toward certain
+cataclysmic events, each of which marks a point of departure for new
+ascents in progression.  I should begin, of course, with the Nebular
+Hypothesis, its crash of suns, followed by the evolution of the star
+and its system of planets, its life, cooling, death, and a fresh crisis
+forming a new nebula.  I should end with either Revolutions or Malaria,
+depending on whether I should last consider the subject in its relation
+to sociology or to pathology; but in any case, somewhere along in the
+latter third of the work, I should treat of Love and Marriage, and
+therein of the Crisis and Catastrophe in Romance.
+
+I have a good mind to do it!
+
+But, no; crises in general must wait, seeing that our particular one
+stands clamoring for solution.  The concrete bids away with the
+abstraction.  None of our friends of this history could be brought just
+now, for a single moment, to seek solace in philosophy, unless it might
+be Professor Blatherwick--and he is entirely oblivious of the fact of
+the crisis having made its appearance.
+
+Not so, for instance, with the professor's extraordinary daughter,
+whose feelings were so lacerated by the culminating proof of the
+fickleness of Brassfield at the Pumphreys' reception that she wondered
+how she could ever have thought of keeping him in that perfidious plane
+of consciousness in the hope that therein he would cleave to her only.
+Better a good friend in Amidon, said she, than a false lover in
+Brassfield.  Howbeit, she isolated herself and mourned, thinking much
+of the wrong her deed of the reception had done to Amidon, and
+wondering how it might be remedied.
+
+Nor with Mr. Amidon, who, while ignorant of the full extent of his
+misfortune in the eyes of Elizabeth, yet knew that he was deep, deep in
+disgrace with her, and found so many plausible reasons for it that the
+episode at the reception seemed the least of them.  He knew enough of
+Brassfield to believe him guilty on any charge which might be brought
+against him.  The only doubt he allowed himself was as to how far he,
+Florian Amidon, was morally responsible for Brassfield's wrong-doings.
+He had no doubt that Miss Scarlett had a real grievance against
+Brassfield, and, in an extremity of woe, made up his mind that Amidon
+must hold himself to the sorry trade of answering a debt he never
+contracted.  He knew from a brief interview with Alvord that the
+political situation was bad, but for this he had scarcely a thought
+since the tragic breaking-up of their little Belshazzar's Feast.  It
+was his relations with Miss Waldron and Miss Scarlett which placed him
+beyond the reach of philosophy.
+
+So also is Judge Blodgett, who has been busy since the banquet, some of
+the time with a towel about his brow, searching through Edgington's
+library, to which his connection with the Bunn's Ferry well case gave
+him the _entree_, for the law of breach of promise of marriage as
+defined by the Pennsylvania decisions.  Edgington himself was
+apparently always from his office.  Blodgett's call on Fuller and Cox
+was most unsatisfactory, Mr. Fuller with some acerbity disclaiming all
+knowledge of any such case as Scarlett versus Brassfield, and Mr. Cox
+being invisible.
+
+"They act," said he to Florian, "like people who are out for revenge,
+or a vindication, or something besides money.  I don't consider their
+attitude favorable to a compromise."
+
+"Well," said Amidon, "that does not surprise me at all."
+
+"It doesn't, eh?" went on the judge.  "Well, I can't say that anything
+surprises me; though I was a little taken off my feet by a rumor that
+something took place between you and the plaintiff at that party the
+other night.  How was that?"
+
+"There may have been something," said Amidon calmly, "but you must get
+particulars from some one else--Clara, perhaps.  You see, she was
+giving tests, and put me into that--Brassfield state, (why, I can't
+understand)--and I don't know what occurred; but there was something."
+
+"I'd like to know about that," said the judge contemplatively, "I'd
+like to know.  That stairway episode--that collision, you remember--may
+not count for much on the trial; but with a few corroborative
+circumstances, eh, my boy?  Farmer jury; pretty girl; blighted
+affection; damned villain, you know.  But say! she's got something to
+prove if she wins, under the authorities here, and there are more cases
+in this state than there ought to be in the whole world; but a
+summer-resort engagement, girl of mature years, a little bit swift down
+the quarter-stretch and all that--cheer up, Florian, we'll win, or
+we'll make it a great case----"
+
+"Blodgett," answered Amidon, who heard with horror the lawyer's
+forecast of the trial, "she may not have to prove anything.  There may
+not be any trial.  I must know these facts!  I may owe her reparation.
+I may--anything!  I must know; and no one but Madame le Claire can help
+us, and she must act through that accursed scoundrel who has got us
+into all this--Brassfield!  Go to her, Blodgett, and tell her that she
+must see us.  I have asked for an interview a dozen times since that
+reception but she won't see any one.  Get an interview for this
+afternoon; and you must be present and hear her bring out of him a full
+confession; not as my attorney, but as my friend, as a gentleman.  If
+you find out the worst, as I believe, I shall offer----"
+
+Judge Blodgett gave Amidon's hand a warm grasp.
+
+"That's like you, Florian," he exclaimed, "and it's the part of a man!
+But I'd see her in Halifax first!  Why, you may be called to give
+up--have you considered--Miss Wald----"
+
+"No no!" said Amidon, "that--_she_ is no longer a factor in the case.
+It's all over with her anyhow, if----  I can't talk of that; but can't
+you see that this other matter must be cleared up--before I can even
+come into her presence?  Can't you see----"
+
+"I'll see the madame," said the judge.  "Yes--I'll see her!  I'll see
+her at once.  I guess you're right about it, Florian."
+
+Madame le Claire was keenly conscious of the converging lines of fate,
+the meeting of which was so rich in baleful promise.  She was
+prostrated at the result of her work at the reception.  She had seen
+Florian in a position of utter humiliation.  She had observed the gray
+pallor in Elizabeth's face as she walked from the room, and felt on her
+conscience the murder of their happiness.  She had seen--and this hurt
+her more than she would to herself admit--she had seen Brassfield walk
+from a whispered conversation with herself--an amorous, wooing
+conversation--to a secret meeting with Daisy Scarlett; so that she felt
+despoiled of the hold she had had on the affections of even Amidon's
+false second self, Brassfield.  For all this she blamed herself because
+of the little jealous spite, to gratify which she had made Brassfield
+walk his disastrous hour on the stage.  What should she do?  What could
+she do?  She secluded herself and pondered.  On this second day, she
+made her resolve: she would see Miss Waldron, and if possible explain
+as much of the mystery as might serve to satisfy her with reference to
+the affair of the East Room.  Accordingly, a note went up to the house
+with the white columns, asking for a meeting.  And as the messenger
+departed, the card of Judge Blodgett came in.
+
+"No!" said Madame le Claire, to his request, "no, I must be excused!  I
+can not conscientiously put him in that state again.  If you could have
+seen him when last----"
+
+"Exactly!" said the judge, filling in the pause.  "And as I didn't see
+that reception affair, you must tell me about it.  It's important for
+me to know."
+
+When he had been told, the judge walked back and forth in evident
+perturbation, fingering over the leaves of a little square book which
+he took from his pocket.
+
+"Did you ever," said he at last, "happen to hear what was the rule laid
+down in the breach of promise case of Hall versus Maguire?"
+
+"Breach of promise!" ejaculated the young woman, inferring a volume
+from the words.  "What do you mean?"
+
+"These facts of which you inform me," said he, "bring Mr. Amidon's case
+within the rule in Hall versus Maguire, square as a die!  Oh, I forgot
+to tell you!  Mr. Amidon, doing business under the name and style of
+Eugene Brassfield, has been sued by Miss Daisy Scarlett, for breach of
+promise.  No publicity, as yet, but----"
+
+"Oh, it must be stopped!" exclaimed the occultist; "it shall be
+stopped!  He is not guilty.  He was irresponsible--ask papa about it;
+he will tell you so.  This girl is coming to see me here to-day: I'll
+tell her how wrong----"
+
+"No, no, my dear!" said the judge in a fatherly manner.  "That would
+never do, never!  You may have given a hint as to this matter of
+irresponsibility, worth considering.  Promise of marriage--civil
+contract; abnormal state--irresponsibility: it looks pretty well!  You
+should have been a lawyer.  But this thing of having dealings with Miss
+Scarlett except in the presence of and through her legal advisers,
+Messrs. Fuller and Cox--not for a moment to be thought of by an
+honorable practitioner: not for a moment!"
+
+Madame le Claire regarded him with a lofty scorn meant for these
+antiquated scruples of his; but before she could find words, the knock
+of the bell-boy called her attention to the door.
+
+"Miss Waldron is below!" said she.  "Judge, you may bring Mr. Amidon up
+in half an hour.  I shall then be at liberty, and may grant his
+request.  Please leave me, now; I have asked Miss Waldron to be shown
+up, and must see her alone."
+
+
+Elizabeth Waldron, in this plexus of disasters, found nowhere a gleam
+of comfort.  Her fine chagrin at the thought of such things as she
+feared might be censurable as overfree self-revelation to her lover in
+such things as letters and the sweet concessions of the new
+betrothal--all this was past, now.  Tragedy has this of comfort in it:
+its fateful lightnings burn out of the atmosphere of life all the
+noisome littlenesses which have seemed worthy of concern.  So it was
+with Elizabeth, as she now faced the very annihilation of all for which
+she had lived--centered in that "perfect lover," who was now worse than
+annihilated in this descent to a plane which made every act of homage
+to her so mean and common that she would have felt his status uplifted
+by some proof of great guilt on his part.  And she could see no way of
+acquitting him.  There was mystery in it, but no exculpation.
+Mystery----
+
+With the idea of mystery came in the image of the strange girl with the
+fascinating glance and the party-colored hair.  Could it be possible
+that the occult power possessed by her might somehow furnish an
+explanation of her lover's strangely base behavior?  More and more did
+this fixed thought engross her mind.  She felt that she must know--must
+see this woman and her colorless father.  Desire grew to resolve;
+resolve bred inquiry as to ways of compassing an interview; and in the
+midst of the inquiry, came Madame le Claire's messenger.  Her answer
+was the putting on of her cloak for a visit to the occultist's parlors.
+
+The two women faced each other like hostile champions in a truce.
+Elizabeth's first aversion to the other had been swept away in the
+flood of righteous jealousy created by the Scarlett episode.  Madame le
+Claire's unreasoning feeling of injury had been mitigated by the same
+baleful affair, and her sense of justice fought for Elizabeth; but no
+two women loving the same man ever met without antagonism.
+
+"I thank you," said Miss Waldron, "for this invitation.  I think you
+owe me the benefit of such light as you can give on some--some
+things--which are dark to me."
+
+A little angry flush rose to Madame le Claire's cheek at the tone in
+which the first part of this speech was uttered.  It passed away, and
+was replaced by a gentler expression at the doleful and faltering
+conclusion.
+
+"I owe you," she answered, "more in the way of knowledge than you
+imagine.  I expect other visitors.  Will you step into this little rear
+room?  I may be called away from you for a while, but I shall return."
+
+"I need not tell you," said Elizabeth, "how vitally important it is to
+me to know whether there was anything in your mesmeric influence
+over--Mr. Brassfield--which would cause him to do--things unworthy of
+him--as he did.  Did you impose any such thing on him by your
+power?--could you have been so cruel?"
+
+"Before I answer that," replied Clara, "there are many things to tell.
+When did you first meet Mr. Amidon.--Brassfield, I mean?"
+
+"Why do you call him by that name?" cried Elizabeth.  "That is what
+Mrs. Hunter called him!  One moment he told me he knew her; the next,
+he denied it to her face.  What is there in this matter of names?"
+
+Madame le Claire looked with a fixed and unwavering calmness at Miss
+Waldron, and answered in a tone of perfect reassurance.
+
+"There is nothing in it which can't be easily explained.  You have
+known Mr. Brassfield a long time?"
+
+"Since I was seventeen.  He did my aunt and me a great favor, which
+lifted us out of poverty--about some land we had, and oil
+discoveries--I went away soon after this, but he has always been very
+kind and good--until--until this----"
+
+Elizabeth walked to the window and looked out for a long time, during
+which Madame le Claire regarded her fixedly and tried not to hate her.
+
+"Did he tell you much of his past?"
+
+"No, he said it was a very ordinary past, and that he would tell us all
+about it some time; and then the subject never came up again.  I never
+really cared!"
+
+"Let me tell it to you," said Madame le Claire.  "He was, all his life,
+a man of wealth and standing.  He was a scholar and a student of the
+fine arts and letters.  He was the pride of his town and his
+university.  Then, all at once, nearly six years ago, came on him one
+of those strange experiences of which I, through my profession, am able
+to speak to you as one having knowledge.  He became another man.  His
+mind had drawn across it a dead line cutting off everything back of a
+certain date.  He did not tell you of his life, _because he did not
+remember it himself_."
+
+Elizabeth gasped, and turned pale.
+
+"This life of his----" she began.
+
+"--was a life which was in every way better--which will add to your
+pride in him.  But you must be prepared for some strange and unexpected
+things.  Now, for instance, a name--a name seems important; but what is
+it?  This loss of personality--of self-consciousness relating to the
+past--it was loss of name, of mode of life, of all memory, except
+certain blind, unconscious reflexes, in which the brain had no part.
+How the name of Brassfield was suggested to this new-born personality
+of his, no one can tell, he least of all.  But----"
+
+"Then his name--his name is--is not----"
+
+Now here was a situation for a diplomat.  To say that Brassfield was an
+assumed name, an alias, was to shock the girl's womanish conservatism
+to its very base.  Madame le Claire proved herself a diplomat.
+
+"Why," said she, as if the matter were, after all, of no importance,
+"the name of Brassfield is his, legally, Judge Blodgett says, and
+morally.  These business names, as distinguished from others, are quite
+common now, I am told--take mine, for instance.  Eugene Brassfield was
+not his name until five years ago, when this happened.  He is really
+Florian Amidon, son of the chemist Wilford Amidon, of whom, I have no
+doubt, you have read."
+
+The fact that the name of Wilford Amidon had never reached her ears,
+did not occur to Elizabeth.  Madame le Claire's choice of expression
+sounded like the announcement that Florian was a prince just throwing
+off his incognito.  The subtle sophistry of this way of putting it
+found grateful harborage in Elizabeth's hungry soul.  For a moment she
+felt comforted.  Then came back the thought that, after all, she had
+found out nothing of the matters she had come to search out.
+
+"It is very strange," said she, "but, after all, it only adds to the
+mystery.  Why did he do those things?  Did you make him do them?  And
+why did he say that he knew Mrs. Hunter, and then deny it?  And if he
+knew about his past when he said he knew her, did he not know it as
+well afterward?  I can not be blinded to these matters by a statement
+of things merely mysterious and strange.  I must have----"
+
+"My friend," said Madame le Claire, "all these things will be
+explained, trust me.  The person tapping at the outer door is Judge
+Blodgett with Mr. Am----with your future husband.  Things will occur of
+which you should know, and which can not take place if they know you
+are here.  It will be most honorable for you to stay.  Remain here and
+note well what happens, and you will get much light on your troubles,
+and on his--of some of which you do not yet know, which I do not
+understand, but which will be cleared up.  You will say nothing, but
+watch and listen."
+
+Before Miss Waldron could protest, the other woman was gone.  Florian
+and Judge Blodgett were brought into the middle room, and seated with
+their faces from the portiere, behind which Elizabeth waited, wondering
+what she should do, feeling that she had the right to know, and
+obedient to the mesmerist's commands.  Mr. Amidon began _in medias
+res_, too full of grim determination for any circumlocution.
+
+"Madame le Claire," said he, "recently, as I sat at supper, I was
+notified that this Miss Scarlett has begun suit against me for breach
+of promise."
+
+"Yes," said Madame le Claire, "I have heard of it.  It is most unjust."
+
+Elizabeth, astounded at Amidon's statement, heard her new friend's
+reply as some far-off note of succor in doubtful and deadly battle.
+She sat close, now, and listened.
+
+"Ever since I came to myself," went on Amidon, "and through your
+wonderful power found out about this life of mine here in Bellevale,
+the name of Miss Scarlett has come up from time to time as connected
+with it.  I have always shrunk from having you find out just what
+our--relations--have been, and the whole thing has been dark to
+me--dark and forbidding.  What wrong I--this man Brassfield--may have
+done her, I can not know without your aid.  I must know this, now.  If
+she has been wronged, she shall have reparation, as full as I can give."
+
+"What do you mean," said Madame le Claire--and Elizabeth held her
+breath--"by full reparation?"
+
+"First let us know the wrong!  If that exists, the reparation will be
+for Miss Scarlett and her advisers to name."
+
+"But they may name the keeping of the promise they say you have made!"
+
+"I have thought that all over."
+
+"But your engagement to----"
+
+"The lady you are about to mention," said Amidon, "must have ceased to
+care much for me, after what I am told took place the other night; and
+when she learns of this other disgrace, as she must before she sees me
+again--if she ever does--it will be all over--for ever--except the
+wrong to her--for which reparation can never be made.  I----"
+
+"Oh, it is too dreadful!" cried Madame le Claire.  "And for that worst
+thing--the other night--I only am to blame!  I put into you the
+character in which you have become weak and drawn aside by suggestions
+not natural to your own character.  Can you ever forgive me?"
+
+"I have never thought of blaming you!" he protested.  "You?  Why, no
+one ever had so good a friend; all the chance I have had to win
+happiness here, you gave me.  I have lost that--by misfortune.  Now
+help me to make things as near right as I can.  Put me back into the
+world of Brassfield, and let me know the worst that I--he--has done."
+
+"Coom een!" said the voice of the professor in the corridor.  "Coom
+een!  Clara iss not here now: den she must be someveres.  Pe bleaced to
+sit vile I look.  Anyhow, she vill soon return.  Ach, Herr Cox, ve
+missed you creatly at our supper--eatings of reasons and sdreams of
+souls!  Ach!  Here iss our friendt te chutche, ant Herr
+Amidon--Brassfield, I mean!"
+
+Madame le Claire appeared in the archway.
+
+"Ah, Miss Scarlett," said she, "you are early.  May I ask you to
+return, in----"
+
+"No!"  It was the voice of Miss Scarlett which replied.  "No, I'm not
+going!  And if 'Gene Brassfield is in there, Billy Cox has something to
+say to him.  Here, Mr. Alvord, you come in, too; he's out there hunting
+for 'Gene.  Billy, do your duty now!"
+
+"Pardon me," said Mr. Cox, advancing into the next room, followed by
+Miss Scarlett.  "Pardon me, Judge Blodgett, I have a few words for you
+and your client.  Miss Scarlett has made me agree to apologize to Mr.
+Brassfield about that summons; and if 'Gene Brassfield thinks I owe him
+any apology for putting it on to him a little before his out-of-town
+friends, I'll make it.  But here are the facts, and he knows it: for
+four years he's been rawhiding me at every chance with his practical
+jokes.  He had me arrested and detained for a whole day on fake
+telegrams at Wilkesbarre, only last fall; and just before that he got
+everybody at the Springs to thinking I was Tascott, and induced a rural
+constable to take me into custody.  Why, Alvord here in his worst
+estate hasn't been as bad as he's been.  If he's lost any opportunity,
+I don't remember it; and, of course, I've got back once in a while, and
+may be about even.  But everything has been good-natured and brotherly,
+as ought to be between members of the gang.  _And_, of course, when the
+cannon-crackers began to go off that night, I knew he was doing it.  I
+was over in Major Pumphrey's parlor, where Daisy had invited me, during
+the eruption, and I told her about these things, and wished for some
+way of getting even, and--and some one spoke of this breach of promise
+suit, and we--that is, I--got up the summons, and I told Ed Tootle to
+serve it on you at your orgy--you had no business to expect me to enter
+any free-for-all inebriates' competition--you know that, 'Gene!  It may
+have been a little extreme as a joke; but if you'd laughed it off as
+you always do, nobody would have thought anything of it except to chaff
+you about it.  But what do you do?  You make as serious a thing of it
+as if you hadn't been trotting with our crowd for five years or so.
+You set this old--my learned friend from the West--briefing it up, and
+you make a fool of me.  Worse than that, you place Daisy in a most
+objectionable position; and, by George, 'Gene, I claim the apology is
+due from you, to me and Daisy!"
+
+That he, Florian Amidon, had ever been guilty of playing such pranks as
+the ones described by Mr. Cox, seemed incredible; but his sense of
+relief at the way his burden rolled away in the light of Cox's
+indignant apology overcame all other sensations.  He sprang forward to
+offer his hand cordially to Mr. Cox.
+
+"I agree with you!" said he.  "I do owe you an apology, and I freely
+offer it.  As for the offense I have given Miss Scarlett, I can only
+say that I have had a very strange mental experience lately, of which
+my friends here can tell you, or I should never have--never have taken
+the matter--as I did.  I beg you both to forgive me!"
+
+"'Gene," said Miss Scarlett, offering her hand, "I'm too game a sport
+to go mourning because I lost out, and you ought to have known--I
+declare, I believe you've been crazy!  I told Billy--Billy and I are
+engaged, now, and are really going to be married--I told Billy how,
+when we were at the watering-place, I insisted that it seemed a shame
+not to be engaged, and how we fixed it to be engaged for a week, and it
+made him furious!  But as good a fellow as I've been, the way you took
+our joke was shabby.  You people may know some good excuse, but----"
+
+Madame le Claire was not only a diplomat: she was a strategist.  Now,
+she saw, was the supreme moment in which to complete for Florian the
+good work she had begun.
+
+"Please excuse Mr. Brassfield," said sha.  "He is wanted in the back
+parlor; come, Mr. Brassfield, give me your arm!"
+
+Through the portiere she swept, bearing Amidon as on wings.  There sat
+Elizabeth, her face bowed down upon her arms, on the back of a sofa.
+She rose as they entered.
+
+"Elizabeth!" cried Florian.  "My darling!"
+
+He stretched out his hands pleadingly, and walked toward her.  She
+shrank back; and Madame le Claire retreated, knowing that the struggle
+of Amidon's life was before him.
+
+Yet, gentle reader, why should not Amidon win?  To us, a thousand
+things might seem to need explanation; but to Elizabeth, all this
+separation of Amidon from Brassfield was so new, so little realized,
+that her love bridged the chasm, and nothing was required except the
+clearing up of a week or two of curious happenings, most of which had
+already been so glozed over by Madame le Claire's generous plea, that
+what girl in love would require any greater price in humble wooing than
+Florian yearned to pay?  Why, mesmerism alone covers all sorts of odd
+and suspicious doings.  The case, for instance, of----  But that is
+beside the point.  The point is, that with half of Brassfield's skill,
+Amidon will win handsomely.  Some scenes ought not to be painted--in
+this plain and flippant prose.  Let us wait, therefore, until the
+arrival of the voices of Florian and Elizabeth at the pitch of ordinary
+conversation admonishes us that the prose writer's psychological moment
+has arrived.  Then we may take and transcribe some notes.
+
+"Of course," Florian said, "he must have had some redeeming
+traits--superficially, or you would never have cared for him----"
+
+"Oh, don't say such things!" she protested.  "Your real, real self came
+uppermost, I am sure, in your behavior to me.  You were perfectly
+lovely, even if you didn't understand me as I wanted you to do--as you
+do now."
+
+"Dearest!" he whispered.  "You never loved him as you do me, did you?"
+
+That little laugh that first charmed him filled the pause.
+
+"Don't say 'him!'" she commanded.  "Think of the original absurdity of
+being jealous of a rival, and that rival yourself!  And remember that
+'he' was my sweetheart, and for my own sake, don't abuse him.  Why, it
+was you all the time; and I always felt, even at the worst, that hidden
+in the Brassfield personality was the one man for me in all the world.
+It was this woman's instinct, that men never believe in, and the girl's
+eyesight.  I look at you, and I know you are the same.  Don't slander
+yourself as you appeared in your other mental clothes.  I won't have
+it--but don't change back, dear!"
+
+
+"But really," said Elizabeth, "is it necessary for us to live in
+Bellevale?"
+
+"Would you go away--with me?"
+
+There was a silence here, during which something seemed to take place
+which removed the necessity of answer; for surely, Elizabeth would not
+have allowed this question to go unanswered otherwise.
+
+"Oh," said she, "there are more places I want to go, and more things I
+want to see and study--you never would believe it!  It will take years
+and years."
+
+"Well, why not?" answered Florian.  "'Whether in Naishapur or Babylon',
+I want to go to every one of those places myself--and always have.  We
+won't build that house.  We'll have Blodgett stay and look after the
+closing up of the business here by Stevens.  We'll run out home so I
+can say hail and farewell to Jennie and greet my new nephews and nieces
+there, and then, ho! for Japan and India and the East, on our way to
+those high places where you want to erect your idolatrous altars.
+Elizabeth!  Do you realize what a Paradise we're planning?"
+
+"There!" she said quaveringly.  "I knew it was too perfect to be true,
+and that we'd find some obstacle, and I've found it!  That miserable
+office you'll have to fill!"
+
+Chillingly the wet blanket descended on their fervid joy, and they
+looked at each other in consternation.  This public call on Mr.
+Brassfield now became an incubus to Mr. Amidon, pinning him to earth as
+he essayed to rise and fly.  Gradually, as he looked fondly in his
+lady-love's face, the hope dawned in his heart that perhaps her desire
+that he should have a "career" might not be much greater than his.
+
+"Dear," said he at last, "would you feel very sorely disappointed if we
+were to give it up--the state and national capital life, and all that?"
+
+"I disappointed!" exclaimed she.  "Why, could you bring yourself to
+give them up?  I hate to say it--but--I just detest the whole thing!"
+
+"So do I!" said Amidon.
+
+They wondered in the next room what could have excited so much hilarity.
+
+"What a beginning!" said Elizabeth.  "To start out in our life with
+such a mutual deception!  But I wanted to have a part in your life,
+whatever it might be; and I could organize Primrose Leagues, and
+succeed in them, if it were necessary to help in any ambition of yours.
+So there!  Oh, it was silly to write in that way--but you really seemed
+at that time----"
+
+"I never did, my dear!  It was that Brassfield; and when I was caught
+and restored by Madame le Claire, I should have declined if it hadn't
+been for the--the Washington career, you know----"
+
+"Oh, please don't say any more----"
+
+"And I had Blodgett get up a letter of withdrawal----"
+
+"Do you suppose he has it yet?" she cried.
+
+"'Letter of withdrawal!'  It sounds so sort of parliamentary and
+correct and comforting!"
+
+"It does," agreed Amidon, "especially in view of the fact that I
+believe I'm beaten anyhow.  Judge Blodgett thinks I am, and Mr.
+Alvord----"
+
+"Poor Jim Alvord!" interposed Elizabeth.  "His wife says he would
+desert his family for you."
+
+"For Brassfield, she means," said Amidon.  "It is really not the same
+thing, dear.  But I was saying that even he half confesses defeat.
+I've made an awful mess of this thing, Elizabeth, on account of not
+really knowing anything of the people or their opinions or desires.
+Even that platform of ours couldn't pull us through.  No wisdom--and I
+haven't much--could keep a man from making blunders when he went out to
+do things for himself, knowing nothing of the situation except what he
+got from his inner consciousness, and from what he was told.  A
+political situation is too delicately balanced for that.  If I had done
+nothing, I should have remained undeservedly popular and reaped the
+reward of Brassfield's cunning and hypocrisy--don't stop me, please!
+But you and I tried to impose righteousness on the people from the
+outside and above.  It never comes in that way, but always from the
+inside and below, like lilies from the mud.  I'm really a most
+unpopular man, opposed by most of the 'good citizens' and all of the
+bad except a few who still believe me dishonest, and will desert me as
+soon as their fellows can convince them that I'm sincere--isn't it a
+pretty plot!  Facing defeat because of my advocacy of principles
+everybody concedes to be right, because I'm suspected of an actual
+intention to act according to my platform pledge; when that man
+Brassfield, who was preparing to carry out a policy of selfish
+spoliation, could have carried every precinct!"
+
+"It does me so much good," she said, "to see you in such a glow of
+indignation, that I allowed you to go on with that unjust condemnation
+of my Eugene.  Well, then, it seems my noble platform actually ruined
+you.  How nasty of the people!  Can't we elope--run away--and never
+come back, or look at a paper or think of it again?  Or shall we use
+Judge Blodgett's letter of withdrawal--bless him!"
+
+Something--perhaps it was the elopement proposal--induced eventualities
+which delayed the conversation again for some minutes.
+
+"Let's go out," said she, "and ask him to--to do whatever they do with
+letters of withdrawal--at once!"
+
+The room into which Amidon led the shy Elizabeth had been a
+clearing-house of confused ideas during their long tete-a-tete.  Madame
+le Claire had explained the mystery of dual personality as well as it
+can be explained, with some comment on the fact that such things happen
+to people occasionally, no one knows why.  Alvord and Judge Blodgett
+agreed that the candidate for mayor should be withdrawn.  Alvord even
+raised the question as to whether, the nomination papers being issued
+to Brassfield, Amidon could be legally elected.  Judge Blodgett said it
+raised the finest legal question he ever had encountered, and if
+carried up would be a case of first impression in the world's
+jurisprudence.  Alvord assented to this without argument.
+
+Then Le Claire told them of Amidon's life in his old home as she had
+learned of it, of his bewildered application to her in New York, and
+how he had been helped.  She was a long time telling it, and all the
+while she was thinking of the tender things happening in the next room.
+She heard the murmuring of their voices, as full of meaning as the
+flutings of mating birds.  And she faltered and stopped.
+
+"Papa, papa!" she cried, "help me out!  Tell them the rest."
+
+"You vill vonder, berhaps," said the professor, "at sairtain
+egsentricities of gonduct of our friendt, in his later Brassfield
+phace, in vitch he has shown de kvality of sportiness--or sportif--vat
+iss de vort?"
+
+"Sportiness," said Miss Scarlett, "is the word."
+
+"T'anks!" said the professor.  "Vell, de egsblanation is dus: te
+Brassfield state vas vun of gontinuous self-hypnotismus.  It iss
+apnormal.  Its shief garacteristic is suchestibility.  Now, if ve find
+dat te supchect hass been frown into de society of people of--vat you
+gall?--sporty tendencies, he vould gradually yield to te suchestion of
+dese tendencies.  He vould----"
+
+"I am glad I heard that," said Elizabeth.  "We must not allow you to
+return to this abnormal state!"
+
+"Mr. Cox," said Judge Blodgett, "do we need a detective to run this
+sporty influence down? or shall we look among the Christian Martyrs?"
+
+"It will relieve me," said Miss Scarlett, hugging Mr. Cox's arm, "if
+you won't look.  I'm afraid to be searched!"
+
+Elizabeth and Florian appeared in the archway.  Her eyes were shining
+with the soft radiance which, like the flush of dawn, comes only once
+in the day's journey, and never returns.  His sought her face in a
+worship that she would never have seen had Eugene Brassfield looked out
+from them.
+
+"I am taking Miss Waldron home," said Mr. Amidon.  "Matters have just
+taken such a turn that I shall leave soon for my former home in
+Wisconsin, where I have large interests, and I may not be able to
+return.  Such being the case, we do not feel that it would be just to
+the people of this city to continue in the position of a candidate for
+public office, and--pshaw! why not be honest?  We're beaten, and we
+don't want the office, anyhow.  Judge, have you that letter of
+withdrawal convenient?"
+
+[Illustration: "I am taking Miss Waldron home," said Mr. Amidon.]
+
+"I have," said the judge.  "I figured all the time that you'd need it."
+
+"Thanks!" said Amidon.  "Take it, Mr. Alvord, and give it to the world
+at large.  You understand, do you not, the peculiar change of
+personality which makes it improper----?"
+
+"Sure," said Alvord.  "The man who put out that platform of ours can't
+afford to be caught short-changing the public by switching candidates
+on them on the eve of election.  And right here let me say, that be it
+Amidon or Brassfield, the ties of brotherhood still hold with Jim
+Alvord, in F. D. and B., and I hate to use this letter.  I believe
+still we could pull through, with proper management from now on, and,
+confound it!  I'd rather be licked with you than to win with any other
+man on earth!"
+
+"In all phases of my life," said Amidon, grasping the little man's hand
+warmly, "I'm going to take the liberty of holding you as my friend.  I
+know faithfulness and unselfishness when I see it, no matter if I don't
+quite fall in with its methods."
+
+Alvord's eyes filled, as his emotions rose with the parting.  Yet he
+could not allow his methods to be questioned even by implication.
+
+"Well, now, as to methods," he began, "theoretically you may be right
+about publicity and that platform, but practically--well, let's forget
+it!  But, 'Gene--or whatever your damned name is!--don't forget me!
+Good-by!"
+
+The judge, the professor, Miss Scarlett, and all the rest had gone on
+their various ways, and Madame le Claire was in one of the inner rooms
+attended by Aaron, whom she had summoned.
+
+"I'm not going to adopt poor Jim's language yet," said Elizabeth, when
+she and Florian were again left alone.  "'Florian, Florian!'--I like
+that name.  But think how hard it was to learn to call you 'Eugene.'
+Do you remember where we were when I first called you that?"
+
+"Don't you realize, dearie," said he, "that I know nothing of all that?
+And except for your sweet letter, I knew nothing of you before that day
+when I came from New York?"
+
+"O----h!" she cried.  "And all the lovely things you did to win me----
+Oh, dear, I never thought of that.  And you remember nothing--nothing
+at all?  Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful!  No wonder I almost hated you
+that night!"
+
+He put his arm about her and kissed her lingeringly.
+
+"Dearest!  Sweetheart!" he said.  "The loss is all mine!  And to make
+up for it, you must let me do them all over again--every one, a
+thousand times.  Come, let us go!"
+
+At the door, she stopped and turned back.
+
+"I must see Madame le Claire," said she.
+
+Already the rooms were filled with the disorder of packing, and Aaron
+was busy preparing for one of their Arab-like flittings.  Madame le
+Claire stood looking down into the street.
+
+"Are you leaving Bellevale?" said Miss Waldron.
+
+"On the next train," answered the hypnotist.  "Our tour has been a long
+time delayed."
+
+"I hope," said Elizabeth, "that we shall see you again some time."
+
+"It is quite probable," said Clara.  "We are wanderers, and public
+characters.  Almost everybody sees us from time to time--if they
+desire."
+
+"I'm not going to leave you this way," said Elizabeth, with hurried
+obscurity of expression.  "You have done for me more--much
+more--than--than I can say; but you know, you know!"
+
+"I know you would do as much for me!"
+
+"No, no!" exclaimed Elizabeth.  "I never would.  I'm not good enough.
+I'm going away now, to be very, very happy, and I want you to see--to
+know--how I feel toward you--oh, oh, I can't say what I mean!  But some
+time, when you get settled down from the agitations we've had, after a
+long time, write and tell me that you're happy, won't you?"
+
+She had put her arm around the slender waist, and faced Madame le
+Claire, gazing at her intently.  Le Claire kissed her forehead, and
+looked long, with the varicolored eyes, into those of Elizabeth.  She
+seemed to speak in that way, as an easier mode of communication at this
+time than by the words which would not come in any adequate form.  So
+the two girls stood as Professor Blatherwick came in and noticed the
+labors of Aaron.
+
+"Packing, Clara?" said he.  "Vell, vere shall ve vork te hypot'esis ant
+te bublic next?  I shall pe glad vunce more to hit te pike.  Dis gase,
+vile supliminally great stuff, is pretty vell vorked out: not?"
+
+"Quite worked out," said Clara, "to the end; indeed, indeed, it is
+completely worked out!"
+
+Elizabeth's arm tightened about her waist, and Elizabeth's breath was
+caught in a quick little sigh.  Madame le Claire replied to these
+inarticulate expressions of sympathy as if they had been words.
+
+"Don't think that!" said she, looking Elizabeth again steadily in the
+face.  "Don't let that haunt your mind in this new life of yours; for
+it will not be so.  Let us be friends though we never meet.  Yes, I
+will write to you; but it will not be necessary.  Whenever you think of
+me, this is what you will think, because I command it: 'She is busy
+with her wandering life.  New things are dimming the memory of me--and
+mine.  She has found the love her soul covets.  She is happy!'"
+
+
+
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