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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Flamsted quarries, by Mary E. Waller
+
+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: Flamsted quarries
+
+Author: Mary E. Waller
+
+Illustrator: G. Patrick Nelson
+
+Release Date: November 30, 2007 [EBook #23664]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLAMSTED QUARRIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          Flamsted Quarries
+
+                          BY MARY E. WALLER
+
+Author of "The Wood Carver of Lympus," "The Daughter of the Rich," "The
+Little Citizen," etc.
+
+
+
+
+WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
+BY G. PATRICK NELSON
+
+A. L. BURT COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
+
+_Copyright, 1910_,
+BY MARY E. WALLER
+Published September, 1910
+
+Reprinted, September, 1910; November, 1910; December, 1910
+
+
+
+
+TO THOSE WHO TOIL
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause"]
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+THE BATTERY IN LIEU OF A PREFACE
+
+PART FIRST, A CHILD FROM THE VAUDEVILLE
+
+PART SECOND, HOME SOIL
+
+PART THIRD, IN THE STREAM
+
+PART FOURTH, OBLIVION
+
+PART FIFTH, SHED NUMBER TWO
+
+THE LAST WORD
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations
+
+
+"She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause"
+
+"Those present loved in after years to recall this scene"
+
+"What a picture she made leaning caressingly against the charmed and
+patient Bess"
+
+"'Unworthy--unworthy!' was Champney Googe's cry, as he knelt before
+Aileen"
+
+
+
+
+FLAMSTED QUARRIES
+
+
+
+
+                       "_Abysmal deeps repose
+    Beneath the stout ship's keel whereon we glide;
+    And if a diver plunge far down within
+    Those depths and to the surface safe return,
+    His smile, if so it chance he smile again,
+    Outweighs in worth all gold._"
+
+
+
+
+The Battery in Lieu of a Preface
+
+
+A few years ago, at the very tip of that narrow rocky strip of land that
+has been well named "the Tongue that laps the Commerce of the World,"
+the million-teeming Island of Manhattan, there was daily presented a
+scene in the life-drama of our land that held in itself, as in solution,
+a great national ideal. The old heroic "Epic of the Nations" was still
+visible to the naked eye, and masquerading here among us of the then
+nineteenth century in the guise of the arrival of the immigrant ship.
+
+The scenic setting is in this instance incomparably fine. As we lean on
+the coping of the sea wall at the end of the green-swarded Battery, in
+the flush of a May sunset that, on the right, throws the Highlands of
+the Navesink into dark purple relief and lights the waters of Harbor,
+River, and Sound into a softly swelling roseate flood, we may fix our
+eyes on the approach to The Narrows and watch the incoming shipping of
+the world: the fruit-laden steamer from the Bermudas, the black East
+Indiaman heavy with teakwood and spices, the lumberman's barge awash
+behind the tow, the old three-masted schooner, low in the water, her
+decks loaded with granite from the far-away quarries of Maine. We may
+see, if we linger, the swift approach of a curiously foreshortened
+ocean steamship, her smokestack belching blackness, and the slower
+on-coming of a Norwegian bark, her sails catching the sunset light and
+gleaming opaline against the clear blue of the southern horizon. These
+last are the immigrant ships.
+
+An hour later in old Castle Garden the North and South of Europe clasp
+hands on the very threshold of America. Four thousand feet are planted
+on the soil of the New World. Four thousand hands are knocking at its
+portals. Two thousand hearts are beating high with hope at prospect of
+the New, or palpitating with terror at contact with the Strange.
+
+A thousand tragedies, a thousand comedies are here enacted before our
+very eyes: hopes, fears, tears, laughter, shrieks, groans, wailings,
+exultant cries, welcoming words, silent all-expressing hand-clasp,
+embrace, despairing wide-eyed search, hopeless isolation, the
+befriended, the friendless, the home-welcomed, the homeless--all
+commingled.
+
+But an official routine soon sorts, separates, pairs, locates; speaks in
+Norwegian, speaks in Neapolitan. An hour passes; the dusk falls; the
+doors are opened; the two thousand, ticketed, labelled, are to enter
+upon the new life. The confusing chatter grows less and less. A child
+wails, and is hushed in soft Italian--a Neapolitan lullaby--by its
+mother as she sits on a convenient bench and for the first time gives
+her little one the breast in a strange land. An old Norwegian, perhaps a
+lineal descendant of our Viking visitors some thousand years ago, makes
+his way to the door, bent beneath a sack-load of bedding; his right hand
+holds his old wife's left. They are the last to leave.
+
+The dusk has fallen. To the sea wall again for air after the thousands
+of garlic-reeking breaths in old Castle Garden. The sea is dark. The
+heavens are deep indigo; against them flashes the Liberty beacon; within
+them are set the Eternal Lights. Upon the waters of the harbor the
+illumined cabin windows of a multitude of river craft throw quivering
+rays along the slow glassy swell.
+
+For a moment on River, and Harbor, and Sound, there is silence. But
+behind us we hear the subdued roar and beat of the metropolis, a sound
+comparable to naught else on earth or in heaven: the mighty systole and
+dyastole of a city's heart, and the tramp, tramp of a million homeward
+bound toilers--the marching tune of Civilization's hosts, to which the
+feet of the newly arrived immigrants are already keeping time, for they
+have crossed the threshold of old Castle Garden and entered the New
+World.
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST
+
+A Child from the Vaudeville
+
+
+I
+
+The performance in itself was crude and commonplace, but the
+demonstration in regard to it was unusual. Although this scene had been
+enacted both afternoon and evening for the past six weeks, the audience
+at the Vaudeville was showing its appreciation by an intent silence.
+
+The curtain had risen upon a street scene in the metropolis at night.
+Snow was falling, dimming the gas jets at the corner and half-veiling,
+half-disclosing the imposing entrance-porch of a marble church. The
+doors were closed; the edifice dark. As the eyes of the onlookers became
+accustomed to the half-lights, they were aware of a huddle of clothes
+against the iron railing that outlined the curve of the three broad
+entrance-steps. As vision grew keener the form of a child was
+discernible, a little match girl who was lighting one by one a few
+matches and shielding the flame with both hands from the draught.
+Suddenly she looked up and around. The rose window above the porch was
+softly illumined; the light it emitted transfused the thickly falling
+snow. Low organ tones became audible, although distant and muffled.
+
+The child rose; came down the centre of the stage to the lowered
+footlights and looked about her, first at the orchestra, then around
+and up at the darkened house that was looking intently at her--a small
+ill-clad human, a spiritual entity, the only reality in this artificial
+setting. She grasped her package of matches in both hands; listened a
+moment as if to catch the low organ tones, then began to sing.
+
+She sang as a bird sings, every part of her in motion: throat, eyes,
+head, body. The voice was clear, loud, full, strident, at times, on the
+higher notes from over-exertion, but always childishly appealing. The
+gallery leaned to catch every word of "The Holy City."
+
+She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause. There was no
+modulation, no phrasing, no interpretation; it was merely a steady
+fortissimo outpouring of a remarkable volume of tone for so small an
+instrument. And the full power of it was, to all appearance, sent
+upwards with intent to the gallery. In any case, the gallery took the
+song unto itself, and as the last words, "_Hosanna for evermore_" rang
+upward, there was audible from above a long-drawn universal "Ah!" of
+satisfaction.
+
+It was followed by a half minute of silence that was expressive of
+latent enthusiasm. The child was still waiting at the footlights,
+evidently for the expected applause from the higher latitudes. And the
+gallery responded--how heartily, those who were present have never
+forgotten: roar upon roar, call upon call, round after round of
+applause, cries of approbation couched in choice Bowery slang, a genuine
+stampede that shook the spectators in their seats. It was an
+irresistible, insatiable, unappeasable, overwhelming clamor for more.
+The infection of enthusiasm was communicated to floors, balconies,
+boxes; they answered, as it were, antiphonally. Faces were seen peeking
+from the wings; hands were visible there, clapping frantically. In the
+midst of the tumultuous uproar the little girl smiled brightly and ran
+off the stage.
+
+The lights were turned on. A drop-scene fell; the stage was transformed,
+for, in the middle distance, swelling green hills rose against a soft
+blue sky seen between trees in the foreground. Sunshine lay on the
+landscape, enhancing the haze in the distance and throwing up the hills
+more prominently against it. The cries and uproar continued.
+
+Meanwhile, in the common dressing-room beyond the wings, there was being
+enacted a scene which if slightly less tumultuous in expression was
+considerably more dangerous in quality. A quick word went the round of
+the stars' private rooms; it penetrated to the sanctum of the Japanese
+wrestlers; it came to the ear of the manager himself: "The Little
+Patti's struck!" It sounded ominous, and, thereupon, the Vaudeville
+flocked to the dressing-room door to see--what? Merely a child in a
+tantrum, a heap of rags on the floor, a little girl in white petticoats
+stamping, dancing, pulling away from an old Italian woman who was trying
+to robe her and exhorting, imploring, threatening the child in almost
+one and the same breath.
+
+The manager rushed to the rescue for the house was losing its head. He
+seized the child by the arm. "What's the matter here, Aileen?"
+
+"I ain't goin' ter dance a coon ter-night--not ter-night!" she cried
+defiantly and in intense excitement; "he's in the box again, an' I'm
+goin' to give him the Sunday-night song, like as I did before when he
+give me the flowers, so now!"
+
+Nonna Lisa, the old Italian, slipped the white dress deftly over the
+mutinous head, so muffling the half-shriek. The manager laughed. "Hurry
+up then--on with you!" The child sprang away with a bound. "I've seen
+this too many times before," he added; "it's an attack of 'the last
+night's nerves.'--Hark!"
+
+The tumult was drowning the last notes of the orchestral intermezzo, as
+the little girl, clad now wholly in white, ran in upon the stage and
+coming again down the centre raised her hand as if to command silence.
+With the gallery to see was to obey; the floor and balconies having
+subsided the applause from above died away.
+
+The child, standing in the full glare of the footlights with the sunny
+skyey spaces and overlapping blue hills behind her, half-faced the
+brilliant house as, without accompaniment, she began to sing:
+
+    "There is a green hill far away
+      Without a city wall."
+
+The childish voice sustained the simple melody perfectly, and it was
+evident when the little girl began the second verse that she was singing
+wholly to please herself and some one in a proscenium box. Before the
+close of the first stanza the gallery experienced a turn, the audience
+as a whole a sensation. Night after night the gallery gods had made it a
+point to be present at that hour of the continuous performance when the
+Little Patti--such was the name on the poster--sang either her famous
+Irish song "Oh, the praties they are small", or "The Holy City", and
+followed them by a coon dance the like of which was not to be seen
+elsewhere in New York; for into it the child threw such an abandonment
+of enthusiasm that she carried herself and her audience to the verge of
+extravagance--the one in action, the other in expression.
+
+And now this!
+
+A woman sobbed outright at the close of the second verse. The gallery
+heard--it hated hysterics--and considered whether it should look upon
+itself as cheated and protest, or submit quietly to being coerced into
+approval. The scales had not yet turned, when someone far aloft drew a
+long breath in order to force it out between closed teeth, and this in
+sign of disapproval. That one breath was, in truth, indrawn, but whether
+or no there was ever an outlet for the same remained a question with the
+audience. A woollen cap was deftly and unexpectedly thrust between the
+malevolent lips and several pair of hands held it there until the little
+singer left the stage.
+
+What appeal, if any, that childish voice, dwelling melodiously on the
+simple words, made to the audience as a whole, cannot be stated because
+unknown; but that it appealed powerfully by force of suggestion, by the
+power of imagination, by the law of association, by the startling
+contrast between the sentiment expressed and the environment of that
+expression, to three, at least, among the many present is a certainty.
+
+There is such a thing in our national life--a constant process, although
+often unrecognized--as social anastomosis: the intercommunication by
+branch of every vein and veinlet of the politico-social body, and
+thereby the coming into touch of lives apparently alien. As a result we
+have a revelation of new experiences; we find ourselves in subjection to
+new influences of before unknown personalities; we perceive the
+opening-up of new channels of communication between individual and
+individual as such. We comprehend that through it a great moral law is
+brought into operation both in the individual and the national life. And
+in recognition of this natural, though oft hidden process, the fact that
+to three men in that audience--men whose life-lines, to all appearance,
+were divergent, whose aims and purposes were antipodal--the simple song
+made powerful appeal, and by means of that appeal they came in after
+life to comprehend something of the workings of this great natural law,
+need cause no wonderment, no cavilling at the so-called prerogative of
+fiction. The laws of Art are the laws of Life, read smaller on the
+obverse.
+
+The child was singing the last stanza in so profound a silence that the
+fine snapping of an over-charged electric wire was distinctly heard:
+
+    "Oh, dearly, dearly has he loved
+      And we must love him too,
+    And trust in his redeeming blood,
+      And try his works to do."
+
+The little girl waited at the footlights for--something. She had done
+her best for an encore and the silence troubled her. She looked
+inquiringly towards the box. There was a movement of the curtains at the
+back; a messenger boy came in with flowers; a gentleman leaned over the
+railing and motioned to the child. She ran forward, holding up the skirt
+of her dress to catch the roses that were dropped into it. She smiled
+and said something. The tension in the audience gave a little; there was
+a low murmur of approval which increased to a buzz of conversation; the
+conductor raised his baton and the child with a courtesy ran off the
+stage. But there was no applause.
+
+During the musical intermezzo that followed, the lower proscenium box
+was vacated and in the first balcony one among a crowd of students rose
+and made his way up the aisle.
+
+"Lien's keller, Champ?" said a friend at the exit, putting a hand on his
+shoulder; "I'm with you."
+
+"Not to-night." He shook off the detaining hand and kept on his way. The
+other stared after him, whistled low to himself and went down the aisle
+to the vacant seat.
+
+At the main entrance of the theatre there was an incoming crowd. It was
+not late, only nine. The drawing-card at this hour was a famous Parisian
+singer of an Elysée _café chantant_. The young fellow stepped aside,
+beyond the ticket-office railing, to let the first force of the
+inrushing human stream exhaust itself before attempting egress for
+himself. In doing so he jostled rather roughly two men who were
+evidently of like mind with him in their desire to avoid the press. He
+lifted his hat in apology, and recognized one of them as the occupant of
+the proscenium box, the gentleman who had given the roses to the little
+singer. The other, although in citizen's dress, he saw by the tonsure
+was a priest.
+
+The sight of such a one in that garb and that environment, diverted for
+the moment Champney Googe's thoughts from the child and her song. He
+scanned the erect figure of the man who, after immediate and courteous
+recognition of the other's apology, became oblivious, apparently, of his
+presence and intent upon the passing throng.
+
+The crowd thinned gradually; the priest passed out under the arch of
+colored electric lights; the gentleman of the box, observing the look on
+the student's face, smiled worldly-wisely to himself as he, too, went
+down the crimson-carpeted incline. Champney Googe's still beardless lip
+had curled slightly as if his thought were a sneer.
+
+
+II
+
+The priest, after leaving the theatre, walked rapidly down Broadway past
+the marble church, that had been shown on the stage, and still straight
+on for two miles at the same rapid gait, past the quiet churchyards of
+St. Paul's and Trinity into the comparative silence of Battery Park and
+across to the sea wall. There he leaned for half an hour, reliving in
+memory not only the years since his seven-year old feet had crossed this
+threshold of the New World, but recalling something of his still earlier
+childhood in his native France. The child's song had been an excitant to
+the memory in recalling those first years in Auvergne.
+
+    "There is a green hill far away
+      Without a city wall."
+
+How clearly he saw that! and his peasant father and mother as laborers
+on or about it, and himself, a six-year old, tending the goats on that
+same green hill or minding the geese in the meadows at its foot.
+
+All this he saw as he gazed blankly at the dark waters of the bay, saw
+clearly as if visioned in crystal. But of subsequent movings and
+wanderings there was a blurred reflection only, till the vision
+momentarily brightened, the outlines defined themselves again as he saw
+his tired drowsy self put to bed in a tiny room that was filled with the
+fragrance of newly baked bread. He remembered the awakening in that
+small room over a bread-filled shop; it belonged to a distant
+great-uncle baker on the mother's side, a personage in the family
+because in trade. He could remember the time spent in that same shop and
+the brick-walled, brick-floored, brick-ovened room behind it. He
+recalled having stood for hours, it might have been days, he could not
+remember--for then Time was forever and its passing of no moment--before
+the deep ovens with a tiny blue-eyed slip of a girl. _P'tite Truite_,
+Little Trout, they called her, the great-uncle baker's one grandchild.
+
+And the shop--he remembered that, so light and bright and sweet and
+clean, with people coming and going--men and women and children--and the
+crisp yard-long loaves carried away in shallow baskets on many a fine
+Norman head in the old seaport of Dieppe. And always the Little Trout
+was by his side, even when the great-uncle placed him in one of the huge
+flat-bottomed bread baskets and drew the two up and down in front of the
+shop. Then all was dim again; so dim that except for the lap and
+backward sucking of the waters against the sea wall, whereon he leaned,
+he had scarcely recalled a ship at the old pier of Dieppe, and the
+Little Trout standing beside her grandfather on the stringer,
+frantically waving her hand as the ship left her moorings and the prow
+nosed the first heavy channel sea that washed against the bulkhead and
+half-drowned her wailing cry:
+
+"Jean--mon Jean!"
+
+The rest was a blank until he landed here almost on this very spot in
+old Castle Garden and, holding hard by his father's hand, was bidden to
+look up at the flag flying from the pole at the top of the queer round
+building--a brave sight even for his young eyes: all the red and white
+and blue straining in the freshening wind with an energy of motion that
+made the boy dance in sympathetic joy at his father's side--
+
+And what next?
+
+Again a confusion of journeyings, and afterwards quiet settlement in a
+red brick box of a house in a mill town on the Merrimac. He could still
+hear the clang of the mill-gates, the ringing of the bells, the hum and
+whir and roar of a hundred thousand spindles, the clacking crash of the
+ponderous shifting frames. He could still see with the inner eye the
+hundreds of windows blazing in the reflected fires of the western sun,
+or twinkling with numberless lights that cast their long reflections on
+the black waters of the canal. There on the bank, at the entrance to the
+footbridge, the boy was wont to take his stand regularly at six o'clock
+of a winter's day, and wait for the hoisting of the mill-gates and the
+coming of his father and mother with the throng of toilers.
+
+So he saw himself--himself as an identity emerging at last from the
+confusion of time and place and circumstance; for there followed the
+public school, the joys of rivalry, the eager outrush for the boy's Ever
+New, the glory of scrimmage and school-boy sports, the battle royal for
+the little Auvergnat when taunted with the epithet "Johnny Frog" by the
+belligerent youth, American born, and the victorious outcome for the
+"foreigner"; the Auvergne blood was up, and the temperament volcanic
+like his native soil where subterranean heats evidence themselves in
+hot, out-welling waters. And afterwards, at home, there were
+congratulations and comfortings, plus applications of vinegar and brown
+butcher's paper to the severely smitten nose of this champion of his new
+Americanhood. But at school and in the street, henceforth there was due
+respect and a general atmosphere of "let bygones be bygones."
+
+Ah, but the pride of his mother in her boy's progress! the joy over the
+first English-French letter that went to the great-uncle baker; the
+constant toil of both parents that the savings might be sufficient to
+educate their one child--that the son might have what the parents
+lacked. Already the mother had begun to speak of the priesthood: she
+might yet see her son Jean a priest, a bishop, and archbishop. Who could
+tell? America is America, and opportunities infinite--a cardinal,
+perhaps, and the gift of a red hat from the Pope, and robes and laces!
+There was no end to her ambitious dreaming.
+
+But across the day-dreams fell the shadow of hard times: the shutting
+down of the mills, the father's desperate illness in a workless winter,
+his death in the early spring, followed shortly by that of the worn-out
+and ill-nourished mother--and for the twelve-year-old boy the
+abomination of desolation, and world and life seen dimly through tears.
+Dim, too, from the like cause, that strange passage across the ocean to
+Dieppe--his mother's uncle having sent for him to return--a weight as of
+lead in his stomach, a fiery throbbing in his young heart, a sickening
+craving for some expression of human love. The boyish tendrils, although
+touched in truth by spring frosts, were outreaching still for some
+object upon which to fasten; yet he shrank from human touch and sympathy
+on that voyage in the steerage lest in his grief and loneliness he
+scream aloud.
+
+Dieppe again, and the Little Trout with her grandfather awaiting him on
+the pier; the Little Trout's arms about his neck in loving welcome, the
+boy's heart full to bursting and his eyelids reddened in his supreme
+effort to keep back tears. Dependent, an orphan, and destined for the
+priesthood--those were his life lines for the next ten years. And the
+end? Revolt, rebellion, partial crime, acquittal under the law, but
+condemnation before the tribunal of his conscience and his God.
+
+There followed the longing to expiate, to expiate in that America where
+he was not known but where he belonged, where his parents' dust mingled
+with the soil; to flee to the Church as to a sanctuary of refuge, to be
+priest through expiation. And this he had been for years while working
+among the Canadian rivermen, among the lumbermen of Maine, sharing their
+lives, their toil, their joys and sorrows, the common inheritance of the
+Human. For years subsequent to his Canadian mission, and after his
+naturalization as an American citizen, he worked in town and city, among
+high and low, rich and poor, recognizing in his catholicity of outlook
+but one human plane: that which may be tested by the spirit level of
+human needs. Now, at last, he was priest by conviction, by inner
+consecration.
+
+He stood erect; drew a long full breath; squared his shoulders and
+looked around him. He noticed for the first time that a Staten Island
+ferryboat had moved into the slip near him; that several passengers were
+lingering to look at him; that a policeman was pacing behind him, his
+eye alert--and he smiled to himself, for he read their thought. He could
+not blame them for looking. He had fancied himself alone with the sea
+and the night and his thoughts; had lost himself to his present
+surroundings in the memory of those years; he had suffered again the old
+agony of passion, shame, guilt, while the events of that pregnant,
+preparatory period in France, etched deep with acid burnings into his
+inmost consciousness, were passing during that half hour in review
+before his inner vision. Small wonder he was attracting attention!
+
+He bared his head. A new moon was sinking to the Highlands of the
+Navesink. The May night was mild, the sea breeze drawing in with gentle
+vigor. He looked northwards up the Hudson, and southwards to the Liberty
+beacon, and eastwards to the Sound. "God bless our Land" he murmured;
+then, covering his head, bowed courteously to the policeman and took his
+way across the Park to the up-town elevated station.
+
+Yes, at last he dared assert it: he was priest by consecration; soul,
+heart, mind, body dedicate to the service of God through Humanity. That
+service led him always in human ways. A few nights ago he saw the
+poster: "The Little Patti". A child then? Thought bridged the abyss of
+ocean to the Little Trout. Some rescue work for him here, possibly;
+hence his presence in the theatre.
+
+
+III
+
+That the priest's effort to rescue the child from the artificial life of
+the stage had been in a measure successful, was confirmed by the
+presence, six months later, of the little girl in the yard of the Orphan
+Asylum on ----nd Street.
+
+On an exceptionally dreary afternoon in November, had any one cared to
+look over the high board fence that bounds three sides of the Asylum
+yard, he might have seen an amazing sight and heard a still more amazing
+chorus:
+
+    "Little Sally Waters
+    Sitting in the sun,
+    Weeping and crying for a young man;
+    Rise, Sally, rise, Sally,
+    Wipe away your tears, Sally;
+    Turn to the east
+    And turn to the west,
+    And turn to the one that you love best!"
+
+Higher and higher the voices of the three hundred orphans shrilled in
+unison as the owners thereof danced frantically around a small solitary
+figure in the middle of the ring of girls assembled in the yard on
+----nd Street. Her coarse blue denim apron was thrown over her head; her
+face was bowed into her hands that rested on her knees. It was a picture
+of woe.
+
+The last few words "you love best" rose to a shriek of exhortation. In
+the expectant silence that followed, "Sally" rose, pirouetted in a
+fashion worthy of a ballet dancer, then, with head down, fists clenched,
+arms tight at her sides, she made a sudden dash to break through the
+encircling wall of girls. She succeeded in making a breach by knocking
+the legs of three of the tallest out from under them; but two or more
+dozen arms, octopus-like, caught and held her. For a few minutes chaos
+reigned: legs, arms, hands, fingers, aprons, heads, stockings, hair,
+shoes of three hundred orphans were seemingly inextricably entangled. A
+bell clanged. The three hundred disentangled themselves with marvellous
+rapidity and, settling aprons, smoothing hair, pulling up stockings and
+down petticoats, they formed in a long double line. While waiting for
+the bell to ring the second warning, they stamped their feet, blew upon
+their cold fingers, and freely exercised their tongues.
+
+"Yer dassn't try that again!" said the mate in line with the
+obstreperous "Sally" who had so scorned the invitation of the hundreds
+of girls to "turn to the one that she loved best".
+
+"I dass ter!" was the defiant reply accompanied by the protrusion of a
+long thin tongue.
+
+"Yer dassn't either!"
+
+"I dass t'either!"
+
+"Git out!" The first speaker nudged the other's ribs with her sharp
+elbow.
+
+"Slap yer face for two cents!" shrieked the insulted "Sally", the Little
+Patti of the Vaudeville, and proceeded to carry out her threat.
+Whereupon Freckles, as she was known in the Asylum, set up a howl that
+was heard all along the line and turned upon her antagonist tooth and
+nail. At that moment the bell clanged a second time. A hush fell upon
+the multitude, broken only by a suppressed shriek that came from the
+vicinity of Freckles. A snicker ran down the line. The penalty for
+breaking silence after the second bell was "no supper", and not one of
+the three hundred cared to incur that--least of all Flibbertigibbet, the
+"Sally" of the game, who had forfeited her dinner, because she had been
+caught squabbling at morning prayers, and was now carrying about with
+her an empty stomach that was at bottom of her ugly mood.
+
+"One, two--one, two." The monitor counted; the girls fell into step, all
+but Flibbertigibbet--the Asylum nickname for the "Little Patti"--who
+contrived to keep out just enough to tread solidly with hobnailed shoe
+on the toes of the long-suffering Freckles. It was unbearable,
+especially the last time when a heel was set squarely upon Freckles'
+latest bunion.
+
+"Ou, ou--oh, au--wau!" Freckles moaned, limping.
+
+"Number 207 report for disorder," said the monitor.
+
+Flibbertigibbet giggled. Number 207 stepped out of the line and burst
+into uncontrollable sobbing; for she was hungry, oh, so hungry! And the
+matron had chalked on the blackboard "hot corn-cakes and molasses for
+Friday". It was the one great treat of the week. The girl behind
+Flibbertigibbet hissed in her ear:
+
+"Yer jest pizen mean; dirt ain't in it."
+
+A back kick worthy of a pack mule took effect upon the whisperer's shin.
+Flibbertigibbet moved on unmolested, underwent inspection at the
+entrance, and passed with the rest into the long basement room which was
+used for meals.
+
+Freckles stood sniffing disconsolately by the door as the girls filed
+in. She was meditating revenge, and advanced a foot in hope that,
+unseen, she might trip her tormentor as she passed her. What, then, was
+her amazement to see Flibbertigibbet shuffle along deliberately a little
+sideways in order to strike the extended foot! This man[oe]uvre she
+accomplished successfully and fell, not forward, but sideways out of
+line and upon Freckles. Freckles pushed her off with a vengeance, but
+not before she heard a gleeful whisper in her ear:
+
+"Dry up--watch out--I'll save yer some!"
+
+That was all; but to Freckles it was a revelation. The children filed
+between the long rows of wooden benches, that served for seats, and the
+tables. They remained standing until the sister in charge gave the
+signal to be seated. When the three hundred sat down as one, with a thud
+of something more than fifteen tons' weight, there broke loose a Babel
+of tongues--English as it is spoken in the mouths of children of many
+nationalities.
+
+It was then that Freckles began to "watch out."
+
+Flibbertigibbet sat rigid on the bench, her eyes turned neither to right
+nor left but staring straight at the pile of smoking corn-meal cakes
+trickling molasses on her tin plate. She was counting: "One, two, three,
+four, five," and the prospect of more; for on treat nights, which
+occurred once a week, there was no stinting with corn-meal cakes, hulled
+corn, apple sauce with fried bread or whatever else might be provided
+for the three hundred orphans at the Asylum on ----nd Street, in the
+great city of New York.
+
+Freckles grew nervous as she watched. What _was_ Flibbertigibbet doing?
+Her fingers were busy untying the piece of red mohair tape with which
+her heavy braid was fastened in a neat loop. She put it around her
+apron, tying it fast; then, blousing the blue denim in front to a pouch
+like a fashion-plate shirt waist, she said in an undertone to her
+neighbor on the right:
+
+"Gee--look! Ain't I got the style?"
+
+"I ain't a-goin' ter look at yer, yer so pizen mean--dirt ain't in it,"
+said 206 contemptuously, and sat sideways at such an angle that she
+could eat her cakes without seeing the eyesore next her.
+
+"Stop crowdin'!" was the next command from the bloused bit of "style" to
+her neighbor on the left. Her sharp elbow emphasized her words and was
+followed by a solid thigh-to-thigh pressure that was felt for the length
+of at least five girls down the bench. The neighbor on the left found
+she could not withstand the continued pressure. She raised her hand.
+
+"What is the trouble with 205?" The voice from the head of the table was
+one of controlled impatience.
+
+"Please 'um--"; but she spoke no further word, for the pressure was
+removed so suddenly that she lost her balance and careened with such
+force towards her torment of a neighbor that the latter was fain to put
+her both arms about her to hold her up. This she did so effectually that
+205 actually gasped for breath.
+
+"I'll pinch yer black an' blue if yer tell!" whispered Flibbertigibbet,
+relaxing her hold and in turn raising her hand.
+
+"What's wanting now, 208?"
+
+"A second helpin', please 'um."
+
+The tin round was passed up to the nickel-plated receptacle, that
+resembled a small bathtub with a cover, and piled anew. Flibbertigibbet
+viewed its return with satisfaction, and Freckles, who had been watching
+every move of this by-play, suddenly doubled up from her plastered
+position against the wall. She saw Flibbertigibbet drop the cakes quick
+as a flash into the low neck of her apron, and at that very minute they
+were reposing in the paunch of the blouse and held there by the mohair
+girdle. Thereafter a truce was proclaimed in the immediate vicinity of
+208. Her neighbors, right and left, their backs twisted towards the
+tease, ate their portions in fear and trembling. After a while 208's
+hand went up again. This time it waved mechanically back and forth as if
+the owner were pumping bucketfuls of water.
+
+"What is it now, 208?" The voice at the head of the table put the
+question with a note of exasperation in it.
+
+"Please 'um, another helpin'."
+
+The sister's lips set themselves close. "Pass up 208's plate," she said.
+The empty plate, licked clean of molasses on the sly, went up the line
+and returned laden with three "bloomin' beauties" as 208 murmured
+serenely to herself. She ate one with keen relish, then eyed the
+remaining two askance and critically. Freckles grew anxious. What next?
+Contrary to all rules 208's head, after slowly drooping little by
+little, lower and lower, dropped finally with a dull thud on the edge of
+the table and a force that tipped the plate towards her. Freckles
+doubled up again; she had seen through the man[oe]uvre: the three
+remaining cakes slid gently into the open half--low apron neck and were
+safely lodged with the other four.
+
+"Number 208 sit up properly or leave the table."
+
+The sister spoke peremptorily, for this special One Three-hundredth was
+her daily, almost hourly, thorn in the flesh. The table stopped eating
+to listen. There was a low moan for answer, but the head was not
+lifted. Number 206 took this opportunity to give her a dig in the ribs,
+and Number 205 crowded her in turn. To their amazement there was no
+response.
+
+"Number 208 answer at once."
+
+"Oh, please, 'um, I've got an awful pain--oo--au--." The sound was low
+but piercing.
+
+"You may leave the table, 208, and go up to the dormitory."
+
+208 rose with apparent effort. Her hands were clasped over the region
+where hot corn-meal cakes are said to lie heavily at times. Her face was
+screwed into an expression indicative of excruciating inner torment. As
+she made her way, moaning softly, to the farther door that opened into
+the cheerless corridor, there was audible a suppressed but decided
+giggle. It proceeded from Freckles. The monitor warned her, but,
+unheeding, the little girl giggled again.
+
+A ripple of laughter started down the three tables, but was quickly
+suppressed.
+
+"Number 207," said the much-tried and long-suffering sister, "you have
+broken the rule when under discipline. Go up to the dormitory and don't
+come down again to-night." This was precisely what Freckles wanted. She
+continued to sniff, however, as she left the room with seemingly
+reluctant steps. Once the door had closed upon her, she flew up the two
+long flights of stairs after Flibbertigibbet whom she found at the
+lavatory in the upper dormitory, cleansing the inside of her apron from
+molasses.
+
+Oh, but those cakes were good, eaten on the broad window sill where the
+two children curled themselves to play at their favorite game of "making
+believe about the Marchioness"!
+
+"But it's hot they be!" Freckles' utterance was thick owing to a large
+mouthful of cake with which she was occupied.
+
+"I kept 'em so squeezin' 'em against my stommick."
+
+"Where the pain was?"
+
+"M-m," her chum answered abstractedly. Her face was flattened against
+the window in order to see what was going on below, for the electric
+arc-light at the corner made the street visible for the distance of a
+block.
+
+"I've dropped a crumb," said Freckles ruefully.
+
+"Pick it up then, or yer'll catch it--Oh, my!"
+
+"Wot?" said Freckles who was on her hands and knees beneath the window
+searching for the crumb that might betray them if found by one of the
+sisters.
+
+"Git up here quick if yer want to see--it's the Marchioness an' another
+kid. Come on!" she cried excitedly, pulling at Freckles' long arm. The
+two little girls knelt on the broad sill, and with faces pressed close
+to the window-pane gazed and whispered and longed until the electric
+lights were turned on in the dormitory and the noise of approaching feet
+warned them that it was bedtime.
+
+Across the street from the Asylum, but facing the Avenue, was a great
+house of stone, made stately by a large courtyard closed by wrought-iron
+gates. On the side street looking to the Asylum, the windows in the
+second story had carved stone balconies; these were filled with bright
+blossoms in their season and in winter with living green. There was
+plenty of room behind the balcony flower-boxes for a white Angora cat to
+take her constitutional. When Flibbertigibbet entered the Asylum in
+June, the cat and the flowers were the first objects outside its walls
+to attract her attention and that of her chum, Freckles. It was not
+often that Freckles and her mate were given, or could obtain, the chance
+to watch the balcony, for there were so many things to do, something for
+every hour in the day: dishes to wash, beds to make, corridors to sweep,
+towels and stockings to launder, lessons to learn, sewing and catechism.
+But one day Flibbertigibbet--so Sister Angelica called the little girl
+from her first coming to the Asylum, and the name clung to her--was sent
+to the infirmary in the upper story because of a slight illness; while
+there she made the discovery of the "Marchioness." She called her that
+because she deemed it the most appropriate name, and why "appropriate"
+it behooves to tell.
+
+Behind the garbage-house, in the corner of the yard near the railroad
+tracks, there was a fine place to talk over secrets and grievances.
+Moreover, there was a knothole in the high wooden fence that inclosed
+the lower portion of the yard. When Flibbertigibbet put her eye to this
+aperture, it fitted so nicely that she could see up and down the street
+fully two rods each way. Generally that eye could range from butcher's
+boy to postman, or 'old clothes' man; but one day, having found an
+opportunity, she placed her visual organ as usual to the hole--and
+looked into another queer member that was apparently glued to the other
+side! But she was not daunted, oh, no!
+
+"Git out!" she commanded briefly.
+
+"I ain't in." The Eye snickered.
+
+"I'll poke my finger into yer!" she threatened further.
+
+"I'll bite your banana off," growled the Eye.
+
+"Yer a cross-eyed Dago."
+
+"You're another--you Biddy!" The Eye was positively insulting; it winked
+at her.
+
+Flibbertigibbet was getting worsted. She stamped her foot and kicked the
+fence. The Eye laughed at her, then suddenly vanished; and
+Flibbertigibbet saw a handsome-faced Italian lad sauntering up the
+street, hands in his pockets, and singing--oh, how he sang! The little
+girl forgot her rage in listening to the song, the words of which
+reminded her of dear Nonna Lisa and her own joys of a four weeks'
+vagabondage spent in the old Italian's company. All this she confessed
+to Freckles; and the two, under one pretence or another, managed to make
+daily visits to the garbage house knothole.
+
+That hole was every bit as good as a surprise party to them. The Eye was
+seen there but once more, when it informed the other Eye that it
+belonged to Luigi Poggi, Nonna Lisa's one grandson; that it was off in
+Chicago with a vaudeville troupe while the other Eye had been with Nonna
+Lisa. But instead of the Eye there appeared a stick of candy twisted in
+a paper and thrust through; at another time some fresh dates, strung on
+a long string, were found dangling on the inner side of the fence--the
+knothole having provided the point of entrance for each date; once a
+small bunch of wild flowers graced it on the yard side. Again, for three
+months, the hole served for a circulating library. A whole story found
+lodgement there, a chapter at a time, torn from a paper-covered novel.
+Flibbertigibbet carried them around with her pinned inside of her blue
+denim apron, and read them to Freckles whenever she was sure of not
+being caught. Luigi was their one boy on earth.
+
+_The Marchioness of Isola Bella_, that was the name of the story; and if
+Flibbertigibbet and Freckles on their narrow cots in the bare upper
+dormitory of the Orphan Asylum on ----nd Street, did not dream of
+sapphire lakes and snow-crowned mountains, of marble palaces and
+turtledoves, of lovely ladies and lordly men, of serenades and guitars
+and ropes of pearl, it was not the fault either of Luigi Poggi or the
+_Marchioness of Isola Bella_. But at times the story-book marchioness
+seemed very far away, and it was a happy thought of Flibbertigibbet's to
+name the little lady in the great house after her; for, once, watching
+at twilight from the cold window seat in the dormitory, the two orphan
+children saw her ladyship dressed for a party, the maid having forgotten
+to lower the shades.
+
+Freckles and Flibbertigibbet dared scarcely breathe; it was so much
+better than the _Marchioness of Isola Bella_, for this one was real and
+alive--oh, yes, very much alive! She danced about the room, running from
+the maid when she tried to catch her, and when the door opened and a
+tall man came in with arms opened wide, the real Marchioness did just
+what the story-book marchioness did on the last page to her lover: gave
+one leap into the outstretched arms of the father-lover.
+
+While the two children opposite were looking with all their eyes at this
+unexpected _dénouement_, the maid drew the shades, and Freckles and
+Flibbertigibbet were left to stare at each other in the dark and cold.
+Flibbertigibbet nodded and whispered:
+
+"That takes the cake. The _Marchioness of Isola Bella_ ain't in it!"
+
+Freckles squeezed her hand. Thereafter, although the girls appreciated
+the various favors of the knothole, their entire and passionate
+allegiance was given to the real Marchioness across the way.
+
+
+IV
+
+One day, it was just after Thanksgiving, the Marchioness discovered her
+opposite neighbors. It was warm and sunny, a summer day that had strayed
+from its place in the Year's procession. The maid was putting the Angora
+cat out on the balcony among the dwarf evergreens. The Marchioness was
+trying to help her when, happening to look across the street, she saw
+the two faces at the opposite window. She stared for a moment, then
+taking the cat from the window sill held her up for the two little girls
+to see. Flibbertigibbet and her mate nodded vigorously and smiled,
+making motions with their hands as if stroking the fur.
+
+The Marchioness dropped the cat and waved her hand to them; the maid
+drew her back from the window; the two girls saw her ladyship twitch
+away from the detaining hand and stamp her foot.
+
+"Gee!" said Flibbertigibbet under her breath, "she's just like us."
+
+"Oh, wot's she up ter now?" Freckles whispered.
+
+Truly, any sane person would have asked that question. The Marchioness,
+having gained her point, was standing on the window seat by the open
+window, which was protected by an iron grating, and making curious
+motions with her fingers and hands.
+
+"Is she a luny?" Freckles asked in an awed voice.
+
+Flibbertigibbet was gazing fixedly at this apparition and made no reply.
+After watching this pantomime a few minutes, she spoke slowly:
+
+"She's one of the dumb uns; I've seen 'em."
+
+The Marchioness was now making frantic gestures towards the top of their
+window. She was laughing too.
+
+"She's a lively one if she is a dumber," said Freckles approvingly.
+Flibbertigibbet jumped to her feet and likewise stood on the window
+sill.
+
+"Gee! She wants us to git the window open at the top. Here--pull!" The
+two children hung their combined weight by the tips of their fingers
+from the upper sash, and the great window opened slowly a few inches;
+then it stuck fast. But they both heard the gleeful voice of their
+opposite neighbor and welcomed the sound.
+
+"I'm talking to you--it's the only way I can--the deaf and dumb--"
+
+The maid lifted her down, struggling, from the window seat, and they
+heard the childish voice scolding in a tongue unknown to them.
+
+Flibbertigibbet set immediately about earning the right to learn the
+deaf-and-dumb alphabet; she hung out all monitor Number Twelve's
+washing--dish towels, stockings, handkerchiefs--every other day for two
+weeks in the bitter December weather. She knew that this special monitor
+had a small brother in the Asylum for Deaf Mutes; this girl taught her
+the strange language in compensation for the child's time and labor. It
+was mostly "give and take" in the Asylum.
+
+"That child has been angelic lately; I don't know what's going to
+happen." Long-suffering Sister Agatha heaved a sigh of relief.
+
+"Oh, there is a storm brewing you may be sure; this calm is unnatural,"
+Sister Angelica replied, smiling at sight of the little figure in the
+yard dancing in the midst of an admiring circle of blue-nosed girls. "I
+believe they would rather stand and watch her than to run about and get
+warm. She is as much fun for them as a circus, and she learns so
+quickly! Have you noticed her voice in chapel lately?"
+
+"Yes, I have"; said Sister Agatha grumpily, "and I confess I can't bear
+to hear her sing like an angel when she is such a little fiend."
+
+Sister Angelica smiled. "Oh, I'm sure she'll come out all right; there's
+nothing vicious about her, and she's a loyal little soul, you can't deny
+that."
+
+"Yes, to those she loves," Sister Agatha answered with some bitterness.
+She knew she was no favorite with the subject under discussion. "See her
+now! I shouldn't think she would have a whole bone left in her body."
+
+They were playing "Snap-the-whip". Flibbertigibbet was the snapper for a
+line of twenty or more girls. As she swung the circle her legs flew so
+fast they fairly twinkled, and her hops and skips were a marvel to
+onlookers. But she landed right side up at last, although breathless,
+her long braid unloosened, hair tossing on the wind, cheeks red as
+American beauty roses, and gray eyes black with excitement of the game.
+Then the bell rang its warning, the children formed in line and marched
+in to lessons.
+
+The two weeks in December in which Flibbertigibbet had given herself to
+the acquisition of the new language, proved long for the Marchioness.
+Every day she watched at the window for the reappearance of the two
+children at the bare upper window opposite; but thus far in vain.
+However, on the second Saturday after their first across-street meeting,
+she saw to her great joy the two little girls curled up on the window
+sill and frantically waving to attract her attention. The Marchioness
+nodded and smiled, clapped her hands, and mounted upon her own broad
+window seat in order to have an unobstructed view over the iron grating.
+
+"She sees us, she sees us!" Freckles cried excitedly, but under her
+breath; "now let's begin."
+
+Flibbertigibbet chose one of the panes that was cleaner than the others
+and putting her two hands close to it began operations. The Marchioness
+fairly hopped up and down with delight when she saw the familiar symbols
+of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, and immediately set her own small white
+hands to work on her first sentence:
+
+"Go slow."
+
+Flibbertigibbet nodded emphatically; the conversation was begun again
+and continued for half an hour. It was in truth a labor as well as a
+work of love. The spelling in both cases was far from perfect and, at
+times, puzzling to both parties; but little by little they became used
+to each other's erratic symbols together with the queer things for which
+they stood, and no conversation throughout the length and breadth of New
+York--yes, even of our United States--was ever more enjoyed than by
+these three girls. Flibbertigibbet and the Marchioness did the
+finger-talking, and Freckles helped with the interpretation. In the
+following translation of this first important exchange of social
+courtesies, the extremely peculiar spelling, and wild combinations of
+vowels in particular, are omitted: but the questions and answers are
+given exactly as they were constructed by the opposite neighbors.
+
+"Go slow." This as a word of warning from the Marchioness.
+
+"You bet."
+
+"Isn't this fun?"
+
+"Beats the band."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+Flibbertigibbet and her chum looked at each other; should it be nickname
+or real name? As they were at present in society and much on their
+dignity they decided to give their real names.
+
+"Aileen Armagh." Thereupon Flibbertigibbet beat upon her breast to
+indicate first person singular possessive. The Marchioness stared at her
+for a minute, then spelled rather quickly:
+
+"It's lovely. We call you something else."
+
+"Who's we?"
+
+"Aunt Ruth and I."
+
+"What do you call me?"
+
+"Flibbertigibbet."
+
+"Git off!" cried Flibbertigibbet, recklessly shoving Freckles on to the
+floor. "Gee, how'd she know!" And thereupon she jumped to her feet and,
+having the broad window sill to herself, started upon a rather
+restricted coon dance in order to prove to her opposite neighbor that
+the nickname belonged to her by good right. Oh, but it was fun for the
+Marchioness! She clapped her hands to show her approval and catching up
+the skirt of her dainty white frock, slowly raised one leg at a right
+angle to her body and stood so for a moment, to the intense admiration
+of the other girls.
+
+"That's what they call me here," said Flibbertigibbet when they got down
+to conversation again.
+
+"What is hers?" asked the Marchioness, pointing to Freckles.
+
+"Margaret O'Dowd, but we call her Freckles."
+
+How the Marchioness laughed! So hard, indeed, that she apparently
+tumbled off the seat, for she disappeared entirely for several minutes,
+much to the girls' amazement as well as chagrin.
+
+"It's like she broke somethin'," whimpered Freckles; "a bone yer
+know--her nose fallin' that way when she went over forrard."
+
+"She ain't chany, I tell yer; she's jest Injy rubber," said
+Flibbertigibbet scornfully but with a note of anxiety in her voice. At
+this critical moment the Marchioness reappeared and jumped upon the
+seat. She had a curious affair in her hand; after placing it to her
+eyes, she signalled her answer:
+
+"I can see them."
+
+"See what?"
+
+"The freckles."
+
+"Wot's she givin' us?" Freckles asked in a perplexed voice.
+
+"She's all right," said Flibbertigibbet with the confidence of superior
+knowledge; "it's a tel'scope; yer can see the moon through, an' yer
+freckles look to her as big as pie-plates."
+
+Freckles crossed herself; it sounded like witches and it had a queer
+look.
+
+"Ask her wot's her name," she suggested.
+
+"What's your name?" Flibbertigibbet repeated on her fingers.
+
+"Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend."
+
+"Gee whiz, ain't that a corker!" Flibbertigibbet exclaimed delightedly.
+"How old are you?" She proceeded thus with her personal investigation
+prompted thereto by Freckles.
+
+"Most ten;--you?"
+
+"Most twelve."
+
+"And Freckles?" The Marchioness laughed as she spelled the name.
+
+"Eleven."
+
+"Ask her if she's an orphant," said Freckles.
+
+"Are you an orphan, Freckles says."
+
+"Half," came the answer. "What are you?"
+
+"Whole," was the reply. "Which is your half?"
+
+"I have only papa--I'll introduce him to you sometime when--"
+
+This explanation took fully five minutes to decipher, and while they
+were at work upon it the maid came up behind the Marchioness and,
+without so much as saying "By your leave", took her down struggling from
+the window seat and drew the shades. Whereupon Flibbertigibbet rose in
+her wrath, shook her fist at the insulting personage, and vowed
+vengeance upon her in her own forceful language:
+
+"You're an old cat, and I'll rub your fur the wrong way till the sparks
+fly."
+
+At this awful threat Freckles looked alarmed, and suddenly realized that
+she was shivering, the result of sitting so long against the cold
+window. "Come on down," she pleaded with the enraged Flibbertigibbet;
+and by dint of coaxing and the promise of a green woollen watch-chain,
+which she had patiently woven, and so carefully, with four pins and an
+empty spool till it looked like a green worm, she succeeded in getting
+her away from the dormitory window.
+
+
+V
+
+If the _Marchioness of Isola Bella_ had filled many of Flibbertigibbet's
+dreams during the last six months, the real Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend
+now filled all her waking hours. Her sole thought was to contrive
+opportunities for more of this fascinating conversation, and she and
+Freckles practised daily on the sly in order to say more, and quickly,
+to the real Marchioness across the way.
+
+By good luck they were given a half-hour for themselves just before
+Christmas, in reward for the conscientious manner in which they made
+beds, washed dishes, and recited their lessons for an entire week. When
+Sister Angelica, laying her hand on Flibbertigibbet's shoulder, had
+asked her what favor she wanted for the good work of that week, the
+little girl answered promptly enough that she would like to sit with
+Freckles in the dormitory window and look out on the street, for maybe
+there might be a hurdy-gurdy with a monkey passing through.
+
+"Not this cold day, I'm sure," said Sister Angelica, smiling at the
+request; "for no monkey could be out in this weather unless he had an
+extra fur coat and a hot water bottle for his toes. Yes, you may go but
+don't stay too long in the cold."
+
+But what if the Marchioness were to fail to make her appearance! They
+could not bear to think of this, and amused themselves for a little
+while by blowing upon the cold panes and writing their names and the
+Marchioness' in the vapor. But, at last--oh, at last, there she was! The
+fingers began to talk almost before they knew it. In some respects it
+proved to be a remarkable conversation, for it touched upon many and
+various topics, all of which proved of equal interest to the parties
+concerned. They lost no time in setting about the exchange of their
+views.
+
+"I'm going to a party," the Marchioness announced, smoothing her gown.
+
+"What time?"
+
+"Five o'clock, but I'm all ready. I am going to dance a minuet."
+
+This was a poser; but Flibbertigibbet did not wish to be outdone,
+although there was no party for her in prospect.
+
+"I can dance too," she signalled.
+
+"I know you can--lovely; that's why I told you."
+
+"I wish I could see you dance the minute."
+
+The Marchioness did not answer at once. Finally she spelled "Wait a
+minute," jumped down from the broad sill and disappeared. In a short
+time she was back again.
+
+"I'm going to dance for you. Look downstairs--when it is dark--and
+you'll see the drawing-room lighted--I'll dance near the windows."
+
+The two girls clapped their hands and Flibbertigibbet jumped up and down
+on the window sill to express her delight.
+
+"When do you have to go to bed?" was the next pointed question from
+Alice Maud Mary.
+
+"A quarter to eight."
+
+"Who puts you in?"
+
+This was another poser for even Flibbertigibbet's quick wits.
+
+"Wot does she mane?" Freckles demanded anxiously.
+
+"I dunno; anyhow, I'll tell her the sisters."
+
+"The sisters," was the word that went across the street.
+
+"Oh, how nice! Do you say your prayers to them too?"
+
+Freckles groaned. "Wot yer goin' to tell her now?"
+
+"Shut up now till yer hear me, an' cross yerself, for I mane it." Such
+was the warning from her mate.
+
+"No; I say them to another lady--Our Lady."
+
+"Oh gracious!" Freckles cried out under her breath and began to snicker.
+
+"What lady?" The Marchioness looked astonished but intensely interested.
+
+"The Holy Virgin. I'll bet she don't know nothin' 'bout Her," said
+Flibbertigibbet in a triumphant aside to Freckles. The Marchioness' eyes
+opened wider upon the two children across the way.
+
+"That is the mother of Our Lord, isn't it?" she said in her dumb way.
+The two children nodded; no words seemed to come readily just then, for
+Alice Maud Mary had given them a surprise. They crossed themselves.
+
+"I never thought of saying my prayers to His mother before, but I shall
+now. He always had a mother, hadn't he?"
+
+Flibbertigibbet could think of nothing to say in answer, but she did the
+next best thing: she drew her rosary from under her dress waist and held
+it up to the Marchioness who nodded understandingly and began to fumble
+at her neck. In a moment she brought forth a tiny gold chain with a
+little gold cross hanging from it. She held it up and dangled it before
+the four astonished eyes opposite.
+
+"Gee! Yer can't git ahead of _her_, an' I ain't goin' to try. She's just
+a darlint." Flibbertigibbet's heart was very full and tender at that
+moment; but she giggled at the next question.
+
+"Do you know any boys?"
+
+One finger was visible at the dormitory window. The Marchioness laughed
+and after telling them she knew ever so many began to count on her
+fingers for the benefit of her opposite neighbors.
+
+"One, two, three, four, five," she began on her right hand--
+
+"I don't believe her," said Freckles with a suspicious sniff.
+
+Flibbertigibbet turned fiercely upon her. "I'd believe her if she said
+she knew a thousand, so now, Margaret O'Dowd, an' yer hold yer tongue!"
+she cried; but in reprimanding Freckles for her want of faith she lost
+count of the boys.
+
+"I must go now," said the Marchioness; "but when the drawing-room
+downstairs is lighted, you look in--there'll be one boy there to dance
+with me. Be sure you look." Suddenly the Marchioness made a sign that
+both girls understood, although it was an extra one and the very
+prettiest of all in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet of the affections: she
+put her fingers to her lips and blew them a kiss.
+
+"Ain't she a darlint!" murmured Flibbertigibbet, tossing the same sign
+across the street. When the Marchioness had left the window, the two
+girls spent the remaining minutes of their reward in planning how best
+to see the dance upon which they had set their hearts. They thought of
+all the places available, but were sure they would not be permitted to
+occupy them. At last Flibbertigibbet decided boldly, on the strength of
+a good conscience throughout one whole week, to ask at headquarters.
+
+"I'm goin' straight to Sister Angelica an' ask her to let us go into the
+chapel; it's the only place. Yer can see from the little windy in the
+cubby-hole where the priest gits into his other clothes."
+
+Freckles looked awestruck. "She'll never let yer go in there."
+
+Her mate snapped her fingers in reply, and catching Freckles' hand raced
+her down the long dormitory, down the two long flights of stairs to the
+schoolroom where Sister Angelica was giving a lesson to the younger
+girls.
+
+"Well, Flibbertigibbet, what is it now?" said the sister smiling into
+the eager face at her elbow. When Sister Angelica called her by her
+nickname instead of by the Asylum number, Flibbertigibbet knew she was
+in high favor. She nudged Freckles and replied:
+
+"I want to whisper to you."
+
+Sister Angelica bent down; before she knew it the little girl's arms
+were about her neck and the child was telling her about the dance at the
+stone house across the way. The sister smiled as she listened to the
+rush of eager words, but she was so glad to find this madcap telling her
+openly her heart's one desire, that she did what she had never done
+before in all her life of beautiful child-consecrated work: she said
+"Yes, and I will go with you. Wait for me outside the chapel door at
+half-past four."
+
+Flibbertigibbet squeezed her around the neck with such grateful vigor
+that the blood rushed to poor Sister Angelica's head. She was willing,
+however, to be a martyr in such a good cause. The little girl walked
+quietly to the door, but when it had closed upon her she executed a
+series of somersaults worthy of the Madison Square Garden acrobats.
+"What'd I tell yer, what'd I tell yer!" she exclaimed, pirouetting and
+somersaulting till the slower-moving Freckles was a trifle dizzy.
+
+Within a quarter of an hour the three were snugly ensconced in the
+window niche of the "cubby-hole," so Flibbertigibbet termed the
+robing-room closet, and looking with all their eyes across the street.
+They were directly opposite what Sister Angelica said must be the
+drawing-room and on a level with it. As they looked, one moment the
+windows were dark, in the next they were filled with soft yet brilliant
+lights. The lace draperies were parted and the children could see down
+the length of the room.
+
+There she was! Hopping and skipping by the side of her father-lover and
+drawing him to the central window. Behind them came the lovely young
+lady and the Boy! The two were holding hands and swinging them freely as
+they laughed and chatted together.
+
+"That's the Boy!" cried Flibbertigibbet, wild with excitement.
+
+"And that must be the Aunt Ruth she told about--oh, ain't she just
+lovely!" cried Freckles.
+
+"Watch out now, an' yer'll see the minute!" said Flibbertigibbet,
+squeezing Sister Angelica's hand; Sister Angelica squeezed back, but
+kept silence. She was learning many things before unknown to her. The
+four came to the middle window and looked out, up, and all around. But
+although the two children waved their hands wildly to attract their
+attention, the good people opposite failed to see them because the
+little window suffered eclipse in the shadow of the large electric
+arc-light's green cap.
+
+"She's goin' to begin!" cried Flibbertigibbet, clapping her hands.
+
+The young lady sat down at the piano and began to play. Whether
+Flibbertigibbet expected a variation of a "coon dance" or an Irish jig
+cannot be stated with certainty, but that she was surprised is a fact;
+so surprised, indeed, that for full two minutes she forgot to talk. To
+the slow music, for such it was--Flibbertigibbet beat time with her
+fingers on the pane to the step--the Marchioness and the Boy, pointing
+their daintily slippered feet, moved up and down, back and forth,
+swinging, turning, courtesying, bowing over the parquet floor with such
+childishly stately yet charming grace that their rhythmic motions were
+as a song without words.
+
+The father-lover stood with his back to the mantel and applauded after
+an especially well executed flourish or courtesy; Aunt Ruth looked over
+her shoulder, smiling, her hands wandering slowly over the keys. At
+last, the final flourish, the final courtesy. The Marchioness' dress
+fairly swept the floor, and the Boy bowed so low that--well,
+Flibbertigibbet never could tell how it happened, but she had a warm
+place in her heart for that boy ever after--he quietly and methodically
+stood head downwards on his two hands, his white silk stockings and
+patent leathers kicking in the air.
+
+The Marchioness was laughing so hard that she sat down in a regular
+"cheese" on the floor; the father-lover was clapping his hands like mad;
+the lady swung round on the piano stool and shook her forefinger at the
+Boy who suddenly came right side up at last, hand on his heart, and
+bowed with great dignity to the little girl on the floor. Then he, too,
+laughed and cut another caper just as a solemn-faced butler came in with
+wraps and furs. But by no means did he remain solemn long! How could he
+with the Boy prancing about him, and the Marchioness playing at
+"Catch-me-if-you-can" with her father-lover, and the lady slipping and
+sliding over the floor to catch the Boy who was always on the other side
+of the would-be solemn butler? Why, he actually swung round in a circle
+by holding on to that butler's dignified coat-tails!
+
+Nor were they the only ones who laughed. Across the way in one of the
+Orphan Asylum windows, Sister Angelica and the children laughed too, in
+spirit joining in the fun, and when the butler came to the window to
+draw the shades there were three long "Ah's," both of intense
+disappointment and supreme satisfaction.
+
+"Watch out, now," said Flibbertigibbet excitedly on the way down into
+the basement for supper and dishwashing, for it was their turn this
+week, "an' yer'll see me dance yer a minute in the yard ter-morrow."
+
+"Yer can't dance it alone," replied doubting Freckles; "yer've got to
+have a boy."
+
+"I don't want one; I'll take you, Freckles, for a boy." Clumsy Freckles
+blushed with delight beneath her many beauty-spots at such promise of
+unwonted graciousness on the part of her chum, and wondered what had
+come over Flibbertigibbet lately.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few hours afterwards when they went up to bed, they whispered together
+again concerning the dance, and begged Sister Angelica to let them have
+just one peep from the dormitory window at their house of delight--a
+request she was glad to grant. They opened one of the inside blinds a
+little way, and exclaimed at the sight. It was snowing. The children
+oh'ed and ah'ed under their breath, for a snowstorm at Christmas time in
+the great city is the child's true joy. At their opposite neighbor's a
+faint light was visible in the balcony room; the wet soft flakes had
+already ridged the balustrade, powdered the dwarf evergreens, topped the
+cap of the electric arc-light and laid upon the concrete a coverlet of
+purest white.
+
+The long bare dormitory filled with the children--the fatherless and
+motherless children we have always with us. Soon each narrow cot held
+its asylum number; the many heads, golden, brown, or black, busied all
+of them with childhood's queer unanchored thoughts, were pillowed in
+safety for another night.
+
+And without the snow continued to fall upon the great city. It graced
+with equal delicacy the cathedral's marble spires and the forest of
+pointed firs which made the numberless Christmas booths that surrounded
+old Washington Market. It covered impartially, and with as pure a white,
+the myriad city roofs that sheltered saint and sinner, whether among the
+rich or the poor, among the cherished or castaways. It fell as thickly
+upon the gravestones in Trinity's ancient churchyard as upon the freshly
+turned earth in a corner of the paupers' burying ground; and it set upon
+black corruption wherever it was in evidence the seal of a transient
+stainlessness.
+
+
+VI
+
+"Really, I am discouraged about that child," said Sister Agatha just
+after Easter. She was standing at one of the schoolroom windows that
+overlooked the yard; she spoke as if thoroughly vexed.
+
+"What is it now--208 again?" Sister Angelica looked up from the copybook
+she was correcting.
+
+"Oh, yes, of course; it's always 208."
+
+"Oh, she doesn't mean anything; it's only her high spirits; they must
+have some vent."
+
+"It's been her ruin being on the stage even for those few weeks, and
+ever since the Van Ostends began to make of her and have her over for
+that Christmas luncheon and the Sunday nights, the child is neither to
+have nor to hold. What with her 'make believing' and her 'acting' she
+upsets the girls generally. She ought to be set to good steady work; the
+first chance I get I'll put her to it. I only wish some one would adopt
+her--"
+
+"I heard Father Honoré--"
+
+"Look at her now!" exclaimed Sister Agatha interrupting her.
+
+Sister Angelica joined her at the window. They could not only see but
+hear all that was going on below. With the garbage house as a
+stage-setting and background to the performance, Flibbertigibbet was
+courtesying low to her audience; the skirt of her scant gingham dress
+was held in her two hands up and out to its full extent. The orphans
+crouched on the pavement in a triple semi-circle in front of her.
+
+"All this rigmarole comes of the theatre," said Sister Agatha grimly.
+
+"Well, where's the harm? She is only living it all over again and giving
+the others a little pleasure at the same time. Dear knows, they have
+little enough, poor things."
+
+Sister Agatha made no reply; she was listening intently to 208's orders.
+The little girl had risen from her low courtesy and was haranguing the
+assembled hundreds:
+
+"Now watch out, all of yer, an' when I do the minute yer can clap yer
+hands if yer like it; an' if yer want some more, yer must clap enough to
+split yer gloves if yer had any on, an' then I'll give yer the coon
+dance; an' then if yer like _that_, yer can play yer gloves are busted
+with clappin' an' stomp yer feet--"
+
+"But we can't," Freckles entered her prosaic protest, "'cause we're
+squattin'."
+
+"Well, get up then, yer'll have to; an' then if you stomp awful, an'
+holler 'On-ko--on-ko!'--that's what they say at the thayertre--I'll give
+yer somethin' else--"
+
+"Wot?" demanded 206 suspiciously.
+
+"Don't yer wish I'd tell!" said 208, and began the minuet.
+
+It was marvellous how she imitated every graceful movement, every turn
+and twist and bow, every courtesy to the imaginary partner--Freckles had
+failed her entirely in this role--whose imaginary hand she held clasped
+high above her head; her clumsy shoes slid over the flagging as if it
+had been a waxed floor under dainty slippers. There was an outburst of
+applause; such an outburst that had the audience really worn gloves,
+every seam, even if French and handsewed, must have cracked under the
+healthy pressure.
+
+208 beamed and, throwing back her head, suddenly flung herself into the
+coon dance which, in its way, was as wild and erratic as the minuet had
+been stately and methodical. Wilder and wilder grew her gyrations--head,
+feet, legs, shoulders, hair, hands, arms, were in seemingly perpetual
+motion. The audience grew wildly excited. They jumped up, shouting
+"On-ko--on-ko!" and accompanied their shouts with the stamping of feet.
+A dexterous somersault on the dancer's part ended the performance; her
+cheeks were flushed with exercise and excitement, her black mane was
+loosened and tossed about her shoulders. The audience lost their heads
+and even 206 joined in the prolonged roar:
+
+"On-ko, 208--on-ko-o-o-oor! On-ko, Flibbertigibbet--some more--some
+more!"
+
+"It's perfectly disgraceful," muttered Sister Agatha, and made a
+movement to leave the window; but Sister Angelica laid a gently
+detaining hand on her arm.
+
+"No, Agatha, not that," she said earnestly; "you'll see that they will
+work all the better for this fun--Hark!"
+
+There was a sudden and deep silence. 208 was evidently ready with her
+encore, a surprise to all but the performer. She shook back the hair
+from her face, raised her eyes, crossed her two hands upon her chest,
+waited a few seconds until a swift passenger train on the track behind
+the fence had smothered its roar in the tunnel depths, then began to
+sing "The Holy City." Even Sister Agatha felt the tears spring as she
+listened. A switch engine letting off steam drowned the last words, and
+there was no applause. Flibbertigibbet looked about her inquiringly; but
+the girls were silent. Such singing appeared to them out of the
+ordinary--and so unlike 208! It took them a moment to recover from their
+surprise; they gathered in groups to whisper together concerning the
+performance.
+
+Meanwhile Flibbertigibbet was waiting expectantly. Where was the well
+earned applause? And she had reserved the best for the last! Ungrateful
+ones! Her friends in the stone house always praised her when she did her
+best,--but these girls--
+
+She stamped her foot, then dashed through the broken ranks, making faces
+as she ran, and crying out in disgust and anger:
+
+"Catch me givin' yer any more on-kos, yer stingy things!" and with that
+she ran into the basement followed by Freckles who was intent upon
+appeasing her.
+
+The two sisters, pacing the dim corridor together after chapel that
+evening, spoke again of their little wilding.
+
+"I didn't finish what I was going to tell you about 208," said Sister
+Angelica. "I heard the Sister Superior tell Father Honoré when he was
+here the other day that Mr. Van Ostend had been to see her in regard to
+the child. It seems he has found a place for her in the country with
+some of his relations, as I understand it. He said his interest in her
+had been roused when he heard her for the first time on the stage, and
+that when he found Flibbertigibbet was the little acquaintance his
+daughter had made, he determined to further the child's interests so far
+as a home is concerned."
+
+"Then there is a prospect of her going," Sister Agatha drew a breath of
+relief. "Did you hear what Father Honoré said?"
+
+"Very little; but I noticed he looked pleased, and I heard him say,
+'This is working out all right; I'll step across and see Mr. Van Ostend
+myself.'--I shall miss her so!"
+
+Sister Agatha made no reply. Together the two sisters continued to pace
+the dim corridor, silent each with her thoughts; and, pacing thus, up
+and down, up and down, the slender, black-robed figures were soon lost
+in the increasing darkness and became mere neutral outlines as they
+passed the high bare windows and entered their respective rooms.
+
+Even so, a few weeks later when Number 208 left the Orphan Asylum on
+----nd Street, they passed quietly out of the child's actual life and
+entered the fitfully lighted chambers of her childish memory wherein, at
+times, they paced with noiseless footsteps as once in the barren halls
+of her orphanage home.
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND
+
+Home Soil
+
+
+I
+
+A land of entrancing inner waters, our own marvellous Lake Country of
+the East, lies just behind those mountains of Maine that sink their
+bases in the Atlantic and are fitly termed in Indian nomenclature
+_Waves-of-the-Sea_. Bight and bay indent this mountainous coast, in
+beauty comparable, if less sublime yet more enticing, to the Norwegian
+fjords; within them are set the islands large and small whereon the
+sheep, sheltered by cedar coverts, crop the short thick turf that is
+nourished by mists from the Atlantic. Above bight and bay and island
+tower the mountains. Their broad green flanks catch the earliest eastern
+and the latest western lights. Their bare summits are lifted boldly into
+the infinite blue that is reflected in the waters which lap their
+foundations.
+
+Flamsted lies at the outlet of Lake Mesantic, on the gentle northward
+slope of these _Waves-of-the-Sea_, some eighteen miles inland from
+Penobscot Bay. Until the last decade of the nineteenth century it was
+unconnected with the coast by any railroad; but at that time a branch
+line from Hallsport on the Bay, encouraged by the opening of a small
+granite quarry in the Flamsted Hills, made its terminus at The
+Corners--a sawmill settlement at the falls of the Rothel, a river that
+runs rapidly to the sea after issuing from Lake Mesantic. A mile beyond
+the station the village proper begins at its two-storied tavern, The
+Greenbush.
+
+From the lower veranda of this hostelry, one may look down the shaded
+length of the main street, dignified by many an old-fashioned house, to
+The Bow, an irregular peninsula extending far into the lake and
+containing some two hundred acres. This estate is the ancestral home of
+the Champneys, known as Champ-au-Haut, in the vernacular "Champo." At
+The Bow the highway turns suddenly, crosses a bridge over the Rothel and
+curves with the curving pine-fringed shores of the lake along the base
+of the mountain until it climbs the steep ascent that leads to Googe's
+Gore, the third division of the town of Flamsted.
+
+As in all New England towns, that are the possessors of "old families,"
+so in Flamsted;--its inhabitants are partisans. The result is, that it
+has been for years as a house divided against itself, and heated
+discussion of the affairs of the Googes at the Gore and the Champneys at
+The Bow has been from generation to generation an inherited interest.
+And from generation to generation, as the two families have ramified and
+intermarriages occurred more and more frequently, party spirit has run
+higher and higher and bitter feelings been engendered. But never have
+the factional differences been more pronounced and the lines of
+separation drawn with a sharper ploughshare in this mountain-ramparted
+New England town, than during the five years subsequent to the opening
+of the Flamsted Quarries which brought in its train the railroad and the
+immigrants. This event was looked upon by the inhabitants as the
+Invasion of the New.
+
+The interest of the first faction was centred in Champ-au-Haut and its
+present possessor, the widow of Louis Champney, old Judge Champney's
+only son. That of the second in the Googes, Aurora and her son Champney,
+the owners of Googe's Gore and its granite outcrop.
+
+The office room of The Greenbush has been for two generations the
+acknowledged gathering place of the representatives of the hostile
+camps. On a cool evening in June, a few days after the departure of
+several New York promoters, who had formed a syndicate to exploit the
+granite treasure in The Gore and for that purpose been fully a week in
+Flamsted, a few of the natives dropped into the office to talk it over.
+
+When Octavius Buzzby, the factotum at Champ-au-Haut and twin of Augustus
+Buzzby, landlord of The Greenbush, entered the former bar-room of the
+old hostelry, he found the usual Saturday night frequenters. Among them
+was Colonel Milton Caukins, tax collector and assistant deputy sheriff
+who, never quite at ease in the presence of his long-tongued wife,
+expanded discursively so soon as he found himself in the office of The
+Greenbush. He was in full flow when Octavius entered.
+
+"Hello, Tave," he cried, extending his hand in easy condescension,
+"you're well come, for you're just in time to hear the latest; the
+deal's on--an A. 1 sure thing this time. Aurora showed me the papers
+to-day. We're in for it now--government contracts, state houses, battle
+monuments, graveyards; we've got 'em all, and things'll begin to hum in
+this backwater hole, you bet!"
+
+Octavius looked inquiringly at his brother. Augustus answered by raising
+his left eyebrow and placidly closing his right eye as a cautionary
+signal to lie low and await developments.
+
+It was the Colonel's way to boom everything, and simply because he could
+not help it. It was not a matter of principle with him, it was an affair
+of temperament. He had boomed Flamsted for the last ten years--its
+climate, its situation, its scenery, its water power, its lake-shore
+lands as prospective sites for mansion summer cottages, and the
+treasures of its unopened quarries. So incorrigible an optimist was
+Milton Caukins that any slight degree of success, which might attend the
+promotion of any one of his numerous schemes, caused an elation that
+amounted to hilarity. On the other hand, the deadly blight of
+non-fulfilment, that annually attacked his most cherished hopes for the
+future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress
+him, or check the prodigal casting of his optimistic daily bread on the
+placid social waters where, as the years multiplied, his enthusiasms
+scarce made a ripple.
+
+"I see Mis' Googe yisterd'y, an' she said folks hed been down on her so
+long for sellin' thet pass'l of paster for the first quarry, thet she
+might ez well go the hull figger an' git 'em down on her for the rest of
+her days by sellin' the rest. By Andrew Jackson! she's got the grit for
+a woman--and the good looks too! She can hold her own for a figger with
+any gal in this town. I see the syndicaters a-castin' sheeps' eyes her
+ways the day she took 'em over The Gore prospectin'; but, by A. J.! they
+hauled in their lookin's when she turned them great eyes of her'n their
+ways.--What's the figger for the hull piece? Does anybody know?"
+
+It was Joel Quimber, the ancient pound-master, who spoke, and the
+silence that followed proved that each man present was resenting the
+fact that he was not in a position to give the information desired.
+
+"I shall know as soon as they get it recorded, that is, if they don't
+trade for a dollar and if they ever do get it recorded." The speaker was
+Elmer Wiggins, druggist and town clerk for the last quarter of a
+century. He was pessimistically inclined, the tendency being fostered by
+his dual vocation of selling drugs and registering the deaths they
+occasionally caused.
+
+Milton Caukins, or the Colonel, as he preferred to be called on account
+of his youthful service in the state militia and his present connection
+with the historical society of The Rangers, took his cigar from his lips
+and blew the smoke forcibly towards the ceiling before he spoke.
+
+"She's got enough now to put Champ through college. The first forty
+acres she sold ten years ago will do that."
+
+"I ain't so sure of thet." Joel Quimber's tone implied obstinate
+conviction that his modestly expressed doubt was a foregone conclusion.
+"Champ's a devil of a feller when it comes to puttin' through anything.
+He's a chip off the old block. He'll put through more 'n his mother can
+git out if he gits in any thicker with them big guns--race hosses, steam
+yachts an' fancy fixin's. He could sink the hull Gore to the foundations
+of Old Time in a few of them suppers I've heerd he gin arter the show. I
+heerd he gin ten dollars a plate for the last one--some kind of
+primy-donny, I heerd. But Champ's game though. I heerd Mr. Van Ostend
+talkin' 'bout him to one of the syndicaters--mebbe they're goin' to work
+him in with them somehow; anyway, I guess Aurory don't begrutch him a
+little spendin' money seein' how easy it come out of the old sheep
+pasters. Who'd 'a' thought a streak of granite could hev made sech a
+stir!"
+
+"It's a stir that'll sink this town in the mud." Mr. Wiggins' voice was
+what might be called thorough-bass, and was apt to carry more weight
+with his townspeople than his opinions, which latter were not always
+acceptable to Colonel Caukins. "Look at it now! This town has never been
+bonded; we're free from debt and a good balance on hand for
+improvements. Now along comes three or four hundred immigrants to begin
+with--trade following the flag, I suppose _you_ call it, Colonel," (he
+interpolated this with cutting sarcasm)--"a hodge-podge of Canucks, and
+Dagos, and Polacks, and the Lord knows what--a darned set of foreigners,
+foreign to our laws, our ways, our religion; and behind 'em a lot of men
+that would be called windbags if it wasn't for their money-bags. And
+between 'em our noses are going to be held right down on the grindstone.
+I tell you we'll have to bond this town to support the schooling for
+these foreign brats, and there's a baker's dozen of 'em every time; and
+there'll be tooting and dancing and singing and playing on Sunday with
+their foreign gimcranks,--mandolin-banjos and what-all--"
+
+"Good heavens, my dear fellow!" the Colonel broke in with an air of
+impatience, "can't you see that it's this very 'stir,' as you term it,
+that is going to put this town into the front rank of the competing
+industrial thousands of America?"
+
+The Colonel, when annoyed at the quantity of cold water thrown upon his
+redhot enthusiasm, was apt to increase the warmth of his patronizing
+address by an endearing term.
+
+"I see farther than the front ranks of your 'competing industrial
+thousands of America,' Milton Caukins; I see clear over 'em to the very
+brink, and I see a struggling wrestling mass of human beings slipping,
+sliding to the bottomless pit of national destitution, helped downwards
+by just such darned boomers of what you call 'industrial efficiency' as
+you are, Milton Caukins." He paused for breath.
+
+Augustus Buzzby, who was ever a man of peace, tried to divert this
+raging torrent of speech into other and personal channels.
+
+"I ain't nothin' 'gainst Mis' Googe as a woman, but she played me a mean
+trick when she sold that first quarry. It killed my trade as dead as a
+door nail. You can't hire them highflyers to put themselves into a town
+their money's bankin' on to ruin in what you might call a summer-social
+way. I found _that_ out 'fore they left this house last week."
+
+"Yes, and she's played a meaner one now." Mr. Wiggins made the assertion
+with asperity and looked at the same time directly at Octavius Buzzby.
+"I know all about their free dispensaries that'll draw trade away from
+my very counter and take the bread and butter out of my mouth; and as
+for the fees--there won't be a chance for recording a homestead site;
+there isn't any counting on such things, for they're a homeless lot,
+always moving from pillar to post with free pickings wherever they
+locate over night, just like the gypsies that came through here last
+September."
+
+"It's kinder queer now, whichever way you've a mind to look at it," Joel
+Quimber remarked meditatively. His eyes were cast up to the ceiling; his
+fore-fingers and thumbs formed an acute triangle over the bridge of his
+nose; the arms of his chair supported his elbows. "Queer thet it's allus
+them upper tens an' emigrants thet keep a-movin' on, fust one place then
+t'other. Kinder looks ez if, arter all, there warn't no great real
+difference when it comes to bein' restless. Take us home folks now,
+we're rooted in deep, an' I guess if we was to be uprooted kinder
+suddin', p'raps we'd hev more charity for the furriners. There's no
+tellin'; I ain't no jedge of sech things, an' I'm an out-an-out
+American. But mebbe my great-great-great-granther's father could hev'
+told ye somethin' wuth tellin'; he an' the Champneys was hounded out of
+France, an' was glad 'nough to emigrate, though they called it
+refugeein' an' pioneerin' in them days."
+
+Augustus Buzzby laid his hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder.
+"You're a son of the soil, Joel; I stand corrected. I guess the less any
+of us true blue Americans say 'bout flinging stones at furriners the
+safer 'twill be for all on us."
+
+But Mr. Wiggins continued his diatribe: "There ain't no denying it, the
+first people in town are down on the whole thing. Didn't the rector tell
+me this very day that 'twas like ploughing up the face of nature for the
+sake of sowing the seeds of political and social destruction--his very
+words--in this place of peace and happy homes? He don't blame Mrs.
+Champney for feeling as she does 'bout Aurora Googe. He said it was a
+shame that just as soon as Mrs. Champney had begun to sell off her lake
+shore lands so as her city relatives could build near her, Mrs. Googe
+must start up and balk all her plans by selling two hundred acres of old
+sheep pasture for the big quarry."
+
+"Humph!" It was the first sound that Octavius Buzzby had uttered since
+his entrance and general greeting. Hearing it his brother looked
+warningly in his direction, for he feared that the factional difference,
+which had come to the surface to breathe in his own and Elmer Wiggins'
+remarks, might find over-heated expression in the mouth of his twin if
+once Tave's ire should be aroused. But his brother gave no heed and,
+much to Augustus' relief, went off at a tangent.
+
+"I heard old Judge Champney talk on these things a good many times in
+his lifetime, an' he was wise, wiser'n any man here." He allowed himself
+this one thrust at Mr. Wiggins and the Colonel. "He used to say: 'Tavy,
+it's all in the natural course of things, and it's got to strike us here
+sometime; not in my time, but in my boy's. No man of us can say he owns
+God's earth, an' set up barriers an' fences, an' sometimes breastworks,
+an' holler "hands off" to every man that peeks over the wall, "this here
+is mine or that is ours!" because 't isn't in the natural order of
+things, and what isn't in the natural order isn't going to be, Tavy.'
+That's what the old Judge said to me more'n once."
+
+"He was right, Tavy, he was right," said Quimber eagerly and earnestly.
+"I can't argify, an' I can't convince; but I know he was right. I've
+lived most a generation longer'n any man here, an' I've seen a thing or
+two an' marked the way of nater jest like the Jedge. I've stood there
+where the Rothel comes down from The Gore in its spring freshet, rarin',
+tearin' down, bearin' stones an' rocks along with its current till it
+strikes the lowlands; then a racin' along, catchin' up turf an' mud an'
+sand, an' foamin' yaller an' brown acrost the medders, leavin' mud a
+quarter of an inch thick on the lowlands; and then a-rushin' into the
+lake ez if 't would turn the bottom upside down--an' jest look what
+happens! Stid of kickin' up a row all along the banks it jest ain't
+nowhere when you look for it! Only the lake riled for a few furlongs off
+shore an' kinder humpin' up in the middle. An' arter a day or two ye
+come back an' look agin, an' where's the rile? All settled to the
+bottom, an' the lake as clear as a looking-glass. An' then ye look at
+the medders an' ye see thet, barrin' a big boulder or two an' some stuns
+thet an ox-team can cart off, an' some gullyin' out long the highroad,
+they ain't been hurt a mite. An' then come 'long 'bout the fust of July,
+an' ye go out an' stan' there and look for the silt--an' what d' ye see?
+Why, jest thet ye're knee deep in clover an' timothy thet hez growed
+thet high an' lush jest on account of thet very silt!
+
+"Thet's the way 't is with nateral things; an' thet's what the old Jedge
+meant. This furrin flood's a-comin'; an' we've got to stan' some scares
+an' think mebbe The Gore dam'll bust, an' the boulders lay round too
+thick for the land, an' the mud'll spile our medders, an' the lake show
+rily so's the cattle won't drink--an' we'll find out thet in this great
+free home of our'n, thet's lent us for a while, thet there's room 'nough
+for all, an', in the end--not in my time, but in your'n--our Land, like
+the medders, is goin' to be the better for it."
+
+"Well put, well put, Quimber," said the Colonel who had been showing
+signs of restlessness under the unusual and protracted eloquence of the
+old pound-master. "We're making the experiment that every other nation
+has had to make some time or other. Take old Rome, now--what was it
+started the decay, eh?"
+
+As no one present dared to cope with the decline of so large a subject,
+the Colonel had the floor. He looked at each man in turn; then waved the
+hand that held his cigar airily towards the ceiling. "Just inbreeding,
+sir, inbreeding. That's what did it. We Americans, are profiting by the
+experience of the centuries and are going to take in fresh blood just as
+fast as it can attain to an arterial circulation in the body politic,
+sir; an arterial circulation, I say--" the Colonel was apt to roll a
+fine phrase more than once under his tongue when the sound thereof
+pleased him,--"and in the course of nature--I agree perfectly with the
+late Judge Champney and our friend, Quimber--there may be, during the
+process, a surcharge of blood to the head or stomach of the body politic
+that will cause a slight attack of governmental vertigo or national
+indigestion. But it will pass, gentlemen, it will pass; and I assure you
+the health of the Republic will be kept at the normal, with nothing more
+than passing attacks of racial hysteria which, however undignified they
+may appear in the eyes of all right-minded citizens, must ever remain
+the transient phenomena of a great nation in the making."
+
+The Colonel, having finished his peroration with another wave of his
+cigar towards the ceiling, lowered his feet from their elevated position
+on the counter, glanced anxiously at the clock, which indicated a
+quarter of nine, and remarked casually that, as Mrs. Caukins was
+indisposed, he felt under obligations to be at home by half-past nine.
+
+Joel Quimber, whom such outbursts of eloquence on the Colonel's part in
+the usual town-meeting left in a generally dazed condition of mind and
+politics, remarked that he heard the whistle of the evening train about
+fifteen minutes ago, and asked if Augustus were expecting any one up on
+it.
+
+"No, but the team's gone down to meet it just the same. Maybe there'll
+be a runner or two; they pay 'bout as well as the big guns after all;
+and then there's a chance of one of the syndicaters coming in on me at
+any time now.--There's the team."
+
+He went out on the veranda. The men within the office listened with
+intensified interest, strengthened by that curiosity which is shown by
+those in whose lives events do not crowd upon one another with such
+overwhelming force, that the susceptibility to fresh impressions is
+dulled. They heard the land-lord's cordial greeting, a confusion of
+sounds incident upon new arrivals; then Augustus Buzzby came in,
+carrying bags and travelling shawl, and, following him, a tall man in
+the garb of a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Close at his side was
+a little girl. She was far from appearing shy or awkward in the presence
+of strangers, nodding brightly to Octavius, who sat nearest the door,
+and smiling captivatingly upon Joel Quimber, whereupon he felt
+immediately in his pockets for a peppermint which, to his
+disappointment, was not there.
+
+The Colonel sprang to his feet when the guests entered, and quickly
+doffed his felt hat which was balancing in a seemingly untenable
+position on the side of his head. The priest, who removed his on the
+threshold, acknowledged the courtesy with a bow and a keen glance which
+included all in the room; then he stepped to the desk on the counter to
+enter his name in the ponderous leather-backed registry which Augustus
+opened for him. The little girl stood beside him, watching his every
+movement.
+
+The Flamstedites saw before them a man in the prime of life, possibly
+forty-five. He was fully six feet in height, noticeably erect, with an
+erectness that gave something of the martial to his carriage, spare but
+muscular, shoulders high and square set, and above them a face deeply
+pock-marked, the features large but regular, the forehead broad and
+bulging rather prominently above the eyes. The eyes they could not see;
+but the voice made itself heard, and felt, while he was writing. The men
+present unconsciously welcomed it as a personality.
+
+"Can you tell me if Mrs. Louis Champney lives near here?" he said,
+addressing his host.
+
+"Yes, sir; just about a mile down the street at The Bow."
+
+"Oh, please, yer Riverence, write mine too," said the child who, by
+standing on tiptoe at the high counter, had managed to follow every
+stroke of the pen.
+
+The priest looked at the landlord with a frankly interrogatory smile.
+
+"To be sure, to be sure. Ain't you my guest as long as you're in my
+home?" Augustus replied with such whole-souled heartiness that the child
+beamed upon him and boldly held out her hand for the pen.
+
+"Let me write it," she said decidedly, as if used to having her way.
+Colonel Caukins sprang to place a high three-legged stool for the little
+registree, and was about to lift her on, but the child, laughing aloud,
+managed to seat herself without his assistance, and forthwith gave her
+undivided attention to the entering of her name.
+
+Those present loved in after years to recall this scene: the old bar,
+the three-legged stool, the little girl perched on top, one foot twisted
+over the round--so busily intent upon making a fine signature that a tip
+of her tongue was visible held tightly against her left cheek--the
+coarse straw hat, the clean but cheap blue dress, the heavy shoes that
+emphasized the delicacy of her ankles and figure; and above her the
+leaning priest, smiling gravely with fatherly indulgence upon this
+firstling of his flock in Flamsted.
+
+[Illustration: "Those present loved in after years to recall this
+scene"]
+
+The child looked up for approval when she had finished and shaken, with
+an air of intense satisfaction, a considerable quantity of sand over the
+fresh ink. Evidently the look in the priest's eyes was reward enough,
+for, although he spoke no word, the little girl laughed merrily and in
+the next moment hopped down rather unexpectedly from her high place and
+busied herself with taking a survey of the office and its occupants.
+
+The priest took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Augustus,
+saying as he did so:
+
+"This is Mr. Buzzby, I know; and here is a letter from Mr. Van Ostend in
+regard to this little girl. Her arrival is premature; but the matron of
+the institution, where she has been, wished to take advantage of my
+coming to Flamsted to place her in my care. Mr. Van Ostend would like to
+have her remain here with you for a few days if Mrs. Champney is not
+prepared to receive her just now."
+
+There was a general movement of surprise among the men in the office,
+and all eyes, with a question-mark visible in them, were turned towards
+Octavius Buzzby. Upon him, the simple announcement had the effect of a
+shock; he felt the need of air, and slipped out to the veranda, but not
+before he received another bright smile from the little girl. He waited
+outside until he saw Augustus show the newcomers upstairs; then he
+re-entered the office and went to the register which was the speculative
+focus of interest for all the others. Octavius read:
+
+     June 18, 1889--FR. JOHN FRANCIS HONORÉ, NEW YORK. AILEEN ARMAGH,
+     ORPHAN ASYLUM, NEW YORK CITY.
+
+The Colonel was in a state of effervescing hilarity. He rubbed his hands
+energetically, slapped Octavius on the back, and exclaimed in high
+feather:
+
+"How's this for the first drops of the deluge, eh, Tave?"
+
+Octavius made no reply. He waited, as usual, for the evening's mail. The
+carrier handed him a telegram from New York for Mrs. Champney. It had
+just come up on the train from Hallsport. He wondered what connection
+its coming might have with the unexpected arrival of this orphan child?
+
+
+II
+
+On his way home Octavius Buzzby found himself wondering, as he had
+wondered many times before on occasion, how he could checkmate this
+latest and most unexpected move on the part of the mistress of
+Champ-au-Haut. His mind was perturbed and he realized, while making an
+effort to concentrate his attention on ways and means, that he had been
+giving much of his mental strength during the last twenty years to the
+search for ulterior motives on the part of Mrs. Louis Champney, a woman
+of sixty now, a Googe by birth (the Googes, through some genealogical
+necromancy, traced their descent from Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The name
+alone, not the blood, had, according to family tradition, suffered
+corruption with time), and the widow of Louis Champney, the late Judge
+Champney's only son.
+
+The Champneys had a double strain of French blood in their veins, Breton
+and Flemish; the latter furnished the collateral branch of the Van
+Ostends. This intermixture, flowing in the veins of men and women who
+were Americans by the birthright of more than two centuries' enjoyment
+of our country's institutions, had produced for several generations as
+fine a strain of brains and breeding as America can show.
+
+Louis Champney, the last of the line in direct descent, was looked upon
+from his boyhood up as the culmination of these centuries' flowering.
+When, at forty, he died without having fulfilled in any wise the great
+expectations of his townspeople and relations, the interest of the
+community, as well as of the family, centred in the prospects of Louis
+Champney Googe, his namesake, and nephew on his wife's side. Here,
+again, numerous family interests as well as communal speculations were
+disappointed. The Champney estate was left entire to the widow, Almeda
+Googe Champney, to dispose of as she might deem fit. Her powers of
+administratrix were untrammelled save in one respect: Octavius Buzzby
+was to remain in his position as factotum on the Champney estate and
+adviser for its interests.
+
+It was at this juncture, when Louis Champney died without remembering
+his nephew-in-law by so much as a book from his library and the boy was
+ten years old, that a crisis was discovered to be imminent in the
+fortunes of the Googe-Champney families, the many ramifications of which
+were intricately interwoven in the communal life of Flamsted. This
+crisis had not been averted; for Aurora Googe, the sister-in-law of Mrs.
+Champney and mother of young Champney, sold a part of her land in The
+Gore for the first granite quarry, and in so doing changed for all time
+the character and fortunes of the town of Flamsted.
+
+For many years Octavius Buzzby had championed openly and in secret the
+cause of Aurora Googe and her only son. To-night, while walking slowly
+homewards, he was pondering what attitude of mind he must assume, before
+he could deal adequately with the momentous event which had been
+foreshadowed from the moment he learned from the priest's lips that Mr.
+Van Ostend was implicated in the coming of this orphan child. He
+recalled that little Alice Van Ostend prattled much about this same
+child during the week she had spent recently with her father at
+Champ-au-Haut.
+
+Was the mistress of Champ-au-Haut going to adopt her?
+
+Almeda Champney had never wanted the blessing of a child, and, contrary
+to her young husband's wishes--he was her junior by twelve years--she
+had had her way. Her nature was so absorbingly tenacious of whatever
+held her narrow interests, that a child at Champ-au-Haut would have
+broken, in a measure, her domination of her weaker-willed husband,
+because it would have centred in itself his love and ambition to "keep
+up the name." That now, eleven years after Louis Champney's death, she
+should contemplate the introduction into her perfectly ordered household
+of a child, an alien, was a revelation of appalling moment to Octavius.
+He scouted the idea that she would enter the house as an assistant. None
+was needed; and, moreover, those small hands could accomplish little in
+the next ten years. She meant to adopt her then! An alien was to inherit
+the Champney property! Octavius actually shivered at the thought.
+
+Was it, could it be an act of spite against Aurora Googe? Was it a final
+answer to any expectations of her nephew, Champney Googe, her husband's
+namesake and favorite? Was this little alien waif to be made a catspaw
+for her revenge? She was capable of such a thing, was Almeda Champney.
+_He_ knew her; none better! Had not her will, thus far in her life, bent
+everything with which it had come in contact; crushed whatever had
+opposed it; broken irrevocably whosoever for a while had successfully
+resisted it?
+
+His thin lips drew to a straight line. All his manhood's strength of
+desire for fair play, a desire he had been fated to see unfulfilled
+during the last twenty years, rose in rebellion to champion the cause of
+the little newcomer who smiled on him so brightly in the office of The
+Greenbush. Nor did he falter in his resolution when he presented himself
+at the library door with the telegram in his hand.
+
+"Come in, Octavius; was there any mail?"
+
+"Only a telegram from New York." He handed it to her.
+
+She opened and read it; then laid it on the table. She removed her
+eyeglasses, for she had grown far-sighted with advancing years, in order
+to look at the back of the small man who was leaving the room. If he had
+seen the smile that accompanied the action, he might well have faltered
+in his resolution to champion any righteous cause on earth.
+
+"Wait a moment, Octavius."
+
+"Now it's coming!" he thought and faced her again; he was bracing
+himself mentally to meet the announcement.
+
+"Did you see the junk man at The Corners to-day about those shingle
+nails?"
+
+In the second of hesitation before replying, he had time inwardly to
+curse her. She was always letting him down in this way. It was a trick
+of hers when, to use his own expression, she had "something up her
+sleeve."
+
+"Yes; but he won't take them off our hands."
+
+"Why not?" She spoke sharply as was her way when she suspected any
+thwarting of her will or desire.
+
+"He says he won't give you your price for they ain't worth it. They
+ain't particular good for old iron anyway; most on 'em's rusty and
+crooked. You know they've been on the old coach house for good thirty
+years, and the Judge used to say--"
+
+"What will he give?"
+
+"A quarter of a cent a pound."
+
+"How many pounds are there?"
+
+"Fifty-two."
+
+"Fifty-two--hm-m; he sha'n't have them. They're worth a half a cent a
+pound if they're worth anything. You can store them in the workshop till
+somebody comes along that does want them, and will pay." He turned again
+to leave her.
+
+"Just a moment, Octavius." Once more he came back over the threshold.
+
+"Were there any arrivals at The Greenbush to-night?"
+
+"I judged so from the register."
+
+"Did you happen to see a girl there?"
+
+"I saw a child, a little girl, smallish and thin; a priest was with
+her."
+
+"A priest?" Mrs. Champney looked nonplussed for a moment and put on her
+glasses to cover her surprise. "Did you learn her name, the girl's?"
+
+"It was in the register, Aileen Armagh, from an orphan asylum in New
+York."
+
+"Then she's the one," she said in a musing tone but without the least
+expression of interest. She removed her glasses. Octavius took a step
+backwards. "A moment more, Octavius. I may as well speak of it now; I am
+only anticipating by a week or two, at the most, what, in any case, I
+should have told you. While Mr. Van Ostend was here, he enlisted my
+sympathy in this girl to such an extent that I decided to keep her for a
+few months on trial before making any permanent arrangement in regard to
+her. I want to judge of her capability to assist Ann and Hannah in the
+housework; Hannah is getting on in years. What do you think of her? How
+did she impress you? Now that I have decided to give her a trial, you
+may speak freely. You know I am guided many times by your judgment in
+such matters."
+
+Octavius Buzzby could have ground his teeth in impotent rage at this
+speech which, to his accustomed ears, rang false from beginning to end,
+yet was cloaked in terms intended to convey a compliment to himself.
+But, instead, he smiled the equivocal smile with which many a speech of
+like tenor had been greeted, and replied with marked earnestness:
+
+"I wouldn't advise you, Mrs. Champney, to count on much assistance from
+a slip of a thing like that. She's small, and don't look more 'n nine,
+and--"
+
+"She's over twelve," Mrs. Champney spoke decidedly; "and a girl of
+twelve ought to be able to help Ann and Hannah in some of their work."
+
+"Well, I ain't no judge of children as there's never been any of late
+years at Champo." He knew his speech was barbed. Mrs. Champney carefully
+adjusted her glasses to the thin bridge of her straight white nose. "And
+if there had been, I shouldn't want to say what they could do or what
+they couldn't at that age. Take Romanzo, now, he's old enough to work if
+you watch him; and now he's here I don't deny but what you had the
+rights of it 'bout my needing an assistant. He takes hold handy if you
+show him how, and is willing and steady. But two on 'em--I don't know;"
+he shook his head dubiously; "a growing boy and girl to feed and train
+and clothe--seems as if--" Octavius paused in the middle of his
+sentence. He knew his ground, or thought he knew it.
+
+"You said yourself she was small and thin, and I can give her work
+enough to offset her board. Of course, she will have to go to school,
+but the tuition is free; and if I pay school taxes, that are increasing
+every year, I might as well have the benefit of them, if I can, in my
+own household."
+
+There seemed no refutation needed to meet such an argument, and Octavius
+retreated another step towards the door.
+
+"A moment more, Octavius," she said blandly, for she knew he was longing
+to rid her of his presence; "Mr. Emlie has been here this evening and
+drawn up the deeds conveying my north shore property to the New York
+syndicate. Mr. Van Ostend has conducted all the negotiations at that
+end, and I have agreed to the erection of the granite sheds on those
+particular sites and to the extension of a railroad for the quarries
+around the head of the lake to The Corners. The syndicate are to control
+all the quarry interests, and Mr. Van Ostend says in a few years they
+will assume vast proportions, entailing an outlay of at least three
+millions. They say there is to be a large electric plant at The Corners,
+for the mill company have sold them the entire water power at the
+falls.--I hope Aurora is satisfied with what she has accomplished in so
+short a time. Champney, I suppose, comes home next month?"
+
+Octavius merely nodded, and withdrew in haste lest his indignation get
+the upper hand of his discretion. It behooved him to be discreet at this
+juncture; he must not injure Aurora Googe's cause, which he deemed as
+righteous a one as ever the sun shone upon, by any injudicious word that
+might avow his partisanship.
+
+Mrs. Champney smiled again when she saw his precipitous retreat. She had
+freighted every word with ill will, and knew how to raise his silent
+resentment to the boiling point. She rose and stepped quickly into the
+hall.
+
+"Tavy," she called after him as he was closing the door into the back
+passage. He turned to look at her; she stood in the full light of the
+hall-lamp. "Just a moment before you go. Did you happen to hear who the
+priest is who came with the girl?"
+
+"His name was in the ledger. The Colonel said he was a father--Father
+Honoré, I can't pronounce it, from New York."
+
+"Is he stopping at The Greenbush?"
+
+"He's put up there for to-night anyway."
+
+"I think I must see this priest; perhaps he can give me more detailed
+information about the girl. That's all."
+
+She went back into the library, closing the door after her. Octavius
+shut his; then, standing there in the dimly lighted passageway, he
+relieved himself by doubling both fists and shaking them vigorously at
+the panels of that same door, the while he simulated, first with one
+foot then with the other, a lively kick against the baseboard, muttering
+between his set teeth:
+
+"The devil if it's all, you devilly, divelly, screwy old--"
+
+The door opened suddenly. Simultaneously with its opening Octavius had
+sufficient presence of mind to blow out the light. He drew his breath
+short and fumbled in his pocket for matches.
+
+"Why, Tavy, you here!" (How well she knew that the familiar name "Tavy"
+was the last turn of the thumbscrew for this factotum of the Champneys!
+She never applied it unless she knew he was thoroughly worsted in the
+game between them.) "I was coming to find you; I forgot to say that you
+may go down to-morrow at nine and bring her up. I want to look her
+over."
+
+She closed the door. Octavius, without stopping to relight the lamp,
+hurried up to his room in the ell, fearful lest he be recalled a fifth
+time--a test of his powers of mental endurance to which he dared not
+submit in his present perturbed state.
+
+Mrs. Champney walked swiftly down the broad main hall, that ran through
+the house, to the door opening on the north terrace whence there was an
+unobstructed view up the three miles' length of Lake Mesantic to the
+Flamsted Hills; and just there, through a deep depression in their
+midst, the Rothel, a rushing brook, makes its way to the calm waters at
+their gates. At this point, where the hills separate like the opening
+sepals of a gigantic calyx, the rugged might of Katahdin heaves head and
+shoulder into the blue.
+
+The irregular margin of the lake is fringed with pines of magnificent
+growth. Here and there the shores rise into cliffs, seamed at the top
+and inset on the face with slim white lady birches, or jut far into the
+waters as rocky promontories sparsely wooded with fir and balsam spruce.
+
+Mrs. Champney stepped out upon the terrace. Her accustomed eyes looked
+upon this incomparable, native scene that was set in the full beauty of
+mid-summer's moonlight. She advanced to the broad stone steps, that
+descend to the level of the lake, and, folding her arms, her hands
+resting lightly upon them, stood immovable, looking northwards to the
+Flamsted Hills--looking, but not seeing; for her thoughts were leaping
+upwards to The Gore and its undeveloped resources; to Aurora Googe and
+the part she was playing in this transitional period of Flamsted's life;
+to the future years of industrial development and, in consequence, her
+own increasing revenues from the quarries. She had stipulated that
+evening that a clause, which would secure to her the rights of a first
+stockholder, should be inserted in the articles of conveyance.
+
+The income of eight thousand from the estate, as willed to her, had
+increased under her management, aided by her ability to drive a sharp
+bargain and the penuriousness which, according to Octavius, was capable
+of "making a cent squeal", to twelve thousand. The sale of her north
+shore lands would increase it another five thousand. Within a few years,
+according to Mr. Van Ostend--and she trusted him--her dividends from her
+stock would net her several thousands more. She was calculating, as she
+stood there gazing northwards, unseeing, into the serene night and the
+hill-peace that lay within it, how she could invest this increment for
+the coming years, and casting about in her mathematically inclined mind
+for means to make the most of it in interest per cent. She felt sure the
+future would show satisfactory results.--And after?
+
+That did not appeal to her.
+
+She unfolded her arms, and gathering her skirt in both hands went down
+the steps and took her stand on the lowest. She was still looking
+northwards. Her skirt slipped from her left hand which she raised half
+mechanically to let a single magnificent jewel, that guarded the plain
+circlet of gold on her fourth finger, flash in the moonlight. She held
+it raised so for a moment, watching the play of light from the facets.
+Suddenly she clinched her delicate fist spasmodically; shook it forcibly
+upwards towards the supreme strength of those silent hills, which, in
+comparison with the human three score and ten, may well be termed
+"everlasting", and, muttering fiercely under her breath, "_You_ shall
+never have a penny of it!", turned, went swiftly up the steps, and
+entered the house.
+
+
+III
+
+Had the mistress of Champ-au-Haut stood on the terrace a few minutes
+longer, she might have seen with those far-sighted eyes of hers a dark
+form passing quickly along the strip of highroad that showed white
+between the last houses at The Bow. It was Father Honoré. He walked
+rapidly along the highway that, skirting the base of the mountain,
+follows the large curve of the lake shore. Rapid as was the pace, the
+quickened eyes were seeing all about, around, above. In passing beneath
+a stretch of towering pines, he caught between their still indefinite
+foliage the gleam of the lake waters. He stopped short for a full minute
+to pommel his resonant chest; to breathe deep, deep breaths of the night
+balm. Then he proceeded on his way.
+
+That way led northwards along the lake shore; it skirted the talus that
+had fallen from the cliff which rose three hundred feet above him. He
+heard the sound of a rolling stone gathering in velocity among the
+rubble. He halted in order to listen; to trace, if possible, its course.
+The dull monotone of its rumbling rattle started a train of thought:
+perhaps his foot, treading the highway lightly, had caused the sensitive
+earth to tremble just sufficiently to jar the delicately poised stone
+and send it from its resting place! He went on. Thoughts not to be
+uttered crowded to the forefront of consciousness as he neared the cleft
+in the Flamsted Hills, whence the Rothel makes known to every wayfarer
+that it has come direct from the heart of The Gore, and brought with it
+the secrets of its granite veins.
+
+The road grew steeper; the man's pace did not slacken, but the straight
+back was bent at an angle which showed the priest had been accustomed to
+mountain climbing. In the leafy half-light, which is neither dawn nor
+twilight, but that reverential effulgence which is made by moonlight
+sifting finely through midsummer foliage, the Rothel murmured over its
+rocky bed; once, when in a deep pool its babble wholly ceased, an owl
+broke the silence with his "witti-hoo-hoo-hoo".
+
+Still upwards he kept his way and his pace until he emerged into the
+full moonlight of the heights. There he halted and looked about him. He
+was near the apex of The Gore. To the north, above the foreground of the
+sea of hilltops, loomed Katahdin. At his right, a pond, some five acres
+in extent, lay at the base of cliff-like rocks topped with a few
+primeval pines. Everywhere there were barren sheep pastures alternating
+with acres of stunted fir and hemlock, and in sheltered nooks, adjacent
+to these coverts, he could discern something which he judged to be stone
+sheepfolds. Just below him, on the opposite side of the road and the
+Rothel, which was crossed by a broad bridging of log and plank, stood a
+long low stone house, to the north of which a double row of firs had
+been planted for a windbreak. Behind him, on a rise of ground a few rods
+from the highway, was a large double house of brick with deep granite
+foundations and white granite window caps. Two shafts of the same stone
+supported the ample white-painted entrance porch. Ancestral elms
+over-leafed the roof on the southern side. One light shone from an upper
+window. Beyond the elms, a rough road led still upwards to the heights
+behind the house.
+
+The priest retraced his steps; turned into this road, for which the
+landlord of The Greenbush had given him minute instructions, and
+followed its rough way for an eighth of a mile; then a sudden turn
+around a shoulder of the hill--and the beginning of the famous Flamsted
+granite quarries lay before him, gleaming, sparkling in the moonlight--a
+snow-white, glistening patch on the barren hilltop. Near it were a few
+huts of turf and stone for the accommodation of the quarrymen. This was
+all. But it was the scene, self-chosen, of this priest's future labors;
+and while he looked upon it, thoughts unutterable crowded fast, too fast
+for the brain already stimulated by the time and environment. He turned
+about; retraced his steps at the same rapid pace; passed again up the
+highroad to the head of The Gore, then around it, across a barren
+pasture, and climbed the cliff-like rock that was crowned by the ancient
+pines. He stood there erect, his head thrown back, his forehead to the
+radiant heavens, his eyes fixed on the pale twinklings of the seven
+stars in the northernmost constellation of the Bear--rapt, caught away
+in spirit by the intensity of feeling engendered by the hour, the place.
+Then he knelt, bowing his head on a lichened rock, and unto his Maker,
+and the Maker of that humanity he had elected to serve, he consecrated
+himself anew.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards, he was coming down The Gore on his way back to
+The Greenbush. He heard the agitated ringing of a bell-wether; then the
+soft huddling rush of a flock of sheep somewhere in the distance. A
+sheep dog barked sharply; a hound bayed in answer till the hills north
+of The Gore gave back a multiple echo; but the Rothel kept its secrets,
+and with inarticulate murmuring made haste to deposit them in the quiet
+lake waters.
+
+
+IV
+
+"But, mother--"
+
+There was an intonation in the protest that hinted at some irritation.
+Champney Googe emptied his pipe on the grass and knocked it clean
+against the porch rail before he continued.
+
+"Won't it make a lot of talk? Of course, I can see your side of it; it's
+hospitable and neighborly and all that, to give the priest his meals for
+a while, but,--" he hesitated, and his mother answered his thought.
+
+"A little talk more or less after all there has been about the quarry
+won't do any harm, and I'm used to it." She spoke with some bitterness.
+
+"It _has_ stirred up a hornet's nest about your ears, that's a fact. How
+does Aunt Meda take this latest move? Meat-axey as usual? I didn't see
+her when I went there yesterday; she's in Hallsport for two days on
+business, so Tave says."
+
+His mother smiled. "I haven't seen her since the sale was concluded, but
+I hear she has strengthened the opposition in consequence. I get my
+information from Mrs. Caukins."
+
+At the mention of that name Champney laughed out. "Good authority,
+mother. I must run over and see her to-night. Well, we don't care, do
+we? I mean about the feeling. Mother, I just wish you were a man for one
+minute."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I'd like to go up to you, man fashion, grip your hand, slap you
+on the back, and shout 'By Jove, old man, you've made a deal that would
+turn the sunny side of Wall Street green with envy!' How did you do it,
+mother? And without a lawyer! I'll bet Emlie is mad because he didn't
+get a chance to put his finger in your pie."
+
+"I was thinking of you, of your future, and how you have been used by
+Almeda Champney; and that gave me the confidence, almost the push of a
+man--and I dealt with them as a man with men; but I felt unsexed in
+doing it. I've wondered what they think of me."
+
+"Think of you! I can tell you what one man thinks of you, and that's Mr.
+Van Ostend. I had a note from him at the time of the sale asking me to
+come to his office, an affidavit was necessary, and I found he had had
+eyes in his head for the most beautiful woman in the world--"
+
+"Champney!"
+
+"Fact; and, what's more, I got an invitation to his house on the
+strength of his recognition of that fact. I dined with him there; his
+sister is a stunning girl."
+
+"I'm glad such homes are open to you; it is your right and--it
+compensates."
+
+"For what, mother?"
+
+"Oh, a good many things. How do they live?"
+
+"The Van Ostends?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Champney Googe hugged his knees and rocked back and forth on the step
+before he answered. His merry face seemed to lengthen in feature, to
+harden in line. His mother left her chair and sewing to sit down on the
+step beside him. She looked up inquiringly.
+
+"Just as _I_ mean to live sometime, mother,"--his fresh young voice rang
+determined and almost hard; his mother's eyes kindled;--"in a way that
+expresses Life--as you and I understand it, and don't live it, mother;
+as you and I have conceived of it while up here among these sheep
+pastures." He glanced inimically for a moment at the barren slopes above
+them. "I have you to thank for making me comprehend the difference." He
+continued the rocking movement for a while, his hands still clasping his
+knees. Then he went on:
+
+"As for his home on the Avenue, there isn't its like in the city, and as
+a storehouse of the best in art it hasn't its equal in the country; it's
+just perfect from picture gallery to billiard room. As for adjuncts,
+there's a shooting box and a _bona fide_ castle in the Scottish
+Highlands, a cottage at Bar Harbor with the accessory of a steam yacht,
+and a racing stud on a Long Island farm. As a financier he's great!"
+
+He sat up straight, and freely used his fists, first on one knee then on
+the other, to emphasize his words; "His right hand is on one great lever
+of interstate traffic, his left on the other of foreign trade, and two
+continents obey his manipulations. His eye exacts trained efficiency
+from thousands; his word is a world event; Wall Street is his automaton.
+Oh, the power of it all! I can't wait to get out into the stream,
+mother! I'm only hugging the shore at present; that's what has made me
+kick against this last year in college; it has been lost time, for I
+want to get rich quick."
+
+His mother laid her hand on his knee. "No, Champney, it's not lost time;
+it's one of your assets as a gentleman."
+
+He looked up at her, his blue eyes smiling into her dark ones.
+
+"I can be a gentleman all right without that asset; you said father
+didn't go."
+
+"No, but the man for whom you are named went, and he told me once a
+college education was a 'gentleman's asset.' That expression was his."
+
+"Well, I don't see that the asset did him much good. It didn't seem to
+discount his liabilities in other ways. Queer, how Uncle Louis went to
+seed--I mean, didn't amount to anything along any business or
+professional line. Only last spring I met the father of a second-year
+man who remembers Uncle Louis well, said he was a classmate of his. He
+told me he was banner man every time and no end popular; the others
+didn't have a show with him."
+
+His mother was silent. Champney, apparently unheeding her
+unresponsiveness, rose quickly, shook himself together, and suddenly
+burst into a mighty laughter that is best comparable to the
+inextinguishable species of the blessed gods. He laughed in arpeggios,
+peal on peal, crescendo and diminuendo, until, finally, he flung himself
+down on the short turf and in his merriment rolled over and over. He
+brought himself right side up at last, tears in his eyes and a sigh of
+satisfying exhaustion on his lips. To his mother's laughing query:
+
+"What is it now, Champney?" He shook his head as if words failed him;
+then he said huskily:
+
+"It's Aunt Meda's _protégée_. Oh, Great Scott! She'll be the death by
+shock of some of the Champo people if she stays another three months. I
+hear Aunt Meda has had her Waterloo. Tavy buttonholed me out in the
+carriage house yesterday, and told me the whole thing--oh, but it's
+rich!" He chuckled again. "He got me to feel his vest; says he can lap
+it three inches already and she has only been here two weeks; and as
+for Romanzo, he's neither to have nor to hold when the girl's in
+sight--wits topsy-turvy, actually, oh, Lord!"--he rolled over again on
+the grass--"what do you think, mother! She got Roman to scour down
+Jim--you know, the white cart-horse, the Percheron--with Hannah's
+cleaning powder, and the girl helped him, and together they got one side
+done and then waited for it to dry to see how it worked. Result: Tave
+dead ashamed to drive him in the cart for fear some one will see the
+yellow-white calico-circus horse, that the two rapscallions have left on
+his hands, and doesn't want Aunt Meda to know it for fear she'll turn
+down Roman. He says he's going to put Jim out to grass in the Colonel's
+back sheep pasture, and when Aunt Meda comes home lie about sudden
+spavin or something. And the joke of it is Roman takes it all as a part
+of the play, and has owned up to Tave that, by mistake, he blacked Aunt
+Meda's walking boots, before she went to Hallsport, with axle grease,
+while the girl was 'telling novels' to him! Tave said Roman told him she
+knew a lot of the nobility, marchionesses and 'sich'; and now Roman
+struts around cocksure, high and mighty as if he'd just been made
+K.C.B., and there's no getting any steady work out of him. You should
+have seen Tave's face when he was telling me!"
+
+His mother laughed. "I can imagine it; he's worried over this new move
+of Almeda's. I confess it puzzles me."
+
+"Well, I'm off to see some of the fun--and the girl. Tave said he didn't
+expect Aunt Meda before to-morrow night, and it's a good time for me to
+rubber round the old place a little on my own hook;--and, mother,"--he
+stooped to her; Aurora Googe raised her still beautiful eyes to the
+frank if somewhat hard blue ones that looked down into hers; a fine
+color mounted into her cheeks,--"take the priest for his meals, for all
+me. It's an invasion, but, of course, I recognize that we're responsible
+for it on account of the quarry business. I suppose we shall have to
+make some concessions to all classes till we get away from here for good
+and all--then we'll have our fling, won't we, mother?"
+
+He was off without waiting for a reply. Aurora Googe watched him out of
+sight, then turned to her work, the flush still upon her cheeks.
+
+
+V
+
+Champney leaned on the gate of the paddock at Champ-au-Haut and looked
+about him. The estate at The Bow had been familiar to him throughout his
+childhood and boyhood. He had been over every foot of it, and at all
+seasons, with his Uncle Louis. He was realizing that it had never seemed
+more beautiful to him than now, seen in the warm light of a July sunset.
+In the garden pleasance, that sloped to the lake, the roses and lilies
+planted there a generation ago still bloomed and flourished, and in the
+elm-shaded paddock, on the gate of which he was leaning, filly and foal
+could trace their pedigree to the sixth and seventh generation of
+deep-chested, clean-flanked ancestors.
+
+The young man comprehended in part only, the reason of his mother's
+extreme bitterness towards Almeda Champney. His uncle had loved him; had
+kept him with him much of the time, encouraging him in his boyish aims
+and ambitions which his mother fostered--and Louis Champney was
+childless, the last in direct descent of a long line of fine
+ancestors--.
+
+Here his thought was checked; those ancestors were his, only in a
+generation far removed; the Champney blood was in his mother's veins.
+But his father was Almeda Champney's only brother--why then, should not
+his mother count on the estate being his in the end? He knew this to
+have been her hope, although she had never expressed it. He had gained
+an indefinite knowledge of it through old Joel Quimber and Elmer Wiggins
+and Mrs. Milton Caukins, a distant relative of his father's. To be sure,
+Louis Champney might have left him his hunting-piece, which as a boy he
+had coveted, just for the sake of his name--
+
+He stopped short in his speculations for he heard voices in the lane.
+The cows were entering it and coming up to the milking shed. The lane
+led up from the low-lying lake meadows, knee deep with timothy and
+clover, and was fenced on both sides from the apple orchards which
+arched and overshadowed its entire length. The sturdy over-reaching
+boughs hung heavy with myriads of green balls. Now and then one dropped
+noiselessly on the thick turf in the lane, and a noble Holstein mother,
+ebony banded with ivory white, her swollen cream-colored bag and
+dark-blotched teats flushed through and through by the delicate rose of
+a perfectly healthy skin, lowered her meek head and, snuffing largely,
+caught sideways as she passed at the enticing green round.
+
+At the end of this lane there swung into view a tall loose-jointed
+figure which the low strong July sunshine threw into bold relief. It was
+Romanzo Caukins, one of the Colonel's numerous family, a boy of sixteen
+who had been bound out recently to the mistress of Champ-au-Haut upon
+agreement of bed, board, clothes, three terms of "schooling" yearly, and
+the addition of thirty dollars to be paid annually to the Colonel.
+
+The payment of this amount, by express stipulation, was to be made at
+the end of each year until Romanzo should come into his majority. By
+this arrangement, Mrs. Champney assured to herself the interest on the
+aforesaid thirty dollars, and congratulated herself on the fact that
+such increment might be credited to Milton Caukins as a minus quantity.
+
+Champney leaped the bars and went down the lane to meet him.
+
+"Hello, Roman, how are you?"
+
+The boy's honest blue eyes, that seemed always to be looking forward in
+a chronic state of expectancy for the unexpected, beamed with goodness
+and goodwill. He wiped his hands on his overalls and clasped Champney's.
+
+"Hullo, Champ, when'd you come?"
+
+"Only yesterday. I didn't see you about when I was here in the
+afternoon. How do you like your job?"
+
+The youth made an uncouth but expressive sign towards the milk shed.
+"Sh--Tave'll hear you. He and I ain't been just on good terms lately;
+but 'tain't my fault," he added doggedly.
+
+At that moment a clear childish voice called from somewhere below the
+lane:
+
+"Romanzo--Romanzo!"
+
+The boy started guiltily. "I've got to go, Champ; she wants me."
+
+Champney seized him with a strong hand by the suspenders. "Here, hold
+on! Who, you gump?"
+
+"The girl--le' me go." But Champney gripped him fast.
+
+"No, you don't, Roman; let her yell."
+
+"Ro--man--zo-o-o-o!" The range of this peremptory call was two octaves
+at least.
+
+"By gum--she's up to something, and Tave won't stand any more
+fooling--le' me go!" He writhed in the strong grasp.
+
+"I won't either. I haven't been half-back on our team for nothing; so
+stand still." And Romanzo stood still, perforce.
+
+Another minute and Aileen came running up the lane. She was wearing the
+same heavy shoes, the same dark blue cotton dress, half covered now with
+a gingham apron--Mrs. Champney had not deemed it expedient to furnish a
+wardrobe until the probation period should have decided her for or
+against keeping the child. She was bareheaded, her face flushed with the
+heat and her violent exercise. She stopped short at a little distance
+from them so soon as she saw that Romanzo was not alone. She tossed back
+her braid and stamped her foot to emphasize her words:
+
+"Why didn't yer come, Romanzo Caukins, when I cried ter yer!"
+
+"'Coz I couldn't; he wouldn't let me." He spoke anxiously, making signs
+towards the shed. But Aileen ignored them; ignored, also, the fact that
+any one was present besides her slave.
+
+Champney answered for himself. He promptly bared his head and advanced
+to shake hands; but Aileen jerked hers behind her.
+
+"I'm Mr. Champney Googe, at your service. Who are you?"
+
+The little girl was sizing him up before she accepted the advance;
+Champney could tell by the "East-side" look with which she favored him.
+
+"I'm Miss Aileen Armagh, and don't yer forget it!--at your service." She
+mimicked him so perfectly that Champney chuckled and Romanzo doubled up
+in silent glee.
+
+"I sha'n't be apt to, thank you. Come, let's shake hands, Miss Aileen
+Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, for we've got to be friends if you're to
+stay here with my aunt." He held out both hands. But the little girl
+kept her own obstinately behind her and backed away from him.
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"'Coz they're all stuck up with spruce gum and Octavius said nothing
+would take it off but grease, and--" she turned suddenly upon Romanzo,
+blazing out upon him in her wrath--"I hollered ter yer so's yer could
+get some for me from Hannah, and you was just dirt mean not to answer
+me."
+
+"Champ wouldn't let me go," said Romanzo sulkily; "besides, I dassn't
+ask Hannah, not since I used the harness cloth she gave to clean down
+Jim."
+
+"Yer 'dassn't!' Fore I'd be a boy and say 'I dassn't!'" There was
+inexpressible scorn in her voice. She turned to Champney, her eyes
+brimming with mischief and flashing a challenge:
+
+"And yer dassn't shake hands with me 'coz mine are all stuck up, so
+now!"
+
+Champney had not anticipated this _pronunciamento_, but he accepted the
+challenge on the instant. "Dare not! You can't say that to me! Here,
+give me your hands." Again he held out his shapely well-kept members,
+and Aileen with a merry laugh brought her grimy sticky little paws into
+view and, without a word, laid them in Champney's palms. He held them
+close, purposely, that they might adhere and provide him with some fun;
+then, breaking into his gay laugh he said:
+
+"Clear out, Roman; Tave 'll be looking for the milk pails. As for you,
+Miss Aileen Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, you can't pull away from me
+now. So, come on, and we'll get Hannah to give us some lard and then
+we'll go down to the boat house where it is cool and cleanup. Come on!"
+
+Holding her by both hands he raced her down the long lane, through the
+vegetable garden, all chassez, down the middle, swing your
+partner--Aileen wild with the fun--up the slate-laid kitchen walk to the
+kitchen door. His own laughter and the child's, happy, merry, care-free,
+rang out peal on peal till Ann and Hannah and Octavius paused in their
+work to listen, and wished that such music might have been heard often
+during their long years of faithful service in childless Champ-au-Haut.
+
+"I hear you are acquainted with some of the nobility, marchionesses and
+so forth," said Champney; the two were sitting in the shadow of the boat
+house cleaning their fingers with the lard Hannah had provided. "Where
+did you make their acquaintance?"
+
+Aileen paused in the act of sliding her greasy hands rapidly over and
+over in each other, an occupation which afforded her unmixed delight, to
+look up at him in amazement. "How did yer know anything 'bout her?"
+
+"Oh, I heard."
+
+"Did Romanzo Caukins tell yer?" she demanded, as usual on the defensive.
+
+"No, oh no; it was only hearsay. Do tell me about her. We don't have any
+round here."
+
+Aileen giggled and resumed the rapid rotary motion of her still unwashed
+hands. "If I tell yer 'bout her, yer'll tell her I told yer. P'raps
+sometime, if yer ever go to New York, yer might see her; and she
+wouldn't like it."
+
+"How do you know but what I have seen her? I've just come from there."
+
+Aileen looked her surprise again. "That's queer, for I've just landed
+from New York meself."
+
+"So I understood; does the marchioness live there too?"
+
+She shook her head. "I ain't going to tell yer; but I'll tell yer 'bout
+some others I know."
+
+"That live in New York?"
+
+"Wot yer giving me?" She laughed merrily; "they live where the Dagos
+live, in Italy, yer know, and--"
+
+"Italy? What are they doing over there?"
+
+"--And--just yer wait till I'll tell yer--they live on an island in a
+be-ee-u-tiful lake, like this;" she looked approvingly at the liquid
+mirror that reflected in its rippleless depths the mountain shadow and
+sunset gold; "and they live in great marble houses, palaces, yer know,
+and flower gardens, and wear nothing but silks and velvet and pearls,
+ropes,--yer mind?--ropes of 'em; and the lords and ladies have concerts,
+yer know, better 'n in the thayertre--"
+
+"What do you know about the theatre?" Champney was genuinely surprised;
+"I thought you came from an orphan asylum."
+
+"Yer did, did yer!" There was scorn in her voice. "Wot do I know 'bout
+the thayertre?--Oh, but yer green!" She broke into another merry laugh
+which, together with the patronage of her words and certain unsavory
+memories of his own, nettled Champney more than he would have cared to
+acknowledge.
+
+"Better 'n the thayertre," she repeated emphatically; "and the lords
+serenade the ladies--Do yer know wot a serenade is?" She interrupted
+herself to ask the question with a strong doubt in the interrogation.
+
+"I've heard of 'em," said Champney meekly; "but I don't think I've ever
+seen one."
+
+"I'll tell yer 'bout 'em. The lords have guitars and go out in the
+moonlight and stand under the ladies' windys and play, and the ladies
+make believe they haven't heard; then they look up all round at the moon
+and sigh _awful_,--" she sighed in sympathy,--"and then the lords begin
+to sing and tell 'em they love 'em and can't live without a--a token.
+I'll bet yer don't know wot that is?"
+
+"No, of course I don't; I'm not a lord, and I don't live in Italy."
+
+"Well, I'll tell yer." Her tone was one of relenting indulgence for his
+ignorance. "Sometimes it's a bow that they make out of the ribbon their
+dresses is trimmed with, and sometimes it's a flower, a rose, yer know;
+and the lord sings again--can yer sing?"
+
+Her companion repressed a smile. "I can manage a tune or two at a
+pinch."
+
+"And the lady comes out on the balcony and leans over--like this, yer
+know;" she jumped up and leaned over the rail of the float, keeping her
+hands well in front of her to save her apron; "and she listens and keeps
+looking, and when he sings he's going to die because he loves her so,
+she throws the token down to him to let him know he mustn't die 'coz she
+loves him too; and he catches it, the rose, yer know, and smells it and
+then he kisses it and squeezes it against his heart--" she forgot her
+greasy hands in the rapture of this imaginative flight, and pressed them
+theatrically over her gingham apron beneath which her own little organ
+was pulsing quick with the excitement of this telling moment; "--and
+then the moon shines just as bright as silver and--and she marries him."
+
+She drew a deep breath. During the recital she had lost herself in the
+personating of the favorite characters from her one novel. While she
+stood there looking out on the lake and the Flamsted Hills with eyes
+that were still seeing the gardens and marble terraces of Isola Bella,
+Champney Googe had time to fix that picture on his mental retina and,
+recalling it in after years, knew that the impression was "more lasting
+than bronze."
+
+She came rather suddenly to herself when she grew aware of her larded
+hands pressed against her clean apron.
+
+"Oh, gracious, but I'll catch it!" she exclaimed ruefully. "Wot'll I do
+now? She said I'd got to keep it clean till she got back, and she'll
+fire me and--and I want to stay awful; it's just like the story, yer
+know." She raised her gray eyes appealingly to his, and he saw at once
+that her childish fear was real. He comforted her.
+
+"I'll tell you what: we'll go back to Hannah and she'll fix it for you;
+and if it's spoiled I'll go down and get some like it in the village and
+my mother will make you a new one. So, cheer up, Miss Aileen Armagh
+and-don't-yer-forget-it! And to-morrow evening, if the moon is out,
+we'll have a serenade all by ourselves; what do you say to that?"
+
+"D' yer mane it?" she demanded, half breathless in her earnestness.
+
+He nodded.
+
+Aileen clapped her hands and began to dance; then she stopped suddenly
+to say: "I ain't going to dance for yer now; but I will sometime," she
+added graciously. "I've got to go now and help Ann. What time are yer
+coming for the serenade?"
+
+"I'll be here about eight; the moon will be out by then and we must have
+a moon."
+
+She started away on the run, beckoning to him with her unwashed hands:
+"Come on, then, till I show yer my windy. It's the little one over the
+dining-room. There ain't a balcony, but--see there! there's the top of
+the bay windy and I can lean out--why didn't yer tell me yer could play
+the guitar?"
+
+"Because I can't."
+
+"A harp, belike?"
+
+"No; guess again."
+
+"Yer no good;--but yer'll come?"
+
+"Shurre; an' more be token it's at eight 'o the clock Oi'll be under yer
+windy." He gave the accent with such Celtic gusto that the little girl
+was captivated.
+
+"Ain't you a corker!" she said admiringly and, waving her hand again to
+him, ran to the house. Champney followed more slowly to lay the case
+before Ann and Hannah.
+
+On his way homeward he found himself wondering if he had ever seen the
+child before. As she leaned on the rail and looked out over the lake, a
+certain grace of attitude, which the coarse clothing failed to conceal,
+the rapt expression in the eyes, the _timbre_ of her voice, all awakened
+a dim certainty that he had seen her before at some time and place
+distinctly unusual; but where? He turned the search-light of
+concentrated thought upon his comings and goings and doings during the
+last year and more. Where had he seen just such a child?
+
+He looked up from the roadway, on which his eyes had been fixed while
+his absent thought was making back tracks over the last twelve months,
+and saw before him the high pastures of The Gore. In the long afterglow
+of the July sunset they enamelled the barren heights with a rich,
+yellowish green. In a flash it came to him: "The green hill far away
+without a city wall"; the child singing on the vaudeville stage; the
+hush in the audience. He smiled to himself. He was experiencing that
+satisfaction which is common to all who have run down the quarry of a
+long-hunted recollection.
+
+"She's the very one," he said to himself; "I wonder if Aunt Meda
+knows."
+
+
+VI
+
+That which proves momentous in our lives is rarely anticipated, seldom
+calculated. Its factors are for the most part unknown quantities; if not
+prime in themselves they are, at least, prime to each other. It cannot
+be measured in terms of time, for often it lies between two infinities.
+But the momentous decision, event, action, which reacts upon the life of
+a man or woman and influences that life so long as it is lived here on
+earth, is on the surface sufficiently finite for us to say: It was on
+such a day I made my decision; to such and such an event I can look back
+as the cause of all that has followed. The How thereof remains traceable
+to our purblind eyes for a month, a term of years, one generation,
+possibly two; the Where and When can generally be defined; but the _Why_
+we ask blindly, and are rarely answered satisfactorily.
+
+Had young Googe been told, while he was walking homewards up The Gore,
+that his life line, like the antenna of the wireless, was even then the
+recipient and transmitter of multiple influences that had been, as it
+were, latent in the storage batteries of a generation; that what he was
+to be in the future was at this very hour in germ for development, he
+would have scouted the idea. His young self-sufficiency would have
+laughed the teller to scorn. He would have maintained as a man his
+mastership of his fate and fortunes, and whistled as carelessly as he
+whistled now for the puppy, an Irish terrier which he had brought home
+with him, for training, to come and meet him.
+
+And the puppy, whose name was Ragamuffin and called Rag for short, came
+duly, unknowing, like his young master, to meet his fate. He wriggled
+broad-side down the walk as a puppy will in his first joy till,
+overpowered by his emotions, he rolled over on his back at Champney's
+feet, the fringes of his four legs waving madly in air.
+
+"Champney, I'm waiting for you." It was his mother calling from the
+door. He ran in through the kitchen, and hurried to make himself
+presentable for the table and their guest whom he saw on the front
+porch.
+
+As he entered the dining-room, his mother introduced him: "Father
+Honoré, my son, Champney."
+
+The two men shook hands, and Mrs. Googe took her seat. The priest bowed
+his head momentarily to make the sign of the cross. Champney Googe shot
+one keen, amazed look in his direction. When that head was lifted
+Champney "opened fire," so he termed it to himself.
+
+"I think I've seen you before, sir." It was hard for him to give the
+title "Father." "I got in your way, didn't I, at the theatre one evening
+over a year ago?"
+
+His mother looked at him in amazement and something of anxiety. Was her
+son in his prejudice forgetting himself?
+
+"Indeed, I think it was the other way round, I was in your way, for I
+remember thinking when you ran up against me 'that young fellow has been
+half-back on a football team.'"
+
+Champney laughed. There was no withstanding this man's voice and the
+veiled humor of his introductory remarks.
+
+"Did I hit hard? I didn't think for a moment that you would recognize
+me; but I knew you as soon as mother introduced us. I see by your face,
+mother, that you need enlightening. It was only that I met Father
+Honoré"--he brought that out with no hesitation--"at the entrance to one
+of the New York theatres over a year ago, and in the crowd nearly ran
+him down. No wonder, sir, you sized me up by the pressure as a football
+fiend. That's rich!" His merry laugh reassured his mother; she turned to
+Father Honoré.
+
+"I don't know whether all my son's acquaintances are made at the theatre
+or not, but it is a coincidence that the other day he happened to
+mention the fact that the first time he saw Mr. Van Ostend he saw him
+there."
+
+"It's my strong impression, Mrs. Googe, that Mr. Googe saw us both at
+the same place, at the same time. Mr. Van Ostend spoke to me of your son
+just a few days before I left New York."
+
+"Did he?" Champney's eager blue eyes sought the priest's. "Do you know
+him well?"
+
+"As we all know him through his place in the world of affairs.
+Personally I have met him only a few times. You may know, perhaps, that
+he was instrumental in placing little Aileen Armagh, the orphan
+child,--you know whom I mean?--at Mrs. Champney's, your aunt, Mrs. Googe
+tells me."
+
+"I was just going to ask you if you would be willing to tell us
+something about her," said Mrs. Googe. "I've not seen her, but from all
+I hear she is a most unusual child, most interesting--"
+
+"Interesting, mother!" Champney interrupted her rather explosively;
+"she's unique, the only and ever Aileen Armagh." He turned again to
+Father Honoré. "Do tell us about her; I've been so blockheaded I
+couldn't put two and two together, but I'm beginning to see daylight at
+last. I made her acquaintance this afternoon. That's why I was a little
+late, mother."
+
+How we tell, even the best of us, with reserves! Father Honoré told of
+his interest being roused, as well as his suspicions, by the wording of
+the poster, and of his determination to see for himself to what extent
+the child was being exploited. But of the thought-lever, the "Little
+Trout", that raised that interest, he made no mention; nor, indeed, was
+it necessary.
+
+"You see there is a class of foreigners on the East side that receive
+commissions for exploiting precocious children on the stage; they are
+very clever in evading the law. The children themselves are helpless. I
+had looked up a good many cases before this because it was in my line of
+work, and in this particular one I found that the child had been
+orphaned in Ireland almost from her birth; that an aunt, without
+relatives, had emigrated with her only a few months before I saw her on
+the stage, and the two had lived in an east side tenement with an old
+Italian. The child's aunt, a young woman about twenty-eight, developed
+quick consumption during the winter and died in the care of the Italian,
+Nonna Lisa they call her. This woman cared for the little girl, and
+began to take her out with her early in March on the avenues and streets
+of the upper west side. The old woman is an itinerant musician and plays
+the guitar with real feeling--I've heard her--and, by the way, makes a
+decent little living of her own. She found that Aileen had a good voice
+and could sing several Irish songs. She learned the accompaniments, and
+the two led, so far as I can discover, a delightful life of vagabondage
+for several weeks. It seems the old Italian has a grandson, Luigi, who
+sings in vaudeville with a travelling troop. He was in the west and
+south during the entire time that Aileen was with his grandmother; and
+through her letters he learned of the little girl's voice. He spoke of
+this to his manager, and he communicated with the manager of a Broadway
+vaudeville--they are both in the vaudeville trust--and asked him to
+engage her, and retain her for the troop when they should start on their
+annual autumn tour. But Nonna Lisa was shrewd.--It's wonderful, Mrs.
+Googe, how quickly they develop the sixth sense of cautious speculation
+after landing! She made a contract for six weeks only, hoping to raise
+her price in the autumn. So I found that the child was not being
+exploited, except legitimately, by the old Italian who was caring for
+her and guarding her from all contamination. But, of course, that could
+not go on, and I had the little girl placed in the orphan asylum on
+----nd Street--" He interrupted himself to say half apologetically:
+
+"I am prolix, I fear, but I am hoping you will be personally interested
+in this child whose future life will, I trust, be spent here far away
+from the metropolitan snares. I am sure she is worth your interest."
+
+"I know she is," said Champney emphatically; "and the more we know of
+her the better. You'll laugh at my experience when you have heard it;
+but first let us have the whole of yours."
+
+"You know, of course, where Mr. Van Ostend lives?" Champney nodded. "Did
+you happen to notice the orphan asylum just opposite on ----nd Street?"
+
+"No; I don't recall any building of that sort."
+
+He smiled. "Probably not; that is not in your line and we men are apt to
+see only what is in the line of our working vision. It seems that Mr.
+Van Ostend has a little girl--"
+
+"I know, that's the Alice I told you of, mother; did you see her when
+she was here last month?"
+
+"No; I only met Mr. Van Ostend on business. You were saying--?" She
+addressed Father Honoré.
+
+"His little daughter told him so much about two orphan children, with
+whom she had managed to have a kind of across-street-and-window
+acquaintance, that he proposed to her to have the children over for
+Christmas luncheon. The moment he saw Aileen, he recognized in her the
+child on the vaudeville stage to whom he had given the flowers--You
+remember that incident?"
+
+"Don't I though!"
+
+"--Because she had sung his wife's favorite hymn. He was thoroughly
+interested in the child after seeing her, so to say, at close range, and
+took the first opportunity to speak with the Sister Superior in regard
+to finding for her a suitable and permanent home. The Sister Superior
+referred him to me. As you know, he came to Flamsted recently with this
+same little daughter; and the child talked so much and told so many
+amusing things about Aileen to Mrs. Champney, that Mr. Van Ostend saw at
+once this was an opportunity to further his plans, although he confided
+to me his surprise that his cousin, Mrs. Champney, should be willing to
+have so immature a child, in her house. Directly on getting home, he
+telephoned to me that he had found a home for her with a relation of his
+in Flamsted. You may judge of my surprise and pleasure, for I had
+received the appointment to this place and the work among the quarrymen
+only a month before. This is how the little girl happened to come up
+with me. I hear she is making friends."
+
+"She can't help making them, and a good deal more besides; for Romanzo
+Caukins, our neighbor's son, and Octavius Buzzby, my aunt's _chargé
+d'affaires_, are at the present time her abject slaves," said Champney,
+rising from the table at a signal from his mother. "Let's go out on the
+porch, and I'll tell you of the fun I've had with her--poor Roman!" He
+shook his head and chuckled.
+
+He stepped into the living-room as he passed through the hall and
+reached for his pipe in a rack above the mantel. "Do you smoke," he
+asked half-hesitatingly, but with an excess of courtesy in his voice as
+if he were apologizing for asking such a question.
+
+"Sometimes; a pipe, if you please." He held out his hand; Champney
+handed him a sweetbrier and a tobacco pouch. "You permit, Madam?" He
+spoke with old world courtesy. Aurora Googe smiled permission. She saw
+with satisfaction her son's puzzled look of inquiry as he noted the
+connoisseurship with which Father Honoré handled his after-supper tools.
+
+Mrs. Milton Caukins, their neighbor in the stone house across the bridge
+over the Rothel, stood for several minutes at her back door listening to
+Champney's continued arpeggios and wondered whose was the deep hearty
+laugh that answered them. In telling his afternoon's experience
+Champney, also, had his reserves: of the coming serenade he said never a
+word to the priest.
+
+"He's O.K. and a man, mother," was his comment on their guest, as he
+bade her good night. Aurora Googe answered him with a smile that
+betokened content, but she was wise enough not to commit herself in
+words. Afterwards she sat long in her room, planning for her son's
+future. The twenty thousand she had just received for the undeveloped
+quarry lands should serve to start him well in life.
+
+
+VII
+
+On the following day, mother and son constituted themselves a committee
+of ways and means as to the best investment of the money in furtherance
+of Champney's interests. Her ambition was gratified in that she saw him
+anxious to take his place in the world of affairs, to "get on" and, as
+he said, make his mark early in the world of finance.
+
+The fact that, during his college course, he had spent the five thousand
+received from the sale of the first quarry, plus the interest on the
+same without accounting for a penny of it, seemed to his mother
+perfectly legitimate; for she had sold the land and laid by the amount
+paid for it in order to put her son through college. Since he was twelve
+years old she had brought him up in the knowledge that it was to be his
+for that purpose. From the time he came, through her generosity, into
+possession of the property, she always replied to those who had the
+courage to criticise her course in placing so large a sum at the
+disposal of a youth:
+
+"My son is a man. I realize I can suggest, but not dictate; moreover I
+have no desire to."
+
+She drew the line there, and rarely had any one dared to expostulate
+further with her. When they ventured it, Aurora Googe turned upon them
+those dark eyes, in which at such times there burned a seemingly
+unquenchable light of self-feeding defiance, and gave them to
+understand, with a repelling dignity of manner that bordered hard on
+haughtiness, that what she and her son might or might not do was no
+one's concern but their own. This self-evident truth, when it struck
+home to her well-wishers, made her no friends. Nor did she regret this.
+She had dwelt, as it were, apart, since her marriage and early
+widowhood--her husband had died seven months before Champney was
+born--on the old Googe estate at The Gore. But she was a good neighbor,
+as Mrs. Caukins could testify; paid her taxes promptly, and minded her
+flocks, the source of her limited income, until wool-raising in New
+England became unprofitable. An opportunity was presented when her boy
+was ten years old to sell a portion of the barren sheep pastures for the
+first quarry. She counted herself fortunate in being able thus to
+provide for Champney's four college years.
+
+In all the village, there were only three men, whom Aurora Googe named
+friend. These men, with the intimacy born of New England's community of
+interest, called her to her face by her Christian name; they were
+Octavius Buzzby, old Joel Quimber, and Colonel Caukins. There had been
+one other, Louis Champney, who during his lifetime promised to do much
+for her boy when he should have come of age; but as the promises were
+never committed to black and white, they were, after his death, as
+though they had never been.
+
+"If only Aunt Meda would fork over some of hers!" Champney exclaimed
+with irritation. They were sitting on the porch after tea. "All I want
+is a seat in the Stock Exchange--and the chance to start in. I believe
+if I had the money Mr. Van Ostend would help me to that."
+
+"You didn't say anything to him about your plans, did you?"
+
+"Well, no; not exactly. But it isn't every fellow gets a chance to dine
+at such a man's table, and I thought the opportunity was too good to be
+wasted entirely. I let him know in a quiet way that I, like every other
+fellow, was looking for a job." Champney laughed aloud at the shocked
+look on his mother's face. He knew her independence of thought and
+action; it brooked no catering for favors.
+
+"You see, mother, men _have_ to do it, or go under. It's about one
+chance in ten thousand that a man gets what he wants, and it's downright
+criminal to throw away a good opportunity to get your foot on a round.
+Run the scaling ladder up or down, it doesn't much matter--there are
+hundreds of applicants for every round; and only one man can stand on
+each--and climb, as I mean to. You don't get this point of view up here,
+mother, but you will when you see the development of these great
+interests. Then it will be each for himself and the devil gets the
+hindermost. Shouldn't I take every legitimate means to forge ahead? You
+heard what the priest said about Mr. Van Ostend's mentioning me to him?
+Let me tell you such men don't waste one breath in mentioning anything
+that does not mean a big interest per cent, _not one breath_. They
+can't, literally, afford to; and I'm hoping, only hoping, you know--",
+he looked up at her from his favorite seat on the lowest step of the
+front porch with a keen hard expectancy in his eyes that belied his
+words, "--that what he said to Father Honoré means something definite.
+Anyhow, we'll wait a while till we see how the syndicate takes hold of
+this quarry business before we decide on anything, won't we, mother?"
+
+"I'm willing to wait as long as you like if you will only promise me one
+thing."
+
+"What's that?" He rose and faced her; she saw that he was slightly on
+the defensive.
+
+"That you will never, _never_, in any circumstances, apply to your Aunt
+Almeda for funds, no matter how much you may want them. I couldn't bear
+that!"
+
+She spoke passionately in earnest, with such depth of feeling that she
+did not realize her son was not giving her the promise when he said
+abruptly, the somewhat hard blue eyes looking straight into hers:
+
+"Mother, why are you so hard on Aunt Meda? She's a stingy old screw, I
+know, and led Uncle Louis round by the nose, so everybody says; but why
+are you so down on her?"
+
+He was insistent, and his insistence was the one trait in his character
+which his mother had found hardest to deal with from his babyhood; from
+it, however, if it should develop happily into perseverance, she hoped
+the most. This trait he inherited from his father, Warren Googe, but in
+the latter it had deteriorated into obstinacy. She always feared for her
+self-control when she met it in her son, and just now she was under the
+influence of a powerful emotion that helped her to lose it.
+
+"Because," she made answer, again passionately but the earnestness had
+given place to anger, "I am a woman and have borne from her what no
+woman bears and forgets, or forgives! Are you any the wiser now?" she
+demanded. "It is all that I shall tell you; so don't insist."
+
+The two continued to look into each other's eyes, and something, it
+could hardly be called inimical, rather an aloofness from the tie of
+blood, was visible to each in the other's steadfast gaze. Aurora Googe
+shivered. Her eyes fell before the younger ones.
+
+"Don't Champney! Don't let's get upon this subject again; I can't bear
+it."
+
+"But, mother," he protested, "you mentioned it first."
+
+"It was what you said about Almeda's furnishing you with money that
+started it. Don't say anything more about it; only promise me, won't
+you?"
+
+She raised her eyes again to his, but this time in appeal. At forty-one
+Aurora Googe was still a very beautiful woman, and her appeal, made
+gently as if in apology for her former vehemence, rendered that beauty
+potent with her son's manhood.
+
+"Let me think it over, mother, before I promise." He answered her as
+gently. "It's a hard thing to exact of a man, and I don't hold much with
+promises. What did Uncle Louis' amount to?"
+
+The blood surged into his mother's face, and tears, rare ones, for she
+was not a weak woman neither was she a sentimental one, filled her eyes.
+Her son came up the steps and kissed her. They were seldom demonstrative
+to this extent save in his home-comings and leave-takings. He changed
+the subject abruptly.
+
+"I'm going down to the village now. You know I have the serenade on my
+program, at eight. Afterwards I'll run down to The Greenbush for the
+mail and to see my old cronies. I haven't had a chance yet." He began to
+whistle for the puppy, but cut himself short, laughing. "I was going to
+take Rag, but he won't fit in with the serenade. Keep him tied up while
+I'm gone, please. Anything you want from the village, mother?"
+
+"No, not to-night."
+
+"Don't sit up for me; I may be late. Joel is long-winded and the Colonel
+is booming The Gore for all it is worth and more too; I want to hear the
+fun. Good night."
+
+
+VIII
+
+The afterglow of sunset was long. The dilated moon, rising from the
+waters of the Bay, shone pale at first; but as it climbed the shoulder
+of the mountain _Wave-of-the-Sea_ and its light fell upon the farther
+margin of the lake, its clear disk was pure argent.
+
+Champney looked his approval. It was the kind of night he had been
+hoping for. He walked leisurely down the road from The Gore for the
+night was warm. It was already past eight, but he lingered, purposely, a
+few minutes longer on the lake shore until the moonlight should widen on
+the waters. Then he went on to the grounds.
+
+He entered by the lane and crossed the lawn to an arching rose-laden
+trellis near the bay window; beneath it was a wooden bench. He looked up
+at the window. The blinds were closed. So far as he could see there was
+no light in all the great house. Behind the rose trellis was a group of
+stately Norway spruce; he could see the sheen of their foliage in the
+moonlight. He took his banjo out of its case and sat down on the bench,
+smiling to himself, for he was thoroughly enjoying, with that enjoyment
+of youth, health, and vitality which belongs to twenty-one, this rustic
+adventure. He touched the strings lightly with preliminary thrumming. It
+was a toss-up between "Annie Rooney" and "Oft in the stilly night." He
+decided for the latter. Raising his eyes to the closed blinds, behind
+which he knew the witch was hiding, he began the accompaniment. The soft
+_thrum-thrum_, vibrating through the melody, found an echo in the
+whirring wings of all that ephemeral insect life which is abroad on such
+a night. The prelude was almost at an end when he saw the blinds begin
+to separate. Champney continued to gaze steadily upwards. A thin bare
+arm was thrust forth; the blinds opened wide; in the dark window space
+he saw Aileen, listening intently and gazing fixedly at the moon as if
+its every beam were dropping liquid music.
+
+He began to sing. His voice was clear, fine, and high, a useful first
+tenor for two winters in the Glee Club. When he finished Aileen deigned
+to look down upon him, but she made no motion of recognition. He rose
+and took his stand directly beneath the window.
+
+"I say, Miss Aileen Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, that isn't playing
+fair! Where's my token?"
+
+There was a giggle for answer; then, leaning as far out as she dared,
+both hands stemmed on the window ledge, the child began to sing. Full,
+free, joyously light-hearted, she sent forth the rollicking Irish melody
+and the merry sentiment that was strung upon it; evidently it had been
+adapted to her, for the words had suffered a slight change:
+
+    "Och! laughin' roses are my lips,
+    Forget-me-nots my ee,
+    It's many a lad they're drivin' mad;
+    Shall they not so wi' ye?
+    Heigho! the morning dew!
+    Heigho! the rose and rue!
+    Follow me, my bonny lad,
+    For I'll not follow you.
+
+    "Wi' heart in mout', in hope and doubt,
+    My lovers come and go:
+    My smiles receive, my smiles deceive;
+    Shall they not serve you so?
+    Heigho! the morning dew!
+    Heigho! the rose and rue!
+    Follow me, my bonny lad,
+    For I'll not follow you."
+
+It was a delight to hear her.
+
+"There now, I'll give yer my token. Hold out yer hands!"
+
+Champney, hugging his banjo under one arm, made a cup of his hands.
+Carefully measuring the distance, she dropped one rosebud into them.
+
+"Put it on yer heart now," was the next command from above. He obeyed
+with exaggerated gesture, to the great delight of the serenadee. "And
+yer goin' to keep it?"
+
+"Forever and a day." Champney made this assertion with a
+hyper-sentimental inflection of voice, and, lifting the flower to his
+nose, drew in his breath--
+
+"Confound you, you little fiend--" he sneezed rather than spoke.
+
+The sneeze was answered by a peal of laughter from above and a
+fifteen-year-old's cracked "Haw-haw-haw" from the region of the Norway
+spruces. Every succeeding sneeze met with a like response--roars of
+laughter on the one hand and peal upon peal on the other. Even the
+kitchen door began to give signs of life, for Hannah and Ann made their
+appearance.
+
+The strong white pepper, which Romanzo managed to procure from Hannah,
+had been cunningly secreted by Aileen between the imbricate petals, and
+then tied, in a manner invisible at night, with a fine thread of pink
+silk begged from Ann. It was now acting and re-acting on the lining of
+the serenader's olfactory organ in a manner to threaten final
+decapitation. Champney was still young enough to resent being made a
+subject of such practical joking by a little girl; but he was also
+sufficiently wise to acknowledge to himself that he had been worsted
+and, in the end, to put a good face on it. It is true he would have
+preferred that Romanzo Caukins had not been witness to his defeat.
+
+The sneezing and laughter gradually subsided. He sat down again on the
+bench and taking up his banjo prepared, with somewhat elaborate effort,
+to put it into its case. He said nothing.
+
+"Say!" came in a sobered voice from above; "are yer mad with me?"
+
+Ignoring both question and questioner, he took out his handkerchief,
+wiped his face and forehead and, returning it to his pocket, heaved a
+sigh of apparent exhaustion.
+
+"I say, Mr. Champney Googe, are yer mad with me?"
+
+To Champney's delight, he heard an added note of anxiety. He bowed his
+head lower over the banjo case and in silence renewed his simulated
+struggle to slip that instrument into it.
+
+"Champney! Are yer _rale_ mad with me?" There was no mistaking the
+earnestness of this appeal. He made no answer, but chuckled inwardly at
+the audacity of the address.
+
+"Champ!" she stamped her foot to emphasize her demand; "if yer don't
+tell me yer ain't mad with me, I'll lave yer for good and all--so now!"
+
+"I don't know that I'm mad with you," he spoke at last in an aggrieved,
+a subdued tone; "I simply didn't think you could play me such a mean
+trick when I was in earnest, dead earnest."
+
+"Did yer mane it?"
+
+"Why, of course I did! You don't suppose a man walks three miles in a
+hot night to serenade a girl just to get an ounce of pepper in his nose
+by way of thanks, do you?"
+
+"I thought yer didn't mane it; Romanzo said yer was laughing at me for
+telling yer 'bout the lords and ladies a-making love with their
+guitars." The voice indicated some dejection of spirits.
+
+"He did, did he! I'll settle with Romanzo later." He heard a soft
+brushing of branches in the region of the Norway spruces and knew that
+the youth was in retreat. "And I'll settle it with you, too, Miss Aileen
+Armagh-and-don't-you-forget-it, in a way that'll make you remember the
+tag end of your name for one while!"
+
+This threat evidently had its effect.
+
+"Wot yer going to do?"
+
+He heard her draw her breath sharply.
+
+"Come down here and I'll tell you."
+
+"I can't. She might catch me. She told me I'd got to stay in my room
+after eight, and she's coming home ter-night. Wot yer going to do?"
+
+Champney laughed outright. "Don't you wish you might know, Aileen
+Armagh!" He took his banjo in one hand, lifted his cap with the other
+and, standing so, bareheaded in the moonlight, sang with all the
+simulated passion and pathos of which he was capable one of the few love
+songs that belong to the world, "Kathleen Mavoureen"; but he took pains
+to substitute "Aileen" for "Kathleen." Even Ann and Hannah, listening
+from the kitchen porch, began to feel sentimentally inclined when the
+clear voice rendered with tender pathos the last lines:
+
+    "Oh! why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart?
+    Oh! why art thou silent, Aileen Mavoureen?"
+
+Without so much as another glance at the little figure in the window, he
+ran across the lawn and up the lane to the highroad.
+
+
+IX
+
+On his way to The Greenbush he overtook Joel Quimber, and without
+warning linked his arm close in the old man's. At the sudden contact
+Joel started.
+
+"Uncle Jo, old chap, how are you? This seems like home to see you
+round."
+
+"Lord bless me, Champ, how you come on a feller! Here, stan' still till
+I get a good look at ye;--growed, growed out of all notion. Why, I
+hain't seen ye for good two year. You warn't to home last summer?"
+
+"Only for a week; I was off on a yachting cruise most of the time.
+Mother said you were up on the Bay then at your grandniece's--pretty
+girl. I remember you had her down here one Christmas."
+
+The old man made no definite answer, but cackled softly to himself:
+"Yachting cruise, eh? And you remember a pretty girl, eh?" He nudged him
+with a sharpened elbow and whispered mysteriously: "Devil of a feller,
+Champ! I've heerd tell, I've heerd tell--chip of the old block, eh?" He
+nudged him knowingly again.
+
+"Oh, we're all devils more or less, we men, Uncle Jo; now, honor bright,
+aren't we?"
+
+"You've hit it, Champ; more or less--more or less. I heerd you was
+a-goin' it strong: primy donny suppers an' ortermobillies--"
+
+"Now, Uncle Jo, you know there's no use believing all you hear, but you
+can't plunge a country raised boy into a whirlpool like New York for
+four years and not expect him to strike out and swim with the rest.
+You've got to, Uncle Jo, or you're nobody. You'd go under."
+
+"Like 'nough you would, Champ; I can't say, fer I hain't ben thar. Guess
+twixt you an' me an' the post, I won't hev ter go thar sence Aurory's
+sold the land fer the quarries. I hear it talked thet it'll bring half
+New York right inter old Flamsted; I dunno, I dunno--you 'member 'bout
+the new wine in the old bottles, Champ?--highflyers, emigrants, Dagos
+and Polacks--Come ter think, Mis' Champney's got one on 'em now. Hev you
+seen her, Champ?"
+
+Champney's hearty laugh rang out with no uncertain sound. "Seen her! I
+should say so. She's worth any 'primy donny', as you call them, that
+ever drew a good silver dollar out of my pockets. Oh, it's too good to
+keep! I must tell you; but you'll keep mum, Uncle Jo?"
+
+"Mum's the word, ef yer say so, Champ." They turned from The Greenbush
+and arm in arm paced slowly up the street again. From time to time, for
+the next ten minutes, Augustus Buzzby and the Colonel in the tavern
+office heard from up street such unwonted sounds of hilarity and so long
+continued, that Augustus looked apprehensively at the Colonel who was
+becoming visibly uneasy lest he fail to place the joke.
+
+When the two appeared at the office door they bore unmistakable signs of
+having enjoyed themselves hugely. Augustus Buzzby gave them his warmest
+welcome and seated Uncle Joel in his deepest office chair, providing him
+at the same time with a pipe and some cut leaf. The Colonel was in his
+glory. With one arm thrown affectionately around young Googe's neck, he
+expatiated on the joy of the community as a whole in again welcoming
+its own.
+
+"Champney, my dear boy,--you still permit me the freedom of old
+friendship?--this town is already looking to you as to its future
+deliverer; I may say, as to a Moses who will lead us into the industrial
+Canaan which is even now, thanks to my friend, your honored mother,
+beckoning to us with its promise of abundant plenty. Never, in my
+wildest dreams, my dear boy, have I thought to see such a consummation
+of my long-cherished hopes."
+
+It was always one of Champney's prime youthful joys to urge the Colonel,
+by judiciously applied excitants, to a greater flowering of eloquence;
+so, now, as an inducement he wrung his neighbor's hand and thanked him
+warmly for his timely recognition of the new Flamsted about to be.
+
+"Now," he said, "the thing is for all of us to fall into line and forge
+ahead, Colonel. If we don't, we'll be left behind; and in these times to
+lag is to take to the backwoods."
+
+"Right you are, my dear fellow; deterioration can only set in when the
+members of a community, like ours, fail to present a solid front to the
+disintegrating forces of a supine civilization which--"
+
+"At it again, Milton Caukins!" It was Mr. Wiggins who, entering the
+office, interrupted the flow,--"dammed the torrent", he was wont to say.
+He extended a hand to young Googe. "Glad to see you, Champney. I hear
+there is a prospect of your remaining with us. Quimber tells us he heard
+something to the effect that a position might be offered you by the
+syndicate."
+
+"It's the first I've heard of it. How did you hear, Uncle Jo?" He
+turned upon the old man with a keen alertness which, taken in connection
+with the Colonel's oratory, was both disconcerting and confusing.
+
+"How'd I hear? Le' me see; Champ, what was we just talking 'bout up the
+street, eh?"
+
+"Oh, never mind that now," he answered impatiently; "let's hear what you
+heard. I'm the interested party just now." But the old man looked only
+the more disturbed and was not to be hurried.
+
+"'Bout that little girl--" he began, but was unceremoniously cut short
+by Champney.
+
+"Oh, damn the girl, just for once, Uncle Jo. What I want to know is, how
+you came to hear anything about me in connection with the quarry
+syndicate."
+
+The old man persisted: "I'm a-tryin' to get a-holt of that man's name
+that got her up here--"
+
+"Van Ostend," Champney suggested; "is that the name you want?"
+
+"That's him, Van Ostend; that's the one. He an' the rest was hevin' a
+meetin' right here in this office 'fore they went to the train, an' I
+was settin' outside the winder an' heerd one on 'em say: 'Thet Mis'
+Googe's a stunner; what's her son like, does any one know?' An' I heerd
+Mr. Van Ostend say: 'She's very unusual; if her son has half her
+executive ability'--them's his very words--'we might work him in with
+us. It would be good business policy to interest, through him, the land
+itself in its own output, so to speak, besides being something of a
+courtesy to Mis' Googe. I've met him twice.' Then they fell to
+discussin' the lay of The Gore and the water power at The Corners."
+
+"Bully for you, Uncle Jo!" Champney slapped the rounded shoulders with
+such appreciative heartiness that the old man's pipe threatened to be
+shaken from between his toothless gums. "You have heard the very thing
+I've been hoping for. Tave never let on that he knew anything about it."
+
+"He didn't, only what I told him." Old Quimber cackled weakly. "I guess
+Tave's got his hands too full at Champo to remember what's told him;
+what with the little girl an' Romanzo--no offence, Colonel." He looked
+apologetically at the Colonel who waved his hand with an airiness that
+disposed at once of the idea of any feeling on his part in regard to
+family revelations. "I heerd tell thet the little girl hed turned his
+head an' Tave couldn't git nothin' in the way of work out of him."
+
+"In that case I must look into the matter." The Colonel spoke with stern
+gravity. "Both Mrs. Caukins and I would deplore any undue influence that
+might be brought to bear upon any son of ours at so critical a period of
+his career."
+
+Mr. Wiggins laughed; but the laugh was only a disguised sneer. "Perhaps
+you'll come to your senses, Colonel, when you've got an immigrant for a
+daughter-in-law. Own up, now, you didn't think your 'competing
+industrial thousands' might be increased by some half-Irish
+grandchildren, now did you?"
+
+Champney listened for the Colonel's answer with a suspended hope that he
+might give Elmer Wiggins "one," as he said to himself. He still owed the
+latter gentleman a grudge because in the past he had been, as it were,
+the fountain head of all in his youthful misery in supplying ample
+portions of the never-to-be-forgotten oil of the castor bean and dried
+senna leaves. He felt at the present time, moreover, that he was
+inimical to his mother and her interests. And Milton Caukins was his
+friend and hers, past, present, and future; of this he was sure.
+
+The Colonel took time to light his cigar before replying; then, waving
+it towards the ceiling, he said pleasantly:
+
+"My young friend here, Champney, to whom we are looking to restore the
+pristine vigor of a fast vanishing line of noble ancestors, is both a
+Googe _and_ a Champney. _His_ ancestors counted themselves honored in
+making alliances with foreigners--immigrants to our all-welcoming
+shores; 'a rose', Mr. Wiggins, 'by any other name'; I need not quote."
+His chest swelled; he interrupted himself to puff vigorously at his
+cigar before continuing: "My son, sir, is on the spindle side of the
+house a _Googe_, and a _Googe_, sir, has the blood of the Champneys and
+the Lord knows of how many noble _immigrants_" (the last word was
+emphasized by a fleeting glance of withering scorn at the small-headed
+Wiggins) "in his veins which, fortunately, cannot be said of you, sir.
+If, at any time in the distant future, my son should see fit to ally
+himself with a scion of the noble and long-suffering Hibernian race, I
+assure you"--his voice was increasing in dimensions--"both Mrs. Caukins
+and myself would feel honored, sir, yes, honored in the breach!"
+
+After this wholly unexpected ending to his peroration, he lowered his
+feet from their accustomed rest on the counter of the former bar and,
+ignoring Mr. Wiggins, remarked to Augustus that it was time for the
+mail. Augustus, glad to welcome any diversion of the Colonel's and Mr.
+Wiggins's asperities, said the train was on time and the mail would be
+there in a few minutes.
+
+"Tave's gone down to meet Mis' Champney," he added turning to Champney.
+"She's been in Hallsport for two days. I presume you ain't seen her."
+
+"Not yet. If you can give me my mail first I can drive up to
+Champ-au-Haut with her to-night. There's the mail-wagon."
+
+"To be sure, to be sure, Champney; and you might take out Mis'
+Champney's; Tave can't leave the hosses."
+
+"All right." He went out on the veranda to see if the Champ-au-Haut
+carriage was in sight. A moment later, when it drove up, he was at the
+door to open it.
+
+"Here I am, Aunt Meda. Will this hold two and all those bundles?"
+
+"Why, Champney, you here? Come in." She made room for him on the ample
+seat; he sprang in, and bent to kiss her before sitting down beside her.
+
+"Now, I call this luck. This is as good as a confessional, small and
+dark, and 'fess I've got to, Aunt Meda, or there'll be trouble for
+somebody at Campo."
+
+Had the space not been so "small and dark" he might have seen the face
+of the woman beside him quiver painfully at the sound of his cheery
+young voice and, when he kissed her, flush to her temples.
+
+"What devilry now, Champney?"
+
+"It's a girl, of course, Aunt Meda--your girl," he added laughing.
+
+"So you've found her out, have you, you young rogue? Well, what do you
+think of her?"
+
+"I think you'll have a whole vaudeville show at Champ-au-Haut for the
+rest of your days--and gratis."
+
+"I've been coming to that conclusion myself," said Mrs. Champney,
+smiling in turn at the recollection of some of her experiences during
+the past three weeks. "She amuses me, and I've concluded to keep her.
+I'm going to have her with me a good part of the time. I've seen enough
+since she has been with me to convince me that my people will amount to
+nothing so long as she is with them." There was an edge to her words the
+sharpness of which was felt by Octavius on the front seat.
+
+"I can't blame them; I couldn't. Why Tave here is threatened already
+with a quick decline--sheer worry of mind, isn't it Tave?" Octavius
+nodded shortly; "And as for Romanzo there's no telling where he will
+end; even Ann and Hannah are infected."
+
+"What do you mean, Champney?" She was laughing now.
+
+"Just wait till I run in and get the mail for us both, and I'll tell
+you; it's my confession."
+
+He sprang out, ran up the steps and disappeared for a moment. He
+reappeared thrusting some letters into his pocket. Evidently he had not
+looked at them. He handed the other letters and papers to Octavius, and
+so soon as the carriage was on the way to The Bow he regaled his aunt
+with his evening's experience under the bay window.
+
+"Serves you right," was her only comment; but her laugh told him she
+enjoyed the episode. He went into the house upon her invitation and sat
+with her till nearly eleven, giving an account of himself--at least all
+the account he cared to give which was intrinsically different from that
+which he gave his mother. Mrs. Champney was what he had once described
+to his mother as "a worldly woman with the rind on," and when he was
+with her, he involuntarily showed that side of his nature which was best
+calculated to make an impression on the "rind." He grew more worldly
+himself, and she rejoiced in what she saw.
+
+
+X
+
+While walking homewards up The Gore, he was wondering why his mother had
+shown such strength of feeling when he expressed the wish that his aunt
+would help him financially to further his plans. He knew the two women
+never had but little intercourse; but with him it was different. He was
+a man, the living representative of two families, and who had a better
+right than he to some of his Aunt Meda's money? A right of blood,
+although on the Champney side distant and collateral. He knew that the
+community as a whole, especially now that his mother had become a factor
+in its new industrial life, was looking to him, as once they had looked
+to his Uncle Louis, to "make good" with his inheritance of race. To this
+end his mother had equipped him with his university training. Why
+shouldn't his aunt be willing to help him? She liked him, that is, she
+liked to talk with him. Sometimes, it is true, it occurred to him that
+his room was better than his company; this was especially noticeable in
+his young days when he was much with his aunt's husband whom he called
+"Uncle Louis." Since his death he had never ceased to visit her at
+Champ-au-Haut--too much was at stake, for he was the rightful heir to
+her property at least, if not Louis Champney's. She, as well as his
+father, had inherited twenty thousand from the estate in The Gore. His
+father, so he was told, had squandered his patrimony some two years
+before his death. His aunt, on the contrary, had already doubled hers;
+and with skilful manipulation forty thousand in these days might be
+quadrupled easily. It was wise, whatever might happen, to keep on the
+right side of Aunt Meda; and as for giving that promise to his mother he
+neither could nor would. His mind was made up on this point when he
+reached The Gore. He told himself he dared not. Who could say what unmet
+necessity might handicap him at some critical time?--this was his
+justification.
+
+In the midst of his wonderings, he suddenly remembered the evening's
+mail. He took it out and struck a match to look at the hand-writing.
+Among several letters from New York, he recognized one as having Mr. Van
+Ostend's address on the reverse of the envelope. He tore it open; struck
+another match and, the letter being type-written, hastily read it
+through with the aid of a third and fourth pocket-lucifer; read it in a
+tumult of expectancy, and finished it with an intense and irritating
+sense of disappointment. He vehemently voiced his vexation: "Oh, damn it
+all!"
+
+He did not take the trouble to return the letter to its cover, but kept
+flirting it in his hand as he strode indignantly up the hill, his arms
+swinging like a young windmill's. When he came in sight of the house, he
+looked up at his mother's bedroom window. Her light was still burning;
+despite his admonition she was waiting for him as usual. He must tell
+her before he slept.
+
+"Champney!" she called, when she heard him in the hall.
+
+"Yes, mother; may I come up?"
+
+"Of course." She opened wide her bedroom door and stood there, waiting
+for him, the lamp in her hand. Her beauty was enhanced by the
+loose-flowing cotton wrapper of pale pink. Her dark heavy hair was
+braided for the night and coiled again and again, crown fashion, on her
+head.
+
+"Aunt Meda never could hold a candle to mother!" was Champney
+Googe's thought on entering. The two sat down for the usual
+before-turning-in-chat.
+
+He was so full of his subject that it overflowed at once in abrupt
+speech.
+
+"Mother, I've had a letter from Mr. Van Ostend--"
+
+"Oh, Champney!" There was the joy of anticipation in her voice.
+
+"Now, mother, don't--don't expect anything," he pleaded, "for you'll be
+no end cut up over the whole thing. Now, listen." He read the letter;
+the tone of his voice indicated both disgust and indignation.
+
+"Now, look at that!" He burst forth eruptively when he had finished.
+"Here we've been banking on an offer for some position in the syndicate,
+at least, something that would help clear the road to Wall Street where
+I should be able to strike out for myself without being dependent on any
+one--I didn't mince matters that day of the dinner when I told him what
+I wanted, either! And here I get an offer to go to Europe for five years
+and study banking systems and the Lord knows what in London, Paris, and
+Berlin, and act as a sort of super in his branch offices. Great Scott!
+Does he think a man is going to waste five years of his life in Europe
+at a time when twenty-four hours here at home might make a man! He's a
+donkey if he thinks that, and I'd have given him credit for more common
+sense--"
+
+"Now, Champney, stop right where you are. Don't boil over so." She
+repressed a smile. "Let's talk business and look at matters as they
+stand."
+
+"I can't;" he said doggedly; "I can't talk business without a business
+basis, and this here,"--he shook the letter much as Rag shook a
+slipper,--"it's just slop! What am I going to do over there, I'd like to
+know?" he demanded fiercely; whereupon his mother took the letter from
+his hand and, without heeding his grumbling, read it carefully twice.
+
+"Now, look here, Champney," she said firmly; "you must use some reason.
+I admit this isn't what you wanted or I expected, but it's something;
+many would think it everything. Didn't you tell me only yesterday that
+in these times a man is fortunate to get his foot on any round of the
+ladder--"
+
+"Well, if I did, I didn't mean the rung of a banking house fire-escape
+over in Europe." He interrupted her, speaking sulkily. Then of a sudden
+he laughed out. "Go on, mother, I'm a chump." His mother smiled and
+continued the broken sentence:
+
+"--And that ten thousand fail where one succeeds in getting even a
+foothold--to climb, as you want to?"
+
+"But how can I climb? That's the point. Why, I shall be twenty-six in
+five years--if I live," he added lugubriously.
+
+His mother laughed outright. The splendid specimen of health, vitality,
+and strength before her was in too marked contrast to his words.
+
+"Well, I don't care," he muttered, but joining heartily in her laugh;
+"I've heard of fellows like me going into a decline just out of pure
+homesickness over there."
+
+"I don't think you will be homesick for Flamsted; I saw no traces of
+that malady while you were in New York. On the contrary, I thought you
+accepted every opportunity to stay away."
+
+"New York is different," he replied, a little shamefaced in the presence
+of the truth he had just heard. "But, mother, you would be alone here."
+
+"I'm used to it, Champney;" she spoke as it were perfunctorily; "and I
+am ambitious to see you succeed as you wish to. I want to see you in a
+position which will fulfil both your hopes and mine; but neither you nor
+I can choose the means, not yet; we haven't the money. For my part, I
+think you should accept this offer; it's one in ten thousand. Work your
+way up during these five years into Mr. Van Ostend's confidence, and I
+am sure, _sure_, that by that time he will have something for you that
+will satisfy even your young ambition. I think, moreover, it is a
+necessity for you to accept this, Champney."
+
+"You do; why?"
+
+"Well, for a good many reasons. I doubt, in the first place, if these
+quarries can get under full running headway for the next seven years,
+and even if you had been offered some position of trust in connection
+with them, you haven't had an opportunity to prove yourself worthy of it
+in a business way. I doubt, too, if the salary would be any larger; it
+is certainly a fair one for the work he offers." She consulted the
+letter. "Twelve hundred for the first year, and for every succeeding
+year an additional five hundred. What more could you expect,
+inexperienced as you are? Many men have to give their services gratis
+for a while to obtain entrance into such offices and have their names,
+even, connected with such a financier. This opportunity is a business
+asset. I feel convinced, moreover, that you need just this discipline."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For some other good reasons. For one, you would be brought into daily
+contact with men, experienced men, of various nationalities--"
+
+"You can be that in New York. There isn't a city in the world where you
+can gain such a cosmopolitan experience." He was still protesting, still
+insisting. His mother made no reply, nor did she notice the
+interruption.
+
+"--Learn their ways, their point of view. All this would be of infinite
+help if, later on, you should come into a position of great
+responsibility in connection with the quarry syndicate.--It does seem so
+strange that hundreds will make their livelihood from our barren
+pastures!" She spoke almost to herself, and for a moment they were
+silent.
+
+"And look at this invitation to cross in his yacht with his family!
+Champney, you know perfectly well nothing could be more courteous or
+thoughtful; it saves your passage money, and it shows plainly his
+interest in you personally."
+
+"I know; that part isn't half bad." He spoke with interest and less
+reluctance. "I saw the yacht last spring lying in North River; she's a
+perfect floating palace they say. Of course, I appreciate the
+invitation; but supposing--only supposing, you know,"--this as a warning
+not to take too much for granted,--"I should accept. How could I live on
+twelve hundred a year? He spends twice that on a cook. How does he think
+a fellow is going to dress and live on that? 'T was a tight squeeze in
+college on thirteen hundred."
+
+His mother knew his way so well, that she recognized in this insistent
+piling of one obstacle upon another the budding impulse to yield. She
+was willing to press the matter further.
+
+"Oh, clothes are cheaper abroad and living is not nearly so dear. You
+could be quite the gentleman on your second year's salary, and, of
+course, I can help out with the interest on the twenty thousand. You
+forget this."
+
+"By George, I did, mother! You're a trump; but I don't want you to think
+I want to cut any figure over there; I don't care enough about 'em. But
+I want enough to have a ripping good time to compensate for staying away
+so long."
+
+"You need not stay five consecutive years away from home. Look here,
+Champney; you have read this letter with your eyes but not with your
+wits. Your boiling condition was not conducive to clear-headedness."
+
+"Oh, I say mother! Don't rap a fellow too hard when he's down."
+
+"You're not down; you're up,"--she held her ground with him right
+sturdily,--"up on the second round already, my son; only you don't know
+it. Here it is in black and white that you can come home for six weeks
+after two years, and the fifth year is shortened by three months if all
+goes well. What more do you want?"
+
+"That's something, anyway."
+
+"Now, I want you to think this over."
+
+"I wish I could run down to New York for a day or two; it would help a
+lot. I could look round and possibly find an opening in the direction I
+want. I want to do this before deciding."
+
+"Champney, I shall lose patience with you soon. You know you, can't run
+down to New York for even a day. Mr. Van Ostend states the fact baldly:
+'Your decision I must have by telegraph, at the latest, by Thursday
+noon.' That's day after to-morrow. 'We sail on Saturday.' Mr. Van Ostend
+is not a man to waste a breath, as you have said."
+
+Champney had no answer ready. He evaded the question. "I'll tell you
+to-morrow, mother. It's late; you mustn't sit up any longer." He looked
+at his watch. "One o'clock. Good night."
+
+"Good night, Champney. Leave your door into the hall wide open; it's so
+close."
+
+She put out her light and sat down by the window. The night was
+breathless; not a leaf of the elm trees quivered. She heard the Rothel
+picking its way down the rocky channel of The Gore. She gave herself up
+to thought, far-reaching both into the past and the future. Soon,
+mingled with the murmur of the brook, she heard her son's quiet measured
+breathing. She rose, walked noiselessly down the hall and stood at his
+bedroom door, to gaze--mother-like, to worship. The moonlight just
+touched the pillow. He lay with his head on his arm; the full white
+chest was partly bared; the spare length of the muscular body was
+outlined beneath the sheet. Her eyes filled with tears. She turned from
+the door, and, noiselessly as she had come, went back to her room and
+her couch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How little the pending decision weighed on his mind was proven by his
+long untroubled sleep; but directly after a late breakfast he told his
+mother he was going out to prospect a little in The Gore; and she,
+understanding, questioned him no further. He whistled to Rag and turned
+into the side road that led to the first quarry. There was no work going
+on there. This small ownership of forty acres was merged in the
+syndicate which had so recently acquired the two hundred acres from the
+Googe estate. He made his way over the hill and around to the head of
+The Gore. He wanted to climb the cliff-like rocks and think it out under
+the pines, landmarks of his early boyhood. He picked his way among the
+boulders and masses of sheep laurel; he was thinking not of the quarries
+but of himself; he did not even inquire of himself how the sale of the
+quarries might be about to affect his future.
+
+Champney Googe was self-centred. The motives for all his actions in a
+short and uneventful life were the spokes to his particular hub of self;
+the tire, that bound them and held them to him, he considered merely the
+necessary periphery of constant contact with people and things by which
+his own little wheel of fortune might be made to roll the more easily.
+He was following some such line of thought while turning Mr. Van
+Ostend's plan over and over in his mind, viewing it from all sides. It
+was not what he wanted, but it might lead to that. His eyes were on the
+rough ground beneath him, his thoughts busy with the pending decision,
+when he was taken out of himself by hearing an unexpected voice in his
+vicinity.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Googe. Am I poaching on your preserve?"
+
+Champney recognized the voice at once. It was Father Honoré's hailing
+him from beneath the pines. He was sitting with his back against one; a
+violin lay on its cover beside him; on his lap was a drawing-board with
+rule and compass pencil. Champney realized on the instant, and with a
+feeling of pleasure, that the priest's presence was no intrusion even at
+this juncture.
+
+"No, indeed, for it is no longer my preserve," he answered cheerily, and
+added, with a touch of earnestness that was something of a surprise to
+himself, "and it wouldn't be if it were still mine."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Googe; I appreciate that. You must find it hard to see a
+stranger like myself preëmpting your special claim, as I fancy this one
+is."
+
+"It used to be when I was a youngster; but, to tell the truth, I haven't
+cared for it much of late years. The city life spoils a man for this. I
+love that rush and hustle and rubbing-elbows with the world in general,
+getting knocked about--and knocking." He laughed merrily, significantly,
+and Father Honoré, catching his meaning at once, laughed too. "But I'm
+not telling you any news; of course, you've had it all."
+
+"Yes, all and a surfeit. I was glad to get away to this hill-quiet."
+
+Champney sat down on the thick rusty-red matting of pine needles and
+turned to him, a question in his eyes. Father Honoré smiled. "What is
+it?" he said.
+
+"May I ask if it was your own choice coming up here to us?"
+
+"Yes, my deliberate choice. I had to work for it, though. The superior
+of my order was against my coming. It took moral suasion to get the
+appointment."
+
+"I don't suppose they wanted to lose a valuable man from the city," said
+Champney bluntly.
+
+"The question of value is not, happily, a question of environment. I
+simply felt I could do my best work here in the best way."
+
+"And you didn't consider yourself at all?" Champney put the question,
+which voiced his thought, squarely.
+
+"Oh, I'm human," he answered smiling at the questioner; "don't make any
+mistake on that point; and I don't suppose many of us can eliminate self
+wholly in a matter of choice. I did want to work here because I believe
+I can do the best work, but I also welcomed the opportunity to get away
+from the city--it weighs on me, weighs on me," he added, but it sounded
+as if he were merely thinking aloud.
+
+Champney failed to comprehend him. Father Honoré, raising his eyes,
+caught the look on the young man's face and interpreted it. He said
+quietly:
+
+"But then you're twenty-one and I'm forty-five; that accounts for it."
+
+For a moment, but a moment only, Champney was tempted to speak out to
+this man, stranger as he was. Mr. Van Ostend evidently had confidence in
+him; why shouldn't he? Perhaps he might help him to decide, and for the
+best. But even as the thought flashed into consciousness, he was aware
+of its futility. He was sure the man would repeat only what his mother
+had said. He did not care to hear that twice. And what was this man to
+him that he should ask his opinion, appeal to him for advice in
+directing this step in his career? He changed the subject abruptly.
+
+"I think you said you had met Mr. Van Ostend?"
+
+"Yes, twice in connection with the orphan child, as I told you, and once
+I dined with him. He has a charming family: his sister and his little
+daughter. Have you met them?"
+
+"Only once. He has just written me and asked me to join them on his
+yacht for a trip to Europe." Champney felt he was coasting on the edge,
+and enjoyed the sport.
+
+"And of course you're going? I can't imagine a more delightful host."
+Father Honoré spoke with enthusiasm.
+
+But Champney failed to respond in like manner. The priest took note of
+it.
+
+"I haven't made up my mind;" he spoke slowly; then, smiling merrily into
+the other's face, "and I came up here to try to make it up."
+
+"And I was here so you couldn't do it, of course!" Father Honoré
+exclaimed so ruefully that Champney's hearty laugh rang out. "No, no; I
+didn't mean for you to take it in that way. I'm glad I found you here--I
+liked what you said about the 'value'."
+
+Father Honoré looked mystified for a moment; his brow contracted in the
+effort to recall at the moment what he had said about "value", and in
+what connection; but instead of any further question as to Champney's
+rather incoherent meaning, he handed him the drawing-board.
+
+"This is the plan for my shack, Mr. Googe. I have written to Mr. Van
+Ostend to ask if the company would have any objection to my putting it
+here near these pines. I understand the quarries are to be opened up as
+far as the cliff, and sometime, in the future, my house will be neighbor
+to the workers. I suppose then I shall have to 'move on'. I'm going to
+build it myself."
+
+"All yourself?"
+
+"Why not? I'm a fairly good mason; I've learned that trade, and there is
+plenty of material, good material, all about." He looked over upon the
+rock-strewn slopes. "I'm going to use some of the granite waste too." He
+put his violin into its case and held out his hand for the board. "I'm
+going now, Mr. Googe; I shall be interested to know your decision as
+soon as you yourself know about it."
+
+"I'll let you know by to-morrow. I've nearly a day of grace. You play?
+You are a musician?" he asked, as Father Honoré rose and tucked the
+violin and drawing-board under his arm.
+
+"My matins," the priest answered, smiling down into the curiously eager
+face that with the fresh unlined beauty of young manhood was upturned to
+his. "Good morning." He lifted his hat and walked rapidly away without
+waiting for any further word from Champney.
+
+"Sure-footed as a mountain goat!" Champney said to himself as he watched
+him cross the rough hilltop. "I'd like to know where he gets it all!"
+
+He stretched out under the pines, his hands clasped under his head, and
+fell to thinking of his own affairs, into the as yet undecided course of
+which the memory of the priest's words, "The question of value is not,
+happily, a question of environment" fell with the force of gravity.
+
+"I might as well go it blind," he spoke aloud to himself: "it's all a
+matter of luck into which ring you shy your hat; I suppose it's the
+'value', after all, that does it in the end. Besides--"
+
+He did not finish that thought aloud; but he suddenly sat bolt upright,
+a fist pressed hard on each knee. His face hardened into determination.
+"By George, what an ass I've been! If I can't do it in one way I can in
+another.--Hoop! Hooray!"
+
+He turned a somersault then and there; came right side up; cuffed the
+dazed puppy goodnaturedly and bade him "Come on", which behest the
+little fellow obeyed to the best of his ability among the rough ways of
+the sheep walks.
+
+He did not stop at the house, but walked straight down to Flamsted, Rag
+lagging at his heels. He sent a telegram to New York. Then he went
+homewards in the broiling sun, carrying the exhausted puppy under his
+arm. His mother met him on the porch.
+
+"I've just telegraphed Mr. Van Ostend, mother, that I'll be in New York
+Friday, ready to sail on Saturday."
+
+"My dear boy!" That was all she said then; but she laid her hand on his
+shoulder when they went in to dinner, and Champney knew she was
+satisfied.
+
+Two days later, Champney Googe, having bade good-bye to his neighbors,
+the Caukinses large and small, to Octavius, Ann and Hannah,--Aileen was
+gone on an errand when he called last at Champ-au-Haut but he left his
+remembrance to her with the latter--to his aunt, to Joel Quimber and
+Augustus, to Father Honoré and a host of village well-wishers who, in
+their joyful anticipation of his future and his fortunes, laid aside all
+factional differences, said, at last, farewell to Flamsted, to The
+Corners, The Bow, and his home among the future quarries in The Gore.
+
+
+
+
+PART THIRD
+
+In the Stream
+
+
+I
+
+Mrs. Milton Caukins had her trials, but they were of a kind some people
+would call "blessed torments." The middle-aged mother of eight children,
+six boys, of whom Romanzo was the eldest, and twin girls, Elvira Caukins
+might with justice lay claim to a superabundance of a certain kind of
+trial. Every Sunday morning proved the crux of her experience, and Mrs.
+Caukins' nerves were correspondingly shaken. To use her own words, she
+"was all of a tremble" by the time she was dressed for church.
+
+On such occasions she was apt to speak her mind, preferably to the
+Colonel; but lacking his presence, to her family severally and
+collectively, to 'Lias, the hired man, or aloud to herself when busy
+about her work. She had been known, on occasion, to acquaint even the
+collie with her state of mind, and had assured the head of the family
+afterwards that there was more sense of understanding of a woman's
+trials in one wag of a dog's tail than in most men's head-pieces.
+
+"Mr. Caukins!" she called up the stairway. She never addressed her
+husband in the publicity of domestic life without this prefix; to her
+children she spoke of him as "your pa"; to all others as "the Colonel."
+
+"Yes, Elvira."
+
+The Colonel's voice was leisurely, but muffled owing to the extra heavy
+lather he was laying about his mouth for the Sunday morning shave. His
+wife's voice shrilled again up the staircase:
+
+"It's going on nine o'clock and the boys are nowheres near ready; I
+haven't dressed the twins yet, and the boys are trying to shampoo each
+other--they've got your bottle of bay rum, and not a single shoe have
+they greased. I wish you'd hurry up and come down; for if there's one
+thing you know I hate it's to go into church after the beginning of the
+first lesson with those boys squeaking and scrunching up the aisle
+behind me. It makes me nervous and upsets me so I can't find the place
+in my prayer book half the time."
+
+"I'll be down shortly." The tone was intended to be conciliatory, but it
+irritated Mrs. Caukins beyond measure.
+
+"I know all about your 'shortlies,' Mr. Caukins; they're as long as the
+rector's sermon this very Whit-sunday--the one day in the whole year
+when the children can't keep still any more than cows in fly time. Did
+you get their peppermints last night?"
+
+"'Gad, my dear, I forgot them! But really--", his voice was degenerating
+into a mumble owing to the pressure of circumstances, "--matters of
+such--er--supreme importance--came--er--to my knowledge last evening
+that--that--"
+
+"That what?"
+
+"--That--that--mm--mm--" there followed the peculiar noise attendant
+upon a general clearing up of much lathered cuticle, "--I forgot them."
+
+"What matters were they? You didn't say anything about 'supreme
+importance' last night, Mr. Caukins."
+
+"I'll tell you later, Elvira; just at present I--"
+
+"Was it anything about the quarries?"
+
+"Mm--"
+
+"_What_ was it?"
+
+"I heard young Googe was expected next week."
+
+"Well, I declare! I could have told you that much myself if you'd been
+at home in any decent season. It seems pretty poor planning to have to
+run down three miles to The Greenbush every Saturday evening to find out
+what you could know by just stepping across the bridge to Aurora's. She
+told me yesterday. Was that all?"
+
+"N--no--"
+
+"For mercy's sake, Mr. Caukins, don't keep me waiting here any longer!
+It's almost church time."
+
+"I wasn't aware that I was detaining you, Elvira." The Colonel's protest
+was mild but dignified. There were sounds above of renewed activity.
+
+"Dulcie," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to a little girl who was standing
+beside her, listening with erected ears to her mother's questions and
+father's answers, "go up stairs into mother's room and see if Doosie's
+getting ready, there's a good girl."
+
+"Doosie is with me, Elvira; I would let well enough alone for the
+present, if I were you," said the Colonel admonishingly. His wife wisely
+took the hint. "Come up, Dulcie," he called, "father's ready." Dulcie
+hopped up stairs.
+
+"You haven't said what matters of importance kept you last night." Mrs.
+Caukins returned to her muttons with redoubled energy.
+
+"Champney came home unexpectedly last evening, and the syndicate has
+offered him a position, a big one, in New York--treasurer of the
+Flamsted Quarries Company; and our Romanzo's got a chance too--"
+
+"You don't say! What is it?" Mrs. Caukins started up stairs whence came
+sounds of an obstreperous bootjack.
+
+"Paymaster, here in town; I'll explain in more propitious circumstances.
+Has 'Lias harnessed yet, Elvira?"
+
+Without deigning to answer, Mrs. Caukins freed her mind.
+
+"Well, Mr. Caukins, I must say you grow more and more like that old ram
+of 'Lias's that has learned to butt backwards just for the sake of going
+contrary to nature. I believe you'd rather tell a piece of news
+backwards than forwards any day! Why didn't you begin by telling me
+about Romanzo? If your own child that's your flesh and blood and bone
+isn't of most interest to you, I'd like to know what is!"
+
+The Colonel's reply was partly inaudible owing to a sudden outbreak of
+altercation among the boys in the room below. Mrs. Caukins, who had just
+reached the landing, turned in her tracks and hurried to the rescue.
+
+The Colonel smiled at the rosy, freshly-shaved face reflected in the
+mirror of the old-fashioned dressing-case, and, at the same time, caught
+the reflection of another image--that of his hired man, 'Lias, who was
+crossing the yard. He went to the window and leaned out, stemming his
+hands on the sill.
+
+"There seems to be the usual Sunday morning row going on below, 'Lias. I
+fear the boys are shampooing each other's heads with the backs of their
+brushes from the sounds."
+
+'Lias smiled, and nodded understandingly.
+
+"Just look in and lend a hand in case Mrs. Caukins should be
+outnumbered, will you? I'm engaged at present." And deeply engaged he
+was to the twins' unspeakable delight. Whistling softly an air from "Il
+Trovatore," he rubbed some orange-flower water on his chin and cheeks;
+then taking a fresh handkerchief, dabbed several drops on the two little
+noses that waited upon him weekly in expectation of this fragrant boon.
+He was rewarded by a few satisfactory kisses.
+
+"Now run away and help mother--coach leaves at nine forty-five
+_pre_-cisely. I forgot the peppermints, but--" he slapped his trousers'
+pockets significantly.
+
+The twins shouted with delight and rushed away to impart the news to the
+boys.
+
+"I wish you would tell me the secret of your boys' conduct in church,
+Colonel Caukins; it's exemplary. I don't understand it, for boys will be
+boys," said the rector one Sunday several years before when all the boys
+were young. He had taken note of their want of restlessness throughout
+the sermon.
+
+The Colonel's mouth twitched; he answered promptly, but avoided his
+wife's eyes.
+
+"All in the method, I assure you. We Americans have spent a generation
+in experimenting with the inductive, the subjective method in education,
+and the result is, to all intents and purposes, a dismal failure. The
+future will prove the value of the objective, the deductive--which is
+mine," he added with a sententious emphasis that left the puzzled rector
+no wiser than before.
+
+"Whatever the method, Colonel, you have a fine family; there is no
+mistake about that," he said heartily.
+
+The Colonel beamed and responded at once:
+
+"'Blessed is the man that hath his quiver full'--"
+
+At this point Mrs. Caukins surreptitiously poked the admonitory end of
+her sunshade between the Colonel's shoulder blades, and the Colonel,
+comprehending, desisted from further quotation of scripture. It was not
+his strong point. Once he had been known to quote, not only unblushingly
+but triumphantly, during a touch-and-go discussion of the labor question
+in the town hall:--"The ass, gentlemen, is worthy of his hire"; and in
+so doing had covered Mrs. Caukins with confusion and made a transient
+enemy of every wage-earner in the audience.
+
+But his boys behaved--that was the point. What boys wouldn't when their
+heart's desire was conveyed to them at the beginning of the sermon by a
+secret-service-under-the-pew process wholly delightful to the young
+human male? Who wouldn't be quiet for the sake of the peppermints, a
+keen three-bladed knife, or a few gelatine fishes that squirmed on his
+warm moist palm in as lively a manner as if just landed on the lake
+shore? Their father had been a boy, and at fifty had a boy's heart
+within him--this was the secret of his success.
+
+Mrs. Caukins appeared at last, radiant in the consciousness of a new
+chip hat and silk blouse. Dulcie and Doosie in white lawn did their
+pains-taking mother credit in every respect. The Colonel gallantly
+presented his wife with a small bunch of early roses--an attention which
+called up a fine bit of color into her still pretty face. 'Lias helped
+her into the three-seated wagon, then lifted in the twins; the boys
+piled in afterwards; the Colonel took the reins. Mrs. Caukins waved her
+sunshade vigorously at 'Lias and gave a long sigh of relief and
+satisfaction.
+
+"Well, we're off at last! I declare I miss Maggie every hour in the day.
+I don't know what I should have done all these years without that girl!"
+
+The mention of "Maggie" emphasizes one of the many changes in Flamsted
+during the six years of Champney Googe's absence. Mrs. Caukins, urged by
+her favorite, Aileen, and advised by Mrs. Googe and Father Honoré, had
+imported Margaret O'Dowd, the "Freckles" of the asylum, as mother's
+helper six months after Aileen's arrival in Flamsted. For nearly six
+years Maggie loyally seconded Mrs. Caukins in the care of her children
+and her household. Slow, but sure and dependable, strong and willing,
+she made herself invaluable in the stone house among the sheep pastures;
+her stunted affections revived and flourished apace in that household of
+well-cared-for children to whom both parents were devoted. It cost her a
+heartache to leave them; but six months ago burly Jim McCann, one of the
+best workmen in the sheds--although of unruly spirit and a source of
+perennial trouble among the men--began to make such determined love to
+the mother's helper that the Caukinses found themselves facing
+inevitable loss. Maggie had been married three months; and already
+McCann had quarrelled with the foreman, and, in a huff, despite his
+wife's tears and prayers, sought of his own accord work in another and
+far distant quarry.
+
+"Maggie told me she'd never leave off teasing Jim to bring her back,"
+said the fifth eldest Caukins.--"Oh, look!" he cried as they rumbled
+over the bridge; "there's Mrs. Googe and Champney on the porch waving to
+us!"
+
+The Colonel took off his hat with a flourish; the boys swung theirs;
+Mrs. Caukins waved her sunshade to mother and son.
+
+"I declare, I'd like to stop just a minute," she said regretfully, for
+the Colonel continued to drive straight on. "I'm so glad for Aurora's
+sake that he's come home; I only hope our Romanzo will do as well."
+
+"It would be an intrusion at such a time, Elvira. The effusions of even
+the best-intentioned friends are injudicious at the inopportune moment
+of domestic reunion."
+
+Mrs. Caukins subsided on that point. She was always depressed by the
+Colonel's grandiloquence, which he usually reserved for The Greenbush
+and the town-meeting, without being able to account for it.
+
+"He'll see a good many changes here; it's another Flamsted we're living
+in," she remarked later on when they passed the first stone-cutters'
+shed on the opposite shore of the lake; and the family proceeded to
+comment all the way to church on the various changes along the route.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in truth another Flamsted, the industrial Flamsted which the
+Colonel predicted six years before on that memorable evening in the
+office of The Greenbush.
+
+To watch the transformation of a quiet back-country New England village
+into the life-centre of a great and far-reaching industry, is in itself
+a liberal education, not only in economics, but in inherited
+characteristics of the human race. Those first drops of "the deluge,"
+the French priest and the Irish orphan, were followed by an influx of
+foreigners of many nationalities: Scotch, Irish, Italians, Poles,
+Swedes, Canadian French; and with these were associated a few
+American-born.
+
+Their life-problem, the earning of wages for the sustenance of
+themselves and their families, was one they had in common. Its solution
+was centred for one and all in their work among the granite quarries of
+The Gore and in the stone-cutters' sheds on the north shore of Lake
+Mesantic. These two things the hundreds belonging to a half-dozen
+nationalities possessed in common--these, and their common humanity
+together with the laws to which it is subject. But aside from this,
+their speech, habits, customs, religions, food, and pastimes were
+polyglot; on this account the lines of racial demarkation were apt, at
+times, to be drawn all too sharply. Yet this very fact of
+differentiation provided hundreds of others--farmers, shopkeepers,
+jobbers, machinists, mechanics, blacksmiths, small restaurant-keepers,
+pool and billiard room owners--with ample sources of livelihood.
+
+This internal change in the community of Flamsted corresponded to the
+external. During those six years the very face of nature underwent
+transformation. The hills in the apex of The Gore were shaved clean of
+the thin layer of turf, and acres of granite laid bare to the drill.
+Monster derricks, flat stone-cars, dummy engines, electric motors, were
+everywhere in evidence. Two glittering steel tracks wound downwards
+through old watercourses to the level of the lake, and to the huge
+stone-cutting sheds that stretched their gray length along the northern
+shore. Here the quarried stones, tons in weight, were unloaded by the
+great electric travelling crane which picks up one after the other with
+automatic perfection of silence and accuracy, and deposits them wherever
+needed by the workmen.
+
+A colony of substantial three-room houses, two large boarding-houses, a
+power house and, farther up beyond the pines, a stone house and a long
+low building, partly of wood, partly of granite waste cemented, circled
+the edges of the quarry.
+
+The usual tale of workmen in the fat years was five hundred quarrymen
+and three hundred stone-cutters. This population of working-men, swelled
+to three thousand by the addition of their families, increased or
+diminished according as the years and seasons proved fat or lean. A
+ticker on Wall Street was sufficient to give to the great industry
+abnormal life and activity, and draw to the town a surplus working
+population. A feeling of unrest and depression, long-continued in
+metropolitan financial circles, was responded to with sensitive pulse on
+these far-away hills of Maine and resulted in migratory flights, by tens
+and twenties, of Irish and Poles, of Swedes, Italians, French Canucks,
+and American-born to more favorable conditions. "Here one day and gone
+the next"; even the union did not make for stability of tenure.
+
+In this ceaseless tidal ebb and flow of industrials, the original
+population of Flamsted managed at times to come to the surface to
+breathe; to look about them; to speculate as to "what next?" for the
+changes were rapid and curiosity was fed almost to satiety. A fruitful
+source of speculation was Champney Googe's long absence from home,
+already six years, and his prospects when he should have returned.
+Speculation was also rife when Aurora Googe crossed the ocean to spend a
+summer with her son; at one time rumors were afloat that Champney's
+prospective marriage with a relation of the Van Ostends was near at
+hand, and this was said to be the cause of his mother's rather sudden
+departure. But on her return, Mrs. Googe set all speculation in this
+direction at rest by denying the rumor most emphatically, and adding the
+information for every one's benefit that she had gone over to be with
+Champney because he did not wish to come home at the time his contract
+with Mr. Van Ostend permitted.
+
+Once during the past year, the village wise heads foregathered in the
+office of The Greenbush to discuss the very latest:--the coming to
+Flamsted of seven Sisters, Daughters of the Mystic Rose, who, foreseeing
+the suppression of their home institution in France, had come to prepare
+a refuge for their order on the shores of America and found another home
+and school among the quarrymen in this distant hill-country of the new
+Maine--an echo of the old France of their ancestors. This was looked
+upon as an undreamed-of innovation exceeding all others that had come to
+their knowledge; it remained for old Joel Quimber to enter the lists as
+champion of the newcomers, their cause, and their school which, with
+Father Honoré's aid, they at once established among the barren hills of
+The Gore.
+
+"Hounded out er France, poor souls, just like my own
+great-great-great-granther's father!" he said, referring to the subject
+again on that last Saturday evening when the frequenters of The
+Greenbush were to be stirred shortly by the news they considered best of
+all: Champney Googe's unexpected arrival. "I was up thar yisterd'y an'
+it beats all how snug they're fixed! The schoolroom's ez neat as a pin,
+an' pitchers on the walls wuth a day's journey to see. They're havin' a
+room built onto the farther end--a kind of er relief hospital, so
+Father Honoré told me--ter help out when the quarrymen git a jammed foot
+er finger, so's they needn't be took home to muss up their little cabins
+an' worrit their wives an' little 'uns. I heerd Aileen hed ben goin' up
+thar purty reg'lar lately for French an' sich; guess Mis' Champney's
+done 'bout the right thing by her, eh, Tave?"
+
+Octavius nodded. "And Aileen's done the right thing by Mrs. Champney. 'T
+isn't every young girl that would stick to it as Aileen's done the last
+six years--not in the circumstances."
+
+"You're right, Tave. I heerd not long ago thet she was a-goin' on the
+stage when she'd worked out her freedom, and by A. J. she's got the
+voice for it! But I'd hate ter see _her_ thar. She's made a lot er
+sunshine in this place, and I guess from all I hear there's them thet
+would stan' out purty stiff agin it; they say Luigi Poggi an' Romanzo
+Caukins purty near fit over her t' other night."
+
+"You needn't believe all you hear, Joel, but you can believe me when I
+tell you there'll be no going on the stage for Aileen--not if I know it,
+or Father Honoré either."
+
+He spoke so emphatically that his brother Augustus looked at him in
+surprise.
+
+"What's up, Tave?" he inquired.
+
+"I mean Aileen's got a level head and isn't going to leave just as
+things are beginning to get interesting. She's stood it six year and she
+can stand it six more if she makes up her mind to it, and I'd ought to
+know, seeing as I've lived with her ever since she come to Flamsted."
+
+"To be sure, Tave, to be sure; nobody knows better'n you, 'bout Aileen,
+an' I guess she's come to look on you, from all I hear, as her special
+piece of property." His brother spoke appeasingly.
+
+Octavius smiled. "Well, I don't deny but she lays claim to me most of
+the time; it's 'Octavius' here and 'Octavius' there all day long.
+Sometimes Mrs. Champney ruffs up about it, but Aileen has a way of
+smoothing her down, generally laughs her out of it. Is that the
+Colonel?" He listened to a step on the veranda. "Don't let on 'bout
+anything 'twixt Romanzo and Aileen before the Colonel, Joel."
+
+"You don't hev ter say thet to me," said old Quimber resentfully;
+"anybody can see through a barn door when thar's a hole in it. All on us
+know Mis' Champney's a-breakin'; they do say she's hed a shock,
+leastwise I heerd so, an' Aileen'll look out for A No. 1. I ain't lived
+to be most eighty in Flamsted for nothin', an' I've seen an' heerd
+more'n I've ever told, Tave; more'n even you know 'bout some things. You
+don't remember the time old Square Googe took Aurory inter his home to
+bring up an' Judge Champney said he was sorry he'd got ahead of him for
+he wanted to adopt her for a daughter himself; them's his words; I heerd
+him. An' I can tell more'n--"
+
+"Shut up, Quimber," said Octavius shortly; and Joel Quimber "shut up,"
+but, winking knowingly at Augustus Buzzby, continued to chuckle to
+himself till the Colonel entered who, beginning to expatiate upon the
+subject of Champney Googe's prospects when he should have returned to
+the home-welcome awaiting him, was happily interrupted by the
+announcement of that young man's unexpected arrival on the evening
+train.
+
+
+II
+
+Champney Googe was beginning to realize, as he stood on the porch with
+his mother and waved to his old neighbors, the Caukinses, the changed
+conditions he was about to face. He was also realizing that he must
+change to meet these conditions. On his way up from the train Saturday
+evening, he noted the power house at The Corners and the substantial
+line of comfortable cottages that extended for a mile along the highroad
+to the entrance of the village. He found Main Street brilliant with
+electric lights and lined nearly its entire length with shops, large and
+small, which were thronged with week-end purchasers. An Italian fruit
+store near The Greenbush bore the proprietor's name, Luigi Poggi; as he
+drove past he saw an old Italian woman bargaining with smiles and lively
+gestures over the open counter. Farther on, from an improvised wooden
+booth, the raucous voice of the phonograph was jarring the night air and
+entertaining a motley group gathered in front of it. Across the street a
+flaunting poster announced "Moving Picture Show for a Nickel." Vehicles
+of all descriptions, from a Maine "jigger" to a "top buggy," were
+stationary along the village thoroughfare, their various steeds hitched
+to every available stone post. In front of the rectory some Italian
+children were dancing to the jingle of a tambourine.
+
+On nearing The Bow the confusion ceased; the polyglot sounds were
+distinguishable only as a murmur. In passing Champ-au-Haut, he looked
+up at the house; here and there a light shone behind drawn shades. Six
+years had passed since he was last there; six years--and time had not
+dulled the sensation of that white pepper in his nostrils! He smiled to
+himself. He must see Aileen before he left, for from time to time he had
+heard good reports of her from his mother with whom she had become a
+favorite. He thought she must be mighty plucky to stand Aunt Meda all
+this time! He gathered from various sources that Mrs. Champney was
+growing peculiar as she approached three score and ten. Her rare letters
+to him, however, were kind enough. But he was sure Aileen's anomalous
+place in the household at Champ-au-Haut--neither servant nor child of
+the house, never adopted, but only maintained--could have been no
+sinecure. Anyway, he knew she had kept the devotion of her two admirers,
+Romanzo Caukins and Octavius Buzzby. From a hint in his aunt's last
+letter, he drew the conclusion that Aileen and Romanzo would make a
+match of it before long, when Romanzo should be established. At any
+rate, Aileen had wit enough, he was sure, to know on which side her
+bread was buttered, and from all he heard by the way of letters, Romanzo
+Caukins was not to be sneezed at as a prospective husband--a
+steady-going, solid sort of a chap who, he was told, had a chance now
+like himself in the quarry business. He must credit Aunt Meda with this
+one bit of generosity, at least; Mr. Van Ostend told him she had applied
+to him for some working position for Romanzo in the Flamsted office, and
+not in vain; he was about to be put in as pay-master.
+
+As he drove slowly up the highroad towards The Gore, he saw the
+stone-cutters' sheds stretching dim and gray in the moonlight along the
+farther shore. A standing train of loaded flat-cars gleamed in the
+electric light like a long high-piled drift of new-fallen snow. Here and
+there, on approaching The Gore, an arc-light darkened the hills round
+about and sent its blinding glare into the traveller's eyes. At last,
+his home was in sight--his home!--he wondered that he did not experience
+a greater thrill of home-coming--and behind and above it the many
+electric lights in and around the quarries produced hazy white
+reflections concentrated in luminous spots on the clear sky.
+
+His mother met him on the porch. Her greeting was such that it caused
+him to feel, and for the first time, that where she was, there,
+henceforth, his true home must ever be.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It will be hard work adjusting myself at first, mother," he said,
+turning to her after watching the wagonload of Caukinses out of sight,
+"harder than I had any idea of. A foreign business training may broaden
+a man in some ways, but it leaves his muscles flabby for real home work
+here in America. You make your fight over there with gloves, and here
+only bare knuckles are of any use; but I'm ready for it!" He smiled and
+squared his shoulders as to an imaginary load.
+
+"You don't regret it, do you, Champney?"
+
+"Yes and no, mother. I don't regret it because I have gained a certain
+knowledge of men and things available only to one who has lived over
+there; but I do regret that, because of the time so spent, I am, at
+twenty-seven, still hugging the shore--just as I was when I left
+college. After all these years I'm not 'in it' yet; but I shall be
+soon," he added; the hard determined ring of steadfast purpose was in
+his voice. He sat down on the lower step: his mother brought forward
+her chair.
+
+"Champney," she spoke half hesitatingly; she did not find it easy to
+question the man before her as she used to question the youth of
+twenty-one, "would you mind telling me if there ever was any truth in
+the rumor that somehow got afloat over here three years ago that you
+were going to marry Ruth Van Ostend? Of course, I denied it when I got
+home, for I knew you would have told me if there had been anything to
+it."
+
+Champney clasped his hands about his knee and nursed it, smiling to
+himself, before he answered:
+
+"I suppose I may as well make a clean breast of the whole affair, which
+is little enough, mother, even if I didn't cover myself with glory and
+come out with colors flying. You see I was young and, for all my four
+years in college, pretty green when it came to the real life of those
+people--"
+
+"You mean the Van Ostends?"
+
+"Yes, their kind. It's one thing to accept their favors, and it's quite
+another to make them think you are doing them one. So I sailed in to
+make Ruth Van Ostend interested in me as far as possible, circumstances
+permitting--and you'll admit that a yachting trip is about as favorable
+as they make it. You know she's three years older than I, and I think it
+flattered and amused her to accept my devotion for a while, but then--"
+
+"But, Champney, did you love her?"
+
+"Well, to be honest, mother, I hadn't got that far myself--don't know
+that I ever should have; any way, I wanted to get her to the point
+before I went through any self-catechism on that score."
+
+"But, Champney!" She spoke with whole-hearted protest.
+
+He nodded up at her understandingly. "I know the 'but', mother; but
+that's how it stood with me. You know they were in Paris the next spring
+and, of course, I saw a good deal of them--and of many others who were
+dancing attendance on the heiress to the same tune that I was. But I
+caught on soon, and saw all the innings were with one special man; and,
+well--I didn't make a fool of myself, that's all. As you know, she was
+married the autumn after your return, three years ago."
+
+"You're sure you really didn't mind, Champney?"
+
+He laughed out at that. "Mind! Well, rather! You see it knocked one of
+my little plans higher than a kite--a plan I made the very day I decided
+to accept Mr. Van Ostend's offer. Of course I minded."
+
+"What plan?"
+
+"Wonder if I'd better tell you, mother? I'd like to stand well in your
+good graces--"
+
+"Oh, Champney!"
+
+"Fact, I would. Well, here goes then: I decided--I was lying up under
+the pines, you know that day I didn't want to accept his offer?"--she
+nodded confirmatorily--"that if I couldn't have an opportunity to get
+rich quick in one way, I would in another; and, in accepting the offer,
+I made up my mind to try for the sister and her millions; if successful,
+I intended to take by that means a short cut to matrimony and fortune."
+
+"Oh, Champney!"
+
+"Young and fresh and--hardened, wasn't it, mother?"
+
+"You were so young, so ignorant, so unused to that sort of living; you
+had no realization of the difficulties of life--of love--."
+
+She began speaking as if in apology for his weakness, but ended with the
+murmured words "life--love", in a voice so tense with pain that it
+sounded as if the major dominant of youth and ignorance suddenly
+suffered transcription into a haunting minor.
+
+Her son looked up at her in surprise.
+
+"Why, mother, don't take it so hard; I assure you I didn't. It brought
+me down to bed rock, for I was making a conceited ass of myself that's
+all, in thinking I could have roses for fodder instead of thistles--and
+just for the asking! It did me no end of good. I shall never rush in
+again where even angels fear to tread except softly--I mean the male
+wingless kind--worth a couple of millions; she has seven in her own
+right.--But we're the best of friends."
+
+He spoke without bitterness. His mother felt, however, at the moment,
+that she would have preferred to hear a note of keen disappointment in
+his explanation rather than this tone of lightest persiflage.
+
+"I don't see how--" she began, but checked herself. A slight flush
+mounted in her cheeks.
+
+"See how what, mother? Please don't leave me dangling; I'm willing to
+take all you can give. I deserve it."
+
+"I wasn't going to blame you, Champney. I'm the last one to do
+that--Life teaches each in her own way. I was only thinking I didn't see
+how any girl _could_ resist loving you, dear."
+
+"Oh, ho! Don't you, mother mine! Well, commend me to a doting--"
+
+"I'm _not_ doting, Champney," she protested, laughing; "I know your
+faults better than you know them yourself."
+
+"A doting mother, I say, to brace up a man fallen through his pride. Do
+you mean to say"--, he sprang to his feet, faced her, his hands thrust
+deep in his pockets, his face alive with the fun of the moment,--"do you
+mean to say that if you were a girl I should prove irresistible to you?
+Come now, mother, tell me, honor bright."
+
+She raised her eyes to his. The flush faded suddenly in her cheeks,
+leaving them unnaturally white; her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"I should worship you," she said under her breath, and dropped her head
+into her hands. He sprang up the steps to her side.
+
+"Why, mother, mother, don't speak so. I'm not worthy of it--it shames
+me. Here, look up," he took her bowed head tenderly between his hands
+and raised it, "look into my face; read it well--interpret, and you will
+cease to idealize, mother."
+
+She wiped her eyes, half-smiling through her tears. "I'm not idealizing,
+Champney, and I didn't know I could be so weak; I think--I think the
+telegram and your coming so unexpectedly--"
+
+"I know, mother," he spoke soothingly, "it was too much; you've been too
+long alone. I'm glad I'm at home at last and can run up here almost any
+time." He patted her shoulder softly, and whistled for Rag. "Come, put
+on your shade hat and we'll go up to the quarries. I want to see them;
+do you realize they are the largest in the country? It's wonderful what
+a change they've made here! After all, it takes America to forge ahead,
+for we've got the opportunities and the money to back them--and what
+more is needed to make us great?" He spoke lightly, expecting no
+answer.
+
+She brought her hat and the two went up the side road under the elms to
+the quarry.
+
+Ay, what more is needed to make us great? That is the question. There
+comes a time when a man, whose ears are not wholly deafened by the roar
+of a trafficking commercialism, asks this question of himself in the
+hope that some answer may be vouchsafed to him. If it come at all, it
+comes like the "still small voice" _after the whirlwind_; and the man
+who asks that question in the expectation of a response, must first have
+suffered, repented, struggled, fought, at times succumbed to fateful
+overwhelming circumstance, before his soul can be attuned so finely that
+the "still small voice" becomes audible. Youth and that question are not
+synchronous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I've not been so much alone as you imagine, Champney," said his mother.
+They were picking their way over the granite slopes and around to Father
+Honoré's house. "Aileen and Father Honoré and all the Caukinses and,
+during this last year, those sweet women of the sisterhood have brought
+so much life into my life up here among these old sheep pastures that
+I've not had the chance to feel the loneliness I otherwise should. And
+then there is that never-to-be-forgotten summer with you over the
+ocean--I feed constantly on the remembrance of all that delight."
+
+"I'm glad you had it, mother."
+
+"Besides, this great industry is so many-sided that it keeps me
+interested in every new development in spite of myself."
+
+"By the way, mother, you wrote me that you had invested most of that
+twenty thousand from the quarry lands in bank stock, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes; Mr. Emlie is president now; he is considered safe. The deposits
+have quadrupled these last two years, and the dividends have been
+satisfactory."
+
+"Yes, I know Emlie's safe enough, but you don't want to tie up your
+money so that you can't convert it at once into cash if advisable. You
+know I shall be on the inside track now and in a position to use a
+little of it at a time judiciously in order to increase it for you. I'd
+like to double it for you as Aunt Meda has doubled her inheritance from
+grandfather--Who's that?"
+
+He stopped short and, shading his eyes with his hat, nodded in the
+direction of the sisterhood house that stood perhaps an eighth of a mile
+beyond the pines. His mother, following his look, saw the figure of a
+girl dodge around the corner of the house. Before she could answer, Rag,
+the Irish terrier, who had been nosing disconsolately about on the
+barren rock, suddenly lost his head. With one short suppressed yelp, he
+laid his heels low to the slippery granite shelves and scuttled,
+scurried, scrambled, tore across the intervening quarry hollow like a
+bundle of brown tow driven before a hurricane.
+
+Mrs. Googe laughed. "No need to ask 'who' when you see Rag go mad like
+that! It's Aileen; Rag has been devoted to her ever since you've been
+gone. I wonder why she isn't at church?"
+
+The girl disappeared in the house. Again and again Champney whistled for
+his dog but Rag failed to put in an appearance.
+
+"He'll need to be re-trained. It isn't well, even for a dog, to be under
+such petticoat government as that; it spoils him. Only I'm afraid I
+sha'n't be at home long enough to make him hear to reason."
+
+"Aileen has him in good training. She knows the dog adores her and makes
+the most of it. Oh, I forgot to tell you I sent word to Father Honoré
+this morning to come over to tea to-night. I knew you would like to see
+him, and he has been anticipating your return."
+
+"Has he? What for I wonder. By the way, where did he take his meals
+after he left you?"
+
+"Over in the boarding-house with the men. He stayed with me only three
+months, until his house was built. He has an old French Canadian for
+housekeeper now."
+
+"He's greatly beloved, I hear."
+
+"The Gore wouldn't be The Gore without him," Mrs. Googe spoke earnestly.
+"The Colonel"--she laughed as she always did when about to quote her
+rhetorical neighbor--"speaks of him to everyone as 'the heart of the
+quarry that responds to the throb of the universal human,' and so far as
+I know no one has ever taken exception to it, for it's true."
+
+"I remember--he was an all round fine man. I shall be glad to see him
+again. He must find some pretty tough customers up here to deal with,
+and the Colonel's office is no longer the soft snap it was for fifteen
+years, I'll bet."
+
+"No, that's true; but, on the whole, there is less trouble than you
+would expect among so many nationalities. Isn't it queer?--Father Honoré
+says that most of the serious trouble comes from disputes between the
+Hungarians and Poles about religious questions. They are apt to settle
+it with fists or something worse. But he and the Colonel have managed
+well between them; they have settled matters with very few arrests."
+
+"I can't imagine the Colonel in that rôle." Champney laughed. "What does
+he do with all his rhetorical trumpery at such times? I've never seen
+him under fire--in fact, he never had been when I left."
+
+"I know he doesn't like it. He told me he shouldn't fill the office
+after another year. You know he was obliged to do it to make both ends
+meet; but since the opening of the quarries he has really prospered and
+has a market right here in town for all the mutton he can raise. I'm so
+glad Romanzo's got a chance."
+
+They rambled on, crossing the apex of The Gore and getting a good view
+of the great extent of the opened quarries. Their talk drifted from one
+thing to another, Champney questioning about this one and that, until,
+as they turned homewards, he declared he had picked up the many dropped
+stitches so fast, that he should feel no longer a stranger in his native
+place when he should make his first appearance in the town the next day.
+He wanted to renew acquaintance with all the people at Champ-au-Haut and
+the old habitués of The Greenbush.
+
+
+III
+
+He walked down to Champ-au-Haut the next afternoon. Here and there on
+the mountain side and along the highroad he noticed the massed pink and
+white clusters of the sheep laurel. Every singing bird was in full
+voice; thrush and vireo, robin, meadow lark, song-sparrow and catbird
+were singing as birds sing but once in the whole year; when the mating
+season is at its height and the long migratory flight northwards is
+forgotten in the supreme instinctive joy of the ever-new miracle of
+procreation.
+
+When he came to The Bow he went directly to the paddock gate. He was
+hoping to find Octavius somewhere about. He wanted to interview him
+before seeing any one else, in regard to Rag who had not returned. The
+recalcitrant terrier must be punished in a way he could not forget; but
+Champney was not minded to administer this well-deserved chastisement in
+the presence of the dog's protectress. He feared to make a poor first
+impression.
+
+He stopped a moment at the gate to look down the lane--what a beautiful
+estate it was! He wondered if his aunt intended leaving anything of it
+to the girl she had kept with her all these years. Somehow he had
+received the impression, whether from Mr. Van Ostend or his sister he
+could not recall, that she once said she did not mean to adopt her. His
+mother never mentioned the matter to him; indeed, she shunned all
+mention, when possible, of Champ-au-Haut and its owner.
+
+In his mind's eye he could still see this child as he saw her on the
+stage at the Vaudeville, clad first in rags, then in white; as he saw
+her again dressed in the coarse blue cotton gown of orphan asylum order,
+sitting in the shade of the boat house on that hot afternoon in July,
+and rubbing her greasy hands in glee; as he saw her for the third time
+leaning from the bedroom window and listening to his improvised
+serenade. Well, he had a bone to pick with her about his dog; that would
+make things lively for a while and serve for an introduction. He reached
+over to unlatch the gate. At that moment he heard Octavius' voice in
+violent protest. It came from behind a group of apple trees down the
+lane in the direction of the milking shed.
+
+"Now don't go for to trying any such experiment as that, Aileen; you'll
+fret the cow besides mussing your clean dress."
+
+"I don't care; it'll wash. Now, please, do let me, Tave, just this
+once."
+
+"I tell you the cow won't give down her milk if you take hold of her.
+She'll get all in a fever having a girl fooling round her." There
+followed the rattle of pails and a stool.
+
+"Now, look here, Octavius Buzzby, who knows best about a cow, you or I?"
+
+"Well, seeing as I've made it my business to look after cows ever since
+I was fifteen year old, you can't expect me to give in to you and say
+_you_ do."
+
+Her merry laugh rang out. Champney longed to echo it, but thought best
+to lie low for a while and enjoy the fun so unexpectedly provided.
+
+"Tavy, dear, that only goes to prove you are a mere man; a dear one to
+be sure--but then! Don't you flatter yourself for one moment that you,
+or any other man, really know any creature of the feminine gender from a
+woman to a cow. You simply can't, Tavy, because you aren't feminine.
+_Can_ you comprehend that? Can you say on your honor as a man that you
+have ever been able to tell for certain what Mrs. Champney, or Hannah,
+or I, for instance, or this cow, or the cat, or Bellona, when she hasn't
+been ridden enough, or the old white hen you've been trying to force to
+sit the last two weeks, is going to do next? Now, honor bright, have
+you?"
+
+Octavius was grumbling some reply inaudible to Champney.
+
+"No, of course you haven't; and what's more you never will. Not that
+it's your fault, Tavy, dear, it's only your misfortune." Exasperating
+patronage was audible in her voice. Champney noted that a trace of the
+rich Irish brogue was left. "Here, give me that pail."
+
+"I tell you, Aileen, you can't do it; you've never learned to milk."
+
+"Oh, haven't I? Look here, Tave, now no more nonsense; Romanzo taught me
+how two years ago--but we both took care you shouldn't know anything
+about it. Give me that pail." This demand was peremptory.
+
+Evidently Octavius was weakening, for Champney heard again the rattle of
+the pails and the stool; then a swish of starched petticoat and a cooing
+"There, there, Bess."
+
+He opened the gate noiselessly and closing it behind him walked down the
+lane. The golden light of the June sunset was barred, where it lay upon
+the brilliant green of the young grass, with the long shadows of the
+apple-tree trunks. He looked between the thick foliage of the
+low-hanging branches to the milking shed. The two were there. Octavius
+was looking on dubiously; Aileen was coaxing the giant Holstein mother
+to stand aside at a more convenient angle for milking.
+
+"Hold her tail, Tave," was the next command.
+
+She seated herself on the stool and laid her cheek against the warm,
+shining black flank; her hands manipulated the rosy teats; then she
+began to sing:
+
+    "O what are you seeking my pretty colleen,
+    So sadly, tell me now!"--
+      "O'er mountain and plain
+      I'm searching in vain
+    Kind sir, for my Kerry cow."
+
+The milk, now drumming steadily into the pail, served for a running
+accompaniment to the next verses.
+
+    "Is she black as the night with a star of white
+    Above her bonny brow?
+      And as clever to clear
+      The dykes as a deer?"--
+    "That's just my own Kerry cow."
+
+    "Then cast your eye into that field of wheat
+    She's there as large as life."--
+      "My bitter disgrace!
+      Howe'er shall I face
+    The farmer and his wife?"
+
+What a voice! And what a picture she made leaning caressingly against
+the charmed and patient Bess! She was so slight, yet round and
+supple--strong, too, with the strength of perfect health! The thick
+fluffed black hair was rolled away from her face and gathered into a low
+knot in the nape of her neck. Her dress cut low at the throat enhanced
+the white purity of her face and the slim round grace of her neck which
+showed to advantage against the ebony flank of the mother of many milky
+ways. Her lips were red and full; the nose was a saucy stub; the eyes he
+could not see; they were downcast, intent upon her filling pail and the
+rising creamy foam; but he knew them to be an Irish blue-gray.
+
+[Illustration: "What a picture she made leaning caressingly against the
+charmed and patient Bess"]
+
+    "Since the farmer's unwed you've no cause to dread
+    From his wife, you must allow.
+      And for kisses three--
+      'Tis myself is he--
+    The farmer will free your cow."
+
+The song ceased; the singer was giving her undivided attention to her
+self-imposed task. Octavius took a stool and began work with another
+cow. Champney, nothing loath to prolong the pleasure of looking at the
+improvised milkmaid, waited before making his presence known until she
+should have finished.
+
+And watching her, he could but wonder at the ways of Chance that had
+cast this little piece of foreign flotsam upon the shores of America,
+only to sweep it inland to this village in Maine. He could not help
+comparing her with Alice Van Ostend--what a contrast! What an abyss
+between the circumstances of the two lives! Yet this one was decidedly
+charming, more so than the other; for he was at once aware that Aileen
+was already in possession of her womanhood's dower of command over all
+poor mortals of the opposite sex--her manner with Octavius showed him
+that; and Alice when he saw her last, now nearly six months ago, would
+have given any one the impression of something still unfledged--a tall,
+slim, overgrown girl of sixteen, and somewhat spoiled. This was indeed
+only natural, for her immediate world of father, aunt, and relations had
+circled ever since her birth in the orbit of her charming wilfulness.
+Champney acknowledged to himself that he had done her bidding a little
+too frequently ever since the first yachting trip, when as a little girl
+she attached herself to him, or rather him to her as a part of her
+special goods and chattels. At that time their common ground for
+conversation was Aileen; the child was never tired of his rehearsing for
+her delight the serenade scene. But in another year she lost this
+interest, for many others took its place; nor was it ever renewed.
+
+The Van Ostends, together with Ruth and her husband, had been living the
+last three winters in Paris, Mr. Van Ostend crossing and recrossing as
+his business interests demanded or permitted. Champney was much with
+them, for their home was always open to him who proved an ever welcome
+guest. He acknowledged to himself, while participating in the intimacy
+of their home life, that if the child's partiality to his companionship,
+so undisguisedly expressed on every occasion, should, in the transition
+periods of girlhood and young womanhood, deepen into a real attachment,
+he would cultivate it with a view to asking her in marriage of her
+father when the time should show itself ripe. In his first youthful
+arrogance of self-assertion he had miscalculated with Ruth Van Ostend.
+He would make provision that this "undeveloped affair"--so he termed
+it--with her niece should not miscarry for want of caution. He intended
+while waiting for Alice to grow up--a feat which her aunt was always
+deploring as an impossibility except in a physical sense--to make
+himself necessary in this young life. Thus far he had been successful;
+her weekly girlish letters conclusively proved it.
+
+While waiting for the milk to cease its vigorous flow, he was conscious
+of reviewing his attitude towards the "undeveloped affair" in some such
+train of thought, and finding in it nothing to condemn, rather to
+commend, in fact; for not for the fractional part of a second did he
+allow a thought of it to divert his mind from the constant end in view:
+the making for himself a recognized place of power in the financial
+world of affairs. He knew that Mr. Van Ostend was aware of this
+steadfast pursuit of a purpose. He knew, moreover, that the fact that
+the great financier was taking him into his New York office as treasurer
+of the Flamsted Quarries, was a tacit recognition not only of his six
+years' apprenticeship in some of the largest banking houses in Europe,
+but of his ability to acquire that special power which was his goal. In
+the near future he would handle and practically control millions both in
+receipt and disbursement. Many of the contracts, already signed, were to
+be filled within the next three years--the sound of the milking suddenly
+ceased.
+
+"My, how my wrists ache! See, Tave, the pail is almost full; there must
+be twelve or fourteen quarts in all."
+
+She began to rub her wrists vigorously. Octavius muttered: "I told you
+so. You might have known you couldn't milk steady like that without
+getting all tuckered out."
+
+Champney stepped forward quickly. "Right you are, Tave, every time. How
+are you, dear old chap?" He held out his hand.
+
+"Champ--Champney--why--" he stammered rather than spoke.
+
+"It's I, Tave; the same old sixpence. Have I changed so much?"
+
+"Changed? I should say so! I thought--I thought--" he was wringing
+Champney's hand; some strange emotion worked in his features--"I thought
+for a second it was Mr. Louis come to life." He turned to Aileen who had
+sprung from her stool. "Aileen, this is Mr. Champney Googe; you've
+forgotten him, I dare say, in all these years."
+
+The rich red mantled her cheeks; the gray eyes smiled up frankly into
+his; she held out her hand. "Oh, no, I've not forgotten Mr. Champney
+Googe; how could I?"
+
+"Indeed, I think it is the other way round; if I remember rightly you
+gave me the opportunity of never forgetting you." He held her hand just
+a trifle longer than was necessary. The girl smiled and withdrew it.
+
+"Milky hands are not so sticky as spruce gum ones, Mr. Googe, but they
+are apt to be quite as unpleasant."
+
+Champney was annoyed without in the least knowing why. He was wondering
+if he should address her as "Aileen" or "Miss Armagh," when Octavius
+spoke:
+
+"Aileen, just go on ahead up to the house and tell Mrs. Champney Mr.
+Googe is here." Aileen went at once, and Octavius explained.
+
+"You see, Champney--Mr. Googe--"
+
+"Have I changed so much, Tave, that you can't use the old name?"
+
+"You've changed a sight; it don't come easy to call you Champ, any more
+than it did to call Mr. Louis by his Christian name. You look a Champney
+every inch of you, and you act like one." He spoke emphatically; his
+small keen eyes dwelt admiringly on the face and figure of the tall man
+before him. "I thought 't was better to send Aileen on ahead, for Mrs.
+Champney's broken a good deal since you saw her; she can't stand much
+excitement--and you're the living image." He called for the boy who had
+taken Romanzo's place. "I'll go up as far as the house with you. How
+long are you going to stay?"
+
+"It depends upon how long it takes me to investigate these quarries,
+learn the ropes. A week or two possibly. I am to be treasurer of the
+Company with my office in New York."
+
+"So I heard, so I heard. I'm glad it's come at last--no thanks to
+_her_," he added, nodding in the direction of the house.
+
+"Do you still hold a grudge, Tave?"
+
+"Yes, and always shall. Right's right and wrong's wrong, and there ain't
+a carpenter in this world that can dovetail the two. You and your mother
+have been cheated out of your rights in what should be yours, and it's
+ten to one if you ever get a penny of it."
+
+Champney smiled at the little man's indignation. "All the more reason to
+congratulate me on my job, Tave."
+
+"Well, I do; only it don't set well, this other business. She ain't
+helped you any to it?" He asked half hesitatingly.
+
+"Not a red cent, Tave. I don't owe her anything. Possibly she will leave
+some of it to this same Miss Aileen Armagh. Stranger things have
+happened." Octavius shook his head.
+
+"Don't you believe it, Champney. She likes Aileen and well she may, but
+she don't like her well enough to give her a slice off of this estate;
+and what's more she don't like any living soul well enough to part with
+a dollar of it on their account."
+
+"Is there any one Aunt Meda ever did love, Tave? From all I remember to
+have heard, when I was a boy, she was always bound up pretty thoroughly
+in herself."
+
+"Did she ever love any one? Well she did; that was her husband, Louis
+Champney, who loved you as his own son. And it's my belief that's the
+reason you don't get your rights. She was jealous as the devil of every
+word he spoke to you."
+
+"You're telling me news--and late in the day."
+
+"Late is better than never, and I'd always meant to tell you when you
+come to man's estate--but you've been away so long, I've thought
+sometimes you was never coming home; but I hoped you would for your
+mother's sake, and for all our sakes."
+
+"I'm going to do what I can, but you mustn't depend too much on me,
+Tave. I'm glad I'm at home for mother's sake although I always felt she
+had a good right hand in you, Tave; you've always been a good friend to
+her, she tells me."
+
+Octavius Buzzby swallowed hard once, twice; but he gave him no reply.
+Champney wondered to see his face work again with some emotion he failed
+to explain satisfactorily to himself.
+
+"There's Mrs. Champney on the terrace; I won't go any farther. Come in
+when you can, won't you?"
+
+"I shall be pretty apt to run in for a chat almost anytime on my way to
+the village." He waved his hand in greeting to his aunt and sprang up
+the steps leading to the terrace.
+
+He bent to kiss her and was shocked by the change in her that was only
+too apparent: the delicate features were sharpened; the temples sunken;
+her abundant light brown hair was streaked heavily with white; the
+hands had grown old, shrunken, the veins prominent.
+
+"Kiss me again, Champney," she said in a low voice, closing her eyes
+when he bent again to fulfil her request. When she opened them he
+noticed that the lids were trembling and the corners of her mouth
+twitched. But she rallied in a moment and said sharply:
+
+"Now, don't say you're sorry--I know all about how I look; but I'm
+better and expect to outlive a good many well ones yet."
+
+She told Aileen to bring another chair. Champney hastened to forestall
+her; his aunt shook her finger at him.
+
+"Don't begin by spoiling her," she said. Then she bade her make ready
+the little round tea-table on the terrace and serve tea.
+
+"What do you think of her?" she asked him after Aileen had entered the
+house. She spoke with a directness of speech that warned Champney the
+question was a cloak to some other thought on her part.
+
+"That she does you credit, Aunt Meda. I don't know that I can pay you or
+her a greater compliment."
+
+"Very well said. You've learned all that over there--and a good deal
+more besides. There have been no folderols in her education. I've made
+her practical. Come, draw up your chair nearer and tell me something of
+the Van Ostends and that little Alice who was the means of Aileen's
+coming to me. I hear she is growing to be a beauty."
+
+"Beauty--well, I shouldn't say she was that, not yet; but 'little.' She
+is fully five feet six inches with the prospect of an additional inch."
+
+"I didn't realize it. When are they coming home?"
+
+"Early in the autumn. Alice says she is going to come out next winter,
+not leak out as the other girls in her set have done; and what Alice
+wants she generally manages to have."
+
+"Let me see--she must be sixteen; why that's too young!"
+
+"Seventeen next month. She's very good fun though."
+
+"Like her?" She looked towards the house where Aileen was visible with a
+tea-tray.
+
+"Well, no; at least, not along her lines I should say. She seems to have
+Tave pretty well under her thumb."
+
+Mrs. Champney smiled. "Octavius thought he couldn't get used to it at
+first, but he's reconciled now; he had to be.--Call her Aileen,
+Champney; you mustn't let her get the upper hand of you by making her
+think she's a woman grown," she added in a low tone, for the girl was
+approaching them, slowly on account of the loaded tray she was carrying.
+
+Champney left his seat and taking the tea-things from her placed them on
+the table. Aileen busied herself with setting all in order and twirling
+the tea-ball in each cup of boiling water, as if she had been used to
+this ultra method of making tea all her life.
+
+"By the way, Aileen--"
+
+He checked himself, for such a look of amazement was in the quickly
+lifted gray eyes, such a surprised arch was visible in the dark brows,
+that he realized his mistake in hearing to his aunt's request. He felt
+he must make himself whole, and if possible without further delay.
+
+"Oh, I see that it must still be Miss Aileen
+Armagh-and-don't-you-forget-it!" he exclaimed, laughing to cover his
+confusion.
+
+She laughed in turn; she could not help it at the memories this title
+called to mind. "Well, it's best to be particular with strangers, isn't
+it?" Down went the eyes to search in the bottom of a teacup.
+
+"I fancied we were not wholly that; I told Aunt Meda about our escapade
+six years ago; surely, that affair ought to establish a common ground
+for our continued acquaintance. But, if that's not sufficient, I can
+find another nearer at hand--where's my dog?"
+
+This brought her to terms.
+
+"Oh, I can't do anything with Rag, Mr. Googe; I'm so sorry. He's over in
+the coach house this very minute, and Tave was going to take him home
+to-night. Just think! That seven-year-old dog has to be carried home,
+old as he is!"
+
+"If it's come to that, I'll take him home under my arm to-night--that
+is, if he won't follow; I'll try that first."
+
+"But you're not going to punish him!--and simply because he likes me.
+That wouldn't be fair!"
+
+She made her protest indignantly. Champney looked at his aunt with an
+amused smile. She nodded understandingly.
+
+"Oh, no; not simply because he likes you, but because he is untrue to
+me, his master."
+
+"But that isn't fair!" she exclaimed again, her cheeks flushing rose
+red; "you've been away so long that the dog has forgotten."
+
+"Oh, no, he hasn't; or if he has I must jog his memory. He's Irish, and
+the supreme characteristic of that breed is fidelity."
+
+"Well, so am I Irish," she retorted pouting; she began to make him a
+second cup of tea by twirling the silver tea-ball in the shallow cup
+until the hot water flew over the edge; "but I shouldn't consider it
+necessary to be faithful to any one who had forgotten and left me for
+six years."
+
+"You wouldn't?" Champney's eyes challenged hers, but either she did not
+understand their message or she was too much in earnest to heed it.
+
+"No I wouldn't; what for? I like Rag and he likes me, and we have been
+faithful to each other; it would be downright hypocrisy on his part to
+like you after all these years."
+
+"How about you?" Champney grew bold because he knew his aunt was
+enjoying the girl's entanglement as much as he was. She was amused at
+his daring and Aileen's earnestness. "Didn't you tell me in Tave's
+presence only just now that you couldn't forget me? How is that for
+fidelity? And why excuse Rag on account of a six years' absence?"
+
+"Well, of course, he's your dog," she said loftily, so evading the
+question and ignoring the laugh at her expense.
+
+"Yes, he's my dog if he is a backslider, and that settles it." He turned
+to his aunt. "I'll run in again to-morrow, Aunt Meda, I mustn't wear my
+welcome out in the first two days of my return."
+
+"Yes, do come in when you can. I suppose you will be here a month or
+two?"
+
+"No; only a week or two at most; but I shall run up often; the business
+will require it." He looked at Aileen. "Will you be so kind as to come
+over with me to the coach house, Miss Armagh, and hand my property over
+to me? Good-bye, Aunt Meda."
+
+Aileen rose. "I'll be back in a few minutes, Mrs. Champney, or will you
+go in now?"
+
+"There's no dew, and the air is so fresh I'll sit here till you come."
+
+The two went down the terrace steps side by side. Mrs. Champney watched
+them out of sight; there was a kindling light in her faded eyes.
+
+"Now, we'll see," said Champney, as they neared the coach house and saw
+in the window the bundle of brown tow with black nose flattened on the
+pane and eyes filled with longing under the tangled topknot. The stub of
+a tail was marking time to the canine heartbeats. Champney opened the
+door; the dog scurried out and sprang yelping for joy upon Aileen.
+
+"Rag, come here!" The dog's day of judgment was in that masculine
+command. The little terrier nosed Aileen's hand, hesitated, then pressed
+more closely to her side. The girl laughed out in merry triumph.
+Champney noted that she showed both sets of her strong white teeth when
+she laughed.
+
+"Rag, dear old boy!" She parted with caressing fingers the skein of tow
+on the frowsled head.
+
+"Come on, Rag." Champney whistled and started up the driveway. The
+terrier fawned on Aileen, slavered, snorted, sniffed, then crept almost
+on his belly, tail stiff, along the ground after Champney who turned and
+laid his hand on him. The dog crouched in the road. He gently pulled the
+stumps of ears--"Now come!"
+
+He went whistling up the road, and the terrier, recognizing his master,
+trotted in a lively manner after him.
+
+Champney turned at the gate and lifted his hat. "How about fidelity now,
+Miss Armagh?" He wanted to tease in payment for that amazed look she
+gave him for taking a liberty with her Christian name.
+
+"Well, of course, he's your dog," she called merrily after him, "but _I_
+wouldn't have done it if I'd been Rag!"
+
+Champney found himself wondering on the homeward way if she really meant
+what she said.
+
+
+IV
+
+It was a careless question, carelessly put, and yet--Aileen Armagh,
+before she returned to the house, was also asking herself if she meant
+what she said, asking it with an unwonted timidity of feeling she could
+not explain. On coming in sight of the terrace, she saw that Mrs.
+Champney was still there. She hesitated a moment, then crossed the lawn
+to the boat house. She wanted to sit there a while in the shade, to
+think things out with herself if possible. What did this mean--this
+strange feeling of timidity?
+
+The course of her life was not wholly smooth. It was inevitable that two
+natures like hers and Mrs. Champney's should clash at times, and the
+impact was apt to be none of the softest. Twice, Aileen, making a
+confidant of Octavius, threatened to run away, for the check rein was
+held too tightly, and the young life became restive under it. When the
+child first came to Champ-au-Haut, its mistress recognized at once that
+in her mischief, her wilfulness, her emphatic assertion of her right of
+way, there was nothing vicious, and to Octavius Buzzby's amazement, she
+dealt with her, on the whole, leniently.
+
+"She amuses me," she would say when closing an eye to some of Aileen's
+escapades that gave a genuine shock to Octavius in the region of his
+local prejudices.
+
+There had been, indeed, no "folderols" in her education. Sewing,
+cooking, housework she was taught root and branch in the time not spent
+at school, both grammar and high. During the last year Mrs. Champney
+permitted her to learn French and embroidery in a systematic manner at
+the school established by the gentle Frenchwomen in The Gore; but she
+steadily refused to permit the girl to cultivate her voice through the
+medium of proper instruction. This denial of the girl's strongest desire
+was always a common subject of dissension and irritation; however, after
+Aileen was seventeen a battle royal of words between the two was a rare
+occurrence.
+
+At the same time she never objected to Aileen's exercising her talent in
+her own way. Father Honoré encouraged her to sing to the accompaniment
+of his violin, knowing well that the instrument would do its share in
+correcting faults. She sang, too, with Luigi Poggi, her "knothole boy"
+of the asylum days; and, as seven years before, Nonna Lisa often
+accompanied with her guitar. The old Italian, who had managed to keep in
+touch with her one-time _protégée_, and her grandson Luigi, made their
+appearance in the village one summer after Aileen had been two years in
+Flamsted. Luigi, now that his vaudeville days were over, was in search
+of work at the quarries; his grandmother was to keep house for him till
+he should be able to establish himself in trade--the goal of so many of
+his thrifty countrymen.
+
+These two Italians were typical of thousands of their nationality who
+come to our shores; whom our national life, through naturalization and
+community of interests, is able in a marvellously short time to
+assimilate--and for the public good. Intelligent, business-like, keen at
+a bargain, but honest and graciously gentle and friendly in manner,
+Luigi Poggi soon established himself in the affections of Flamsted--in
+no one's more solidly than in Elmer Wiggins', strange to say, who
+capitulated to the "foreigner's" progressive business methods--and after
+three years of hard and satisfactory work at the quarries and in the
+sheds, by living frugally and saving thriftily he was able to open the
+first Italian fruit stall in the quarry town. The business was
+flourishing and already threatened to overrun its quarters. Luigi was in
+a fair way to become fruit capitalist; his first presidential vote had
+been cast, and he felt prepared to enjoy to the full his new
+Americanhood.
+
+But with his young manhood and the fulfilment of its young aspirations,
+came other desires, other incentives for making his business a success
+and himself a respected and honored citizen of these United States.
+Luigi Poggi was ready to give into Aileen's keeping--whenever she might
+choose to indicate by a word or look that she was willing to accept the
+gift--his warm Italian heart that knew no subterfuge in love, but gave
+generously, joyfully, in the knowledge that there would be ever more and
+more to bestow. He had not as yet spoken, save with his dark eyes, his
+loving earnestness of voice, and the readiness with which, ever since
+his appearance in Flamsted he ran and fetched and carried for her.
+
+Aileen enjoyed this devotion. The legitimate pleasure of knowing she is
+loved--even when no response can be given--is a girl's normal emotional
+nourishment. Through it the narrows in her nature widen and the shallows
+deepen to the dimensions that enable the woman's heart to give, at last,
+even as she has received,--ay, even more than she can ever hope to
+receive. This novitiate was now Aileen's.
+
+As a foil, against which Luigi's silent devotion showed to the best
+advantage, Romanzo Caukins' dogged persistence in telling her on an
+average of once in two months that he loved her and was waiting for a
+satisfactory answer, served its end. For six years, while Romanzo
+remained at Champ-au-Haut, the girl teased, cajoled, tormented, amused,
+and worried the Colonel's eldest. Of late, since his twenty-first
+birthday, he had turned the tables on her, and was teasing and worrying
+her with his love-blind persistence. That she had given him a decided
+answer more than once made no impression on his determined spirit. In
+her despair Aileen went to Octavius; but he gave her cold comfort.
+
+"What'd I tell you two years ago, Aileen? Didn't I say you couldn't play
+with even a slow-match like Roman, if you didn't want a fire later on?
+And you wouldn't hear a word to me."
+
+"But I didn't know, Tave! How could I think that just because a boy tags
+round after you from morning till night for the sake of being amused,
+that when he gets to be twenty-one he is going to keep on tagging round
+after you for the rest of his days? I never saw such a leech! He simply
+won't accept the fact once for all that I won't have him; but he's got
+to--so now!"
+
+Octavius smiled at the sudden little flurry; he was used to them.
+
+"I take it Roman doesn't think you know your own mind."
+
+"He doesn't! Well, he'll find out I do, then. Oh, dear, why couldn't he
+just go on being Romanzo Caukins with no nonsense about him, and not
+make such a goose of himself! Anyway, I'm thankful he's gone; it got so
+I couldn't so much as tell him to harness up for Mrs. Champney, that he
+didn't consider it a sign of 'yielding' on my part!" She laughed out.
+"Oh, Tavy dear, what should I do without you!--Now if I could make an
+impression on you, it might be worth while," she added mischievously.
+
+Octavius would have failed to be the man he was had he not felt
+flattered; he smiled on her indulgently. "Well, I shouldn't tag round
+after you much if I was thirty year younger; 't ain't my way. But
+there's one thing, Aileen, I want to say to you, and if you've got any
+common sense you'll heed me this time: I want you to be mighty careful
+how you manage with Luigi. You've got no slow-match to play with this
+time, let me tell you; you've got a regular sleeping volcano like some
+of them he was born near; and it won't do, I warn you. He ain't Romanzo
+Caukins--Roman's home made; but t'other is a foreigner; they're
+different."
+
+"Oh, don't preach, Octavius." She always called him by his unabbreviated
+name when she was irritated. "I like well enough to sing with Luigi, and
+go rowing with him, and play tennis, and have the good times, but it's
+nonsense for you to think he means anything serious. Why, he never spoke
+a word of love to me in his life!"
+
+"Humph!--that silent kind's the worst; you don't give him a chance."
+
+"And I don't mean to--does that satisfy you?" she demanded. "If it
+doesn't, I'll tell you something--but it's a secret; you won't tell?"
+
+"Not if you don't want me to; I ain't that kind."
+
+"I know you're not, Tave; that's why I'm going to tell you. Here, let me
+whisper--"; she bent to his ear; he was seated on a stool in the coach
+house mending a strap; "--I've waited all this time for that prince to
+come, and do you suppose for one moment I'd look at any one else?"
+
+"Now that ain't fair to fool me like that, Aileen!"
+
+Octavius was really vexed, but he spoke the last words to empty air, for
+the girl caught up her skirt and ran like a deer up the lane. He could
+hear her laughing at his discomfiture; the sound grew fainter and
+fainter; when it ceased he resumed his work, from time to time shaking
+his head ominously and talking to himself as a vent for his outraged
+feelings.
+
+But Aileen spoke the truth. Her vivid imagination, a factor in the true
+Celtic temperament, provided her with another life, apart from the busy
+practical one which Mrs. Champney laid out for her. All her childish
+delights of day-dreaming and joyous romancing, fostered by that first
+novel which Luigi Poggi thrust through the knothole in the orphan asylum
+fence, was at once transferred to Alice Van Ostend and her surroundings
+so soon as the two children established their across-street
+acquaintance. Upon her arrival in Flamsted, the child's adaptability to
+changed circumstances and new environment was furthered by the play of
+this imagination that fed itself on what others, who lack it, might call
+the commonplace of life: the house at Champ-au-Haut became her lordly
+palace; the estate a park; she herself a princess guarded only too well
+by an aged duenna; Octavius Buzzby and Romanzo Caukins she looked upon
+as life-servitors.
+
+Now and then the evidence of this unreal life, which she was leading,
+was made apparent to Octavius and Romanzo by some stilted mode of
+speech. At such times they humored her; it provided amusement of the
+richest sort. She also continued to invent "novels" for Romanzo's
+benefit, and many a half-hour the two spent in the carriage
+house--Aileen aglow with the enthusiasm of narration, and Romanzo intent
+upon listening, charmed both with the tale and the narrator. In these
+invented novels, there was always a faithful prince returning after long
+years of wandering to the faithful princess. This was her one theme with
+variations.
+
+Sometimes she danced a minuet on the floor of the stable, with this
+prince as imaginary partner, and Romanzo grew jealous of the bewitching
+smiles and coquetries she bestowed upon the vacant air. At others she
+would induce the youth to enter a box stall, telling him to make believe
+he was at the theatre, and then, forgetting her rôle of princess, she
+was again the Aileen Armagh of old--the child on the vaudeville stage,
+dancing the coon dance with such vigor and abandonment that once, when
+Aileen was nearly sixteen, Octavius, being witness to this flaunting
+performance, took her severely to task for such untoward actions now
+that she was grown up. He told her frankly that if Romanzo Caukins was
+led astray in the future it would be through her carryings-on; at which
+Aileen looked so dumbfoundered that Octavius at once perceived his
+mistake, and retreated weakly from his position by telling her if she
+wanted to dance like that, she'd better dance before him who understood
+her and her intentions.
+
+At this second speech Aileen stared harder than ever; then going up to
+him and throwing an arm around his neck, she whispered:
+
+"Tave, dear, are you mad with me? What have I done?--Is it really
+anything so awful?"
+
+Her distress was so unfeigned that Octavius, not being a woman,
+comforted her by telling her he was a great botcher. Inwardly he cursed
+himself for an A No. 1 fool. Aileen never danced the "coon" again, but
+thereafter gave herself such grown-up and stand-off airs in Romanzo's
+presence, that the youth proceeded in all earnest to lose both head and
+heart to the girl's gracious blossoming womanhood. Octavius, observing
+this, groaned in spirit, and henceforth held his tongue when he heard
+the girl carolling her Irish love songs in the presence of the ingenuous
+Caukins.
+
+After this, the girl's exuberance of spirits and the sustaining inner
+life of the imagination helped her wonderfully during the three
+following years of patient waiting on a confirmed invalid. Of late, Mrs.
+Champney had come to depend more and more on the girl's strong youth; to
+demand more and more from her abundant vitality and lively spirits; and
+Aileen, although recognizing the anomalous position she held in the
+Champ-au-Haut household--neither servant nor child, neither companion
+nor friend--gave of herself; gave as her Irish inheritance prompted her
+to give: ungrudgingly, faithfully, without reward save the knowledge of
+a duty performed towards the woman who, in taking her into her household
+and maintaining her there, had placed her in a position to make
+friends--such friends!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the soil is turned over carefully, enriched and prepared perfectly
+for the seed; when rain is abundant, sunshine plenteous and
+mother-earth's spring quickening is instinctive, is it to be wondered at
+that the rootlet delves, the plantlet lifts itself, the bud forms
+quickly, and unexpectedly spreads its petal-star to the sunlight which
+enhances its beauty and fructifies its work of reproduction? The natural
+laws, in this case, work to their prescribed end along lines of
+favoring circumstance--and Love is but the working out of the greatest
+of all Nature's laws. When conditions are adverse, there is only too
+often struggle, strife, wretchedness. The result is a dwarfing of the
+product, a lowering of the vital power, a recession from the type. But,
+on the contrary, when all conditions combine to further the working of
+this law, we have the rapid and perfect flowering, followed by the
+beneficent maturity of fruit and seed. Thus Life, the ever-new, becomes
+immortal.
+
+Small wonder that Aileen Armagh, trying to explain that queer feeling of
+timidity, should suddenly press her hand hard over her heart! It was
+throbbing almost to the point of suffocating her, so possessed was it by
+the joy of a sudden and wonderful presence of love.
+
+The knowledge brought with it a sense of bewildering unreality. She knew
+now that her day dreams had a substantial basis. She knew now that she
+had _not_ meant what she said.
+
+For years, ever since the night of the serenade, her vivid imagination
+had been dwelling on Champney Googe's home-coming; for years he was the
+central figure in her day dreams, and every dream was made half a
+reality to her by means of the praises in his behalf which she heard
+sounded by each man, woman, and child in the ever-increasing circle of
+her friends. It was always with old Joel Quimber: "When Champ gits back,
+we'll hev what ye might call the head of a fam'ly agin." Octavius Buzzby
+spent hours in telling her of the boy's comings and goings and doings at
+Champ-au-Haut, and the love Louis Champney bore him. Romanzo Caukins set
+him on the pedestal of his boyish enthusiasm. The Colonel himself was
+not less enthusiastic than his first born; he never failed to assure
+Aileen when she was a guest in his house--an event that became a weekly
+matter as she grew older--that her lot had fallen in pleasant places;
+that to his friend, Mrs. Googe, and her son, Champney, she was indebted
+for the new industrial life which brought with it such advantages to one
+and all in Flamsted.
+
+To Aurora Googe, the mother of her imaginative ideal, Aileen, attracted
+from the first by her beauty and motherly kindness towards an orphan
+waif, gave a child's demonstrative love, afterwards a girl's adoration.
+In all this devotion she was abetted by Elvira Caukins to whom Aurora
+Googe had always been an ideal of womanhood. Moreover, Aileen came to
+know during these years of Champney Googe's absence that his mother
+worshipped in reality where she herself worshipped in imagination.
+
+Thus the ground was made ready for the seed. Small wonder that the
+flowering of love in this warm Irish heart was immediate, when Champney
+Googe, on the second day after his home-coming, questioned her with that
+careless challenge in his eyes:
+
+"You wouldn't?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun set before she left the boat house. She ran up the steps to the
+terrace and, not finding Mrs. Champney there, sought her in the house.
+She found her in the library, seated in her easy chair which she had
+turned to face the portrait of her husband, over the fireplace.
+
+"Why didn't you call me to help you in, Mrs. Champney? I blame myself
+for not coming sooner."
+
+"I really feel stronger and thought I might as well try it; there is
+always a first time--and you were with Champney, weren't you?"
+
+"I? Why no--what made you think that?" Mrs. Champney noticed the slight
+hesitation before the question was put so indifferently, and the quick
+red that mounted in the girl's cheeks. "Mr. Googe went off half an hour
+ago with Rag tagging on behind."
+
+"Then he conquered as usual."
+
+"I don't know whether I should call it 'conquering' or not; Rag didn't
+want to go, that was plain enough to see."
+
+"What made him go then?"
+
+Aileen laughed out. "That's just what I'd like to know myself."
+
+"What do you think of him?"
+
+"Who?--Rag or Mr. Googe?"
+
+She was always herself with Mrs. Champney, and her daring spirit of
+mischief rarely gave offence to the mistress of Champ-au-Haut. But by
+the tone of voice in which she answered, Aileen knew that, without
+intention, she had irritated her.
+
+"You know perfectly well whom I mean--my nephew, Mr. Googe."
+
+Aileen was silent for a moment. Her young secret was her own to guard
+from all eyes, and especially from all unfriendly ones. She was standing
+on the hearth, in front of Mrs. Champney. Turning her head slightly she
+looked up at the portrait of the man above her--looked upon almost the
+very lineaments of him whom at that very moment her young heart was
+adoring: the fine features, the blue eyes, the level brows, the firm
+curving lips, the abundant brown hair. It was as if Champney Googe
+himself were smiling down upon her. As she continued to look, the lovely
+light in the girl's face--a light reflected from no sunset fires over
+the Flamsted Hills, but from the sunrise of girlhood's first
+love--betrayed her to the faded watchful eyes beside her.
+
+"He looks just like your husband;" she spoke slowly; her voice seemed to
+linger on the last word; "when Tave saw him he said he thought it was
+Mr. Champney come to life, and I think--"
+
+Mrs. Champney interrupted her. "Octavius Buzzby is a fool." Sudden anger
+hardened her voice; a slight flush came into her wasted cheeks. "Tell
+Hannah I want my supper now, let Ann bring it in here to me. I don't
+need you; I'm tired."
+
+Aileen turned without another word--she knew too well that tone of voice
+and what it portended; she was thankful to hear it rarely now--and left
+the room to do as she was bidden.
+
+"Little fool!" Almeda Champney muttered between set teeth when the door
+closed upon the girl. She placed both hands on the arms of her chair to
+raise herself; walked feebly to the hearth where a moment before Aileen
+had stood, and raising her eyes to the smiling ones looking down into
+hers, confessed her woman's weakness in bitter words that mingled with a
+half-sob:
+
+"And I, too, was a fool--all women are with such as you."
+
+
+V
+
+Although Mrs. Champney remained the only one who read Aileen Armagh's
+secret, yet even she asked herself as the summer sped if she read
+aright.
+
+During the three weeks in which her nephew was making himself familiar
+with all the inner and outer workings of the business at The Gore and in
+the sheds, she came to anticipate his daily coming to Champ-au-Haut, for
+he brought with him the ozone of success. His laugh was so unaffectedly
+hearty; his interest in the future of Flamsted and of himself as a
+factor in its prosperity so unfeigned; his enjoyment of his own
+importance so infectious, his account of the people and things he had
+seen during his absence from home so entertaining that, in his presence,
+his aunt breathed a new atmosphere, the life-giving qualities of which
+were felt as beneficial to every member of the household at The Bow.
+
+Mrs. Champney took note that he never asked for Aileen. If the girl were
+there when he ran in for afternoon tea on the terrace or an hour's chat
+in the evening,--sometimes it happened that the day saw him three times
+at Champ-au-Haut--her presence to all appearance afforded him only an
+opportunity to tease her goodnaturedly; he delighted in her repartee.
+Mrs. Champney, keenly observant, failed to detect in the girl's frank
+joyousness the least self-consciousness; she was just her own merry self
+with him, and the "give and take" between them afforded Mrs. Champney a
+fund of amusement.
+
+On the evening of his departure for New York, she was witness to their
+merry leave-taking. Afterwards she summoned Octavius to the library.
+
+"You may bring all the mail for the house hereafter to me, Octavius; now
+that I am feeling so much stronger, I shall gradually resume my
+customary duties in the household. You need not give any of the mail to
+Aileen to distribute--I'll do it after to-night."
+
+"What the devil is she up to now!" Octavius said to himself as he left
+the room.
+
+But no letter from New York came for Aileen. Mrs. Champney tried another
+tack: the next time her nephew came to Flamsted, later on in the autumn,
+she asked him to write her in detail concerning his intimacy with her
+cousins, the Van Ostends, and of their courtesies to him. Champney,
+nothing loath--always keeping in mind the fact that it was well to keep
+on the right side of Aunt Meda--wrote her all she desired to know. What
+he wrote was retailed faithfully to Aileen; but the frequent dinners at
+the Van Ostends', and the prospective coming-out reception and ball to
+be given for Alice and scheduled for the late winter, called forth from
+the eagerly listening girl only ejaculations of delight and pleasant
+reminiscence of the first time she had seen the little girl dressed for
+a party. If, inwardly she asked herself the question why Alice Van
+Ostend had dropped all her childish interest in her whom she had been
+the means of sending to Flamsted, why she no longer inquired for her,
+her common sense was apt to answer the question satisfactorily. Aileen
+Armagh was keen-eyed and quick-witted, possessing, without actual
+experience in the so-called other world of society, a wonderful
+intuition as to the relative value of people and circumstances in this
+ordinary world which already, during her short life, had presented
+various interesting phases for her inspection; consequently she
+recognized the abyss of circumstance between her and the heiress of
+Henry Van Ostend. But, with an intensity proportioned to her open-minded
+recognition of the first material differences, her innate womanliness
+and pride refused to acknowledge any abyss as to their respective
+personalities. Hence she kept silence in regard to certain things;
+laughed and made merry over the letters filled with the Van Ostends'
+doings--and held on her own way, sure of her own status with herself.
+
+Aileen kept her secret, and all the more closely because she was
+realizing that Champney Googe was far from indifferent to her. At first,
+the knowledge of the miracle of love, that was wrought so suddenly as
+she thought, sufficed to fill her heart with continual joy. But,
+shortly, that was modified by the awakening longing that Champney should
+return her love. She felt she charmed him; she knew that he timed his
+coming and going that he might encounter her in the house or about the
+grounds, whenever and wherever he could--sometimes alone in her boat on
+the long arm of the lake, that makes up to the west and is known as
+"lily-pad reach"; and afterwards, during the autumn, in the quarry woods
+above The Gore where with her satellites, Dulcie and Doosie Caukins, she
+went to pick checkerberries.
+
+Mrs. Champney was baffled; she determined to await developments, taking
+refuge from her defeat in the old saying "Love and a cough can't be
+hidden." Still, she could but wonder when four months of the late
+spring and early summer passed, and Champney made no further appearance
+in Flamsted. This hiatus was noticeable, and she would have found it
+inexplicable, had not Mr. Van Ostend written her a letter which
+satisfied her in regard to many things of which she had previously been
+in doubt; it decided her once for all to speak to Aileen and warn her
+against any passing infatuation for her nephew. For this she determined
+to bide her time, especially as Champney's unusual length of absence
+from Flamsted seemed to have no effect on the girl's joyous spirits. In
+July, however, she had again an opportunity to see the two together at
+Champ-au-Haut. Champney was in Flamsted on business for two days only,
+and so far as she knew there was no opportunity for Aileen to see her
+nephew more than once and in her presence. She managed matters in such a
+way that Aileen's services were in continual demand during Champney's
+two days' stay in his native town.
+
+But after that visit in July, the singing voice was heard ringing
+joyfully at all times of the day in the house and about the grounds of
+The Bow. Sometimes the breeze brought it to Octavius from across the
+lake waters--Luigi's was no longer with it--and he pitied the girl
+sincerely because the desire of her heart, the cultivation of such a
+voice, was denied her. Mrs. Champney, also, heard the clear voice,
+which, in this the girl's twentieth year, was increasing in volume and
+sweetness, carolling the many songs in Irish, English, French and
+Italian. She marvelled at the light-heartedness and, at the same time,
+wondered if, now that Romanzo Caukins could no longer hope, Aileen would
+show enough common sense to accept Luigi Poggi in due time, and through
+him make for herself an established place in Flamsted. Not that she was
+yet ready to part with her--far from it. She was too useful a member of
+the Champ-au-Haut household. Still, if it were to be Poggi in the end,
+she felt she could control matters to the benefit of all concerned,
+herself primarily. She was pleasing herself with the idea of such
+prospective control of Aileen's matrimonial interests one afternoon,
+just after Champney's flying visit in July, when she rose from her chair
+beneath the awning and, to try her strength, made her way slowly along
+the terrace to the library windows; they were French casements and one
+of them had swung outwards noiselessly in the breeze. She was about to
+step through, when she saw Aileen standing on the hearth before the
+portrait of Louis Champney. She was gazing up at it, her face illumined
+by the same lovely light that, a year before, had betrayed her secret to
+the faded but observant eyes of Louis Champney's widow.
+
+This was enough; the mistress of Champ-au-Haut was again on her
+guard--and well she might be, for Aileen Armagh was in possession of the
+knowledge that Champney Googe loved her. In joyful anticipation she was
+waiting for the word which, spoken by him when he should be again in
+Flamsted, was to make her future both fair and blest.
+
+
+VI
+
+In entering on his business life in New York, Champney Googe, like many
+another man, failed to take into account the "minus quantities" in his
+personal equation. These he possessed in common with other men because
+he, too, was human: passions in common, ambitions in common, weaknesses
+in common, and last, but not least, the pursuance of a common end--the
+accumulation of riches.
+
+The sum of these minus quantities added to the total of temperamental
+characteristics and inherited traits left, unfortunately, in balancing
+the personal equation a minus quantity. Not that he had any realization
+of such a result--what man has? On the contrary, he firmly believed that
+his inherited obstinate perseverance, his buoyant temperament, his
+fortunate business connection with the great financier, his position as
+the meeting-point of the hitherto divided family interests in Flamsted,
+his intimacy with the Van Ostends--the distant tie of blood confirming
+this at all points--plus his college education and cosmopolitan business
+training in the financial capitals of Europe, were potent factors in
+finding the value of _x_--this representing to him an, as yet, unknown
+quantity of accumulated wealth.
+
+He had not yet asked himself how large a sum he wished to amass, but he
+said to himself almost daily, "I have shown my power along certain lines
+to-day," these lines converging in his consciousness always to monetary
+increment.
+
+He worked with a will. His energy was tireless. He learned constantly
+and much from other men powerful in the world of affairs--of their
+methods of speculation, some legitimate, others quite the contrary; of
+their manipulation of stocks, weak and strong; of their strengthening
+the market when the strengthening was necessary to fill a threatened
+deficit in their treasury and of their weakening a line of investment to
+prevent over-loading and consequent depletion of the same. He was
+thoroughly interested in all he heard and saw of the development of
+mines and industries for the benefit of certain banking cliques and land
+syndicates. If now and then a mine proved to have no bottom and the
+small investor's insignificant sums dropped out of sight in this
+bottomless pit, that did not concern him--it was all in the game, and
+the game was an enticing one to be played to the end. The two facts that
+nothing is certain at all times, and that everything is uncertain at
+some time, added the excitement of chance to his business interest.
+
+At times, for instance when walking up the Avenue on a bracing October
+day, he felt as if he owned all in sight--a condition of mind which
+those who know from experience the powerful electro-magnetic current
+generated by the rushing life of the New York metropolis can well
+understand. He struck out into the stream with the rest, and with
+overweening confidence in himself--in himself as master of circumstances
+which he intended to control in his own interests, in himself as the
+pivotal point of Flamsted affairs. The rapidity of the current acted as
+a continual stimulus to exertion. Like all bold swimmers, he knew in a
+general way that the channel might prove tortuous, the current threaten
+at times to overpower him; but, carried rapidly out into mid-stream with
+that gigantic propulsive force that is the resultant of the diverse
+onward-pressure of the metropolitan millions, he suddenly found himself
+one day in that mid-stream without its ever having occurred to him that
+he might not be able to breast it. Even had he thought enough about the
+matter to admit that certain untoward conditions might have to be met,
+he would have failed to realize that the shore towards which he was
+struggling might prove in the end a quicksand.
+
+Another thing: he failed to take into account the influence of any cross
+current, until he was made to realize the necessity of stemming his
+strength against it. This influence was Aileen Armagh.
+
+Whenever in walking up lower Broadway from the office he found himself
+passing Grace Church, he realized that, despite every effort of will, he
+was obliged to relive in thought the experience of that night seven
+years ago at the Vaudeville. Then for the first time he saw the little
+match girl crouching on the steps of the stage reproduction of this same
+marble church. The child's singing of her last song had induced in him
+then--wholly unawares, wholly unaccountably--a sudden mental nausea and
+a physical disgust at the course of his young life, the result being
+that the woman "who lay in wait for him at the corner" by appointment,
+watched that night in vain for his coming.
+
+In reliving this experience, there was always present in his thought the
+Aileen Armagh as he knew her now--pure, loyal, high-spirited, helpful,
+womanly in all her household ways, entertaining in her originality,
+endowed with the gift of song. She was charming; this was patent to all
+who knew her. It was a pleasure to dwell on this thought of her, and,
+dwelling upon it too often at off-times in his business life, the desire
+grew irresistible to be with her again; to chat with her; to see the
+blue-gray eyes lifted to his; to find in them something he found in no
+others. At such times a telegram sped over the wires, to Aurora Googe,
+and her heart was rejoiced by a two days' visit from her son.
+
+Champney Googe knew perfectly well that this cross current of influence
+was diametrically opposed to his own course of life as he had marked it
+out for himself; knew that this was a species of self-gratification in
+which he had no business to indulge; he knew, moreover, that from the
+moment he should make an earnest effort to win Alice Van Ostend and her
+accompanying millions, this self-gratification must cease. He told
+himself this over and over again; meanwhile he made excuse--a talk with
+the manager of the quarries, a new order of weekly payments to introduce
+and regulate with Romanzo Caukins, the satisfactory pay-master in the
+Flamsted office, a week-end with his mother, the consideration of
+contracts and the erection of a new shed on the lake shore--to visit
+Flamsted several times during the autumn, winter, and early spring.
+
+At last, however, he called a halt.
+
+Alice Van Ostend, young, immature, amusing in her girlish abandon to the
+delight of at last "coming out", was, nevertheless, rapidly growing up,
+a condition of affairs that Champney was forced rather unwillingly to
+admit just before her first large ball. As usual he made himself useful
+to Alice, who looked upon him as a part of her goods and chattels. It
+was in the selection of the favors for the german to be given in the
+stone house on the occasion of the coming-out reception for its heiress,
+that his eyes were suddenly opened to the value of time, so to say; for
+Alice was beginning to patronize him. By this sign he recognized that
+she was putting the ten years' difference in their ages at something
+like a generation. It was not pleasing to contemplate, because the
+winning of Alice Van Ostend was, to use his own expression, in a line
+coincident with his own life lines. Till now he believed he was the
+favored one; but certain signs of the times began to be provocative of
+distrust in this direction.
+
+He asked boldly for the first dance, for the cotillon, and the privilege
+of giving her the flowers she was to wear that night. He assumed these
+favors to be within his rights; she was by no means of his way of
+thinking. It developed during their scrapping--Champney had often to
+scrap with Alice to keep on a level with her immaturity--that there was
+another rival for the cotillon, another, a younger man, who desired to
+give her the special flowers for this special affair. The final division
+of the young lady's favors was not wholly reassuring to Mr. Googe. As a
+result of this awakening, he decided to remain in New York without
+farther visits to Flamsted until the Van Ostends should have left the
+city for the summer.
+
+But in the course of the spring and summer he found it one thing to call
+a halt and quite another to make one. The cross current of influence,
+which had its source in Flamsted, was proving, against his will and
+judgment, too strong for him. He knew this and deplored it, for it
+threatened to carry him away from the shore towards which he was
+pushing, unawares that this apparently firm ground of attainment might
+prove treacherous in the end.
+
+"Every man has his weakness, and she's mine," he told himself more than
+once; yet in making this statement he was half aware that the word
+"weakness" was in no sense applicable to Aileen. It remained for the
+development of his growing passion for her to show him that he was
+wholly in the wrong--she was his strength, but he failed to realize
+this.
+
+Champney Googe was not a man to mince matters with himself. He told
+himself that he was not infatuated; infatuation was a thing to which he
+had yielded but few times in his selfish life. He was ready to
+acknowledge that his interest in Aileen Armagh was something deeper,
+more lasting; something that, had he been willing to look the whole
+matter squarely in the face instead of glancing askance at its profile,
+he would have seen to be perilously like real love--that love which
+first binds through passionate attachment, then holds through congenial
+companionship to bless a man's life to its close.
+
+"She suits me--suits me to a T;" such was his admission in what he
+called his weak moments. Then he called himself a fool; he cursed
+himself for yielding to the influence of her charming personality in so
+far as to encourage what he perceived to be on her part a deep and
+absorbing love for him. In yielding to his weakness, he knew he was
+deviating from the life lines he had laid with such forethought for his
+following. A rich marriage was the natural corollary of his
+determination to advance his own interests in his chosen career. This
+marriage he still intended to make, if possible with Alice Van Ostend;
+and the fact that young Ben Falkenburg, an old playmate of Alice's, just
+graduated from college, the "other man" of the cotillon favors, was the
+first invited guest for the prospective cruise on Mr. Van Ostend's
+yacht, did not dovetail with his intentions. It angered him to think of
+being thwarted at this point.
+
+"Why must such a girl cross my path just as I was getting on my feet
+with Alice?" he asked himself, manlike illogically impatient with Aileen
+when he should have lost patience with himself. But in the next moment
+he found himself dwelling in thought on the lovely light in the eyes
+raised so frankly to his, on the promises of loyalty those same eyes
+would hold for him if only he were to speak the one word which she was
+waiting to hear--which she had a right to hear after his last visit in
+July to Flamsted.
+
+If he had not kissed her that once! With a girl like Aileen there could
+be no trifling--what then?
+
+He cursed himself for his heedless folly, yet--he knew well enough that
+he would not have denied himself that moment of bliss when the girl in
+response to his whispered words of love gave him her first kiss, and
+with it the unspoken pledge of her loving heart.
+
+"I'm making another ass of myself!" he spoke aloud and continued to chew
+the end of a cold cigar.
+
+The New York office was deserted in these last days of August except for
+two clerks who had just left to take an early train to the beach for a
+breath of air. The treasurer of the Flamsted Quarries Company was
+sitting idle at his desk. It was an off-time in business and he had
+leisure to assure himself that he was without doubt the quadruped
+alluded to above--"An ass that this time is in danger of choosing
+thistles for fodder when he can get something better."
+
+Only the day before he had concluded on his own account a deal, that
+cost him much thought and required an extra amount of a certain kind of
+courage, with a Wall Street firm. Now that this was off his hands and
+there was nothing to do between Friday and Monday, when he was to start
+for Bar Harbor to join the Van Ostends and a large party of invited
+guests for a three weeks' cruise on the Labrador coast, he had plenty of
+time to convince himself that he possessed certain asinine qualities
+which did not redound to his credit as a man of sense. In his idle
+moments the thought of Aileen had a curious way of coming to the surface
+of consciousness. It came now. He whirled suddenly to face his desk
+squarely; tossed aside the cold cigar in disgust; touched the electric
+button to summon the office boy.
+
+"I'll put an end to it--it's got to be done sometime or other--just as
+well now." He wrote a note to the head clerk to say that he was leaving
+two days earlier for his vacation than he intended; left his address for
+the next four days in case anything should turn up that might demand his
+presence before starting on the cruise; sent the office boy off with a
+telegram to his mother that she might expect him Saturday morning for
+two days in Flamsted; went to his apartment, packed grip and steamer
+trunk for the yacht, and left on the night express for the Maine coast.
+
+
+VII
+
+"I just saw Mr. Googe driving down from The Gore, Aileen, so he's in
+town again."
+
+Octavius was passing the open library window where Aileen was sitting at
+her work, and stopped to tell her the news.
+
+"Is he?"
+
+The tone was indifferent, but had she not risen quickly to shake some
+threads of embroidery linen into the scrap-basket beneath the library
+table, Octavius might have seen the quick blood mount into her cheeks,
+the red lips quiver. It was welcome news for which she had been waiting
+already six weeks.
+
+Octavius spoke again but in a low voice:
+
+"You might mention it to Mrs. Champney when she comes down; it don't set
+well, you know, if she ain't told everything that's going on." He passed
+on without waiting for an answer.
+
+The girl took her seat again by the window. Her work lay in her lap; her
+hands were folded above it; her face was turned to the Flamsted Hills.
+"Would he come soon? When and where could she see him again, and alone?"
+Her thoughts were busy with conjecture.
+
+Octavius recrossing the terrace called out to her:
+
+"You going up to Mrs. Caukins' later on this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes; Mrs. Champney said she didn't need me."
+
+"I'll take you up."
+
+"Thank you, Tave, not to-day. I'm going to row up as far as the upper
+shed. I promised the twins to meet them there; they want to see the new
+travelling crane at work. We'll go up afterwards to The Gore together."
+
+"It's pretty hot, but I guess you're all three seasoned by this time."
+
+"Through and through, Tave; and I'm not coming home till after
+supper--it's lovely then--there's Mrs. Champney coming!"
+
+She heard her step in the upper hall and ran upstairs to assist her in
+coming down.
+
+"Will you go out on the terrace now?" she asked her on entering the
+library.
+
+"I'll wait a while; it's too warm at this hour."
+
+Aileen drew Mrs. Champney's arm chair to the other casement window. She
+resumed her seat and work.
+
+"How are you getting on with the napkins?" the mistress of Champ-au-Haut
+inquired after a quarter of an hour's silence in which she was busied
+with some letters.
+
+"Fine--see?" She held up a corner for her inspection. "This is the
+tenth; I shall soon be ready for the big table cloth."
+
+"Bring them to me."
+
+Aileen obeyed, and showed her the monogram, A C, wrought by her own deft
+fingers in the finest linen.
+
+"There's no one like a Frenchwoman to teach embroidery; you've done them
+credit." Aileen dropped a mock courtesy. "Which one taught you?"
+
+"Sister Ste. Croix."
+
+"Is she the little wrinkled one?"
+
+"Yes, but I've fallen in love with every wrinkle, she's a perfect
+dear--"
+
+"I didn't imply she wasn't." Mrs. Champney was apt to snap out at Aileen
+when, according to her idea, she was "gushing" too much. The girl had
+ceased to mind this; she was used to it, especially during her three
+years of attendance on this invalid. "Who designed this monogram?"
+
+"She did; she can draw beautifully."
+
+Mrs. Champney put on her glasses to examine in detail the exquisite
+lettering, A C.
+
+Aileen leaned above her, smiling to herself. How many loving thoughts
+were wrought into those same initials! How many times, while her fingers
+were busy fashioning them, she had planned to make just such for her
+very own! How often, as she wrought, she had laid her lips to the A C,
+murmuring to herself over and over again, "Aileen--Champney,
+Champney--Aileen," so filling and satisfying with the sound of this
+pleasing combination her every loving anticipation!
+
+She was only waiting for the "word", schooling herself in these last six
+weeks to wait patiently for it--the "word" which should make these
+special letters her legitimate own!
+
+The singing thoughts that ring in the consciousness of a girl who gives
+for the first time her whole heart to her lover; the chanted prayers to
+her Maker, that rise with every muted throb of the young wife's heart
+which is beating for two in anticipation of her first motherhood--who
+shall dare enumerate them?
+
+The varied loving thoughts in this girl's quick brain, which was fed by
+her young pulsing heart--a heart single in its loyalty to one during all
+the years since her orphan childhood, were intensified and illumined by
+the inherent quickening power of a vivid imagination, and inwrought with
+these two letters that stood, at present, for their owner, Almeda
+Champney. Aileen's smile grew wonderfully tender, almost tremulous as
+she continued to lean above her work. Mrs. Champney looking up suddenly
+caught it and, in part, interpreted it. It angered her both unreasonably
+and unaccountably. This girl must be taught her place. She aspiring to
+Champney Googe! She handed her back the work.
+
+"Ann said just now she heard Octavius telling you that my nephew,
+Champney Googe, is in town--when did he come?"
+
+"I don't know--Tave didn't say."
+
+"I wonder Alice Van Ostend didn't mention that he was coming here before
+going on the yachting cruise they've planned. I had a letter from her
+yesterday--I know you'd like to hear it."
+
+"Of course I should! It's the first one she has written you, isn't
+it?--Where is it?" She spoke with her usual animated interest.
+
+"I have it here."
+
+She took up one of several letters in her lap, opened it, turned it
+over, adjusted her glasses and began to read a paragraph here and there.
+Aileen listened eagerly.
+
+"I suppose I may as well read it all--Alice wouldn't mind you," said
+Mrs. Champney, and proceeded to give the full contents. It was filled
+with anticipations of the yachting cruise, of a later visit to Flamsted,
+of Champney and her friends. Champney's name occurred many
+times,--Alice's attitude towards the possessor of it seemed to be that
+of private ownership,--but everything was written with the frankness of
+an accepted publicity of the fact that Mr. Googe was one of her social
+appendages. Aileen was amused at the whole tone of the rather lengthy
+epistle; it gave her no uneasiness.
+
+Mrs. Champney laid aside her glasses; she wanted to note the effect of
+the reading on the girl.
+
+"You can see for yourself from this how matters stand between these two;
+it needn't be spoken of in Flamsted outside the family, but it's just as
+well for you to know of it--don't you think so?"
+
+Aileen parried; she enjoyed a little bout with Champney Googe's aunt.
+
+"Of course, it's plain enough to see that they're the best of friends--"
+
+"Friends!" Mrs. Champney interrupted her; there was a scornful note in
+her voice which insensibly sharpened; "you haven't your usual common
+sense, Aileen, if you can't read between these lines well enough to see
+that Miss Van Ostend and my nephew are as good as engaged."
+
+Aileen smiled, but made no reply.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" The tone was peremptory and denoted extreme
+irritation. Aileen put down her work and looked across to her
+interrogator.
+
+"I was only smiling at my thoughts."
+
+"Will you be so good as to state what they are? They may prove decidedly
+interesting to me--at this juncture," she added emphatically.
+
+Aileen's look of amusement changed swiftly to one of surprise.
+
+"To be honest, I was thinking that what she writes about Mr. Googe
+doesn't sound much like love, that was all--"
+
+"That was all!" Mrs. Champney echoed sarcastically; "well, what more do
+you need to convince you of facts I should like to know?"
+
+Aileen laughed outright at this. "Oh, Mrs. Champney, what's the use of
+being a girl, if you can't know what other girls mean?"
+
+"Please explain yourself."
+
+"Won't you please read that part again where she mentions the people
+invited for the cruise."
+
+Mrs. Champney found the paragraph and re-read it aloud.
+
+"Falkenburg--that's the name--Ben Falkenburg."
+
+"How did you ever hear of this Ben Falkenburg?"
+
+"Oh, I heard of him years ago!" The mischief was in her voice and Mrs.
+Champney recognized it.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"When I was in New York--in the asylum; he's the one that danced the
+minuet with the Marchioness; I told you about it years ago."
+
+"How do you know he was the boy?"
+
+"Because Alice told me his name then, and showed me the valentine and
+May-basket he sent her--just read the postscript again; if you want to
+crack a letter for its kernel, you'll generally find it in a postscript,
+that is with girls of Alice's age."
+
+She spoke as if there were years of seniority on her part. Mrs. Champney
+turned to the postscript again.
+
+"I see nothing in this--you're romancing again, Aileen; you'd better put
+it aside; it will get you into trouble sometime."
+
+"Oh, never fear for me, Mrs. Champney; I'll take care of all the
+romancing as well as the romances--but can't you see by those few words
+that it's Mr. Ben Falkenburg who is going to make the yachting trip for
+Miss Van Ostend, and not your nephew?"
+
+"No, I can't," Mrs. Champney answered shortly, "and neither could you if
+your eyes weren't blinded by your infatuation for him."
+
+Aileen rolled up her work deliberately. If the time had come for open
+war to be declared between the two on Champney Googe's account, it was
+best to fight the decisive battle now, before seeing him again. She rose
+and stood by the window.
+
+"What do you mean, Mrs. Champney?" Her temper was rising quickly as it
+always did when Mrs. Champney went too far. She had spoken but once of
+her nephew in a personal way to Aileen since she asked that question a
+year ago, "What do you think of him?"
+
+"I mean what I say." Her voice took on an added shrillness. "Your
+infatuation for my nephew has been patent for a year now--and it's time
+you should be brought to your senses; I can't suppose you're fool enough
+to think he'll marry you."
+
+Aileen set her lips close. After all, it was not best to answer this
+woman as she deserved to be answered. She controlled the increasing
+anger so far as to be able to smile frankly and answer lightly:
+
+"You've no need to worry, Mrs. Champney; your nephew has never asked me
+to be his wife."
+
+"His wife!" she echoed scornfully; "I should say not; and let me tell
+you for your own benefit--sometime you'll thank me for it--and mark my
+words, Aileen Armagh, he never will ask you to be his wife, and the
+sooner you accept this unvarnished truth the better it will be for you.
+I suppose you think because you've led Romanzo Caukins and young Poggi a
+chase, you can do the same with Champney Googe--but you'll find out your
+mistake; such men aren't led--they lead. He is going to marry Alice Van
+Ostend."
+
+"Do you _know_ this for a fact, Mrs. Champney?" She turned upon her
+sharply. She was, at last, at bay; her eyes were dark with anger; her
+lips and cheeks white.
+
+"It's like you to fly off at a tangent, Aileen, and doubt a person's
+word simply because it happens to contain an unpleasant truth for
+you--here is the proof," she held up a letter; "it's from my cousin,
+Henry Van Ostend; he has written it out in black and white that my
+nephew has already asked for his daughter's hand. Now disabuse your mind
+of any notion you may have in regard to Champney Googe--I hope you won't
+disgrace yourself by crying for the moon after this."
+
+The girl's eyes fairly blazed upon her.
+
+"Mrs. Champney, after this I'll thank you to keep your advice and your
+family affairs to yourself--_I_ didn't ask for either. And you've no
+need to tell me I'm only Aileen Armagh--for I know it perfectly well.
+I'm only an orphan you took into your home seven years ago and have
+kept, so far, for her service. But if I am only this, I am old enough to
+do and act as I please--and now you may mark _my_ words: it's not I who
+will disgrace you and yours--not I, remember that!" Her anger threatened
+to choke her; but her voice although husky remained low, never rising
+above its level inflection. "And let me tell you another thing: I'm as
+good any day as Alice Van Ostend, and I should despise myself if I
+thought myself less; and if it's the millions that make the difference
+in the number of your friends--may God keep me poor till I die!" She
+spoke with passionate earnestness.
+
+Mrs. Champney smiled to herself; she felt her purpose was accomplished.
+
+"Are you going up to Mrs. Caukins'?" she asked in a matter-of-fact voice
+that struck like cold iron on the girl's burning intensity of feeling.
+
+"Yes, I'm going."
+
+"Well, be back by seven."
+
+The girl made no reply. She left the library at once, closing the door
+behind her with a force that made the hall ring. Mrs. Champney smiled
+again, and proceeded to re-read Alice Van Ostend's letter.
+
+Aileen went out through the kitchen and across the vegetable garden to
+the boat house. She cast loose one of the boats in the float, took her
+seat and rowed out into the lake--rowed with a strength and swiftness
+that accurately gauged her condition of mind. She rounded the peninsula
+of The Bow and headed her boat, not to the sheds on the north shore, but
+towards the west, to "lily-pad reach". To get away from that woman's
+presence, to be alone with herself--that was all she craved at the
+moment. The oars caught among the lily-pads; this gave her an excuse for
+pulling and wrenching at them. Her anger was still at white heat--not a
+particle of color as yet tinged her cheeks--and the physical exertion
+necessary to overcome such an obstacle as the long tough stems she felt
+to be a relief.
+
+"It isn't true--it isn't true," she said over and over again to herself.
+She kept tugging and pulling till by sheer strength she forced the boat
+into the shallow water among the tall arrowhead along the margin of the
+shore.
+
+She stepped out on the landing stones, drew up the boat, then made her
+way across the meadow to the shade of the tall spreading willows. Here
+she threw herself down, pressing her face into the cool lush grass, and
+relived in thought that early morning hour she had spent alone with him,
+only a few weeks ago, on the misty lake among the opening water lilies.
+
+She had been awakened that morning in mid-July by hearing him singing
+softly beneath her open window that same song which seven years ago made
+such an unaccountable impression on her child's heart. He had often in
+jest threatened to repeat the episode of the serenade, but she never
+realized that beneath the jest there was any deeper meaning. Now she was
+aware of that meaning in her every fibre, physical and spiritual.
+
+    "Aileen Mavoureen, the gray dawn is breaking--"
+
+And hearing that, realizing that the voice was calling for her alone in
+all the world, she rose; dressed herself quickly; beckoned joyously to
+him from the window; noiselessly made her way down the back stairs;
+softly unbolted the kitchen porch door--
+
+He was there with hands outstretched for hers; she placed them in his,
+and again, in remembrance of their fun and frolic seven years before, he
+raced with her down the slate-laid garden walk, across the lawn to the
+boat house where his own boat lay moored.
+
+It was four o'clock on that warm midsummer morning. The mists lay light
+but impenetrable on the surface of the lake. The lilies were still
+closed.
+
+They spoke but little.
+
+"I knew no one could hear me--they all sleep on the other side, don't
+they?"
+
+"Yes, all except the boy, and he sleeps like a log--Tave has to wake him
+every morning; alarm clocks are no good."
+
+"Have you ever seen the lilies open, Aileen?"
+
+"No, never; I've never been out early in the morning, but I've often
+seen them go to sleep under the starlight."
+
+"We will row round then till they open--it's worth seeing."
+
+The sun rose in the low-lying mists; it transfused them with crimson. It
+mounted above them; shot them through and through with gold and
+violet--then dispersed them without warning, and showed to the girl's
+charmed eyes and senses the gleaming blue of the lake waters blotched
+with the dull green of the lily-pads, and among them the lilies
+expanding the fragrant white of their corollas to its beneficent light
+and warmth....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she left the boat his kiss was on her lips, his words of love
+ringing in her ears. One more of her day dreams was realized: she had
+given to the man she loved with all her heart her first kiss--and with
+it, on her part, the unspoken pledge of herself.
+
+A movement somewhere about the house, the lowing of the cattle, the
+morning breeze stirring in the trees--something startled them. They drew
+apart, smiling into each other's eyes. She placed her finger on her
+lips.
+
+"Hush!" she whispered. She was off on a run across the lawn, turning
+once to wave her hand to him.--And now _this_!
+
+How could this then that she had just been told be true?
+
+Her whole being revolted at the thought that he was tampering with what
+to her was the holiest in her young life--her love for him. In the past
+six weeks it never once occurred to her that he could prove unworthy of
+such trust as hers; no man would dare to be untrue to her--to her,
+Aileen Armagh, who never in all her wilfulness and love of romance had
+given man or boy occasion to use either her name or her lightly! How
+dared he do this thing? Did he not know with whom he had to deal?
+Because she was only Aileen Armagh, and at service with his relation,
+did he think her less the true woman?
+
+Suspicion was foreign to her open nature; doubt, distrust had no place
+in her young life; but like a serpent in the girl's Eden the words of
+the mistress of Champ-au-Haut, "He never will ask you to be his wife,"
+dropped poison in her ears.
+
+She sat up on the grass, thrust back her hair from her forehead--
+
+"Let him dare to hint even that what he said was love for me was not
+what--what--"
+
+She buried her face in her hands.
+
+"Aileen--Aileen--where are you?"
+
+That voice, breaking in upon her wretched thought of him, brought her to
+her feet.
+
+
+VIII
+
+"Mother, don't you think Aunt Meda might open her purse and do something
+for Aileen Armagh now that the girl has been faithful to her interests
+so long?"
+
+He had remained at home since his arrival in the morning, and was now
+about to drive down into the town.
+
+His mother looked up from her sewing in surprise.
+
+"What put that into your mind? I was thinking the same thing myself not
+a week ago; she has such a wonderful voice."
+
+"It seems unjust to keep her from utilizing it for herself so far as an
+income is concerned and to deprive others of the pleasure of hearing her
+voice after it is trained. But, of course, she can't do it herself."
+
+"I only wish I could do it for her." His mother spoke with great
+earnestness. "But even if I could help, there would be no use offering
+so long as she remains with Almeda."
+
+"Perhaps not; anyway, I'm going down there now, and I shall do what I
+can to sound Aunt Meda on this point."
+
+"Good luck!" she called after him. He turned, lifted his hat, and smiled
+back at her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He found Mrs. Champney alone on the terrace; she was sitting under the
+ample awning that protected her from the sun but was open on all sides
+for air.
+
+"All alone, Aunt Meda?" he inquired cheerfully, taking a seat beside
+her.
+
+"Yes; when did you come?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Isn't it rather unexpected?" She glanced sideways rather sharply at
+him.
+
+"My coming here is; I'm really on my way to Bar Harbor. The Van Ostends
+are off on Tuesday with a large party and I promised to go with them."
+
+"So Alice wrote me the other day. It's the first letter I have had from
+her. She says she is coming here on her way home in October, that she's
+'just crazy' to see Flamsted Quarries--but I can read between the lines
+even if my eyes are old." She smiled significantly.
+
+Champney felt that an answering smile was the safe thing in the
+circumstances. He wondered how much Aunt Meda knew from the Van Ostends.
+That she was astute in business matters was no guaranty that she would
+prove far-sighted in matrimonial affairs.
+
+"I've known Alice so long that she's gotten into the habit of taking me
+for granted--not that I object," he added with a glance in the direction
+of the boat house. Mrs. Champney, whom nothing escaped, noticed it.
+
+"I should hope not," she said emphatically. "I may as well tell you,
+Champney, that Mr. Van Ostend has not hesitated to write me of your
+continued attentions to Alice and your frankness with him in regard to
+the outcome of this. So far as I see, his only objection could be on
+account of her extreme youth--I congratulate you." She spoke with great
+apparent sincerity.
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Meda," he said quietly; "your congratulations are
+premature, and the subject so far as Alice and I are concerned is taboo
+for three years--at Mr. Van Ostend's special request."
+
+"Quite right--a girl doesn't know her own mind before she is
+twenty-five."
+
+"Faith, I know one who knows her own mind on all subjects at
+twenty!"--he laughed heartily as if at some amusing remembrance--"and
+that's Aileen; by the way, where is she, Aunt Meda?"
+
+"She was going up to Mrs. Caukins'. I suppose she is there now--why?"
+
+"Because I want to talk about her, and I don't want her to come in on us
+suddenly."
+
+"What about Aileen?" She spoke indifferently.
+
+"About her voice; you've never been willing, I understand, to have it
+cultivated?"
+
+"What if I haven't?"
+
+"That's just the 'what', Aunt Meda," he said pleasantly but earnestly;
+"I've heard her singing a good many times, and I've never heard her that
+I didn't wish some one would be generous enough to such talent to pay
+for cultivating it."
+
+"Do you know why I haven't been willing?"
+
+"No, I don't--and I'd like to know."
+
+"Because, if I had, she would have been on the stage before now--and
+where could I get another? I don't intend to impoverish myself for her
+sake--not after what I've done for her." She spoke emphatically. "What
+was your idea in asking me about her?"
+
+"I thought it was a pity that such a talent should be left to go to
+seed. I wish you could look at it from my standpoint and give her the
+wherewithal to go to Europe for three or four years in order to
+cultivate it--she can take care of herself well enough."
+
+"And you really advise this?" She asked almost incredulously.
+
+"Why not? You must have seen my interest in the girl. I can't think of a
+better way of showing it than to induce you to put her in the way of
+earning her livelihood by her talent."
+
+Mrs. Champney made no direct reply. After a moment's silence she asked
+abruptly:
+
+"Have you ever said anything to her about this?"
+
+"Never a word."
+
+"Don't then; I don't want her to get any more new-fangled notions into
+her head."
+
+"Just as you say; but I wish you would think about it--it seems almost a
+matter of justice." He rose to go.
+
+"Where are you going now?"
+
+"Over to the shed office; I want to see the foreman about the last
+contract. I'll borrow the boat, if you don't mind, and row up--I have
+plenty of time." He looked at his watch. "Can I do anything for you
+before I go?" he asked gently, adjusting an awning curtain to shut the
+rays of the sun from her face.
+
+"Yes; I wish you would telephone up to Mrs. Caukins and tell her to tell
+Aileen to be at home before six; I need her to-night."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+He went into the house and telephoned. He did not think it necessary to
+return and report Mrs. Caukins' reply that Aileen "hadn't come up yet."
+He went directly to the boat house, wondering in the mean time where she
+was.
+
+One of the two boats was already gone; doubtless she had taken it--where
+could she be?
+
+He stepped into the boat, and pulled slowly out into the lake, keeping
+in the lee of the rocky peninsula of The Bow. He was fairly well
+satisfied with his effort in Aileen's behalf and with himself because he
+had taken a first step in the right direction. Neither his mother nor
+Aunt Meda could say now that he was not disinterested; if Father Honoré
+came over, as was his custom, to chat with him on the porch for an hour
+or two in the evening, he would broach the subject again to him who was
+the girl's best friend. If she could go to Europe there would be less
+danger--
+
+Danger?--Yes; he was willing to admit it, less danger for them both;
+three years of absence would help materially in this matter in which he
+felt himself too deeply involved. Then, in the very face of this
+acknowledgment, he could not help a thought that whitened his cheek as
+it formulated itself instantaneously in his consciousness: if she were
+three years in Europe, there would be opportunity for him to see her
+sometime.
+
+He knew the thought could not be uttered in the girl's pure presence;
+yet, with many others, he held that a woman, if she loves a man
+absorbingly, passionately, is capable of any sacrifice--would she?
+Hardly; she was so high-spirited, so pure in thought--yet she loved him,
+and after all love was the great Subduer. But no--it could never be;
+this was his decision. He rowed out into the lake.
+
+Why must a man's action prove so often the slave of his thought!
+
+He was passing the arm of Mesantic that leads to "lily-pad reach". He
+turned to look up the glinting curve. Was she there?--should he seek
+her?
+
+He backed water on the instant. The boat responded like a live thing,
+quivered, came to a partial rest--stopped, undulating on the surface
+roughened by the powerful leverage of the oars. Champney sat motionless,
+the dripping blades suspended over the water. He knew that in all
+probability the girl was there in "lily-pad reach". Should he seek her?
+Should he go?--Should he?
+
+The hands that held the steady oars quivered suddenly, then gripped them
+as in a vise; the man's face flushed; he bent to the right oar, the
+craft whirled half way on her keel; the other oar fell--swiftly and
+powerfully the boat shot ahead up "lily-pad reach".
+
+Reason, discretion, judgment razed in an instant from the table of
+consciousness; desire rampant, the desire of possession to which
+intellect, training, environment, even that goodward-turning which men
+under various aspects term religion, succumb in a moment like the
+present one in which Champney Googe was bending all his strength to the
+oars that he might be the sooner with the girl he loved.
+
+He did not ask himself what next? He gave no thought to aught but
+reaching the willows as soon as he could. His eye was on the glinting
+curve before him; he rounded it swiftly--her boat was there tied to the
+stake among the arrowhead; his own dragged through the lily-pads beside
+it; he sprang out, ran up the bank--
+
+"Aileen--Aileen--where are you?" he called eagerly, impatiently, and
+sought about him to find her.
+
+Aileen Armagh heard that call, and doubt, suspicion, anger dropped away
+from her. Instead, trust, devotion, anticipation clothed her thought of
+him; he was coming to speak the "word" that was to make her future fair
+and plain--the one "word" that should set him forever in her heart,
+enthrone him in her life. That word was not "love", but the sacrament
+of love; the word of four letters which a woman writes large with
+legitimate loving pride in the face of the world. She sprang to her feet
+and waited for him; the willows drooped on either side of her--so he saw
+her again.
+
+He took her in his arms. "Aileen--Aileen," he said over and over again
+between the kisses that fell upon her hair, forehead, lips.
+
+She yielded herself to his embrace, passionately given and returned with
+all a girl's loving ardor and joy in the loved man's presence. Between
+the kisses she waited for the "word."
+
+It was not forthcoming.
+
+She drew away from him slightly and looked straight into his eyes that
+were devouring her face and form. The unerring instinct of a pure nature
+warned her against that look. He caught her to him--but she stemmed both
+hands against his breast to repulse him.
+
+"Let me go, Champney," she said faintly.
+
+"Why should I let you go? Aileen, my Aileen, why should I ever let you
+go?" A kiss closed the lips that were about to reply--a kiss so long and
+passionate that the girl felt her strength leaving her in the close
+embrace.
+
+"He will speak the 'word' now surely," she told herself. Between their
+heart-throbs she listened for it.
+
+The "word" was not spoken.
+
+Again she stemmed her hands against him, pressing them hard against his
+shoulders. "Let me go, Champney." She spoke with spirit.
+
+The act of repulsion, the ring in her voice half angered him; at the
+same time it added fuel to desire.
+
+"I will not let you go--you love me--tell me so--"
+
+He waited for no reply but caught her close; the girl struggled in his
+arms. It was dawning on her undaunted spirit that this, which she was
+experiencing with Champney Googe, the man she loved with all her heart,
+was not love. Of a sudden, all that brave spirit rose in arms to ward
+off from herself any spoken humiliation to her womanhood, ay more, to
+prevent the man she loved from deepening his humiliation of himself in
+her presence.
+
+"Let me go" she said, but despite her effort for control her voice
+trembled.
+
+"You know I love you--why do you repel me so?"
+
+"Let me go," she said again; this time her voice was firm, the tone
+peremptory; but she made no further struggle to free herself from his
+arms.--"Oh, what are you doing!"
+
+"I am making the attempt to find out if you love me as I love you--"
+
+"You have no right to kiss me so--"
+
+"I have the right because I love you--"
+
+"But I don't love you."
+
+"Yes you do, Aileen Armagh--don't say that again."
+
+"I do not love you--let me go, I say."
+
+He let her go at last. She stood before him, pale, but still undaunted.
+
+"Do you know what you are saying?" he demanded almost fiercely under his
+breath. He took her head between his hands and bent it back to close her
+lips with another kiss.
+
+"Yes, I know. I do not love you--don't touch me!" She held out her
+hands to him, palm outwards, as if warding off some present danger.
+
+He paid no heed to her warning, but caught her to him again. "Tell me
+now you don't love me, Aileen," he whispered, laying his cheek to hers.
+
+"I tell you I do not love you," she said aloud; her voice was clear and
+firm.
+
+He drew back then to look at her in amazement; turned away for a moment
+as if half dazed; then, holding her to his side with his left arm he
+laid his ear hard over her heart. What was it that paled the man's
+flushed cheeks?
+
+The girl's heart was beating slowly, calmly, even faintly. He caught her
+wrist, pressing his fingers on her pulse--there was not the suspicion of
+a flutter. He let her go then. She stood before him; her eyes were
+raised fearlessly to his.
+
+"I'm going to row back now--no, don't speak--not a word--"
+
+She turned and walked slowly down to the boat; cast it off; poled it
+with one oar out of the tall arrowhead and the thick fringe of
+lily-pads; took her seat; fitted the oars to the rowlocks, dipped them,
+and proceeded to row steadily down the reach towards The Bow.
+
+Champney Googe stood where she had left him till he watched her out of
+sight around the curve; then he went over to the willows and sat down.
+It took time for him to recover from his debauch of feeling. He made
+himself few thoughts at first; but as time passed and the shadows
+lengthened on the reach, he came slowly to himself. The night fell; the
+man still sat there, but the thoughts were now crowding fast,
+uncomfortably fast. He dropped his head into his hands, so covering his
+face in the dark for very shame that he had so outraged his manhood. He
+knew now that she knew he had not intended to speak that "word" between
+them; but no finer feeling told him that she had saved him from himself.
+
+In that hour he saw himself as he was--unworthy of a good woman's love.
+
+He saw other things as well; these he hoped to make good in the near
+future, but this--but this!
+
+He rowed back under cover of the dark to Champ-au-Haut. Octavius, who
+was wondering at his non-appearance with the boat, met him with a
+lantern at the float.
+
+"Here's a telegram just come up; the operator gave it to me for you. I
+told him you was out in the boat and would be here 'fore you went up
+home."
+
+"All right, Tave." He opened it; read it by the light of the lantern.
+
+"I've got to go back to New York--it's a matter of business. It's all up
+with my vacation and the yachting cruise now,"--he looked at his
+watch,--"seven; I can get the eight-thirty accommodation to Hallsport,
+and that will give me time to catch the Eastern express."
+
+"Hold on a minute and I'll get your trap from the stable--it's all ready
+for you."
+
+"No, I'll get it myself--good-bye, Tave, I'm off."
+
+"Good-bye, Champney."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Champ's worried about something," he said to himself; he was making
+fast the boat. "I never see him look like that--I hope he hasn't got
+hooked in with any of those Wall Street sharks."
+
+In a few minutes he heard the carriage wheels on the gravel in the
+driveway. He stopped on his way to the stable to listen.
+
+"He's driving like Jehu," he muttered. He was still listening; he heard
+the frequent snorting of the horse, the rapid click of hoofs on the
+highroad--but he did not hear what was filling the driver's ears at that
+moment: the roar of an unseen cataract.
+
+Champney Googe was realizing for the first time that he was in
+mid-stream; that he might not be able to breast the current; that the
+eddying water about him was in fact the whirlpool; that the rush of what
+he had deemed mere harmless rapids was the prelude to the thunderous
+fall of a cataract ahead.
+
+
+IX
+
+For several weeks after her nephew's visit, Mrs. Champney occupied many
+of her enforced leisure half-hours in trying to put two and two together
+in their logical combination of four; but thus far she had failed. She
+learned through Octavius that Champney had returned to New York on
+Saturday evening; that in consequence he was obliged to give up the
+cruise with the Van Ostends; from Champney himself she had no word. Her
+conclusion was that there had been no chance for him to see Aileen
+during the twelve hours he was in town, for the girl came home as
+requested shortly before six, but with a headache, and the excuse for it
+that she had rowed too far in the sun on the way up to the sheds.
+
+"My nephew told me he was going to row up to the sheds, too--did you
+happen to meet him there?" she inquired. She was studying the profile of
+the girl's flushed and sunburned face. Aileen had just said good night
+and was about to leave Mrs. Champney's room. She turned quickly to face
+her. She spoke with sharp emphasis:
+
+"I did _not_ meet your nephew at the sheds, Mrs. Champney, nor did I see
+him there--and I'll thank you, after what you said to me this morning,
+to draw no more conclusions in regard to your nephew's seeing or meeting
+me at the sheds or anywhere else--it's not worth your while; for I've no
+desire either to see or meet him again. Perhaps this will satisfy you."
+She left the room at once without giving Mrs. Champney time to reply.
+
+A self-satisfied smile drew apart Mrs. Champney's thin lips; evidently
+the girl's lesson was a final and salutary one. She would know her place
+after this. She determined not to touch on this subject again with
+Aileen; she might run the risk of going too far, and she desired to keep
+her with her as long as possible. But she noticed that the singing voice
+was heard less and less frequently about the house and grounds. Octavius
+also noticed it, and missed it.
+
+"Aileen, you don't sing as much as you did a while ago--what's the
+matter?" he asked her one day in October when she joined him to go up
+street after supper on an errand.
+
+"Matter?--I've sung out for one while; I'm taking a rest-cure with my
+voice, Tave."
+
+"It ain't the kind of rest-cure that'll agree with you, nor I guess any
+of us at Champo. There ain't no trouble with her that's bothering you?"
+He pointed with a backward jerk of his thumb to the house.
+
+"No."
+
+"She's acted mad ever since I told her Champney had to go back that
+night and tend to business; guess she'd set her heart on his making a
+match on that yachting cruise--well, 't would be all in the family,
+seeing there's Champney blood in the Van Ostends, good blood
+too,--there's no better," he added emphatically.
+
+"Oh, Tave, you're always blowing the Champneys' horn--"
+
+"And why shouldn't I?"--he was decidedly nettled. "The Champneys are my
+folks, my townspeople, the founders of this town, and their interests
+have always been mine--why shouldn't I speak up for 'em, I'd like to
+know? You won't find no better blood in the United States than the
+Champneys'."
+
+Aileen made no reply; she was looking up the street to Poggi's fruit
+stall, where beneath a street light she saw a crowd of men from the
+quarries.
+
+"Romanzo said there was some trouble in the sheds--do you know what it
+is?" she asked.
+
+"No, I can't get at the rights of it; they didn't get paid off last
+week, so Romanzo told me last night, but he said Champney telegraphed
+he'd fix it all right in another week. He says dollars are scarce just
+at this time--crops moving, you know, and market dull."
+
+She laughed a little scornfully. "You seem to think Mr. Googe can fix
+everything all right, Tave."
+
+"Champney's no fool; he's 'bout as interested in this home work as
+anybody, and if he says it'll be all right, you may bet your life it
+will be--There's Jo Quimber coming; p'raps he's heard something and can
+tell us."
+
+"What's that crowd up to, Uncle Jo?" said Aileen, linking her arm in the
+old man's and making him right about face to walk on with them.
+
+"Talkin' a strike. I heerd 'em usin' Champ's name mighty free, Tave,
+just now--guess he'd better come home an' calm 'em down some, or
+there'll be music in the air thet this town never danced to yet. By A.
+J., it riles me clear through to hear 'em!"
+
+"You can't blame them for wanting their pay, Uncle Jo." There was a
+challenge in the girl's voice which Uncle Jo immediately accepted.
+
+"So ye've j'ined the majority in this town, hev ye, Aileen? I don't say
+ez I'm blamin' anybody fer wantin' his pay; I'm jest sayin' it don't set
+well on me the way they go at it to get it. How's the quickest way to
+git up a war, eh? Jest keep talkin' it up--talkin' it up, an' it's sure
+to come. They don't give a man like Champ a chance--talkin' behind his
+back and usin' a good old Flamsted name ez ef 't wuz a mop rag!" Joel's
+indignation got the better of his discretion; his voice was so loud that
+it began to attract the attention of some men who were leaving Poggi's;
+the crowd was rapidly dispersing.
+
+"Sh--Joel! they'll hear you. You've been standing up for everything
+foreign that's come into this town for the last seven years--what's come
+over you that you're going back on all your preaching?"
+
+"I ain't goin' back on nothin'," the old man replied testily; "but a
+man's a man, I don't keer whether he's a Polack or a 'Merican--I don't
+keer nothin' 'bout thet; but ef he's a man he knows he'd oughter stop
+backbitin' and hittin' out behind another man's back--he'd oughter come
+out inter the open an' say, 'You ain't done the right thing by me, now
+let's both hev it out', instead of growlin' and grumblin' an' spittin'
+out such all-fired nonsense 'bout the syndicaters and Champ--what's
+Champ got to do with it, anyway? He can't make money for 'em."
+
+The crowds were surging past them; the men were talking together; their
+confused speech precluded the possibility of understanding what was
+said.
+
+"He's no better than other men, Uncle Jo," the girl remarked after the
+men had passed. She laughed as she spoke, but the laugh was not a
+pleasant one; it roused Octavius.
+
+"Now, look here, Aileen, you stop right where you are--"
+
+She interrupted him, and her voice was again both merry and pleasant,
+for they were directly opposite Luigi's shop: "I'm going to, Tave; I'm
+going to stop right here; Mrs. Champney sent me down on purpose to get
+some of those late peaches Luigi keeps; she said she craved them, and
+I'm going in this very minute to get them--"
+
+She waved her hand to both and entered the shop.
+
+Old Quimber caught Octavius by the arm to detain him a moment before he
+himself retraced his steps up street.
+
+"What d'ye think, Tave?--they goin' to make a match on't, she an' Poggi?
+I see 'm together a sight."
+
+"You can't tell 'bout Aileen any more'n a weather-cock. She might go
+farther and fare worse."
+
+"Thet's so, Tave; Poggi's a man, an' a credit to our town. I guess from
+all I hear Romanzo's 'bout give it up, ain't he?"
+
+"Romanzo never had a show with Aileen," Octavius said decidedly; "he
+ain't her kind."
+
+"Guess you're right, Tave--By A. J. there they go now!" He nudged
+Octavius with his elbow. Octavius, who had passed the shop and was
+standing on the sidewalk with old Quimber, saw the two leave it and walk
+slowly in the direction of The Bow. He listened for the sound of
+Aileen's merry laugh and chat, but he heard nothing. His grave face at
+once impressed Joel.
+
+"Something's up 'twixt those two, eh, Tave?" he whispered.
+
+Octavius nodded in reply; he was comprehending all that old man's words
+implied. He bade Quimber good night and walked on to The Greenbush. The
+Colonel found him more taciturn than usual that evening....
+
+"I can't, Luigi,--I can't marry you," she answered almost irritably. The
+two were nearing the entrance to Champo; the Italian was pleading his
+cause. "I can't--so don't say anything more about it."
+
+"But, Aileen, I will wait--I can wait; I've waited so long already. I
+believe I began to love you through that knothole, you remember?"
+
+"I haven't forgotten;" she half smiled at the remembrance; "but that
+seems so long ago, and things have changed so--I've changed, Luigi."
+
+The tone of her voice was hard. Luigi looked at her in surprise.
+
+"What has changed you, Aileen? Tell me--can't you trust me?"
+
+"Luigi!"--she faced him suddenly, looking straight up into his handsome
+face that turned white as he became aware that what she was about to say
+was final--"I'd give anything if I could say to you what you want me
+to--you deserve all my love, if I could only give it to you, for you are
+faithful and true, and mean what you say--it would be the best thing for
+me, I know; but I can't, Luigi; I've nothing to give, and it would be
+living a lie to you from morning till night to give you less than you
+deserve. I only blame myself that I'm not enough like other girls to
+know a good man when I see him, and take his love with a thankful heart
+that it's mine--but it's no use--don't blame me for being myself--" Her
+lips trembled; she bit the lower one white in her effort to steady it.
+
+For a moment Luigi made no reply. Suddenly he leaned towards her--she
+drew away from him quickly--and said between his teeth, all the
+long-smouldering fire of southern passion, passion that is founded on
+jealousy, glowing in his eyes:
+
+"Tell me, Aileen Armagh, is there another man you love?--tell me--"
+
+Rag who had been with her all the afternoon moved with a quick
+threatening motion to her side and a warning _gurr--rrrr_ for the one
+who should dare to touch her.
+
+"No." She spoke defiantly. Luigi straightened himself. Rag sprang upon
+her fawning and caressing; she shoved him aside roughly, for the dog was
+at that moment but the scapegoat for his master; Rag cowered at her
+feet.
+
+"Ah--" It was a long-drawn breath of relief. Luigi Poggi's eyes
+softened; the fire in them ceased to leap and blaze; something like hope
+brightened them.
+
+"I could bear anything but that--I was afraid--" He hesitated.
+
+"Afraid of what?" She caught up his words sharply, and began to walk
+rapidly up the driveway.
+
+He answered slowly: "I was afraid you were in love with Mr. Googe--I saw
+you once out rowing with him--early one morning--"
+
+"I in love with Mr. Googe!" she echoed scornfully, "you needn't ever be
+afraid of that; I--I hate him!"
+
+Luigi stared at her in amazement. He scarce could keep pace with her
+rapid walk that was almost a run. Her cheeks were aflame; her eyes
+filled with tears. All her pent up wretchedness of the last two months,
+all her outraged love, her womanhood's humiliation, a sense of life's
+bitter injustice and of her impotence to avenge the wrong put upon her
+affections, found vent in these three words. And Luigi, seeing Aileen
+Armagh changed into something that an hour before he would not have
+believed possible, was gripped by a sudden fear,--he must know the truth
+for his own peace of mind,--and, under its influence, he laid his hand
+on her arm and brought her to a standstill.
+
+Rag snarled another warning; Aileen thrust him aside with her foot.
+
+"What has he done to you to make you hate him so?"
+
+Because he spoke slowly, Aileen thought he was speaking calmly. Had she
+not been carried away by her own strength of feeling, she would have
+known that she might not risk the answer she gave him.
+
+"Done to me?--nothing; what could he do?--but I hate him--I never want
+to see his face again!"
+
+She was beside herself with anger and shame. It was the tone of Luigi's
+voice that brought her to her senses; in a flash she recalled Octavius
+Buzzby's warning about playing with "volcanic fires." It was too late,
+however, to recall her words.
+
+"Luigi, I've said too much; you don't understand--now let's drop it."
+She drew away her arm from beneath his hand, and resumed her rapid walk
+up the driveway, Rag trotting after her.
+
+"And you mean what you say--you never want to see him again?" He spoke
+again slowly.
+
+"Never," she said firmly.
+
+Luigi made no reply. They were nearing the house. She turned to him when
+they reached the steps.
+
+"Luigi,"--she put out her hand and he took it in both his,--"forget what
+I've said about another and forgive me for what I've had to say to
+yourself--we've always been such good friends, that now--"
+
+She was ready with the smile that captivated him, but it was a tremulous
+one for she smiled through tears; she was thinking of the contrast.
+
+"And always will be, Aileen, when we both know for good and all that we
+can be nothing more to each other," he answered gently.
+
+She was grateful to him; but she turned away and went up the steps
+without saying good-bye.
+
+
+X
+
+"'Gad, I wish I was well out of it!"
+
+For the first time within the memory of Elmer Wiggins and Lawyer Emlie,
+who heard the Colonel's ejaculation, his words and tone proclaimed the
+fact that he was not in his seemingly unfailing good spirits. He was
+standing with the two at the door of the drug shop and watching the
+crowds of men gathered in groups along the main street.
+
+It was Saturday afternoon and the men were idle, a weekly occurrence the
+Colonel had learned to dread since his incumbency as deputy sheriff and,
+in consequence of his office, felt responsible for the peace of the
+community at large until Monday morning.
+
+Something unusual was in the air, and the three men were at once aware
+of it. The uneasiness, that had prevailed in the sheds and at The Gore
+during the past month, was evidently coming to a crisis now that the
+men's pay was two weeks overdue.
+
+Emlie looked grave on replying, after a pause in which the three were
+busy taking note of the constantly increasing crowd in front of the town
+hall:
+
+"I don't blame you, Colonel; there'll be the deuce to pay if the men
+don't get paid off by Monday noon. They've been uneasy now so long about
+the piece work settlement, that this last delay is going to be the match
+that fires the train--and no slow match either from the looks; I don't
+understand this delay. When did Romanzo send his last message?"
+
+"About an hour ago, but he hasn't had any answer yet," replied the
+Colonel, shading his eyes with his hat to look up street at the town
+hall crowd. "He has been telephoning and telegraphing off and on for the
+last two weeks; but he can't get any satisfaction--corporations, you
+know, don't materialize just for the rappings."
+
+"What does Champney say?" inquired Mr. Wiggins.
+
+"State of the market," said the Colonel laconically.
+
+The men did not look at one another, for each was feeling a certain
+degree of indignation, of humiliation and disappointment that one of
+their own, Champney Googe, should go back on Flamsted to the extent of
+allowing the "market" to place the great quarry interests, through
+non-payment of the workers, in jeopardy.
+
+"Has Romanzo heard direct from him to-day?" asked Emlie.
+
+"No; the office replied he was out of the city for Saturday and Sunday;
+didn't give his address but asked if we could keep the men quiet till
+the middle of next week when the funds would be forwarded."
+
+"I wired our New York exchange yesterday," said Emlie, "but they can't
+give us any information--answered things had gone to pot pretty
+generally with certain securities, but Flamsted was all right,--not tied
+up in any of them. Of course, they know the standing of the syndicate.
+There'll have to be some new arrangement for a large reserve fund right
+here on home soil, or we'll be kept in hot water half the time. I don't
+believe in having the hands that work in one place, and the purse that
+holds their pay in another; it gets too ticklish at such times when the
+market drops and a plank or two at the bottom falls out."
+
+"Neither do I;" Mr. Wiggins spoke emphatically. "The Quarries Company's
+liabilities run up into the millions on account of the contracts they
+have signed and the work they have undertaken, and there ought to be a
+million of available assets to discount panics like this one that looks
+pretty threatening to us away off here in Maine. Our bank ought to have
+the benefit of some of the money."
+
+"Well, so far, we've had our trouble for nothing, you might say. You, as
+a director, know that Champney sends up a hundred thousand say on
+Thursday, and Romanzo draws it for the pay roll and other disbursements
+on Saturday morning; they hold it at the other end to get the use of it
+till the last gun is fired." He spoke with irritation.
+
+"It looks to me as if some sort of a gun had been fired already," said
+Mr. Wiggins, pointing to the increasing crowd before the hall.
+
+"Something's up," said Emlie, startled at the sight of the gathering
+hundreds.
+
+"Then there's my place," said the Colonel--the other two thought they
+heard him sigh--and started up the street.
+
+Emlie turned to Mr. Wiggins.
+
+"It's rough on the Colonel; he's a man of peace if ever there was one,
+and likes to stand well with one and all. This rough and tumble business
+of sheriff goes against the grain; his time is up next month; he'll be
+glad enough to be out of it. I'll step over to the office for the paper,
+I see they've just come--the men have got them already from the stand--"
+
+Elmer Wiggins caught his arm.
+
+"Look!" he cried under his breath, pointing to the crowd and a man who
+was mounting the tail of an express wagon that had halted on the
+outskirts of the throng. "That's one of the quarrymen--he's ring-leader
+every time--he's going to read 'em something--hark!"
+
+They could hear the man haranguing the ever-increasing crowd; he was
+waving a newspaper. They could not hear what he was saying, but in the
+pauses of his speechifying the hoarse murmur of approval grew louder and
+louder. The cart-tail orator pointed to the headlines; there was a
+sudden deep silence, so deep that the soft scurrying of a mass of fallen
+elm leaves in the gutter seemed for a moment to fill all the air. Then
+the man began to read. They saw the Colonel on the outside of the crowd;
+saw him suddenly turn and make with all haste for the post-office; saw
+him reappear reading the paper.
+
+The two hurried across the street to him.
+
+"What's the matter?" Emlie demanded.
+
+The Colonel spoke no word. He held the sheet out to them and with
+shaking forefinger pointed to the headlines:
+
+     BIG EMBEZZLEMENT BY FLAMSTED QUARRIES CO. OFFICIAL
+
+     GUILTY MAN A FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE
+
+     SEARCH WARRANTS OUT
+
+     DETECTIVES ON TRAIL
+
+     "New York--Special Despatch: L. Champney Googe, the treasurer of
+     the Flamsted Quarries Co.--" etc., etc.
+
+The men looked at one another. There was a moment of sickening silence;
+not so much as a leaf whirled in the gutter; it was broken by a great
+cheer from the assembled hundreds of workmen farther up the street,
+followed by a conglomerate of hootings, cat-calls, yells and falsetto
+hoorays from the fringe of small boys. The faces of the three men in
+front of the post-office grew white at their unspoken thought. Each
+waited for the other.
+
+"His mother--" said Emlie at last.
+
+Elmer Wiggins' lips trembled. "You must tell her, Colonel--she mustn't
+hear it this way--"
+
+"My God, how can I!" The Colonel's voice broke, but only for a second,
+then he braced himself to his martyrdom. "You're right; she mustn't hear
+it from any one but me--telephone up at once, will you, Elmer, that I'm
+coming up to see her on an important matter?--Emlie, you'll drive me up
+in your trap--we can get there before the men have a chance to get
+home--keep a watch on the doings here in the town, Elmer, and telephone
+me if there's any trouble--there's Romanzo coming now, I suppose he's
+got word from the office--if you happen to see Father Honoré, tell him
+where I am, he will help--"
+
+He stepped into the trap that had been hitched in front of the drug
+store, and Emlie took the reins. Elmer Wiggins reached up his hand to
+the Colonel, who gripped it hard.
+
+"Yes, Elmer," he said in answer to the other's mute question, "this is
+one of the days when a man, who is a man, may wish he'd never been
+born--"
+
+They were off, past the surging crowds who were now thronging the entire
+street, past The Bow, and over the bridge on their way to The Gore.
+
+
+XI
+
+"Run on ahead, girlies," said Aileen to the twins who were with her for
+their annual checkerberry picnic, "I'll be down in a few minutes."
+
+They were on the edge of the quarry woods which sheltered the Colonel's
+outlying sheep pastures and protected from the north wind the two
+sheepfolds that were used for the autumn and early spring. Dulcie and
+Doosie, obedient to Aileen's request, raced hand in hand across the
+short-turfed pastures, balancing their baskets of red berries.
+
+The late afternoon sunshine of the last of October shone clear and warm
+upon the fading close-cropped herbage that covered the long slopes. The
+sheep were gathering by flocks at the folds. The collie, busy and
+important, was at work with 'Lias rounding up the stragglers. Aileen's
+eyes were blinded to the transient quiet beauty of this scene, for she
+was alive to but one point in the landscape--the red brick house with
+granite trimmings far away across the Rothel, and the man leaving the
+carriage which had just stopped at the front porch. She could not
+distinguish who it was, and this fact fostered conjecture--Could it be
+Champney Googe who had come home to help settle the trouble in the
+sheds?
+
+How she hated him!--yet her heart gave a sudden sick throb of
+expectation. How she hated herself for her weakness!
+
+"You look tired to death, Aileen," was Mrs. Caukins' greeting a few
+minutes afterwards, "come in and rest yourself before supper. Luigi was
+here just now and I've sent Dulcie over with him to Aurora's to get the
+Colonel; I saw him go in there fifteen minutes ago, and he's no notion
+of time, not even meal-time, when he's talking business with her. I know
+it's business, because Mr. Emlie drove up with him; he's waiting for him
+to come out. Romanzo has just telephoned that he can't get home for
+supper, but he'll be up in time to see you home."
+
+Mrs. Caukins was diplomatic; she looked upon herself as a committee of
+one on ways and means to further her son's interest so far as Aileen
+Armagh was concerned; but that young lady was always ready with a check
+to her mate.
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Caukins, but I'll not trouble him; Tave is coming up to
+drive me home about eight; he knows checkerberry picking isn't easy
+work."
+
+Mrs. Caukins was looking out of the window and did not reply.
+
+"I declare," she exclaimed, "if there isn't Octavius this very minute
+driving up in a rush to Aurora's too--and Father Honoré's with
+him!--Why, what--"
+
+Without waiting to finish her thought, she hurried to the door to call
+out to Dulcie, who was coming back over the bridge towards the house,
+running as fast as she could:
+
+"What's the matter, Dulcie?"
+
+"Oh, mother--mother--" the child panted, running up the road, "father
+wants you to come over to Mrs. Googe's right off, as quick as you
+can--he says not to stop for anything--"
+
+The words were scarcely out of her mouth before Mrs. Caukins, without
+heeding Aileen, was hurrying down the road. The little girl, wholly out
+of breath, threw herself down exhausted on the grass before the door.
+Aileen and Doosie ran out to her.
+
+"What is it, Dulcie--can't you tell me?" said Aileen.
+
+Between quickened breaths the child told what she knew.
+
+"Luigi stopped to speak to Mr. Emlie--and Mr. Emlie said something
+dreadful for Flamsted--had happened--and Luigi looked all of a sudden so
+queer and pale,"--she sat up, and in the excitement and importance of
+imparting such news forgot her over-exertion,--"and Mr. Emlie said
+father was telling Mrs. Googe--and he was afraid it would kill her--and
+then father came to the door looking just like Luigi, all queer and
+pale, and Mr. Emlie says, 'How is she?' and father shook his head and
+said, 'It's her death blow,' then I squeezed Luigi's hand to make him
+look at me, and I asked him what it was Mrs. Googe's was sick of, for I
+must go and tell mother--and he looked at Mr. Emlie and he nodded and
+said, 'It's town talk already--it's in the papers.' And then Luigi told
+me that Mr. Champney Googe had been stealing, Aileen!--and if he got
+caught he'd have to go to prison--then father sent me over home for
+mother and told me to run, and I've run so--Oh, Aileen!"
+
+It was a frightened cry, and her twin echoed it. While Aileen Armagh was
+listening with shortened breaths to the little girl, she felt as if she
+were experiencing the concentrated emotions of a lifetime; as a result,
+the revulsion of feeling was so powerful that it affected her
+physically; her young healthy nerves, capable at other times of almost
+any tension, suddenly played her false. The effect upon her of what she
+heard was a severe nervous shock. She had never fainted in her life, nor
+had she known the meaning of an hysterical mood; she neither fainted nor
+screamed now, but began to struggle horribly for breath, for the shocked
+heart began beating as it would, sending the blood in irregular spurts
+through the already over-charged arteries. From time to time she groaned
+heavily as her struggle continued.
+
+The two children were terrified. Doosie raced distractedly across the
+pastures to get 'Lias, and Dulcie ran into the house for water. Her
+little hand was trembling as she held the glass to Aileen's white
+quivering lips that refused it.
+
+By the time, however, that 'Lias got to the house, the crisis was past;
+she could smile at the frightened children, and assure 'Lias that she
+had had simply a short and acute attack of indigestion from eating too
+many checkerberries over in the woods.
+
+"It serves me right," she said smiling into the woe-begone little faces
+so near to hers; "I've always heard they are the most indigestible
+things going--now don't you eat any more, girlies, or you'll have a
+spasm like mine. I'm all right, 'Lias; go back to your work, I'll just
+help myself to a cup of hot water from the tea-kettle and then I'll go
+home with Tave--I see him coming for me--I didn't expect him now."
+
+"But, Aileen, won't you stay to supper?" said the twins at one and the
+same time; "we always have you to celebrate our checkerberry picnic."
+
+"Dear knows, I've celebrated the checkerberries enough already," she
+said laughing,--but 'Lias noticed that her lips were still
+colorless,--"and I think, dearies, that it's no time for us to be
+celebrating any more to-day when poor Mrs. Googe is in such trouble."
+
+"What's up?" said 'Lias.
+
+The twins' eagerness to impart their knowledge of recent events to 'Lias
+was such that the sorrow of parting was greatly mitigated; moreover,
+Aileen left them with a promise to come up again soon.
+
+"I'm ready, Tave," she said as he drew up at the door. 'Lias helped her
+in.
+
+"Come again soon, Aileen--you've promised," the twins shouted after her.
+
+She turned and waved her hand to them. "I'll come," she called back in
+answer.
+
+They drove in silence over the Rothel, past the brick house where
+Emlie's trap was still standing, but now hitched. Octavius Buzzby's face
+was gray; his features were drawn.
+
+"Did you hear, Aileen?" he said, after they had driven on a while and
+begun to meet the quarrymen returning from Flamsted, many of whom were
+talking excitedly and gesticulating freely.
+
+"Yes--Dulcie told me something. I don't know how true it is," she
+answered quietly.
+
+"It's true," he said grimly, "and it'll kill his mother."
+
+"I don't know about that;" she spoke almost indifferently; "you can
+stand a good deal when it comes to the point."
+
+Octavius turned almost fiercely upon her.
+
+"What do you know about it?" he demanded. "You're neither wife nor
+mother, but you might show a little more feeling, being a woman. Do you
+realize what this thing means to us--to Flamsted--to the family?"
+
+"Tave," she turned her gray eyes full upon him, the pupils were
+unnaturally enlarged, "I don't suppose I do know what it means to all of
+you--but it makes me sick to talk about it--please don't--I can't bear
+it--take me home as quick as you can."
+
+She grew whiter still.
+
+"Ain't you well, Aileen?" he asked in real anxiety, repenting of his
+hard word to her.
+
+"Not very, Tave; the truth is I ate too many checkerberries and had an
+attack of indigestion--I shall be all right soon--and they sent over for
+Mrs. Caukins just at that time, and when Dulcie came back she told
+me--it's awful--but it's different with you; he belongs to you all here
+and you've always loved him."
+
+"Loved him!"--Octavius Buzzby's voice shook with suppressed emotion--"I
+should say loved him; he's been dear to me as my own--I thank God Louis
+Champney isn't living to go through this disgrace!"
+
+He drew up in the road to let a gang of workmen separate--he had been
+driving the mare at full speed. Both he and Aileen caught fragments of
+what they were saying.
+
+"It's damned hard on his mother--"
+
+"They say there's a woman in the case--"
+
+"Generally is with them highflyers--"
+
+"I'll bet he'll make for the old country, if he can get clear he'll--"
+
+"Europe's full of 'em--reg'lar cesspool they say--"
+
+"Any reward offered?"
+
+"The Company'll have to fork over or there'll be the biggest strike in
+Flamsted that the stone-cutting business has seen yet--"
+
+"The papers don't say what the shortage is--"
+
+"What's Van Ostend's daughter's name, anybody know?--they say he was
+sweet on her--"
+
+"She's a good haul," a man laughed hoarsely, insultingly, "but she
+didn't bite, an' lucky for her she didn't."
+
+"You're 'bout right--them high rollers don't want to raise nothing but
+game cocks--no prison birds, eh?"
+
+The men passed on, twenty or more. Octavius Buzzby, and the one who in
+the last hour had left her girlhood behind her, drove homewards in
+silence. Her eyes were lowered; her white cheeks burned again, but with
+shame at what she was obliged to hear.
+
+
+XII
+
+The strike was averted; the men were paid in full on the Wednesday
+following that Saturday the events of which brought for a time Flamsted,
+its families, and its great industry into the garish light of
+undesirable publicity. In the sheds and the quarries the routine work
+went on as usual, but speculation was rife as to the outcome of the
+search for the missing treasurer. A considerable amount of money was put
+up by the sporting element among the workmen, that the capture would
+take place within three weeks. Meanwhile, the daily papers furnished
+pabulum for the general curiosity and kept the interest as to the
+outcome on the increase. Some reports had it that Champney Googe was
+already in Europe; others that he had been seen in one of the Central
+American capitals. Among those who knew him best, it was feared he was
+already in hiding in his native State; but beyond their immediate circle
+no suspicion of this got abroad.
+
+Among the native Flamstedites, who had known and loved Champney from a
+child, there was at first a feeling of consternation mingled with shame
+of the disgrace to his native town. They felt that Champney had played
+false to his two names, and through the honored names of Googe and
+Champney he had brought disgrace upon all connections, whether by ties
+of blood or marriage. To him they had looked to be a leader in the new
+Flamsted that was taking its place in the world's work. For a few days
+it seemed as if the keystone of the arch of their ambition and pride
+had fallen and general ruin threatened. Then, after the first week
+passed without news as to his whereabouts, there was bewilderment,
+followed on the second Monday by despair deepened by a suspense that was
+becoming almost unbearable.
+
+It was a matter of surprise to many to find the work in sheds and
+quarries proceeding with its accustomed regularity; to find that to the
+new comers in Flamsted the affair was an impersonal one, that Champney
+Googe held no place among the workmen; that his absconding meant to them
+simply another one of the "high rollers" fleeing from his deserts.
+Little by little, during that first week, the truth found its way home
+to each man and woman personally interested in this erring son of
+Flamsted's old families, that a man is but one working unit among
+millions, and that unit counts in a community only when its work is
+constructive in the communal good.
+
+At a meeting of the bank directors the telling fact was disclosed that
+all of Mrs. Googe's funds--the purchase money of the quarry lands--had
+been withdrawn nine months previous; but this, they ascertained later,
+had been done with her full consent and knowledge.
+
+Romanzo was summoned with the Company's books to the New York office.
+The Colonel seemed to his friends to have aged ten years in seven days.
+He wore the look of a man haunted by the premonition of some impending
+catastrophe. But he confided his trouble to no one, not even to his
+wife. Aurora Googe's friends suffered with her and for her; they began,
+at last, to fear for her reason if some definite word should not soon be
+forthcoming.
+
+The tension in the Champ-au-Haut household became almost intolerable as
+the days passed without any satisfaction as to the fugitive's
+whereabouts. After the first shock, and some unpleasant recrimination on
+the part of Mrs. Champney, this tension showed itself by silently
+ignoring the recent family event. Mrs. Champney found plausible excuse
+in the state of her health to see no one. Octavius Buzzby attended to
+his daily duties with the face of a man who has come through a severe
+sickness; Hannah complained that "he didn't eat enough to keep a cat
+alive." His lack of appetite was an accompaniment to sleepless,
+thought-racked nights.
+
+Aileen Armagh said nothing--what could she say?--but sickened at her own
+thoughts. She made excuse to be on the street, at the station, in The
+Gore at the Caukinses', with Joel Quimber and Elmer Wiggins, as well as
+among the quarrymen's families, whose children she taught in an
+afternoon singing class, in the hope of hearing some enlightening word;
+of learning something definite in regard to the probabilities of escape;
+of getting some inkling of the whole truth. She gathered a little here,
+a little there; she put two and two together, and from what she heard as
+a matter of speculation, and from what she knew to be true through Mrs.
+Caukins via Romanzo in New York, she found that Champney Googe had
+sacrificed his honor, his mother, his friends, and the good name of his
+native town for the unlawful love of gain. She was obliged to accept
+this fact, and its acceptance completed the work of destruction that the
+revelation of Champney Googe's unfaith, through the declaration of a
+passion that led to no legitimate consummation in marriage, had wrought
+in her young buoyant spirit. She was broken beneath the sudden
+cumulative and overwhelming knowledge of evil; her youth found no
+abiding-place either for heart or soul. To Father Honoré she could not
+go--not yet!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the afternoon of Monday week, a telegram came for the Colonel. He
+opened it in the post office. Octavius coming in at the same time for
+his first mail noticed at once the change in his face--he looked
+stricken.
+
+"What is it, Colonel?" he asked anxiously, joining him.
+
+For answer Milton Caukins held out the telegram. It was from the State
+authorities; its purport that the Colonel was to form a posse and be
+prepared to aid, to the extent of his powers, the New York detectives
+who were coming on the early evening train. The fugitive from justice
+had left New York and been traced to Hallsport.
+
+"I've had a premonition of this--it's the last stroke, Tave--here, in
+his home--among us--and his mother!--and, in duty bound, I, of all
+others, must be the man to finish the ugly job--"
+
+Octavius Buzzby's face worked strangely. "It's tough for you, Colonel,
+but I guess a Maine man knows his whole duty--only, for God's sake,
+don't ask me!" It was a groan rather than an ejaculation. The two
+continued to talk in a low tone.
+
+"I shall call for volunteers and then get them sworn in--it means stiff
+work for to-night. We'll keep this from Aurora, Tave; she mustn't know
+_this_."
+
+"Yes, if we can. Are you going to ask any of our own folks to volunteer,
+Milton?" In times of great stress and sorrow his townspeople called the
+Colonel by his Christian name.
+
+"No; I'm going to ask some of the men who don't know him well--some of
+the foreigners; Poggi's one. He'll know some others up in The Gore. And
+I don't believe, Tave, there's one of our own would volunteer, do you?"
+
+"No, I don't. We can't go that far; it would be like cutting our own
+throats."
+
+"You're right, Tave--that's the way I feel; but"--he squared his
+shoulders--"it's got to be done and the sooner it's over the better for
+us all--but, Tave, I hope to God he'll keep out of our way!"
+
+"Amen," said Octavius Buzzby.
+
+The two stood together in the office a moment longer in gloomy silence,
+then they went out into the street.
+
+"Well, I must get to work," said the Colonel finally, "the time's scant.
+I'll telephone my wife first. We can't keep this to ourselves long;
+everybody, from the quarrymen to the station master, will be keen on the
+scent."
+
+"I'm glad no reward was offered," said Octavius.
+
+"So am I." The Colonel spoke emphatically. "The roughscuff won't
+volunteer without that, and I shall be reasonably certain of some good
+men--God! and I'm saying this of Champney Googe--it makes me sick; who'd
+have thought it--who'd have thought it--"
+
+He shook his head, and stepped into the telephone booth. Octavius waited
+for him.
+
+"I've warned Mrs. Caukins," he said when he came out, "and told her how
+things stand; that I'd try to get Poggi, and that I sha'n't be at home
+to-night. She says tell Aileen to tell Mrs. Champney she will esteem it
+a great favor if she will let her come up to-night; she has one of her
+nervous headaches and doesn't want to be alone with the children and
+'Lias. You could take her up, couldn't you?"
+
+"I guess she can come, and I'll take her up 'fore supper; I don't want
+to be gone after dark," he added with meaning emphasis.
+
+"I understand, Tave; I'm going over to Poggi's now."
+
+The two parted with a hand-clasp that spoke more than any words.
+
+
+XIII
+
+About four, Octavius drove Aileen up to the Colonel's. He said nothing
+to her of the coming crucial night, but Aileen had her thoughts. The
+Colonel's absence from home, but not from town, coupled with yesterday's
+New York despatch which said that there was no trace of the guilty man
+in New York, and affirmed on good authority that the statement that he
+had not left the country was true, convinced her that something
+unforeseen was expected in the immediate vicinity of Flamsted. But he
+would never attempt to come here!--She shivered at the thought.
+Octavius, noticing this movement, remarked that he thought there was
+going to be a black frost. Aileen maintained that the rising wind and
+the want of a moon would keep it off.
+
+Although Octavius was inclined to take exception to the feminine
+statement that the moon, or the want of it, had an effect on frost,
+nevertheless this apparently innocent remark on Aileen's part recalled
+to him the fact that the night was moonless--he wondered if the Colonel
+had thought of this--and he hoped with all his soul that it would prove
+to be starless as well. "Champney knows the Maine woods--knows 'em from
+the Bay to the head of Moosehead as well as an Oldtown Indian, yes and
+beyond." So he comforted himself in thought.
+
+Mrs. Caukins met them with effusion.
+
+"I declare, Aileen, I don't know what I should have done if you couldn't
+have come up; I'm all of a-tremble now and I've got such a nervous
+headache from all I've been through, and all I've got to, that I can't
+see straight out of my eyes.--Won't you stop to supper, Tave?"
+
+"I can't to-night, Elvira, I--"
+
+"I'd no business to ask you, I know," she said, interrupting him; "I
+might have known you'd want to be on hand for any new developments. I
+don't know how we're going to live through it up here; you don't feel it
+so much down in the town--I don't believe I could go through it without
+Aileen up here with me, for the twins aren't old enough to depend on or
+to be told everything; they're no company at such times, and of course I
+sha'n't tell them, they wouldn't sleep a wink; I miss my boys
+dreadfully--"
+
+"Tell them what? What do you mean by 'to-night'?" Aileen demanded, a
+sudden sharpness in her voice.
+
+"Why, don't you know?"--She turned to Octavius, "Haven't you told her?"
+
+Her appeal fell on departing and intentionally deaf ears; for Octavius,
+upon hearing Aileen's sudden and amazed question, abruptly bade them
+good-night, spoke to the mare and was off at a rapid pace before Mrs.
+Caukins comprehended that the telling of the latest development was left
+to her.
+
+She set about it quickly enough, and what with her nervousness, her
+sympathy for that mother across the Rothel, her anxiety for the Colonel,
+her fear of the trial to which his powers of endurance were about to be
+put, and the description of his silent suffering during the last week,
+she failed to notice that Aileen said nothing. The girl busied herself
+with setting the table and preparing tea, Mrs. Caukins, meanwhile,
+rocking comfortably in her chair and easing her heart of its heavy
+burden by continual drippings of talk after the main flow of her tale
+was exhausted.
+
+Presently, just after sunset, the twins came rushing in. Evidently they
+were full of secrets--they were always a close corporation of two--and
+their inane giggles and breathless suppression of what they were
+obviously longing to impart to their mother and Aileen, told on Mrs.
+Caukins' already much worn nerves.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't stay out so long after sundown, children, you worry
+me to death. I don't say but the quarries are safe enough, but I do say
+you never can tell who's round after dusk, and growing girls like you
+belong at home."
+
+She spoke fretfully. The twins exchanged meaning glances that were lost
+on their mother, who was used to their ways, but not on Aileen.
+
+"Where have you been all this time, Dulcie?" she asked rather
+indifferently. Her short teaching experience had shown her that the only
+way to gain children's confidence is not to display too great a
+curiosity in regard to their comings and goings, their doings and
+undoings. "Tave and I didn't see you anywhere when we drove up."
+
+The twins looked at each other and screwed their lips into a violently
+repressive contortion.
+
+"We've been over to the sheepfolds with 'Lias."
+
+"Why, 'Lias has been out in the barn for the last half hour--what were
+you doing over there, I'd like to know?" Their mother spoke sharply, for
+untruth she would not tolerate.
+
+"We did stay with 'Lias till he got through, then we played ranchmen and
+made believe round up the cattle the way the boys wrote us they do." Two
+of their brothers were in the West trying their fortune on a ranch and
+incidentally "dovetailing into the home business," as the Colonel
+defined their united efforts along the line of mutton raising.
+
+"Well, I never!" their mother ejaculated; "I suppose now you'll be
+making believe you're everything the other boys are going to be."
+
+The little girls giggled and nodded emphatically.
+
+"Well, Aileen," she said as she took her seat at the table, "times have
+changed since I was a girl, and that isn't so very long ago. Then we
+used to content ourselves with sewing, and housework, and reading all
+the books in the Sunday school library, and making our own clothes, and
+enjoying ourselves as much as anybody nowadays for all I see, what with
+our picnics and excursions down the Bay and the clam bakes and winter
+lecture course and the young folks 'Circle' and two or three dances to
+help out--and now here are my girls that can't be satisfied to sit down
+and hem good crash towels for their mother, but must turn themselves
+into boys, and play ranchmen and baseball and hockey on the ice, and
+Wild West shows with the dogs and the pony--and even riding him
+a-straddle--and want to go to college just because their two brothers
+are going, and, for all I know, join a fraternity and have secrets from
+their own mother and a football team!" She paused long enough to help
+the twins bountifully.
+
+"Sometimes I think it's their being brought up with so many boys, and
+then again I'm convinced it's the times, for all girls seem to have
+caught the male fever. What with divided skirts, and no petticoats, and
+racing and running and tumbling in basket ball, and rowing races, and
+entering for prize championships in golf and the dear knows what, it'll
+be lucky if a mother of the next generation can tell whether she's
+borned girls or boys by the time her children are ten years old. The
+land knows it's hard enough for a married woman to try to keep up with
+one man in a few things, but when it comes to a lot of old maids and
+unmarried girls trying to catch up all the time with the men in
+_everything_, and catch on too, I must say _I_, for one, draw the line."
+
+Aileen could not help smiling at this diatribe on "the times." The twins
+laughed outright; they were used to their mother by this time, and
+patronized her in a loving way.
+
+"We weren't there _all_ the time," Doosie said meaningly, and Dulcie
+added her little word, which she intended should tantalize her mother
+and Aileen to the extent that many pertinent questions should be
+forthcoming, and the news they were burning to impart would, to all
+appearance, be dragged out of them--a process in which the twins
+revelled.
+
+"We met Luigi on the road near the bridge."
+
+"What do you suppose Luigi's doing up here at this time, I'd like to
+know," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to Aileen and ignoring the children.
+
+"He come up on an errand to see some of the quarrymen," piped up both
+the girls at the same time.
+
+"Oh, is that all?" said their mother indifferently; then, much to the
+twins' chagrin, she suddenly changed the subject. "I want you to take
+the glass of wine jell on the second shelf in the pantry over to Mrs.
+Googe's after you finish your supper--you can leave it with the girl and
+tell her not to say anything to Mrs. Googe about it, but just put some
+in a saucer and give it to her with her supper. Maybe it'll tempt her to
+taste it, poor soul!"
+
+The twins sat up very straight on their chairs. A look of consternation
+came into their faces.
+
+"We don't want to go," murmured Dulcie.
+
+"Don't want to go!" their mother exclaimed; decided irritation was
+audible in her voice. "For pity's sake, what is the matter now, that you
+can't run on an errand for me just over the bridge, and here you've been
+prowling about in the dusk for the last hour around those lonesome
+sheepfolds and 'Lias nowheres near--I declare, I could understand my six
+boys even if they were terrors when they were little. You could always
+count on their being somewheres anyway, even if 't was on the top of
+freight cars at The Corners or at the bottom of the pond diving for
+pebbles that they brought up between their lips and run the risk of
+choking besides drowning; and they did think the same thoughts for at
+least twenty-four hours on a stretch, when they were set on having
+things--but when it come to my having two girls, and I forty at the
+time, I give it up! They don't know their own minds from one six minutes
+to the next.--Why don't you want to go?" she demanded, coming at last to
+the point. Aileen was listening in amused silence.
+
+"'Coz we got scared--awful scared," said Dulcie under her breath.
+
+"Scared most to death," Doosie added solemnly.
+
+Both Mrs. Caukins and Aileen saw at once that the children were in
+earnest.
+
+"You look scared!" said Mrs. Caukins with withering scorn; "you've eaten
+a good supper if you were 'scared' as you say.--What scared you?"
+
+The twins looked down into their plates, the generally cleared-up
+appearance of which seemed fully to warrant their mother's sarcasm.
+
+"Luigi told us not to tell," said Dulcie in a low voice.
+
+"Luigi told you not to tell!" echoed their mother. "I'd like to know
+what right Luigi Poggi has to tell my children not to tell their mother
+anything and everything!" She spoke with waxing excitement; every
+motherly pin-feather was erect.
+
+"He was 'fraid it would scare you," ventured Doosie.
+
+"Scare me! He must have a pretty poor opinion of a woman that can raise
+six boys of her own and then be 'scared' at what two snips of girls can
+tell her. You'll tell me now, this very minute, what scared you--this
+all comes of your being away from the house so far and so late--and I
+won't have it."
+
+"We saw a bear--"
+
+"A big one--"
+
+"He was crawling on all fours--"
+
+"Back of the sheepfold wall--"
+
+"He scrooched down as if he was nosing for something--"
+
+"Just where the trees are so thick you can't see into the woods--"
+
+"And we jumped over the wall and right down into the sheep, and they
+made an awful fuss they were so scared too, huddling and rushing round
+to get out--"
+
+"Then we found the gate--"
+
+"But I _heard_ him--" Dulcie's eyes were very big and bright with
+remembered terror.
+
+"And then we climbed over the gate--'Lias had locked it--and run home
+lickety-split and most run into Luigi at the bridge--"
+
+"'Coz we come down the road after we got through the last pasture--"
+
+"Oh, he was so big!" Doosie shuddered as her imagination began to work
+more vigorously with the recital--"bigger'n a man--"
+
+"What nonsense."
+
+The twins had been telling all this at the same time, and their mother's
+common sense and downright exclamation brought them to a full stop. They
+looked crestfallen.
+
+"You needn't tell me there's a bear between here and Moosehead--I know
+better. Did you tell Luigi all this?" she questioned sharply.
+
+The two nodded affirmatively.
+
+"And he told you not to tell me?"
+
+Another nod.
+
+"Did he say anything more?"
+
+"He said he'd go up and see."
+
+"Hm--m--"
+
+Mrs. Caukins turned a rather white face to Aileen; the two, looking into
+each other's eyes, read there a common fear.
+
+"Perhaps you'll take the jelly over for me, Aileen; I'll just step to
+the back door and holler to 'Lias to bring in the collie and the
+hound--'t isn't always safe to let the dogs out after dark if there
+_should_ happen to be anything stirring in the quarry woods."
+
+"I'll go," said Aileen. She went into the pantry to get the glass of
+jelly.
+
+"We'll go with you, we won't mind a bit with you or Luigi," chorussed
+the twins.
+
+"You don't go one step," said their mother, entering at that moment from
+the kitchen, and followed by the two dogs; "you'll stay right where you
+are, and what's more, you'll both go to bed early to make you remember
+that I mean what I say about your being out so long another time after
+sundown--no good comes of it," she muttered.
+
+The twins knew by the tone of her voice that there was no further appeal
+to be made.
+
+"You can wash up the dishes while Aileen's gone; my head is so
+bad.--Don't be gone too long, Aileen," she said, going to the door with
+her.
+
+"I sha'n't stay unless I can do something--but I'll stop a little while
+with Ellen, poor girl; she must be tired of all this excitement, sitting
+there alone so much as she has this last week."
+
+"Of course, but Aurora won't see you; it's as much as ever I can do to
+get a look at her, and as to speaking a word of comfort, it's out of the
+question.--Why!" she exclaimed, looking out into the dusk that was
+settling into night, "they never light the quarries so early, not with
+all the arc-lights, I wonder--Oh, Aileen!" she cried, as the meaning of
+the great illumination in The Gore dawned upon her.
+
+The girl did not answer. She ran down the road to the bridge with every
+nerve in her strained to its utmost.
+
+
+XIV
+
+She hurried over to the brick house across the Rothel; rapped at the
+kitchen door and, upon the girl's opening it, gave the jelly to her with
+Mrs. Caukins' message. She assured Ellen, who begged her to come in,
+that she would run over if possible a little later in the evening. A low
+whine and prolonged snuffing made themselves audible while the two
+talked together in low tones at the door. They seemed to proceed from
+the vicinity of the dining-room door.
+
+"Where's Rag?" said Aileen, listening intently to the muffled sounds.
+
+"I shut him up in the dining-room closet when I see you come up the
+walk; he goes just wild to get with you any chance he can, and Mrs.
+Googe told me she wanted to keep him round the house nights."
+
+"Then be careful he doesn't get out to-night--supposing you chain him up
+just for once."
+
+"Oh, I couldn't do that; Mrs. Googe wouldn't let me; but I'll see he
+doesn't follow you. I do wish you would come in--it's so lonesome," she
+said again wistfully.
+
+"I can't now, Ellen; but if I can get away after eight, I may run over
+and sit with you a while. I'm staying with Mrs. Caukins because the
+Colonel is away to-night."
+
+"So I heard; 'Lias told me just now on his way down to the village. He
+said he wouldn't be gone long, for the Colonel wasn't to home.--I
+wonder what they've turned on all the lights for?" she said, craning her
+neck to look farther up the road.
+
+Aileen made no reply. She cautioned her again to keep Rag at home. A
+series of muffled but agonized yelps followed her down the walk.
+
+She stood still in the road and looked about her. Everywhere the great
+quarry arc-lights were sending their searching rays out upon the
+quarries and their approaches.
+
+"What shall I do--oh, what _shall_ I do!" was her hopeless unuttered
+cry.
+
+It seemed to Aileen Armagh, standing there in the road at the entrance
+to the bridge, as if a powerful X-ray were being directed at that moment
+upon her whole life so far as she remembered it; and not only upon that,
+but upon her heart and soul--her thoughts, desires, her secret agony; as
+if the ray, in penetrating her body and soul, were laying bare her
+secret to the night:--she still loved him.
+
+"Oh, what shall I do--what _shall_ I do!" was the continual inner cry.
+
+Life was showing itself to her in this experience, as seen through the
+lens of a quickened imagination, in all its hideousness. Never had she
+experienced such a sense of loneliness. Never had she realized so
+forcibly that she was without father and mother, without kin in a
+foreign country, without a true home and abiding-place. Never had it
+been brought home to her with such keen pain that she was, in truth, a
+waif in this great world; that the one solid support for her in this
+world, her affections, had been ruthlessly cut away from under her by
+the hand of the man she had loved with all the freshness and joy of her
+young loving heart. He had been all the more to her because she was
+alone; the day dreams all the brighter because she believed he was the
+one to realize them for her--and now!
+
+She walked on slowly.
+
+"What shall I do--what shall I do!" was her inward cry, repeated at
+intervals. She crossed the bridge. All was chaotic in her thoughts. She
+had supposed, during the last two months, that all her love was turned
+to hate,--she hoped it was, for it would help her to bear,--that all her
+feeling for him, whom she knew she ought to despise, was dead. Why,
+then, if it were dead, she asked herself now, had she spoken so
+vehemently to Luigi? And Luigi--where was he--what was he doing?
+
+What was it produced that nervous shock when she learned the last truth
+from Dulcie Caukins? Was it her shame at his dishonor? No--she knew by
+the light of the X-ray piercing her soul that the thought of his
+imprisonment meant absence from her; after all that had occurred, she
+was obliged to confess that she was still longing for his presence. She
+hated herself for this confession.--Where was he now?
+
+She looked up the road towards the quarry woods--Thank God, those, at
+least, were dark! Oh, if she but dared to go! dared to penetrate them;
+to call to him that the hours of his freedom were numbered; to
+help--someway, somehow! A sudden thought, over-powering in its intimation
+of possibilities, stopped her short in the road just a little way beyond
+the Colonel's; but before she could formulate it sufficiently to follow
+it up with action, before she had time to realize the sensation of
+returning courage, she was aware of the sound of running feet on the
+road above her. On a slight rise of ground the figure of a man showed
+for a moment against the clear early dark of the October night; he was
+running at full speed.
+
+Could it be--?
+
+She braced herself to the shock--he was rapidly nearing her--a powerful
+ray from an arc-light shot across his path--fell full upon his hatless
+head--
+
+"_You!_--Luigi!" she cried and darted forward to meet him.
+
+He thrust out his arm to brush her aside, never slackening his pace; but
+she caught at it, and, clasping it with both hands, hung upon it her
+full weight, letting him drag her on with him a few feet.
+
+"Stop, Luigi Poggi!--Stop, I tell you, or I'll scream for help--stop, I
+say!"
+
+He was obliged to slacken his speed in order not to hurt her. He tried
+to shake her off, untwist her hands; she clung to him like a leech. Then
+he stopped short, panting. She could see the sweat dropping from his
+forehead; his teeth began to chatter. She still held his arm tightly
+with both hands.
+
+"Let me go--" he said, catching his breath spasmodically.
+
+"Not till you tell me where you've been--what you've been doing--tell
+me."
+
+"Doing--" He brought out the word with difficulty.
+
+"Yes, doing, don't you hear?" She shook his arm violently in her anxious
+terror.
+
+"I don't know--" the words were a long groan.
+
+"Where have you been then?--quick, tell me--"
+
+He began to shake with a hard nervous chill.
+
+"With him--over in the quarry woods--I tried to take him--he fought
+me--" The chill shook him till he could scarcely stand.
+
+She dropped his arm; drew away from him as if touching were
+contamination; then her eyes, dilating with a still greater horror,
+fixed themselves on the bosom of his shirt--there was a stain--
+
+"Have you killed him--" she whispered hoarsely.
+
+The answer came through the clattering teeth:
+
+"I--I don't know--you said--you said you--never wanted to see him
+again--"
+
+Luigi found himself speaking the last words to the empty air; he was
+alone, in the middle of the road, in the full glare of an electric
+light. He was conscious of a desire to escape from it, to escape
+detection--to rid himself of his over-powering misery in the quietest way
+possible. He gathered himself together; his limbs steadied; the
+shivering grew less; he went on down the road at a quick walk. Already
+the quarrymen were coming out in force to see what might be up. He must
+avoid them at all hazards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One thought was the motive power which sent Aileen running up the road
+towards the pastures, by crossing which she could reach in a few minutes
+the quarry woods: "I must know if he is dead; if he is not dead, I must
+try to save him from a living death."
+
+This thought alone sent her speeding over the darkened slopes. She was
+light of foot, but sometimes she stumbled; she was up and on again--the
+sheepfold her goal. The quarry woods stood out dark against the clear
+sky; there seemed to be more light on these uplands than below in The
+Gore; she saw the sheepfold like a square blot on the pasture slope. She
+reached it--should she call aloud--call his name? How find him?
+
+She listened intently; the wind had died down; the sheep were huddling
+and moving restlessly within the fold; this movement seemed unusual.
+She climbed the rough stone wall; the sheep were massed in one corner,
+heads to the wall, tails to the bare centre of the fold; they kept
+crowding closer and more close.
+
+In that bared space of hoof-trampled earth she saw him lying.
+
+She leaped down, the frightened sheep riding one another in their
+frantic efforts to get away from the invaders of their peace. She knelt
+by him; lifted his head on her knee; her hands touched his sleeve, she
+drew back from something warm and wet.
+
+"Champney--O Champney, what has he done to you!" she moaned in hopeless
+terror; "what shall I do--"
+
+"Is it you--Aileen?--help me up--"
+
+With her aid he raised himself to a sitting posture.
+
+"It must have been the loss of blood--I felt faint suddenly." He spoke
+clearly. "Can you help me?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes--only tell me how."
+
+"If you could bind this up--have you anything--"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes--"
+
+He used his left hand entirely; it was the right arm that had received
+the full blow of some sharp instrument. "Just tear away the
+shirt--that's right--"
+
+She did as he bade her. She took her handkerchief and bound the arm
+tightly above the wound, twisting it with one of her shell hairpins. She
+slipped off her white petticoat, stripped it, and under his directions
+bandaged the arm firmly.
+
+He spoke to her then as if she were a personality and not an instrument.
+
+"Aileen, it's all up with me if I am found here--if I don't get out of
+this--tell my mother I was trying to see her--to get some funds, I have
+nothing. I depended on my knowledge of this country to escape--put them
+off the track--they're after me now--aren't they?"
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"I thought so; I should have got across to the house if the quarry
+lights hadn't been turned on so suddenly--I knew they'd got word when I
+saw that--still, I might have made the run, but that man throttled me--I
+must go--"
+
+He got on his feet. At that moment they both started violently at the
+sound of something worrying at the gate; there was a rattle at the bars,
+a scramble, a frightened bleating among the sheep, a joyous bark--and
+Rag flung himself first upon Aileen then on Champney.
+
+He caught the dog by the throat, choking him into silence, and handed
+him to Aileen.
+
+"For God's sake, keep the dog away--don't let him come--keep him quiet,
+or I'm lost--" he dropped over the wall and disappeared in the woods.
+
+Here and there across the pastures a lantern shot its unsteady rays. The
+posse had begun their night's work.
+
+The dog struggled frantically to free himself from Aileen's arms; again
+and again she choked him that he might not bark and betray his master.
+The terrified sheep bleated loud and long, trampling one another in vain
+efforts to get through or over the wall.
+
+"Oh, Rag, Rag,--stop, or I must kill you, dear, dear little Rag--oh, I
+can't choke you--I can't--I can't! Rag, be still, I say--oh--"
+
+Between his desire to free his limbs, to breathe freely, and the
+instinctive longing to follow his master, the dog's powerful muscles
+were doing double work.
+
+"Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do--" she groaned in her
+helplessness. The dog's frantic struggles were proving too much for her
+strength, for she had to hold him with one hand; the other was on his
+windpipe. She knew 'Lias would soon be coming home; he could hear the
+sheep from the road, as she already heard the subdued bay of the hound
+and the muffled bark of the collie, shut--thanks to Mrs. Caukins'
+premonition of what might happen--within four walls. She looked about
+her--a strip of her white skirt lay on the ground--_Could she--?_
+
+"No, Rag darling--no, I can't, I can't--" she began to cry. Through her
+tears she saw something sticking up from the hoof-trampled earth near
+the strip of cotton--a knife--
+
+She was obliged to take her hand from the dog's throat in order to pick
+it up--there was one joyous bark....
+
+"O Rag, forgive me--forgive!" she cried under her breath, sobbing as if
+her heart would break.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She picked up the piece of skirt, and fled with the knife in her
+hand--over the wall, over the pastures, that seemed lighter beneath the
+rising stars, down the highroad into the glare of an arc-light. She
+looked at the instrument of death as she ran; it was a banana knife such
+as Luigi used continually in his shop. She crossed the bridge, dropped
+the knife over the guard into the rushing Rothel; re-crossed the bridge
+and, throwing back the wings of the Scotch plaid cape she wore, examined
+in the full light of the powerful terminal lamp her hands, dress, waist,
+cuffs.--There was evidence.
+
+She took off her cape, wrapped it over head and shoulders, folded it
+close over both arms, and went back to the house. She heard carriages
+coming up the road to The Gore.
+
+Mrs. Caukins, in a quivering state of excitement, called to her from the
+back porch:
+
+"Come out here, Aileen; 'Lias hasn't got back yet--the sheep are making
+the most awful noise; something's the matter over there, you may
+depend--and I can see lights, can you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered unsteadily. "I saw them a few minutes ago. I didn't
+stay with Ellen, but went up the road a piece, for my head was aching
+too, and I thought a little air would do me good--and I believe I got
+frightened seeing the lights--I heard the sheep too--it's dreadful to
+think what it means."
+
+Mrs. Caukins turned and looked at her sharply; the light from the
+kitchen shone out on the porch.
+
+"Well, I must say you look as if you'd seen a ghost; you're all of a
+shiver; you'd better go in and warm you and take a hot water bag up to
+bed with you; it's going to be a frosty night. I'm going to stay here
+till 'Lias comes back. I'm thankful the twins are abed and asleep, or I
+should have three of you on my hands. Just as soon as 'Lias gets back,
+I'm going into my room to lie down--I can't sleep, but if I stay up on
+my feet another hour I shall collapse with my nerves and my head; you
+can do what you've a mind to."
+
+Aileen went into the kitchen. When Mrs. Caukins came in, fifteen minutes
+later, with the information that she could see by the motion of 'Lias'
+lantern that he was near the house, she found the girl huddled by the
+stove; she was still wrapped in her cape. A few minutes afterwards she
+went up to her room for the night.
+
+Late in the evening there was a rumor about town that Champney Googe had
+been murdered in the Colonel's sheepfold. Before midnight this was
+contradicted, and the fact established that 'Lias had found his dog
+stabbed to death in the fold, and that he said he had seen traces of a
+terrific struggle. The last news, that came in over the telephone from
+the quarries, was to the effect that no trace of the fugitive was found
+in the quarry woods and the posse were now on the county line scouring
+the hills to the north. The New York detectives, arriving on the evening
+train, were carried up to join the Flamsted force.
+
+The next day the officers of the law returned, and confirmed the report,
+already current in the town, that Champney Googe had outwitted them and
+made his escape. Every one believed he would attempt to cross the Canada
+border, and the central detective agency laid its lines accordingly.
+
+
+XV
+
+Since Champney Googe's escape on that October night, two weeks had been
+added to the sum of the hours that his friends were counting until they
+should obtain some definite word of his fate. During that time the love
+of the sensational, which is at the root of much so-called communal
+interest, was fed by the excitement of the nominal proceedings against
+Luigi Poggi. On the night of Champney's flight he went to Father Honoré
+and Elmer Wiggins, and confessed his complicity in the affair at the
+sheepfold. Within ten days, however, the Italian had been exonerated for
+his attack on the escaped criminal; nor was the slightest blame attached
+to such action on his part. He had been duly sworn in by the Colonel,
+and was justified in laying hands on the fugitive, although the wisdom
+of tackling a man, who was in such desperate straits, of his own accord
+and alone was questioned. Not once during the sharp cross examination,
+to which he was subjected by Emlie and the side-judge, was Aileen's name
+mentioned--nor did he mention it to Father Honoré. Her secret was to be
+kept.
+
+During those two weeks of misery and suspense for all who loved Champney
+Googe, Octavius Buzzby was making up his mind on a certain subject. Now
+that it was fully made up, his knock on the library door sounded more
+like a challenge than a plea for admittance.
+
+"Come in, Octavius."
+
+Mrs. Champney was writing. She pushed aside the pad and, moving her
+chair, faced him. Octavius noted the uncompromising tone of voice when
+she bade him enter, and the hard-set lines of her face as she turned
+inquiringly towards him. For a moment his courage flagged; then the
+righteousness of his cause triumphed. He closed the door behind him.
+This was not his custom, and Mrs. Champney looked her surprise.
+
+"Anything unusual, Octavius?"
+
+"I want a talk with you, Mrs. Champney."
+
+"Sit down then." She motioned to a chair; but Octavius shook his head.
+
+"I can say all I've got to say standing; it ain't much, but it's to the
+point."
+
+Mrs. Champney removed her glasses and swung them leisurely back and
+forth on their gold chain. "Well, to the point, then."
+
+He felt the challenge implied in her words and accepted it.
+
+"I've served this estate pretty faithful for hard on to thirty-seven
+years. I've served the Judge, and I've served his son, and now I'm going
+to work to save the man that's named for that son--"
+
+Mrs. Champney interrupted him sharply, decisively.
+
+"That will do, Octavius. There is no occasion for you to tell me this; I
+knew from the first you would champion his cause--no matter how bad a
+one. We'll drop the subject; you must be aware it is not a particularly
+pleasant one to me."
+
+Octavius winced. Mrs. Champney smiled at the effect of her words; but he
+ignored her remark.
+
+"I like to see fair play, Mrs. Champney, and I've seen some things here
+in Champo since the old Judge died that's gone against me. Right's right
+and wrong's wrong, and I've stood by and kept still when I'd ought to
+have spoken; perhaps 't would have been better for us all if I had--and
+I'm including Champney Googe. When his father died--" Mrs. Champney
+started, leaned forward in her chair, her hands tightly grasping the
+arms.
+
+"His father--" she caught up her words, pressed her thin lips more
+closely together, and leaned back again in her chair. Octavius looked at
+her in amazement.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, "his father, Warren Googe; who else should I mean?"
+
+Mrs. Champney made no reply, and Octavius went on, wetting his lips to
+facilitate articulation, for his throat was going dry:
+
+"His father made me promise to look out for the child that was a-coming;
+and another man, Louis Champney, your husband,"--Mrs. Champney sat up
+rigid, her eyes fixed in a stare upon the speaker's lips,--"told me when
+the boy come that he'd father him as was fatherless--"
+
+She interrupted him again, a sneering smile on her lips:
+
+"You know as well as I, Octavius Buzzby, what Mr. Champney's will
+was--too feeble a thing to place dependence on for any length of time;
+if he said that, he didn't mean it--not as you think he did," she added
+in a tone that sent a shiver along Octavius' spine. But he did not
+intend to be "downed," as he said to himself, "not this time by Almeda
+Champney." He continued undaunted:
+
+"I do know what he meant better'n anybody living, and I know what he was
+going to do for the boy; and _I_ know, too, Mrs. Champney, who hindered
+him from having his will to do for the boy; and right's right, and
+now's your time to make good to his memory and intentions--to make good
+your husband's will for Champney Googe and save your husband's name from
+disgrace and more besides. _You_ know--but you never knew I did till
+now--what Louis Champney promised to do for the boy--and he told me more
+than once, Mrs. Champney, for he trusted _me_. He told me he was going
+to educate the boy and start him well in life, and that he wasn't going
+to end there; he told me he was going to leave him forty thousand
+dollars, Mrs. Champney--and he told me this not six weeks before he
+died; and the interest on forty thousand has equalled the principal by
+this time,--and you know best _why_ he hasn't had his own--I ain't blind
+and nobody else here in Flamsted. And now I've come to ask you, if
+you've got a woman's heart instead of a stone in your bosom, to make
+over that principal and interest to the Quarry Company and save the boy
+Louis Champney loved; he told me once what I knew, that his blood flowed
+in that child's veins--"
+
+"That's a lie--take that back!" she almost shrieked under her breath.
+She started to her feet, trembling in every limb, her face twitching
+painfully.
+
+Octavius was appalled at the effect of his words; but he dared not
+falter now--too much was at stake--although fearful of the effect of any
+further excitement upon the woman before him. He spoke appeasingly:
+
+"I can't take that back, for it's true, Mrs. Champney. You know as well
+as I do that far back his mother was a Champney."
+
+"Oh--I forgot." She dropped into her chair and drew a long breath as of
+exhaustion. "What were you saying?" She passed her hand slowly over her
+eyes, then put on her glasses. Octavius saw by that one movement that
+she had regained her usual control. He, too, felt relieved, and spoke
+more freely:
+
+"I said I want you to make good that eighty thousand dollars--"
+
+"Don't be a fool, Octavius Buzzby,"--she broke in upon him coldly, a
+world of scornful pity in her voice,--"you mean well, but you're a fool
+to think that at my time of life I'm going to impoverish myself and my
+estate for Champney Googe. You've had your pains for nothing. Let him
+take his punishment like any other man--he's no better, no worse; it's
+the fault of his bringing up; Aurora has only herself to thank."
+
+Octavius took a step forward. By a powerful effort he restrained himself
+from shaking his fist in her face. He spoke under his breath:
+
+"You leave Aurora's name out of this, Mrs. Champney, or I'll say things
+that you'll be sorry to hear." His anger was roused to white heat and he
+dared not trust himself to say more.
+
+She laughed out loud--the forced, mocking laugh of a miserable old age.
+"I knew from the first Aurora Googe was at the bottom of this--"
+
+"She doesn't know anything about this, I came of--"
+
+"You keep still till I finish," she commanded him, her faded eyes
+sending forth something from behind her glasses that resembled blue
+lightning; "I say she's at the bottom of this as she's been at the
+bottom of everything else in Flamsted. She'll never have a penny of my
+money, that was Louis Champney's, to clear either herself or her
+state's-prison brat! Tell her that for me with my compliments on her
+son's career.--And as for you, Octavius Buzzby, I'll repeat what you
+said: I'm not blind and nobody else is in Flamsted, and I know, and
+everybody here knows, that you've been in love with Aurora Googe ever
+since my father took her into his home to bring up."
+
+She knew that blow would tell. Octavius started as if he had been struck
+in the face by the flat of an enemy's hand. He stepped forward quickly
+and looked her straight in the eyes.
+
+"You she-devil," he said in a low clear voice, turned on his heel and
+left the room. He closed the door behind him, and felt of the knob to
+see that he had shut it tight. This revelation of a woman's nature was
+sickening him; he wanted to make sure that the library door was shut
+close upon the malodorous charnel house of the passions. He shivered
+with a nervous chill as he hurried down the hall and went upstairs to
+his room in the ell.
+
+He sat down on the bed and leaned his head on his hands, pressing his
+fingers against his throbbing temples. Half an hour passed; still he sat
+there trying to recover his mental poise; the terrible anger he had
+felt, combined with her last thrust, had shocked him out of it.
+
+At last he rose; went to his desk; opened a drawer, took out a tin box,
+unlocked it, and laid the papers and books it contained one by one on
+the table to inspect them. He selected a few, snapped a rubber about the
+package and thrust it into the inner breast pocket of his coat. Then he
+reached for his hat, went downstairs, left word with Ann that he was
+going to drive down for the mail but that he should not be back before
+ten, proceeded to the stable, harnessed the mare into a light driving
+trap and drove away. He took the road to The Gore.
+
+On approaching the house he saw a light in Aurora's bedroom. He drove
+around to the kitchen door and tied the mare to the hitching-post. His
+rap was answered by Ellen, a quarryman's daughter whom Mrs. Googe
+employed for general help; but she spoke behind the closed door:
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"It's me, Octavius Buzzby."
+
+She drew the bolt and flung open the door. "Oh, it's you, is it, Mr.
+Buzzby? I've got so nervous these last three weeks, I keep the door
+bolted most of the time. Have you heard anything?" she asked eagerly,
+speaking under her breath.
+
+"No," said Octavius shortly; "I want to see Mrs. Googe. Tell her I must
+see her; it's important."
+
+The girl hesitated. "I don't believe she will--and I hate to ask
+her--she looks awful, Mr. Buzzby. It scares me just to see her goin'
+round without saying a word from morning to night, and then walking half
+the night up in her room. I don't believe she's slept two hours a night
+since--you know when."
+
+"I guess she'll see me, Ellen; you go and ask her, anyway. I'll stay in
+the lower hall."
+
+He heard her rap at the bedroom door and deliver the message. There
+followed the sharp click of a lock, the opening of the door and the
+sound of Aurora's voice:
+
+"Tell him to come up."
+
+Octavius started upstairs. He had seen her but once in the past three
+weeks; that was when he went to her on the receipt of the news of
+Champney's flight; he vowed then he would not go again unless sent for;
+the sight of the mother's despair, that showed itself in speechless
+apathy, was too much for him. He could only grasp her hand at that time,
+press it in both his, and say: "Aurora, if you need me, call me; you
+know me. We'll help all we can--both of you--"
+
+But there was no response. He tiptoed out of the room as if leaving the
+presence of the dead.
+
+Now, as he mounted the stairs, he had time to wonder what her attitude
+would be after these three weeks of suspense. A moment more and he stood
+in her presence, mute, shocked, heartsick at the change that this month
+of agony had wrought in her. Her face was ghastly in its pallor; deep
+yellowish-purple half-circles lay beneath her sunken eyes; every
+feature, every line of the face was sharpened, and on each cheek bone
+burned a fever spot of vivid scarlet; her dry eyes also burned with
+unnatural and fevered brightness, the heavy eyelids keeping up a
+continuous quivering, painful to see. The hand she held out to him
+throbbed quick and hard in his grasp.
+
+"Any news, Tave?" Her voice was dull from despair.
+
+He shook his head; the slow tears coursed down his cheeks; he could not
+help it.
+
+"Sit down, Tave; you said it was important."
+
+He controlled his emotion as best he could. "Aurora, I've been thinking
+what can be done when he's found--"
+
+"If he ever is! Oh, Tave, Tave--if I could only know something--where he
+is--if living; I can't sleep thinking--" She wrung her clasped hands and
+began to walk nervously back and forth in the room.
+
+"Aurora, I feel sure he's living, but when he's found--then's the time
+to help."
+
+"How?" She turned upon him almost savagely; it looked as if her
+primitive mother-passion were at bay for her young. "Where's help to
+come from? I've nothing left."
+
+"But I have." He spoke with confidence and took out the package from
+his breast pocket. He held it out to her. "See here, Aurora, here's the
+value of twenty thousand dollars--take it--use it as your own."
+
+She drew away from it.--"Money!" She spoke almost with horror.
+
+"Yes, Aurora, honest money. Take it and see how far 't will go towards
+saving prosecution for him."
+
+"You mean--," she hesitated; her dry eyes bored into his that dropped
+before her unwavering gaze, "--you mean you're giving your hard-earned
+wages to me to help save my boy?"
+
+"Yes, and glad to give them--if you knew how glad, Aurora--"
+
+She covered her face with her hands. Octavius took her by the arm and
+drew her to a chair.
+
+"Sit down," he said gently; "you're all worn out."
+
+She obeyed him passively, still keeping her hands before her face. But
+no sooner was she seated than she began to rock uneasily back and forth,
+moaning to herself, till suddenly the long-dried fount was opened up;
+the merciful blessing of tears found vent. She shook with uncontrollable
+sobbing; she wept for the first time since Champney's flight, and the
+tears eased her brain for the time of its living nightmare.
+
+Octavius waited for her weeping to spend itself. His heart was wrung
+with pity, but he was thankful for every tear she shed; his
+gratefulness, however, found a curious inner expression.
+
+"Damn her--damn her--damn her--" he kept saying over and over to
+himself, and the mere repetition seemed to ease him of his over-powering
+surcharge of pity. But it was Almeda Champney he had in mind, and, after
+all, his unuttered inner curses were only a prayer for help, read
+backwards.
+
+At last, Aurora Googe lifted her face from her hands and looked at
+Octavius Buzzby. He reddened and rose to go.
+
+"Tave, wait a little while; don't go yet."
+
+He sat down.
+
+"I thought--I felt all was lost--no one cared--I was alone--there was no
+help. You have shown me that I have been wrong--all wrong--such
+friends--such a friend as you--" Her lips quivered; the tears welled
+from the red and swollen lids. "I can't take the money, Tave, I
+can't--don't look so--only on one condition. I've been coming to a
+decision the last two days. I'm going straight to Almeda, Tave, and ask
+her, beg her, if I have to, on my bended knees to save my boy--she has
+more than enough--you know, Tave, what Champney should have had--"
+
+Octavius nodded emphatically and found his voice.
+
+"Don't I know? You may bet your life I know more'n I've ever told,
+Aurora. Don't I know how Louis Champney said to me: 'Tave, I shall see
+the boy through; forty thousand of mine is to be his'; and that was six
+weeks before he died; and don't I know, too, how I didn't get a glimpse
+of Louis Champney again till two weeks before his death, and then he was
+unconscious and didn't know me or any one else?"
+
+Octavius paused for breath. Aurora Googe rose and went to the closet.
+
+"I must go now, Tave; take me with you." She took out a cloak and
+burnous.
+
+"I hate to say it, Aurora, but I'm afraid it won't do no good; she's a
+tough cuss when it comes to money--"
+
+"But she must; he's her own flesh and blood and she's cheated him out of
+what is rightfully his. It's been my awful pride that kept me from going
+sooner--and--oh, Tave, Tave,--I tried to make my boy promise never to
+ask her for money! I've been hoping all along she would offer--"
+
+"Offer! Almeda Champney offer to help any one with her money that was
+Louis Champney's!"
+
+"But she has enough of her own, Tave; the money that was my boy's
+grandfather's."
+
+"You don't know her, Aurora, not yet, after all you've suffered from
+her. If you'd seen her and lived with her as I have, year out and year
+in, you'd know her love of money has eat into her soul and gangrened it.
+'T ain't no use to go, I tell you, Aurora." He put out his hand to
+detain her, for she had thrown on her cloak and was winding the burnous
+about her head.
+
+"Tave, I'm going; don't say another word against it; and you must take
+me down. She isn't the only one who has loved money till it blinded them
+to duty--I can't throw stones--and after all she's a woman; I am going
+to ask her to help with the money that is rightfully my boy's--and if
+she gives it, I will take your twenty thousand to make up the amount."
+She pressed the package into his hand.
+
+"But what if she doesn't?"
+
+"Then I'll ask Father Honoré to do what he proposed to do last week: go
+to Mr. Van Ostend and ask him for the money--there's nothing left but
+that." She drew her breath hard and led the way from the room,
+hurriedly, as if there were not a moment to lose. Octavius followed her,
+protesting:
+
+"Try Mr. Van Ostend first, Aurora; don't go to Mrs. Champney now."
+
+"Now is the only time. If I hadn't asked my own relation, Mr. Van Ostend
+would have every reason to say, 'Why didn't you try in your own family
+first?'"
+
+"But, Aurora, I'm afraid to have you."
+
+"Afraid! I, of Almeda Champney?"
+
+She stopped short on the stairs to look back at him. There was a trace
+of the old-time haughtiness in her bearing. Octavius welcomed it, for he
+was realizing that he could not move her from her decision, and as for
+the message from Almeda Champney, he knew he never could deliver it--he
+had no courage.
+
+"You needn't sit up for me, Ellen," she said to the surprised girl as
+they went out; "it may be late before I get home; bolt the back door,
+I'll take the key to the front."
+
+He helped her into the trap, and in silence they drove down to The Bow.
+
+
+XVI
+
+Aurora Googe spoke for the first time when Octavius left her at the door
+of Champ-au-Haut.
+
+"Tave, don't leave me; I want you to be near, somewhere in the hall, if
+she is in the library. I want a witness to what I must say and--I trust
+you. But don't come into the room no matter what is said."
+
+"I won't, Aurora, and I'll be there in a few minutes. I'm just going to
+drive to the stable and send the boy down for the mail, and I'll be
+right back. There's Aileen."
+
+The girl answered the knock, and on recognizing who it was caught her
+breath sharply. She had not seen Mrs. Googe during the past month of
+misery and shame and excitement, and previous to that she had avoided
+Champney Googe's mother on account of the humiliation her love for the
+son had suffered at that son's hands--a humiliation which struck at the
+roots of all that was truest and purest in that womanhood, which was
+drying up the clear-welling spring of her buoyant temperament, her young
+enjoyment in life and living and all that life offers of best to
+youth--offers once only.
+
+She started back at the sight of those dark eyes glowing with an
+unnatural fire, at the haggard face, its pallor accentuated by the white
+burnous. One thought had time to flash into consciousness before the
+woman standing on the threshold could speak: here was suffering to
+which her own was as a candle light to furnace flame.
+
+"I've come to see Mrs. Champney, Aileen; is she in the library?"
+
+"Yes,"--the girl's lips trembled,--"shall I tell her you are here?"
+
+"No." She threw aside her cloak as if in great haste; Aileen took it and
+laid it on a chair. Mrs. Googe went swiftly to the library door and
+rapped. Aileen heard the "Come in," and the exclamation that followed:
+"So you've come at last, have you!"
+
+She knew that tone of voice and what it portended. She put her fingers
+in her ears to shut out further sound of it, and ran down the hall to
+the back passageway, closed the door behind her and stood there
+trembling from nervousness.--Had Mrs. Googe obtained some inkling that
+she had a message to deliver from that son?--a message she neither could
+nor would deliver? Did Champney Googe's mother know that she had seen
+that son in the quarry woods? Mrs. Googe's friends had told her the
+truth of the affair at the sheepfold, when it was found that her
+unanswered suspicions were liable to unsettle her reason.--Could she
+know of that message? Could any one?
+
+The mere presence in the house of this suffering woman set Aileen's
+every nerve tingling with sickening despair. She determined to wait
+there in the dimly lighted back hall until Octavius should make his
+appearance, be it soon or late; he always came through here on his way
+to the ell.
+
+Aurora Googe looked neither to right nor left on entering the room. She
+went straight to the library table, on the opposite side of which Mrs.
+Champney was still sitting where Octavius had left her nearly two hours
+before. She stemmed both hands on it as if finding the support
+necessary. Fixing her eyes, already beginning to glaze with the
+increasing fever, upon her sister-in-law, she spoke, but with apparent
+effort:
+
+"Yes, I've come, at last, Almeda--I've come to ask help for my boy--"
+
+Mrs. Champney interrupted her; she was trembling visibly, even Aurora
+Googe saw that.
+
+"I suppose this is Octavius Buzzby's doings. When I gave him that
+message it was final--_final_, do you hear?"
+
+She raised her voice almost an octave in the intense excitement she was
+evidently trying to combat. The sound penetrated to Aileen, shut in the
+back hall, and again she thrust her fingers into her ears. At that
+moment Octavius entered from the outer door.
+
+"What are you doing here, Aileen?" For the first time in his life he
+spoke roughly to her.
+
+She turned upon him her white scared face. "What is _she_ doing?" she
+managed to say through chattering teeth.
+
+Octavius repented him, that under the strain of the situation he had
+spoken to her as he had. "Go to bed, Aileen," he said firmly, but
+gently; "this ain't no place for you now."
+
+She needed but that word; she was half way up the stairs before he had
+finished. He heard her shut herself into the room. He hung up his coat,
+noiselessly opened the door into the main hall, closed it softly behind
+him and took his stand half way to the library door. He saw nothing, but
+he heard all.
+
+For a moment there was silence in the room; then Aurora spoke in a dull
+strained voice:
+
+"I don't know what you mean--I haven't had any message, and--and"--she
+swallowed hard--"nothing is final--nothing--not yet--that's why I've
+come. You must help me, Almeda--help me to save Champney; there is no
+one else in our family I can call upon or who can do it--and there is a
+chance--"
+
+"What chance?"
+
+"The chance to save him from--from imprisonment--from a living death--"
+
+"Has he been taken?"
+
+"Taken!"--she swayed back from the table, clutching convulsively the
+edge to preserve her balance--"don't--don't, Almeda; it will kill me. I
+am afraid for him--afraid--don't you understand?--Help me--let me have
+the money, the amount that will save my son--free him--"
+
+She swayed back towards the table and leaned heavily upon it, as fearing
+to lose her hold lest she should sink to her knees. Mrs. Champney was
+recovering in a measure from the first excitement consequent upon the
+shock of seeing the woman she hated standing so suddenly in her
+presence. She spoke with cutting sarcasm:
+
+"What amount, may I inquire, do you deem necessary for the present to
+insure prospective freedom for your son?"
+
+"You know well enough, Almeda; I must have eighty thousand at least."
+
+Mrs. Champney laughed aloud--the same mocking laugh of a miserable old
+age that had raised Octavius Buzzby's anger to a white heat of rage.
+Hearing it again, the man of Maine, without fully realizing what he was
+doing, turned back his cuffs. He could scarce restrain himself
+sufficiently to keep his promise to Aurora.
+
+"Eighty thousand?--hm--m; between you and Octavius Buzzby there would be
+precious little left either at Champ-au-Haut or of it." She turned in
+her chair in order to look squarely up into the face of the woman on the
+opposite side of the table. "And you expect me to impoverish myself for
+the sake of Champney Googe?"
+
+"It wouldn't impoverish you--you have your father's property and more
+too; he is of your own blood--why not?"
+
+"Why not?" she repeated and laughed out again in her scorn; "why should
+I, answer me that?"
+
+"He is your brother, Warren Googe's son--don't make me say any more,
+Almeda Champney; you know that nothing but this, nothing on earth--could
+have brought me here to ask anything of _you_!"
+
+There was a ring of the old-time haughty independence in her voice;
+Octavius rejoiced to hear it. "She's getting a grip on herself," he said
+to himself; "I hope she'll give her one 'fore she gets through with
+her."
+
+"Why didn't my brother save his money for him then--if he's his son?"
+she demanded sharply, but breathing short as she spoke the last words in
+a tone that conveyed the venom of intense hatred.
+
+"Almeda, don't; you know well enough 'why'; don't keep me in such
+suspense--I can't bear it; only tell me if you will help."
+
+She seemed to gather herself together; she swept round the table; came
+close to the woman in the armchair; bent to her; the dark burning eyes
+fixed the faded blue ones. "Tell me quick, I say,--I can bear no more."
+
+"Aurora Googe, I sent word to you by Octavius Buzzby that I would not
+help your state's-prison bird--fledged from your nest, not mine,--"
+
+She did not finish, for the woman she was torturing suddenly laid a hot
+hand hard and close, for the space of a few seconds, over those
+malevolent lips. Mrs. Champney drew back, turned in her chair and
+reached for the bell.
+
+Aurora removed her hand.
+
+"Stop there, you've said enough, Almeda Champney!" she commanded her.
+She pointed to the portrait over the fireplace. "By the love he bore my
+son--by the love we two women bore him--help--"
+
+Mrs. Champney rose suddenly by great effort from her chair. The two
+women stood facing each other.
+
+"Go--go!" she cried out shrilly, hoarsely; her face was distorted with
+passion, her hands were clenched and trembling violently, "leave my
+sight--leave my house--you--_you_ ask _me_, by the love we bore Louis
+Champney, to save from his just deserts Louis Champney's bastard!"
+
+Her voice rose to a shriek; she shook her fist in Aurora's face, then
+sank into her chair and, seizing the bell, rang it furiously.
+
+Octavius darted forward, but stopped short when he heard Aurora's
+voice--low, dull, as if a sickening horror had quenched forever its
+life:
+
+"You have thought _that_ all these years?--O God!--Louis--Louis, what
+more--"
+
+She fell before Octavius could reach her. Aileen and Ann, hearing the
+bell, came running through the hall into the room.
+
+"Help me up stairs, Aileen,"--the old woman was in command as
+usual,--"give me my cane, Ann; don't stand there staring like two
+fools."
+
+Aileen made a sign to Octavius to call Hannah; the two women helped the
+mistress of Champ-au-Haut up to her room.
+
+Mrs. Googe seemed not to have lost consciousness, for as Hannah bent
+over her she noticed that her eyelids quivered.
+
+"She's all wore out, poor dear, that's what's the matter," said Hannah,
+raising her to a sitting position; she passed her hand tenderly over the
+dark hair.
+
+Aileen came running down stairs bringing salts and cologne. Hannah
+bathed her forehead and chafed her wrists.
+
+In a few minutes the white lips quivered, the eyes opened; she made an
+effort to rise. Octavius helped her to her feet; but for Aileen's arm
+around her she would have fallen again.
+
+"Take me home, Tave." She spoke in a weak voice.
+
+"I will, Aurora," he answered promptly, soothingly, although his hands
+trembled as he led her to a sofa; "I'll just hitch up the pair in the
+carryall and Hannah'll ride up with us, won't you, Hannah?"
+
+"To be sure, to be sure. Don't you grieve yourself to death, Mis'
+Googe," she said tenderly.
+
+"Don't wait to harness into the carryall, Tave--take me now--in the
+trap--take me away from here. I don't need you, Hannah. I didn't know I
+was so weak--the air will make me feel better; give me my cloak,
+Aileen."
+
+The girl wrapped her in it, adjusted the burnous, that had fallen from
+her head, and went with her to the door. Aurora turned and looked at
+her. The girl's heart was nigh to bursting. Impulsively she threw her
+arms around the woman's neck and whispered: "If you need me, do send for
+me--I'll come."
+
+But Aurora Googe went forth from Champ-au-Haut without a word either to
+the girl, to Hannah, or to Octavius Buzzby.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the first two miles they drove in silence. The night was clear but
+cold, the ground frozen hard; a northwest wind roared in the pines along
+the highroad and bent the bare treetops on the mountain side. From time
+to time Octavius heard the woman beside him sigh heavily as from
+physical exhaustion. When, at last, he felt that she was shivering, he
+spoke:
+
+"Are you cold, Aurora? I've got something extra under the seat."
+
+"No, I'm not cold; I feel burning up."
+
+He turned to look at her face in the glare of an electric light they
+were passing. It was true; the rigor was that of increasing fever; her
+cheeks were scarlet.
+
+"I wish you'd have let me telephone for the doctor; I don't feel right
+not to leave you in his hands to-night, and Ellen hasn't got any head on
+her."
+
+"No--no; I don't need him; he couldn't do me any good--nobody
+can.--Tave, did you hear her, what she said?" She leaned towards him to
+whisper her question as if she feared the dark might have ears.
+
+"Yes, I heard her--damn her! I can't help it, Aurora."
+
+"And you don't believe it--you _know_ it isn't true?"
+
+Octavius drew rein for a moment; lifted his cap and passed the back of
+his hand across his forehead to wipe off the sweat that stood in beads
+on it. He turned to the woman beside him; her dark eyes were devouring
+his face in the effort, or so it seemed, to anticipate his answer.
+
+"Aurora, I've known you" (how he longed to say "loved you," but those
+were not words for him to speak to Aurora Googe after thirty years of
+silence) "ever since you was sixteen and old Mr. Googe took you, an
+orphan girl, into his home; and I knew Louis Champney from the time he
+was the same age till he died. What I've seen, I've seen; and what I
+know, I know. Louis Champney loved you better'n he loved his life, and I
+know you loved him; but if the Almighty himself should swear it's true
+what Almeda Googe said, I wouldn't believe him--I wouldn't!"
+
+The terrible nervous strain from which the woman was suffering lessened
+under the influence of his speech. She leaned nearer.
+
+"It was not true," she whispered again; "I know you'll believe me."
+
+Her voice sounded weaker than before, and Octavius grew alarmed lest she
+have another of what Hannah termed a "sinking spell" then and there. He
+drew rein suddenly, and so tightly that the mare bounded forward and
+pulled at a forced pace up the hill to The Gore.
+
+"And she thought _that_ all these years--and I never knew. That's why
+she hates my boy and won't help--oh, how could she!"
+
+She shivered again. Octavius urged the mare to greater exertion. If only
+he could get the stricken woman home before she had another turn.
+
+"How could she?" he repeated with scathing emphasis; "just as any
+she-devil can set brooding on an evil thought for years till she's
+hatched out a devil's dozen of filthy lies." He drew the reins a little
+too tightly in his righteous wrath, and the mare reared suddenly. "What
+the dev--whoa, there Kitty, what you about?"
+
+He calmed the resentful beast, and they neared the house in The Gore at
+a quick trot.
+
+"You don't think she has ever spoken to any one before--not so, do you,
+Tave? not to Louis ever?--"
+
+"No, I don't, Aurora. Louis Champney wouldn't have stood that--I know
+him well enough for that; but she might have hinted at a something, and
+it's my belief she did. But don't you fret, Aurora; she'll never speak
+again--I'd take my oath on that--and if I dared, I'd say I wish Almighty
+God would strike her dumb for saying what she has."
+
+They had reached the house. She lifted her face to the light burning in
+her bedroom.
+
+"Oh, my boy--my boy--" she moaned beneath her breath. Octavius helped
+her out, and holding the reins in one hand, with the other supported her
+to the steps; her knees gave beneath her.--"Oh, where is he
+to-night--what shall I do!--Think for me, Tave, act for me, or I shall
+go mad--"
+
+Octavius leaned to the carriage and threw the reins around the
+whipstock.
+
+"Aurora," he grasped her firmly by the arm, "give me the key."
+
+She handed it to him; he opened the door; led her in; called loudly for
+Ellen; and when the frightened girl came hurrying down from her room, he
+bade her see to Mrs. Googe while he went for the doctor.
+
+
+XVII
+
+"The trouble is she has borne up too long."
+
+The doctor was talking to Father Honoré while untying the horse from the
+hitching-post at the kitchen porch.
+
+"She has stood it longer than I thought she could; but without the
+necessary sleep even her strong constitution and splendid physique can't
+supply sufficient nerve force to withstand such a strain--it's fearful.
+Something had to give somewhere. Practically she hasn't slept for over
+three weeks, and, what's more, she won't sleep till--she knows one way
+or the other. I can't give her opiates, for the strain has weakened her
+heart--I mean functionally." He stepped into the carriage. "You haven't
+heard anything since yesterday morning, have you?"
+
+"No; but I'm inclined to think that now he has put them off the track
+and got them over the border, he will make for New York again. It's my
+belief he will try to get out of the country by that door instead of by
+way of Canada."
+
+"I never thought of that." He gathered up the reins, and, leaning
+forward from the hood, looked earnestly into the priest's eyes. "Make
+her talk if you can--it's her only salvation. She hasn't opened her lips
+to me, and till she speaks out--you understand--I can do nothing. The
+fever is only the result of the nerve-strain."
+
+"I wish it were in my power to help her. I may as well tell you
+now--but I'd like it to remain between ourselves, of course I've told
+the Colonel--that I determined last night to go down to New York and see
+if I can accomplish anything. I shall have two private detectives there
+to work with me. You know the city agency has its men out there
+already?"
+
+"No, I didn't. I thought all the force was centred here in this State
+and on the Canada line. It strikes me that if she could know you were
+going--and for what--she might speak. You might try that, and let me
+know the result."
+
+"I will."
+
+The doctor drove off. Father Honoré stood for a few minutes on the back
+porch; he was thinking concentratedly:--How best could he approach the
+stricken mother and acquaint her with his decision to search for her
+son?
+
+He was roused by the sound of a gentle voice speaking in French:
+
+"Good-morning, Father Honoré; how is Mrs. Googe? I have just heard of
+her illness."
+
+It was Sister Ste. Croix from the sisterhood home in The Gore.
+
+The crisp morning air tinged with a slight color her wrinkled and
+furrowed cheeks; her eyelids, also, were horribly wrinkled, as could be
+plainly seen when they drooped heavily over the dark blue eyes. Yet
+Sister Ste. Croix was still in middle life.
+
+"There is every cause for great anxiety, I grieve to say. The doctor has
+just gone."
+
+"Who is with her, do you know?"
+
+"Mrs. Caukins, so Ellen says."
+
+"Do you think she would object to having me nurse her for a while? She
+has been so lovely to me ever since I came here, and in one way and
+another we have been much together. I have tried again and again to see
+her during these dreadful weeks, but she has steadily refused to see me
+or any of us--just shut herself out from her friends."
+
+"I wish she would have you about her; it would do her good; and surely
+Mrs. Caukins can't leave her household cares to stay with her long, nor
+can she be running back and forth to attend to her. I am going to make
+the attempt to see her, and if I succeed I will tell her that you are
+ready to come at any minute--and only waiting to come to her."
+
+"Do; and won't you tell Ellen I will come down and see her this
+afternoon? Poor girl, she has been so terrified with the events of these
+last weeks that I have feared she would not stay. If I'm here, I feel
+sure she would remain."
+
+"If Mrs. Googe will not heed your request, I do hope you will make it
+your mission work to induce Ellen to stay."
+
+"Indeed, I will; I thought she might stay the more willingly if I were
+with her."
+
+"I'm sure of it," Father Honoré said heartily.
+
+"Are you going in now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, please tell Ellen that if Mrs. Googe wants me, she is to come up
+at once to tell me. Good morning."
+
+She walked rapidly down the road beside the house. Father Honoré turned
+to look after her. How many, many lives there were like
+that!--unselfish, sacrificing, loving, helpful, yet unknown, unthought
+of. He watched the slight figure, the shoulders bowed already a little,
+but the step still firm and light, till it passed from sight. Then he
+entered the kitchen and encountered Mrs. Caukins.
+
+"I never was so glad to see any living soul as I am you, Father Honoré,"
+was her greeting; she looked up from the lemon she was squeezing; "I
+don't dare to leave her till she gets a regular nurse. It's enough to
+break your heart to see her lying there staring straight before her and
+not saying a word--not even to the doctor. I told the Colonel when he
+was here a little while ago that I couldn't stand it much longer; it's
+getting on my nerves--if she'd only say _something_, I don't care what!"
+
+She paused in concocting the lemonade to wipe her eyes on a corner of
+her apron.
+
+"Mrs. Caukins, I wish you would say to Mrs. Googe that I am here and
+would like to speak with her before I leave town this afternoon. You
+might say I expect to be away for a few days and it is necessary that I
+should see her now."
+
+"You don't mean to say you're going to leave us right in the lurch,
+'fore we know anything about Champney!--Why, what will the Colonel do
+without you? You've been his right hand man. He's all broken up; that
+one night's work nearly killed him, and he hasn't seemed himself
+since--"
+
+Father Honoré interrupted this flow of ejaculatory torrent.
+
+"I've spoken to the Colonel about my going, Mrs. Caukins. He agrees with
+me that no harm can come of my leaving here for a few days just at this
+time."
+
+"I'll tell her, Father Honoré; I'm going up this minute with the
+lemonade; but it's ten to one she won't see you; she wouldn't see the
+rector last week--oh, dear me!" She groaned and left the room.
+
+She was back again in a few minutes, her eyes wide with excitement.
+
+"She says you can come up, Father Honoré, and you'd better go up quick
+before she gets a chance to change her mind."
+
+He went without a word. When Mrs. Caukins heard him on the stair and
+caught the sound of his rap on the door, she turned to Ellen and spoke
+emphatically, but with trembling lips:
+
+"I don't believe the archangel Gabriel himself could look at you more
+comforting than Father Honoré does; if _he_ can't help her, the Lord
+himself can't, and I don't mean that for blasphemy either. Poor
+soul--poor soul"--she wiped the tears that were rolling down her
+cheeks,--"here I am the mother of eight children and never had to lose a
+night's sleep on account of their not doing right, and here's Aurora
+with her one and can't sleep nor eat for the shame and trouble he's
+brought on her and all of us--for I'm a Googe. Life seems sometimes to
+get topsy-turvy, and I for one can't make head nor tail of it. The
+Colonel's always talking about Nature's 'levelling up,' but I don't see
+any 'levelling'; seems to me as if she was turning everything up on edge
+pretty generally.--Give me that rice I saw in the pantry, Ellen; I'm
+going to make her a little broth; I've got a nice foreshoulder piece at
+home, and it will be just the thing."
+
+Ellen, rejoicing in such talkative companionship, after the three weeks
+of dreadful silence in the house, did her bidding, at the same time
+taking occasion to ask some questions on her own part, among them one
+which set Mrs. Caukins speculating for a week: "Who do you suppose
+killed Rag?"
+
+Aurora was in bed, but propped to a sitting position by pillows. When
+Father Honoré entered she started forward.
+
+"Have you heard anything?" Her voice was weak from physical exhaustion.
+
+"No, Mrs. Googe--"
+
+She sank back on the pillows; he drew a chair to the bedside.
+
+"--But I have decided to go down to New York and search for myself. I
+have a feeling he is there, not in Maine or Canada; and I know that city
+from Washington Heights to the Battery."
+
+"You think he'll be found?" She could scarcely articulate the words;
+some terror had her by the throat; her eyes showed deadly fear.
+
+"Yes, I think he will."
+
+"But she won't do anything--I--I went to her--"
+
+"Don't exert yourself too much, Mrs. Googe, but if you can tell me whom
+you mean, to whom you have applied, it might help me to act
+understandingly."
+
+"To his aunt--I went last night."
+
+"Mrs. Champney?"
+
+She closed her eyes and made a motion of assent.
+
+"And she will do nothing?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I fail to understand this. Surely she might give of her abundance to
+save one who is of her own blood. Would it do any good, do you think,
+for me to see her? I'll gladly go."
+
+She shook her head. "You don't understand."
+
+He waited in silence for some further word; for her to open her eyes at
+least. But none was forthcoming; the eyes remained closed. After a while
+he said gently:
+
+"Perhaps I might understand, if you felt willing to tell me, if the
+effort is not too great."
+
+She opened her eyes and fixed them apathetically on the strong helpful
+face.
+
+"I wonder if you could understand--I don't know--you're not a woman--"
+
+"No, but I am human, Mrs. Googe; and human sympathy is a great
+enlightener."
+
+"The weight here--and here!" She raised one hand to her head, the other
+she laid over her heart. "If I could get rid of that for one hour--I
+should be strong again--to live--to endure."
+
+Father Honoré was silent. He knew the long pent stream of grief and
+misery must flow in its own channel when once it should burst its
+bounds.
+
+"My son must never know--you will give me your word?"
+
+"I give you my word, Mrs. Googe."
+
+She leaned forward from her pillows, looked anxiously at the door, which
+was open into the hall, then whispered:
+
+"She said--my son was Louis Champney's--bastard;--_you_ don't believe
+it, do you?"
+
+For the space of a second Father Honoré shrank within himself. He could
+not tell at that moment whether he had here to do with an overwrought
+brain, with a mind obsessed, or with an awful fact. But he answered
+without hesitation and out of his inmost conviction:
+
+"No, I do not believe it, Mrs. Googe."
+
+"I thought you wouldn't--Octavius didn't." She sighed profoundly as if
+relieved from pain. "That's why she hates me--why she will not help."
+
+"In that case I will go to Mr. Van Ostend. I asked to see you that I
+might tell you this."
+
+"Will you--oh, will you?" She sighed again--a sigh of great physical
+relief, for she placed her hand again over her heart, pressing it hard.
+
+"That helps here," she said, passing her other hand over her forehead;
+"perhaps I can tell you now, before you go--perhaps it will help more."
+
+Her voice grew stronger with every full breath she was now able to draw.
+Gradually a look of comprehension replaced the apathetic stare. She
+looked squarely at the priest for the first time since his entrance.
+Father Honoré could but wonder if the thought behind that look would
+find adequate expression.
+
+"You haven't said 'God' to me once since that--that night. Don't speak
+to me about Him now, will you? He's too far away--it doesn't mean
+anything to me."
+
+"Mrs. Googe, there comes a time in most lives when God seems so far away
+that we can find Him only through the Human;--perhaps such a time has
+come in your life."
+
+"I don't know; I never thought much about that. But--my god was human,
+oh, for so many years!--I loved Louis Champney."
+
+Again there was a long inhalation and exhalation. It seemed as if each
+admission, which she forced herself to make, loosened more and more the
+tension of the long-racked nerves; as a result the muscles of the throat
+relaxed, the articulation grew distinct, the voice stronger.
+
+"--And he loved me--better than life itself. I was so young when it
+began--only sixteen. My husband's father took me into his home then to
+bring up; I was an orphan. And Louis Champney loved me then and
+always--but Almeda Googe, my husband's sister, loved him too--in her
+way. Her own father could do nothing with her awful will--it crushed
+everybody that came in contact with it--that opposed it; it crushed
+me--and in the end, Louis."
+
+She took a little of the lemonade to moisten her lips and went on:
+
+"She was twelve years older than he. She took him when he was in
+college; worked on him, lied to him about me; told him I loved her
+brother; worked backwards, forwards, underhanded--any way to influence
+him against me and get her hold upon him. He went to Europe; she
+followed; wrote lying letters to her brother--said she was engaged to be
+married to Louis before her return; told Louis I was going to marry her
+brother, Warren Googe--in the end she had her way, and always has had
+it, and will have it. I married Warren Googe; she was forty when she
+married Louis at twenty-eight."
+
+She paused, straightened herself. Something like animation came into her
+face.
+
+"It does me good to speak--at last. I've never spoken in all these
+years--and I can tell you. My child was born seven months after my
+husband's death. Louis Champney came to see me then--up here, in this
+room; it was the first time we had dared to see each other alone--but
+the baby lay beside me; _that kept us_. He said but little; but he took
+up the child and looked at him; then he turned to me. 'This should have
+been our son, Aurora,' he said, and I--oh, what will you think of me!"
+She dropped her head into her hands.
+
+"I knew in my heart that during all those months I was carrying Warren
+Googe's child, I had only one thought: 'Oh, if it were only Louis' and
+mine!' And because I was a widow, I felt free to dwell upon that one
+thought night and day. Louis' face was always before me. I came in
+thought to look upon him as the true father of my boy--not that other
+for whom I had had no love. And I took great comfort in that
+thought--and--and--my boy is the living image of Louis Champney."
+
+She withdrew her hands, clasping them nervously and rubbing them in each
+other.
+
+"Oh, I sinned, I sinned in thought, and I've been punished, but there
+was never anything more--and last night I had to hear that from her!"
+
+For a moment the look of deadly fear returned to the eyes, but only for
+a moment; her hands continued to work nervously.
+
+"Never anything more; only that day when he took my boy in his arms and
+said what he did, we both knew we could not see much of each other for
+the rest of our lives--that's why I've kept so much to myself. He kissed
+the baby then, laid him in my arms and, stooping, kissed me once--only
+once--I've lived on that--and said: 'I will do all I can for this boy.'
+And--and"--her lips trembled for the first time--"that little baby, as
+it lay on my breast, saved us both. It was renunciation--but it made me
+hard; it killed Louis.
+
+"I saw Louis seldom and always in the presence of my boy. But Almeda
+Champney was not satisfied with what she had done; she transferred her
+jealousy to my son. She was jealous of every word Louis spoke to him;
+jealous of every hour he was with him. When Louis died, still young--my
+son was left unprovided for. That was Almeda Champney's work--she
+wouldn't have it.
+
+"Then I sold the first quarry for means to send Champney to college; and
+I sold the rest in order to start him well in business, in the world.
+But I know that at the bottom of my ambition for him, was the desire
+that he might succeed in spite of the fact that his aunt had kept from
+him the property which Louis Champney intended to be his. My ambition
+has been overweening for Champney's material success--I have urged him
+on, when I should have restrained. I have aided him to the extent of my
+ability to attain his end. I longed to see him in a position that,
+financially, would far out-shine hers. I felt it would compensate in
+part. I loved my son--and I loved in him Louis Champney. I alone am to
+blame for what has come of it--I--his mother."
+
+Her lips trembled excessively. She waited to control them before she
+could continue.
+
+"Last night, when I begged her to help me, she answered me with what I
+told you. I could bear no more--"
+
+She leaned back on the pillows, exhausted for a while with her great
+effort, but the light of renewed life shone from every feature.
+
+"I am better now," she said, turning to Father Honoré the dark hollow
+eyes so full of gratitude that the priest looked away from her.
+
+While this page in human history was being laid open before him, Father
+Honoré said nothing. The confession it contained was so awful in its
+still depths of pure passion, so far-reaching in its effects on a human
+soul, that he felt suddenly the utter insignificance of his own
+existence, the futility of all words, the meagreness of all sympathetic
+expression. And he was honest enough to withhold all attempt at such.
+
+"I fear you are very tired," he said, and rose to go.
+
+"No, no; I am better already. The telling has done me such good. I shall
+soon be up and about. When do you go?"
+
+"This afternoon; and you may expect telegrams from me at almost any
+time; so don't be alarmed simply because I send them. I thought you
+would prefer to know from day to day."
+
+"You are good--but I can say nothing." The tears welled at last and
+overflowed on her cheeks.
+
+"Don't say that--I beg of you." He spoke almost sharply, as if hurt
+physically. "Nothing is needed--and I hope you will let Sister Ste.
+Croix come in for a few days and care for you. She wants to come."
+
+"Tell her to come. I think I am willing to see any one now--something
+has given way here;" she pressed her hand to her head; "it's a great
+relief."
+
+"Good-bye." He held out his hand and she placed hers in it; the tears
+kept rolling down her cheeks.
+
+"Tell my darling boy, when you see him, that it was my fault--and I love
+him so--oh, how I love him--" Her voice broke in a sob.
+
+Father Honoré left the room to cover his emotion. He spoke to Ellen from
+the hall, and went out at the front door in order to avoid Mrs. Caukins.
+He had need to be alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That afternoon at the station, Octavius Buzzby met him on the platform.
+
+"Mr. Buzzby, is there any truth in the rumor I heard, as I came to the
+train, that Mrs. Champney has had a stroke?"
+
+The face of Champ-au-Haut's factotum worked strangely before he made
+answer.
+
+"Yes, she's had a slight shock. The doctor told me this morning that he
+knew she'd had the first one over three years ago; this is the second.
+I've come down for a nurse he telegraphed for; I expect her on the next
+train up--and, Father Honoré--" he hesitated; his hands were working
+nervously in each other.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Buzzby?"
+
+"I come down to see you, too, on purpose--"
+
+"To see me?" Father Honoré looked his surprise; his thoughts leaped to a
+possible demand on Mrs. Champney's part for his presence at
+Champ-au-Haut--she might have repented her words, changed her mind;
+might be ready to help her nephew. In that case, he would wait for the
+midnight train.
+
+The man of Maine's face was working painfully again; he was struggling
+for control; his feelings were deep, tender, loyal; he was capable of
+any sacrifice for a friend.
+
+"Father Honoré--I don't want to butt in anywhere--into what ain't my
+business, but I do want to know if you're going to New York?"
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"Are you going to try to see _him_?"
+
+"I'm going to try to find him--for his mother's sake and his own."
+
+Octavius Buzzby grasped his hand and wrung it. "God bless you!" He
+fumbled with his left hand in his breast pocket and drew forth a
+package. "Here, you take this--it's honest money, all mine--you use it
+for Champney--to help out, you know, in any way you see fit."
+
+Father Honoré was so moved he could not speak at once.
+
+"If Mr. Googe could know what a friend he has in you, Mr. Buzzby," he
+said at last, "I don't think he could wholly despair, whatever might
+come,"--he pressed the package back into Octavius' hand,--"keep it with
+you, it's safer; and I promise you if I need it I will call on you."
+Suddenly his indignation got the better of him--"But this is
+outrageous!"--he spoke in a low voice but vehemently,--"Mrs. Champney is
+abundantly able to do this for her nephew, whereas you--"
+
+"You're right, sir, it's a damned outrage--I beg your pardon, Father
+Honoré, I hadn't ought to said that, but I've seen so much, and I'm all
+broke up, I guess, with what I've been through since yesterday. I went
+to her myself then and made bold to ask her to help with her riches
+that's bringing her in eight per cent, and told her some plain truths--"
+
+"You went--!" Father Honoré exclaimed; he had almost said "too," but
+caught himself in time.
+
+"Yes, I went, and all I got was an insult for my pains. She's a
+she-dev--I beg your pardon, sir; it would serve me right if the Almighty
+struck me dumb with a stroke like hers, only hers don't affect her
+speech any, Aileen says--I guess her tongue's insured against shock for
+life, but it hadn't ought to be, sir, not after the blasphemy it's
+uttered. But I ain't the one to throw stones, not after what I've just
+said in your presence, sir, and I do beg your pardon, I know what's due
+to the clo--"
+
+The train, rounding the curve, whistled deafeningly.
+
+Father Honoré grasped both Octavius' hands; held them close in a firm
+cordial grip; looked straight into the small brown eyes that were filled
+with tears, the result of pure nervousness.
+
+"We men understand each other, Mr. Buzzby; no apology is necessary--let
+me have your prayers while I am away, I shall need them--good-bye--" He
+entered the car.
+
+Octavius Buzzby lifted his hat and stood bareheaded on the platform till
+the train drew out.
+
+
+
+
+PART FOURTH
+
+Oblivion
+
+
+I
+
+"I have called to see Mr. Van Ostend, by appointment," said Father
+Honoré to the footman in attendance at the door of the mansion on the
+Avenue.
+
+He was shown into the library. Mr. Van Ostend rose from the armchair to
+greet him.
+
+"I am glad to see you, Father Honoré." He shook hands cordially and drew
+up a chair opposite to his own before the blazing hearth. "Be seated; I
+have given orders that we are not to be interrupted. I cannot pretend
+ignorance as to the cause of your coming--a sad, bad matter for us all.
+Have you any news?"
+
+"Only that he is here in New York."
+
+Mr. Van Ostend looked startled. "Here? Since when? My latest advice was
+this afternoon from the Maine detectives."
+
+"I heard yesterday from headquarters that he had been traced here, but
+he must be in hiding somewhere; thus far they've found no trace of him.
+I felt sure, from the very first, he would return; that is why I came
+down. He couldn't avoid detection any longer in the country, nor could
+he hold out another week in the Maine wilderness--no man could stand it
+in this weather."
+
+"How long have you been here, Father Honoré?"
+
+"Three days. I promised Mrs. Googe to do what I could to find him; the
+mother suffers most."
+
+"I know--I know; it's awful for her; but, for God's sake, what did he do
+it for!"
+
+"Why do we all sin at times?"
+
+"Yes, yes--I know; that's your point of view, but that does not answer
+me in this case. He had every opportunity to work along legitimate lines
+towards the end he professed to wish to attain--and he had the ability
+to attain it; I know this from my experience with him. What could have
+possessed him to put himself in the place of a sneak thief--he, born a
+gentleman, with Champney blood in his veins?"
+
+Father Honoré did not answer his question which was more an indignant
+ejaculation.
+
+"You spoke of my 'point of view,' Mr. Van Ostend. I think I know what
+that implies; you mean from the point of view of the priesthood?"
+
+The man on the opposite side of the fire-lighted hearth looked at him in
+surprise. "Yes, just that; but I intended no reflection on your opinion;
+perhaps I ought to say frankly, that it implied a doubt of your powers
+of judgment in a business matter like the one in question. Naturally, it
+does not lie in your line."
+
+Father Honoré smiled a little sadly. "Perhaps you may recall that old
+saying of the Jew, Nathan the Wise: 'A man is a man before he is either
+Christian or Jew.' And we are men, Mr. Van Ostend; men primarily before
+we are either financier or priest. Let us speak as man to man; put aside
+all points of view entailed by difference of training, and meet on the
+common ground of our manhood, I am sure the perspective and
+retrospective ought to be in the same line of vision from that
+standpoint."
+
+Mr. Van Ostend was silent. He was thinking deeply. The priest saw this,
+and waited for the answer which he felt sure would be well thought out
+before it found expression. He spoke at last, slowly, weighing his
+words:
+
+"I am questioning whether, with the best intentions as men to meet in
+the common plane of our manhood, to see from thence alike in a certain
+direction, you and I, at our age, can escape from the moulded lines of
+our training into that common plane."
+
+"I think we can if we keep to the fundamentals of life."
+
+"We can but try; but there must be then an absolutely unclouded
+expression of individual opinion on the part of each." His assertion
+implied both a challenge and a doubt. "What is your idea of the reason
+for his succumbing to such a temptation?"
+
+"I believe it was the love of money and the power its acquisition
+carries with it. I know, too, that Mrs. Googe blames herself for having
+fostered this ambition in him. She would only too gladly place anything
+that is hers to make good, but there is nothing left; it all went." He
+straightened himself. "What I have come to you for, Mr. Van Ostend, is
+to ask you one direct question: Are you willing to make good the amount
+of the embezzlement to the syndicate and save prosecution in this
+special case--save the man, Champney Googe, and so give him another
+chance in life? You know, but not so well, perhaps, as I, what years in
+a penitentiary mean for a man when he leaves it."
+
+"Are you aware that you are asking me to put a premium on crime?" Mr.
+Van Ostend asked coldly. He looked at the priest as if he thought he had
+taken leave of his senses.
+
+"That is one way of putting it, I admit; but there is another. Let me
+put it to you: if you had had a son; if he were fatherless; if he had
+fallen through emulation of other men, wouldn't you like to know that
+some man might lend a hand for the sake of the mother?"
+
+"I don't know. Stealing is stealing, whether my son were the thief or
+another man's. Why shouldn't a man take his punishment? You know the
+everyday argument: the man who steals a loaf of bread gets nine months,
+and the man who steals a hundred thousand gets clear. If the law is for
+the one and not for the other, the result is, logically, anarchy.
+Besides, the man, not he of the street who steals because he is hungry,
+but the one who has every advantage of education and environment to make
+his way right in life, goes wrong knowingly. Are we in this case to
+coddle, to sympathize, to let ourselves be led into philanthropic drivel
+over 'judge not that ye be not judged'? I cannot see it so."
+
+"You are right in your reasoning, but you are reasoning according to the
+common law, man-made; and I said we could agree only if we keep to the
+fundamentals of life."
+
+"Well, if the law isn't a fundamental, what is?"
+
+"I heard Bishop Brooks once say: 'The Bible _was_ before ever it was
+written.' And perhaps I can best answer your question by saying the law
+of the human existed before the law of which you are thinking was ever
+written. Love, mercy, long-suffering _were_ before the law formulated
+'an eye for an eye,' or this world could not have existed to the
+present time for you and me. It is in recognition of that, in dealing
+with the human, that I make my appeal to you--for the mother, first and
+foremost, who suffers through the son, her first-born and only child, as
+your daughter is your only--" Mr. Van Ostend interrupted him.
+
+"I must beg you, Father Honoré, not to bring my daughter's name into
+this affair. I have suffered enough--enough."
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend, pardon me the seeming discourtesy in your own house,
+but I am compelled to mention it. After you have given your final
+decision to my importuning, there can be no further appeal. The man, if
+living, must go to prison. Mrs. Champney positively refuses to help her
+nephew in any way. She has been approached twice on the subject of
+advancing four-fifths of the hundred thousand; she can do it, but she
+won't. She is not a mother; neither has she any real love for her
+nephew, for she refuses to aid him in his extremity. I mentioned your
+daughter, because you must know that her name has been in the past
+connected with the man for whom I am asking the boon of another chance
+in life. I have felt convinced that for her sake, if for no other, you
+would make this sacrifice."
+
+"My daughter, I am glad to inform you, never cared for the man. She is
+too young, too undeveloped. It is the one thing that makes it possible
+for me to contemplate what he has done with any degree of sanity. Had he
+won her affections, had she loved him--" He paused: it was impossible
+for him to proceed.
+
+"Thank God that she was spared that!" Father Honoré ejaculated under his
+breath. Mr. Van Ostend looking at him keenly, perceived that he was
+under the influence of some powerful emotion. He turned to him, a mute
+question on his lips. Father Honoré answered that mute query with
+intense earnestness, by repeating what, apparently, he had said to
+himself:
+
+"I thank my God that she never cared for him in that way, for otherwise
+her life would have been wrecked; nor could you, who would lay down your
+life for her happiness, have spared or saved her,--her young affections,
+her young faith and joy in life, all shattered, and Life the iconoclast!
+That is the saddest part of it. It is women who suffer most and always.
+In making this appeal to you, I have had continually in mind his mother,
+and you, the father of a woman. I know how your pride must have suffered
+in the knowledge that his name, even, has been connected with hers--but
+your suffering is as naught compared with that mother's who, at this
+very moment, is waiting for some telegram from me that shall tell her
+her son is found, is saved. But I will not over urge, Mr. Van Ostend. If
+you feel you cannot do this, that it is a matter of principle with you
+to refuse, there is no need to prolong this interview which is painful
+to us both. I thank you for the time you have given me." He rose to go.
+Mr. Van Ostend did likewise.
+
+At that moment a girl's joyous voice sounded in the hall just outside
+the door.
+
+"Oh, never mind that, Beales; papa never considers me an interruption.
+I'm going in, anyway, to say good night; I don't care if all Wall Street
+is there. Has the carriage come?"
+
+There was audible the sound of a subdued protest; then came a series of
+quick taps on the door and the sound of the gay voice again:
+
+"Papa--just a minute to say good night; if I can't come in, do you come
+out and give me a kiss--do you hear?"
+
+The two men looked at each other. Mr. Van Ostend stepped quickly to the
+door and, opening it, stood on the threshold. Something very like a
+diaphanous white cloud enwrapped him; two thin arms, visible through it,
+went suddenly round his neck; then his arms enfolded her.
+
+"Oh, Papsy dear, don't hug me so hard! You'll crush all my flowers. Ben
+sent them; wasn't he a dear? I've promised him the cotillon to-night for
+them. Good night." She pecked at his cheek again as he released her; the
+cloud of white liberty silk tulle drifted away from the doorway and left
+it a blank.
+
+Mr. Van Ostend closed the door; came back to the hearth; stood there,
+his arms folded tightly over his chest, his head bowed. For a few
+minutes neither man spoke. When the clock on the mantel chimed a quarter
+to nine, Father Honoré made a movement to go. Mr. Van Ostend turned
+quickly to him and put out a detaining hand.
+
+"May I ask if you are going to continue the search this evening; it's a
+bad night."
+
+"Yes; I've had the feeling that, after he has been so long in hiding,
+he'll have to come out--he must be at the end of his strength. I am
+going out with two detectives now; they have been on the case with me.
+This is quite apart from the general detective agency's work."
+
+"Father Honoré," Mr. Van Ostend spoke with apparent effort, "I know I am
+right in my reasoning--and you are right in your fundamentals. We both
+may be wrong in the end, you in appealing to me for this aid to restrain
+prosecution, and I in giving it. Time alone will show us. But if we are,
+we must take the consequences of our act. If, by yielding, I make it
+easier for another man to do as Champney Googe has done, may God forgive
+me; I could never forgive myself. If you, in asking this, have erred in
+freeing from his punishment a man who deserves every bit he can get, you
+will have to reckon with your own conscience.--Don't misunderstand me.
+No spirit of philanthropy influences me in my act. Don't credit me with
+any 'love-to-man' attitude. I am going to advance the sum necessary to
+avoid prosecution if you find him; but I do it solely on that mother's
+account, and"--he hesitated--"because I don't want her, whom you have
+just seen, connected, even remotely, by the thought of what a
+penitentiary term implies. I don't want to entertain the thought that
+even the hem of _my_ child's garment has been so much as touched by a
+hand that will work at hard labor for seven, perhaps fifteen, years. And
+I want you to understand that, in yielding, my principle remains
+unchanged. I owe it to you to say this much, for you have dealt with me
+as man to man."
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend, we may both be in the wrong, as you say; if it prove
+so, I shall be the first to acknowledge my error to you. My one thought
+has been to save that mother further agony and to give a man, still
+young, another chance."
+
+"I've understood it so."
+
+He went to his writing table, sat down at it, and, for a moment, busied
+himself with making out his personal check for one hundred thousand
+dollars payable to the Flamsted Granite Quarries Company. He handed it
+to Father Honoré to look at. The priest read it.
+
+"Whatever bail is needed, if an arrest should follow now," said Mr. Van
+Ostend further and significantly, "I will be responsible for."
+
+The two men clasped hands and looked understandingly into each other's
+eyes. What each read therein, what each felt in the other's palm beats,
+they realized there was no need to express in words.
+
+"Let me hear, Father Honoré, so soon as you learn anything definite;
+I'll keep you posted so far as I hear."
+
+"I will. Good night, Mr. Van Ostend."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On reaching the iron gates to the courtyard, the priest stepped aside to
+give unimpeded passage to a carriage just leaving the house. As it
+passed him, the electric light flashed athwart the bowed glass front,
+already dripping with sleet, and behind it he caught a glimpse of a
+girl's delicate face that rose from out the folds of a chinchilla wrap,
+like a flower from its sheath. She was chatting gaily with her maid.
+
+
+II
+
+The night was wild. New York can show such in late November. A gale from
+the northeast was driving before it a heavy sleet that froze as it
+fell, coating the overhead wires and glazing the asphalt and sidewalks.
+
+It lacked an hour of midnight. From Fleischmann's bakery, the goal of
+each man among the shivering hundreds lined up on Tenth Street, the
+light streamed out upon a remnant of Life's jetsam--that which is
+submerged, which never comes to the surface unless drawn there by some
+searching and rescuing hand; that which the home-sheltered never see by
+daylight, never know, save from hearsay. In the neighboring rectory of
+Grace Church one dim light was burning in an upper room. The marble
+church itself looked a part of the winter scene; its walls and
+pinnacles, already encrusted with ice crystals, glittered fantastically
+in the rays of the arc-light; beneath them, the dark, shuffling,
+huddling line of humanity moved uneasily in the discomfort of the keen
+wind.
+
+At twelve o 'clock, each unknown, unidentified human unit in that line,
+as he reaches the window, puts forth his hand for the loaf, and
+thrusting it beneath his coat, if he be so fortunate as to have one, or
+under his arm, vanishes....
+
+Whither? As well ask: Whence came he?
+
+Well up towards the bakery, because the hour was early, stood Champney
+Googe, unknown, unidentified as yet by three men, Father Honoré and two
+detectives, who from the dark archway of a sunken area farther down the
+street were scanning this bread-line. The man for whom they were
+searching held his head low. An old broad-brimmed felt hat was jammed
+over his forehead, almost covering his eyes. The face beneath its shadow
+was sunken, drawn; the upper lip, chin, and cheeks covered with a three
+weeks' growth of hair that had been blackened with soot. The long period
+of wandering in the Maine wilderness had reduced his clothes to a
+minimum. His shoes were worn, the leather split, showing bare flesh.
+Like hundreds of others in like case, he found himself forced into this
+line, even at the risk of detection, through the despairing desperation
+of hunger. There was nothing left for him but this--that is, if he were
+not to starve. And after this, there remained for him but one thing, one
+choice out of three final ones--he knew this well: flight and
+expatriation, the act of grace by which a man frees himself from this
+life, or the penitentiary. Which should it be?
+
+"Never that last, never!" he said over and over again to himself during
+this last month. "Never, never _that_!"
+
+It was the horror of that which spurred him to unimaginable exertion in
+the wilderness in order to escape the detectives on his track; to put
+them off the scent; to lead them to the Canada border and so induce them
+to cross it in their search. He had succeeded; and thereafter his one
+thought was to get to New York, to that metropolis where the human unit
+is reduced to the zero power, and can dive under, even vanish, to
+reappear only momently on the surface to breathe. But having reached the
+city, by stolen rides on the top of freight cars, and plunging again
+into its maelstrom, he found himself still in the clutch of this
+unnamable horror. Docks, piers, bridges, stations were become mere
+detective terminals to him--things to be shunned at all cost. The long
+perspective of the avenues, the raking view from river to river in the
+cross streets, afforded him no shelter from watching eyes--in every
+passing glance he read his doom; these, too, were things to be avoided
+at all hazard.
+
+For four nights, since he sought refuge in New York, he had crawled into
+an empty packing-box in a black alley behind a Water Street wholesale
+house. Twice, during this time, he had made the attempt to board as
+stowaway an outward-bound steamship and sailing vessel for a South
+American port; but he had failed, for the Eyes were upon him--always the
+Eyes wherever he went, whenever he looked, Eyes that were spotting him.
+In the weakness consequent upon prolonged fasting and the protracted
+exposure during his journey from Maine, this horror was becoming an
+obsession bordering on delirium. It was even now beginning to dull the
+two senses of sight and hearing--at least, he imagined it--as he stood
+in line waiting for the loaf that should keep him another day, keep him
+for one of two alternatives: flight, if possible to South America,
+or ...
+
+As he stood there, the fear that his sight might grow suddenly dim, that
+he might in consequence fail in recognition of those Eyes so constantly
+on the lookout for him, suddenly increased. He grew afraid, at last, to
+look up--What if the Eyes should be there! He bore the ever-increasing
+horror as long as he could, then--better starve and have done with it
+than die like a dog from sheer fright!--he stepped cautiously, softly,
+starting at the crackle of the ice under his tread, off the curbstone
+into the street. So far he was safe. He kept his head low, and walked
+carelessly towards Third Avenue. When nearing the corner he determined
+he would look up. He took the middle of the street. It cost him a
+supreme effort to raise his eyes, to look stealthily about him, behind,
+before, to right, to left--
+
+_What was that in the dark area archway!_ His sight blurred for the
+moment, so increasing the blackness of impending horror; then, under the
+influence of this last applied stimulus, his sight grew preternaturally
+keen. He discerned one moving form--two--three; to his over-strained
+nerves there seemed a whole posse behind them. Oh, the Eyes, the Eyes
+that were so constantly on him! Could he never rid himself of them! He
+bent his head to the sleeting blast and darted down the middle of the
+street to Second Avenue.
+
+_He knew now the alternative._
+
+After a possible five seconds of hesitation the three men gave chase. It
+was the make of the man, his motion as he started to run, the running
+itself as Champney took the middle of the street, by which Father Honoré
+marked him. It was just such a start, just such running, as the priest
+had seen many a time on the football field when the goal, which should
+decide for victory, was to be made. He recognized it at once.
+
+"That's he!" He spoke under his breath to the two men; the three started
+in pursuit.
+
+But Champney Googe was running to goal, and the old training stood him
+in good stead. He was across Second Avenue before the men were half way
+down Tenth Street; down Eighth Street towards East River he fled, but at
+First he doubled on his tracks and eluded them. They lost him as he
+turned into Second Avenue again; not a footstep showed on the
+ice-coated pavement. They stopped at a telephone station to notify the
+police at the Brooklyn Bridge terminals, then paused to draw a long
+breath.
+
+"You're sure 't was him?" One of the detectives appealed to Father
+Honoré.
+
+"Yes, I'm sure."
+
+"He give us the slip this time; he knew we was after him," the other
+panted rather than spoke, for the long run had winded him. "I never see
+such running--and look at the glare of ice! He'd have done me up in
+another block."
+
+"Well, the hunt's up for to-night, anyway. There's no use tobogganning
+round after such a hare at this time of night," said the other, wiping
+the wet snow from the inside of his coat collar.
+
+"We've spotted him sure enough," said the first, "and I think, sir, with
+due notifications at headquarters for all the precincts to-night, we can
+run him down and in to-morrow. If you've no more use for me, I'll just
+step round to headquarters and get the lines on him before
+daylight--that is, if they'll work." He looked dubiously at the sagging
+ice-laden wires.
+
+"You won't need me any longer?" The second man spoke inquiringly, as if
+he would like to know Father Honoré's next move.
+
+"I don't need you both, but I'd like one of you to volunteer to keep me
+company, for a while, at least. I can't give up this way, although I
+know no more of his whereabouts than you do. I've a curious unreasoning
+feeling that he'll try the ferries next."
+
+"He can't get at the bridge--we've headed him off there, and it's a bad
+night. It's been my experience that this sort don't take to water, not
+naturally, on such nights as this. We might try one of the Bowery
+lodging houses that I know this sort finds out sometimes. I'll go with
+you, if you like."
+
+"Thank you, I want to try the ferries first; we'll begin at the Battery
+and work up. How long does the Staten Island boat run?"
+
+"Not after one; but they'll be behind time to-night; it's getting to be
+a smothering snow. I don't believe the elevated can run on time either,
+and we've got three blocks to walk to the next station."
+
+"We'd better be going, then." Father Honoré bade the other man good
+night, and the two walked rapidly to the nearest elevated station on
+Second Avenue. It was an up-town train that rolled in covered with sleet
+and snow, and they were obliged to wait fully a quarter of an hour
+before a south bound one took them to the Battery.
+
+The wind was lessening, but a heavy snowfall had set in. They made their
+way across the park to the "tongue that laps the commerce of the world."
+
+Where was that commerce now? Wholly vanished with the multiple daytime
+activities that centre near this spot. The great fleet of incoming and
+out-going ocean liners, of vessels, barges, tows, ferries, tugs--where
+were they in the drifting snow that was blotting out the night in opaque
+white? The clank and rush of the elevated, the strident grinding of the
+trolleys, the polyglot whistling and tooting of the numerous small river
+craft, the cries of 'longshoremen, the roaring basal note of
+metropolitan mechanism--all were silenced. Nothing was to be heard, at
+the moment of their arrival, but the heavy wash of the harbor waters
+against the sea wall and its yeasting churn in the ferry slip.
+
+Near the dock-house they saw some half-obliterated tracks in the snow.
+Father Honoré bent to examine them; it availed him nothing. He looked at
+his watch; at the same moment he heard the distant hoarse half-smothered
+whistle repeated again and again and the deadened beat of the paddle
+wheels. Gradually the boat felt her way into the slip. The snow was
+falling heavily.
+
+"We will wait here until the boat leaves," said Father Honoré, stepping
+inside to a dark wind-sheltered angle of the house.
+
+"It's a wild goose chase we're on," muttered his companion after a
+while. The next moment he laid a heavy hand on the priest's arm,
+gripping it hard, every muscle tense.
+
+A heavy brewery team, drawn by noble Percherons, rumbled past them down
+the slip. On it, behind the driver's seat, was the figure of a man,
+crouched low. Had it not been for the bandaged arm and the unnatural
+contour it gave to the body's profile, they might have failed to
+recognize him. The two stood motionless in the blackness of the inner
+angle, pressing close to the iron pillars as their man passed them at a
+distance of something less than twelve feet. The warning bell rang; they
+hurried on board.
+
+After the boat was well out into the harbor, the detective entered the
+cabin to investigate. He returned to report to Father Honoré that the
+man was not inside.
+
+"Outside then," said the priest, drawing a sharp short breath.
+
+The two made their way forward, keeping well behind the team. Father
+Honoré saw Champney standing by the outside guard chain. He was whitened
+by the clinging snow. The driver of the team sang out to him: "I say,
+pardner, you'd better come inside!"
+
+He neither turned nor spoke, but, bracing himself, suddenly crouched to
+the position for a standing leap, fist clenched....
+
+A great cry rang out into the storm-filled night:
+
+"Champney!"
+
+The two men flung themselves upon him as he leaped, and in the ensuing
+struggle the three rolled together on the deck. He fought them like a
+madman, using his bandaged arm, his feet, his head. He was powerful with
+the fictitious strength of desperation and thwarted intent. But the two
+men got the upper hand, and, astride the prostrate form, the detective
+forced on the handcuffs. At the sound of the clinking irons, the
+prisoner suffered collapse then and there.
+
+"Thank God!" said Father Honoré as he lifted the limp head and
+shoulders. With the other's aid he carried him into the cabin and laid
+him on the floor. The priest took off his own wet cloak, then his coat;
+with the latter he covered the poor clay that lay apparently
+lifeless--no one should look upon that face either in curiosity,
+contempt, or pity.
+
+The detective went out to interview the driver of the team.
+
+"Where'd you pick him up?"
+
+"'Long on West Street, just below Park Place. I see by the way he spoke
+he'd broke his wind--asked if I was goin' to a ferry an' if I'd give him
+a lift. I said 'Come along,' and asked no questions. He ain't the first
+I've helped out o' trouble, but I guess I've got him in sure enough this
+time."
+
+"You're going to put up on the Island?"
+
+"Yes; but what business is it o' a decent-looking cove like youse, I'd
+like to know."
+
+"Well, it's this way: we've got to get this man back to New York
+to-night; it's the boat's last trip and there ain't a chance of getting
+a cab or hack in this blizzard, and at this time of night, to get him up
+from the ferry. If you'll take the job, I'll give you fifteen dollars
+for it."
+
+"That ain't so easy earned in a reg'lar snow-in; besides, I don't want
+to be a party to gettin' him furder into your grip by takin' him over."
+
+"Oh, that's all right. He's got a friend with him who'll see to him for
+the rest of the night."
+
+"Well, I don't mind then. It's goin' on one now, an' I might as well
+make a night o' it on t' other side. It's damned hard on the hosses,
+though, an' it's ten to one I don't get lifted myself by one o' them
+cussed cruelty to animil fellers that sometimes poke their noses into
+the wrong end o' their business.--Make it twenty an' it is done."
+
+The detective smiled. "Twenty it is." He patted the noble Percherons and
+felt their warmth under the blankets. "You're not the kind they're
+after. What have you got in your team?"
+
+"Nothing but the hosses' feed-bags."
+
+"That'll do. We'll put him in now in case any one comes on at Staten
+Island for the return trip. You don't know nothing about _this_, you
+know." He looked at him knowingly.
+
+"All right, Cap'n; I'd be willin' to say I was a bloomin' idjot for two
+saw-horses. Come, rake out."
+
+The detective laughed. "Here's ten to bind the bargain--the rest when
+you've landed him."
+
+
+III
+
+The brewery team made its way slowly up from the ferry owing to the
+drifting snow and icy pavements. From time to time a plough ran on the
+elevated, or on the trolley tracks, and sent the snow in fan-like spurts
+from the fender. The driver drew rein in a west-side street off lower
+Seventh Avenue. It was a brotherhood house where the priest had taken a
+room for an emergency like the present one. He knew that within these
+walls no questions would be asked, yet every aid given, if required, in
+just these circumstances. The man beneath the horse-blankets was still
+unconscious when they lifted him out, and carried him up to a large room
+in the topmost story. The detective, after removing the handcuffs, asked
+if he could be of any further use that night. He stepped to the side of
+the cot and looked searchingly into the passive face on the pillow.
+
+"No; he's safe here," Father Honoré replied. "You will notify the police
+and the other detectives. I will go bail for him if any should be
+needed; but I may as well tell you now that the case will probably never
+come to trial; the amount has been guaranteed." He wrote a telegram and
+handed it to the man. "Would you do me the favor to get this off as
+early as you can?"
+
+"Humph! Poor devil, he's got off easy; but from his looks and the tussle
+we had with him, I don't think he'll be over grateful to you for
+bringing him through this. I've seen so much of this kind, that I've
+come to think it's better when they drop out quietly, no fuss, like as
+he wanted to."
+
+"I can't agree with you. Thank you for your help."
+
+"Not worth mentioning; it's all in the night's work, you know. Good
+night. I'll send the telegram just as soon as the wires are working. You
+know my number if you want me." He handed him a card.
+
+"Thank you; good night."
+
+When the door closed upon him, Father Honoré drew a long breath that was
+half a suppressed groan; then he turned to the passive form on the cot.
+There was much to be done.
+
+He administered a little stimulant; heated some water over a small gas
+stove; laid out clean sheets, a shirt, some bandages and a few surgical
+instruments from a "handy closet," that was kept filled with simple
+hospital emergency requirements, and set to work. He cut the shoes from
+the stockingless feet; cut away the stiffened clothing, what there was
+of it; laid bare the bandaged arm; it was badly swollen, stiff and
+inflamed. He soaked from a clotted knife-wound above the elbow the piece
+of cloth with which it had first been bound. He looked at the discolored
+rag as it lay in his hand, startled at what he saw: a handkerchief--a
+small one, a woman's! With sickening dread he searched in the corners;
+he found them: A. A., wreathed around with forget-me-nots, all in
+delicate French embroidery.
+
+"My God, my God!" he groaned. He recalled having seen Aileen
+embroidering these very handkerchiefs last summer up under the pines.
+One of the sisterhood, Sister Ste. Croix, was with her giving
+instruction, while she herself wrought on a convent-made garment.
+
+What did it mean? With multiplied thoughts that grasped helplessly
+hither and thither for some point of attachment, he went on with his
+work. Two hours later, he had the satisfaction of knowing the man before
+him was physically cared for as well as it was possible for him to be
+until he should regain consciousness. His practised eye recognized this
+to be a case of collapse from exhaustion, physical and mental. Now
+Nature must work to replenish the depleted vitality. He could trust her
+up to a certain point.
+
+He sat by the cot, his elbows on his knees, his head dropped into his
+hands, pondering the mystery of this life before him--of all life, of
+death, of the Beyond; marvelling at the strange warp and woof of
+circumstance, his heart wrung for the anguish of that mother far away in
+the quarries of The Gore, his soul filled with thankfulness that she was
+spared the sight of _this_.
+
+The gray November dawn began to dim the electric light in the room. He
+went to a window, opened the inner blinds and looked out. The storm was
+not over, but the wind had lessened and the flakes fell sparsely. He
+looked across over the neighboring roofs weighted with snow; the wires
+were down. A muffled sound of street traffic heralded the beginning day.
+As he turned back to the cot he saw that Champney's eyes were open; but
+the look in them was dazed. They closed directly. When they opened
+again, the full light of day was in the room; semi-consciousness had
+returned. He spoke feebly:
+
+"Where am I?"
+
+"Here, safe with me, Champney." He leaned over him, but saw that he was
+not recognized.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Your friend, Father Honoré."
+
+"Father Honoré--" he murmured, "I don't know you." He gave a convulsive
+start--"Where are the Eyes gone?" he whispered, a look of horror
+creeping into his own.
+
+"There are none here, none but mine, Champney. Listen; you are safe with
+me, safe, do you understand?"
+
+He gave no answer, but the dazed look returned. He moistened his parched
+lips with his tongue and swallowed hard. Father Honoré held a glass of
+water to his mouth, slipping an arm and hand beneath his head to raise
+him. He drank with avidity; tried to sit up, but fell back exhausted.
+The priest busied himself with preparing some hot beef extract on the
+little stove. When it was ready he sat down by the cot and fed it to him
+spoonful by spoonful.
+
+"Thank you," Champney said quietly when the priest had finished his
+ministration. He turned a little on his side and fell asleep.
+
+The sleep was that which follows exhaustion; it was profound and
+beneficial. Evidently no distress of mind or body marred it, and for
+every sixty minutes of the blessed oblivion, there was renewed activity
+in nature's ever busy laboratory to replenish the strength that had been
+sacrificed in this man's protracted struggle to escape his doom, and, by
+means of it, to restore the mental balance, fortunately not too long
+lost....
+
+When he awoke, it was to full consciousness. The sun was setting. Behind
+the Highlands of the Navesink it sank in royal state: purple, scarlet,
+and gold. Upon the crisping blue waters of Harbor, Sound, and River, the
+reflection of its transient glory lay in quivering windrows of gorgeous
+color. It crimsoned faintly the snow that lay thick on the multitude of
+city roofs; it blazoned scarlet the myriad windows in the towers and
+skyscrapers; it filled the keen air with wonderful fleeting lights that
+bewildered and charmed the unaccustomed eyes of the metropolitan
+millions.
+
+Champney waited for it to fade; then he turned to the man beside him.
+
+"Father Honoré--" he half rose from the cot. The priest bent over him.
+Champney laid one arm around his neck, drew him down to him and, for a
+moment only, the two men remained cheek to cheek.
+
+"Champney--my son," was all he could say.
+
+"Yes; now tell me all--the worst; I can bear it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I can't see my way, yet." These were the first words he spoke after
+Father Honoré had finished telling him of his prospective relief from
+sentence and the means taken to obtain it. He had listened intently,
+without interruption, sitting up on the cot, his look fixed unwaveringly
+on the narrator. He put his hand to his face as he spoke, covering his
+eyes for a moment; then he passed it over the three weeks' stubble on
+his cheeks and chin.
+
+"Is it possible for me to shave here? I must get up--out of this. I
+can't think straight unless I get on my feet."
+
+"Do you feel strong enough, Champney?"
+
+"I shall get strength quicker when I'm up. Thank you," he said, as
+Father Honoré helped him to his feet. He swayed as if dizzy on crossing
+the room to a small mirror above a stand. Father Honoré placed the hot
+water and shaving utensils before him. He declined his further
+assistance.
+
+"Are there--are there any clothes I could put on?" He asked
+hesitatingly, as he proceeded to shave himself awkwardly with his one
+free hand.
+
+"Such as they are, a plenty." Father Honoré produced a common tweed suit
+and fresh underwear from the "handy closet." These together with some
+other necessaries from a drawer in the stand supplied a full equipment.
+
+"Can I tub anywhere?" was his next question after he had finished
+shaving.
+
+"Yes; this bath closet here is at your disposal." He opened a door into
+a small adjoining hall-room. Champney took the clothes and went in. While
+he was bathing, Father Honoré used the room telephone to order in a
+substantial evening meal. After the noise of the splashing ceased, he
+heard a half-suppressed groan. He listened intently, but there was no
+further sound, not even of the details of dressing.
+
+A half-hour passed. He had taken in the tray, and was becoming anxious,
+when the door opened and Champney came in, clean, clothed, but with a
+look in his eyes that gave the priest all the greater cause for anxiety
+because, up to that time, the man had volunteered no information
+concerning himself; he had received what the priest said passively,
+without demonstration of any kind. There had been as yet no spiritual
+vent for the over-strained mind, the over-charged soul. The priest knew
+this danger and what it portended.
+
+He ate the food that was placed before him listlessly. Suddenly he
+pushed the plate away from him across the table at which he was sitting.
+"I can't eat; it nauseates me," he said; then, leaning his folded arms
+on the edge, he dropped his head upon them groaning heavily in an agony
+of despair, shame, remorse: "God! What's the use--what's the use!
+There's nothing left--nothing left."
+
+Father Honoré knew that the crucial hour was striking, and his prayer
+for help was the wordless outreaching of every atom of his consciousness
+for that One more powerful than weak humanity, to guide, to aid him.
+
+"Your manhood is left." He spoke sternly, with authority. This was no
+time for pleading, for sympathy, for persuasion.
+
+"My manhood!" The bitterest self-contempt was voiced in those two words.
+He raised his head, and the look he gave to the man opposite bordered on
+the inimical.
+
+"Yes, your manhood. Do you, in your supreme egotism, suppose that you,
+Champney Googe, are the only man in this world who has sinned, suffered,
+gone under for a time? Are you going to lie down in the ditch like a
+craven, simply because you have failed to withstand the first assaults
+of the devil that is in you? Do you think, because you have sinned,
+there is no longer a place for you and your work in this world where all
+men are sinners at some time in their lives? I tell you, Champney
+Googe,--and mark well what I say,--your sin, as sin, is not so
+despicable as your attitude towards your own life. Why, man, you're
+alive--"
+
+"Yes, alive--thanks to you; but knocked out after the first round," he
+muttered. The priest noted, however, that he still held his head erect.
+He took fresh courage.
+
+"And what would you say of a man who, because he has been knocked out in
+the first round, does not dare to enter the ring again? So far as I've
+seen anything of life, it is a man's duty to get on his feet as quickly
+as he can--square away and at it again."
+
+"There's nothing left to fight--it's all gone--my honor--"
+
+"True, your honor's gone; you can't get that back; but you can put
+yourself in the running to obtain a standard for your future honor.
+Champney, listen;" he drew his chair nearer to him that the table might
+not separate them; "hear me, a man like yourself, erring, because human,
+who has sinned, suffered--let me speak out of my own experience. Put
+aside regret; it clogs. Regret nothing; what's done is done past recall.
+Live out your life, no matter what the struggle. Count this life as
+yours to make the best of. Live, I say; live, work, make good; it is in
+any man's power who has received a reprieve like yours. I know whereof I
+am speaking. I'll go further: it would be in your power even if you had
+been judged and committed."
+
+The man, to whom he was appealing, shuddered as he heard the word
+"committed."
+
+"_That_ would be death," he said under his breath; "last night was
+nothing, nothing to that--but you can't understand--"
+
+"Better, perhaps, than you think. But what I want you to see is that
+there is something left to live for; Champney--your mother." He had
+hesitated to speak of her, not knowing what the effect might be.
+
+Champney started to his feet, his hand clenched on the table edge. He
+breathed short, hard. "O God, O God! Why didn't you let me go? How can I
+face her and live!" He began to pace the room with rapid jerky steps.
+Father Honoré rose.
+
+"Champney Googe,"--he spoke calmly, but with a concentrated energy of
+tone that made its impression on the man addressed,--"when you lay there
+last night," he motioned towards the cot, "I thanked my God that she
+was not here to see you. I have telegraphed her that you are alive. In
+the hope that you yourself might send some word, either directly or
+through me, I have withheld all detail of your condition, all further
+news; but, for her sake, I dare not keep her longer in suspense. Give me
+some word for her--some assurance from yourself that you will live for
+her sake, if not for your own. Reparation must begin here and _now_, and
+no time be lost; it's already late." He looked at his watch.
+
+Champney turned upon him fiercely. "Don't force me to anything. I can't
+see my way, I tell you. You have said I was a man. Let me take my stand
+on that assurance, and act as one who must first settle a long-standing
+account with himself before he can yield to any impulse of emotion. Go
+to bed--do; you're worn out with watching with me. I'll sit here by the
+window; _I promise you_. There's no sleep in me or for me--I want to be
+alone--alone."
+
+It was an appeal, and the priest recognized in it the cry of the
+individual soul when the full meaning of its isolation from humankind is
+first revealed to it. He let him alone. Without another word he drew off
+his boots, turned out the electric light, opened the inner blinds, and
+laid himself down on the cot, worn, weary, but undaunted in spirit. At
+times he lost himself for a few minutes; for the rest he feigned the
+sleep he so sorely needed. The excitation of his nerves, however, kept
+him for the greater part of the night conscious of all that went on in
+the room.
+
+Champney sat by the window. During that night he never left his seat.
+Father Honoré could see his form silhouetted against the blank of the
+panes; his head was bowed into his hands. From time to time he drew
+deep, deep, shuddering breaths. The struggle going on in that human
+breast beside the window, the priest knew to be a terrible one--a
+spiritual and a mental hand-to-hand combat, against almost over-powering
+odds, in the arena of the soul.
+
+The sun was reddening the east when Champney turned from the window,
+rose quietly, and stepped to the side of the cot. He stood there a few
+minutes looking down on the strong, marked face that, in the morning
+light, showed yellow from watching and fatigue. Father Honoré knew he
+was there; but he waited those few minutes before opening his eyes. He
+looked up then, not knowing what he was to expect, and met Champney's
+blue ones looking down into his. That one look was sufficient to assure
+him that the man who stood there so quietly beside him was the Champney
+Googe of a new birth. The "old man" had been put away; he was ready for
+the race, "_forgetting those things that are behind_."
+
+"I've won out," he said with a smile.
+
+The two men clasped hands and were silent for a few minutes. Then
+Champney drew a chair to the cot.
+
+"I'd like to talk with you, if you don't mind," he said.
+
+
+IV
+
+In the priest's soul there was rejoicing. He was anticipating the
+victorious outcome of the struggle to which, in part, he had been
+witness. But he acknowledged afterwards that he had had not the faintest
+conception, not the remotest intimation of the actual truth. It remained
+for Champney Googe to enlighten him.
+
+"I've been digging for the root of the whole matter," he began simply.
+His hand was clenched and pressed hard on his knee, otherwise he showed
+no sign of the effort that speech cost him. "I've been clearing away all
+obstructions, trying to look at myself outside of myself; and I find
+that, ever since I can remember, I've had the ambition to be rich--and
+rich for the power it apparently gives over other men, for the amplitude
+of one kind of living it affords, for the extension of the lines of
+personal indulgence and pleasure seemingly indefinitely, for the
+position it guarantees. There has been but one goal always: the making
+of money.
+
+"I rebelled at first at the prospect of the five years' apprenticeship
+in Europe. I can see now that those six years, as they proved to be,
+fostered my ambition by placing me in direct and almost daily contact
+with those to whom great wealth is a natural, not an acquired thing."
+(Father Honoré noted that throughout his confession he avoided the
+mention of any name, and he respected him for it.) "On my return, as
+you know, I was placed in a position of great responsibility, as well
+as one affording every opportunity to further my object in life. I began
+to make use of these opportunities at once; the twenty thousand received
+from the quarry lands I invested, and in a short time doubled the sum. I
+was in a position to gain the inside knowledge needed to manipulate
+money with almost a certainty of increment; this knowledge, I was given
+to understand, I might use for any personal investment of funds; I took
+advantage of the privilege.
+
+"I soon found that to operate successfully and largely, as I needed to
+in order to gain my end and gain it quickly, I must have a larger amount
+of cash. For this reason, I re-invested the forty thousand on the
+strength of my knowledge of a rise that was to be brought about in
+certain stocks within two months. This rise was guaranteed, you
+understand; guaranteed by three influential financiers. It would double
+my investment. They let it be known in a quiet way and in certain
+quarters, that this rise would occur at about such a date, and then
+forced the market up till they themselves had a good surplus. All this I
+know for a fact, because I was on the inside. Just at this time the
+syndicate intrusted to me three hundred thousand as a workable margin
+for certain future investments. My orders were to invest in this
+prepared stock only _after_ October fifteenth. Meanwhile the
+manipulation of this amount was in my hands for eight weeks.
+
+"I knew the forty thousand I had purposely invested in these stocks
+would double itself by the fifteenth of October; this was the date set.
+I knew this because I had the guaranty of the three men behind me; and,
+knowing this, I took a hundred thousand of the sum intrusted to me, in
+order to make a deal with a Wall Street firm which would net me twenty
+thousand within two weeks.
+
+"I knew perfectly well what I was doing--but there was never any
+intention on my part of robbery or embezzlement. I knew the sum eighty
+thousand, from my personal investment of forty thousand, was due on
+October fifteenth; this, plus the twenty thousand due from the Wall
+Street deal, would insure the syndicate from any loss. In fact, they
+would never know that the money had been used by me to antedate the
+investment of the three hundred thousand--a part of the net yearly
+working profits from the quarries--intrusted to me."
+
+He paused for a moment to pass his hand over his forehead; his eyebrows
+contracted suddenly as if he were in pain.
+
+"The temptation to take this money, although knowing well enough it was
+not mine to take, was too great for me. It was the resultant of every
+force of, I might say, my special business propulsion. This temptation
+lay along the lines on which I had built up my life: the pursuance of a
+line of action by which I might get rich quick.--Then came the crash.
+That special guaranteed stock broke--never to rally in time to save
+me--sixty-five points. The syndicate sent out warning signals to me that
+I was just in time to save any part of the three hundred thousand from
+investment in those stocks. Of course, I got no return from the forty
+thousand of my personal investment, and the hundred thousand I had used
+for the deal went down too. So much for the guaranty of the
+multi-millionaires.--Just then, when everything was chaotic and a big
+panic threatened, came a call from the manager of the quarries for
+immediate funds; the men were getting uneasy because pay was two weeks
+overdue. The syndicate told me to apply the working margin of three
+hundred thousand at once for this purpose. Of course there was a
+shortage; it was bound to be discovered. I tried to procrastinate--tried
+to put off the payment of the men; then came the threatened strike on
+account of non-payment of wages. I knew it was all up with me. When I
+saw I must be found out, I fled--
+
+"I never meant to rob them--to rob any one, never--never--" His voice
+broke slightly on those words.
+
+"I believe you." Father Honoré spoke for the first time. "Not one man in
+ten thousand begins by meaning to steal."
+
+"I know it; that's what makes the bitterer cud-chewing."
+
+"I know--I know." The priest spoke under his breath. He was sitting on
+the side of the cot, and leaned forward suddenly, his elbows on his
+knees, his chin resting in his palms, his eyes gazing beyond Champney to
+something intangible, some inner vision that was at that moment
+projecting itself from the sensitive plate of consciousness upon the
+blank of reality.
+
+Champney looked at him keenly. He was aware that, for the moment, Father
+Honoré was present with him only in the body. He waited, before
+speaking, until the priest's eyes turned slowly to his; his position
+remained the same. Champney went on:
+
+"All that you have done to obtain this reprieve, has been done for
+me--for mine--"; his voice trembled. "A man comes to know the measure of
+such sacrifice after an experience like mine--I have no words--"
+
+"Don't, Champney--don't--"
+
+"No, I won't, because I can't--because nothing is adequate. I thought it
+all out last night. There is but one way to show you, to prove anything
+to you; I am going to do as you said: make good my manhood--"
+
+Father Honoré's hand closed upon Champney's.
+
+"--And there is but one way in which I can make it good. I can take only
+a step at a time now, but it's this first step that will start me
+right."
+
+He paused a moment as if to gather strength to voice his decision.
+
+"I should disown my manhood if I shirked now. The horror of prospective
+years of imprisonment has been more to me than death--I welcomed _that_
+as the alternative. But now, the manhood that is left in me demands that
+if I am willing to live as a man, I must take my punishment like a man.
+I am going to let things take their usual course; accept no relief from
+the money guaranteed to reimburse the syndicate; plead guilty, and let
+the sentence be what it may: seven, fifteen, or twenty years--it's all
+one."
+
+He drew a long breath as of deliverance. The mere formulating of his
+decision in the presence of another man gave him strength, almost
+assurance to act for himself in furthering his own commitment. But the
+priest bowed his head into his hands and a groan burst from his lips, so
+laden with wretchedness, with mental and spiritual suffering, that even
+Champney Googe was startled from his hard-won calm.
+
+"Father Honoré, what is it? Don't take it so hard." He laid his hand on
+his shoulder. "I can't ask you if I've done right, because no man can
+decide that for me; but wouldn't you do the same if you were in my
+place?"
+
+"Oh, would to God I had!--would to God I had!" he groaned rather than
+spoke.
+
+Champney was startled. He realized, for the first time, perhaps, in his
+self-centred life, that he was but a unit among suffering millions. He
+was realizing, moreover, that, with the utterance of his decision, he
+had, as it were, retired from the stage for many years to come; the
+curtain had fallen on his particular act in the life-drama; that others
+now occupied his place, and among them was this man before him who,
+active for good, foremost in noble works, strong in the faith, helpful
+wherever help might be needed, a refuge for the oppressed of soul, a
+friend to all humanity because human, _his_ friend--his mother's, was
+suffering at this moment as he himself had suffered, but without the
+relief that is afforded by renunciation. Out of a great love and pity he
+spoke:
+
+"What is it? Can't you tell me? Won't it help, just as man to man--as it
+has helped me?"
+
+Father Honoré regained his control before Champney ceased questioning.
+
+"I don't know that it will help; but I owe it to you to tell you, after
+what you have said--told me. I can preach--oh yes! But the practice--the
+practice--" He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
+
+"What you have just told me justifies me in telling you what I thought
+never to speak of again in this world. You have done the only thing to
+do in the circumstances--it has taken the whole courage of a man; but I
+never for a moment credited you with sufficient manhood to dare it. It
+only goes to show how shortsighted we humans are, how incomprehensive of
+the workings of the human heart and soul; we think we know--and find
+ourselves utterly confounded, as I am now." He was silent for a few
+minutes, apparently deep in meditation.
+
+"Had I done, when I was twenty years old, as you are going to do, I
+should have had no cause to regret; all my life fails to make good in
+that respect.--When I was a boy, an orphan, my heartstrings wound
+themselves about a little girl in France who was kind to me. I may as
+well tell you now that the thought of that child was one of the motives
+that induced me to investigate Aileen's case, when we saw her that night
+at the vaudeville."
+
+He looked at Champney, who, at the mention of Aileen's name, had started
+involuntarily. "You remember that night?" Champney nodded. How well he
+remembered it! But he gave no further sign.
+
+"I was destined for the priesthood later on, but that did not stifle the
+love in my heart for the young girl. It was in my novitiate years. I
+never dared ask myself what the outcome of it all would be; I wanted to
+finish my novitiate first. I knew she loved me with a charming, open,
+young girl's love that in the freedom of our household life--her
+grandfather was my great-uncle on my mother's side--found expression in
+a sisterly way; and in the circumstances I could not tell her of my
+love. It was the last year of my novitiate when I discovered the fact
+that a young man, in the employ of her grandfather, was paying her
+attention with the intention of asking her of him in marriage. The mere
+thought of the loss of her drove me half mad. I took the first
+opportunity, when at home for the holidays, to tell her my love, and I
+threatened, that, if she gave herself to another, I would end
+all--either for myself or for him. The girl was frightened, indignant,
+horrified almost, at the force of the passion that was consuming me;
+she repelled me--that ended it; I took it for granted that she loved
+that other. I lay in wait for him one night as he was going to the
+house; taunted him; heaped upon him such abuse as makes a man another's
+murderer; I goaded him into doing what I had intended. He struck me in
+the face; closed with me, and I fought him; but he was wrestling with a
+madman. We were on the cliff at Dieppe; the night was dark;
+intentionally I forced him towards the edge. He struggled manfully,
+trying to land a blow on my head that would save him; he wrestled with
+me and he was a man of great strength; but I--I knew I could tire him
+out. It was dark--I knew when he went over the edge, but I could see
+nothing, I heard nothing....
+
+"I fled; hid myself; but I was caught; held for a time awaiting the
+outcome of the man's hurt. Had he died it would have been manslaughter.
+As it was I knew it was murder, for there had been murder in my heart.
+He lived, but maimed for life. The lawyer, paid for by my great-uncle,
+set up the plea of self-defence. I was cleared in the law, and fled to
+America to expiate. I know now that there was but one expiation for
+me--to do what you are to do; plead guilty and take my punishment like a
+man. I failed to do it--and _I_ preach of manhood to you!"
+
+There was silence in the room. Champney broke it and his voice was
+almost unrecognizable; it was hoarse, constrained:
+
+"But your love was noble--you loved her with all the manhood that was in
+you."
+
+"God knows I did; but that does not alter the fact of my consequent
+crime."
+
+He looked again at Champney as he spoke out his conviction, and his own
+emotion suffered a check in his amazement at the change in the
+countenance before him. He had seen nothing like this in the thirty-two
+hours he had been in his presence; his jaw was set; his nostrils white
+and sharpened; the pupils of his eyes contracted to pin points; and into
+the sallow cheeks, up to the forehead knotted as with intense pain, into
+the sunken temples, the blood rushed with a force that threatened
+physical disaster, only to recede as quickly, leaving the face ghastly
+white, the eyelids twitching, the muscles about the mouth quivering.
+
+Noting all this Father Honoré read deeper still; he knew that Champney
+Googe had not told him the whole, possibly not the half--_and never
+would tell_. His next question convinced him of that.
+
+"May I ask what became of the young girl you loved?--Don't answer, if I
+am asking too much."
+
+"I don't know. I have never heard from her. I can only surmise. But I
+did receive a letter from her when I was in prison, before my trial--she
+was summoned as witness; and oh, the infinite mercy of a loving woman's
+heart!" He was silent a moment.
+
+"She took so much blame upon herself, telling me that she had not known
+her own heart; that she tried to think she loved me as a brother; that
+she had been willing to let it go on so, and because she had not been
+brave enough to be honest with herself, all this trouble had come upon
+me whom she acknowledged she loved--upon her and her household. She
+begged me, if acquitted, never to see her, never to communicate with her
+again. There was but one duty for us both she said, guilty as we both
+were of what had occurred to wreck a human being for life; to go each
+_the way apart_ forever--I mine, she hers--to expiate in good works, in
+loving kindness to those who might need our help....
+
+"I have never known anything further--heard no word--made no inquiry. At
+that time, after my acquittal, my great-uncle, a well-to-do baker,
+settled a sum of money on the man who had been in his employ; the
+interest of it would support him in his incapacity to do a man's work
+and earn a decent livelihood. My uncle said then I was never again to
+darken his doors. He desired me to leave no address; to keep secret to
+myself my destination, and forever after my whereabouts. I obeyed to the
+letter--now enough of myself. I have told you this because, as a man, I
+had not the face to sit here in your presence and hear your decision,
+without showing you my respect for your courage--and I have taken this
+way to show it."
+
+He held out his hand and Champney wrung it. "You don't know all, or you
+would have no respect," he said brokenly.
+
+The two men looked understandingly into each other's eyes, but they both
+felt intuitively that any prolongation of this unwonted emotional strain
+would be injurious to both, and the work in hand. They, at once, in
+tacit understanding of each other's condition, put aside "the things
+that were behind" and "reached forth to those that were before": they
+laid plans for the speedy execution of all that Champney's decision
+involved.
+
+"There is one thing I cannot do," he spoke with decision; "that is to
+see my mother before my commitment--or after. It is the only thing that
+will break me down. I need all the strength of control I possess to go
+through this thing."
+
+The priest knew better than to protest.
+
+"Telegraph her to-day what you think best to ease her suspense. I will
+write her, and ask you to deliver my letter to her after you have seen
+me through. I want _you_ to go up with me--to the very doors; and I want
+yours to be the last known face I see on entering. Another request: I
+don't want you, my mother, or any one else known to me, to communicate
+with me by letter, message, or even gift of any kind during my term,
+whether seven years or twenty. This is oblivion. I cease to exist, as an
+identity, outside the walls. I will make one exception: if my mother
+should fall ill, write me at once.--How she will live, I don't know! I
+dare not think--it would unsettle my reason; but she has friends; she
+has you, the Colonel, Tave, Elvira, Caukins; they will not see her want,
+and there's the house; it's in her name."
+
+He rose, shook himself together, drew a long breath. "Now let us go to
+work; the sooner it's over the better for all concerned.--I suppose the
+clothes I had on are worth nothing, but I'd like to look them over."
+
+He spoke indifferently and went into the adjoining bath closet where
+Father Honoré, not liking to dispose of them until Champney should have
+spoken of them at least, had left the clothes in a bundle. He had put
+the little handkerchief, discolored almost beyond recognition, in with
+them. Champney came out in a few minutes.
+
+"They're no good," he said. "I'll have to wear these, if I may. I
+believe it's one of the regulations that what a man takes in of his own,
+is saved for him to take out, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes." An hour later when Father Honoré disposed of the bundle to the
+janitor, he knew that Aileen's handkerchief had been abstracted--and he
+read still deeper into the ways of the human heart....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Within ten days sentence was passed: seven years with hard labor.
+
+There was no appeal for mercy, and speedy commitment followed. A
+paragraph in the daily papers conveyed a knowledge of the fact to the
+world in general; and within ten days, the world in general, as usual,
+forgot the circumstance; it was only one of many.
+
+
+
+
+PART FIFTH
+
+Shed Number Two
+
+
+I
+
+"It's a wonder ye're not married yet, Aileen, an' you twenty-six."
+
+It was Margaret McCann, the "Freckles" of orphan asylum days, who spoke.
+Her utterance was thick, owing to the quantity of pins she was
+endeavoring to hold between tightly pressed lips. She was standing on a
+chair putting up muslin curtains in her new home at The Gore, or Quarry
+End Park, as it was now named, and Aileen had come to help her.
+
+"It's like ye're too purticular," she added, her first remark not having
+met with any response. She turned on the chair and looked down upon her
+old chum.
+
+She was sitting on the floor surrounded by a pile of fresh-cut muslin;
+the latest McCann baby was tugging with might and main at her apron in
+vain endeavor to hoist himself upon his pudgy uncertain legs. Aileen was
+laughing at his efforts. Catching him suddenly in her arms, she covered
+the little soft head, already sprouting a suspicion of curly red hair,
+with hearty kisses; and Billy, entering into the fun, crowed and
+gurgled, clutching wildly at the dark head bent above him and managing
+now and then, when he did not grasp too wide of the mark, to bury his
+chubby creased hands deep in its heavy waves.
+
+"Oh, Maggie, you're like all the rest! Because you've a good husband of
+your own, you think every other girl must go and do likewise."
+
+"Now ye're foolin', Aileen, like as you used to at the asylum. But I
+mind the time when Luigi was the wan b'y for you--I wonder, now, you
+couldn't like him, Aileen? He's so handsome and stiddy-like, an' doin'
+so well. Jim says he'll be one of the rich men of the town if he kapes
+on as he's begun. They do say as how Dulcie Caukins'll be cuttin' you
+out."
+
+"I didn't love him, Maggie; that's reason enough." She spoke shortly.
+Maggie turned again from her work to look down on her in amazement.
+
+"You was always that way, Aileen!" she exclaimed impatiently, "thinkin'
+nobody but a lord was good enough for you, an' droppin' Luigi as soon as
+ever you got in with the Van Ostend folks; and as for 'love'--let me
+give you as good a piece of advice as you'll get between the risin' of a
+May sun and its settin':--if you see a good man as loves you an' is
+willin' to marry you, take him, an' don't you leave him the chanct to
+get cool over it. Ye'll love him fast enough if he's good to you--like
+my Jim," she added proudly.
+
+"Oh, your Jim! You're always quoting him; he isn't quite perfection even
+if he is 'your Jim.'"
+
+"An' is it parfection ye're after?" Maggie was apt in any state of
+excitement to revert in her speech to the vernacular. "'Deed an' ye'll
+look till the end of yer days an' risk dyin' a downright old maid, if
+it's parfection ye're after marryin' in a man! An' I don't need a gell
+as has niver been married to tell me my Jim ain't parfection nayther!"
+
+Maggie resumed her work in a huff; Aileen smiled to herself.
+
+"I didn't mean to say anything against your husband, Maggie; I was only
+speaking in a general way."
+
+"An' how could ye mane anything against me husband in a gineral or a
+purticular way? Sure I know he's got a temper; an' what man of anny
+sinse hasn't, I'd like to know? An' he's not settled-like to work in
+anny wan place, as I'd like to have him be. But Jim's young; an' a man,
+he says, can't settle to anny regular work before he's thirty. He says
+all the purfessional men can't get onto their feet in a business way
+till they be thirty; an' stone-cuttin', Jim says, is his purfession like
+as if 't was a lawyer's or a doctor's or a priest's; an' Jim says he
+loves it. An' there ain't a better worker nor Jim in the sheds, so the
+boss says; an' if he will querrel between whiles--an' I'm not denyin' he
+don't--it's sure the other man's fault for doin' something mane; Jim
+can't stand no maneness. He's a good worker, is Jim, an' a good husband,
+an' a lovin' father, an' a good provider, an' he don't drink, an' he
+ain't the slithery kind--if he'd 'a' been that I wouldn't married him."
+
+There was a note of extreme authority in what Maggie in her excitement
+was giving expression to. Now that Jim McCann was back and at work in
+the sheds after a seven years absence, it was noted by many, who knew
+his wife of old, that, in the household, it was now Mrs. McCann who had
+the right of way. She was evidently full of her subject at the present
+moment and, carried away by the earnestness of her expressed
+convictions, she paid no heed to Aileen's non-responsiveness.
+
+"An' I'm that proud that I'm Mrs. James Patrick McCann, wid a good house
+over me head, an' a good husband to pay rint that'll buy it on the
+insthalment plan, an' two little gells an' a darlin' baby to fill it,
+that I be thankin' God whiniver Jim falls to swearin'--an' that's ivery
+hour in the day; but it's only a habit he can't be broke of, for Father
+Honoré was after talkin' wid him, an' poor Jim was that put out wid
+himself, that he forgot an' swore his hardest to the priest that he'd
+lave off swearin' if only he knew whin he was doin' it! But he had to
+give up tryin', for he found himself swearin' at the baby he loved him
+so. An' whin he told Father Honoré the trouble he had wid himself an'
+the b'y, that darlin' man just smiled an' says:--'McCann, there's other
+ways of thankin' God for a good home, an' a lovin' wife, and a foine b'y
+like yours, than tellin' yer beads an' sayin' your prayers.'--He said
+that, he did; an' I say, I'm thankin' God ivery hour in the day that
+I've got a good husband to swear, an' a cellar to fill wid fuel an'
+potaters, an' a baby to put to me breast, an'--an'--it's the same I'm
+wishin' for you, me dear."
+
+There was a suspicious tremble in Maggie's voice as she turned again to
+her work.
+
+Aileen spoke slowly: "Indeed, I wish I had them all, Maggie; but those
+things are not for me."
+
+"Not for you!" Maggie dashed a tear from her eyes. "An' why not for you,
+I'd like to know? Isn't ivery wan sayin' ye've got the voice fit for the
+oppayra? An' isn't all the children an' the quarrymen just mad over yer
+teachin' an' singin'? An' look at what yer know an' can do! Didn't wan
+of the Sisters tell me the other day: 'Mrs. McCann,' says she, 'Aileen
+Armagh is an expurrt in embroidery, an' could earn her livin' by it.'
+An' wasn't Mrs. Caukins after praisin' yer cookin' an' sayin' you beat
+the whole Gore on yer doughnuts? An' didn't the Sisters come askin' me
+the other day if I had your receipt for the milk-rice? Jim says there's
+a man for ivery woman if she did but know it.--There now, I'm glad to
+see yer smilin' an' lookin' like yer old self! Just tell me if the
+curtains be up straight? Jim can't abide annything that ain't on the
+square. Straight, be they?"
+
+"Yes, straight as a string," said Aileen, laughing outright at Freckles'
+eloquence--the eloquence of one who was wont to be slow of speech before
+matrimony loosened her tongue and home love taught her the right word in
+the right place.
+
+"Straight, is it? Then I'll mount down an' we'll sit out in the kitchen
+an' hem the rest. It's Doosie Caukins has begged the loan of the two
+little gells for the afternoon. The twins seem to me most like my
+own--rale downright swate gells, an' it's hopin' I am they'll do well
+when it' comes to their marryin'."
+
+Aileen laughed merrily at the matrimonial persistence of her old chum's
+thoughts.
+
+"Oh, Maggie, you are an incorrigible matchmaker!"
+
+She picked up the baby and the yards of muslin she had been measuring
+for window lengths; leaving Maggie to follow, she went out into the
+kitchen and deposited Billy in the basket-crib beside her chair. Maggie
+joined her in a few minutes.
+
+"It seems like old times for you an' me to be chattin' together again so
+friendly-like--put a finger's length into the hem of the long ones; do
+you remember when Sister Angelica an' you an' me was cuddled together to
+watch thim dance the minute over at the Van Ostends'?--Och, you
+darlin'!"
+
+She rose from her chair and caught up the baby who was holding out both
+arms to her and trying in his semi-articulate way to indicate his
+preference of her lap to the basket.
+
+"What fun we had!" Aileen spoke half-heartedly; the mention of that name
+intensified the pain of an ever present thought.
+
+"An' did ye read her marriage in the papers, I guess 't was a year
+gone?"
+
+Aileen nodded.
+
+"Jim read it out to me wan night after supper, an' I got so homesick of
+a suddin' for the Caukinses, an' you, an' the quarries, an' Mrs.
+Googe--it was before me b'y come--that I fell to cryin' an' nearly cried
+me eyes out; an' Jim promised me then and there he'd come back to
+Flamsted for good and all. But he couldn't help sayin': 'What the divil
+are ye cryin' about, Maggie gell? I was readin' of the weddin' to ye,
+and thinkin' to hearten ye up a bit, an' here ye be cryin' fit to break
+yer heart, an' takin' on as if ye'd niver had a weddin' all by yerself!'
+An' that made me laugh; but, afterwards, I fell to cryin' the harder,
+an' told him I couldn't help it, for I'd got such a good lovin' husband,
+an' me an orphan as had nobody--
+
+"An' then I stopped, for Jim took me in his arms--he was in the
+rockin'-chair--and rocked back an' forth wid me like a mother does wid a
+six-months' child, an' kept croonin' an' croonin' till I fell asleep wid
+my head on his shoulder--" Mrs. McCann drew a long breath--"Och, Aileen,
+it's beautiful to be married!"
+
+For a while the two worked in silence, broken only by little Billy
+McCann, who was blissfully gurgling emphatic endorsement of everything
+his mother said. The bright sunshine of February filled the barren Gore
+full to the brim with sparkling light. From time to time the sharp
+crescendo _sz-szz-szzz_ of the trolleys, that now ran from The Corners
+to Quarry End Park at the head of The Gore, teased the still cold air.
+Maggie was in a reminiscent mood, being wrought upon unwittingly by the
+sunny quiet and homey kitchen warmth. She looked over the head of her
+baby to Aileen.
+
+"Do you remember the B'y who danced with the Marchioness, and when they
+was through stood head downwards with his slippers kicking in the air?"
+
+"Yes, and the butler, and how he hung on to his coat-tails!"
+
+Maggie laughed. "I wonder now could it be _the_ B'y--I mane the man she
+married?"
+
+Aileen looked up from her work. "Yes, he's the one."
+
+"An' how did you know that?" Maggie asked in some surprise.
+
+"Mrs. Champney told me--and then I knew she liked him."
+
+"Who, the Marchioness?"
+
+"Yes; I knew by the way she wrote about him that she liked him."
+
+"Well, now, who'd 'a' thought that! The very same B'y!" she exclaimed,
+at the same time looking puzzled as if not quite grasping the situation.
+"Why, I thought--I guess 't was Romanzo wrote me just about that
+time--that she was in love with Mr. Champney Googe." Her voice sank to a
+whisper on the last words. "Wouldn't it have been just awful if she
+had!"
+
+"She might have done a worse thing than to love him." Aileen's voice was
+hard in spite of her effort to speak naturally.
+
+Maggie broke forth in protest.
+
+"Now, how can you say that, Aileen! What would the poor gell's life have
+been worth married to a man that's in for seven years! Jim says when he
+comes out he can't niver vote again for prisident, an' it's ten chanct
+to wan that he'll get a job."
+
+In her earnestness she failed to notice that Aileen's face had borrowed
+its whiteness from the muslin over which she was bending.
+
+"Aileen--"
+
+"Yes, Maggie."
+
+"I'm goin' to tell you something. Jim told me the other day; he wouldn't
+mind my tellin' you, but he says he don't want anny wan of the fam'ly to
+get wind of it."
+
+"What is it?" Aileen looked up half fearfully.
+
+"Gracious, you look as if you'd seen a ghost! 'T isn't annything so rale
+dreadful, but it gives you a kind of onaisy feelin' round your heart."
+
+"What is it? Tell me quick." She spoke again peremptorily in order to
+cover her fear. Maggie looked at her wonderingly, and thought to herself
+that Aileen had changed beyond her knowledge.
+
+"There was a man Jim knew in the other quarries we was at, who got put
+into that same prison for two years--for breakin' an' enterin'--an' Jim
+see him not long ago; an' when Jim told him where he was workin' the man
+said just before he was comin' out, Mr. Googe come in, an' he see him
+_breakin' stones wid a prison gang_--rale toughs; think of that, an' he
+a gentleman born! Jim said that was tough; he says it's back-breakin'
+work; that quarryin' an' cuttin' ain't nothin' to that--ten hours a day,
+too. My heart's like to break for Mrs. Googe. I think of it ivery time I
+see her now; an' just look how she's workin' her fingers to the bone to
+support herself widout help! Mrs. Caukins says she's got seventeen
+mealers among the quarrymen now, an' there'll be more next spring. What
+do you s'pose her son would say to that?"
+
+She pressed her own boy a little more closely to her breast; the young
+mother's heart was stirred within her. "Mrs. Caukins says Mrs. Champney
+could help her an' save her lots, but she won't; she's no mind to."
+
+"I don't believe Mrs. Googe would accept any help from Mrs.
+Champney--and I don't blame her, either. I'd rather starve than be
+beholden to her!" The blood rushed into the face bent over the muslin.
+
+"Why don't you lave her, Aileen? I would--the stingy old screw!"
+
+Aileen folded her work and laid it aside before she answered.
+
+"I _am_ going soon, Maggie; I've stood it about as many years as I
+can--"
+
+"Oh, but I'm glad! It'll be like gettin' out of the jail yerself, for
+all you've made believe you've lived in a palace--but ye're niver goin'
+so early?" she protested earnestly.
+
+"Yes, I must, Maggie. You are not to tell anyone what I've said about
+leaving Mrs. Champney--not even Jim."
+
+Maggie's face fell. "Dear knows, I can promise you not to tell Jim; but
+it's like I'll be tellin' him in me slape. It's a trick I have, he says,
+whin I'm tryin' to kape something from him."
+
+She laughed happily, and bade Billy "shake a day-day" to the pretty
+lady; which behest Billy, half turning his rosy little face from the
+maternal fount, obeyed perfunctorily and then, smiling, closed his
+sleepy eyes upon his mother's breast.
+
+
+II
+
+Aileen took that picture of intimate love and warmth with her out into
+the keen frosty air of late February. But its effect was not to soften,
+to warm; it hardened rather. The thought of Maggie with her baby boy at
+her breast, of her cosy home, her loyalty to her husband and her love
+for him, of her thankfulness for the daily mercy of the wherewithal to
+feed the home mouths, reacted sharply, harshly, upon the mood she was
+in; for with the thought of that family life and family ties--the symbol
+of all that is sane and fruitful of the highest good in our
+humanity--was associated by extreme contrast another thought:--
+
+"And _he_ is breaking stones with a 'gang of toughs'--breaking stones!
+Not for the sake of the pittance that will procure for him his daily
+bread, but because he is forced to the toil like any galley slave. The
+prison walls are frowning behind him; the prison cell is his only home;
+the tin pan of coarse food, which is handed to him as he lines up with
+hundreds of others after the day's work, is the only substitute for the
+warm home-hearth, the lighted supper table, the merry give-and-take of
+family life that eases a man after his day's toil."
+
+Her very soul was in rebellion.
+
+She stopped short and looked about her. She was on the road to Father
+Honoré's house. It was just four o'clock, for the long whistle was
+sounding from the stone sheds down in the valley. She saw the quarrymen
+start homewards. Dark irregular files of them began crawling up over the
+granite ledges, many of which were lightly covered with snow. Although
+it was February, the winter was mild for this latitude, and the twelve
+hundred men in The Gore had lost but a few days during the last three
+months on account of the weather. Work had been plenty, and the spring
+promised, so the manager said, a rush of business. She watched them for
+a while.
+
+"And they are going to their homes--and he is still breaking stones!"
+Her thoughts revolved about that one fact.
+
+A sudden rush of tears blinded her; she drew her breath hard. What if
+she were to go to Father Honoré and tell him something of her trouble?
+Would it help? Would it ease the intolerable pain at her heart, lessen
+the load on her mind?
+
+She dared not answer, dared not think about it. Involuntarily she
+started forward at a quick pace towards the stone house over by the
+pines--a distance of a quarter of a mile.
+
+The sun was nearing the rim of the Flamsted Hills. Far beyond them, the
+mighty shoulder of Katahdin, mantled with white, caught the red gleam
+and lent to the deep blue of the northern heavens a faint rose
+reflection of the setting sun. The children, just from school, were
+shouting at their rough play--snow-balling, sledding, skating and
+tobogganning on that portion of the pond which had been cleared of snow.
+The great derricks on the ledges creaked and groaned as the remaining
+men made all fast for the night; like a gigantic cobweb their supporting
+wires stretched thick, enmeshed, and finely dark over the white expanse
+of the quarries. From the power-house a column of steam rose straight
+and steady into the windless air.
+
+Hurrying on, Aileen looked upon it with set lips and a hardening heart.
+She had come to hate, almost, the sight of this life of free toil for
+the sake of love and home.
+
+It was a woman who was thinking these thoughts in her rapid walk to the
+priest's house--a woman of twenty-six who for more than seven years had
+suffered in silence; suffered over and over again the humiliation that
+had been put upon her womanhood; who, despite that humiliation, could
+not divest herself of the idea that she still clung to her girlhood's
+love for the man who had humiliated her. She told herself again and
+again that she was idealizing that first feeling for him, instead of
+accepting the fact that, as a woman, she would be incapable, if the
+circumstances were to repeat themselves now, of experiencing it.
+
+Since that fateful night in The Gore, Champney Googe's name had never
+voluntarily passed her lips. So far as she knew, no one so much as
+suspected that she was a factor in his escape--for Luigi had kept her
+secret. Sometimes when she felt, rather than saw, Father Honoré's eyes
+fixed upon her in troubled questioning, the blood would rush to her
+cheeks and she could but wonder in dumb misery if Champney had told him
+anything concerning her during those ten days in New York.
+
+For six years there had been a veil, as it were, drawn between the
+lovely relations that had previously existed between Father Honoré and
+this firstling of his flock in Flamsted. For a year after his experience
+with Champney Googe in New York, he waited for some sign from Aileen
+that she was ready to open her heart to him; to clear up the mystery of
+the handkerchief; to free herself from what was evidently troubling her,
+wearing upon her, changing her in disposition--but not for the better.
+Aileen gave no sign. Another year passed, but Aileen gave no sign, and
+Father Honoré was still waiting.
+
+The priest did not believe in forcing open the portals to the secret
+chambers of the human heart. He respected the individual soul and its
+workings as a part of the divinely organized human. He believed that, in
+time, Aileen would come to him of her own accord and seek the help she
+so sorely needed. Meanwhile, he determined to await patiently the
+fulness of that time. He had waited already six years.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was looking over and arranging some large photographs of
+cathedrals--Cologne, Amiens, Westminster, Mayence, St. Mark's, Chester,
+and York--and the detail of nave, chancel, and choir. One showed the
+exquisite sculpture on a flying buttress; another the carving of a
+choir-stall canopy; a third the figure-crowded façade of a western
+porch. Here was the famous rose window in the Antwerp transept; the
+statue of one of the apostles in Naumburg; the nave of Cologne; the
+conglomerate of chapels about the apse of Mayence; the Angel's Pillar at
+Strasburg--they were a joy in line and proportion to the eye, in effect
+and spirit of purpose to the understanding mind, the receptive soul.
+
+Father Honoré was revelling in the thought of the men's appreciative
+delight when he should show them these lovely stones--across-the-sea kin
+to their own quarry granite. His semi-monthly talks with the quarrymen
+and stone-cutters were assuming, after many years, the proportions of
+lectures on art and scientific themes. Already many a professor from
+some far-away university had accepted his invitation to give of his best
+to the granite men of Maine. Rarely had they found a more fitting or
+appreciative audience.
+
+"How divine!" he murmured to himself, his eyes dwelling lovingly--at the
+same time his pencil was making notes--on the 'Prentice Pillar in Roslyn
+Chapel. Then he smiled at the thought of the contrast it offered to his
+own chapel in the meadows by the lake shore. In that, every stone, as in
+the making of the Tabernacle of old, had been a free-will offering from
+the men--each laid in its place by a willing worker; and, because
+willing, the rough walls were as eloquent of earnest endeavor as the
+famed 'Prentice Pillar itself.
+
+"I'd like to see such a one as this in our chapel!" He was talking to
+himself as was his way when alone. "I believe Luigi Poggi, if he had
+kept on in the sheds, would in time have given this a close second."
+
+He took up the magnifying glass to examine the curled edges of the stone
+kale leaves.
+
+There was a knock at the door.
+
+He hastily placed the photographs in a long box beside the table, and,
+instead of saying "Come in," stepped to the door and opened it.
+
+Aileen stood there. The look in her eyes as she raised them to his, and
+said in a subdued voice, "Father Honoré, can you spare me a little time,
+all to myself?" gave him hope that the fulness of time was come.
+
+"I always have time for you, Aileen; come in. I'll start up the fire a
+bit; it's growing much colder."
+
+He laid the wood on the hearth, and with the bellows blew it to a
+leaping flame. While he was thus occupied, Aileen looked around her. She
+knew this room and loved it.
+
+The stone fireplace was deep and ample, built by Father Honoré,--indeed,
+the entire one storey house was his handiwork. Above it hung a large
+wooden crucifix. On the shelf beneath were ranged some superb specimens
+of quartz and granite. The plain deal table, also of ample proportions,
+was piled at one end high with books and pamphlets. Two large windows
+overlooked the pond, the sloping depression of The Gore, the course of
+the Rothel, and the headwaters of Lake Mesantic. Some plain wooden
+armchairs were set against the walls that had been rough plastered and
+washed with burnt sienna brown. On them was hung an exquisite
+engraving--the Sistine Madonna and Child. There were also a few
+etchings, among them a copy of Whistler's _The Thames by London Bridge_,
+and a view of Niagara by moonlight. A mineral cabinet, filled to
+overflowing with fine specimens, extended the entire length of one wall.
+The pine floor was oiled and stained; large hooked rugs, genuine
+products of Maine, lay here and there upon it.
+
+Many a man coming in from the quarries or the sheds with a grievance, a
+burden, or a joy, felt the influence of this simple room. Many a woman
+brought here her heavy over-charged heart and was eased in its
+fire-lighted atmosphere of welcome. Many a child brought hither its
+spring offering of the first mitchella, or its autumn gift of
+checkerberries. Many a girl, many a boy had met here to rehearse a
+Christmas glee or an Easter anthem. Many a night these walls echoed to
+the strains of the priest's violin, when he sat alone by the fireside
+with only the Past for a guest. And these combined influences lingered
+in the room, mellowed it, hallowed it, and made themselves felt to one
+and all as beneficent--even as now to Aileen.
+
+Father Honoré placed two of the wooden chairs before the blazing fire.
+Aileen took one.
+
+"Draw up a little nearer, Aileen; you look chilled." He noticed her
+extreme pallor and the slight trembling of her shoulders.
+
+She glanced out of the window at some quarrymen who were passing.
+
+"You don't think we shall be interrupted, do you?" she asked rather
+nervously.
+
+"Oh, no. I'll just step to the kitchen and give a word to Thérèse. She
+is a good watchdog when I am not to be disturbed." He opened a door at
+the back of the room.
+
+"Thérèse."
+
+"On y va."
+
+An old French Canadian appeared in answer to his call. He addressed her
+in French.
+
+"If any one should knock, Thérèse, just step to the kitchen porch door
+and say that I am engaged for an hour, at least."
+
+"Oui, oui, Père Honoré."
+
+He closed the door.
+
+"There, now you can have your chat 'all to yourself' as you requested,"
+he said smiling. He sat down in the other chair he had drawn to the
+fire.
+
+"I've been over to Maggie's this afternoon--"
+
+She hesitated; it was not easy to find an opening for her long pent
+trouble.
+
+Father Honoré spread his hands to the blaze.
+
+"She has a fine boy. I'm glad McCann is back again, and I hope anchored
+here for life. He's trying to buy his home he tells me."
+
+"So Maggie said--Father Honoré;" she clasped and unclasped her hands
+nervously; "I think it's that that has made me come to you to-day."
+
+"That?--I think I don't quite understand, Aileen."
+
+"The home--I think I never felt so alone--so homeless as when I was
+there with her--and the baby--"
+
+She looked down, struggling to keep back the tears. Despite her efforts
+the bright drops plashed one after the other on her clasped hands. She
+raised her eyes, looking almost defiantly through the falling tears at
+the priest; the blood surged into her white cheeks; the rush of words
+followed:--
+
+"I have no home--I've never had one--never shall have one--it's not for
+me, that paradise; it's for men and women like Jim McCann and
+Maggie.--Oh, why did I come here!" she cried out wildly; "why did you
+put me there in that house?--Why didn't Mr. Van Ostend let me alone
+where I was--happy with the rest! Why," she demanded almost fiercely,
+"why can't a child's life be her own to do with what she chooses? Why
+has any human being a right to say to another, whether young or old,
+'You shall live here and not there'? Oh, it is tyrannical--it is tyranny
+of the worst kind, and what haven't I had to suffer from it all! It is
+like Hell on earth!"
+
+Her breath caught in great sobs that shook her; her eyes flashed through
+blinding tears; her cheeks were crimson; she continued to clasp and
+unclasp her hands.
+
+The peculiar ivory tint of the strong pock-marked face opposite her took
+on, during this outburst, a slightly livid hue. Every word she uttered
+was a blow; for in it was voiced misery of mind, suffering and hardness
+of heart, despair, ingratitude, undeserved reproach, anger, defiance and
+the ignoring of all facts save those in the recollection of which she
+had lost all poise, all control--And she was still so young! What was
+behind these facts that occasioned such a tirade?
+
+This was the priest's problem.
+
+He waited a moment to regain his own control. The ingratitude, the
+bitter injustice had shocked him out of it. Her mood seemed one of
+defiance only. The woman before him was one he had never known in the
+Aileen Armagh of the last fourteen years. He knew, moreover, that he
+must not speak--dare not, as a sacred obligation to his office, until he
+no longer felt the touch of anger he experienced upon hearing her
+unrestrained outburst. It was but a moment before that touch was
+removed; his heart softened towards her; filled suddenly with a pitying
+love, for with his mind's eye he saw the small blood-stained
+handkerchief in his hand, the initials A. A., the man on the cot from
+whose arm he had taken it more than six years before. Six years! How she
+must have suffered--and in silence!
+
+"Aileen," he said at last and very gently, "whatever was done for you at
+that time was done with the best intentions for your good. Believe me,
+could Mr. Van Ostend and I have foreseen such resulting wretchedness as
+this for our efforts, we should never have insisted on carrying out our
+plan for you. But, like yourself, we are human--we could not foresee
+this any more than you could. There is, however, one course always open
+to you--"
+
+"What?" she demanded; her voice was harsh from continued struggle with
+her complex emotions. She was past all realization of what she owed to
+the dignity of his office.
+
+"You have long been of age; you are at liberty to leave Mrs. Champney
+whenever you will."
+
+"I am going to." The response came prompt and hard.
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"I don't know--yet--;" her speech faltered; "but I want to try the
+stage. Every one says I have the voice for it, and I suppose I could
+make a hit in light operetta or vaudeville as well now as when I was a
+child. A few years more and I shall be too old."
+
+"And you think you can enter into such publicity without protection?"
+
+"Oh, I'm able to protect myself--I've done that already." She spoke with
+bitterness.
+
+"True, you are a woman now--but still a young woman--"
+
+Father Honoré stopped there. He was making no headway with her. He knew
+only too well that, as yet, he had not begun to get beneath the surface.
+When he spoke it was as if he were merely thinking aloud.
+
+"Somehow, I hadn't thought that you would be so ready to leave us
+all--so many friends. Are we nothing to you, Aileen? Will you make
+better, truer ones among strangers? I can hardly think so."
+
+She covered her face with her hands and began to sob again, but
+brokenly.
+
+"Aileen, my daughter, what is it? Is there any new trouble preparing for
+you at The Bow?"
+
+She shook her head. The tears trickled through her fingers.
+
+"Does Mrs. Champney know that you are going to leave her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Has it become unbearable?"
+
+Another shake of the head. She searched blindly for her handkerchief,
+drew it forth and wiped her eyes and face.
+
+"No; she's kinder than she's been for a long time--ever since that last
+stroke. She wants me with her most of the time."
+
+"Has she ever spoken to you about remaining with her?"
+
+"Yes, a good many times. She tried to make me promise I would stay
+till--till she doesn't need me. But, I couldn't, you know."
+
+"Then why--but of course I know you are worn out by her long invalidism
+and tired of the fourteen years in that one house. Still, she has been
+lenient since you were twenty-one. She has permitted you--although of
+course you had the undisputed right--to earn for yourself in teaching
+the singing classes in the afternoon and evening school, and she pays
+you something beside--fairly well, doesn't she? I think you told me you
+were satisfied."
+
+"Oh yes, in a way--so far as it goes. She doesn't begin to pay me as she
+would have to pay another girl in my position--if I have any there. I
+haven't said anything about it to her, because I wanted to work off my
+indebtedness to her on account of what she spent on me in bringing me
+up--she never let me forget that in those first seven years! I want to
+give more than I've had," she said proudly, "and sometime I shall tell
+her of it."
+
+"But you have never given her any love?"
+
+"No, I couldn't give her that.--Do you blame me?"
+
+"No; you have done your whole duty by her. May I suggest that when you
+leave her you still make your home with us here in Flamsted? You have no
+other home, my child."
+
+"No, I have no other home," she repeated mechanically.
+
+"I know, at least, two that are open to you at any time you choose to
+avail yourself of their hospitality. Mrs. Caukins would be so glad to
+have you both for her daughters' sake and her own. The Colonel desires
+this as much as she does and--" he hesitated a moment, "now that Romanzo
+has his position in the New York office, and has married and settled
+there, there could be no objection so far as I can see."
+
+There was no response.
+
+"But if you do not care to consider that, there is another. About seven
+months ago, Mrs. Googe--"
+
+"Mrs. Googe?"
+
+She turned to him a face from which every particle of color had faded.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Googe. She would have spoken to you herself long before this,
+but, you know, Aileen, how she would feel in the circumstances--she
+would not think of suggesting your coming to her from Mrs. Champney. I
+feel sure she is waiting for you to take the initiative."
+
+"Mrs. Googe?" she repeated, continuing to stare at him--blankly, as if
+she had heard but those two words of all that he was saying.
+
+"Why, yes, Mrs. Googe. Is there anything so strange in that? She has
+always loved you, and she said to me, only the other day, 'I would love
+to have her young companionship in my house'--she will never call it
+home, you know, until her son returns--'to be as a daughter to me'--"
+
+"Daughter!--I--want air--"
+
+She swayed forward in speaking. Father Honoré sprang and caught her or
+she would have fallen. He placed her firmly against the chair back and
+opened the window. The keen night air charged with frost quickly revived
+her.
+
+"You were sitting too near the fire; I should have remembered that you
+had come in from the cold," he said, delicately regarding her feelings;
+"let me get you a glass of water, Aileen."
+
+She put out her hand with a gesture of dissent. She began to breathe
+freely. The room chilled rapidly. Father Honoré closed the window and
+took his stand on the hearth. Aileen raised her eyes to him. It seemed
+as if she lifted the swollen reddened lids with difficulty.
+
+"Father Honoré," she said in a low voice, tense with suppressed feeling,
+"dear Father Honoré, the only father I have ever known, don't you know
+_why_ I cannot go to Mrs. Googe's?--why I must not stay too long in
+Flamsted?"
+
+And looking into those eyes, that were incapable of insincerity, that,
+in the present instance, attempted to veil nothing, the priest read all
+that of which, six years ago on that never to be forgotten November
+night in New York, he had had premonition.
+
+"My daughter--is it because of Champney's prospective return within a
+year that you feel you cannot remain longer with us?"
+
+Her quivering lips gave an almost inaudible assent.
+
+"Why?" He dared not spare her; he felt, moreover, that she did not wish
+to be spared. His eyes held hers.
+
+Bravely she answered, bracing soul and mind and body to steadfastness.
+There was not a wavering of an eyelid, not a suggestion of faltering
+speech as she spoke the words that alone could lift from her
+overburdened heart the weight of a seven years' silence:
+
+"Because I love him."
+
+The answer seemed to Father Honoré supreme in its sacrificial
+simplicity. He laid his hand on her head. She bowed beneath his touch.
+
+"I have tried so hard," she murmured, "so hard--and I cannot help it. I
+have despised myself for it--if only he hadn't been put _there_, I think
+it would have helped--but he is there, and my thoughts are with him
+there--I see him nights--in that cell--I see him daytimes _breaking
+stones_--I can't sleep, or eat, without comparing--you know. Oh, if he
+hadn't been put _there_, I could have conquered this weakness--"
+
+"Aileen, _no_! It is no weakness, it is strength."
+
+Father Honoré withdrew his hand, that had been to the broken woman a
+silent benediction, and walked up and down the long room. "You would
+never have conquered; there was--there is no need to conquer. Such love
+is of God--trust it, my child; don't try any longer to thrust it forth
+from your heart, your life; for if you do, your life will be but a poor
+maimed thing, beneficial neither to yourself nor to others. I say,
+cherish this supreme love for the man who is expiating in a prison; hold
+it close to your soul as a shield and buckler to the spirit against the
+world; truly, you will need no other if you go forth from us into a
+world of strangers--but why, why need you go?"
+
+He spoke gently, but insistently. He saw that the girl was hanging upon
+his every word as if he bespoke her eternal salvation. And, in truth,
+the priest was illumining the dark and hidden places of her life and
+giving her courage to love on which, to her, meant courage to live
+on.--Such were the demands of a nature, loyal, impulsive, warmly
+affectionate, sincere, capable of an all-sacrificing love that could
+give without return if need be, but a nature which, without love
+developing in her of itself just for the sake of love, would shrivel,
+become embittered, and like withered fruit on a tree drop useless to the
+ground to be trodden under the careless foot of man.
+
+In the darkening room the firelight leaped and showed to Father Honoré
+the woman's face transfigured under the powerful influence of his words.
+She smiled up at him--a smile so brave in its pathos, so winning in its
+true womanliness, that Father Honoré felt the tears bite his eyeballs.
+
+"Perhaps I don't need to go then."
+
+"This rejoices me, Aileen--it will rejoice us all," he answered heartily
+to cover his emotion.
+
+"But it won't be easy to stay where I am."
+
+"I know--I know; you speak as one who has suffered; but has not Champney
+suffered too? Think of his home-coming!"
+
+"Yes, he has suffered--in a way--but not my way."
+
+Father Honoré had a vision at that moment of Champney Googe's face when
+he said, "But you loved her with your whole manhood." He made no reply,
+but waited for Aileen to say more if she should so choose.
+
+"I believed he loved me--and so I told him my love--I shall never, never
+get over that!" she exclaimed passionately. "But I know now--I knew
+before he went away the last time, that I was mistaken; no man could
+say what he did and know even the first letter of love."
+
+Her indignation was rising, and Father Honoré welcomed it; it was a
+natural trait with her, and its suppression gave him more cause for
+anxiety than its expression.
+
+"He didn't love me--not really--"
+
+"Are you sure of this, Aileen?"
+
+"Yes, I am sure."
+
+"You have good reason to know that you are telling a fact in asserting
+this?"
+
+"Yes, altogether too good a reason." There was a return of bitterness in
+her answer.
+
+Father Honoré was baffled. Aileen spoke without further questioning.
+Evidently she was desirous of making her position as well as Champney's
+plain to him and to herself. Her voice grew more gentle as she
+continued:--
+
+"Father Honoré, I've loved him so long--and so truly, without hope, you
+know--never any hope, and hating myself for loving where I was not
+loved--that I think I do know what love is--"
+
+Father Honoré smiled to himself in the half-dark; this voice was still
+young, and its love-wisdom was young-wise, also. There was hope, he told
+himself, that all would come right in the end--work together for good.
+
+"But Mr. Googe never loved me as I loved him--and I couldn't accept
+less."
+
+The priest caught but the lesser part of her meaning. Even his wisdom
+and years failed to throw light on the devious path of Aileen's thoughts
+at this moment. Of the truth contained in her expression, he had no
+inkling.
+
+"Aileen, I don't know that I can make it plain to you, but--a man's
+love is so different from a woman's that, sometimes, I think such a
+statement as you have just made is so full of flaws that it amounts to
+sophistry; but there is no need to discuss that.--Let me ask you if you
+can endure to stay on with Mrs. Champney for a few months longer? I have
+a very special reason for asking this. Sometime I will tell you."
+
+"Oh, yes;" she spoke wearily, indifferently; "I may as well stay there
+as anywhere now." Then with more interest and animation, "May I tell you
+something I have kept to myself all these years? I want to get rid of
+it."
+
+"Surely--the more the better when the heart is burdened."
+
+He took his seat again, and with pitying love and ever increasing
+interest and amazement listened to her recital of the part she played on
+that October night in the quarry woods--of her hate that turned to love
+again when she found the man she had both loved and hated in the extreme
+of need, of the 'murder'--so she termed it in her contrition--of Rag, of
+her swearing Luigi to silence. She told of herself--but of Champney
+Googe's unmanly temptation of her honor, of his mad passion for her, she
+said never a word; her two pronounced traits of chastity and loyalty
+forbade it, as well as the desire of a loving woman to shield him she
+loved in spite of herself.
+
+Of the little handkerchief that played its part in that night's
+threatened tragedy she said nothing--neither did Father Honoré;
+evidently, she had forgotten it.
+
+Suddenly she clasped her hands hard over her heart.
+
+"That dear loving little dog's death has lain here like a stone all
+these years," she said, and rose to go.
+
+"You are absolved, Aileen," he said smiling. "It was, like many others,
+a little devoted life sacrificed to a great love."
+
+He reached to press the button that turned on the electric lights. Their
+soft brilliance caught in sparkling gleams on the points of a small
+piece of almost pure white granite among the specimens on the shelf
+above them. Father Honoré rose and took it from its place.
+
+"This is for you, Aileen," he said handing it to her.
+
+"For me?" She looked at him in wonder, not understanding what he meant
+by this insignificant gift at such a time.
+
+He smiled at her look of amazement.
+
+"No wonder you look puzzled. You must be thinking you have 'asked me for
+bread and I am giving you a stone.' But this is for remembrance."
+
+He hesitated a moment.
+
+"You said once this afternoon, that for years it had been a hell on
+earth for you--a strong expression to fall from a young woman's lips;
+and I said nothing. Sometime, perhaps, you will see things differently.
+But if I said nothing, it was only because I thought the more; for just
+as you spoke those words, my eye caught the glitter of this piece of
+granite in the firelight, and I said to myself--'that is like what
+Aileen's life will be, and through her life what her character will
+prove to be.' This stone has been crushed, subjected to unimaginable
+heat, upheaved, submerged, ground again to powder, remelted,
+overwhelmed, made adamant, rent, upheaved again,--and now, after æons,
+it lies here so near the blue above our Flamsted Hills, worthy to be
+used and put to all noble uses; fittest in all the world for foundation
+stone--for it is the foundation rock of our earth crust--for all
+lasting memorials of great deed and noble thought; for all temples and
+holies of holies. Take it, Aileen, and--remember!"
+
+"I will, oh, I will; and I'll try to fit myself, too; I'll try, dear,
+dear Father Honoré," she said humbly, gratefully.
+
+He held out his hand and she placed hers in it. He opened the door.
+
+"Good night, Aileen, and God bless you."
+
+"Good night, Father Honoré."
+
+She went out into the clear winter starlight. The piece of granite, she
+held tightly clasped in her hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The priest, after closing the door, went to the pine table and opening a
+drawer took out a letter. It bore a recent date. It was from the
+chaplain of the prison and informed him there was a strong prospect of
+release for Champney Googe at least three months before the end of his
+term. Father Honoré smiled to himself. He refolded it and laid it in the
+drawer.
+
+
+III
+
+Early in the following March, on the arrival of the 3 P.M. train from
+Hallsport, there was the usual crowd at The Corners' station to meet it.
+They watched the passengers as they left the train and commented freely
+on one and another known to them.
+
+"I'll bet that's the new boss at the upper quarries," said one, pointing
+to a short thickset man making his way up the platform.
+
+"Yes, that's him; and they're taking on a gang of new men with him;
+they're in the last car--there they come! There's going to be a regular
+spring freshet of 'em coming along now--the business is booming."
+
+They scanned the men closely as they passed, between twenty and thirty
+of them of various nationalities. They were gesticulating wildly,
+vociferating loudly, shouldering bundle, knapsack or tool-kit. Behind
+them came a few stone-cutters, mostly Scotch and Irish. The last to
+leave the train was evidently an American.
+
+The crowd on the platform surged away to the electric car to watch
+further proceedings of the newly arrived "gang." The arrival of the
+immigrant workmen always afforded fun for the natives. The men shivered
+and hunched their shoulders; the raw March wind was searching. The
+gesticulating and vociferating increased. To any one unacquainted with
+foreign ways, a complete rupture of international peace and relations
+seemed imminent. They tumbled over one another into the cars and filled
+them to overflowing, even to the platform where they clung to the
+guards.
+
+The man who had been the last to leave the train stood on the emptied
+platform and looked about him. He carried a small bundle. He noted the
+sign on the electric cars, "To Quarry End Park". A puzzled look came
+into his face. He turned to the baggage-master who was wrestling with
+the immigrants' baggage:--iron-bound chests, tin boxes and trunks, sacks
+of heavy coarse linen filled with bedding.
+
+"Does this car go to the sheds?"
+
+The station master looked up. "It goes past there, but this is the
+regular half-hour express for the quarries and the Park. You a stranger
+in these parts?"
+
+"This is all strange to me," the man answered.
+
+"Any baggage?"
+
+"No."
+
+At that moment there was a rapid clanging of the gong; the motorman let
+fly the whirling rod; the over full cars started with a jerk--there was
+a howl, a shout, followed by a struggle to keep the equilibrium; an
+undersized Canuck was seen to be running madly alongside with one hand
+on the guard and endeavoring to get a foothold; he was hauled up
+unceremoniously by a dozen hands. The crowd watching them, cheered and
+jeered:
+
+"Goin' it some, Antoine! Don't get left!"
+
+"Keep on your pins, you Dagos!"
+
+"Steady, Polacks--there's the strap!"
+
+"Gee up, Johnny!" This to the motorman.
+
+"Gosh, it's like a soda bottle fizzin' to hear them Rooshians talkin'."
+
+"Hooray for you!"
+
+The cars were off swiftly now; the men on the platforms waved their
+hats, their white teeth flashing, their gold earrings twinkling, and
+echoed the American cheer:--
+
+"Horray!"
+
+The station master turned away laughing.
+
+"They look like a tough crowd, but they're O. K. in the end," he said to
+the man beside him who was looking after the vanishing car and its
+trailer. "There's yours coming down the switch. That'll take you up to
+Flamsted and the sheds." He pushed the loaded truck up the platform.
+
+The stranger entered the car and took a seat at the rear; there were no
+other passengers. He told the conductor to leave him as near as possible
+to the sheds.
+
+"Guess you don't know these parts?" The conductor put the question.
+
+"This here is new to me," the man answered; he seemed nothing loath to
+enter into conversation. "When was this road built?"
+
+"'Bout five years ago. You'll see what a roadway they've made clear
+along the north shore of the lake; it's bein' built up with houses just
+as fast as it's taken up."
+
+He rang the starting bell. The car gathered headway and sped noisily
+along the frozen road-bed. In a few minutes it stopped at the Flamsted
+station; then it followed the shore of the lake for two miles until it
+reached the sheds. It stopped here and the man got out.
+
+"Can you tell me where the manager's office is?" he asked a workman who
+was passing.
+
+"Over there." He pointed with his thumb backwards across some railroad
+tracks and through a stone-yard to a small two-storey office building at
+the end of three huge sheds.
+
+The man made his way across to them. Once he stopped to look at the
+leaden waters of the lake, rimmed with ice; and up at the leaden sky
+that seemed to be shutting down close upon them like a lid; and around
+at the gray waste of frozen ground, the meadows covered lightly with
+snow and pools of surface ice that here and there showed the long
+bleached grass pricking through in grayish-yellow tufts. Beyond the
+meadows he saw a rude stone chapel, and near by the foundations, capped
+with wood, of a large church. He shivered once; he had no overcoat. Then
+he went on to the manager's office. He rang and opened the door.
+
+"Can I see the manager?"
+
+"He's out now; gone over to the engine-house to see about the new smoke
+stack; he'll be back in a few minutes. Guess you'll find a stool in the
+other room."
+
+The man entered the room, but remained standing, listening with
+increasing interest to the technical talk of the other two men who were
+half lying on the table as they bent over some large plans--an
+architect's blue prints. Finally the man drew near.
+
+"May I look too?" he asked.
+
+"Sure. These are the working plans for the new Episcopal cathedral at
+A.;" he named a well known city; "you've heard of it, I s'pose?"
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"Here for a job?"
+
+"Yes. Is all this work to be done by the company?"
+
+"Every stone. We got the contract eleven months ago. We're at work on
+these courses now." He turned the plates that the man might see.
+
+He bent over to examine them, noting the wonderful detail of arch and
+architrave, of keystone, cornice and foundation course. Each stone,
+varying in size and shape, was drawn with utmost accuracy, dimensions
+given, numbered with its own number for the place of its setting into
+the perfect whole. The stability of the whole giant structure was
+dependent upon the perfection and right placing of each individual stone
+from lowest foundation to the keystones of the vaulting arches of the
+nave; the harmony of design dependent on rightly maintained proportions
+of each granite block, large or small--and all this marvellous structure
+was the product of the rude granite veins in The Gore! That adamantine
+mixture of gneiss and quartz, prepared in nature's laboratory throughout
+millions of years, was now furnishing the rock which, beneath human
+manipulation, was flowering into the great cathedral! And that perfect
+whole was _ideaed_ first in the brain of man, and a sketch of it
+transferred by the sun itself to the blue paper which lay on the table!
+
+What a combination and transmutation of those forceful powers that
+originate in the Unnamable!
+
+The manager entered, passed into the next room and, sitting down at his
+desk, began to make notes on a pad. At a sign from the two men, the
+stranger followed him, cap in hand.
+
+The manager spoke without looking at him:--"Well?"
+
+"I'd like a job in the sheds."
+
+At the sound of that voice, the manager glanced up quickly, keenly. He
+saw before him a man evidently prematurely gray. The broad shoulders
+bowed slightly as if from long-continued work involving much stooping.
+He looked at the hands; they were rough, calloused with toil, the
+knuckles spread, the nails broken and worn. Then he looked again into
+the face; that puzzled him. It was smooth-shaven, square in outline and
+rather thin, but the color was good; the eyes--what eyes!
+
+The manager found himself wondering if there were a pair to match them
+in the wide world. They were slightly sunken, large, blue, of a depth
+and beauty and clarity rarely seen in that color. Within them, as if at
+home, dwelt an expression of inner quiet, and sadness combined with
+strength and firmness. It was not easy to look long into them without
+wanting to grasp the possessor's hand in fellowship. They smiled, too,
+as the manager continued to stare. That broke the spell; they were
+undeniably human. The manager smiled in response.
+
+"Learned your trade?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long have you been working at it?"
+
+"Between six and seven years."
+
+"Any tools with you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Union man?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Hm-m."
+
+The manager chewed the handle of his pen, and thought something out with
+himself; his eyes were on the pad before him.
+
+"We've got to take on a lot of new men for the next two years--as many
+as we can of skilled workmen. The break will have to be made sometime.
+Anyhow, if you'll risk it they've got a job for you in Shed Number
+Two--cutting and squaring for a while--forty cents an hour--eight hour
+day. I'll telephone to the boss if you want it."
+
+"I do."
+
+He took up the desk-telephone and gave his message.
+
+"It's all right." He drew out a ledger from beneath the desk. "What's
+your letter?"
+
+"Letter?" The man looked startled for a moment.
+
+"Yes, initial of your last name."
+
+"G."
+
+The manager found the letter, thrust in his finger, opened the page
+indicated and shoved the book over the desk towards the applicant. He
+handed him his pen.
+
+"Write your name, your age, and what you're native of." He indicated the
+columns.
+
+The man took the pen. He seemed at first slightly awkward in handling
+it. The entry he made was as follows:
+
+"Louis C. Googe--thirty-four--United States."
+
+The manager glanced at it. "That's a common enough name in Maine and
+these parts," he said. Then he pointed through the window. "That's the
+shed over there--the middle one. The boss'll give you some tools till
+you get yours."
+
+"Thank you." The man put on his cap and went out.
+
+"Well, I'll be hanged!" was all the manager said as he looked after the
+applicant. Then he rose, went to the office door and watched the man
+making his way through the stone-yards towards the sheds. "Well, boys,"
+he said further, turning to the two men bending over the plans, "that
+suit ain't exactly a misfit, but it hasn't seen the light of day for a
+good many years--and it's the same with the man. What in thunder is he
+doing in the sheds! Did he say anything specially to you before I came
+in?"
+
+"No; only he seemed mighty interested in the plans, examined the detail
+of some of them--as if he knew."
+
+"We'll keep our eyes on him." The manager went back to his desk.
+
+
+IV
+
+Perhaps the dreariest environment imaginable is a stone-cutters' shed on
+a bleak day in the first week in March. The large ones stretching along
+the north shore of Lake Mesantic are no exception to this statement. A
+high wind from the northeast was driving before it particles of ice, and
+now and then a snow flurry. It penetrated every crack and crevice of the
+huge buildings, the second and largest of which covered a ground space
+of more than an acre. Every gust made itself both felt and heard among
+the rafters. Near the great doors the granite dust whirled in eddies.
+
+At this hour in the afternoon Shed Number Two was a study in black and
+gray and white. Gray dust several inches thick spread underfoot; all
+about were gray walls, gray and white granite piles, gray columns,
+arches, uncut blocks, heaps of granite waste, gray workmen in gray
+blouses and canvas aprons covered with gray dust. In one corner towered
+the huge gray-black McDonald machine in mighty strength, its multiple
+revolving arms furnished with gigantic iron fists which manipulate the
+unyielding granite with Herculean automatonism--an invention of the
+film-like brain of man to conquer in a few minutes the work of nature's
+æons! Gray-black overhead stretched the running rails for the monster
+electric travelling crane; some men crawling out on them looked like
+monkeys. Here and there might be seen the small insignificant "Lewis
+Key"--a thing that may be held on a woman's palm--sustaining a granite
+weight of many tons.
+
+There were three hundred men at work in this shed, and the ringing
+_chip-chip-chipping_ monotone from the hundreds of hammers and chisels,
+filled the great space with industry's wordless song that has its
+perfect harmony for him who listens with open ears and expansive mind.
+
+Jim McCann was at work near the shed doors which had been opened several
+times since one o'clock to admit the flat cars with the granite. He was
+alternately blowing on his benumbed fingers and cursing the doors and
+the draught that was chilling him to the marrow. The granite dust was
+swirling about his legs and rising into his nostrils. It lacked a
+half-hour to four.
+
+Two cars rolled in silently.
+
+"Shut thim damned doors, man!" he shouted across to the door-tender;
+"God kape us but we' it's our last death we'll be ketchin' before we can
+clane out our lungs o' the dust we've swallowed the day. It's after
+bein' wan damned slitherin' whorl of grit in the nose of me since eight
+the morn."
+
+He struck hard on his chisel and a spark flew. A workman, an Italian,
+laughed.
+
+"That's arll-rright, Jim--fire up!"
+
+"You kape shet," growled McCann. He was unfriendly as a rule to the
+Dagos. "It's in me blood," was his only excuse.
+
+"An' if it's a firin' ye be after," he continued, "ye'll get it shurre
+if ye lave off workin' to warm up yer tongue wid such sass.--Shut thim
+doors!" he shouted again; but a gust of wind failed to carry his voice
+in the desired direction.
+
+In the swirling roar and the small dust-spout that followed in its
+wake, Jim and the workmen in his cold section were aware of a man who
+had been half-blown in with the whirling dust. He took shelter for a
+moment by the inner wall. The foreman saw him and recognized him for the
+man who, the manager had just telephoned, was coming over from the
+office. He came forward to meet him.
+
+"You're the man who has just taken on a job in Shed Number Two?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The foreman signed to one of the men and told him to bring an extra set
+of tools.
+
+"Here's your section," he said indicating McCann's; "you can begin on
+this block--just squaring it for to-night."
+
+The man took his tools with a "Thank you," and went to work. The others
+watched him furtively, as Jim told Maggie afterwards "from the tail of
+me eye."
+
+He knew his work. They soon saw that. Every stroke told. The doors were
+shut at last and the electric lights turned on. Up to the stroke of four
+the men worked like automatons--_chip-chip-chipping_. Now and then there
+was some chaffing, good-natured if rough.
+
+The little Canuck, who by dint of running had caught the car, was
+working nearby. McCann called out to him:
+
+"I say, Antwine, where you'd be after gettin' that cap with the monkey
+ears?"
+
+"Bah gosh, Ah have get dis à Mo'real--at good marché--sheep." He stroked
+the small skin earlaps caressingly with one hand, then spat upon his
+palm and fell to work again.
+
+"Montreal is it? When did you go?"
+
+"Ah was went tree day--le Père Honoré tol' mah Ah better was go to mon
+maître; he was dead las' week."
+
+"Wot yer givin' us, Antwine? Three days to see yer dead mater an' lavin'
+yer stiddy job for the likes of him, an' good luck yer come back this
+afternoon or the new man 'ud 'a' had it."
+
+"Ah, non--ah, non! De boss haf tol' mah, Ah was keep mah shob. Ah,
+non--ah, non. Ah was went pour l'amour de Père Honoré."
+
+"Damn yer lingo--shpake English, I tell you."
+
+Antoine grinned and shook his head.
+
+"Wot yer givin' us about his Riverince, eh?"
+
+"Le Père Honoré, hein? Ah-h-h-rr, le bon Père Honoré! Attendez--he tol'
+mah Ah was best non raconter--mais, Ah raconte you, Shim--"
+
+"Go ahead, Johnny Frog; let's hear."
+
+"Ah was been lee'l garçon--lee'l bébé, no père; ma mère was been--how
+you say?--gypsee à cheval, hein?" he appealed to McCann.
+
+"You mane a gypsy that rides round the counthry?"
+
+Antoine nodded emphatically. "Yah--oui, gypsee à cheval, an' bars--"
+
+"Bears?"
+
+"Mais oui, bruins--bars; pour les faire dancer--"
+
+"You mane your mother was a gypsy that went round the counthry showin'
+off dancin' bears?"
+
+"Yah-oui. Ah mane so. She haf been seek--malade--how you say, petite
+vérole--so like de Père Honoré?" He made with his forefinger dents in
+his face and forehead.
+
+"An' is it the shmall pox yer mane?"
+
+"Yah-oui, shmall pookes. She was haf it, an' tout le monde--how you
+say?--efferybodyee was haf fear. She was haf nottin' to eat--nottin' to
+drrink; le Père Honoré was fin' her in de bois--forêt, an' was been tak'
+ma pauvre mère in hees ahrms, an' he place her in de sugair-house, an'
+il l'a soignée--how you say?" He appealed to the Italian whose interest
+was on the increase.
+
+"Nurrsed?"
+
+"Yah--oui, nurrsed her, an' moi aussi--lee'l bébé'--"
+
+"D' yer mane his Riverince nursed you and yer mother through the shmall
+pox?" demanded McCann. Several of the workmen stopped short with hammers
+uplifted to hear Antoine's answer.
+
+"Mais oui, il l'a soignée jusqu'à ce qu'elle was been dead; he l'a
+enterrée--place in de terre--airth, an' moi he haf place chez un farmyer
+à Mo'real. An' le Père Honoré was tak' la petite vérole--shmall pookes
+in de sugair-house, an' de farmyer was gif him to eat an' to drrink par
+la porte--de door; de farmyer haf non passé par de door. Le Père Honoré
+m'a sauvé--haf safe, hein? An' Ah was been work ten, twenty, dirty year,
+Ah tink. Ah gagne--gain, hein?--two hundert pièces. Ah been come to de
+quairries, pour l'amour de bon Père Honoré qui m'a safe, hein? Ah be
+très content; Ah gagne, gain two, tree pièces--dollaires--par jour."
+
+He nodded at one and all, his gold half-moon earrings twinkling in his
+evident satisfaction with himself and "le bon Père Honoré."
+
+The men were silent. Jim McCann's eyes were blurred with tears. The
+thought of his own six-months boy presented itself in contrast to the
+small waif in the Canada woods and the dying gypsy mother, nursed by the
+priest who had christened his own little Billy.
+
+"It's a bad night for the lecture," said a Scotchman, and broke
+therewith the emotional spell that was holding the men who had made out
+the principal points of Antoine's story.
+
+"Yes, but Father Honoré says it's all about the cathedrals, an' not many
+will want to miss it," said another. "They say there's a crowd coming
+down from the quarries to-night to hear it."
+
+"Faith, an' it's Mr. Van Ostend will be after havin' to put on an a
+trailer to his new hall," said McCann; "the b'ys know a good thing whin
+they see it, an' we was like to smother, the whole kit of us, whin they
+had the last pitchers of them mountins in Alasky on the sheet. It's the
+stairioptican that takes best wid the b'ys."
+
+The four o'clock whistle began to sound. Three hundred chisels and
+hammers were dropped on the instant. The men hurried to the doors that
+were opened their full width to give egress to the hastening throngs.
+They streamed out; there was laughing and chaffing; now and then, among
+the younger ones, some good-natured fisticuffs were exchanged. Many
+sought the electrics to The Gore; others took the car to The Corners.
+From the three sheds, the power-house, the engine-house, the office, the
+dark files streamed forth from their toil. Within fifteen minutes the
+lights were turned out, the watchman was making his first round. Instead
+of the sounds of a vast industry, nothing was heard but the
+_sz-szz-szzz_ of the vanishing trams, the sputter of an arc-light, the
+barking of a dog. The gray twilight of a bleak March day shut down
+rapidly over frozen field and ice-rimmed lake.
+
+
+V
+
+Champney Googe left the shed with the rest; no one spoke to him,
+although many a curious look was turned his way when he had passed, and
+he spoke to no one. He waited for a car to Flamsted. There he got out.
+He found a restaurant near The Greenbush and ordered something to eat.
+Afterwards he went about the town, changed almost beyond recognition. He
+saw no face he knew. There were foreigners everywhere--men who were to
+be the fathers of the future American race. A fairly large opera house
+attracted his attention; it was evidently new. He looked for the
+year--1901. A little farther on he found the hall, built, so he had
+gathered from the few words among the men in the sheds, by Mr. Van
+Ostend. The name was on the lintel: "Flamsted Quarries Hall." Every few
+minutes an electric tram went whizzing through Main Street towards The
+Bow. Crowds of young people were on the street.
+
+He looked upon all he saw almost indifferently, feeling little, caring
+little. It was as if a mental and spiritual numbness had possession of
+every faculty except the manual; he felt at home only while he was
+working for that short half-hour in the shed. He was not at ease here
+among this merry careless crowd. He stopped to look in at the windows of
+a large fine shop for fruits and groceries; he glanced up at the
+sign:--"Poggi and Company."
+
+"Poggi--Poggi" he said to himself; he was thinking it out. "Luigi
+Poggi--Luigi--Ah!" It was a long-drawn breath. He had found his clew.
+
+He heard again that cry: "Champney,--O Champney! what has he done to
+you!" The night came back to him in all its detail. It sickened him.
+
+He was about to turn from the window and seek the quiet of The Bow until
+the hall should be open--at "sharp seven" he heard the men say--when a
+woman passed him and entered the shop. She took a seat at the counter
+just inside the show-window. He stood gazing at her, unable to move his
+eyes from the form, the face. It was she--Aileen!
+
+The sickening feeling increased for a moment, then it gave place to
+strange electric currents that passed and repassed through every nerve.
+It was a sensation as if his whole body--flesh, muscles, nerves,
+arteries, veins, every lobe of his brain, every cell within each lobe,
+had been, as the saying is of an arm or leg, "asleep" and was now
+"coming to." The tingling sensation increased almost to torture; but he
+could not move. That face held him.
+
+He must get away before she came out! That was his one thought. The
+first torment of awakening sensation to a new life was passing. He
+advanced a foot, then the other; he moved slowly, but he moved at last.
+He walked on down the street, not up towards The Bow as he had intended;
+walked on past The Greenbush towards The Corners; walked on and on till
+the nightmare of this awakening from a nearly seven-years abnormal sleep
+of feeling was over. Then he turned back to the town. The town clock was
+striking seven. The men were entering the hall by tens and twenties.
+
+He took his seat in a corner beneath the shadow of a large gallery at
+the back, over the entrance.
+
+There were only men admitted. He looked upon the hundreds assembled, and
+realized for the first time in more than six years that he was again a
+free man among free men. He drew a long breath of relief, of
+realization.
+
+At a quarter past seven Father Honoré made his appearance on the
+platform. The men settled at once into silence, and the priest began
+without preface:
+
+"My friends, we will take up to-night what we may call the Brotherhood
+of Stone."
+
+The men looked at one another and smiled. Here was something new.
+
+"That is the right thought for all of you to take with you into the
+quarries and the sheds. Don't forget it!"
+
+He made certain distinct pauses after a few sentences. This was done
+with intention; for the men before him were of various nationalities,
+although he called this his "English night." But many were learning and
+understood imperfectly; it was for them he paused frequently. He wanted
+to give them time to take in what he was saying. Sometimes he repeated
+his words in Italian, in French, that the foreigners might better
+comprehend his meaning.
+
+"Perhaps some of you have worked in the limestone quarries on the Bay?
+All who have hold up hands."
+
+A hundred hands, perhaps more, were raised.
+
+"Any worked in the marble quarries of Vermont?"
+
+A dozen or more Canucks waved their hands vigorously.
+
+"Here are three pieces--limestone, marble, and granite." He held up
+specimens of the three. "All of them are well known to most of you. Now
+mark what I say of these three:--first, the limestone gets burned
+principally; second, the marble gets sculptured principally; third, the
+granite gets hammered and chiselled principally. Fire, chisel, and
+hammer at work on these three rocks; but, they are all _quarried_ first.
+This fact of their being quarried puts them in the Brotherhood--of
+Labor."
+
+The men nudged one another, and nodded emphatically.
+
+"They are all three taken from the crust of the earth; this Earth is to
+them the earth-mother. Now mark again what I say:--this fact of their
+common earth-mother puts them in the Brotherhood--of Kin."
+
+He took up three specimens of quartz crystals.
+
+"This quartz crystal"--he turned it in the light, and the hexagonal
+prisms caught and reflected dazzling rays--"I found in the limestone
+quarry on the Bay. This," he took up another smaller one, "I found after
+a long search in the marble quarries of Vermont. This here," he held up
+a third, a smaller, less brilliant, less perfect one--"I took out of our
+upper quarry after a three weeks' search for it.
+
+"This fact, that these rocks, although of different market value and put
+to different uses, may yield the same perfect crystal, puts the
+limestone, the marble, the granite in the Brotherhood--of Equality.
+
+"In our other talks, we have named the elements of each rock, and given
+some study to each. We have found that some of their elements are the
+basic elements of our own mortal frames--our bodies have a common
+earth-mother with these stones.
+
+"This last fact puts them in the Brotherhood--of Man."
+
+The seven hundred men showed their appreciation of the point made by
+prolonged applause.
+
+"Now I want to make clear to you that, although these rocks have
+different market values, are put to different uses, the real value for
+us this evening consists in the fact that each, in its own place, can
+yield a crystal equal in purity to the others.--Remember this the next
+time you go to work in the quarries and the sheds."
+
+He laid aside the specimens.
+
+"We had a talk last month about the guilds of four hundred years ago. I
+asked you then to look upon yourselves as members of a great twentieth
+century working guild. Have you done it? Has every man, who was present
+then, said since, when hewing a foundation stone, a block for a bridge
+abutment, a corner-stone for a cathedral or a railroad station, a
+cap-stone for a monument, a milestone, a lintel for a door, a
+hearthstone or a step for an altar, 'I belong to the great guild of the
+makers of this country; I quarry and hew the rock that lays the enduring
+bed for the iron or electric horses which rush from sea to sea and carry
+the burden of humanity'?--Think of it, men! Yours are the hands that
+make this great track of commerce possible. Yours are the hands that
+curve the stones, afterwards reared into noble arches beneath which the
+people assemble to do God reverence. Yours are the hands that square the
+deep foundations of the great bridges which, like the Brooklyn, cross
+high in mid-air from shore to shore! Have you said this? Have you done
+it?"
+
+"Ay, ay.--Sure.--We done it." The murmuring assent was polyglot.
+
+"Very well--see that you keep on doing it, and show that you do it by
+the good work you furnish."
+
+He motioned to the manipulators in the gallery to make ready for the
+stereopticon views. The blank blinding round played erratically on the
+curtain. The entire audience sat expectant.
+
+There was flashed upon the screen the interior of a Canadian "cabin."
+The family were at supper; the whole interior, simple and homely, was
+indicative of warmth and cheerful family life.
+
+The Canucks in the audience lost their heads. The clapping was frantic.
+Father Honoré smiled. He tapped the portrayed wall with the end of his
+pointer.
+
+"This is comfort--no cold can penetrate these walls; they are double
+plastered. Credit limestone with that!"
+
+The audience showed its appreciation in no uncertain way.
+
+"The crystal--can any one see that--find that in this interior?"
+
+The men were silent. Father Honoré was pointing to the mother and her
+child; the father was holding out his arms to the little one who, with
+loving impatience, was reaching away from his mother over the table to
+his father. They comprehended the priest's thought in the lesson of the
+limestone:--the love and trust of the human. No words were needed. An
+emotional silence made itself felt.
+
+The picture shifted. There was thrown upon the screen the marble
+Cathedral of Milan. A murmur of delight ran through the house.
+
+"Here we have the limestone in the form of marble. Its beauty is the
+price of unremitting toil. This, too, belongs in the brotherhoods of
+labor, kin, and equality.--Do you find the crystal?"
+
+His pointer swept the hierarchy of statues on the roof, upwards to the
+cross on the pinnacle, where it rested.
+
+"This crystal is the symbol of what inspires and glorifies humanity. The
+crystal is yours, men, if with believing hearts you are willing to say
+'Our Father' in the face of His works."
+
+He paused a moment. It was an understood thing in the semi-monthly
+talks, that the men were free to ask questions and to express an
+opinion, even, at times, to argue a point. The men's eyes were fixed
+with keen appreciation on the marble beauty before them, when a voice
+broke the silence.
+
+"That sounds all right enough, your Reverence, what you've said about
+'Our Father' and the brotherhoods, but there's many a man says it that
+won't own me for a brother. There's a weak joint somewhere--and no
+offence meant."
+
+Some of the men applauded.
+
+Father Honoré turned from the screen and faced the men; his eyes
+flashed. The audience loved to see him in this mood, for they knew by
+experience that he was generally able to meet his adversary, and no odds
+given or taken.
+
+"That's you, is it, Szchenetzy?"
+
+"Yes, it's me."
+
+"Do you remember in last month's talk that I showed you the
+Dolomites--the curious mountains of the Tyrol?--and in connection with
+those the Brenner Pass?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, something like seven hundred years ago a poor man, a poet and
+travelling musician, was riding over that pass and down into that very
+region of the Dolomites. He made his living by stopping at the
+stronghold-castles of those times and entertaining the powerful of the
+earth by singing his poems set to music of his own making. Sometimes he
+got a suit of cast-off clothes in payment; sometimes only bed and board
+for a time. But he kept on singing his little poems and making more of
+them as he grew rich in experience of men and things; for he never grew
+rich in gold--money was the last thing they ever gave him. So he
+continued long his wandering life, singing his songs in courtyard and
+castle hall until they sang their way into the hearts of the men of his
+generation. And while he wandered, he gained a wonderful knowledge of
+life and its ways among rich and poor, high and low; and, pondering the
+things he had seen and the many ways of this world, he said to himself,
+that day when he was riding over the Brenner Pass, the same thing that
+you have just said--in almost the same words:--'Many a man calls God
+"Father" who won't acknowledge me for a brother.'
+
+"I don't know how he reconciled facts--for your fact seems plain
+enough--nor do I know how you can reconcile them; but what I do know is
+this:--that man, poor in this world's goods, but rich in experience and
+in a natural endowment of poetic thought and musical ability, _kept on
+making poems, kept on singing them_, despite that fact to which he had
+given expression as he fared over the Brenner; despite the fact that a
+suit of cast-off clothes was all he got for his entertainment of those
+who would not call him 'brother.' Discouraged at times--for he was very
+human--he kept on giving the best that was in him, doing the work
+appointed for him in this world--and doing it with a whole heart
+Godwards and Christwards, despite his poverty, despite the broken
+promises of the great to reward him pecuniarily, despite the world,
+despite _facts_, Szchenetzy! He sang when he was young of earthly love
+and in middle age of heavenly love, and his songs are cherished, for
+their beauty of wisdom and love, in the hearts of men to this day."
+
+He smiled genially across the sea of faces to Szchenetzy.
+
+"Come up some night with your violin, Szchenetzy, and we will try over
+some of those very songs that the Germans have set to music of their
+own, those words of Walter of the Bird-Meadow--so they called him then,
+and men keep on calling him that even to this day."
+
+He turned again to the screen.
+
+"What is to be thrown on the screen now--in rapid succession for our
+hour is brief--I call our Marble Quarry. Just think of it! quarried by
+the same hard work which you all know, by which you earn your daily
+bread; sculptured into forms of exceeding beauty by the same hard toil
+of other hands. And behind all the toil there is the _soul of art_, ever
+seeking expression through the human instrument of the practised hand
+that quarries, then sculptures, then places, and builds! I shall give a
+word or two of explanation in regard to time and locality; next month we
+will take the subjects one by one."
+
+There flashed upon the screen and in quick succession, although the men
+protested and begged for an extension of exposures, the noble Pisan
+group and Niccola Pisano's pulpit in the baptistery--the horses from the
+Parthenon frieze--the Zeus group from the great altar at
+Pergamos--Theseus and the Centaur--the Wrestlers--the Discus Thrower
+and, last, the exquisite little church of Saint Mary of the Thorn,--the
+Arno's jewel, the seafarers' own,--that looks out over the Pisan waters
+to the Mediterranean.
+
+It was a magnificent showing. No words from Father Honoré were needed to
+bring home to his audience the lesson of the Marble Quarry.
+
+"I call the next series, which will be shown without explanation and
+merely named, other members of the Brotherhood of Stone. We study them
+separately later on in the summer."
+
+The cathedrals of York, Amiens, Westminster, Cologne, Mayence, St.
+Mark's--a noble array of man's handiwork, were thrown upon the screen.
+The men showed their appreciation by thunderous applause.
+
+The screen was again a blank; then it filled suddenly with the great
+Upper Quarry in The Gore. The granite ledges sloped upward to meet the
+blue of the sky. The great steel derricks and their crisscrossing cables
+cast curiously foreshortened shadows on the gleaming white expanse. Here
+and there a group of men showed dark against a ledge. In the centre, one
+of the monster derricks held suspended in its chains a forty-ton block
+of granite just lifted from its eternal bed. Beside it a workman showed
+like a pigmy.
+
+Some one proposed a three times three for the home quarries. The men
+rose to their feet and the cheers were given with a will. The ringing
+echo of the last had not died away when the quarry vanished, and in its
+place stood the finished cathedral of A.--the work which the hands of
+those present were to create. It was a reproduction of the architect's
+water-color sketch.
+
+The men still remained standing; they gave no outward expression to
+their admiration; that, indeed, although evident in their faces, was
+overshadowed by something like awe. _Their_ hands were to be the
+instruments by which this great creation of the mind of man should
+become a fact. Without those hands the architect's idea could not be
+materialized; without the "idea" their daily work would fail.
+
+The truth went home to each man present--even to that unknown one
+beneath the gallery who, when the men had risen to cheer, shrank farther
+into his dark corner and drew short sharp breaths. The Past would not
+down at his bidding; he was beginning to feel his weakness when he had
+most need of strength.
+
+He did not hear Father Honoré's parting words:--"Here you find the third
+crystal--strength, solidity, the bedrock of endeavor. Take these three
+home with you:--the pure crystal of human love and trust, the heart
+believing in its Maker, the strength of good character. There you have
+the three that make for equality in this world--and nothing else does.
+Good night, my friends."
+
+
+VI
+
+Father Honoré got home from the lecture a little before nine. He renewed
+the fire, drew up a chair to the hearth, took his violin from its case
+and, seating himself before the springing blaze, made ready to play for
+a while in the firelight. This was always his refreshment after a
+successful evening with the men. He drew his thumb along the bow--
+
+There was a knock at the door. He rose and flung it wide with a human
+enough gesture of impatience; his well-earned rest was disturbed too
+soon. He failed to recognize the man who was standing bareheaded on the
+step.
+
+"Father Honoré, I've come home--don't you know me, Champney?"
+
+There was no word in response, but his hands were grasped hard--he was
+drawn into the room--the door was shut on the chill wind of that March
+night. Then the two men stood silent, gazing into each other's eyes,
+while the firelight leaped and showed to each the other's face--the
+priest's working with a powerful emotion he was struggling to control;
+Champney Googe's apparently calm, but in reality tense with anxiety. He
+spoke first:
+
+"I want to know about my mother--is she well?"
+
+Father Honoré found his voice, an uncertain one but emphatic; it left no
+room for further anxiety in the questioner's mind.
+
+"Yes, well, thank God, and looking forward to this--but it's so soon! I
+don't understand--when did you come?"
+
+He kept one hand on Champney's as if fearing to lose him, with the other
+he pulled forward a chair from the wall and placed it near his own; he
+sat down and drew Champney into the other beside him.
+
+"I came up on the afternoon train; I got out yesterday."
+
+"It's so unexpected. The chaplain wrote me last month that there was a
+prospect of this within the next six months, but I had no idea it would
+be so soon--neither, I am sure, had he."
+
+"Nor I--I don't know that I feel sure of it yet. Has my mother any idea
+of this?"
+
+"I wasn't at liberty to tell her--the communication was confidential.
+Still she knows that it is customary to shorten the--" he caught up his
+words.
+
+"--Term for exemplary conduct?" Champney finished for him.
+
+"Yes. I can't realize this, Champney; it's six years and four months--"
+
+"Years--months! You might say six eternities. Do you know, I can't get
+used to it--the freedom, I mean. At times during these last twenty-four
+hours, I have actually felt lost without the work, the routine--the
+solitude." He sighed heavily and spoke further, but as if to himself:
+
+"Last Thanksgiving Day we were all together--eight hundred of us in the
+assembly room for the exercises. Two men get pardoned out on that day,
+and the two who were set free were in for manslaughter--one for twenty
+years, the other for life. They had been in eighteen years. I watched
+their faces when their numbers were called; they stepped forward to the
+platform and were told of their pardon. There wasn't a sign of
+comprehension, not a movement of a muscle, the twitch of an
+eyelid--simply a dead stolid stare. The truth is, they were benumbed as
+to feeling, incapable of comprehending anything, of initiating anything,
+as I was till--till this afternoon; then I began to live, to feel
+again."
+
+"That's only natural. I've heard other men say the same thing. You'll
+recover tone here among your own--your friends and other men."
+
+"Have I any?--I mean outside of you and my mother?" he asked in a low
+voice, but subdued eagerness was audible in it.
+
+"Have you any? Why, man, a friend is a friend for life--and beyond. Who
+was it put it thus: 'Said one: I would go up to the gates of hell with a
+friend.--Said the other: I would go in.' That last is the kind you have
+here in Flamsted, Champney."
+
+The other turned away his face that the firelight might not betray him.
+
+"It's too much--it's too much; I don't deserve it."
+
+"Champney, when you decided of your own accord to expiate in the manner
+you have through these six years, do you think your friends--and
+others--didn't recognize your manhood? And didn't you resolve at that
+time to 'put aside' those things that were behind you once and
+forever?--clear your life of the clogging part?"
+
+"Yes,--but others won't--"
+
+"Never mind others--you are working out your own salvation."
+
+"But it's going to be harder than I thought--I find I am beginning to
+dread to meet people--everything is so changed. It's going to be harder
+than I realized to carry out that resolution. The Past won't
+down--everything is so changed--everything--"
+
+Father Honoré rose to turn on the electric lights. He did not take his
+seat again, but stood on the hearth, back to the fire, his hands clasped
+behind him. The clear light from the shaded bulbs shone full upon the
+face of the man before him, and the priest, searching that face to read
+its record, saw set upon it, and his heart contracted at the sight, the
+indelible seal of six years of penal servitude. The close-cut hair was
+gray; the brow was marked by two horizontal furrows; the cheeks were
+deeply lined; and the broad shoulders--they were bent. Formerly he stood
+before the priest with level eyes, now he was shorter by an inch of the
+six feet that were once his. He noticed the hands--the hands of the
+day-laborer.
+
+He managed to reply to Champney's last remark without betraying the
+emotion that threatened to master him.
+
+"Outwardly, yes; things have changed and will continue to change. The
+town is making vast strides towards citizenship. But you will find those
+you know the same--only grown in grace, I hope, with the years; even Mr.
+Wiggins is convinced by this time that the foreigners are not
+barbarians."
+
+Champney smiled. "It was rough on Elmer Wiggins at first."
+
+"Yes, but things are smoothing out gradually, and as a son of Maine he
+has too much common sense at bottom to swim against the current. And
+there's old Joel Quimber--I never see him that he doesn't tell me he is
+marking off the days in his 'almanack,' he calls it, in anticipation of
+your return."
+
+"Dear old Jo!--No!--Is that true? Old Jo doing that?"
+
+"To be sure, why not? And there's Octavius Buzzby--I don't think he
+would mind my telling you now--indeed, I don't believe he'd have the
+courage to tell you himself--" Father Honoré smiled happily, for he saw
+in Champney's face the light of awakening interest in the common life of
+humanity, and he felt a prolongation of this chat would clear the
+atmosphere of over-powering emotion,--"there have never three months
+passed by these last six years that he hasn't deposited half of his
+quarterly salary with Emlie in the bank in your name--"
+
+"Oh, don't--don't! I can't bear it--dear old Tave--" he groaned rather
+than spoke; the blood mounted to his temples, but his friend proved
+merciless.
+
+"And there's Luigi Poggi! I don't know but he will make you a
+proposition, when he knows you are at home, to enter into partnership
+with him and young Caukins--the Colonel's fourth eldest. Champney, he
+wants to atone--he has told me so--"
+
+"Is--is he married?"
+
+Father Honoré noticed that his lips suddenly went dry and he swallowed
+hard after his question.
+
+"No," the priest hastened to say, then he hesitated; he was wondering
+how far it was safe to probe; "but it is my strong impression that he is
+thinking seriously of it--a lovely girl, too, she is--" he saw the man's
+face before him go white, the jaw set like a vise--"little Dulcie
+Caukins, you remember her?"
+
+Champney nodded and wet his lips.
+
+"He has been thrown a good deal with the Caukinses since he took their
+son into partnership; the Colonel's boys are all doing well. Romanzo is
+in New York."
+
+"Still with the Company?"
+
+"Yes, in the main office. He married in that city two years ago--rather
+well, I hear, but Mrs. Caukins is not reconciled yet. Now, there's a
+friend! You don't know the depth of her feeling for you--but she has
+shown it by worshipping your mother."
+
+Champney Googe's eyes filled to overflowing, but he squeezed the
+springing drops between his eyelids, and asked with lively interest:
+
+"Why isn't Mrs. Caukins reconciled?"
+
+"Well, because--I suppose it's no secret now, at least Mrs. Caukins has
+never made one of it, in fact, has aired the subject pretty thoroughly,
+you know her way--"
+
+Champney looked up and smiled. "I'm glad she hasn't changed."
+
+"But of course you don't know it. The fact is she had set heart on
+having for a daughter-in-law Aileen Armagh--you remember little Aileen?"
+
+Champney Googe's hands closed spasmodically on the arms of his chair. To
+cover this involuntary movement, he leaned forward suddenly and kicked a
+burning brand, that had fallen on the hearth, back into the fireplace. A
+shower of sparks flew up chimney.
+
+Father Honoré went on without waiting for the answer he knew would not
+be forthcoming: "Aileen gave me a fright the other day. I met her on the
+street, and she took that occasion, in the midst of a good deal of noise
+and confusion, to inform me with her usual vivacity of manner that she
+was to be housekeeper to a man--'a job for life,' she added with the old
+mischief dancing in her eyes and the merry laugh that is a tonic for the
+blues. Upon my asking her gravely who was the fortunate man--for I had
+no one in mind and feared some impulsive decision--she pursed her lips,
+hesitated a moment, and, manufacturing a charming blush, said:--'I don't
+mind telling you; it's Mr. Octavius Buzzby. I'm to be his housekeeper
+for life and take care of him in his old age after his work and mine is
+finished at Champo.' I confess, I was relieved."
+
+"My aunt is still living, then?" Champney asked with more eagerness and
+energy than the occasion demanded. His eyes shone with suppressed
+excitement, and ever-awakening life animated every feature. Father
+Honoré, noting the sudden change, read again, as once six years before,
+deep into this man's heart.
+
+"Yes, but it is death in life. Aileen is still with her--faithful as the
+sun, but rebelling at times as is only natural. The girl gave promise of
+rich womanhood, but even you would wonder at such fine development in
+such an environment of continual invalidism. Mrs. Champney has had two
+strokes of paralysis; it is only a question of time."
+
+"There is _one_ who never was my friend--I've often wondered why."
+
+Into the priest's inner vision flashed that evening before his departure
+for New York--the bedroom--the mother--that confession--
+
+"It looks that way, I admit, but I've thought sometimes she has cared
+for you far more than any one will ever know."
+
+Champney started suddenly to his feet.
+
+"What time is it? I must be going."
+
+"Going?--You mean home--to-night?"
+
+"Yes, I must go home. I came to ask you to go to my mother to prepare
+her for this--I dared not shock her by going unannounced. You'll go
+with me--you'll tell her?"
+
+"At once."
+
+He reached for his coat and turned off the lights. The two went out arm
+and arm into the March night. The wind was still rising.
+
+"It's only half-past nine, and Mrs. Googe will be up; she is a busy
+woman."
+
+"Tell me--" he drew his breath short--"what has my mother done all these
+years--how has she lived?"
+
+"As every true woman lives--doing her full duty day by day, living in
+hope of this joy."
+
+"But I mean _what_ has she done to live--to provide for herself; she has
+kept the house?"
+
+"To be sure, and by her own exertions. She has never been willing to
+accept pecuniary aid from any friend, not even from Mr. Buzzby, or the
+Colonel. I am in a position to know that Mr. Van Ostend did his best to
+persuade her to accept something just as a loan."
+
+"But what has she been doing?"
+
+"She has been taking the quarrymen for meals the last six years,
+Champney--at times she has had their families to board with her, as many
+as the house could accommodate."
+
+The arm which his own held was withdrawn with a jerk. Champney Googe
+faced him: they were on the new iron bridge over the Rothel.
+
+"You mean to say my mother--_my_ mother, Aurora Googe, has been keeping
+a quarrymen's boarding-house all these years?"
+
+"Yes; it is legitimate work."
+
+"My mother--_my_ mother--" he kept repeating as he stood motionless on
+the bridge. He seemed unable to grasp the fact for a moment; then he
+laid his hand heavily on Father Honoré's shoulder as if for support; he
+spoke low to himself, but the priest caught a few words:
+
+"I thank Thee--thank--for life--work--"
+
+He seemed to come gradually to himself, to recognize his whereabouts. He
+began to walk on, but very slowly.
+
+"Father Honoré," he said, and his tone was deeply earnest but at the
+same time almost joyful, "I'm not going home to my mother empty-handed,
+I never intended to--I have work. I can work for her, free her from
+care, lift from her shoulders the burden of toil for my sake."
+
+"What do you mean, Champney?"
+
+"I made application to the manager of the Company this afternoon; I saw
+they were all strangers to me, and they took me on in the sheds--Shed
+Number Two. I went to work this afternoon. You see I know my trade; I
+learned it during the last six years. I can support her now--Oh--"
+
+He stopped short just as they were leaving the bridge; raised his head
+to the black skies above him, reached upwards with both hands palm
+outwards--
+
+"--I thank my Maker for these hands; I thank Him that I can labor with
+these hands; I thank Him for the strength of manhood that will enable me
+to toil with these hands; I thank Him for my knowledge of good and evil;
+I thank Him that I have 'won sight out of blindness--'" his eyes
+strained to the skies above The Gore.
+
+The moon, struggling with the heavy drifting cloud-masses, broke through
+a confined ragged circle and, for a moment, its splendor shone upon the
+heights of The Gore; its effulgence paled the arc-lights in the
+quarries; a silver shaft glanced on the Rothel in its downward course,
+and afar touched the ruffled waters of Lake Mesantic....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I'll stay here on the lawn," he said five minutes afterwards upon
+reaching the house. A light was burning in his mother's bedroom; another
+shone from her sitting-room on the first floor.
+
+The priest entered without knocking; this house was open the year round
+to the frequent comers and goers among the workmen. He rapped at the
+sitting-room door. Mrs. Googe opened it.
+
+"Why, Father Honoré, I didn't expect you to-night--didn't you have
+the--What is it?--oh, what is it!" she cried, for the priest's face
+betrayed him.
+
+"Joyful news, Mrs. Googe,"--he let her read his face--"your son is a
+free man to-night."
+
+There was no outcry on the mother's part; but her hands clasped each
+other till the nails showed white.
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"Here, in Flamsted--"
+
+"Let me go--let me go to him--"
+
+"He has come to you--he is just outside--"
+
+She was past him with a rush--at the door--on the porch--
+
+"Champney!--My son!--where are you?" she cried out into the night.
+
+Her answer came on swift feet. He sprang up the steps two at a time,
+they were in each other's arms--then he had to be strong for both.
+
+He led her in, half carrying her; placed her in a chair; knelt before
+her, chafing her hands....
+
+Father Honoré made his escape; they were unconscious of his presence or
+his departure. He closed the front door softly behind him, and on feet
+shod with light-heartedness covered the road to his own house in a few
+minutes. He flung aside his coat, took his violin, and played and played
+till late into the night.
+
+Two of the sisters of The Mystic Rose, who had been over to Quarry End
+Park nursing a sick quarryman's wife throughout the day, paused to
+listen as they passed the house. One of them was Sister Ste. Croix.
+
+The violin exulted, rejoiced, sang of love heavenly, of love earthly, of
+all loves of life and nature; it sang of repentance, of expiation, of
+salvation--
+
+"I can bear no more," whispered Sister Ste. Croix to her companion, and
+the hand she laid on the one that was raised to hush her, was not only
+cold, it was damp with the sweat of the agony of remembrance.
+
+The strains of the violin's song accompanied them to their own door.
+
+
+VII
+
+The Saturday-night frequenters of The Greenbush have changed with the
+passing years like all else in Flamsted. The Greenbush itself is no
+longer a hostelry, but a cosy club-house purveyed for, to the
+satisfaction of every member, by its old landlord, Augustus Buzzby. The
+Club's membership, of both young and old men, is large and increasing
+with the growth of the town; but the old frequenters of The Greenbush
+bar-room head the list--Colonel Caukins and Octavius Buzzby paying the
+annual dues of their first charter member, old Joel Quimber, now in his
+eighty-seventh year.
+
+The former office is a grill room, and made one with the back parlor,
+now the club restaurant. On this Saturday night in March, the
+white-capped chef--Augustus prided himself in keeping abreast the
+times--was busy in the grill room, and Augustus himself was
+superintending the laying of a round table for ten. The Colonel was to
+celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday by giving a little supper.
+
+"Nothing elaborate, Buzzby," he said a week before the event, "a fine
+saddle of mutton--Southdown--some salmon trout, a stiff bouillon for
+Quimber, you know his masticatory apparatus is no longer equal to this
+whole occasion, and a chive salad. _The_ cake Mrs. Caukins elects to
+provide herself, and I need not assure you, who know her culinary
+powers, that it will be a _ne plus ultra_ of a cake, both in material
+and execution; fruits, coffee and cheese--Roquefort. Your accomplished
+chef can fill in the interstices. Here are the cards--Quimber at my
+right, if you please."
+
+Augustus looked at the cards and smiled.
+
+"All the old ones included, I see, Colonel," he ran over the names,
+"Quimber, Tave, Elmer Wiggins, Emlie, Poggi and Caukins"--he laughed
+outright; "that's a good firm, Colonel," he said slyly, and the Colonel
+smiled his appreciation of the gentle insinuation--"the manager at the
+sheds, and the new boss of the Upper Quarry?" He looked inquiringly at
+the Colonel on reading the last name.
+
+"That's all right, Buzzby; he's due here next Saturday, the festal day;
+and I want to give some substantial expression to him, as a stranger and
+neighbor, of Flamsted's hospitality."
+
+Augustus nodded approval, and continued: "And me! Thank you kindly,
+Colonel, but you'll have to excuse me this time. I want everything to go
+right on this special occasion. I'll join you with a pipe afterwards."
+
+"As you please, Buzzby, only make it a cigar; and consider yourself
+included in the spirit if not in the flesh. Nine sharp."
+
+At a quarter of nine, just as Augustus finished putting the last touch
+to an already perfect table, the Colonel made his appearance at The
+Greenbush, a pasteboard box containing a dozen boutonnières under his
+arm. He laid one on the table cloth by each plate, and stood back to
+enjoy the effect. He rubbed his hands softly in appreciation of the
+"color scheme" as he termed it--a phrase that puzzled Augustus. He saw
+no "scheme" and very little "color" in the dark-wainscoted room, except
+the cheerful fire on the hearth and some heavy red half-curtains at the
+windows to shut out the cold and dark of this March night. The walls
+were white; the grill of dark wood, and the floor painted dark brown.
+But the red carnations on the snow-white damask did somehow "touch the
+whole thing up," as he confided later to his brother.
+
+The Colonel's welcome to his companions was none the less cordial
+because he repressed his usual flow of eloquence till "the cloth should
+be removed." He purposed then to spring a surprise, oratorical and
+otherwise, on those assembled.
+
+After the various toasts,--all given and drunk in sweet cider made for
+the occasion from Northern Spies, the Colonel being prohibitive for
+example's sake,--the good wishes for many prospective birthdays and
+prosperous years, the Colonel filled his glass to the brim and, holding
+it in his left hand, literally rose to the occasion.
+
+"Gentlemen," he began in full chest tones, "some fourteen years ago,
+five of us now present were wont to discuss in the old office of this
+hospitable hostelry, now the famous grill room of the Club, the Invasion
+of the New--the opening of the great Flamsted Quarries--the migrations
+of the nations hitherwards and the consequent prospective industrial
+development of our native village."
+
+He paused and looked about him impressively; finally his eye settled
+sternly on Elmer Wiggins who, satisfied inwardly with the choice and
+bounteous supper provided by the Colonel, had made up his mind to "stand
+fire", as he said afterwards to Augustus.
+
+The Colonel resumed his speech, his voice acquiring as he proceeded a
+volume and depth that carried it far beyond the grill room's walls to
+the ears of edified passers on the street:
+
+"There were those among us who maintained--in the face of extreme
+opposition, I am sorry to say--that this town of Flamsted would soon
+make itself a factor in the vast industrial life of our marvellous
+country. In retrospect, I reflect that those who had this faith, this
+trust in the resources of their native town, were looked upon with
+scorn; were subjected to personal derision; were termed, to put it
+mildly, 'mere dreamers'--if I am not mistaken, the original expression
+was 'darned boomers.' Mr. Wiggins, here, our esteemed wholesale and
+retail pharmacist, will correct me if I am wrong on this point--"
+
+He paused again as if expecting an answer; nothing was forthcoming but a
+decidedly embarrassed "Hem," from the afore-named pharmacist. The
+Colonel was satisfied.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, in refutation of that term--I will not repeat
+myself--and what it implied, after fourteen years, comparable to those
+seven fat kine of Pharaoh's dream, our town can point throughout the
+length and breadth of our land to its monumental works of art and
+utility that may well put to blush the renowned record of the Greeks and
+Romans."
+
+Prolonged applause and a ringing cheer.
+
+"All over our fair land the granite monoliths of _Flamsted_, beacon or
+battle, point heavenwards. The transcontinental roads, that track and
+nerve our country, cross and re-cross the raging torrents of western
+rivers on granite abutments from the _Flamsted_ quarries! The laws,
+alike for the just and unjust,"--the Colonel did not perceive his slip,
+but Elmer Wiggins smiled to himself,--"are promulgated within the
+stately granite halls of the capitals of our statehood--_Flamsted_
+again! The gospel of praise and prayer will shortly resound beneath the
+arches of the choir and nave of the great granite cathedral--the product
+of the quarries in The Gore!"
+
+Deafening applause, clinking of glasses, and cries of "Good!
+True--Hear--Hear!"
+
+The Colonel beamed and gathered himself together with a visible effort
+for his peroration. He laid his hand on his heart.
+
+"A man of feeling, gentlemen, has a heart. He is not oblivious either of
+the needs of his neighbor, his community, or the world in general.
+Although he is vulnerable to wounds in the house of his friends,"--a
+severe look falls upon Wiggins,--"he is not impervious to appeal for
+sympathy from without. I trust I have defined a man of feeling,
+gentlemen, a man of heart, as regards the world in general. And now, to
+make an abrupt descent from the abstract to the concrete, from the
+general to the particular, I will permit myself to say that those
+aspersions cast upon me fourteen years ago as a mere promoter,
+irrespective of my manhood, hurt me as a man of feeling--a man of heart.
+
+"Sir--" he turned again to Elmer Wiggins who was apparently the
+lightning conductor for the Colonel's fourteen years of pent-up
+injury--"a father has his feelings. You are _not_ a father--I draw no
+conclusions; but _if_ you had been a father fourteen years ago in this
+very room, I would have trusted to your magnanimity not to give
+expression to your decided views on the subject of the native Americans'
+intermarriage with those of a race foreign to us. I assure you, sir,
+such a view not only narrows the mind, but constricts humanity, and
+ossifies the heart--that special organ by which the world, despite
+present-day detractors, lives and moves and has its being." (Murmuring
+assent.)
+
+"But, sir, I believe you have come to see otherwise, else as my guest on
+this happy occasion, I should not permit myself to apply to you so
+personal a remark. And, gentlemen," the Colonel swelled visibly, but
+those nearest him caught the shimmer of a suspicious moisture in his
+eyes, "I am in a position to-night--this night whereon you have added to
+my happiness by your presence at this board--to repeat now what I said
+fourteen years ago in this very room: I consider myself honored in that
+a member of my immediate family, one very, very dear to me," his voice
+shook in spite of his effort to strengthen it, "is contemplating
+entering into the solemn estate of matrimony at no distant date with--a
+foreigner, gentlemen, but a naturalized citizen of our great and
+glorious United States. Gentlemen," he filled his glass again and held
+it high above his head,--"I give you with all my heart Mr. Luigi Poggi,
+an honored and prosperous citizen of Flamsted--my future son-in-law--the
+prospective husband of my youngest daughter, Dulcibella Caukins."
+
+The company rose to a man, young Caukins assisting Quimber to his feet.
+
+With loud and hearty acclaim they welcomed the new member of the Caukins
+family; they crowded about the Colonel, and no hand that grasped his and
+Luigi's in congratulation was firmer and more cordial than Elmer
+Wiggins'. The Colonel's smile expanded; he was satisfied--the old score
+was wiped out.
+
+Afterwards with cigars and pipes they discussed for an hour the affairs
+of Flamsted. The influx of foreigners with their families was causing a
+shortage of houses and housing. Emlie proposed the establishment of a
+Loan and Mortgage Company to help out the newcomers. Poggi laid before
+them his plan for an Italian House to receive the unmarried men on their
+arrival.
+
+"By the way," he said, turning to the new head of the Upper Quarry, "you
+brought up a crowd with you this afternoon, didn't you?--mostly my
+countrymen?"
+
+"No, a mixed lot--about thirty. A few Scotch and English came up on the
+same train. Have they applied to you?" He addressed the manager of the
+Company's sheds.
+
+"No. I think they'll be along Monday. I've noticed that those two
+nationalities generally have relations who house and look out for them
+when they come. But I had an application from an American just after the
+train came in; I don't often have that now."
+
+"Did you take him on?" the Colonel asked between two puffs of his
+Havana.
+
+"Yes; and he went to work in Shed Number Two. I confess he puzzles me."
+
+"What was he like?" asked the head of the Upper Quarry.
+
+"Tall, blue eyes, gray hair, but only thirty-four as the register
+showed--misfit clothes--"
+
+"That's the one--he came up in the train with me. I noticed him in the
+car. I don't believe he moved a muscle all the way up. I couldn't make
+him out, could you?"
+
+"Well, no, I couldn't. By the way, Colonel, I noticed the name he
+entered was a familiar one in this part of Maine--Googe--"
+
+"Googe!" The Colonel looked at the speaker in amazement; "did he give
+his first name?"
+
+"Yes, Louis--Louis C. Googe--"
+
+"My God!"
+
+Whether the ejaculation proceeded from one mouth or five, the manager
+and foreman could not distinguish; but the effect on the Flamsted men
+was varied and remarkable. The Colonel's cigar dropped from his shaking
+hand; his face was ashen. Emlie and Wiggins stared at each other as if
+they had taken leave of their senses. Joel Quimber leaned forward, his
+hands folded on the head of his cane, and spoke to Octavius who sat
+rigid on his chair:
+
+"What'd he say, Tave?--Champ to home?"
+
+But Octavius Buzzby was beyond the power of speech. Augustus spoke for
+him:
+
+"He said a man applied for work in the sheds this afternoon, Uncle Jo,
+who wrote his name Louis C. Googe."
+
+"Thet's him--thet's Champ--Champ's to home. You help me inter my coat,
+Tave, I 'm goin' to see ef's true--" He rose with difficulty. Then
+Octavius spoke; his voice shook:
+
+"No, Uncle Jo, you sit still a while; if it's Champney, we can't none of
+us see him to-night." He pushed him gently into his chair.
+
+The Colonel was rousing himself. He stepped to the telephone and called
+up Father Honoré.
+
+"Father Honoré--
+
+"This is Colonel Caukins. Can you tell me if there is any truth in the
+report that Champney Googe has returned to-day?
+
+"Thank God."
+
+He put up the receiver, but still remained standing.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said to the manager and the Upper Quarry guest, his
+voice was thick with emotion and the tears of thankfulness were coursing
+down his cheeks, "perhaps no greater gift could be bestowed on my
+sixty-fifth birthday than Champney Googe's return to his home--his
+mother--his friends--we are all his friends. Perhaps the years are
+beginning to tell on me, but I feel that I must excuse myself to you and
+go home--I want to tell my wife. I will explain all to you, as strangers
+among us, some other time; for the present I must beg your
+indulgence--joy never kills, but I am experiencing the fact that it can
+weaken."
+
+"That's all right, Colonel," said the manager; "we understand it
+perfectly and it's late now."
+
+"I'll go, too, Colonel," said Octavius; "I'm going to take Uncle Jo home
+in the trap."
+
+Luigi Poggi helped the Colonel into his great coat. When he left the
+room with his prospective father-in-law, his handsome face had not
+regained the color it lost upon the first mention of Champney's name.
+
+Emlie and Wiggins remained a few minutes to explain as best they could
+the situation to the stranger guests, and the cause of the excitement.
+
+"I remember now hearing about this affair; I read it in the
+newspapers--it must have been seven or eight years ago."
+
+"Six years and four months." Mr. Wiggins corrected him.
+
+"I guess it'll be just as well not to spread the matter much among the
+men--they might kick; besides he isn't, of course, a union man."
+
+"There's one thing in his favor," it was Emlie who spoke, "the
+management and the men have changed since it occurred, and there are
+very few except our home folks that would be apt to mention it--and they
+can be trusted where Champney Googe is concerned."
+
+The four went out together.
+
+The grill room of The Greenbush was empty save for Augustus Buzzby who
+sat smoking before the dying fire. Old visions were before his eyes--one
+of the office on a June night many years ago; the five friends
+discussing Champney Googe's prospects; the arrival of Father Honoré and
+little Aileen Armagh--so Luigi had at last given up hope in that
+direction for good and all.
+
+The town clock struck twelve. He sighed heavily; it was for the old
+times, the old days, the old life.
+
+
+VIII
+
+It was several months before Aileen saw him. Her close attendance on
+Mrs. Champney and her avoidance of the precincts of The Gore--Maggie
+complained loudly to Mrs. Googe that Aileen no longer ran in as she used
+to do, and Mrs. Caukins confided to her that she thought Aileen might
+feel sensitive about Luigi's engagement, for she had been there but
+twice in five months--precluded the possibility of her meeting him. She
+excused herself to Mrs. Googe and the Sisters on the ground of her
+numerous duties at Champ-au-Haut; Ann and Hannah were both well on in
+years and Mrs. Champney was failing daily.
+
+It was perhaps five months after his return that she was sitting one
+afternoon in Mrs. Champney's room, in attendance on her while the
+regular nurse was out for two hours. There had been no conversation
+between them for nearly the full time, when Mrs. Champney spoke abruptly
+from the bed:
+
+"I heard last month that Champney Googe is back again--has been back for
+five months; why didn't you tell me before?"
+
+The voice was very weak, but querulous and sharp. Aileen was sewing at
+the window. She did not look up.
+
+"Because I didn't suppose you liked him well enough to care about his
+coming home; besides, it was Octavius' place to tell you."
+
+"Well, I don't care about his coming, or his going either, for that
+matter, but I do care about knowing things that happen under my very
+nose within a reasonable time of their happening. I'm not in my dotage
+yet, I'll have you to understand."
+
+Aileen was silent.
+
+"Come, say something, can't you?" she snapped.
+
+"What do you want me to say, Mrs. Champney?" She spoke wearily, but not
+impatiently. The daily, almost hourly demands of this sick old woman
+had, in a way, exhausted her.
+
+"Tell me what he's doing."
+
+"He's at work."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the sheds--Shed Number Two."
+
+"What!" Paralysis prevented any movement of her hands, but her head
+jerked on the pillow to one side, towards Aileen.
+
+"I said he was at work in the sheds."
+
+"What's Champney Googe doing in the sheds?"
+
+"Earning his living, I suppose, like other men."
+
+Almeda Champney was silent for a while. Aileen could but wonder what the
+thoughts might be that were filling the shrivelled box of the
+brain--what were the feelings in the ossifying heart of the woman who
+had denied help to one of her own blood in time of need. Had she any
+feeling indeed, except that for self?
+
+"Have you seen him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I should think he would want to hide his head for shame."
+
+"I don't see why." She spoke defiantly.
+
+"Why? Because I don't see how after such a career a man can hold up his
+head among his own."
+
+Aileen bit her under lip to keep back the sharp retort. She chose
+another and safer way.
+
+"Oh," she said brightly, looking over to Mrs. Champney with a frank
+smile, "but he has really just begun his career, you know--"
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean he has just begun honest work among honest men, and that's the
+best career for him or any other man to my thinking."
+
+"Umph!--little you know about it."
+
+Aileen laughed outright. "Oh, I know more than you think I do, Mrs.
+Champney. I haven't lived twenty-six years for nothing, and what I've
+seen, I've seen--and I've no near-sighted eyes to trouble me either; and
+what I've heard, I've heard, for my ears are good--regular long-distance
+telephones sometimes."
+
+She was not prepared for the next move on Mrs. Champney's part.
+
+"I believe you would marry him now--after all, if he asked you." She
+spoke with a sneer.
+
+"Do you really believe it?" She folded her work and prepared to leave
+the room, for she heard the nurse's step in the hall below. "Well, if
+you do, I'll tell you something, Mrs. Champney, but I'd like it to be
+between us." She crossed the room and paused beside the bed.
+
+"What?"
+
+She bent slightly towards her. "I would rather marry a man who earns his
+three dollars a day at honest work of quarrying or cutting stones,--or
+breaking them, for that matter,"--she added under her breath, "but I'm
+not saying he would be any relation of yours--than a man who doesn't
+know what a day's toil is except to cudgel his brains tired, with
+contriving the quickest means of making his millions double themselves
+at other people's expense in twenty-four hours."
+
+The nurse opened the door. Mrs. Champney spoke bitterly:
+
+"You little fool--you think you know, but--" aware of the nurse, she
+ended fretfully, "you wear me out, talking so much. Tell Hannah to make
+me some fresh tamarind water--and bring it up quick."
+
+By the time Aileen had brought up the refreshment, she had half repented
+of her words. Mrs. Champney had been failing perceptibly the last few
+weeks, and all excitement was forbidden her. For this reason she had
+been kept so long in ignorance of Champney's return. As Aileen held the
+drinking tube to her lips, she noticed that the faded sunken eyes, fixed
+upon her intently, were not inimical--and she was thankful. She desired
+to live in peace, if possible, with this pitiable old age so long as it
+should last--a few weeks at the longest. The lesson of the piece of
+granite was not lost upon her. She kept the specimen on a little shelf
+over her bed.
+
+She went down stairs into the library to answer a telephone call; it was
+from Maggie McCann who begged her to come up that afternoon to see her;
+the matter was important and could not wait. Aileen knew by the pleading
+tone of the voice, which sounded unnatural, that she was needed for
+something. She replied she would go up at once. She put on her hat, and
+while waiting for the tram at The Bow, bought a small bag of gumdrops
+for Billy.
+
+Maggie received her with open arms and a gush of tears; thereupon Billy,
+now tottering on his unsteady feet, flopped suddenly on the floor and
+howled with true Irish good will.
+
+"Why, Maggie, what _is_ the matter!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Och, Aileen, darlin', me heart's in smithereens, and I'm that deep in
+trouble that me head's like to rend--an' Jim's all broke up--"
+
+"What is it; do tell me, Maggie--can I help?" she urged, catching up
+Billy and endeavoring to smother his howls with kisses.
+
+Mrs. McCann wiped her reddened eyes, took off her apron and sat down in
+a low chair by Aileen who was filling Billy's small mouth, conveniently
+open for another howl upon perceiving his mother wipe her eyes, with a
+sizable gumdrop.
+
+"The little gells be over to the kindergarten with the Sisters, an' I
+thought I'd clane go out of me mind if I couldn't have a word wid you
+before Jim gets home--Och, Aileen, dearie, me home I'm so proud of--"
+She choked, and Billy immediately repudiated his gumdrop upon Aileen's
+clean linen skirt; his eyes were reading the signs of the times in his
+mother's face.
+
+"Now, Maggie, dear, tell me all about it. Begin at the beginning, and
+then I'll know where you're at."
+
+Maggie smiled faintly. "Sure, I wouldn't blame you for not knowin' where
+I'm at." Mrs. McCann sniffed several times prefatorily.
+
+"You know I told you Jim had a temper, Aileen--"
+
+Aileen nodded in assent; she was busy coaxing the rejected ball into
+Billy's puckered mouth.
+
+"--And that there's times whin he querrels wid the men--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you know Mr. Googe bein' in the same shed an' section wid Jim, I
+says innercent-like to Jim:--'I'm glad he's in your section, Jim, belike
+you can make it a bit aisier for him.'
+
+"'Aisy is it?' says Jim.
+
+"'Yes, aisy,' says I.
+
+"'An' wot wud I be after makin' a job aisier for the likes of him?' he
+says, grouchy-like.
+
+"'An' why not?' says I.
+
+"'For a jail-bird?' says he.
+
+"'Deed,' says I, 'if yer own b'y had been breakin' stones wid a gang of
+toughs for sivin long years gone, wouldn't ye be after likin' a man to
+spake wan daycint word wid him?' says I.
+
+"Wid that Jim turned on quick-like an' says:--
+
+"'I'll thank ye, Mrs. McCann, to kape yer advice to yerself. It's not
+Jim McCann's b'y that'll be doin' the dirthy job that yer Mr. Champney
+Googe was after doin' six years gone, nor be after takin' the bread an'
+butter out of an honest man's mout' that has a wife an' three childer to
+feed. He's a convic',' says Jim.
+
+"'What if he is?' says I.
+
+"'I don't hold wid no convic's,' says Jim; 'I hold wid honest men; an'
+if it's convic's be comin' to take the best piece-work out of our hands,
+it's time we struck--to a man,' says Jim.
+
+"Niver, niver but wanct has Jim called me 'Mrs. McCann,'" Maggie said
+brokenly, but stifled a sob for Billy's sake; "an' niver wanct has he
+gone to work widout kissin' me an' the childer, sometimes twice
+round--but he went out yisterday an' niver turned for wan look at wife
+an' childer; an' me heart was that heavy in my bosom that me b'y refused
+the breast an' cried like to kill himself for wan mortal hour, an' the
+little gells cried too, an' me bread burnin' to a crisp, an' I couldn't
+do wan thing but just sit down wid me hands full of cryin' childer--an'
+me heart cryin' like a child wid 'em."
+
+Aileen tried to comfort.
+
+"But, Maggie, such things will happen in the happiest married lives, and
+with the best of husbands. Jim will get over it--I suppose he has by
+this time; you say it isn't like to him to hold anger long--"
+
+"But he hasn't!" Maggie broke forth afresh, and between mother and son,
+who immediately followed suit, a deluge threatened. "Wan of the
+stone-cutters' wives, Mrs. MacLoughanchan, he works in the same section
+as Jim, told me about it--"
+
+"About what?" Aileen asked, hoping to get some continuity into Maggie's
+relation of her marital woes.
+
+"The fight at the sheds."
+
+"What fight?" Aileen put the question with a sickening fear at her
+heart.
+
+"The fight betwixt Jim an' Mr. Googe--"
+
+"What do you mean, Maggie?"
+
+"I mane wot I say," Maggie replied with some show of spirit, for
+Aileen's tone of voice was peremptory; "Jim McCann, me husband, an' Mr.
+Googe had words in the shed--"
+
+"What words?"
+
+"Just lave me time an' I'll tell you, Aileen. You be after catchin' me
+short up betwixt ivery word, an' more be token as if't was your own man,
+instid of mine, ye was worrittin' about. I said they had words, but by
+rights I should say it was Jim as had them. Jim was mad because the boss
+in Shed Number Two give Mr. Googe a piece of work he had been savin' an'
+promisin' him; an' Jim made a fuss about it, an' the boss said he'd give
+Jim another, but Jim wanted _that wan piece_; an' Jim threatened to get
+up a strike, an' if there's a strike Jim'll lave the place an' I'll lose
+me home--ochone--"
+
+"Go on, Maggie." Aileen was trying to anticipate Maggie's tale, and in
+anticipation of the worst happening to Champney Googe, she lost her
+patience. She could not bear the suspense.
+
+"But Jim didn't sass the boss--he sassed Mr. Googe. 'T was this way, so
+Mrs. MacLoughanchan says--Jim said niver a word about the fight to me,
+but he said he would lave the place if they didn't strike--Mr. Googe
+says, 'McCann, the foreman says you're to begin on the two keystones at
+wanct--at wanct,' says he, repating it because Jim said niver a word.
+An' Jim fires up an' says under his breath:
+
+"'I don't take no orders from convic's,' says he.
+
+"'What did you say, McCann?' says Mr. Googe, steppin' up to him wid a
+glint in his eye that Jim didn't mind he was so mad; an' instid of
+repatin' it quiet-like, Jim says, steppin' outside the shed when he see
+the boss an' Mr. Googe followin' him, loud enough for the whole shed to
+hear:
+
+'"I don't take orders from no convic's--' an' then--" Maggie laid her
+hand suddenly over her heart as if in pain, '"Take that back, McCann,'
+says Mr. Googe--'I'll give you the wan chanct.'--An' then Jim swore an'
+said he'd see him an' himself in hell first, an' then, before Jim knew
+wot happened, Mr. Googe lit out wid his fist--an' Jim layin' out on the
+grass, for Mrs. MacLoughanchan says her man said Mr. Googe picked a soft
+place to drop him in; an' Mr. Googe helps Jim to his feet, an' holds out
+his hand an' says:
+
+"'Shake hands, McCann, an' we'll start afresh--'
+
+"But, oh, Aileen! Jim wouldn't, an' Mr. Googe turned away sad-like, an'
+then Jim comes home, an' widout a word to his wife, says if they don't
+strike, because there's a convic' an' a no union man a-workin'
+'longside of him in his section, he'll lave an' give up his job
+here--an' it's two hundred he's paid down out of his wages, an' me
+a-savin' from morn till night on me home--an' 't was to be me very own
+because Jim says no man alive can tell when he'll be dead in the
+quarries an' the sheds."
+
+She wept afresh and Billy was left unconsoled, for Maggie, wiping her
+eyes to look at Aileen and wonder at her silence, saw that she, too, was
+weeping; but the tears rolled silently one after another down her
+flushed cheeks.
+
+"Och, Aileen, darlin'! Don't ye cry wid me--me burden's heavy enough
+widout the weight of wan of your tears--say something to comfort me
+heart about Jim."
+
+"I can't, Maggie, I think it's wicked for Jim to say such things to Mr.
+Googe--everybody knows what he has been through. And it would serve Jim
+McCann but right," she added hotly, "if the time should come when his
+Billy should have the same cruel words said to him--"
+
+"Don't--don't--for the love of the Mother of God, don't say such things,
+Aileen!" She caught up the sorely perplexed and troubled Billy, and
+buried her face in his red curls. "Don't for the sake of the mother I
+am, an' only a mother can know how the Mother of God himself felt wid
+her crucified Son an' the bitter words he had to hear--ye're not a
+mother, Aileen, an' so I won't lay it up too much against ye--"
+
+Aileen interrupted her with exceeding bitterness;
+
+"No, I'm not a mother, Maggie, and I never shall be."
+
+Maggie looked at her in absolute incomprehension. "I thought you was
+cryin' for me, an' Jim, an' all our prisent troubles, but I belave yer
+cryin' for--"
+
+Mrs. McCann stopped short; she was still staring at Aileen who suddenly
+lifted her brimming eyes to hers.--What Mrs. McCann read therein she
+never accurately defined, even to Jim; but, whatever it was, it caused a
+revulsion of feeling in Maggie's sorely bruised heart. She set Billy
+down on the floor without any ceremony, much to that little man's
+surprise, and throwing her arms around Aileen drew her close with a
+truly maternal caress.
+
+"Och, darlin'--darlin'--" she said in the voice with which she soothed
+Billy to sleep, "darlin' Aileen, an' has your puir heart been bearin'
+this all alone, an' me talkin' an' pratin' about me Jim to ye, an' how
+beautiful it is to be married!--'Deed an' it is, darlin', an' if Jim
+wasn't a man he'd be an angel sure; but it's not Maggie McCann that's
+wantin' her husband to be an angel yet, an' you must just forgive him,
+Aileen, an' you'll find yerself that no man's parfection, an' a woman
+has to be after takin' thim as they be--lovin' an' gentle be times, an'
+cross as Cain whin yer expectin' thim to be swateheartin' wid ye; an'
+wake when ye think they're after bein' rale giants; an' strong whin
+ye're least lookin' for it; an ginerous by spells an' spendthrifts wid
+their 'baccy, an' skinflints wid their own, an'--an'--just common,
+downright aggravatin', lovable men, darlin'--There now! Yer smilin'
+again like me old Aileen, an' bad cess to the wan that draws another
+tear from your swate Irish eyes." She kissed her heartily.
+
+In trying to make amends Mrs. McCann forgot her own woes; taking Billy
+in her arms, she went to the stove and set on the kettle.
+
+"It's four past, an' Jim'll be comin' in tired and worritted, so I'll
+put on an extra potater or two an' a good bit of bacon an' some pase.
+Stay wid us, Aileen."
+
+"No, Maggie, I can't; besides you and Jim will want the house to
+yourself till you get straightened out--and, Maggie, it _will_
+straighten out, don't you worry."
+
+"'Deed, an' I'll not waste me breath another time tellin' me troubles to
+a heart that's sorer than me own--good-bye, darlin', an' me best thanks
+for comin' up so prompt to me in me trouble. It's good to have a friend,
+Aileen, an' we've been friendly that long that it seems as if me own
+burden must be yours."
+
+Aileen smiled, leaning to kiss Billy as he clung to his mother's neck.
+
+"I'll come up whenever you want me and I can get away, Maggie, an' next
+time I'll bring you more comfort, I hope. Good-bye."
+
+"Och, darlin'!--T'row a kiss, Billy. Look, Aileen, at the kisses me
+b'y's t'rowin' yer!" she exclaimed delightedly; and Billy, in the
+exuberance of his joy that tears were things of the past, continued to
+throw kisses after the lady till she disappeared down the street.
+
+
+IX
+
+Oh, but her heart was hot with indignation as she walked along the road,
+her eyes were stung with scalding tears, her thoughts turbulent and
+rebellious! Why must he suffer such indignities from a man like Jim
+McCann! How dared a man, that was a man, taunt another like that! The
+hand holding her sun umbrella gripped the handle tightly, and through
+set teeth she said to herself: "I hate them all--hate them!"
+
+The declining July sun was hot upon her; the road-bed, gleaming white
+with granite dust, blinded her. She looked about for some shelter where
+she could wait for the down car; there was none in sight, except the
+pines over by Father Honoré's and the sisterhood house an eighth of a
+mile beyond. She continued to stand there in the glare and the
+heat--miserable, dejected, rebellious, until the tram halted for her.
+The car was an open one; there was no other occupant. As it sped down
+the curving road to the lake shore, the breeze, created by its movement,
+was more than grateful to her. She took off her shade-hat to enjoy the
+full benefit of it.
+
+At the switch, half way down, the tram waited for the up car. She could
+hear it coming from afar; the overhead wires vibrated to the extra power
+needed on the steep grade. It came in sight, crowded with workmen on
+their way home to Quarry End; the rear platform was black with them. It
+passed over the switch slowly, passed within two feet of her seat. She
+turned to look at it, wondering at its capacity for so many--and
+looked, instead, directly into the face of Champney Googe who stood on
+the lower step, his dinner-pail on his arm, the arm thrust through the
+guard.
+
+At sight of her, so near him that the breath of each might have been
+felt on the cheek of the other, he raised his workman's cap--
+
+She saw the gray head, the sudden pallor on brow and cheek, the deep,
+slightly sunken eyes fixed upon her as if on her next move hung the
+owner's hope of eternal life--the eyes moved with the slowly moving car
+to focus _her_....
+
+To Aileen Armagh that face, changed as it was, was a glimpse of heaven
+on earth, and that heaven was reflected in the smile with which she
+greeted it. She did more:--unheeding the many faces that were turned
+towards her, she leaned from the car, her eyes following him, the
+love-light still radiating from her every feature, till he was carried
+beyond sight around the curving base of the Flamsted Hills.
+
+She heard nothing more externally, saw nothing more, until she found
+herself at The Corners instead of The Bow. The tumult within her
+rendered her deaf to the clanging of the electric gong, blind to the
+people who had entered along Main Street. Love, and love alone, was
+ringing its joy-bells in her soul till external sounds grew muffled,
+indistinct; until she became unaware of her surroundings. Love was
+knocking so loudly at her heart that the bounding blood pulsed rhythmic
+in her ears. Love was claiming her wholly, possessing her soul and
+body--but no longer that idealizing love of her young girlhood and
+womanhood. Rather it was that love which is akin to the divine rapture
+of maternity--the love that gives all, that sacrifices all, which
+demands nothing of the loved one save to love, to shield, to
+comfort--the love that makes of a true woman's breast not only a rest
+whereon a man, as well as his babe, may pillow a weary head, but a round
+tower of strength within which there beats a heart of high courage for
+him who goes forth to the daily battlefield of Life.
+
+She rode back to The Bow. Hannah called to her from the kitchen door
+when she saw her coming up the driveway:
+
+"Come round here a minute, Aileen."
+
+"What is it, Hannah?" Her voice trembled in spite of her effort to speak
+naturally. She prayed Hannah might not notice.
+
+"Here's a little broth I've made for Uncle Jo Quimber. I heard he wasn't
+very well, and I wish you'd take this down to him before supper. Tell
+him it won't hurt him and it's real strengthenin'."
+
+"I will go now, and--Hannah, don't mind if I don't come home to supper
+to-night; I'm not hungry; it's too hot to eat. If I want anything, I'll
+get a glass of milk in the pantry afterwards. If Mrs. Champney should
+want me, tell Octavius he'll find me down by the boat house."
+
+"Mis' Champney ain't so well, to-night, the nurse says. I guess it's
+this heat is telling on her."
+
+"I should think it would--even I feel it." She was off again down the
+driveway, glad to be moving, for a strange restlessness was upon her.
+
+She found Joel Quimber sitting in his arm chair on the back porch of the
+little house belonging to his grand-niece. The old man looked feeble,
+exhausted and white; but his eyes brightened on seeing Aileen come round
+the corner of the porch.
+
+"What you got there, Aileen?"
+
+"Something good for you, Uncle Jo. Hannah made it for you on purpose."
+She showed him the broth.
+
+"Hannah's a good soul, I thank her kindly. Set down, Aileen, set down."
+
+"I'm afraid you're too tired to have company to-night, Uncle Jo."
+
+"Lord, no--you ain't comp'ny, Aileen, an' I ain't never too tired to
+have your comp'ny either."
+
+She smiled and took her seat on the lower step, at his feet.
+
+"Jest thinkin' of you, Aileen--"
+
+"Me, Uncle Jo? What put me into your head?"
+
+"You're in a good part of the time ef you did but know it."
+
+"Oh, Uncle Jo, did they teach you how to flatter like that in the little
+old schoolhouse you showed me years ago at The Corners?"
+
+Old Joel Quimber chuckled weakly.
+
+"No--not thar. A man, ef he's any kind of a man, don't have to learn his
+a-b-c before he can tell a good-lookin' gal she's in his head, or his
+heart--jest which you're a min' ter--most of the time. Yes, I was
+thinkin' of you, Aileen--you an' Champney."
+
+The color died out entirely from Aileen's cheeks, and then surged into
+them again till she put her hands to her face to cool their throbbing.
+She was wondering if Love had entered into some conspiracy with Fate
+to-day to keep this beloved name ever in her ears.
+
+"What about me and Mr. Googe?" She spoke in a low tone, her face was
+turned away from the old man to the meadows and the sheds in the
+distance.
+
+"I was a-thinkin' of this time fourteen year ago this very month. Champ
+an' me was walkin' up an' down the street, an' he was tellin' me 'bout
+that serenade, an' how you'd give him a rosebud with pepper in it--Lord,
+Aileen, you was a case, an' no mistake! An' I was thinkin', too, what
+Champ said to me thet very night. He was tellin' 'bout thet great
+hell-gate of New York, an' he said, 'You've got to swim with the rest or
+you'd go under, Uncle Jo,'--'go under,' them's his very words. An' I
+said, 'Like enough _you_ would, Champ--I ain't ben thar--'"
+
+He paused a moment, shuffled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
+Then he spoke again, but in so low a tone that Aileen could barely catch
+the words:
+
+"An' he went under, Champ did--went under--"
+
+Aileen felt, without seeing, for her face was still turned to the
+meadows and the sheds, that the old man was leaning to her. Then she
+heard his voice in her ear:
+
+"Hev you seen him?"
+
+"Once, Uncle Jo."
+
+"You're his friend, ain't you, Aileen?"
+
+"Yes." Her voice trembled.
+
+"Guess we're all his friends in Flamsted--I heered they fit in the shed,
+Champ an' Jim McCann--it hadn't ought 'a'-ben, Aileen--hadn't ought
+'a'-ben; but't warn't Champ's fault, you may bet your life on thet.
+Champ went under, but he didn't stay under--you remember thet, Aileen.
+An' I can't nowise blame him, now he's got his head above water agin,
+for not stan'in' it to have a man like McCann heave a stone at him jest
+ez he's makin' for shore. 'T ain't right, an' the old Judge use ter say,
+'What ain't right hadn't ought ter be.'"
+
+He waited a while to regain his scant breath; the long speech had
+exhausted it. At last he chuckled weakly to himself, "Champ's a devil
+of a feller--" he caught up his words as if he were saying too much;
+laid his hand on Aileen's head; turned her face half round to his and,
+leaning, whispered again in her ear:
+
+"Don't you go back on Champ, promise me thet, Aileen."
+
+She sprang to her feet and laid her hand in his.
+
+"I promise, Uncle Jo."
+
+"Thet's a good girl." He laid his other hand over hers. "You stick by
+Champ an' stick up for him too; he's good blood, an' ef he did go under
+for a spell, he ain't no worse 'n the rest, nor half ez bad; for Champ
+went in _of his own accord--of his own accord_," he repeated
+significantly, "an' don't you forget thet, Aileen! Thet takes grit;
+mebbe you wouldn't think so, but it does. Champ makes me think of them
+divers, I've read an' heerd about, thet dives for pearls. Some on 'em
+comes up all right, but some of 'em go under for good an' all. Champ
+dove mighty deep--he was diving for money, which he figured was his
+pearl, Aileen--an' he most went under for good an' all without gettin'
+what he wanted, an' now he's come to the surface agin, it's all ben wuth
+it--he's got the pearl, Aileen, but t'ain't the one he expected to
+get--he told me so t' other night. We set here him an' me, an'
+understan' one 'nother even when we don't talk--jest set an' smoke an'
+puff--"
+
+"What pearl is it, Uncle Jo?" She whispered her question, half fearing,
+but wholly longing to hear the old man's answer.
+
+"Guess he'll tell you himself sometime, Aileen."
+
+He leaned back in his chair; he was tired. Aileen stooped and kissed him
+on the forehead.
+
+"Goodnight, Uncle Jo," she said softly, "an' don't forget Hannah's
+broth or there'll be trouble at Champo."
+
+He roused himself again.
+
+"I heered from Tave to-day thet Mis' Champney is pretty low."
+
+"Yes, she feels this heat in her condition."
+
+"Like enough--like enough; guess we all do a little." Then he seemed to
+speak to himself:--"She was rough on Champ," he murmured.
+
+Aileen left him with that name on his lips.
+
+On her return to Champ-au-Haut, she went down to the boat house to sit a
+while in its shade. The surface of the lake was motionless, but the
+reflection of the surrounding heights and shores was slightly veiled,
+owing to the heat-haze that quivered above it.
+
+Aileen was reliving the experience of the last seven years, the
+consummation of which was the knowledge that Champney Googe loved her.
+She was sure of this now. She had felt it intuitively during the
+twilight horror of that October day in The Gore. But how, when, where
+would he speak the releasing word--the supreme word of love that alone
+could atone, that alone could set her free? Would he ever speak
+it?--could he, after that avowal of the unreasoning passion for her
+which had taken possession of him seven years ago? And, moreover, what
+had not that avowal and its expression done to her?
+
+Her cheek paled at the thought:--he had kissed love into her for all
+time; and during all his years of imprisonment she had been held in
+thrall, as it were, to him and to his memory. All her rebellion at such
+thraldom, all her disgust at her weakness, as she termed it, all her
+hatred, engendered by the unpalatable method he had used to enthrall
+her, all her struggle to forget, to live again her life free of any
+entanglement with Champney Googe, all her endeavors to care for other
+men, had availed her naught. Love she must--and Champney Googe remained
+the object of that love. Father Honoré's words gave her courage to live
+on--loving.
+
+"Champney--Champney," she said low to herself. She covered her face with
+her hands. The mere taking of his name on her lips eased the exaltation
+of her mood. She rejoiced that she had been able that afternoon to show
+him how it stood with her after these many years; for the look in his
+eyes, when he recognized her, told her that she alone could hold to his
+lips the cup that should quench his thirst. Oh, she would be to him what
+no other woman could ever have been, ever could be--no other! She knew
+this. He knew it. When, oh, when would the word be spoken?
+
+She withdrew her hands from her face, and looked up the lake to the
+sheds. The sun was nearing the horizon, and against its clear red light
+the gray buildings loomed large and dark.--And there was his place!
+
+She sprang to her feet, ready to act upon a sudden thought. If she were
+not needed at the house, she would go up to the sheds; perhaps she could
+walk off the restlessness that kept urging her to action. At any rate,
+she could find comfort in thinking of his presence there during the day;
+she would be for a time, at least, in his environment. She knew Jim
+McCann's section; she and Maggie had been there more than once to watch
+the progress of some great work.
+
+On the way up to the house she met Octavius.
+
+"Where you going, Aileen?"
+
+"Up to the house to see if I'm needed. If they don't want me, I'm going
+up to the sheds for a walk. They say they look like cathedrals this
+week, so many of the arches and pillars are ready to be shipped."
+
+"There's no need of your going up to the house. Mis' Champney ain't so
+well, and the nurse says she give orders for no one to come nigh
+her--for she's sent for Father Honoré."
+
+"Father Honoré! What can she want of him?" she asked in genuine
+surprise. "He hasn't been here for over a year."
+
+"Well, anyway, I've got my orders to fetch Father Honoré, and I was just
+asking Hannah where you were. I thought you might like to ride up with
+me; I've harnessed up in the surrey."
+
+"I won't drive way up, Tave; but I'd like you to put me down at the
+sheds. Maggie says it's really beautiful now in Shed Number Two. While
+I'm waiting for you, I can nose round all I want to and you can pick me
+up there on your way back. Just wait till I run up to the house to see
+the nurse myself, will you?" Octavius nodded.
+
+She ran up the steps of the terrace, and on her return found Octavius
+with the surrey at the front door.
+
+Aileen was silent during the first part of the drive. This was unusual
+when the two were together, and, after waiting a while, Octavius spoke:
+
+"I'm wondering what she wants to see Father Honoré for."
+
+"I'd like to know myself."
+
+"It's got into my head, and somehow I can't get it out, that it's
+something to do with Champney--"
+
+"Champney!--" the name slipped unawares through the red barrier of her
+lips; she bit them in vexation at their betrayal of her thought--"you
+mean Champney Googe?" She tried to speak indifferently.
+
+"Who else should I mean?" Octavius answered shortly. Aileen's ways at
+times, especially during these last few years when Champney Googe's name
+happened to be mentioned in her presence, were irritating in the extreme
+to the faithful factotum at Champ-au-Haut.
+
+"I wish, Aileen, you'd get over your grudge against him--"
+
+"What grudge?"
+
+"You can tell that best yourself--there's no use your playing off--I
+don't pretend to know anything about it, but I can put my finger on the
+very year and the very month you turned against Champney Googe who
+never had anything but a pleasant word for you ever since you was so
+high--" he indicated a few feet on his whipstock--"and first come to
+Champo. 'T ain't generous, Aileen; 't ain't like a true woman; 't ain't
+like you to go back on a man just because he has sinned. He stands in
+need of us all now, although they say at the sheds he can hold his own
+with the best of 'em--I heard the manager telling Emlie he'd be foreman
+of Shed Number Two if he kept on, for he's the only one can get on with
+all of the foreigners; guess Jim McCann knows--"
+
+"What do you mean by the year and the month?"
+
+"I mean what I say. 'T was in August seven years ago--but p'r'aps you
+don't remember," he said. His sarcasm was intentional.
+
+She made no reply, but smiled to herself--a smile so exasperating to
+Octavius that he sulked a few minutes in silence. After another eighth
+of a mile, she spoke with apparent interest:
+
+"What makes you think Mrs. Champney wants to see Father Honoré about her
+nephew?"
+
+"Because it looks that way. This afternoon, when you was out, she got me
+to move Mr. Louis' picture from the library to her room, and I had to
+hang it on the wall opposite her bed--" Octavius paused--"I believe she
+don't think she'll last long, and she don't look as if she could either.
+Last week she had Emlie up putting a codicil to her will. The nurse told
+me she was one of the witnesses, she and Emlie and the doctor--catch her
+letting me see any of her papers!" He reined into the road that led to
+the sheds.
+
+"I hope to God she'll do him justice this time," he spoke aloud, but
+evidently to himself.
+
+"How do you mean, Tave?"
+
+"I mean by giving him what's his by rights; that's what I mean." He
+spoke emphatically.
+
+"He wouldn't be the man I think he is if he ever took a cent from
+her--not after what she did!" she exclaimed hotly.
+
+Octavius turned and looked at her in amazement.
+
+"That's the first time I ever heard you speak up for Champney Googe, an'
+I've known you since before you knew him. Well, it's better late than
+never." He spoke with a degree of satisfaction in his tone that did not
+escape Aileen. "Which door shall I leave you at?"
+
+"Round at the west--there are some people coming out now--here we are.
+You'll find me here when you come back."
+
+"I shall be back within a half an hour; I telephoned Father Honoré I was
+coming up--you're sure you don't mind waiting here alone? I'll get back
+before dusk."
+
+"What should I be afraid of? I won't let the stones fall on me!"
+
+She sprang to the ground. Octavius turned the horse and drove off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On entering the shed she caught her breath in admiration. The level rays
+of the July sun shone into the gray interior illumining the farthest
+corners. Their glowing crimson flushed the granite to a scarcely
+perceptible rose. Portions of the noble arches, parts of the architrave,
+sculptured cornice and keystone, drums, pediments and capitals, stone
+mullions, here and there a huge monolith, caught the ethereal flush and
+transformed Shed Number Two into a temple of beauty.
+
+She sought the section near the doors, where Jim McCann worked, and sat
+down on one of the granite blocks--perhaps the very one on which _he_
+was at work. The fancy was a pleasing one. Now and then she laid her
+hand caressingly on the cool stone and smiled to herself. Some men and
+women were looking at the huge Macdonald machine over in the farthermost
+corner; one by one they passed out at the east door--at last she was
+alone with her loving thoughts in this cool sanctuary of industry.
+
+She noticed a chisel lying behind the stone on which she sat; she turned
+and picked it up. She looked about for a hammer; she wanted to try her
+puny strength on what Champney Googe manipulated with muscles hardened
+by years of breaking stones--that thought was no longer a nightmare to
+her--but she saw none. The sun sank below the horizon; the afterglow
+promised to be both long and beautiful. After a time she looked out
+across the meadows--a man was crossing them; evidently he had just left
+the tram, for she heard the buzzing of the wires in the still air. He
+was coming towards the sheds. His form showed black against the western
+sky. Another moment--and Aileen knew him to be Champney Googe.
+
+She sat there motionless, the chisel in her hand, her face turned to the
+west and the man rapidly approaching Shed Number Two--a moment more, he
+was within the doors, and, evidently in haste, sought his section; then
+he saw her for the first time. He stopped short. There was a cry:
+
+"Aileen--Aileen--"
+
+She rose to her feet. With one stride he stood before her, leaning to
+look long into her eyes which never wavered while he read in them her
+woman's fealty to her love for him.
+
+He held out his hands, and she placed hers within them. He spoke, and
+the voice was a prayer:
+
+"My wife, Aileen--"
+
+"My husband--" she answered, and the words were a _Te Deum_.
+
+
+X
+
+Octavius drew up near the shed and handed the reins to Father Honoré.
+
+"If you'll just hold the mare a minute, I'll step inside and look for
+Aileen."
+
+He disappeared in the darkening entrance, but was back again almost
+immediately. Father Honoré saw at once from his face that something
+unusual had taken place. He feared an accident.
+
+"Is Aileen all right?" he asked anxiously.
+
+Octavius nodded. He got into the surrey; the hands that took the reins
+shook visibly. He drove on in silence for a few minutes. He was
+struggling for control of his emotion; for the truth is Octavius wanted
+to cry; and when a man wants to cry and must not, the result is
+inarticulateness and a painful contortion of every feature. Father
+Honoré, recognizing this fact, waited. Octavius swallowed hard and many
+times before he could speak; even then his speech was broken:
+
+"She's in there--all right--but Champney Googe is with her--"
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+Father Honoré's voice rang out with no uncertain sound. It was a
+heartening thing to hear, and helped powerfully to restore to Octavius
+his usual poise. He turned to look at his companion and saw every
+feature alive with a great joy. Suddenly the scales fell from this man
+of Maine's eyes.
+
+"You don't mean it!" he exclaimed in amazement.
+
+"Oh, but I _do_," replied Father Honoré joyfully and emphatically....
+
+"Father Honoré," he said after a time in which both men were busy with
+their thoughts, "I ain't much on expressing what I feel, but I want to
+tell you--for you'll understand--that when I come out of that shed I'd
+had a vision,"--he paused,--"a revelation;" the tears were beginning to
+roll down his cheeks; his lips were trembling; "we don't have to go back
+two thousand years to get one, either--I saw what this world's got to be
+saved by if it's saved at all--"
+
+"What was it, Mr. Buzzby?" Father Honoré spoke in a low voice.
+
+"I saw a vision of human love that was forgiving, and loving, and saving
+by nothing but love, like the divine love of the Christ you preach
+about--Father Honoré, I saw Aileen Armagh sitting on a block of granite
+and Champney Googe kneeling before her, his head in the very dust at her
+feet--and she raising it with her two arms--and her face was like an
+angel's--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two men drove on in silence to Champ-au-Haut.
+
+The priest was shown at once to Mrs. Champney's room. He had not seen
+her for over a year and was prepared for a great change; but the actual
+impression of her condition, as she lay motionless on the bed, was a
+shock. His practised eye told him that the Inevitable was already on the
+threshold, demanding entrance. He turned to the nurse with a look of
+inquiry.
+
+"The doctor will be here in a few minutes; I have telephoned for him,"
+she said low in answer. She bent over the bed.
+
+"Mrs. Champney, Father Honoré is here; you wished to see him."
+
+The eyes opened; there was still mental clarity in their outlook. Father
+Honoré stepped to the bed.
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Champney?" he asked gently.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Her articulation was indistinct but intelligible.
+
+"In what way?"
+
+She looked at him unwaveringly.
+
+"Is--she going--to marry--him?"
+
+Father Honoré read her thought and wondered how best to answer. He was
+of the opinion that she would remember Aileen in her will. The girl had
+been for years so faithful and, in a way, Mrs. Champney cared for her.
+Humanly speaking, he dreaded, by his answer, to endanger the prospect of
+the assurance to Aileen of a sum that would place her beyond want and
+the need to work for any one's support but her own in the future. But as
+he could not know what answer might or might not affect Aileen's future,
+he decided to speak the whole truth--let come what might.
+
+"I sincerely hope so," he replied.
+
+"Do--you know?" with a slight emphasis on the "know."
+
+"I know they love each other--have loved each other for many years."
+
+"If she does--she--won't get anything from me--you tell her--so."
+
+"That will make no difference to Aileen, Mrs. Champney. Love outweighs
+all else with her."
+
+She continued to look at him unwaveringly.
+
+"Love--fools--" she murmured.
+
+But Father Honoré caught the words, and the priest's manhood asserted
+itself in the face of dissolution and this blasphemy.
+
+"No--rather it is wisdom for them to love; it is ordained of God that
+human beings should love; I wish them joy. May I not tell them that you,
+too, wish them joy, Mrs. Champney? Aileen has been faithful to you, and
+your nephew never wronged you personally. Will you not be reconciled to
+him?" he pleaded.
+
+"No."
+
+"But why?" He spoke very gently, almost in appeal.
+
+"Why?" she repeated tonelessly, her eyes still fixed on his face,
+"because he is--hers--Aurora Googe's--"
+
+She paused for another effort. Her eyes turned at last to the portrait
+of Louis Champney on the wall at the foot of her bed.
+
+"She took all his love--all--all his love--and he was my husband--I
+loved my husband--But you don't know--"
+
+"What, Mrs. Champney? Let me help you, if I can."
+
+"No help--I loved my husband--he used to lie here--by my side--on this
+bed--and cry out--in his sleep for her--lie here--by my side in--the
+night--and stretch out his arms--for her--not me--not for me--"
+
+Her eyes were still fixed on Louis Champney's face. Suddenly the lids
+drooped; she grew drowsy, but continued to murmur, incoherently at
+first, then inarticulately.
+
+The nurse stepped to his side. Father Honoré's eyes dwelt pityingly for
+a moment on this deathbed; then he turned and left the room, marvelling
+at the differentiated expression in this life of that which we name
+Love.
+
+Octavius was waiting for him in the lower hall.
+
+"Did you see her?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"Yes; but to no purpose; her life has been lived, Mr. Buzzby; nothing
+can affect it now."
+
+"You don't mean she's gone?" Octavius started at the sound of his own
+voice; it seemed to echo through the house.
+
+"No; but it is, I believe, only a question of an hour at most."
+
+"I'd better drive up then for Aileen; she ought to know--ought to be
+here."
+
+"Believe me, it would be useless, Mr. Buzzby. Those two belong to life,
+not to death--leave them alone together; and leave her there above, to
+her Maker and the infinite mercy of His Son."
+
+"Amen," said Octavius Buzzby solemnly; but his thought was with those
+whom he had seen leave Champ-au-Haut through the same outward-opening
+portal that was now set wide for its mistress: the old Judge, and his
+son, Louis--the last Champney.
+
+He accompanied Father Honoré to the door.
+
+"No farther, Mr. Buzzby," he said, when Octavius insisted on driving him
+home. "Your place is here. I shall take the tram as usual at The Bow."
+
+They shook hands without further speech. In the deepening twilight
+Octavius watched him down the driveway. Despite his sixty years he
+walked with the elastic step of young manhood.
+
+
+XI
+
+"Unworthy--unworthy!" was Champney Googe's cry, as he knelt before
+Aileen in an access of shame and contrition in the presence of such a
+revelation of woman's love.
+
+[Illustration: "'Unworthy--unworthy!' was Champney Googe's cry, as he
+knelt before Aileen"]
+
+Aileen lifted his head, laid her arms around his neck, drew him by her
+young strength and her gentle compelling words to a seat beside her on
+the granite block. She kept her arms about him.
+
+"No, Champney, not unworthy; but worthy, worthy of it all--all that life
+can give you in compensation for those seven years. We'll put it all
+behind us; we'll live in the present and in hope of a blessed future.
+Take heart, my husband--"
+
+The bowed shoulders heaved beneath her arms.
+
+"So little to offer--so little--"
+
+"'So little'!" she exclaimed; "and is it 'little' you call your love for
+me? Is it 'little' that I'm to have a home--at last--of my own? Is it
+'little' that the husband I love is going out of it and coming home to
+it in his daily work, and my heart going out to him both ways at once?
+And is it 'little' you call the gift of a mother to her who is
+motherless--" her voice faltered.
+
+Champney caught her in his arms; his tears fell upon the dark head.
+
+"I'm a coward, Aileen, and you are just like our Father Honoré; but I
+_will_ put all behind me. I _will_ not regret. I _will_ work out my own
+salvation here in my native place, among my own and among strangers. I
+vow here I _will_, God helping me, if only in thankfulness for the two
+hearts that are mine...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The afterglow faded from the western heavens. The twilight came on
+apace. The two still sat there in the darkening shed, at times
+unburdening their over-charged hearts; at others each rested heart and
+body and soul in the presence of the other, and both were aware of the
+calming influence of the dim and silent shed.
+
+"How did you happen to come down here just to-night, and after work hours
+too, Champney?" she asked, curious to know the how and the why of this
+meeting.
+
+"I came down for my second chisel. I remembered when I got home that it
+needed sharpening and I could not do without it to-morrow morning. Of
+course the machine shop was closed, so I thought I'd try my hand at it
+on the grindstone up home this evening."
+
+"Then is this it?" she exclaimed, picking up the chisel from the block.
+
+"Yes, that's mine." He held out his hand for it.
+
+"Indeed, you're not going to have it--not this one! I'll buy you
+another, but this is mine. Wasn't I holding it in my hand and thinking
+of you when I saw you coming over the meadows?"
+
+"Keep it--and I'll keep something I have of yours."
+
+"Of mine? Where did you get anything of mine? Surely it isn't the
+peppered rosebud?"
+
+"Oh, no. I've had it nearly seven years."
+
+"Seven years!" She exclaimed in genuine surprise. "And whatever have you
+had of mine I'd like to know that has kept seven years? It's neither
+silver nor gold--for I've little of either; not that silver or gold can
+make a man happy," she added quickly, fearing he might be sensitive to
+her speech.
+
+"No; I've learned that, Aileen, thank God!"
+
+"What is it then?--tell me quick."
+
+He thrust his hand into the workman's blouse and drew forth a small
+package, wrapped in oiled silk and sewed to a cord that was round his
+neck. He opened it.
+
+Aileen bent to examine it, her eyes straining in the increasing dusk.
+
+"Why, it's never--it's not my handkerchief!--Champney!"
+
+"Yes, yours, Aileen--that night in all the horror and despair, I heard
+something in your voice that told me you--didn't hate me--"
+
+"Oh, Champney!"
+
+"Yes. I've kept it ever since--I asked permission to take it in with
+me?--I mean into my cell. They granted it. It was with me night and
+day--my head lay on it at night; I got my first sleep so--and it went
+with me to work during the day. It's been kissed clean thin till it's
+mere gossamer; it helped, that and the work, to save my brain--"
+
+She caught handkerchief and hand in both hers and pressed her lips to
+them again and again.
+
+"And now I'm going to keep it, after you're mine in the sight of man, as
+you are now before God; put it away and keep it for--" He stopped short.
+
+"For whom?" she whispered.
+
+He drew her close to him--closer and more near.
+
+"Aileen, my beloved," his voice was earnestly joyful, "I am hoping for
+the blessing of children--are you?--"
+
+"Except for you, my arms will feel empty for them till they come--"
+
+"Oh, my wife--my true wife!--now I can tell you all!" he said, and the
+earnest note was lost in purest joy. He whispered:
+
+"You know, dear, I'm but half a man, and must remain such. I am no
+citizen, have no citizen's rights, can never vote--have no voice in all
+that appeals to manhood--my country--"
+
+"I know--I know--" she murmured pityingly.
+
+"And so I used to think there in my cell at night when I kissed the
+little handkerchief--Please God, if Aileen still loves me when I get
+out, if she in her loving mercy will forgive to the extent that she will
+be my wife, then it may be that she will bestow on me the blessing of a
+child--a boy who will one day stand among men as his father never can
+again, who will possess the full rights of citizenship; in him I may
+live again as a man--but only so."
+
+"Please God it may be so."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They walked slowly homewards to The Bow in the clear warm dark of the
+midsummer-night. They had much to say to each other, and often they
+lingered on the way. They lingered again when they came to the gate by
+the paddock in the lane.
+
+Aileen looked towards the house. A light was burning in Mrs. Champney's
+room.
+
+"I'm afraid Mrs. Champney must be much worse. Tave never would have
+forgotten me if he hadn't received some telephone message while he was
+at Father Honoré's. But the nurse said there was nothing I could do when
+I left with Tave--but oh, I'm so glad he didn't stop! I _must_ go in
+now, Champney," she said decidedly. But he still held her two hands.
+
+"Tell me, Champney, have you ever thought your aunt might remember
+you--for the wrong she did you?"
+
+"No; and if she should, I never would take a cent of it."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad--so glad!" She squeezed both his hands right hard.
+
+He read her thought and smiled to himself; he was glad that in this he
+had not disappointed her.
+
+"But there's one thing I wish she would do--poor--_poor_ Aunt Meda--" he
+glanced up at the light in the window.
+
+"Yes, 'poor,' Champney--I know." She was nodding emphatically.
+
+"I wish she would leave enough to Mr. Van Ostend to repay with interest
+what he repaid for me to the Company; it would be only just, for, work
+as I may, I can never hope to do that--and I long so to do it--no
+workman could do it--"
+
+She interrupted gayly: "Oh, but you've a working-woman by your side!"
+She snatched away her small hands--for she belonged to the small people
+of the earth. "See, Champney, the two hands! I can work, and I'm not
+afraid of it. I can earn a lot to help with--and I shall. There's my
+cooking, and singing, and embroidery--"
+
+He smiled again in the dark at her enthusiasm--it was so like her!
+
+"And I'll lift the care from our mother too,--and you're not to fret
+your dear soul about the Van Ostend money--if one can't do it, surely
+two can with God's blessing. Now I _must_ go in--and you may give me
+another kiss for I've been on starvation diet these last seven
+years--only one--oh, Champney!"...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dim light continued to burn in the upper chamber at Champ-au-Haut
+until the morning; for before Champney and Aileen left the shed, the
+Inevitable had already crossed the threshold of that chamber--and the
+dim light burned on to keep him company....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A month later, when Almeda Champney's will was admitted to probate and
+its contents made public, it was found that there were but six
+bequests--one of which was contained in the codicil--namely:
+
+To Octavius Buzzby the oil portrait of Louis Champney.
+
+To Ann and Hannah one thousand dollars each in recognition of faithful
+service for thirty-seven years.
+
+To Aileen Armagh (so read the codicil) a like sum _provided she did not
+marry Champney Googe_.
+
+One half of the remainder of the estate, real and personal, was
+bequeathed to Henry Van Ostend; the other half, in trust, to his
+daughter, Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend.
+
+The instrument bore the date of Champney Googe's commitment.
+
+
+
+
+The Last Word
+
+
+I
+
+It is the day after Flamsted's first municipal election; after twenty
+years of progress it has attained to proud citizenship. The community,
+now amounting to twelve thousand, has spent all its surplus energy in
+municipal electioneering delirium; there were four candidates in the
+field for mayor and party spirit ran high. On this bright May morning of
+1910, the streets are practically deserted, whereas yesterday they were
+filled with shouting throngs. The banners are still flung across the
+main street; a light breeze lifts them into prominence and with them the
+name of the successful candidate they bear--Luigi Poggi.
+
+The Colonel, as a result of continued oratory in favor of his
+son-in-law's candidacy, is laid up at home with an attack of laryngitis;
+but he has strength left to whisper to Elmer Wiggins who has come up to
+see him:
+
+"Yesterday, after twenty years of solid work, Flamsted entered upon its
+industrial majority through the throes of civic travail," a mixture of
+metaphors that Mr. Wiggins ignores in his joy at the result of the
+election; for Mr. Wiggins has been hedging with his New England
+conscience and fearing, as a consequence, punishment in
+disappointmenting election results. He wavered, in casting his vote,
+between the two principal candidates, young Emlie, Lawyer Emlie's son,
+and Luigi Poggi.
+
+As a Flamstedite in good and regular standing, he knew he ought to vote
+for his own, Emlie, instead of a foreigner. But, he desired above all
+things to see Luigi Poggi, his friend, the most popular merchant and
+keenest man of affairs in the town, the first mayor of the city of
+Flamsted. Torn between his duty and the demands of his heart, he
+compromised by starting a Poggi propaganda, that was carried on over his
+counter and behind the mixing-screen, with every customer whether for
+pills or soda water. Then, on the decisive day, he entered the booth and
+voted a straight Emlie ticket!! So much for the secret ballot.
+
+He shook the Colonel's hand right heartily.
+
+"I thought I'd come up to congratulate personally both you and the city,
+and talk things over in a general way, Colonel; sorry to find you so
+used up, but in a good cause."
+
+The Colonel beamed.
+
+"A matter of a day or two of rest. You did good work, Mr. Wiggins, good
+work," he whispered; "you'd make a good parliamentary whip--'Gad, my
+voice is gone!--but as you say, in a good cause--a good cause--"
+
+"No better on earth," Mr. Wiggins responded enthusiastically.
+
+The Colonel was magnanimous; he forbore to whisper one word in reminder
+of the old-time pessimism that twenty years ago held the small-headed
+man of Maine in such dubious thrall.
+
+"It was each man's vote that told--yours, and mine--" he whispered
+again, nodding understandingly.
+
+Mr. Wiggins at once changed the subject.
+
+"Don't you exert yourself, Colonel; let me do the talking--for a
+change," he added with a twinkle in his eyes. The Colonel caught his
+meaning and threw back his head for a hearty laugh, but failed to make a
+sound.
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend came up on the train last night, just in time to see the
+fireworks, they say," said Mr. Wiggins. "Yes," he went on in answer to a
+question he read in the Colonel's eyes, "came up to see about the Champo
+property. Emlie told me this morning. Mr. Van Ostend and Tave and Father
+Honoré are up there now; I saw the automobile standing in the driveway
+as I came up on the car. Guess Tave has run the place about as long as
+he wants to alone. He's getting on in years like the rest of us, and
+don't want so much responsibility."
+
+"Does Emlie know anything?" whispered the Colonel eagerly.
+
+"Nothing definite; they're going to talk it over to-day; but he had some
+idea about the disposition of the estate, I think, from what he said."
+
+The Colonel motioned with his lips: "Tell me."
+
+Mr. Wiggins proceeded to give the Colonel the desired information.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While this one-sided conversation was taking place, Henry Van Ostend was
+standing on the terrace at Champ-au-Haut, discussing with Father Honoré
+and Octavius Buzzby the best method of investing the increasing revenues
+of the large estate, vacant, except for its faithful factotum and the
+care-takers, Ann and Hannah, during the seven years that have passed
+since Mrs. Champney's death.
+
+"Mr. Googe had undoubtedly a perfect right to dispute this will, Father
+Honoré," he was saying.
+
+"But he would never have done it; I know such a thing could never have
+occurred to him."
+
+"That does not alter the facts of this rather peculiar case. Mr. Buzzby
+knows that, up to this date, my daughter and I have never availed
+ourselves of any rights in this estate; and he has managed it so wisely
+alone, during these last seven years, that now he no longer wishes to be
+responsible for the investment of its constantly increasing revenues. I
+shall never consider this estate mine--will or no will." He spoke
+emphatically. "Law is one thing, but a right attitude, where property is
+concerned, towards one's neighbor is quite another."
+
+He looked to right and left of the terrace, and included in his glance
+many acres of the noble estate. Father Honoré, watching him, suddenly
+recalled that evening in the financier's own house when the Law was
+quoted as "fundamental"--and he smiled to himself.
+
+Mr. Van Ostend faced the two men.
+
+"Do you think it would do any good for me to approach him on the subject
+of setting apart that portion of the personal estate, and its increase
+in the last seven years, which Mrs. Champney inherited from her father,
+Mr. Googe's grandfather, for his children--that is if he won't take it
+himself?"
+
+"No."
+
+The two men spoke as one; the negative was strongly emphatic.
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend," Octavius Buzzby spoke with suppressed excitement, "if
+I may make bold, who has lived here on this place and known its owners
+for forty years, to give you a piece of advice, I'd like to give it."
+
+"I want all I can get, Mr. Buzzby; it will help me to see my way in this
+matter."
+
+"Then I'm going to ask you to let bygones be bygones, and not say one
+word to Mr. Googe about this property. He begun seven years ago in the
+sheds and has worked his way up to foreman this last year, and if you
+was to propose to him what you have to us, it would rake up the past,
+sir--a past that's now in its grave, thank God! Champney--I ask your
+pardon--Mr. Googe wouldn't touch a penny of it more 'n he'd touch
+carrion. I _know_ this; nor he wouldn't have his boy touch it either. I
+ain't saying he don't appreciate the good money does, for he's told me
+so; but for himself--well, sir, I think you know what I mean: he's
+through with what is just money. He's a man, is Champney Googe, and he's
+living his life in a way that makes the almighty dollar look pretty
+small in comparison with it--Father Honoré, you know this as well as I
+do."
+
+The priest nodded gravely in the affirmative.
+
+"Tell me something of his life, Father Honoré," said Mr. Van Ostend;
+"you know the degree of respect I have always had for him ever since he
+took his punishment like a man--and you and I were both on the wrong
+track," he added with a meaning smile.
+
+"I don't quite know what to say," replied his friend. "It isn't anything
+I can point to and say he has done this or that, because he gets beneath
+the surface, as you might say, and works there. But I do know that where
+there is an element of strife among the men, there you will find him as
+peacemaker--he has a wonderful way with them, but it is indefinable. We
+don't know all he does, for he never speaks of it, only every once in a
+while something leaks out. I know that where there is a sickbed and a
+quarryman on it, there you will find Champney Googe as watcher after his
+day's work--and tender in his ministrations as a woman. I know that when
+sickness continues and the family are dependent on the fund, Champney
+Googe works many a night overtime and gives his extra pay to help out. I
+know, too, that when a strike threatens, he, who is now in the union
+because he is convinced he can help best there, is the balance-wheel,
+and prevents radical unreason and its results. There's trouble brewing
+there now--about the automatic bush hammer--"
+
+"I have heard of it."
+
+"--And Jim McCann is proving intractable. Mr. Googe is at work with him,
+and hopes to bring him round to a just point of view. And I know,
+moreover, that when there is a crime committed and a criminal to be
+dealt with, that criminal finds in the new foreman of Shed Number Two a
+friend who, without condoning the crime, stands by him as a human being.
+I know that out of his own deep experience he is able to reach out to
+other men in need, as few can. In all this his wife is his helpmate, his
+mother his inspiration.--What more can I say?"
+
+"Nothing," said Henry Van Ostend gravely. "He has two children I hear--a
+boy and a girl. I should like to see her who was the little Aileen of
+twenty years ago."
+
+"I hope you may," said Father Honoré cordially; "yes, he has two lovely
+children, Honoré, now in his first knickerbockers, is my namesake--"
+
+Octavius interrupted him, smiling significantly:
+
+"He's something more than Father Honoré's namesake, Mr. Van Ostend, he's
+his shadow when he is with him. The men have a little joke among
+themselves whenever they see the two together, and that's pretty often;
+they say Father Honoré's shadow will never grow less till little Honoré
+reaches his full growth."
+
+The priest smiled. "He and I are very, very close friends," was all he
+permitted himself to say, but the other men read far more than that into
+his words.
+
+Henry Van Ostend looked thoughtful. He considered with himself for a few
+minutes; then he spoke, weighing his words:
+
+"I thank you both; I have solved my difficulty with your help. You have
+spoken frankly to me, and shown me this matter in a different light; I
+may speak as frankly to you, as to Mr. Googe's closest friends. The
+truth is, neither my daughter nor myself can appropriate this money to
+ourselves--we both feel that it does not belong to us, _in the
+circumstances_. I should like you both to tell Mr. Googe for me, that
+out of the funds accruing to the estate from his grandfather's money, I
+will take for my share the hundred thousand dollars I repaid to the
+Quarries Company thirteen years ago--you know what I mean--and the
+interest on the same for those six years. Mr. Googe will understand that
+this is done in settlement of a mere business account--and he will
+understand it as between man and man. I think it will satisfy him.
+
+"I have determined since talking with you, although the scheme has been
+long in my mind and I have spoken to Mr. Emlie about it, to apply the
+remainder of the estate for the benefit of the quarrymen, the
+stone-cutters, their families and, incidentally, the city of Flamsted.
+My plans are, of course, indefinite; I cannot give them in detail, not
+having had time to think them out; but I may say that this house will be
+eventually a home for men disabled in the quarries or sheds. The plan
+will develop further in the executing of it. You, Father Honoré, you and
+Mr. Buzzby, Mr. Googe, and Mr. Emlie will be constituted a Board of
+Overseers--I know that in your hands the work will be advanced, and, I
+hope, prospered to the benefit of this generation and succeeding ones."
+
+Octavius Buzzby grasped his hand.
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend, I wish old Judge Champney was living to hear this! He'd
+approve, Mr. Van Ostend, he'd approve of it all--and Mr. Louis too."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Buzzby, for these words; they do me good. And now," he
+said, turning to Father Honoré, "I want very much to see Mr. Googe--now
+that this business is settled. I have wanted to see him many times
+during these last six years, but I felt--I feared he might consider my
+visiting him an intrusion--"
+
+"Not at all--not at all; this simply shows me that you don't as yet know
+the real Mr. Googe. He will be glad to see you at any time."
+
+"I think I'd like to see him in the shed."
+
+"No reason in the world why you shouldn't; he is one of the most
+accessible men at all times and seasons."
+
+"Supposing, then, you ride up with me in the automobile?"
+
+"Certainly I will; shall we go up this forenoon?"
+
+"Yes, I should like to go now. Mr. Buzzby, I shall be back this
+afternoon for a talk with you. I want to make some definite arrangement
+for Ann and Hannah."
+
+"I'll be here."
+
+The two walked together to the driveway, and shortly the mellow note of
+the great Panhard's horn sounded, as the automobile rounded the curve of
+The Bow and sped away to the north shore highway and the sheds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that afternoon Aileen, with her baby daughter, Aurora, in her arms,
+was standing on the porch watching for her husband's return. The usual
+hour for his home-coming had long passed. She began to fear that the
+threatened trouble in the sheds, on account of the attempted
+introduction of the automatic bush hammer, might have come to a crisis.
+At last, however, she saw him leave the car and cross the bridge over
+the Rothel. His step was quick and firm. She waved her hand to him; a
+swing of his cap answered her. Then little Aurora's tiny fist was
+manipulated by her mother to produce a baby form of welcome.
+
+Champney sprang up the steps two at a time, and for a moment the little
+wife and baby Aurora disappeared in his arms.
+
+"Oh, Champney, I'm so thankful you've come! I knew just by the way you
+came over the bridge that things were going better at the sheds. You are
+so late I began to get worried. Come, supper's waiting."
+
+"Wait a minute, Aileen--Mother--" he called through the hall, "come here
+a minute, please."
+
+Aurora Googe came quickly at that ever welcome call. Her face was even
+more beautiful than formerly, for great joy and peace irradiated every
+feature.
+
+"Where's Honoré?" he said abruptly, looking about for his boy who was
+generally the first to run as far as the bridge to greet him. His wife
+answered.
+
+"He and Billy went with Father Honoré as far as the power-house; he'll
+be back soon with Billy. Sister Ste. Croix went by a few minutes ago,
+and I told her to hurry them home.--What's the good news, Champney? Tell
+me quick--I can't wait to hear it."
+
+Champney smiled down at the eager face looking up to him; her chin was
+resting on her baby's head.
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend has been in the sheds to-day--and I've had a long talk
+with him."
+
+"Oh, Champney!"
+
+Both women exclaimed at the same time, and their faces reflected the joy
+that shone in the eyes of the man they loved with a love bordering on
+worship.
+
+Champney nodded. "Yes, and so satisfactory--" he drew a long breath; "I
+have so much to tell it will take half the evening. He wishes to 'pay
+his respects,' so he says, to my wife and mother, if convenient for the
+ladies to-morrow--how is it?" He looked with a smile first into the gray
+eyes and then into the dark ones. In the latter he read silent pleased
+consent; but Aileen's danced for joy as she answered:
+
+"Convenient! So convenient, that he'll get the surprise of his life from
+me, anyhow; he really must be made to realize that I am his debtor for
+the rest of my days--don't I owe the 'one man on earth for me' to him?
+for would I have ever seen Flamsted but for him? And have I ever
+forgotten the roses he dropped into the skirt of my dress twenty-one
+years ago this very month when I sang the Sunday night song for him at
+the Vaudeville? Twenty-one years! Goodness, but it makes me feel old,
+mother!"
+
+Aurora Googe smiled indulgently on her daughter, for, at times, Aileen,
+not only in ways, but looks, was still like the child of twelve.
+
+Champney grew suddenly grave.
+
+"Do you realize, Aileen, that this meeting to-day in the shed is the
+first in which we three, Father Honoré, Mr. Van Ostend, and I, have ever
+been together under one roof since that night twenty-one years ago when
+I first saw you?"
+
+"Why, that doesn't seem possible--but it _is_ so, isn't it? Wasn't that
+strange!"
+
+"Yes, and no," said Champney, looking at his mother. "I thought of our
+first meeting one another at the Vaudeville, as we three stood there
+together in the shed looking upwards to The Gore; and Father Honoré told
+me afterward that he was thinking of that same thing. We both wondered
+if Mr. Van Ostend recalled that evening, and the fact of our first
+acquaintance, although unknown to one another."
+
+"I wonder--" said Aileen, musingly.
+
+Champney spoke abruptly again; there was a note of uneasiness in his
+voice:
+
+"I wonder what keeps Honoré--I'll just run up the road and see if he's
+coming. If he isn't, I will go on till I meet the boys. I wish," he
+added wistfully, "that McCann felt as kindly to me as Billy does to my
+son; I am beginning to think that old grudge of his against me will
+never yield, not even to time;--I'll be back in a few minutes."
+
+Aileen watched him out of sight; then she turned to Aurora Googe.
+
+"We are blest in this turn of affairs, aren't we, mother? This meeting
+is the one thing Champney has been dreading--and yet longing for. I'm
+glad it's over."
+
+"So am I; and I am inclined to think Father Honoré brought it about; if
+you remember, he said nothing about Mr. Van Ostend's being here when he
+stopped just now."
+
+"So he didn't!" Aileen spoke in some surprise; then she added with a
+joyous laugh: "Oh, that dear man is sly--bless him!"--But the tears
+dimmed her eyes.
+
+
+II
+
+"Go straight home with Honoré, Billy, as straight as ever you can," said
+Father Honoré to eight-year-old Billy McCann who for the past year had
+constituted himself protector of five-year-old Honoré Googe; "I'll watch
+you around the power-house."
+
+Little Honoré reached up with both arms for the usual parting from the
+man he adored. The priest caught him up, kissed him heartily, and set
+him down again with the added injunction to "trot home."
+
+The two little boys ran hand in hand down the road. Father Honoré
+watched them till the power-house shut them from sight; then he waited
+for their reappearance at the other corner where the road curves
+downward to the highroad. He never allowed Honoré to go alone over the
+piece of road between the point where he was standing and the
+power-house, for the reason that it bordered one of the steepest and
+roughest ledges in The Gore; a careless step would be sure to send so
+small a child rolling down the rough surface. But beyond the
+power-house, the ledges fell away very gradually to the lowest slopes
+where stood, one among many in the quarries, the new monster steel
+derrick which the men had erected last week. They had been testing it
+for several days; even now its powerful arm held suspended a block of
+many tons' weight. This was a part of the test for "graduated
+strain"--the weight being increased from day to day.
+
+The men, in leaving their work, often took a short cut homeward from the
+lower slope to the road just below the power-house, by crossing this
+gentle declivity of the ledge. Evidently Billy McCann with this in mind
+had twisted the injunction to "go straight home" into a chance to "cut
+across"; for surely this way would be the "straightest." Besides, there
+was the added inducement of close proximity to the wonderful new derrick
+that, since its instalment, had been occupying many of Billy's waking
+thoughts.
+
+Father Honoré, watching for the children's reappearance at the corner of
+the road just beyond the long low power-house, was suddenly aware, with
+a curious shock, of the two little boys trotting in a lively manner down
+the easy grade of the "cross cut" slope, and nearing the derrick and its
+suspended weight. He frowned at the sight and, calling loudly to them to
+come back, started straight down over the steep ledge at the side of the
+road. He heard some one else calling the boys by name, and, a moment
+later, saw that it was Sister Ste. Croix who was coming up the hill.
+
+The children did not hear, or would not, because of their absorption in
+getting close to the steel giant towering above them. Sister Ste. Croix
+called again; then she, too, started down the slope after them.
+
+She noticed some men running from the farther side of the quarry. She
+saw Father Honoré suddenly spring by leaps and bounds down over the
+rough ledge. What was it? The children were apparently in no danger. She
+looked up at the derrick--
+
+_What was that!_ A tremor in its giant frame; a swaying of its cabled
+mast; a sickening downward motion of the weighted steel arm--then--
+
+"Merciful Christ!" she groaned, and for the space of a few seconds
+covered her eyes....
+
+The priest, catching up the two children one under each arm, ran with
+superhuman strength to evade the falling derrick--with a last supreme
+effort he rolled the boys beyond its reach; they were saved, but--
+
+Their savior was pinioned by the steel tip fast to the unyielding
+granite.
+
+A woman's shriek rent the air--a fearful cry:
+
+"Jean--mon Jean!"
+
+A moment more and Sister Ste. Croix reached the spot--she took his head
+on her lap.
+
+"Jean--mon Jean," she cried again.
+
+The eyes, dimmed already, opened; he made a supreme effort to speak--
+
+"Margot--p'tite Truite--"...
+
+Thus, after six and forty years of silence, Love spoke once; that Love,
+greater than State and Church because it is the foundation of both, and
+without it neither could exist; that Love--co-eval with all life, the
+Love which defies time, sustains absence, glorifies loss--remains, thank
+God! a deathless legacy to the toiling Race of the Human, and, because
+deathless, triumphant in death.
+
+It triumphed now....
+
+The ponderous crash of the derrick followed by the screams of the two
+boys, brought the quarrymen, the women and children, rushing in
+terrified haste from their evening meal. But when they reached the spot,
+and before Champney Googe, running over the granite slopes, as once
+years before he ran from pursuing justice, could satisfy himself that
+his boy was uninjured, at what a sacrifice he knew only when he knelt by
+the prostrate form, before Jim McCann, seizing a lever, could shout to
+the men to "lift all together," the life-blood ebbed, carrying with it
+on the hurrying out-going tide the priest's loving undaunted spirit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All work at the quarries and the sheds was suspended during the
+following Saturday; the final service was to be held on Sunday.
+
+All Saturday afternoon, while the bier rested before the altar in the
+stone chapel by the lake shore, a silent motley procession filed under
+the granite lintel:--stalwart Swede, blue-eyed German, sallow-cheeked
+Pole, dark-eyed Italian, burly Irish, low-browed Czechs, French
+Canadians, stolid English and Scotch, Henry Van Ostend and three of the
+directors of the Flamsted Quarries Company, rivermen from the Penobscot,
+lumbermen from farther north, the Colonel and three of his sons, the
+rector from The Bow, a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church from New
+York, the little choir boys--children of the quarrymen--and Augustus
+Buzzby, members of the Paulist Order, Elmer Wiggins, Octavius Buzzby
+supporting old Joel Quimber, Nonna Lisa--in all, over three thousand
+souls one by one passed up the aisle to stand with bared bowed head by
+that bier; to look their last upon the mask of the soul; to render, in
+spirit, homage to the spirit that had wrought among its fellows,
+manfully, unceasingly, to realize among them on this earth a
+long-striven-for ideal.
+
+Many a one knelt in prayer. Many a mother, not of English tongue,
+placing her hand upon the head of her little child forced him to kneel
+beside her; her tears wet the stone slabs of the chancel floor.
+
+Just before sunset, the Daughters of the Mystic Rose passed into the
+church; they bore tapers to set upon the altar, and at the head and
+foot of the bier. Two of them remained throughout the night to pray by
+the chancel rail; one of them was Sister Ste. Croix. Silent, immovable
+she knelt there throughout the short June night. Her secret remained
+with her and the one at whose feet she was kneeling.
+
+The little group of special friends from The Gore came last, just a
+little while before the face they loved was to be covered forever from
+human gaze: Aileen with her four-months' babe in her arms, Aurora Googe
+leading little Honoré by the hand, Margaret McCann with her boy, Elvira
+Caukins and her two daughters. Silent, their tears raining upon the awed
+and upturned faces of the children, they, too, knelt; but no sound of
+sobbing profaned the great peaceful silence that was broken only by the
+faint _chip-chip-chipping_ monotone from Shed Number Two. In that four
+men were at work. Champney Googe was one of them.
+
+He was expecting them at this appointed time. When he saw them enter the
+chapel, he put aside hammer and chisel and went across the meadow to
+join them. He waited for them to come out; then, taking the babe from
+his wife's arms, he gave her into his mother's keeping. He looked
+significantly at his wife. The others passed on and out; but Aileen
+turned and with her husband retraced her steps to the altar. They knelt,
+hand clasped in hand....
+
+When they rose to look their last upon that loved face, they knew that
+their lives had received through his spirit the benediction of God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Champney returned to his work, for time pressed. The quarrymen in The
+Gore had asked permission the day before to quarry a single stone in
+which their priest should find his final resting place. Many of them
+were Italians, and Luigi Poggi was spokesman. Permission being given, he
+turned to the men:
+
+"For the love of God and the man who stood to us for Him, let us quarry
+the stone nearest heaven. Look to the ridge yonder; that has not been
+opened up--who will work with me to open up the highest ridge in The
+Gore, and quarry the stone to-night."
+
+The volunteers were practically all the men in the Upper and Lower
+Quarries; the foreman was obliged to draw lots. The men worked in
+shifts--worked during that entire night; they bared a space of sod;
+cleared off the surface layer; quarried the rock, using the hand drill
+entirely. Towards morning the thick granite slab, that lay nearest to
+the crimsoning sky among the Flamsted Hills, was hoisted from its
+primeval bed and lowered to its place on the car.
+
+It was then that four men, Champney Googe, Antoine, Jim McCann, and
+Luigi Poggi asserted their right, by reason of what the dead had been to
+them, to cut and chisel the rock into sarcophagus shape. Luigi and
+Antoine asked to cut the cover of the stone coffin.
+
+All Saturday afternoon, the four men in Shed Number Two worked at their
+work of love, of unspeakable gratitude, of passionate devotion to a
+sacrificed manhood. They wrought in silence. All that afternoon, they
+could see, by glancing up from their work and looking out through the
+shed doors across the field, the silent procession entering and leaving
+the chapel. Sometimes Jim McCann would strike wild in his feverish haste
+to ease, by mere physical exertion, his great over-charged heart of its
+load of grief; a muttered curse on his clumsiness followed. Now and
+then Champney caught his eye turned upon him half-appealingly; but they
+spoke no word; _chip-chip-chipping_, they worked on.
+
+The sun set; electricity illumined the shed. Antoine worked with
+desperation; Luigi wrought steadily, carefully, beautifully--his heart
+seeking expression in every stroke. When the dawn paled the electric
+lights, he laid aside his tools, took off his canvas apron, and stepped
+back to view the cover as a whole. The others, also, brought their stone
+to completion. As with one accord they went over to look at the
+Italian's finished work, and saw--no carving of archbishop's mitre, no
+sculpture of cardinal's hat (O mother, where were the day-dreams for
+your boy!), but a rough slab, in the centre of which was a raised heart
+of polished granite, and, beneath it, cut deep into the rock--which,
+although lying yesterday nearest the skies above The Gore, was in past
+æons the foundation stone of our present world--the words:
+
+     THE HEART OF THE QUARRY.
+
+The lights went out. The dawn was reddening the whole east; it touched
+the faces of the men. They looked at one another. Suddenly McCann
+grasped Champney's hand, and reaching over the slab caught in his the
+hands of the other two; he gripped them hard, drew a long shuddering
+breath, and spoke, but unwittingly on account of his habitual profanity,
+the last word:
+
+"By Jesus Christ, men, we're brothers!"
+
+The full day broke. The men still stood there, hand clasping hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+A. L. Burt Company's Popular Copyright Fiction.
+
+    Abner Daniel. By Will N. Harben.
+    Adventures of A Modest Man. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Adventures of Gerard. By A. Conan Doyle.
+    Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.
+    Ailsa Page. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Alternative, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Ancient Law, The. By Ellen Glasgow.
+    Angel of Forgiveness, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Angel of Pain, The. By E. F. Benson.
+    Annals of Ann, The. By Kate Trimble Sharber.
+    Anna the Adventuress. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Ann Boyd. By Will N. Harben.
+    As the Sparks Fly Upward. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
+    At the Age of Eve. By Kate Trimble Sharber.
+    At the Mercy of Tiberius. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
+    At the Moorings. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Awakening of Helen Richie, The. By Margaret Deland.
+    Barrier, The. By Rex Beach.
+    Bar 20. By Clarence E. Mulford.
+    Bar-20 Days. By Clarence E. Mulford.
+    Battle Ground, The. By Ellen Glasgow.
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+    Ben Blair. By Will Lillibridge.
+    Best Man, The. By Harold McGrath.
+    Beth Norvell. By Randall Parrish.
+    Betrayal, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Better Man, The. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
+    Beulah. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
+    Bill Toppers, The. By Andre Castaigne.
+    Blaze Derringer. By Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.
+    Bob Hampton of Placer. By Randall Parrish.
+    Bob, Son of Battle. By Alfred Ollivant.
+    Brass Bowl, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.
+    Bronze Bell, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.
+    Butterfly Man, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    By Right of Purchase. By Harold Bindloss.
+    Cab No. 44. By R. F. Foster.
+    Calling of Dan Matthews, The. By Harold Bell Wright.
+    Call of the Blood, The. By Robert Hichens.
+    Cape Cod Stories. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Cap'n Erl. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Captain Warren's Wards. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Caravaners, The. By the author of "Elizabeth and Her German Garden."
+    Cardigan. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Carlton Case, The. By Ellery H. Clark.
+    Car of Destiny, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Carpet From Bagdad, The. By Harold McGrath.
+    Cash Intrigue, The. By George Randolph Chester.
+    Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine. Frank S. Stockton.
+    Castle by the Sea, The. By H. B. Marriot Watson.
+    Challoners, The. By E. F. Benson.
+    Chaperon, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    City of Six, The. By C. L. Canfield.
+    Circle, The. By Katherine Cecil Thurston (author of "The
+         Masquerader," "The Gambler.")
+    Colonial Free Lance, A. By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.
+    Conquest of Canaan, The. By Booth Tarkington.
+    Conspirators, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Cynthia of the Minute. By Louis Joseph Vance.
+    Dan Merrithew. By Lawrence Perry.
+    Day of the Dog, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Depot Master, The. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Derelicts. By William J. Locke.
+    Diamond Master, The. By Jacques Futrelle.
+    Diamonds Cut Paste. By Agnes and Egerton Castle.
+    Divine Fire, The. By May Sinclair.
+    Dixie Hart. By Will N. Harben.
+    Dr. David. By Marjorie Benton Cooke.
+    Early Bird, The. By George Randolph Chester.
+    Eleventh Hour, The. By David Potter.
+    Elizabeth In Rugen. (By the author of "Elizabeth and Her German
+         Garden.")
+    Elusive Isabel. By Jacques Futrelle.
+    Elusive Pimpernel, The. By Baroness Orczy.
+    Enchanted Hat, The. By Harold McGrath.
+    Excuse Me. By Rupert Hughes.
+    54-40 or Fight. By Emerson Hough.
+    Fighting Chance, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Flamsted Quarries. By Mary E. Waller.
+    Flying Mercury, The. By Eleanor M. Ingram.
+    For a Maiden Brave. By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.
+    Four Million, The. By O. Henry.
+    Four Pool's Mystery, The. By Jean Webster.
+    Fruitful Vine, The. By Robert Hichens.
+    Ganton & Co. By Arthur J. Eddy.
+    Gentleman of France, A. By Stanley Weyman.
+    Gentleman, The. By Alfred Ollivant.
+    Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford. By George Randolph Chester.
+    Gilbert Neal. By Will N. Harben.
+    Girl and the Bill, The. By Bannister Merwin.
+    Girl from His Town, The. By Marie Van Vorst.
+    Girl Who Won, The. By Beth Ellis.
+    Glory of Clementina, The. By William J. Locke.
+    Glory of the Conquered, The. By Susan Glaspell.
+    God's Good Man. By Marie Corelli.
+    Going Some. By Rex Beach.
+    Golden Web, The. By Anthony Partridge.
+    Green Patch, The. By Bettina von Hutten.
+    Happy Island (sequel to "Uncle William"). By Jennette Lee.
+    Hearts and the Highway. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
+    Held for Orders. By Frank H. Spearman.
+    Hidden Water. By Dane Coolidge.
+    Highway of Fate, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Homesteaders, The. By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.
+    Honor of the Big Snows, The. By James Oliver Curwood.
+    Hopalong Cassidy. By Clarence E. Mulford.
+    Household of Peter, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    House of Mystery, The. By Will Irwin.
+    House of the Lost Court, The. By C. N. Williamson.
+    House of the Whispering Pines, The. By Anna Katherine Green.
+    House on Cherry Street, The. By Amelia E. Barr.
+    How Leslie Loved. By Anne Warner.
+    Husbands of Edith, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Idols. By William J. Locke.
+    Illustrious Prince, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Imprudence of Prue, The. By Sophie Fisher.
+    Inez. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
+    Infelice. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
+    Initials Only. By Anna Katharine Green.
+    In Defiance of the King. By Chauncey G. Hotchkiss.
+    Indifference of Juliet, The. By Grace S. Richmond.
+    In the Service of the Princess. By Henry C. Rowland.
+    Iron Woman, The. By Margaret Deland.
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+    Key to the Unknown, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Kingdom of Earth, The. By Anthony Partridge.
+    King Spruce. By Holman Day.
+    Ladder of Swords, A. By Gilbert Parker.
+    Lady Betty Across the Water. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Lady Merton, Colonist. By Mrs. Humphrey Ward.
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+    Lane That Had No Turning, The. By Gilbert Parker.
+    Last Trail, The. By Zane Grey.
+    Last Voyage of the Donna Isabel, The. By Randall Parrish.
+    Leavenworth Case, The. By Anna Katharine Green.
+    Lin McLean. By Owen Wister.
+    Little Brown Jug at Kildare, The. By Meredith Nicholson.
+    Loaded Dice. By Ellery H. Clarke.
+    Lord Loveland Discovers America. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Lorimer of the Northwest. By Harold Bindloss.
+    Lorraine. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Lost Ambassador, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Love Under Fire. By Randall Parrish.
+    Loves of Miss Anne, The. By S. R. Crockett.
+    Macaria. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
+    Mademoiselle Celeste. By Adele Ferguson Knight.
+    Maid at Arms, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Maid of Old New York, A. By Amelia E. Barr.
+    Maid of the Whispering Hills, The. By Vingie Roe.
+    Maids of Paradise, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Making of Bobby Burnit, The. By George Randolph Chester.
+    Mam' Linda. By Will N. Harben.
+    Man Outside, The. By Wyndham Martyn.
+    Man in the Brown Derby, The. By Wells Hastings.
+    Marriage a la Mode. By Mrs. Humphrey Ward.
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+    Master Mummer, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
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+    Max. By Katherine Cecil Thurston.
+    Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.
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+    Missioner, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Miss Selina Lue. By Maria Thompson Daviess.
+    Mistress of Brae Farm, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Money Moon, The. By Jeffery Farnol.
+    Motor Maid, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Much Ado About Peter. By Jean Webster.
+    Mr. Pratt. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    My Brother's Keeper. By Charles Tenny Jackson.
+    My Friend the Chauffeur. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    My Lady Caprice (author of the "Broad Highway"). Jeffery Farnol.
+    My Lady of Doubt. By Randall Parrish.
+    My Lady of the North. By Randall Parrish.
+    My Lady of the South. By Randall Parrish.
+    Mystery Tales. By Edgar Allen Poe.
+    Nancy Stair. By Elinor Macartney Lane.
+    Ne'er-Do-Well, The. By Rex Beach.
+    No Friend Like a Sister. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Officer 666. By Barton W. Currie and Augustin McHugh.
+    One Braver Thing. By Richard Dehan.
+    Order No. 11. By Caroline Abbot Stanley.
+    Orphan, The. By Clarence E. Mulford.
+    Out of the Primitive. By Robert Ames Bennett.
+    Pam. By Bettina von Hutten.
+    Pam Decides. By Bettina von Hutten.
+    Pardners. By Rex Beach.
+    Partners of the Tide. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Passage Perilous, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Passers By. By Anthony Partridge.
+    Paternoster Ruby, The. By Charles Edmonds Walk.
+    Patience of John Moreland, The. By Mary Dillon.
+    Paul Anthony, Christian. By Hiram W. Hays.
+    Phillip Steele. By James Oliver Curwood.
+    Phra the Phoenician. By Edwin Lester Arnold.
+    Plunderer, The. By Roy Norton.
+    Pole Baker. By Will N. Harben.
+    Politician, The. By Edith Huntington Mason.
+    Polly of the Circus. By Margaret Mayo.
+    Pool of Flame, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.
+    Poppy. By Cynthia Stockley.
+    Power and the Glory, The. By Grace McGowan Cooke.
+    Price of the Prairie, The. By Margaret Hill McCarter.
+    Prince of Sinners, A. By E. Phillip Oppenheim.
+    Prince or Chauffeur. By Lawrence Perry.
+    Princess Dehra, The. By John Reed Scott.
+    Princess Passes, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Princess Virginia, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Prisoners of Chance. By Randall Parrish.
+    Prodigal Son, The. By Hall Caine.
+    Purple Parasol, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Reconstructed Marriage, A. By Amelia Barr.
+    Redemption of Kenneth Galt, The. By Will N. Harben.
+    Red House on Rowan Street. By Roman Doubleday.
+    Red Mouse, The. By William Hamilton Osborne.
+    Red Pepper Burns. By Grace S. Richmond.
+    Refugees, The. By A. Conan Doyle.
+    Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, The. By Anne Warner.
+    Road to Providence, The. By Maria Thompson Daviess.
+    Romance of a Plain Man, The. By Ellen Glasgow.
+    Rose in the Ring, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Rose of Old Harpeth, The. By Maria Thompson Daviess.
+    Rose of the World. By Agnes and Egerton Castle.
+    Round the Corner in Gay Street. By Grace S. Richmond.
+    Routledge Rides Alone. By Will Livingston Comfort.
+    Running Fight, The. By Wm. Hamilton Osborne.
+    Seats of the Mighty, The. By Gilbert Parker.
+    Septimus. By William J. Locke.
+    Set In Silver. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Self-Raised. (Illustrated.) By Mrs. Southworth.
+    Shepherd of the Hills, The. By Harold Bell Wright.
+    Sheriff of Dyke Hole, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
+    Sidney Carteret, Rancher. By Harold Bindloss.
+    Simon the Jester. By William J. Locke.
+    Silver Blade, The. By Charles E. Walk.
+    Silver Horde, The. By Rex Beach.
+    Sir Nigel. By A. Conan Doyle.
+    Sir Richard Calmady. By Lucas Malet.
+    Skyman, The. By Henry Ketchell Webster.
+    Slim Princess, The. By George Ade.
+    Speckled Bird, A. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
+    Spirit in Prison, A. By Robert Hichens.
+    Spirit of the Border, The. By Zane Grey.
+    Spirit Trail, The. By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.
+    Spoilers, The. By Rex Beach.
+    Stanton Wins. By Eleanor M. Ingram.
+    St. Elmo. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
+    Stolen Singer, The. By Martha Bellinger.
+    Stooping Lady, The. By Maurice Hewlett.
+    Story of the Outlaw, The. By Emerson Hough.
+    Strawberry Acres. By Grace S. Richmond.
+    Strawberry Handkerchief, The. By Amelia E. Barr.
+    Sunnyside of the Hill, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Sunset Trail, The. By Alfred Henry Lewis.
+    Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop. By Anne Warner.
+    Sword of the Old Frontier, A. By Randall Parrish.
+    Tales of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.
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+    Three Brothers, The. By Eden Phillpotts.
+    Throwback, The. By Alfred Henry Lewis.
+    Thurston of Orchard Valley. By Harold Bindloss.
+    Title Market, The. By Emily Post.
+    Torn Sails. A Tale of a Welsh Village. By Allan Raine.
+    Trail of the Axe, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
+    Treasure of Heaven, The. By Marie Corelli.
+    Two-Gun Man, The. By Charles Alden Seltzer.
+    Two Vanrevels, The. By Booth Tarkington.
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+    Up from Slavery. By Booker T. Washington.
+    Vanity Box, The. By C. N. Williamson.
+    Vashti. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
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+    Vigilante Girl, A. By Jerome Hart.
+    Village of Vagabonds, A. By F. Berkeley Smith.
+    Visioning, The. By Susan Glaspell.
+    Voice of the People, The. By Ellen Glasgow.
+    Wanted--A Chaperon. By Paul Leicester Ford.
+    Wanted: A Matchmaker. By Paul Leicester Ford.
+    Watchers of the Plains, The. Ridgwell Cullum.
+    Wayfarers, The. By Mary Stewart Cutting.
+    Way of a Man, The. By Emerson Hough.
+    Weavers, The. By Gilbert Parker.
+    When Wilderness Was King. By Randall Parrish.
+    Where the Trail Divides. By Will Lillibridge.
+    White Sister, The. By Marion Crawford.
+    Window at the White Cat, The. By Mary Roberts Rhinehart.
+    Winning of Barbara Worth, The. By Harold Bell Wright.
+    With Juliet In England. By Grace S. Richmond.
+    Woman Haters, The. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Woman In Question, The. By John Reed Scott.
+    Woman In the Alcove, The. By Anna Katharine Green.
+    Yellow Circle, The. By Charles E. Walk.
+    Yellow Letter, The. By William Johnston.
+    Younger Set, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
+
+
+
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Flamsted quarries, by Mary E. Waller
+
+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: Flamsted quarries
+
+Author: Mary E. Waller
+
+Illustrator: G. Patrick Nelson
+
+Release Date: November 30, 2007 [EBook #23664]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLAMSTED QUARRIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h1>Flamsted Quarries</h1>
+
+<h2>BY MARY E. WALLER</h2>
+
+<h3>Author of "The Wood Carver of Lympus," "The Daughter of the Rich," "The
+Little Citizen," etc.</h3>
+
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">With Four Illustrations</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> G. PATRICK NELSON</h4>
+
+<h4>A. L. BURT COMPANY<br />
+<span class="smcap">Publishers New York</span></h4>
+
+<h4><i>Copyright, 1910</i>,<br />
+<span class="smcap">By Mary E. Waller</span><br />
+Published September, 1910</h4>
+
+<h4>Reprinted, September, 1910; November, 1910;<br />
+December, 1910</h4>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>TO THOSE WHO TOIL</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus1" id="illus1"></a>
+<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause"</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#The_Battery_in_Lieu_of_a_Preface"><span class="smcap">The Battery in Lieu of a Preface</span></a><br />
+<a href="#PART_FIRST"><span class="smcap">Part First, A Child from the Vaudeville</span></a><br />
+<a href="#PART_SECOND"><span class="smcap">Part Second, Home Soil</span></a><br />
+<a href="#PART_THIRD"><span class="smcap">Part Third, In the Stream</span></a><br />
+<a href="#PART_FOURTH"><span class="smcap">Part Fourth, Oblivion</span></a><br />
+<a href="#PART_FIFTH"><span class="smcap">Part Fifth, Shed Number Two</span></a><br />
+<a href="#The_Last_Word"><span class="smcap">The Last Word</span></a><br /><br />
+<a href="#A_L_Burt_Companys_Popular_Copyright_Fiction">A. L. Burt Company's Popular Copyright Fiction.</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>Illustrations</h2>
+
+
+<p><a href="#illus1">"She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus2">"Those present loved in after years to recall this scene"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus3">"What a picture she made leaning caressingly against the charmed and
+patient Bess"</a></p>
+
+<p><a href="#illus4">"'Unworthy&mdash;unworthy!' was Champney Googe's cry, as he knelt before
+Aileen"</a></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>FLAMSTED QUARRIES</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i19">"<i>Abysmal deeps repose</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Beneath the stout ship's keel whereon we glide;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And if a diver plunge far down within</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Those depths and to the surface safe return,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>His smile, if so it chance he smile again,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Outweighs in worth all gold.</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="The_Battery_in_Lieu_of_a_Preface" id="The_Battery_in_Lieu_of_a_Preface"></a>The Battery in Lieu of a Preface</h2>
+
+
+<p>A few years ago, at the very tip of that narrow rocky strip of land that
+has been well named "the Tongue that laps the Commerce of the World,"
+the million-teeming Island of Manhattan, there was daily presented a
+scene in the life-drama of our land that held in itself, as in solution,
+a great national ideal. The old heroic "Epic of the Nations" was still
+visible to the naked eye, and masquerading here among us of the then
+nineteenth century in the guise of the arrival of the immigrant ship.</p>
+
+<p>The scenic setting is in this instance incomparably fine. As we lean on
+the coping of the sea wall at the end of the green-swarded Battery, in
+the flush of a May sunset that, on the right, throws the Highlands of
+the Navesink into dark purple relief and lights the waters of Harbor,
+River, and Sound into a softly swelling roseate flood, we may fix our
+eyes on the approach to The Narrows and watch the incoming shipping of
+the world: the fruit-laden steamer from the Bermudas, the black East
+Indiaman heavy with teakwood and spices, the lumberman's barge awash
+behind the tow, the old three-masted schooner, low in the water, her
+decks loaded with granite from the far-away quarries of Maine. We may
+see, if we linger, the swift approach of a curiously foreshortened
+ocean steamship, her smokestack belching blackness, and the slower
+on-coming of a Norwegian bark, her sails catching the sunset light and
+gleaming opaline against the clear blue of the southern horizon. These
+last are the immigrant ships.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later in old Castle Garden the North and South of Europe clasp
+hands on the very threshold of America. Four thousand feet are planted
+on the soil of the New World. Four thousand hands are knocking at its
+portals. Two thousand hearts are beating high with hope at prospect of
+the New, or palpitating with terror at contact with the Strange.</p>
+
+<p>A thousand tragedies, a thousand comedies are here enacted before our
+very eyes: hopes, fears, tears, laughter, shrieks, groans, wailings,
+exultant cries, welcoming words, silent all-expressing hand-clasp,
+embrace, despairing wide-eyed search, hopeless isolation, the
+befriended, the friendless, the home-welcomed, the homeless&mdash;all
+commingled.</p>
+
+<p>But an official routine soon sorts, separates, pairs, locates; speaks in
+Norwegian, speaks in Neapolitan. An hour passes; the dusk falls; the
+doors are opened; the two thousand, ticketed, labelled, are to enter
+upon the new life. The confusing chatter grows less and less. A child
+wails, and is hushed in soft Italian&mdash;a Neapolitan lullaby&mdash;by its
+mother as she sits on a convenient bench and for the first time gives
+her little one the breast in a strange land. An old Norwegian, perhaps a
+lineal descendant of our Viking visitors some thousand years ago, makes
+his way to the door, bent beneath a sack-load of bedding; his right hand
+holds his old wife's left. They are the last to leave.</p>
+
+<p>The dusk has fallen. To the sea wall again for air after the thousands
+of garlic-reeking breaths in old Castle Garden. The sea is dark. The
+heavens are deep indigo; against them flashes the Liberty beacon; within
+them are set the Eternal Lights. Upon the waters of the harbor the
+illumined cabin windows of a multitude of river craft throw quivering
+rays along the slow glassy swell.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment on River, and Harbor, and Sound, there is silence. But
+behind us we hear the subdued roar and beat of the metropolis, a sound
+comparable to naught else on earth or in heaven: the mighty systole and
+dyastole of a city's heart, and the tramp, tramp of a million homeward
+bound toilers&mdash;the marching tune of Civilization's hosts, to which the
+feet of the newly arrived immigrants are already keeping time, for they
+have crossed the threshold of old Castle Garden and entered the New
+World.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_FIRST" id="PART_FIRST"></a>PART FIRST</h2>
+
+<h3>A Child from the Vaudeville</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+<p>The performance in itself was crude and commonplace, but the
+demonstration in regard to it was unusual. Although this scene had been
+enacted both afternoon and evening for the past six weeks, the audience
+at the Vaudeville was showing its appreciation by an intent silence.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain had risen upon a street scene in the metropolis at night.
+Snow was falling, dimming the gas jets at the corner and half-veiling,
+half-disclosing the imposing entrance-porch of a marble church. The
+doors were closed; the edifice dark. As the eyes of the onlookers became
+accustomed to the half-lights, they were aware of a huddle of clothes
+against the iron railing that outlined the curve of the three broad
+entrance-steps. As vision grew keener the form of a child was
+discernible, a little match girl who was lighting one by one a few
+matches and shielding the flame with both hands from the draught.
+Suddenly she looked up and around. The rose window above the porch was
+softly illumined; the light it emitted transfused the thickly falling
+snow. Low organ tones became audible, although distant and muffled.</p>
+
+<p>The child rose; came down the centre of the stage to the lowered
+footlights and looked about her, first at the orchestra, then around
+and up at the darkened house that was looking intently at her&mdash;a small
+ill-clad human, a spiritual entity, the only reality in this artificial
+setting. She grasped her package of matches in both hands; listened a
+moment as if to catch the low organ tones, then began to sing.</p>
+
+<p>She sang as a bird sings, every part of her in motion: throat, eyes,
+head, body. The voice was clear, loud, full, strident, at times, on the
+higher notes from over-exertion, but always childishly appealing. The
+gallery leaned to catch every word of "The Holy City."</p>
+
+<p>She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause. There was no
+modulation, no phrasing, no interpretation; it was merely a steady
+fortissimo outpouring of a remarkable volume of tone for so small an
+instrument. And the full power of it was, to all appearance, sent
+upwards with intent to the gallery. In any case, the gallery took the
+song unto itself, and as the last words, "<i>Hosanna for evermore</i>" rang
+upward, there was audible from above a long-drawn universal "Ah!" of
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>It was followed by a half minute of silence that was expressive of
+latent enthusiasm. The child was still waiting at the footlights,
+evidently for the expected applause from the higher latitudes. And the
+gallery responded&mdash;how heartily, those who were present have never
+forgotten: roar upon roar, call upon call, round after round of
+applause, cries of approbation couched in choice Bowery slang, a genuine
+stampede that shook the spectators in their seats. It was an
+irresistible, insatiable, unappeasable, overwhelming clamor for more.
+The infection of enthusiasm was communicated to floors, balconies,
+boxes; they answered, as it were, antiphonally. Faces were seen peeking
+from the wings; hands were visible there, clapping frantically. In the
+midst of the tumultuous uproar the little girl smiled brightly and ran
+off the stage.</p>
+
+<p>The lights were turned on. A drop-scene fell; the stage was transformed,
+for, in the middle distance, swelling green hills rose against a soft
+blue sky seen between trees in the foreground. Sunshine lay on the
+landscape, enhancing the haze in the distance and throwing up the hills
+more prominently against it. The cries and uproar continued.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, in the common dressing-room beyond the wings, there was being
+enacted a scene which if slightly less tumultuous in expression was
+considerably more dangerous in quality. A quick word went the round of
+the stars' private rooms; it penetrated to the sanctum of the Japanese
+wrestlers; it came to the ear of the manager himself: "The Little
+Patti's struck!" It sounded ominous, and, thereupon, the Vaudeville
+flocked to the dressing-room door to see&mdash;what? Merely a child in a
+tantrum, a heap of rags on the floor, a little girl in white petticoats
+stamping, dancing, pulling away from an old Italian woman who was trying
+to robe her and exhorting, imploring, threatening the child in almost
+one and the same breath.</p>
+
+<p>The manager rushed to the rescue for the house was losing its head. He
+seized the child by the arm. "What's the matter here, Aileen?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't goin' ter dance a coon ter-night&mdash;not ter-night!" she cried
+defiantly and in intense excitement; "he's in the box again, an' I'm
+goin' to give him the Sunday-night song, like as I did before when he
+give me the flowers, so now!"</p>
+
+<p>Nonna Lisa, the old Italian, slipped the white dress deftly over the
+mutinous head, so muffling the half-shriek. The manager laughed. "Hurry
+up then&mdash;on with you!" The child sprang away with a bound. "I've seen
+this too many times before," he added; "it's an attack of 'the last
+night's nerves.'&mdash;Hark!"</p>
+
+<p>The tumult was drowning the last notes of the orchestral intermezzo, as
+the little girl, clad now wholly in white, ran in upon the stage and
+coming again down the centre raised her hand as if to command silence.
+With the gallery to see was to obey; the floor and balconies having
+subsided the applause from above died away.</p>
+
+<p>The child, standing in the full glare of the footlights with the sunny
+skyey spaces and overlapping blue hills behind her, half-faced the
+brilliant house as, without accompaniment, she began to sing:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"There is a green hill far away<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Without a city wall."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The childish voice sustained the simple melody perfectly, and it was
+evident when the little girl began the second verse that she was singing
+wholly to please herself and some one in a proscenium box. Before the
+close of the first stanza the gallery experienced a turn, the audience
+as a whole a sensation. Night after night the gallery gods had made it a
+point to be present at that hour of the continuous performance when the
+Little Patti&mdash;such was the name on the poster&mdash;sang either her famous
+Irish song "Oh, the praties they are small", or "The Holy City", and
+followed them by a coon dance the like of which was not to be seen
+elsewhere in New York; for into it the child threw such an abandonment
+of enthusiasm that she carried herself and her audience to the verge of
+extravagance&mdash;the one in action, the other in expression.</p>
+
+<p>And now this!</p>
+
+<p>A woman sobbed outright at the close of the second verse. The gallery
+heard&mdash;it hated hysterics&mdash;and considered whether it should look upon
+itself as cheated and protest, or submit quietly to being coerced into
+approval. The scales had not yet turned, when someone far aloft drew a
+long breath in order to force it out between closed teeth, and this in
+sign of disapproval. That one breath was, in truth, indrawn, but whether
+or no there was ever an outlet for the same remained a question with the
+audience. A woollen cap was deftly and unexpectedly thrust between the
+malevolent lips and several pair of hands held it there until the little
+singer left the stage.</p>
+
+<p>What appeal, if any, that childish voice, dwelling melodiously on the
+simple words, made to the audience as a whole, cannot be stated because
+unknown; but that it appealed powerfully by force of suggestion, by the
+power of imagination, by the law of association, by the startling
+contrast between the sentiment expressed and the environment of that
+expression, to three, at least, among the many present is a certainty.</p>
+
+<p>There is such a thing in our national life&mdash;a constant process, although
+often unrecognized&mdash;as social anastomosis: the intercommunication by
+branch of every vein and veinlet of the politico-social body, and
+thereby the coming into touch of lives apparently alien. As a result we
+have a revelation of new experiences; we find ourselves in subjection to
+new influences of before unknown personalities; we perceive the
+opening-up of new channels of communication between individual and
+individual as such. We comprehend that through it a great moral law is
+brought into operation both in the individual and the national life. And
+in recognition of this natural, though oft hidden process, the fact that
+to three men in that audience&mdash;men whose life-lines, to all appearance,
+were divergent, whose aims and purposes were antipodal&mdash;the simple song
+made powerful appeal, and by means of that appeal they came in after
+life to comprehend something of the workings of this great natural law,
+need cause no wonderment, no cavilling at the so-called prerogative of
+fiction. The laws of Art are the laws of Life, read smaller on the
+obverse.</p>
+
+<p>The child was singing the last stanza in so profound a silence that the
+fine snapping of an over-charged electric wire was distinctly heard:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, dearly, dearly has he loved<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And we must love him too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And trust in his redeeming blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And try his works to do."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The little girl waited at the footlights for&mdash;something. She had done
+her best for an encore and the silence troubled her. She looked
+inquiringly towards the box. There was a movement of the curtains at the
+back; a messenger boy came in with flowers; a gentleman leaned over the
+railing and motioned to the child. She ran forward, holding up the skirt
+of her dress to catch the roses that were dropped into it. She smiled
+and said something. The tension in the audience gave a little; there was
+a low murmur of approval which increased to a buzz of conversation; the
+conductor raised his baton and the child with a courtesy ran off the
+stage. But there was no applause.</p>
+
+<p>During the musical intermezzo that followed, the lower proscenium box
+was vacated and in the first balcony one among a crowd of students rose
+and made his way up the aisle.</p>
+
+<p>"Lien's keller, Champ?" said a friend at the exit, putting a hand on his
+shoulder; "I'm with you."</p>
+
+<p>"Not to-night." He shook off the detaining hand and kept on his way. The
+other stared after him, whistled low to himself and went down the aisle
+to the vacant seat.</p>
+
+<p>At the main entrance of the theatre there was an incoming crowd. It was
+not late, only nine. The drawing-card at this hour was a famous Parisian
+singer of an Elys&eacute;e <i>caf&eacute; chantant</i>. The young fellow stepped aside,
+beyond the ticket-office railing, to let the first force of the
+inrushing human stream exhaust itself before attempting egress for
+himself. In doing so he jostled rather roughly two men who were
+evidently of like mind with him in their desire to avoid the press. He
+lifted his hat in apology, and recognized one of them as the occupant of
+the proscenium box, the gentleman who had given the roses to the little
+singer. The other, although in citizen's dress, he saw by the tonsure
+was a priest.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of such a one in that garb and that environment, diverted for
+the moment Champney Googe's thoughts from the child and her song. He
+scanned the erect figure of the man who, after immediate and courteous
+recognition of the other's apology, became oblivious, apparently, of his
+presence and intent upon the passing throng.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd thinned gradually; the priest passed out under the arch of
+colored electric lights; the gentleman of the box, observing the look on
+the student's face, smiled worldly-wisely to himself as he, too, went
+down the crimson-carpeted incline. Champney Googe's still beardless lip
+had curled slightly as if his thought were a sneer.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>The priest, after leaving the theatre, walked rapidly down Broadway past
+the marble church, that had been shown on the stage, and still straight
+on for two miles at the same rapid gait, past the quiet churchyards of
+St. Paul's and Trinity into the comparative silence of Battery Park and
+across to the sea wall. There he leaned for half an hour, reliving in
+memory not only the years since his seven-year old feet had crossed this
+threshold of the New World, but recalling something of his still earlier
+childhood in his native France. The child's song had been an excitant to
+the memory in recalling those first years in Auvergne.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"There is a green hill far away<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Without a city wall."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How clearly he saw that! and his peasant father and mother as laborers
+on or about it, and himself, a six-year old, tending the goats on that
+same green hill or minding the geese in the meadows at its foot.</p>
+
+<p>All this he saw as he gazed blankly at the dark waters of the bay, saw
+clearly as if visioned in crystal. But of subsequent movings and
+wanderings there was a blurred reflection only, till the vision
+momentarily brightened, the outlines defined themselves again as he saw
+his tired drowsy self put to bed in a tiny room that was filled with the
+fragrance of newly baked bread. He remembered the awakening in that
+small room over a bread-filled shop; it belonged to a distant
+great-uncle baker on the mother's side, a personage in the family
+because in trade. He could remember the time spent in that same shop and
+the brick-walled, brick-floored, brick-ovened room behind it. He
+recalled having stood for hours, it might have been days, he could not
+remember&mdash;for then Time was forever and its passing of no moment&mdash;before
+the deep ovens with a tiny blue-eyed slip of a girl. <i>P'tite Truite</i>,
+Little Trout, they called her, the great-uncle baker's one grandchild.</p>
+
+<p>And the shop&mdash;he remembered that, so light and bright and sweet and
+clean, with people coming and going&mdash;men and women and children&mdash;and the
+crisp yard-long loaves carried away in shallow baskets on many a fine
+Norman head in the old seaport of Dieppe. And always the Little Trout
+was by his side, even when the great-uncle placed him in one of the huge
+flat-bottomed bread baskets and drew the two up and down in front of the
+shop. Then all was dim again; so dim that except for the lap and
+backward sucking of the waters against the sea wall, whereon he leaned,
+he had scarcely recalled a ship at the old pier of Dieppe, and the
+Little Trout standing beside her grandfather on the stringer,
+frantically waving her hand as the ship left her moorings and the prow
+nosed the first heavy channel sea that washed against the bulkhead and
+half-drowned her wailing cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Jean&mdash;mon Jean!"</p>
+
+<p>The rest was a blank until he landed here almost on this very spot in
+old Castle Garden and, holding hard by his father's hand, was bidden to
+look up at the flag flying from the pole at the top of the queer round
+building&mdash;a brave sight even for his young eyes: all the red and white
+and blue straining in the freshening wind with an energy of motion that
+made the boy dance in sympathetic joy at his father's side&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And what next?</p>
+
+<p>Again a confusion of journeyings, and afterwards quiet settlement in a
+red brick box of a house in a mill town on the Merrimac. He could still
+hear the clang of the mill-gates, the ringing of the bells, the hum and
+whir and roar of a hundred thousand spindles, the clacking crash of the
+ponderous shifting frames. He could still see with the inner eye the
+hundreds of windows blazing in the reflected fires of the western sun,
+or twinkling with numberless lights that cast their long reflections on
+the black waters of the canal. There on the bank, at the entrance to the
+footbridge, the boy was wont to take his stand regularly at six o'clock
+of a winter's day, and wait for the hoisting of the mill-gates and the
+coming of his father and mother with the throng of toilers.</p>
+
+<p>So he saw himself&mdash;himself as an identity emerging at last from the
+confusion of time and place and circumstance; for there followed the
+public school, the joys of rivalry, the eager outrush for the boy's Ever
+New, the glory of scrimmage and school-boy sports, the battle royal for
+the little Auvergnat when taunted with the epithet "Johnny Frog" by the
+belligerent youth, American born, and the victorious outcome for the
+"foreigner"; the Auvergne blood was up, and the temperament volcanic
+like his native soil where subterranean heats evidence themselves in
+hot, out-welling waters. And afterwards, at home, there were
+congratulations and comfortings, plus applications of vinegar and brown
+butcher's paper to the severely smitten nose of this champion of his new
+Americanhood. But at school and in the street, henceforth there was due
+respect and a general atmosphere of "let bygones be bygones."</p>
+
+<p>Ah, but the pride of his mother in her boy's progress! the joy over the
+first English-French letter that went to the great-uncle baker; the
+constant toil of both parents that the savings might be sufficient to
+educate their one child&mdash;that the son might have what the parents
+lacked. Already the mother had begun to speak of the priesthood: she
+might yet see her son Jean a priest, a bishop, and archbishop. Who could
+tell? America is America, and opportunities infinite&mdash;a cardinal,
+perhaps, and the gift of a red hat from the Pope, and robes and laces!
+There was no end to her ambitious dreaming.</p>
+
+<p>But across the day-dreams fell the shadow of hard times: the shutting
+down of the mills, the father's desperate illness in a workless winter,
+his death in the early spring, followed shortly by that of the worn-out
+and ill-nourished mother&mdash;and for the twelve-year-old boy the
+abomination of desolation, and world and life seen dimly through tears.
+Dim, too, from the like cause, that strange passage across the ocean to
+Dieppe&mdash;his mother's uncle having sent for him to return&mdash;a weight as of
+lead in his stomach, a fiery throbbing in his young heart, a sickening
+craving for some expression of human love. The boyish tendrils, although
+touched in truth by spring frosts, were outreaching still for some
+object upon which to fasten; yet he shrank from human touch and sympathy
+on that voyage in the steerage lest in his grief and loneliness he
+scream aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Dieppe again, and the Little Trout with her grandfather awaiting him on
+the pier; the Little Trout's arms about his neck in loving welcome, the
+boy's heart full to bursting and his eyelids reddened in his supreme
+effort to keep back tears. Dependent, an orphan, and destined for the
+priesthood&mdash;those were his life lines for the next ten years. And the
+end? Revolt, rebellion, partial crime, acquittal under the law, but
+condemnation before the tribunal of his conscience and his God.</p>
+
+<p>There followed the longing to expiate, to expiate in that America where
+he was not known but where he belonged, where his parents' dust mingled
+with the soil; to flee to the Church as to a sanctuary of refuge, to be
+priest through expiation. And this he had been for years while working
+among the Canadian rivermen, among the lumbermen of Maine, sharing their
+lives, their toil, their joys and sorrows, the common inheritance of the
+Human. For years subsequent to his Canadian mission, and after his
+naturalization as an American citizen, he worked in town and city, among
+high and low, rich and poor, recognizing in his catholicity of outlook
+but one human plane: that which may be tested by the spirit level of
+human needs. Now, at last, he was priest by conviction, by inner
+consecration.</p>
+
+<p>He stood erect; drew a long full breath; squared his shoulders and
+looked around him. He noticed for the first time that a Staten Island
+ferryboat had moved into the slip near him; that several passengers were
+lingering to look at him; that a policeman was pacing behind him, his
+eye alert&mdash;and he smiled to himself, for he read their thought. He could
+not blame them for looking. He had fancied himself alone with the sea
+and the night and his thoughts; had lost himself to his present
+surroundings in the memory of those years; he had suffered again the old
+agony of passion, shame, guilt, while the events of that pregnant,
+preparatory period in France, etched deep with acid burnings into his
+inmost consciousness, were passing during that half hour in review
+before his inner vision. Small wonder he was attracting attention!</p>
+
+<p>He bared his head. A new moon was sinking to the Highlands of the
+Navesink. The May night was mild, the sea breeze drawing in with gentle
+vigor. He looked northwards up the Hudson, and southwards to the Liberty
+beacon, and eastwards to the Sound. "God bless our Land" he murmured;
+then, covering his head, bowed courteously to the policeman and took his
+way across the Park to the up-town elevated station.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, at last he dared assert it: he was priest by consecration; soul,
+heart, mind, body dedicate to the service of God through Humanity. That
+service led him always in human ways. A few nights ago he saw the
+poster: "The Little Patti". A child then? Thought bridged the abyss of
+ocean to the Little Trout. Some rescue work for him here, possibly;
+hence his presence in the theatre.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>That the priest's effort to rescue the child from the artificial life of
+the stage had been in a measure successful, was confirmed by the
+presence, six months later, of the little girl in the yard of the Orphan
+Asylum on &mdash;&mdash;nd Street.</p>
+
+<p>On an exceptionally dreary afternoon in November, had any one cared to
+look over the high board fence that bounds three sides of the Asylum
+yard, he might have seen an amazing sight and heard a still more amazing
+chorus:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Little Sally Waters<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sitting in the sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weeping and crying for a young man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rise, Sally, rise, Sally,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wipe away your tears, Sally;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turn to the east<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And turn to the west,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And turn to the one that you love best!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Higher and higher the voices of the three hundred orphans shrilled in
+unison as the owners thereof danced frantically around a small solitary
+figure in the middle of the ring of girls assembled in the yard on
+----nd Street. Her coarse blue denim apron was thrown over her head; her
+face was bowed into her hands that rested on her knees. It was a picture
+of woe.</p>
+
+<p>The last few words "you love best" rose to a shriek of exhortation. In
+the expectant silence that followed, "Sally" rose, pirouetted in a
+fashion worthy of a ballet dancer, then, with head down, fists clenched,
+arms tight at her sides, she made a sudden dash to break through the
+encircling wall of girls. She succeeded in making a breach by knocking
+the legs of three of the tallest out from under them; but two or more
+dozen arms, octopus-like, caught and held her. For a few minutes chaos
+reigned: legs, arms, hands, fingers, aprons, heads, stockings, hair,
+shoes of three hundred orphans were seemingly inextricably entangled. A
+bell clanged. The three hundred disentangled themselves with marvellous
+rapidity and, settling aprons, smoothing hair, pulling up stockings and
+down petticoats, they formed in a long double line. While waiting for
+the bell to ring the second warning, they stamped their feet, blew upon
+their cold fingers, and freely exercised their tongues.</p>
+
+<p>"Yer dassn't try that again!" said the mate in line with the
+obstreperous "Sally" who had so scorned the invitation of the hundreds
+of girls to "turn to the one that she loved best".</p>
+
+<p>"I dass ter!" was the defiant reply accompanied by the protrusion of a
+long thin tongue.</p>
+
+<p>"Yer dassn't either!"</p>
+
+<p>"I dass t'either!"</p>
+
+<p>"Git out!" The first speaker nudged the other's ribs with her sharp
+elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"Slap yer face for two cents!" shrieked the insulted "Sally", the Little
+Patti of the Vaudeville, and proceeded to carry out her threat.
+Whereupon Freckles, as she was known in the Asylum, set up a howl that
+was heard all along the line and turned upon her antagonist tooth and
+nail. At that moment the bell clanged a second time. A hush fell upon
+the multitude, broken only by a suppressed shriek that came from the
+vicinity of Freckles. A snicker ran down the line. The penalty for
+breaking silence after the second bell was "no supper", and not one of
+the three hundred cared to incur that&mdash;least of all Flibbertigibbet, the
+"Sally" of the game, who had forfeited her dinner, because she had been
+caught squabbling at morning prayers, and was now carrying about with
+her an empty stomach that was at bottom of her ugly mood.</p>
+
+<p>"One, two&mdash;one, two." The monitor counted; the girls fell into step, all
+but Flibbertigibbet&mdash;the Asylum nickname for the "Little Patti"&mdash;who
+contrived to keep out just enough to tread solidly with hobnailed shoe
+on the toes of the long-suffering Freckles. It was unbearable,
+especially the last time when a heel was set squarely upon Freckles'
+latest bunion.</p>
+
+<p>"Ou, ou&mdash;oh, au&mdash;wau!" Freckles moaned, limping.</p>
+
+<p>"Number 207 report for disorder," said the monitor.</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet giggled. Number 207 stepped out of the line and burst
+into uncontrollable sobbing; for she was hungry, oh, so hungry! And the
+matron had chalked on the blackboard "hot corn-cakes and molasses for
+Friday". It was the one great treat of the week. The girl behind
+Flibbertigibbet hissed in her ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Yer jest pizen mean; dirt ain't in it."</p>
+
+<p>A back kick worthy of a pack mule took effect upon the whisperer's shin.
+Flibbertigibbet moved on unmolested, underwent inspection at the
+entrance, and passed with the rest into the long basement room which was
+used for meals.</p>
+
+<p>Freckles stood sniffing disconsolately by the door as the girls filed
+in. She was meditating revenge, and advanced a foot in hope that,
+unseen, she might trip her tormentor as she passed her. What, then, was
+her amazement to see Flibbertigibbet shuffle along deliberately a little
+sideways in order to strike the extended foot! This man[oe]uvre she
+accomplished successfully and fell, not forward, but sideways out of
+line and upon Freckles. Freckles pushed her off with a vengeance, but
+not before she heard a gleeful whisper in her ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Dry up&mdash;watch out&mdash;I'll save yer some!"</p>
+
+<p>That was all; but to Freckles it was a revelation. The children filed
+between the long rows of wooden benches, that served for seats, and the
+tables. They remained standing until the sister in charge gave the
+signal to be seated. When the three hundred sat down as one, with a thud
+of something more than fifteen tons' weight, there broke loose a Babel
+of tongues&mdash;English as it is spoken in the mouths of children of many
+nationalities.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that Freckles began to "watch out."</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet sat rigid on the bench, her eyes turned neither to right
+nor left but staring straight at the pile of smoking corn-meal cakes
+trickling molasses on her tin plate. She was counting: "One, two, three,
+four, five," and the prospect of more; for on treat nights, which
+occurred once a week, there was no stinting with corn-meal cakes, hulled
+corn, apple sauce with fried bread or whatever else might be provided
+for the three hundred orphans at the Asylum on &mdash;&mdash;nd Street, in the
+great city of New York.</p>
+
+<p>Freckles grew nervous as she watched. What <i>was</i> Flibbertigibbet doing?
+Her fingers were busy untying the piece of red mohair tape with which
+her heavy braid was fastened in a neat loop. She put it around her
+apron, tying it fast; then, blousing the blue denim in front to a pouch
+like a fashion-plate shirt waist, she said in an undertone to her
+neighbor on the right:</p>
+
+<p>"Gee&mdash;look! Ain't I got the style?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't a-goin' ter look at yer, yer so pizen mean&mdash;dirt ain't in it,"
+said 206 contemptuously, and sat sideways at such an angle that she
+could eat her cakes without seeing the eyesore next her.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop crowdin'!" was the next command from the bloused bit of "style" to
+her neighbor on the left. Her sharp elbow emphasized her words and was
+followed by a solid thigh-to-thigh pressure that was felt for the length
+of at least five girls down the bench. The neighbor on the left found
+she could not withstand the continued pressure. She raised her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the trouble with 205?" The voice from the head of the table was
+one of controlled impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"Please 'um&mdash;"; but she spoke no further word, for the pressure was
+removed so suddenly that she lost her balance and careened with such
+force towards her torment of a neighbor that the latter was fain to put
+her both arms about her to hold her up. This she did so effectually that
+205 actually gasped for breath.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll pinch yer black an' blue if yer tell!" whispered Flibbertigibbet,
+relaxing her hold and in turn raising her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"What's wanting now, 208?"</p>
+
+<p>"A second helpin', please 'um."</p>
+
+<p>The tin round was passed up to the nickel-plated receptacle, that
+resembled a small bathtub with a cover, and piled anew. Flibbertigibbet
+viewed its return with satisfaction, and Freckles, who had been watching
+every move of this by-play, suddenly doubled up from her plastered
+position against the wall. She saw Flibbertigibbet drop the cakes quick
+as a flash into the low neck of her apron, and at that very minute they
+were reposing in the paunch of the blouse and held there by the mohair
+girdle. Thereafter a truce was proclaimed in the immediate vicinity of
+208. Her neighbors, right and left, their backs twisted towards the
+tease, ate their portions in fear and trembling. After a while 208's
+hand went up again. This time it waved mechanically back and forth as if
+the owner were pumping bucketfuls of water.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it now, 208?" The voice at the head of the table put the
+question with a note of exasperation in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Please 'um, another helpin'."</p>
+
+<p>The sister's lips set themselves close. "Pass up 208's plate," she said.
+The empty plate, licked clean of molasses on the sly, went up the line
+and returned laden with three "bloomin' beauties" as 208 murmured
+serenely to herself. She ate one with keen relish, then eyed the
+remaining two askance and critically. Freckles grew anxious. What next?
+Contrary to all rules 208's head, after slowly drooping little by
+little, lower and lower, dropped finally with a dull thud on the edge of
+the table and a force that tipped the plate towards her. Freckles
+doubled up again; she had seen through the man[oe]uvre: the three
+remaining cakes slid gently into the open half&mdash;low apron neck and were
+safely lodged with the other four.</p>
+
+<p>"Number 208 sit up properly or leave the table."</p>
+
+<p>The sister spoke peremptorily, for this special One Three-hundredth was
+her daily, almost hourly, thorn in the flesh. The table stopped eating
+to listen. There was a low moan for answer, but the head was not
+lifted. Number 206 took this opportunity to give her a dig in the ribs,
+and Number 205 crowded her in turn. To their amazement there was no
+response.</p>
+
+<p>"Number 208 answer at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please, 'um, I've got an awful pain&mdash;oo&mdash;au&mdash;." The sound was low
+but piercing.</p>
+
+<p>"You may leave the table, 208, and go up to the dormitory."</p>
+
+<p>208 rose with apparent effort. Her hands were clasped over the region
+where hot corn-meal cakes are said to lie heavily at times. Her face was
+screwed into an expression indicative of excruciating inner torment. As
+she made her way, moaning softly, to the farther door that opened into
+the cheerless corridor, there was audible a suppressed but decided
+giggle. It proceeded from Freckles. The monitor warned her, but,
+unheeding, the little girl giggled again.</p>
+
+<p>A ripple of laughter started down the three tables, but was quickly
+suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Number 207," said the much-tried and long-suffering sister, "you have
+broken the rule when under discipline. Go up to the dormitory and don't
+come down again to-night." This was precisely what Freckles wanted. She
+continued to sniff, however, as she left the room with seemingly
+reluctant steps. Once the door had closed upon her, she flew up the two
+long flights of stairs after Flibbertigibbet whom she found at the
+lavatory in the upper dormitory, cleansing the inside of her apron from
+molasses.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, but those cakes were good, eaten on the broad window sill where the
+two children curled themselves to play at their favorite game of "making
+believe about the Marchioness"!</p>
+
+<p>"But it's hot they be!" Freckles' utterance was thick owing to a large
+mouthful of cake with which she was occupied.</p>
+
+<p>"I kept 'em so squeezin' 'em against my stommick."</p>
+
+<p>"Where the pain was?"</p>
+
+<p>"M-m," her chum answered abstractedly. Her face was flattened against
+the window in order to see what was going on below, for the electric
+arc-light at the corner made the street visible for the distance of a
+block.</p>
+
+<p>"I've dropped a crumb," said Freckles ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>"Pick it up then, or yer'll catch it&mdash;Oh, my!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wot?" said Freckles who was on her hands and knees beneath the window
+searching for the crumb that might betray them if found by one of the
+sisters.</p>
+
+<p>"Git up here quick if yer want to see&mdash;it's the Marchioness an' another
+kid. Come on!" she cried excitedly, pulling at Freckles' long arm. The
+two little girls knelt on the broad sill, and with faces pressed close
+to the window-pane gazed and whispered and longed until the electric
+lights were turned on in the dormitory and the noise of approaching feet
+warned them that it was bedtime.</p>
+
+<p>Across the street from the Asylum, but facing the Avenue, was a great
+house of stone, made stately by a large courtyard closed by wrought-iron
+gates. On the side street looking to the Asylum, the windows in the
+second story had carved stone balconies; these were filled with bright
+blossoms in their season and in winter with living green. There was
+plenty of room behind the balcony flower-boxes for a white Angora cat to
+take her constitutional. When Flibbertigibbet entered the Asylum in
+June, the cat and the flowers were the first objects outside its walls
+to attract her attention and that of her chum, Freckles. It was not
+often that Freckles and her mate were given, or could obtain, the chance
+to watch the balcony, for there were so many things to do, something for
+every hour in the day: dishes to wash, beds to make, corridors to sweep,
+towels and stockings to launder, lessons to learn, sewing and catechism.
+But one day Flibbertigibbet&mdash;so Sister Angelica called the little girl
+from her first coming to the Asylum, and the name clung to her&mdash;was sent
+to the infirmary in the upper story because of a slight illness; while
+there she made the discovery of the "Marchioness." She called her that
+because she deemed it the most appropriate name, and why "appropriate"
+it behooves to tell.</p>
+
+<p>Behind the garbage-house, in the corner of the yard near the railroad
+tracks, there was a fine place to talk over secrets and grievances.
+Moreover, there was a knothole in the high wooden fence that inclosed
+the lower portion of the yard. When Flibbertigibbet put her eye to this
+aperture, it fitted so nicely that she could see up and down the street
+fully two rods each way. Generally that eye could range from butcher's
+boy to postman, or 'old clothes' man; but one day, having found an
+opportunity, she placed her visual organ as usual to the hole&mdash;and
+looked into another queer member that was apparently glued to the other
+side! But she was not daunted, oh, no!</p>
+
+<p>"Git out!" she commanded briefly.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't in." The Eye snickered.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll poke my finger into yer!" she threatened further.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bite your banana off," growled the Eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Yer a cross-eyed Dago."</p>
+
+<p>"You're another&mdash;you Biddy!" The Eye was positively insulting; it winked
+at her.</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet was getting worsted. She stamped her foot and kicked the
+fence. The Eye laughed at her, then suddenly vanished; and
+Flibbertigibbet saw a handsome-faced Italian lad sauntering up the
+street, hands in his pockets, and singing&mdash;oh, how he sang! The little
+girl forgot her rage in listening to the song, the words of which
+reminded her of dear Nonna Lisa and her own joys of a four weeks'
+vagabondage spent in the old Italian's company. All this she confessed
+to Freckles; and the two, under one pretence or another, managed to make
+daily visits to the garbage house knothole.</p>
+
+<p>That hole was every bit as good as a surprise party to them. The Eye was
+seen there but once more, when it informed the other Eye that it
+belonged to Luigi Poggi, Nonna Lisa's one grandson; that it was off in
+Chicago with a vaudeville troupe while the other Eye had been with Nonna
+Lisa. But instead of the Eye there appeared a stick of candy twisted in
+a paper and thrust through; at another time some fresh dates, strung on
+a long string, were found dangling on the inner side of the fence&mdash;the
+knothole having provided the point of entrance for each date; once a
+small bunch of wild flowers graced it on the yard side. Again, for three
+months, the hole served for a circulating library. A whole story found
+lodgement there, a chapter at a time, torn from a paper-covered novel.
+Flibbertigibbet carried them around with her pinned inside of her blue
+denim apron, and read them to Freckles whenever she was sure of not
+being caught. Luigi was their one boy on earth.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Marchioness of Isola Bella</i>, that was the name of the story; and if
+Flibbertigibbet and Freckles on their narrow cots in the bare upper
+dormitory of the Orphan Asylum on &mdash;&mdash;nd Street, did not dream of
+sapphire lakes and snow-crowned mountains, of marble palaces and
+turtledoves, of lovely ladies and lordly men, of serenades and guitars
+and ropes of pearl, it was not the fault either of Luigi Poggi or the
+<i>Marchioness of Isola Bella</i>. But at times the story-book marchioness
+seemed very far away, and it was a happy thought of Flibbertigibbet's to
+name the little lady in the great house after her; for, once, watching
+at twilight from the cold window seat in the dormitory, the two orphan
+children saw her ladyship dressed for a party, the maid having forgotten
+to lower the shades.</p>
+
+<p>Freckles and Flibbertigibbet dared scarcely breathe; it was so much
+better than the <i>Marchioness of Isola Bella</i>, for this one was real and
+alive&mdash;oh, yes, very much alive! She danced about the room, running from
+the maid when she tried to catch her, and when the door opened and a
+tall man came in with arms opened wide, the real Marchioness did just
+what the story-book marchioness did on the last page to her lover: gave
+one leap into the outstretched arms of the father-lover.</p>
+
+<p>While the two children opposite were looking with all their eyes at this
+unexpected <i>d&eacute;nouement</i>, the maid drew the shades, and Freckles and
+Flibbertigibbet were left to stare at each other in the dark and cold.
+Flibbertigibbet nodded and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"That takes the cake. The <i>Marchioness of Isola Bella</i> ain't in it!"</p>
+
+<p>Freckles squeezed her hand. Thereafter, although the girls appreciated
+the various favors of the knothole, their entire and passionate
+allegiance was given to the real Marchioness across the way.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>One day, it was just after Thanksgiving, the Marchioness discovered her
+opposite neighbors. It was warm and sunny, a summer day that had strayed
+from its place in the Year's procession. The maid was putting the Angora
+cat out on the balcony among the dwarf evergreens. The Marchioness was
+trying to help her when, happening to look across the street, she saw
+the two faces at the opposite window. She stared for a moment, then
+taking the cat from the window sill held her up for the two little girls
+to see. Flibbertigibbet and her mate nodded vigorously and smiled,
+making motions with their hands as if stroking the fur.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchioness dropped the cat and waved her hand to them; the maid
+drew her back from the window; the two girls saw her ladyship twitch
+away from the detaining hand and stamp her foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Gee!" said Flibbertigibbet under her breath, "she's just like us."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, wot's she up ter now?" Freckles whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Truly, any sane person would have asked that question. The Marchioness,
+having gained her point, was standing on the window seat by the open
+window, which was protected by an iron grating, and making curious
+motions with her fingers and hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she a luny?" Freckles asked in an awed voice.</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet was gazing fixedly at this apparition and made no reply.
+After watching this pantomime a few minutes, she spoke slowly:</p>
+
+<p>"She's one of the dumb uns; I've seen 'em."</p>
+
+<p>The Marchioness was now making frantic gestures towards the top of their
+window. She was laughing too.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a lively one if she is a dumber," said Freckles approvingly.
+Flibbertigibbet jumped to her feet and likewise stood on the window
+sill.</p>
+
+<p>"Gee! She wants us to git the window open at the top. Here&mdash;pull!" The
+two children hung their combined weight by the tips of their fingers
+from the upper sash, and the great window opened slowly a few inches;
+then it stuck fast. But they both heard the gleeful voice of their
+opposite neighbor and welcomed the sound.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm talking to you&mdash;it's the only way I can&mdash;the deaf and dumb&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The maid lifted her down, struggling, from the window seat, and they
+heard the childish voice scolding in a tongue unknown to them.</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet set immediately about earning the right to learn the
+deaf-and-dumb alphabet; she hung out all monitor Number Twelve's
+washing&mdash;dish towels, stockings, handkerchiefs&mdash;every other day for two
+weeks in the bitter December weather. She knew that this special monitor
+had a small brother in the Asylum for Deaf Mutes; this girl taught her
+the strange language in compensation for the child's time and labor. It
+was mostly "give and take" in the Asylum.</p>
+
+<p>"That child has been angelic lately; I don't know what's going to
+happen." Long-suffering Sister Agatha heaved a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, there is a storm brewing you may be sure; this calm is unnatural,"
+Sister Angelica replied, smiling at sight of the little figure in the
+yard dancing in the midst of an admiring circle of blue-nosed girls. "I
+believe they would rather stand and watch her than to run about and get
+warm. She is as much fun for them as a circus, and she learns so
+quickly! Have you noticed her voice in chapel lately?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have"; said Sister Agatha grumpily, "and I confess I can't bear
+to hear her sing like an angel when she is such a little fiend."</p>
+
+<p>Sister Angelica smiled. "Oh, I'm sure she'll come out all right; there's
+nothing vicious about her, and she's a loyal little soul, you can't deny
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to those she loves," Sister Agatha answered with some bitterness.
+She knew she was no favorite with the subject under discussion. "See her
+now! I shouldn't think she would have a whole bone left in her body."</p>
+
+<p>They were playing "Snap-the-whip". Flibbertigibbet was the snapper for a
+line of twenty or more girls. As she swung the circle her legs flew so
+fast they fairly twinkled, and her hops and skips were a marvel to
+onlookers. But she landed right side up at last, although breathless,
+her long braid unloosened, hair tossing on the wind, cheeks red as
+American beauty roses, and gray eyes black with excitement of the game.
+Then the bell rang its warning, the children formed in line and marched
+in to lessons.</p>
+
+<p>The two weeks in December in which Flibbertigibbet had given herself to
+the acquisition of the new language, proved long for the Marchioness.
+Every day she watched at the window for the reappearance of the two
+children at the bare upper window opposite; but thus far in vain.
+However, on the second Saturday after their first across-street meeting,
+she saw to her great joy the two little girls curled up on the window
+sill and frantically waving to attract her attention. The Marchioness
+nodded and smiled, clapped her hands, and mounted upon her own broad
+window seat in order to have an unobstructed view over the iron grating.</p>
+
+<p>"She sees us, she sees us!" Freckles cried excitedly, but under her
+breath; "now let's begin."</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet chose one of the panes that was cleaner than the others
+and putting her two hands close to it began operations. The Marchioness
+fairly hopped up and down with delight when she saw the familiar symbols
+of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, and immediately set her own small white
+hands to work on her first sentence:</p>
+
+<p>"Go slow."</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet nodded emphatically; the conversation was begun again
+and continued for half an hour. It was in truth a labor as well as a
+work of love. The spelling in both cases was far from perfect and, at
+times, puzzling to both parties; but little by little they became used
+to each other's erratic symbols together with the queer things for which
+they stood, and no conversation throughout the length and breadth of New
+York&mdash;yes, even of our United States&mdash;was ever more enjoyed than by
+these three girls. Flibbertigibbet and the Marchioness did the
+finger-talking, and Freckles helped with the interpretation. In the
+following translation of this first important exchange of social
+courtesies, the extremely peculiar spelling, and wild combinations of
+vowels in particular, are omitted: but the questions and answers are
+given exactly as they were constructed by the opposite neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>"Go slow." This as a word of warning from the Marchioness.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't this fun?"</p>
+
+<p>"Beats the band."</p>
+
+<p>"What is your name?"</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet and her chum looked at each other; should it be nickname
+or real name? As they were at present in society and much on their
+dignity they decided to give their real names.</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen Armagh." Thereupon Flibbertigibbet beat upon her breast to
+indicate first person singular possessive. The Marchioness stared at her
+for a minute, then spelled rather quickly:</p>
+
+<p>"It's lovely. We call you something else."</p>
+
+<p>"Who's we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Ruth and I."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you call me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Flibbertigibbet."</p>
+
+<p>"Git off!" cried Flibbertigibbet, recklessly shoving Freckles on to the
+floor. "Gee, how'd she know!" And thereupon she jumped to her feet and,
+having the broad window sill to herself, started upon a rather
+restricted coon dance in order to prove to her opposite neighbor that
+the nickname belonged to her by good right. Oh, but it was fun for the
+Marchioness! She clapped her hands to show her approval and catching up
+the skirt of her dainty white frock, slowly raised one leg at a right
+angle to her body and stood so for a moment, to the intense admiration
+of the other girls.</p>
+
+<p>"That's what they call me here," said Flibbertigibbet when they got down
+to conversation again.</p>
+
+<p>"What is hers?" asked the Marchioness, pointing to Freckles.</p>
+
+<p>"Margaret O'Dowd, but we call her Freckles."</p>
+
+<p>How the Marchioness laughed! So hard, indeed, that she apparently
+tumbled off the seat, for she disappeared entirely for several minutes,
+much to the girls' amazement as well as chagrin.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like she broke somethin'," whimpered Freckles; "a bone yer
+know&mdash;her nose fallin' that way when she went over forrard."</p>
+
+<p>"She ain't chany, I tell yer; she's jest Injy rubber," said
+Flibbertigibbet scornfully but with a note of anxiety in her voice. At
+this critical moment the Marchioness reappeared and jumped upon the
+seat. She had a curious affair in her hand; after placing it to her
+eyes, she signalled her answer:</p>
+
+<p>"I can see them."</p>
+
+<p>"See what?"</p>
+
+<p>"The freckles."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot's she givin' us?" Freckles asked in a perplexed voice.</p>
+
+<p>"She's all right," said Flibbertigibbet with the confidence of superior
+knowledge; "it's a tel'scope; yer can see the moon through, an' yer
+freckles look to her as big as pie-plates."</p>
+
+<p>Freckles crossed herself; it sounded like witches and it had a queer
+look.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask her wot's her name," she suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"What's your name?" Flibbertigibbet repeated on her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend."</p>
+
+<p>"Gee whiz, ain't that a corker!" Flibbertigibbet exclaimed delightedly.
+"How old are you?" She proceeded thus with her personal investigation
+prompted thereto by Freckles.</p>
+
+<p>"Most ten;&mdash;you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most twelve."</p>
+
+<p>"And Freckles?" The Marchioness laughed as she spelled the name.</p>
+
+<p>"Eleven."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask her if she's an orphant," said Freckles.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you an orphan, Freckles says."</p>
+
+<p>"Half," came the answer. "What are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whole," was the reply. "Which is your half?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have only papa&mdash;I'll introduce him to you sometime when&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>This explanation took fully five minutes to decipher, and while they
+were at work upon it the maid came up behind the Marchioness and,
+without so much as saying "By your leave", took her down struggling from
+the window seat and drew the shades. Whereupon Flibbertigibbet rose in
+her wrath, shook her fist at the insulting personage, and vowed
+vengeance upon her in her own forceful language:</p>
+
+<p>"You're an old cat, and I'll rub your fur the wrong way till the sparks
+fly."</p>
+
+<p>At this awful threat Freckles looked alarmed, and suddenly realized that
+she was shivering, the result of sitting so long against the cold
+window. "Come on down," she pleaded with the enraged Flibbertigibbet;
+and by dint of coaxing and the promise of a green woollen watch-chain,
+which she had patiently woven, and so carefully, with four pins and an
+empty spool till it looked like a green worm, she succeeded in getting
+her away from the dormitory window.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>If the <i>Marchioness of Isola Bella</i> had filled many of Flibbertigibbet's
+dreams during the last six months, the real Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend
+now filled all her waking hours. Her sole thought was to contrive
+opportunities for more of this fascinating conversation, and she and
+Freckles practised daily on the sly in order to say more, and quickly,
+to the real Marchioness across the way.</p>
+
+<p>By good luck they were given a half-hour for themselves just before
+Christmas, in reward for the conscientious manner in which they made
+beds, washed dishes, and recited their lessons for an entire week. When
+Sister Angelica, laying her hand on Flibbertigibbet's shoulder, had
+asked her what favor she wanted for the good work of that week, the
+little girl answered promptly enough that she would like to sit with
+Freckles in the dormitory window and look out on the street, for maybe
+there might be a hurdy-gurdy with a monkey passing through.</p>
+
+<p>"Not this cold day, I'm sure," said Sister Angelica, smiling at the
+request; "for no monkey could be out in this weather unless he had an
+extra fur coat and a hot water bottle for his toes. Yes, you may go but
+don't stay too long in the cold."</p>
+
+<p>But what if the Marchioness were to fail to make her appearance! They
+could not bear to think of this, and amused themselves for a little
+while by blowing upon the cold panes and writing their names and the
+Marchioness' in the vapor. But, at last&mdash;oh, at last, there she was! The
+fingers began to talk almost before they knew it. In some respects it
+proved to be a remarkable conversation, for it touched upon many and
+various topics, all of which proved of equal interest to the parties
+concerned. They lost no time in setting about the exchange of their
+views.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to a party," the Marchioness announced, smoothing her gown.</p>
+
+<p>"What time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Five o'clock, but I'm all ready. I am going to dance a minuet."</p>
+
+<p>This was a poser; but Flibbertigibbet did not wish to be outdone,
+although there was no party for her in prospect.</p>
+
+<p>"I can dance too," she signalled.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you can&mdash;lovely; that's why I told you."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could see you dance the minute."</p>
+
+<p>The Marchioness did not answer at once. Finally she spelled "Wait a
+minute," jumped down from the broad sill and disappeared. In a short
+time she was back again.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to dance for you. Look downstairs&mdash;when it is dark&mdash;and
+you'll see the drawing-room lighted&mdash;I'll dance near the windows."</p>
+
+<p>The two girls clapped their hands and Flibbertigibbet jumped up and down
+on the window sill to express her delight.</p>
+
+<p>"When do you have to go to bed?" was the next pointed question from
+Alice Maud Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"A quarter to eight."</p>
+
+<p>"Who puts you in?"</p>
+
+<p>This was another poser for even Flibbertigibbet's quick wits.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot does she mane?" Freckles demanded anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno; anyhow, I'll tell her the sisters."</p>
+
+<p>"The sisters," was the word that went across the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how nice! Do you say your prayers to them too?"</p>
+
+<p>Freckles groaned. "Wot yer goin' to tell her now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up now till yer hear me, an' cross yerself, for I mane it." Such
+was the warning from her mate.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I say them to another lady&mdash;Our Lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh gracious!" Freckles cried out under her breath and began to snicker.</p>
+
+<p>"What lady?" The Marchioness looked astonished but intensely interested.</p>
+
+<p>"The Holy Virgin. I'll bet she don't know nothin' 'bout Her," said
+Flibbertigibbet in a triumphant aside to Freckles. The Marchioness' eyes
+opened wider upon the two children across the way.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the mother of Our Lord, isn't it?" she said in her dumb way.
+The two children nodded; no words seemed to come readily just then, for
+Alice Maud Mary had given them a surprise. They crossed themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of saying my prayers to His mother before, but I shall
+now. He always had a mother, hadn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet could think of nothing to say in answer, but she did the
+next best thing: she drew her rosary from under her dress waist and held
+it up to the Marchioness who nodded understandingly and began to fumble
+at her neck. In a moment she brought forth a tiny gold chain with a
+little gold cross hanging from it. She held it up and dangled it before
+the four astonished eyes opposite.</p>
+
+<p>"Gee! Yer can't git ahead of <i>her</i>, an' I ain't goin' to try. She's just
+a darlint." Flibbertigibbet's heart was very full and tender at that
+moment; but she giggled at the next question.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know any boys?"</p>
+
+<p>One finger was visible at the dormitory window. The Marchioness laughed
+and after telling them she knew ever so many began to count on her
+fingers for the benefit of her opposite neighbors.</p>
+
+<p>"One, two, three, four, five," she began on her right hand&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe her," said Freckles with a suspicious sniff.</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet turned fiercely upon her. "I'd believe her if she said
+she knew a thousand, so now, Margaret O'Dowd, an' yer hold yer tongue!"
+she cried; but in reprimanding Freckles for her want of faith she lost
+count of the boys.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go now," said the Marchioness; "but when the drawing-room
+downstairs is lighted, you look in&mdash;there'll be one boy there to dance
+with me. Be sure you look." Suddenly the Marchioness made a sign that
+both girls understood, although it was an extra one and the very
+prettiest of all in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet of the affections: she
+put her fingers to her lips and blew them a kiss.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't she a darlint!" murmured Flibbertigibbet, tossing the same sign
+across the street. When the Marchioness had left the window, the two
+girls spent the remaining minutes of their reward in planning how best
+to see the dance upon which they had set their hearts. They thought of
+all the places available, but were sure they would not be permitted to
+occupy them. At last Flibbertigibbet decided boldly, on the strength of
+a good conscience throughout one whole week, to ask at headquarters.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm goin' straight to Sister Angelica an' ask her to let us go into the
+chapel; it's the only place. Yer can see from the little windy in the
+cubby-hole where the priest gits into his other clothes."</p>
+
+<p>Freckles looked awestruck. "She'll never let yer go in there."</p>
+
+<p>Her mate snapped her fingers in reply, and catching Freckles' hand raced
+her down the long dormitory, down the two long flights of stairs to the
+schoolroom where Sister Angelica was giving a lesson to the younger
+girls.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Flibbertigibbet, what is it now?" said the sister smiling into
+the eager face at her elbow. When Sister Angelica called her by her
+nickname instead of by the Asylum number, Flibbertigibbet knew she was
+in high favor. She nudged Freckles and replied:</p>
+
+<p>"I want to whisper to you."</p>
+
+<p>Sister Angelica bent down; before she knew it the little girl's arms
+were about her neck and the child was telling her about the dance at the
+stone house across the way. The sister smiled as she listened to the
+rush of eager words, but she was so glad to find this madcap telling her
+openly her heart's one desire, that she did what she had never done
+before in all her life of beautiful child-consecrated work: she said
+"Yes, and I will go with you. Wait for me outside the chapel door at
+half-past four."</p>
+
+<p>Flibbertigibbet squeezed her around the neck with such grateful vigor
+that the blood rushed to poor Sister Angelica's head. She was willing,
+however, to be a martyr in such a good cause. The little girl walked
+quietly to the door, but when it had closed upon her she executed a
+series of somersaults worthy of the Madison Square Garden acrobats.
+"What'd I tell yer, what'd I tell yer!" she exclaimed, pirouetting and
+somersaulting till the slower-moving Freckles was a trifle dizzy.</p>
+
+<p>Within a quarter of an hour the three were snugly ensconced in the
+window niche of the "cubby-hole," so Flibbertigibbet termed the
+robing-room closet, and looking with all their eyes across the street.
+They were directly opposite what Sister Angelica said must be the
+drawing-room and on a level with it. As they looked, one moment the
+windows were dark, in the next they were filled with soft yet brilliant
+lights. The lace draperies were parted and the children could see down
+the length of the room.</p>
+
+<p>There she was! Hopping and skipping by the side of her father-lover and
+drawing him to the central window. Behind them came the lovely young
+lady and the Boy! The two were holding hands and swinging them freely as
+they laughed and chatted together.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the Boy!" cried Flibbertigibbet, wild with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"And that must be the Aunt Ruth she told about&mdash;oh, ain't she just
+lovely!" cried Freckles.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch out now, an' yer'll see the minute!" said Flibbertigibbet,
+squeezing Sister Angelica's hand; Sister Angelica squeezed back, but
+kept silence. She was learning many things before unknown to her. The
+four came to the middle window and looked out, up, and all around. But
+although the two children waved their hands wildly to attract their
+attention, the good people opposite failed to see them because the
+little window suffered eclipse in the shadow of the large electric
+arc-light's green cap.</p>
+
+<p>"She's goin' to begin!" cried Flibbertigibbet, clapping her hands.</p>
+
+<p>The young lady sat down at the piano and began to play. Whether
+Flibbertigibbet expected a variation of a "coon dance" or an Irish jig
+cannot be stated with certainty, but that she was surprised is a fact;
+so surprised, indeed, that for full two minutes she forgot to talk. To
+the slow music, for such it was&mdash;Flibbertigibbet beat time with her
+fingers on the pane to the step&mdash;the Marchioness and the Boy, pointing
+their daintily slippered feet, moved up and down, back and forth,
+swinging, turning, courtesying, bowing over the parquet floor with such
+childishly stately yet charming grace that their rhythmic motions were
+as a song without words.</p>
+
+<p>The father-lover stood with his back to the mantel and applauded after
+an especially well executed flourish or courtesy; Aunt Ruth looked over
+her shoulder, smiling, her hands wandering slowly over the keys. At
+last, the final flourish, the final courtesy. The Marchioness' dress
+fairly swept the floor, and the Boy bowed so low that&mdash;well,
+Flibbertigibbet never could tell how it happened, but she had a warm
+place in her heart for that boy ever after&mdash;he quietly and methodically
+stood head downwards on his two hands, his white silk stockings and
+patent leathers kicking in the air.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchioness was laughing so hard that she sat down in a regular
+"cheese" on the floor; the father-lover was clapping his hands like mad;
+the lady swung round on the piano stool and shook her forefinger at the
+Boy who suddenly came right side up at last, hand on his heart, and
+bowed with great dignity to the little girl on the floor. Then he, too,
+laughed and cut another caper just as a solemn-faced butler came in with
+wraps and furs. But by no means did he remain solemn long! How could he
+with the Boy prancing about him, and the Marchioness playing at
+"Catch-me-if-you-can" with her father-lover, and the lady slipping and
+sliding over the floor to catch the Boy who was always on the other side
+of the would-be solemn butler? Why, he actually swung round in a circle
+by holding on to that butler's dignified coat-tails!</p>
+
+<p>Nor were they the only ones who laughed. Across the way in one of the
+Orphan Asylum windows, Sister Angelica and the children laughed too, in
+spirit joining in the fun, and when the butler came to the window to
+draw the shades there were three long "Ah's," both of intense
+disappointment and supreme satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Watch out, now," said Flibbertigibbet excitedly on the way down into
+the basement for supper and dishwashing, for it was their turn this
+week, "an' yer'll see me dance yer a minute in the yard ter-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Yer can't dance it alone," replied doubting Freckles; "yer've got to
+have a boy."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want one; I'll take you, Freckles, for a boy." Clumsy Freckles
+blushed with delight beneath her many beauty-spots at such promise of
+unwonted graciousness on the part of her chum, and wondered what had
+come over Flibbertigibbet lately.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A few hours afterwards when they went up to bed, they whispered together
+again concerning the dance, and begged Sister Angelica to let them have
+just one peep from the dormitory window at their house of delight&mdash;a
+request she was glad to grant. They opened one of the inside blinds a
+little way, and exclaimed at the sight. It was snowing. The children
+oh'ed and ah'ed under their breath, for a snowstorm at Christmas time in
+the great city is the child's true joy. At their opposite neighbor's a
+faint light was visible in the balcony room; the wet soft flakes had
+already ridged the balustrade, powdered the dwarf evergreens, topped the
+cap of the electric arc-light and laid upon the concrete a coverlet of
+purest white.</p>
+
+<p>The long bare dormitory filled with the children&mdash;the fatherless and
+motherless children we have always with us. Soon each narrow cot held
+its asylum number; the many heads, golden, brown, or black, busied all
+of them with childhood's queer unanchored thoughts, were pillowed in
+safety for another night.</p>
+
+<p>And without the snow continued to fall upon the great city. It graced
+with equal delicacy the cathedral's marble spires and the forest of
+pointed firs which made the numberless Christmas booths that surrounded
+old Washington Market. It covered impartially, and with as pure a white,
+the myriad city roofs that sheltered saint and sinner, whether among the
+rich or the poor, among the cherished or castaways. It fell as thickly
+upon the gravestones in Trinity's ancient churchyard as upon the freshly
+turned earth in a corner of the paupers' burying ground; and it set upon
+black corruption wherever it was in evidence the seal of a transient
+stainlessness.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>"Really, I am discouraged about that child," said Sister Agatha just
+after Easter. She was standing at one of the schoolroom windows that
+overlooked the yard; she spoke as if thoroughly vexed.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it now&mdash;208 again?" Sister Angelica looked up from the copybook
+she was correcting.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, of course; it's always 208."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she doesn't mean anything; it's only her high spirits; they must
+have some vent."</p>
+
+<p>"It's been her ruin being on the stage even for those few weeks, and
+ever since the Van Ostends began to make of her and have her over for
+that Christmas luncheon and the Sunday nights, the child is neither to
+have nor to hold. What with her 'make believing' and her 'acting' she
+upsets the girls generally. She ought to be set to good steady work; the
+first chance I get I'll put her to it. I only wish some one would adopt
+her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard Father Honor&eacute;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Look at her now!" exclaimed Sister Agatha interrupting her.</p>
+
+<p>Sister Angelica joined her at the window. They could not only see but
+hear all that was going on below. With the garbage house as a
+stage-setting and background to the performance, Flibbertigibbet was
+courtesying low to her audience; the skirt of her scant gingham dress
+was held in her two hands up and out to its full extent. The orphans
+crouched on the pavement in a triple semi-circle in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>"All this rigmarole comes of the theatre," said Sister Agatha grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, where's the harm? She is only living it all over again and giving
+the others a little pleasure at the same time. Dear knows, they have
+little enough, poor things."</p>
+
+<p>Sister Agatha made no reply; she was listening intently to 208's orders.
+The little girl had risen from her low courtesy and was haranguing the
+assembled hundreds:</p>
+
+<p>"Now watch out, all of yer, an' when I do the minute yer can clap yer
+hands if yer like it; an' if yer want some more, yer must clap enough to
+split yer gloves if yer had any on, an' then I'll give yer the coon
+dance; an' then if yer like <i>that</i>, yer can play yer gloves are busted
+with clappin' an' stomp yer feet&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But we can't," Freckles entered her prosaic protest, "'cause we're
+squattin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, get up then, yer'll have to; an' then if you stomp awful, an'
+holler 'On-ko&mdash;on-ko!'&mdash;that's what they say at the thayertre&mdash;I'll give
+yer somethin' else&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wot?" demanded 206 suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't yer wish I'd tell!" said 208, and began the minuet.</p>
+
+<p>It was marvellous how she imitated every graceful movement, every turn
+and twist and bow, every courtesy to the imaginary partner&mdash;Freckles had
+failed her entirely in this role&mdash;whose imaginary hand she held clasped
+high above her head; her clumsy shoes slid over the flagging as if it
+had been a waxed floor under dainty slippers. There was an outburst of
+applause; such an outburst that had the audience really worn gloves,
+every seam, even if French and handsewed, must have cracked under the
+healthy pressure.</p>
+
+<p>208 beamed and, throwing back her head, suddenly flung herself into the
+coon dance which, in its way, was as wild and erratic as the minuet had
+been stately and methodical. Wilder and wilder grew her gyrations&mdash;head,
+feet, legs, shoulders, hair, hands, arms, were in seemingly perpetual
+motion. The audience grew wildly excited. They jumped up, shouting
+"On-ko&mdash;on-ko!" and accompanied their shouts with the stamping of feet.
+A dexterous somersault on the dancer's part ended the performance; her
+cheeks were flushed with exercise and excitement, her black mane was
+loosened and tossed about her shoulders. The audience lost their heads
+and even 206 joined in the prolonged roar:</p>
+
+<p>"On-ko, 208&mdash;on-ko-o-o-oor! On-ko, Flibbertigibbet&mdash;some more&mdash;some
+more!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's perfectly disgraceful," muttered Sister Agatha, and made a
+movement to leave the window; but Sister Angelica laid a gently
+detaining hand on her arm.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Agatha, not that," she said earnestly; "you'll see that they will
+work all the better for this fun&mdash;Hark!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden and deep silence. 208 was evidently ready with her
+encore, a surprise to all but the performer. She shook back the hair
+from her face, raised her eyes, crossed her two hands upon her chest,
+waited a few seconds until a swift passenger train on the track behind
+the fence had smothered its roar in the tunnel depths, then began to
+sing "The Holy City." Even Sister Agatha felt the tears spring as she
+listened. A switch engine letting off steam drowned the last words, and
+there was no applause. Flibbertigibbet looked about her inquiringly; but
+the girls were silent. Such singing appeared to them out of the
+ordinary&mdash;and so unlike 208! It took them a moment to recover from their
+surprise; they gathered in groups to whisper together concerning the
+performance.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Flibbertigibbet was waiting expectantly. Where was the well
+earned applause? And she had reserved the best for the last! Ungrateful
+ones! Her friends in the stone house always praised her when she did her
+best,&mdash;but these girls&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She stamped her foot, then dashed through the broken ranks, making faces
+as she ran, and crying out in disgust and anger:</p>
+
+<p>"Catch me givin' yer any more on-kos, yer stingy things!" and with that
+she ran into the basement followed by Freckles who was intent upon
+appeasing her.</p>
+
+<p>The two sisters, pacing the dim corridor together after chapel that
+evening, spoke again of their little wilding.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't finish what I was going to tell you about 208," said Sister
+Angelica. "I heard the Sister Superior tell Father Honor&eacute; when he was
+here the other day that Mr. Van Ostend had been to see her in regard to
+the child. It seems he has found a place for her in the country with
+some of his relations, as I understand it. He said his interest in her
+had been roused when he heard her for the first time on the stage, and
+that when he found Flibbertigibbet was the little acquaintance his
+daughter had made, he determined to further the child's interests so far
+as a home is concerned."</p>
+
+<p>"Then there is a prospect of her going," Sister Agatha drew a breath of
+relief. "Did you hear what Father Honor&eacute; said?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very little; but I noticed he looked pleased, and I heard him say,
+'This is working out all right; I'll step across and see Mr. Van Ostend
+myself.'&mdash;I shall miss her so!"</p>
+
+<p>Sister Agatha made no reply. Together the two sisters continued to pace
+the dim corridor, silent each with her thoughts; and, pacing thus, up
+and down, up and down, the slender, black-robed figures were soon lost
+in the increasing darkness and became mere neutral outlines as they
+passed the high bare windows and entered their respective rooms.</p>
+
+<p>Even so, a few weeks later when Number 208 left the Orphan Asylum on
+----nd Street, they passed quietly out of the child's actual life and
+entered the fitfully lighted chambers of her childish memory wherein, at
+times, they paced with noiseless footsteps as once in the barren halls
+of her orphanage home.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_SECOND" id="PART_SECOND"></a>PART SECOND</h2>
+
+<h3>Home Soil</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>A land of entrancing inner waters, our own marvellous Lake Country of
+the East, lies just behind those mountains of Maine that sink their
+bases in the Atlantic and are fitly termed in Indian nomenclature
+<i>Waves-of-the-Sea</i>. Bight and bay indent this mountainous coast, in
+beauty comparable, if less sublime yet more enticing, to the Norwegian
+fjords; within them are set the islands large and small whereon the
+sheep, sheltered by cedar coverts, crop the short thick turf that is
+nourished by mists from the Atlantic. Above bight and bay and island
+tower the mountains. Their broad green flanks catch the earliest eastern
+and the latest western lights. Their bare summits are lifted boldly into
+the infinite blue that is reflected in the waters which lap their
+foundations.</p>
+
+<p>Flamsted lies at the outlet of Lake Mesantic, on the gentle northward
+slope of these <i>Waves-of-the-Sea</i>, some eighteen miles inland from
+Penobscot Bay. Until the last decade of the nineteenth century it was
+unconnected with the coast by any railroad; but at that time a branch
+line from Hallsport on the Bay, encouraged by the opening of a small
+granite quarry in the Flamsted Hills, made its terminus at The
+Corners&mdash;a sawmill settlement at the falls of the Rothel, a river that
+runs rapidly to the sea after issuing from Lake Mesantic. A mile beyond
+the station the village proper begins at its two-storied tavern, The
+Greenbush.</p>
+
+<p>From the lower veranda of this hostelry, one may look down the shaded
+length of the main street, dignified by many an old-fashioned house, to
+The Bow, an irregular peninsula extending far into the lake and
+containing some two hundred acres. This estate is the ancestral home of
+the Champneys, known as Champ-au-Haut, in the vernacular "Champo." At
+The Bow the highway turns suddenly, crosses a bridge over the Rothel and
+curves with the curving pine-fringed shores of the lake along the base
+of the mountain until it climbs the steep ascent that leads to Googe's
+Gore, the third division of the town of Flamsted.</p>
+
+<p>As in all New England towns, that are the possessors of "old families,"
+so in Flamsted;&mdash;its inhabitants are partisans. The result is, that it
+has been for years as a house divided against itself, and heated
+discussion of the affairs of the Googes at the Gore and the Champneys at
+The Bow has been from generation to generation an inherited interest.
+And from generation to generation, as the two families have ramified and
+intermarriages occurred more and more frequently, party spirit has run
+higher and higher and bitter feelings been engendered. But never have
+the factional differences been more pronounced and the lines of
+separation drawn with a sharper ploughshare in this mountain-ramparted
+New England town, than during the five years subsequent to the opening
+of the Flamsted Quarries which brought in its train the railroad and the
+immigrants. This event was looked upon by the inhabitants as the
+Invasion of the New.</p>
+
+<p>The interest of the first faction was centred in Champ-au-Haut and its
+present possessor, the widow of Louis Champney, old Judge Champney's
+only son. That of the second in the Googes, Aurora and her son Champney,
+the owners of Googe's Gore and its granite outcrop.</p>
+
+<p>The office room of The Greenbush has been for two generations the
+acknowledged gathering place of the representatives of the hostile
+camps. On a cool evening in June, a few days after the departure of
+several New York promoters, who had formed a syndicate to exploit the
+granite treasure in The Gore and for that purpose been fully a week in
+Flamsted, a few of the natives dropped into the office to talk it over.</p>
+
+<p>When Octavius Buzzby, the factotum at Champ-au-Haut and twin of Augustus
+Buzzby, landlord of The Greenbush, entered the former bar-room of the
+old hostelry, he found the usual Saturday night frequenters. Among them
+was Colonel Milton Caukins, tax collector and assistant deputy sheriff
+who, never quite at ease in the presence of his long-tongued wife,
+expanded discursively so soon as he found himself in the office of The
+Greenbush. He was in full flow when Octavius entered.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Tave," he cried, extending his hand in easy condescension,
+"you're well come, for you're just in time to hear the latest; the
+deal's on&mdash;an A. 1 sure thing this time. Aurora showed me the papers
+to-day. We're in for it now&mdash;government contracts, state houses, battle
+monuments, graveyards; we've got 'em all, and things'll begin to hum in
+this backwater hole, you bet!"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius looked inquiringly at his brother. Augustus answered by raising
+his left eyebrow and placidly closing his right eye as a cautionary
+signal to lie low and await developments.</p>
+
+<p>It was the Colonel's way to boom everything, and simply because he could
+not help it. It was not a matter of principle with him, it was an affair
+of temperament. He had boomed Flamsted for the last ten years&mdash;its
+climate, its situation, its scenery, its water power, its lake-shore
+lands as prospective sites for mansion summer cottages, and the
+treasures of its unopened quarries. So incorrigible an optimist was
+Milton Caukins that any slight degree of success, which might attend the
+promotion of any one of his numerous schemes, caused an elation that
+amounted to hilarity. On the other hand, the deadly blight of
+non-fulfilment, that annually attacked his most cherished hopes for the
+future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress
+him, or check the prodigal casting of his optimistic daily bread on the
+placid social waters where, as the years multiplied, his enthusiasms
+scarce made a ripple.</p>
+
+<p>"I see Mis' Googe yisterd'y, an' she said folks hed been down on her so
+long for sellin' thet pass'l of paster for the first quarry, thet she
+might ez well go the hull figger an' git 'em down on her for the rest of
+her days by sellin' the rest. By Andrew Jackson! she's got the grit for
+a woman&mdash;and the good looks too! She can hold her own for a figger with
+any gal in this town. I see the syndicaters a-castin' sheeps' eyes her
+ways the day she took 'em over The Gore prospectin'; but, by A. J.! they
+hauled in their lookin's when she turned them great eyes of her'n their
+ways.&mdash;What's the figger for the hull piece? Does anybody know?"</p>
+
+<p>It was Joel Quimber, the ancient pound-master, who spoke, and the
+silence that followed proved that each man present was resenting the
+fact that he was not in a position to give the information desired.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall know as soon as they get it recorded, that is, if they don't
+trade for a dollar and if they ever do get it recorded." The speaker was
+Elmer Wiggins, druggist and town clerk for the last quarter of a
+century. He was pessimistically inclined, the tendency being fostered by
+his dual vocation of selling drugs and registering the deaths they
+occasionally caused.</p>
+
+<p>Milton Caukins, or the Colonel, as he preferred to be called on account
+of his youthful service in the state militia and his present connection
+with the historical society of The Rangers, took his cigar from his lips
+and blew the smoke forcibly towards the ceiling before he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"She's got enough now to put Champ through college. The first forty
+acres she sold ten years ago will do that."</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't so sure of thet." Joel Quimber's tone implied obstinate
+conviction that his modestly expressed doubt was a foregone conclusion.
+"Champ's a devil of a feller when it comes to puttin' through anything.
+He's a chip off the old block. He'll put through more 'n his mother can
+git out if he gits in any thicker with them big guns&mdash;race hosses, steam
+yachts an' fancy fixin's. He could sink the hull Gore to the foundations
+of Old Time in a few of them suppers I've heerd he gin arter the show. I
+heerd he gin ten dollars a plate for the last one&mdash;some kind of
+primy-donny, I heerd. But Champ's game though. I heerd Mr. Van Ostend
+talkin' 'bout him to one of the syndicaters&mdash;mebbe they're goin' to work
+him in with them somehow; anyway, I guess Aurory don't begrutch him a
+little spendin' money seein' how easy it come out of the old sheep
+pasters. Who'd 'a' thought a streak of granite could hev made sech a
+stir!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a stir that'll sink this town in the mud." Mr. Wiggins' voice was
+what might be called thorough-bass, and was apt to carry more weight
+with his townspeople than his opinions, which latter were not always
+acceptable to Colonel Caukins. "Look at it now! This town has never been
+bonded; we're free from debt and a good balance on hand for
+improvements. Now along comes three or four hundred immigrants to begin
+with&mdash;trade following the flag, I suppose <i>you</i> call it, Colonel," (he
+interpolated this with cutting sarcasm)&mdash;"a hodge-podge of Canucks, and
+Dagos, and Polacks, and the Lord knows what&mdash;a darned set of foreigners,
+foreign to our laws, our ways, our religion; and behind 'em a lot of men
+that would be called windbags if it wasn't for their money-bags. And
+between 'em our noses are going to be held right down on the grindstone.
+I tell you we'll have to bond this town to support the schooling for
+these foreign brats, and there's a baker's dozen of 'em every time; and
+there'll be tooting and dancing and singing and playing on Sunday with
+their foreign gimcranks,&mdash;mandolin-banjos and what-all&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens, my dear fellow!" the Colonel broke in with an air of
+impatience, "can't you see that it's this very 'stir,' as you term it,
+that is going to put this town into the front rank of the competing
+industrial thousands of America?"</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel, when annoyed at the quantity of cold water thrown upon his
+redhot enthusiasm, was apt to increase the warmth of his patronizing
+address by an endearing term.</p>
+
+<p>"I see farther than the front ranks of your 'competing industrial
+thousands of America,' Milton Caukins; I see clear over 'em to the very
+brink, and I see a struggling wrestling mass of human beings slipping,
+sliding to the bottomless pit of national destitution, helped downwards
+by just such darned boomers of what you call 'industrial efficiency' as
+you are, Milton Caukins." He paused for breath.</p>
+
+<p>Augustus Buzzby, who was ever a man of peace, tried to divert this
+raging torrent of speech into other and personal channels.</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't nothin' 'gainst Mis' Googe as a woman, but she played me a mean
+trick when she sold that first quarry. It killed my trade as dead as a
+door nail. You can't hire them highflyers to put themselves into a town
+their money's bankin' on to ruin in what you might call a summer-social
+way. I found <i>that</i> out 'fore they left this house last week."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and she's played a meaner one now." Mr. Wiggins made the assertion
+with asperity and looked at the same time directly at Octavius Buzzby.
+"I know all about their free dispensaries that'll draw trade away from
+my very counter and take the bread and butter out of my mouth; and as
+for the fees&mdash;there won't be a chance for recording a homestead site;
+there isn't any counting on such things, for they're a homeless lot,
+always moving from pillar to post with free pickings wherever they
+locate over night, just like the gypsies that came through here last
+September."</p>
+
+<p>"It's kinder queer now, whichever way you've a mind to look at it," Joel
+Quimber remarked meditatively. His eyes were cast up to the ceiling; his
+fore-fingers and thumbs formed an acute triangle over the bridge of his
+nose; the arms of his chair supported his elbows. "Queer thet it's allus
+them upper tens an' emigrants thet keep a-movin' on, fust one place then
+t'other. Kinder looks ez if, arter all, there warn't no great real
+difference when it comes to bein' restless. Take us home folks now,
+we're rooted in deep, an' I guess if we was to be uprooted kinder
+suddin', p'raps we'd hev more charity for the furriners. There's no
+tellin'; I ain't no jedge of sech things, an' I'm an out-an-out
+American. But mebbe my great-great-great-granther's father could hev'
+told ye somethin' wuth tellin'; he an' the Champneys was hounded out of
+France, an' was glad 'nough to emigrate, though they called it
+refugeein' an' pioneerin' in them days."</p>
+
+<p>Augustus Buzzby laid his hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder.
+"You're a son of the soil, Joel; I stand corrected. I guess the less any
+of us true blue Americans say 'bout flinging stones at furriners the
+safer 'twill be for all on us."</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Wiggins continued his diatribe: "There ain't no denying it, the
+first people in town are down on the whole thing. Didn't the rector tell
+me this very day that 'twas like ploughing up the face of nature for the
+sake of sowing the seeds of political and social destruction&mdash;his very
+words&mdash;in this place of peace and happy homes? He don't blame Mrs.
+Champney for feeling as she does 'bout Aurora Googe. He said it was a
+shame that just as soon as Mrs. Champney had begun to sell off her lake
+shore lands so as her city relatives could build near her, Mrs. Googe
+must start up and balk all her plans by selling two hundred acres of old
+sheep pasture for the big quarry."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" It was the first sound that Octavius Buzzby had uttered since
+his entrance and general greeting. Hearing it his brother looked
+warningly in his direction, for he feared that the factional difference,
+which had come to the surface to breathe in his own and Elmer Wiggins'
+remarks, might find over-heated expression in the mouth of his twin if
+once Tave's ire should be aroused. But his brother gave no heed and,
+much to Augustus' relief, went off at a tangent.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard old Judge Champney talk on these things a good many times in
+his lifetime, an' he was wise, wiser'n any man here." He allowed himself
+this one thrust at Mr. Wiggins and the Colonel. "He used to say: 'Tavy,
+it's all in the natural course of things, and it's got to strike us here
+sometime; not in my time, but in my boy's. No man of us can say he owns
+God's earth, an' set up barriers an' fences, an' sometimes breastworks,
+an' holler "hands off" to every man that peeks over the wall, "this here
+is mine or that is ours!" because 't isn't in the natural order of
+things, and what isn't in the natural order isn't going to be, Tavy.'
+That's what the old Judge said to me more'n once."</p>
+
+<p>"He was right, Tavy, he was right," said Quimber eagerly and earnestly.
+"I can't argify, an' I can't convince; but I know he was right. I've
+lived most a generation longer'n any man here, an' I've seen a thing or
+two an' marked the way of nater jest like the Jedge. I've stood there
+where the Rothel comes down from The Gore in its spring freshet, rarin',
+tearin' down, bearin' stones an' rocks along with its current till it
+strikes the lowlands; then a racin' along, catchin' up turf an' mud an'
+sand, an' foamin' yaller an' brown acrost the medders, leavin' mud a
+quarter of an inch thick on the lowlands; and then a-rushin' into the
+lake ez if 't would turn the bottom upside down&mdash;an' jest look what
+happens! Stid of kickin' up a row all along the banks it jest ain't
+nowhere when you look for it! Only the lake riled for a few furlongs off
+shore an' kinder humpin' up in the middle. An' arter a day or two ye
+come back an' look agin, an' where's the rile? All settled to the
+bottom, an' the lake as clear as a looking-glass. An' then ye look at
+the medders an' ye see thet, barrin' a big boulder or two an' some stuns
+thet an ox-team can cart off, an' some gullyin' out long the highroad,
+they ain't been hurt a mite. An' then come 'long 'bout the fust of July,
+an' ye go out an' stan' there and look for the silt&mdash;an' what d' ye see?
+Why, jest thet ye're knee deep in clover an' timothy thet hez growed
+thet high an' lush jest on account of thet very silt!</p>
+
+<p>"Thet's the way 't is with nateral things; an' thet's what the old Jedge
+meant. This furrin flood's a-comin'; an' we've got to stan' some scares
+an' think mebbe The Gore dam'll bust, an' the boulders lay round too
+thick for the land, an' the mud'll spile our medders, an' the lake show
+rily so's the cattle won't drink&mdash;an' we'll find out thet in this great
+free home of our'n, thet's lent us for a while, thet there's room 'nough
+for all, an', in the end&mdash;not in my time, but in your'n&mdash;our Land, like
+the medders, is goin' to be the better for it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well put, well put, Quimber," said the Colonel who had been showing
+signs of restlessness under the unusual and protracted eloquence of the
+old pound-master. "We're making the experiment that every other nation
+has had to make some time or other. Take old Rome, now&mdash;what was it
+started the decay, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>As no one present dared to cope with the decline of so large a subject,
+the Colonel had the floor. He looked at each man in turn; then waved the
+hand that held his cigar airily towards the ceiling. "Just inbreeding,
+sir, inbreeding. That's what did it. We Americans, are profiting by the
+experience of the centuries and are going to take in fresh blood just as
+fast as it can attain to an arterial circulation in the body politic,
+sir; an arterial circulation, I say&mdash;" the Colonel was apt to roll a
+fine phrase more than once under his tongue when the sound thereof
+pleased him,&mdash;"and in the course of nature&mdash;I agree perfectly with the
+late Judge Champney and our friend, Quimber&mdash;there may be, during the
+process, a surcharge of blood to the head or stomach of the body politic
+that will cause a slight attack of governmental vertigo or national
+indigestion. But it will pass, gentlemen, it will pass; and I assure you
+the health of the Republic will be kept at the normal, with nothing more
+than passing attacks of racial hysteria which, however undignified they
+may appear in the eyes of all right-minded citizens, must ever remain
+the transient phenomena of a great nation in the making."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel, having finished his peroration with another wave of his
+cigar towards the ceiling, lowered his feet from their elevated position
+on the counter, glanced anxiously at the clock, which indicated a
+quarter of nine, and remarked casually that, as Mrs. Caukins was
+indisposed, he felt under obligations to be at home by half-past nine.</p>
+
+<p>Joel Quimber, whom such outbursts of eloquence on the Colonel's part in
+the usual town-meeting left in a generally dazed condition of mind and
+politics, remarked that he heard the whistle of the evening train about
+fifteen minutes ago, and asked if Augustus were expecting any one up on
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but the team's gone down to meet it just the same. Maybe there'll
+be a runner or two; they pay 'bout as well as the big guns after all;
+and then there's a chance of one of the syndicaters coming in on me at
+any time now.&mdash;There's the team."</p>
+
+<p>He went out on the veranda. The men within the office listened with
+intensified interest, strengthened by that curiosity which is shown by
+those in whose lives events do not crowd upon one another with such
+overwhelming force, that the susceptibility to fresh impressions is
+dulled. They heard the land-lord's cordial greeting, a confusion of
+sounds incident upon new arrivals; then Augustus Buzzby came in,
+carrying bags and travelling shawl, and, following him, a tall man in
+the garb of a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Close at his side was
+a little girl. She was far from appearing shy or awkward in the presence
+of strangers, nodding brightly to Octavius, who sat nearest the door,
+and smiling captivatingly upon Joel Quimber, whereupon he felt
+immediately in his pockets for a peppermint which, to his
+disappointment, was not there.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel sprang to his feet when the guests entered, and quickly
+doffed his felt hat which was balancing in a seemingly untenable
+position on the side of his head. The priest, who removed his on the
+threshold, acknowledged the courtesy with a bow and a keen glance which
+included all in the room; then he stepped to the desk on the counter to
+enter his name in the ponderous leather-backed registry which Augustus
+opened for him. The little girl stood beside him, watching his every
+movement.</p>
+
+<p>The Flamstedites saw before them a man in the prime of life, possibly
+forty-five. He was fully six feet in height, noticeably erect, with an
+erectness that gave something of the martial to his carriage, spare but
+muscular, shoulders high and square set, and above them a face deeply
+pock-marked, the features large but regular, the forehead broad and
+bulging rather prominently above the eyes. The eyes they could not see;
+but the voice made itself heard, and felt, while he was writing. The men
+present unconsciously welcomed it as a personality.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell me if Mrs. Louis Champney lives near here?" he said,
+addressing his host.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; just about a mile down the street at The Bow."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, please, yer Riverence, write mine too," said the child who, by
+standing on tiptoe at the high counter, had managed to follow every
+stroke of the pen.</p>
+
+<p>The priest looked at the landlord with a frankly interrogatory smile.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, to be sure. Ain't you my guest as long as you're in my
+home?" Augustus replied with such whole-souled heartiness that the child
+beamed upon him and boldly held out her hand for the pen.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me write it," she said decidedly, as if used to having her way.
+Colonel Caukins sprang to place a high three-legged stool for the little
+registree, and was about to lift her on, but the child, laughing aloud,
+managed to seat herself without his assistance, and forthwith gave her
+undivided attention to the entering of her name.</p>
+
+<p>Those present loved in after years to recall this scene: the old bar,
+the three-legged stool, the little girl perched on top, one foot twisted
+over the round&mdash;so busily intent upon making a fine signature that a tip
+of her tongue was visible held tightly against her left cheek&mdash;the
+coarse straw hat, the clean but cheap blue dress, the heavy shoes that
+emphasized the delicacy of her ankles and figure; and above her the
+leaning priest, smiling gravely with fatherly indulgence upon this
+firstling of his flock in Flamsted.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus2" id="illus2"></a>
+<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"Those present loved in after years to recall this scene"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<p>The child looked up for approval when she had finished and shaken, with
+an air of intense satisfaction, a considerable quantity of sand over the
+fresh ink. Evidently the look in the priest's eyes was reward enough,
+for, although he spoke no word, the little girl laughed merrily and in
+the next moment hopped down rather unexpectedly from her high place and
+busied herself with taking a survey of the office and its occupants.</p>
+
+<p>The priest took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Augustus,
+saying as he did so:</p>
+
+<p>"This is Mr. Buzzby, I know; and here is a letter from Mr. Van Ostend in
+regard to this little girl. Her arrival is premature; but the matron of
+the institution, where she has been, wished to take advantage of my
+coming to Flamsted to place her in my care. Mr. Van Ostend would like to
+have her remain here with you for a few days if Mrs. Champney is not
+prepared to receive her just now."</p>
+
+<p>There was a general movement of surprise among the men in the office,
+and all eyes, with a question-mark visible in them, were turned towards
+Octavius Buzzby. Upon him, the simple announcement had the effect of a
+shock; he felt the need of air, and slipped out to the veranda, but not
+before he received another bright smile from the little girl. He waited
+outside until he saw Augustus show the newcomers upstairs; then he
+re-entered the office and went to the register which was the speculative
+focus of interest for all the others. Octavius read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>June 18, 1889&mdash;<span class="smcap">Fr. John Francis Honor&eacute;, New York. Aileen Armagh,
+Orphan Asylum, New York City.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>The Colonel was in a state of effervescing hilarity. He rubbed his hands
+energetically, slapped Octavius on the back, and exclaimed in high
+feather:</p>
+
+<p>"How's this for the first drops of the deluge, eh, Tave?"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius made no reply. He waited, as usual, for the evening's mail. The
+carrier handed him a telegram from New York for Mrs. Champney. It had
+just come up on the train from Hallsport. He wondered what connection
+its coming might have with the unexpected arrival of this orphan child?</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>On his way home Octavius Buzzby found himself wondering, as he had
+wondered many times before on occasion, how he could checkmate this
+latest and most unexpected move on the part of the mistress of
+Champ-au-Haut. His mind was perturbed and he realized, while making an
+effort to concentrate his attention on ways and means, that he had been
+giving much of his mental strength during the last twenty years to the
+search for ulterior motives on the part of Mrs. Louis Champney, a woman
+of sixty now, a Googe by birth (the Googes, through some genealogical
+necromancy, traced their descent from Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The name
+alone, not the blood, had, according to family tradition, suffered
+corruption with time), and the widow of Louis Champney, the late Judge
+Champney's only son.</p>
+
+<p>The Champneys had a double strain of French blood in their veins, Breton
+and Flemish; the latter furnished the collateral branch of the Van
+Ostends. This intermixture, flowing in the veins of men and women who
+were Americans by the birthright of more than two centuries' enjoyment
+of our country's institutions, had produced for several generations as
+fine a strain of brains and breeding as America can show.</p>
+
+<p>Louis Champney, the last of the line in direct descent, was looked upon
+from his boyhood up as the culmination of these centuries' flowering.
+When, at forty, he died without having fulfilled in any wise the great
+expectations of his townspeople and relations, the interest of the
+community, as well as of the family, centred in the prospects of Louis
+Champney Googe, his namesake, and nephew on his wife's side. Here,
+again, numerous family interests as well as communal speculations were
+disappointed. The Champney estate was left entire to the widow, Almeda
+Googe Champney, to dispose of as she might deem fit. Her powers of
+administratrix were untrammelled save in one respect: Octavius Buzzby
+was to remain in his position as factotum on the Champney estate and
+adviser for its interests.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this juncture, when Louis Champney died without remembering
+his nephew-in-law by so much as a book from his library and the boy was
+ten years old, that a crisis was discovered to be imminent in the
+fortunes of the Googe-Champney families, the many ramifications of which
+were intricately interwoven in the communal life of Flamsted. This
+crisis had not been averted; for Aurora Googe, the sister-in-law of Mrs.
+Champney and mother of young Champney, sold a part of her land in The
+Gore for the first granite quarry, and in so doing changed for all time
+the character and fortunes of the town of Flamsted.</p>
+
+<p>For many years Octavius Buzzby had championed openly and in secret the
+cause of Aurora Googe and her only son. To-night, while walking slowly
+homewards, he was pondering what attitude of mind he must assume, before
+he could deal adequately with the momentous event which had been
+foreshadowed from the moment he learned from the priest's lips that Mr.
+Van Ostend was implicated in the coming of this orphan child. He
+recalled that little Alice Van Ostend prattled much about this same
+child during the week she had spent recently with her father at
+Champ-au-Haut.</p>
+
+<p>Was the mistress of Champ-au-Haut going to adopt her?</p>
+
+<p>Almeda Champney had never wanted the blessing of a child, and, contrary
+to her young husband's wishes&mdash;he was her junior by twelve years&mdash;she
+had had her way. Her nature was so absorbingly tenacious of whatever
+held her narrow interests, that a child at Champ-au-Haut would have
+broken, in a measure, her domination of her weaker-willed husband,
+because it would have centred in itself his love and ambition to "keep
+up the name." That now, eleven years after Louis Champney's death, she
+should contemplate the introduction into her perfectly ordered household
+of a child, an alien, was a revelation of appalling moment to Octavius.
+He scouted the idea that she would enter the house as an assistant. None
+was needed; and, moreover, those small hands could accomplish little in
+the next ten years. She meant to adopt her then! An alien was to inherit
+the Champney property! Octavius actually shivered at the thought.</p>
+
+<p>Was it, could it be an act of spite against Aurora Googe? Was it a final
+answer to any expectations of her nephew, Champney Googe, her husband's
+namesake and favorite? Was this little alien waif to be made a catspaw
+for her revenge? She was capable of such a thing, was Almeda Champney.
+<i>He</i> knew her; none better! Had not her will, thus far in her life, bent
+everything with which it had come in contact; crushed whatever had
+opposed it; broken irrevocably whosoever for a while had successfully
+resisted it?</p>
+
+<p>His thin lips drew to a straight line. All his manhood's strength of
+desire for fair play, a desire he had been fated to see unfulfilled
+during the last twenty years, rose in rebellion to champion the cause of
+the little newcomer who smiled on him so brightly in the office of The
+Greenbush. Nor did he falter in his resolution when he presented himself
+at the library door with the telegram in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Octavius; was there any mail?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only a telegram from New York." He handed it to her.</p>
+
+<p>She opened and read it; then laid it on the table. She removed her
+eyeglasses, for she had grown far-sighted with advancing years, in order
+to look at the back of the small man who was leaving the room. If he had
+seen the smile that accompanied the action, he might well have faltered
+in his resolution to champion any righteous cause on earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a moment, Octavius."</p>
+
+<p>"Now it's coming!" he thought and faced her again; he was bracing
+himself mentally to meet the announcement.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see the junk man at The Corners to-day about those shingle
+nails?"</p>
+
+<p>In the second of hesitation before replying, he had time inwardly to
+curse her. She was always letting him down in this way. It was a trick
+of hers when, to use his own expression, she had "something up her
+sleeve."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but he won't take them off our hands."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" She spoke sharply as was her way when she suspected any
+thwarting of her will or desire.</p>
+
+<p>"He says he won't give you your price for they ain't worth it. They
+ain't particular good for old iron anyway; most on 'em's rusty and
+crooked. You know they've been on the old coach house for good thirty
+years, and the Judge used to say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What will he give?"</p>
+
+<p>"A quarter of a cent a pound."</p>
+
+<p>"How many pounds are there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty-two."</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty-two&mdash;hm-m; he sha'n't have them. They're worth a half a cent a
+pound if they're worth anything. You can store them in the workshop till
+somebody comes along that does want them, and will pay." He turned again
+to leave her.</p>
+
+<p>"Just a moment, Octavius." Once more he came back over the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"Were there any arrivals at The Greenbush to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"I judged so from the register."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you happen to see a girl there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I saw a child, a little girl, smallish and thin; a priest was with
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"A priest?" Mrs. Champney looked nonplussed for a moment and put on her
+glasses to cover her surprise. "Did you learn her name, the girl's?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was in the register, Aileen Armagh, from an orphan asylum in New
+York."</p>
+
+<p>"Then she's the one," she said in a musing tone but without the least
+expression of interest. She removed her glasses. Octavius took a step
+backwards. "A moment more, Octavius. I may as well speak of it now; I am
+only anticipating by a week or two, at the most, what, in any case, I
+should have told you. While Mr. Van Ostend was here, he enlisted my
+sympathy in this girl to such an extent that I decided to keep her for a
+few months on trial before making any permanent arrangement in regard to
+her. I want to judge of her capability to assist Ann and Hannah in the
+housework; Hannah is getting on in years. What do you think of her? How
+did she impress you? Now that I have decided to give her a trial, you
+may speak freely. You know I am guided many times by your judgment in
+such matters."</p>
+
+<p>Octavius Buzzby could have ground his teeth in impotent rage at this
+speech which, to his accustomed ears, rang false from beginning to end,
+yet was cloaked in terms intended to convey a compliment to himself.
+But, instead, he smiled the equivocal smile with which many a speech of
+like tenor had been greeted, and replied with marked earnestness:</p>
+
+<p>"I wouldn't advise you, Mrs. Champney, to count on much assistance from
+a slip of a thing like that. She's small, and don't look more 'n nine,
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She's over twelve," Mrs. Champney spoke decidedly; "and a girl of
+twelve ought to be able to help Ann and Hannah in some of their work."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I ain't no judge of children as there's never been any of late
+years at Champo." He knew his speech was barbed. Mrs. Champney carefully
+adjusted her glasses to the thin bridge of her straight white nose. "And
+if there had been, I shouldn't want to say what they could do or what
+they couldn't at that age. Take Romanzo, now, he's old enough to work if
+you watch him; and now he's here I don't deny but what you had the
+rights of it 'bout my needing an assistant. He takes hold handy if you
+show him how, and is willing and steady. But two on 'em&mdash;I don't know;"
+he shook his head dubiously; "a growing boy and girl to feed and train
+and clothe&mdash;seems as if&mdash;" Octavius paused in the middle of his
+sentence. He knew his ground, or thought he knew it.</p>
+
+<p>"You said yourself she was small and thin, and I can give her work
+enough to offset her board. Of course, she will have to go to school,
+but the tuition is free; and if I pay school taxes, that are increasing
+every year, I might as well have the benefit of them, if I can, in my
+own household."</p>
+
+<p>There seemed no refutation needed to meet such an argument, and Octavius
+retreated another step towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>"A moment more, Octavius," she said blandly, for she knew he was longing
+to rid her of his presence; "Mr. Emlie has been here this evening and
+drawn up the deeds conveying my north shore property to the New York
+syndicate. Mr. Van Ostend has conducted all the negotiations at that
+end, and I have agreed to the erection of the granite sheds on those
+particular sites and to the extension of a railroad for the quarries
+around the head of the lake to The Corners. The syndicate are to control
+all the quarry interests, and Mr. Van Ostend says in a few years they
+will assume vast proportions, entailing an outlay of at least three
+millions. They say there is to be a large electric plant at The Corners,
+for the mill company have sold them the entire water power at the
+falls.&mdash;I hope Aurora is satisfied with what she has accomplished in so
+short a time. Champney, I suppose, comes home next month?"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius merely nodded, and withdrew in haste lest his indignation get
+the upper hand of his discretion. It behooved him to be discreet at this
+juncture; he must not injure Aurora Googe's cause, which he deemed as
+righteous a one as ever the sun shone upon, by any injudicious word that
+might avow his partisanship.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney smiled again when she saw his precipitous retreat. She had
+freighted every word with ill will, and knew how to raise his silent
+resentment to the boiling point. She rose and stepped quickly into the
+hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Tavy," she called after him as he was closing the door into the back
+passage. He turned to look at her; she stood in the full light of the
+hall-lamp. "Just a moment before you go. Did you happen to hear who the
+priest is who came with the girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"His name was in the ledger. The Colonel said he was a father&mdash;Father
+Honor&eacute;, I can't pronounce it, from New York."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he stopping at The Greenbush?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's put up there for to-night anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I must see this priest; perhaps he can give me more detailed
+information about the girl. That's all."</p>
+
+<p>She went back into the library, closing the door after her. Octavius
+shut his; then, standing there in the dimly lighted passageway, he
+relieved himself by doubling both fists and shaking them vigorously at
+the panels of that same door, the while he simulated, first with one
+foot then with the other, a lively kick against the baseboard, muttering
+between his set teeth:</p>
+
+<p>"The devil if it's all, you devilly, divelly, screwy old&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The door opened suddenly. Simultaneously with its opening Octavius had
+sufficient presence of mind to blow out the light. He drew his breath
+short and fumbled in his pocket for matches.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Tavy, you here!" (How well she knew that the familiar name "Tavy"
+was the last turn of the thumbscrew for this factotum of the Champneys!
+She never applied it unless she knew he was thoroughly worsted in the
+game between them.) "I was coming to find you; I forgot to say that you
+may go down to-morrow at nine and bring her up. I want to look her
+over."</p>
+
+<p>She closed the door. Octavius, without stopping to relight the lamp,
+hurried up to his room in the ell, fearful lest he be recalled a fifth
+time&mdash;a test of his powers of mental endurance to which he dared not
+submit in his present perturbed state.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney walked swiftly down the broad main hall, that ran through
+the house, to the door opening on the north terrace whence there was an
+unobstructed view up the three miles' length of Lake Mesantic to the
+Flamsted Hills; and just there, through a deep depression in their
+midst, the Rothel, a rushing brook, makes its way to the calm waters at
+their gates. At this point, where the hills separate like the opening
+sepals of a gigantic calyx, the rugged might of Katahdin heaves head and
+shoulder into the blue.</p>
+
+<p>The irregular margin of the lake is fringed with pines of magnificent
+growth. Here and there the shores rise into cliffs, seamed at the top
+and inset on the face with slim white lady birches, or jut far into the
+waters as rocky promontories sparsely wooded with fir and balsam spruce.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney stepped out upon the terrace. Her accustomed eyes looked
+upon this incomparable, native scene that was set in the full beauty of
+mid-summer's moonlight. She advanced to the broad stone steps, that
+descend to the level of the lake, and, folding her arms, her hands
+resting lightly upon them, stood immovable, looking northwards to the
+Flamsted Hills&mdash;looking, but not seeing; for her thoughts were leaping
+upwards to The Gore and its undeveloped resources; to Aurora Googe and
+the part she was playing in this transitional period of Flamsted's life;
+to the future years of industrial development and, in consequence, her
+own increasing revenues from the quarries. She had stipulated that
+evening that a clause, which would secure to her the rights of a first
+stockholder, should be inserted in the articles of conveyance.</p>
+
+<p>The income of eight thousand from the estate, as willed to her, had
+increased under her management, aided by her ability to drive a sharp
+bargain and the penuriousness which, according to Octavius, was capable
+of "making a cent squeal", to twelve thousand. The sale of her north
+shore lands would increase it another five thousand. Within a few years,
+according to Mr. Van Ostend&mdash;and she trusted him&mdash;her dividends from her
+stock would net her several thousands more. She was calculating, as she
+stood there gazing northwards, unseeing, into the serene night and the
+hill-peace that lay within it, how she could invest this increment for
+the coming years, and casting about in her mathematically inclined mind
+for means to make the most of it in interest per cent. She felt sure the
+future would show satisfactory results.&mdash;And after?</p>
+
+<p>That did not appeal to her.</p>
+
+<p>She unfolded her arms, and gathering her skirt in both hands went down
+the steps and took her stand on the lowest. She was still looking
+northwards. Her skirt slipped from her left hand which she raised half
+mechanically to let a single magnificent jewel, that guarded the plain
+circlet of gold on her fourth finger, flash in the moonlight. She held
+it raised so for a moment, watching the play of light from the facets.
+Suddenly she clinched her delicate fist spasmodically; shook it forcibly
+upwards towards the supreme strength of those silent hills, which, in
+comparison with the human three score and ten, may well be termed
+"everlasting", and, muttering fiercely under her breath, "<i>You</i> shall
+never have a penny of it!", turned, went swiftly up the steps, and
+entered the house.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>Had the mistress of Champ-au-Haut stood on the terrace a few minutes
+longer, she might have seen with those far-sighted eyes of hers a dark
+form passing quickly along the strip of highroad that showed white
+between the last houses at The Bow. It was Father Honor&eacute;. He walked
+rapidly along the highway that, skirting the base of the mountain,
+follows the large curve of the lake shore. Rapid as was the pace, the
+quickened eyes were seeing all about, around, above. In passing beneath
+a stretch of towering pines, he caught between their still indefinite
+foliage the gleam of the lake waters. He stopped short for a full minute
+to pommel his resonant chest; to breathe deep, deep breaths of the night
+balm. Then he proceeded on his way.</p>
+
+<p>That way led northwards along the lake shore; it skirted the talus that
+had fallen from the cliff which rose three hundred feet above him. He
+heard the sound of a rolling stone gathering in velocity among the
+rubble. He halted in order to listen; to trace, if possible, its course.
+The dull monotone of its rumbling rattle started a train of thought:
+perhaps his foot, treading the highway lightly, had caused the sensitive
+earth to tremble just sufficiently to jar the delicately poised stone
+and send it from its resting place! He went on. Thoughts not to be
+uttered crowded to the forefront of consciousness as he neared the cleft
+in the Flamsted Hills, whence the Rothel makes known to every wayfarer
+that it has come direct from the heart of The Gore, and brought with it
+the secrets of its granite veins.</p>
+
+<p>The road grew steeper; the man's pace did not slacken, but the straight
+back was bent at an angle which showed the priest had been accustomed to
+mountain climbing. In the leafy half-light, which is neither dawn nor
+twilight, but that reverential effulgence which is made by moonlight
+sifting finely through midsummer foliage, the Rothel murmured over its
+rocky bed; once, when in a deep pool its babble wholly ceased, an owl
+broke the silence with his "witti-hoo-hoo-hoo".</p>
+
+<p>Still upwards he kept his way and his pace until he emerged into the
+full moonlight of the heights. There he halted and looked about him. He
+was near the apex of The Gore. To the north, above the foreground of the
+sea of hilltops, loomed Katahdin. At his right, a pond, some five acres
+in extent, lay at the base of cliff-like rocks topped with a few
+primeval pines. Everywhere there were barren sheep pastures alternating
+with acres of stunted fir and hemlock, and in sheltered nooks, adjacent
+to these coverts, he could discern something which he judged to be stone
+sheepfolds. Just below him, on the opposite side of the road and the
+Rothel, which was crossed by a broad bridging of log and plank, stood a
+long low stone house, to the north of which a double row of firs had
+been planted for a windbreak. Behind him, on a rise of ground a few rods
+from the highway, was a large double house of brick with deep granite
+foundations and white granite window caps. Two shafts of the same stone
+supported the ample white-painted entrance porch. Ancestral elms
+over-leafed the roof on the southern side. One light shone from an upper
+window. Beyond the elms, a rough road led still upwards to the heights
+behind the house.</p>
+
+<p>The priest retraced his steps; turned into this road, for which the
+landlord of The Greenbush had given him minute instructions, and
+followed its rough way for an eighth of a mile; then a sudden turn
+around a shoulder of the hill&mdash;and the beginning of the famous Flamsted
+granite quarries lay before him, gleaming, sparkling in the moonlight&mdash;a
+snow-white, glistening patch on the barren hilltop. Near it were a few
+huts of turf and stone for the accommodation of the quarrymen. This was
+all. But it was the scene, self-chosen, of this priest's future labors;
+and while he looked upon it, thoughts unutterable crowded fast, too fast
+for the brain already stimulated by the time and environment. He turned
+about; retraced his steps at the same rapid pace; passed again up the
+highroad to the head of The Gore, then around it, across a barren
+pasture, and climbed the cliff-like rock that was crowned by the ancient
+pines. He stood there erect, his head thrown back, his forehead to the
+radiant heavens, his eyes fixed on the pale twinklings of the seven
+stars in the northernmost constellation of the Bear&mdash;rapt, caught away
+in spirit by the intensity of feeling engendered by the hour, the place.
+Then he knelt, bowing his head on a lichened rock, and unto his Maker,
+and the Maker of that humanity he had elected to serve, he consecrated
+himself anew.</p>
+
+<p>Ten minutes afterwards, he was coming down The Gore on his way back to
+The Greenbush. He heard the agitated ringing of a bell-wether; then the
+soft huddling rush of a flock of sheep somewhere in the distance. A
+sheep dog barked sharply; a hound bayed in answer till the hills north
+of The Gore gave back a multiple echo; but the Rothel kept its secrets,
+and with inarticulate murmuring made haste to deposit them in the quiet
+lake waters.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+
+<p>"But, mother&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>There was an intonation in the protest that hinted at some irritation.
+Champney Googe emptied his pipe on the grass and knocked it clean
+against the porch rail before he continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Won't it make a lot of talk? Of course, I can see your side of it; it's
+hospitable and neighborly and all that, to give the priest his meals for
+a while, but,&mdash;" he hesitated, and his mother answered his thought.</p>
+
+<p>"A little talk more or less after all there has been about the quarry
+won't do any harm, and I'm used to it." She spoke with some bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>has</i> stirred up a hornet's nest about your ears, that's a fact. How
+does Aunt Meda take this latest move? Meat-axey as usual? I didn't see
+her when I went there yesterday; she's in Hallsport for two days on
+business, so Tave says."</p>
+
+<p>His mother smiled. "I haven't seen her since the sale was concluded, but
+I hear she has strengthened the opposition in consequence. I get my
+information from Mrs. Caukins."</p>
+
+<p>At the mention of that name Champney laughed out. "Good authority,
+mother. I must run over and see her to-night. Well, we don't care, do
+we? I mean about the feeling. Mother, I just wish you were a man for one
+minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I'd like to go up to you, man fashion, grip your hand, slap you
+on the back, and shout 'By Jove, old man, you've made a deal that would
+turn the sunny side of Wall Street green with envy!' How did you do it,
+mother? And without a lawyer! I'll bet Emlie is mad because he didn't
+get a chance to put his finger in your pie."</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking of you, of your future, and how you have been used by
+Almeda Champney; and that gave me the confidence, almost the push of a
+man&mdash;and I dealt with them as a man with men; but I felt unsexed in
+doing it. I've wondered what they think of me."</p>
+
+<p>"Think of you! I can tell you what one man thinks of you, and that's Mr.
+Van Ostend. I had a note from him at the time of the sale asking me to
+come to his office, an affidavit was necessary, and I found he had had
+eyes in his head for the most beautiful woman in the world&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Champney!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fact; and, what's more, I got an invitation to his house on the
+strength of his recognition of that fact. I dined with him there; his
+sister is a stunning girl."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad such homes are open to you; it is your right and&mdash;it
+compensates."</p>
+
+<p>"For what, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, a good many things. How do they live?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Van Ostends?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Champney Googe hugged his knees and rocked back and forth on the step
+before he answered. His merry face seemed to lengthen in feature, to
+harden in line. His mother left her chair and sewing to sit down on the
+step beside him. She looked up inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as <i>I</i> mean to live sometime, mother,"&mdash;his fresh young voice rang
+determined and almost hard; his mother's eyes kindled;&mdash;"in a way that
+expresses Life&mdash;as you and I understand it, and don't live it, mother;
+as you and I have conceived of it while up here among these sheep
+pastures." He glanced inimically for a moment at the barren slopes above
+them. "I have you to thank for making me comprehend the difference." He
+continued the rocking movement for a while, his hands still clasping his
+knees. Then he went on:</p>
+
+<p>"As for his home on the Avenue, there isn't its like in the city, and as
+a storehouse of the best in art it hasn't its equal in the country; it's
+just perfect from picture gallery to billiard room. As for adjuncts,
+there's a shooting box and a <i>bona fide</i> castle in the Scottish
+Highlands, a cottage at Bar Harbor with the accessory of a steam yacht,
+and a racing stud on a Long Island farm. As a financier he's great!"</p>
+
+<p>He sat up straight, and freely used his fists, first on one knee then on
+the other, to emphasize his words; "His right hand is on one great lever
+of interstate traffic, his left on the other of foreign trade, and two
+continents obey his manipulations. His eye exacts trained efficiency
+from thousands; his word is a world event; Wall Street is his automaton.
+Oh, the power of it all! I can't wait to get out into the stream,
+mother! I'm only hugging the shore at present; that's what has made me
+kick against this last year in college; it has been lost time, for I
+want to get rich quick."</p>
+
+<p>His mother laid her hand on his knee. "No, Champney, it's not lost time;
+it's one of your assets as a gentleman."</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at her, his blue eyes smiling into her dark ones.</p>
+
+<p>"I can be a gentleman all right without that asset; you said father
+didn't go."</p>
+
+<p>"No, but the man for whom you are named went, and he told me once a
+college education was a 'gentleman's asset.' That expression was his."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't see that the asset did him much good. It didn't seem to
+discount his liabilities in other ways. Queer, how Uncle Louis went to
+seed&mdash;I mean, didn't amount to anything along any business or
+professional line. Only last spring I met the father of a second-year
+man who remembers Uncle Louis well, said he was a classmate of his. He
+told me he was banner man every time and no end popular; the others
+didn't have a show with him."</p>
+
+<p>His mother was silent. Champney, apparently unheeding her
+unresponsiveness, rose quickly, shook himself together, and suddenly
+burst into a mighty laughter that is best comparable to the
+inextinguishable species of the blessed gods. He laughed in arpeggios,
+peal on peal, crescendo and diminuendo, until, finally, he flung himself
+down on the short turf and in his merriment rolled over and over. He
+brought himself right side up at last, tears in his eyes and a sigh of
+satisfying exhaustion on his lips. To his mother's laughing query:</p>
+
+<p>"What is it now, Champney?" He shook his head as if words failed him;
+then he said huskily:</p>
+
+<p>"It's Aunt Meda's <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>. Oh, Great Scott! She'll be the death by
+shock of some of the Champo people if she stays another three months. I
+hear Aunt Meda has had her Waterloo. Tavy buttonholed me out in the
+carriage house yesterday, and told me the whole thing&mdash;oh, but it's
+rich!" He chuckled again. "He got me to feel his vest; says he can lap
+it three inches already and she has only been here two weeks; and as
+for Romanzo, he's neither to have nor to hold when the girl's in
+sight&mdash;wits topsy-turvy, actually, oh, Lord!"&mdash;he rolled over again on
+the grass&mdash;"what do you think, mother! She got Roman to scour down
+Jim&mdash;you know, the white cart-horse, the Percheron&mdash;with Hannah's
+cleaning powder, and the girl helped him, and together they got one side
+done and then waited for it to dry to see how it worked. Result: Tave
+dead ashamed to drive him in the cart for fear some one will see the
+yellow-white calico-circus horse, that the two rapscallions have left on
+his hands, and doesn't want Aunt Meda to know it for fear she'll turn
+down Roman. He says he's going to put Jim out to grass in the Colonel's
+back sheep pasture, and when Aunt Meda comes home lie about sudden
+spavin or something. And the joke of it is Roman takes it all as a part
+of the play, and has owned up to Tave that, by mistake, he blacked Aunt
+Meda's walking boots, before she went to Hallsport, with axle grease,
+while the girl was 'telling novels' to him! Tave said Roman told him she
+knew a lot of the nobility, marchionesses and 'sich'; and now Roman
+struts around cocksure, high and mighty as if he'd just been made
+K.C.B., and there's no getting any steady work out of him. You should
+have seen Tave's face when he was telling me!"</p>
+
+<p>His mother laughed. "I can imagine it; he's worried over this new move
+of Almeda's. I confess it puzzles me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm off to see some of the fun&mdash;and the girl. Tave said he didn't
+expect Aunt Meda before to-morrow night, and it's a good time for me to
+rubber round the old place a little on my own hook;&mdash;and, mother,"&mdash;he
+stooped to her; Aurora Googe raised her still beautiful eyes to the
+frank if somewhat hard blue ones that looked down into hers; a fine
+color mounted into her cheeks,&mdash;"take the priest for his meals, for all
+me. It's an invasion, but, of course, I recognize that we're responsible
+for it on account of the quarry business. I suppose we shall have to
+make some concessions to all classes till we get away from here for good
+and all&mdash;then we'll have our fling, won't we, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>He was off without waiting for a reply. Aurora Googe watched him out of
+sight, then turned to her work, the flush still upon her cheeks.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Champney leaned on the gate of the paddock at Champ-au-Haut and looked
+about him. The estate at The Bow had been familiar to him throughout his
+childhood and boyhood. He had been over every foot of it, and at all
+seasons, with his Uncle Louis. He was realizing that it had never seemed
+more beautiful to him than now, seen in the warm light of a July sunset.
+In the garden pleasance, that sloped to the lake, the roses and lilies
+planted there a generation ago still bloomed and flourished, and in the
+elm-shaded paddock, on the gate of which he was leaning, filly and foal
+could trace their pedigree to the sixth and seventh generation of
+deep-chested, clean-flanked ancestors.</p>
+
+<p>The young man comprehended in part only, the reason of his mother's
+extreme bitterness towards Almeda Champney. His uncle had loved him; had
+kept him with him much of the time, encouraging him in his boyish aims
+and ambitions which his mother fostered&mdash;and Louis Champney was
+childless, the last in direct descent of a long line of fine
+ancestors&mdash;.</p>
+
+<p>Here his thought was checked; those ancestors were his, only in a
+generation far removed; the Champney blood was in his mother's veins.
+But his father was Almeda Champney's only brother&mdash;why then, should not
+his mother count on the estate being his in the end? He knew this to
+have been her hope, although she had never expressed it. He had gained
+an indefinite knowledge of it through old Joel Quimber and Elmer Wiggins
+and Mrs. Milton Caukins, a distant relative of his father's. To be sure,
+Louis Champney might have left him his hunting-piece, which as a boy he
+had coveted, just for the sake of his name&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short in his speculations for he heard voices in the lane.
+The cows were entering it and coming up to the milking shed. The lane
+led up from the low-lying lake meadows, knee deep with timothy and
+clover, and was fenced on both sides from the apple orchards which
+arched and overshadowed its entire length. The sturdy over-reaching
+boughs hung heavy with myriads of green balls. Now and then one dropped
+noiselessly on the thick turf in the lane, and a noble Holstein mother,
+ebony banded with ivory white, her swollen cream-colored bag and
+dark-blotched teats flushed through and through by the delicate rose of
+a perfectly healthy skin, lowered her meek head and, snuffing largely,
+caught sideways as she passed at the enticing green round.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of this lane there swung into view a tall loose-jointed
+figure which the low strong July sunshine threw into bold relief. It was
+Romanzo Caukins, one of the Colonel's numerous family, a boy of sixteen
+who had been bound out recently to the mistress of Champ-au-Haut upon
+agreement of bed, board, clothes, three terms of "schooling" yearly, and
+the addition of thirty dollars to be paid annually to the Colonel.</p>
+
+<p>The payment of this amount, by express stipulation, was to be made at
+the end of each year until Romanzo should come into his majority. By
+this arrangement, Mrs. Champney assured to herself the interest on the
+aforesaid thirty dollars, and congratulated herself on the fact that
+such increment might be credited to Milton Caukins as a minus quantity.</p>
+
+<p>Champney leaped the bars and went down the lane to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Roman, how are you?"</p>
+
+<p>The boy's honest blue eyes, that seemed always to be looking forward in
+a chronic state of expectancy for the unexpected, beamed with goodness
+and goodwill. He wiped his hands on his overalls and clasped Champney's.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, Champ, when'd you come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only yesterday. I didn't see you about when I was here in the
+afternoon. How do you like your job?"</p>
+
+<p>The youth made an uncouth but expressive sign towards the milk shed.
+"Sh&mdash;Tave'll hear you. He and I ain't been just on good terms lately;
+but 'tain't my fault," he added doggedly.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a clear childish voice called from somewhere below the
+lane:</p>
+
+<p>"Romanzo&mdash;Romanzo!"</p>
+
+<p>The boy started guiltily. "I've got to go, Champ; she wants me."</p>
+
+<p>Champney seized him with a strong hand by the suspenders. "Here, hold
+on! Who, you gump?"</p>
+
+<p>"The girl&mdash;le' me go." But Champney gripped him fast.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you don't, Roman; let her yell."</p>
+
+<p>"Ro&mdash;man&mdash;zo-o-o-o!" The range of this peremptory call was two octaves
+at least.</p>
+
+<p>"By gum&mdash;she's up to something, and Tave won't stand any more
+fooling&mdash;le' me go!" He writhed in the strong grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't either. I haven't been half-back on our team for nothing; so
+stand still." And Romanzo stood still, perforce.</p>
+
+<p>Another minute and Aileen came running up the lane. She was wearing the
+same heavy shoes, the same dark blue cotton dress, half covered now with
+a gingham apron&mdash;Mrs. Champney had not deemed it expedient to furnish a
+wardrobe until the probation period should have decided her for or
+against keeping the child. She was bareheaded, her face flushed with the
+heat and her violent exercise. She stopped short at a little distance
+from them so soon as she saw that Romanzo was not alone. She tossed back
+her braid and stamped her foot to emphasize her words:</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't yer come, Romanzo Caukins, when I cried ter yer!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Coz I couldn't; he wouldn't let me." He spoke anxiously, making signs
+towards the shed. But Aileen ignored them; ignored, also, the fact that
+any one was present besides her slave.</p>
+
+<p>Champney answered for himself. He promptly bared his head and advanced
+to shake hands; but Aileen jerked hers behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Mr. Champney Googe, at your service. Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>The little girl was sizing him up before she accepted the advance;
+Champney could tell by the "East-side" look with which she favored him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Miss Aileen Armagh, and don't yer forget it!&mdash;at your service." She
+mimicked him so perfectly that Champney chuckled and Romanzo doubled up
+in silent glee.</p>
+
+<p>"I sha'n't be apt to, thank you. Come, let's shake hands, Miss Aileen
+Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, for we've got to be friends if you're to
+stay here with my aunt." He held out both hands. But the little girl
+kept her own obstinately behind her and backed away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Coz they're all stuck up with spruce gum and Octavius said nothing
+would take it off but grease, and&mdash;" she turned suddenly upon Romanzo,
+blazing out upon him in her wrath&mdash;"I hollered ter yer so's yer could
+get some for me from Hannah, and you was just dirt mean not to answer
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Champ wouldn't let me go," said Romanzo sulkily; "besides, I dassn't
+ask Hannah, not since I used the harness cloth she gave to clean down
+Jim."</p>
+
+<p>"Yer 'dassn't!' Fore I'd be a boy and say 'I dassn't!'" There was
+inexpressible scorn in her voice. She turned to Champney, her eyes
+brimming with mischief and flashing a challenge:</p>
+
+<p>"And yer dassn't shake hands with me 'coz mine are all stuck up, so
+now!"</p>
+
+<p>Champney had not anticipated this <i>pronunciamento</i>, but he accepted the
+challenge on the instant. "Dare not! You can't say that to me! Here,
+give me your hands." Again he held out his shapely well-kept members,
+and Aileen with a merry laugh brought her grimy sticky little paws into
+view and, without a word, laid them in Champney's palms. He held them
+close, purposely, that they might adhere and provide him with some fun;
+then, breaking into his gay laugh he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Clear out, Roman; Tave 'll be looking for the milk pails. As for you,
+Miss Aileen Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, you can't pull away from me
+now. So, come on, and we'll get Hannah to give us some lard and then
+we'll go down to the boat house where it is cool and cleanup. Come on!"</p>
+
+<p>Holding her by both hands he raced her down the long lane, through the
+vegetable garden, all chassez, down the middle, swing your
+partner&mdash;Aileen wild with the fun&mdash;up the slate-laid kitchen walk to the
+kitchen door. His own laughter and the child's, happy, merry, care-free,
+rang out peal on peal till Ann and Hannah and Octavius paused in their
+work to listen, and wished that such music might have been heard often
+during their long years of faithful service in childless Champ-au-Haut.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you are acquainted with some of the nobility, marchionesses and
+so forth," said Champney; the two were sitting in the shadow of the boat
+house cleaning their fingers with the lard Hannah had provided. "Where
+did you make their acquaintance?"</p>
+
+<p>Aileen paused in the act of sliding her greasy hands rapidly over and
+over in each other, an occupation which afforded her unmixed delight, to
+look up at him in amazement. "How did yer know anything 'bout her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I heard."</p>
+
+<p>"Did Romanzo Caukins tell yer?" she demanded, as usual on the defensive.</p>
+
+<p>"No, oh no; it was only hearsay. Do tell me about her. We don't have any
+round here."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen giggled and resumed the rapid rotary motion of her still unwashed
+hands. "If I tell yer 'bout her, yer'll tell her I told yer. P'raps
+sometime, if yer ever go to New York, yer might see her; and she
+wouldn't like it."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know but what I have seen her? I've just come from there."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen looked her surprise again. "That's queer, for I've just landed
+from New York meself."</p>
+
+<p>"So I understood; does the marchioness live there too?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "I ain't going to tell yer; but I'll tell yer 'bout
+some others I know."</p>
+
+<p>"That live in New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wot yer giving me?" She laughed merrily; "they live where the Dagos
+live, in Italy, yer know, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Italy? What are they doing over there?"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;And&mdash;just yer wait till I'll tell yer&mdash;they live on an island in a
+be-ee-u-tiful lake, like this;" she looked approvingly at the liquid
+mirror that reflected in its rippleless depths the mountain shadow and
+sunset gold; "and they live in great marble houses, palaces, yer know,
+and flower gardens, and wear nothing but silks and velvet and pearls,
+ropes,&mdash;yer mind?&mdash;ropes of 'em; and the lords and ladies have concerts,
+yer know, better 'n in the thayertre&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know about the theatre?" Champney was genuinely surprised;
+"I thought you came from an orphan asylum."</p>
+
+<p>"Yer did, did yer!" There was scorn in her voice. "Wot do I know 'bout
+the thayertre?&mdash;Oh, but yer green!" She broke into another merry laugh
+which, together with the patronage of her words and certain unsavory
+memories of his own, nettled Champney more than he would have cared to
+acknowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"Better 'n the thayertre," she repeated emphatically; "and the lords
+serenade the ladies&mdash;Do yer know wot a serenade is?" She interrupted
+herself to ask the question with a strong doubt in the interrogation.</p>
+
+<p>"I've heard of 'em," said Champney meekly; "but I don't think I've ever
+seen one."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell yer 'bout 'em. The lords have guitars and go out in the
+moonlight and stand under the ladies' windys and play, and the ladies
+make believe they haven't heard; then they look up all round at the moon
+and sigh <i>awful</i>,&mdash;" she sighed in sympathy,&mdash;"and then the lords begin
+to sing and tell 'em they love 'em and can't live without a&mdash;a token.
+I'll bet yer don't know wot that is?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course I don't; I'm not a lord, and I don't live in Italy."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll tell yer." Her tone was one of relenting indulgence for his
+ignorance. "Sometimes it's a bow that they make out of the ribbon their
+dresses is trimmed with, and sometimes it's a flower, a rose, yer know;
+and the lord sings again&mdash;can yer sing?"</p>
+
+<p>Her companion repressed a smile. "I can manage a tune or two at a
+pinch."</p>
+
+<p>"And the lady comes out on the balcony and leans over&mdash;like this, yer
+know;" she jumped up and leaned over the rail of the float, keeping her
+hands well in front of her to save her apron; "and she listens and keeps
+looking, and when he sings he's going to die because he loves her so,
+she throws the token down to him to let him know he mustn't die 'coz she
+loves him too; and he catches it, the rose, yer know, and smells it and
+then he kisses it and squeezes it against his heart&mdash;" she forgot her
+greasy hands in the rapture of this imaginative flight, and pressed them
+theatrically over her gingham apron beneath which her own little organ
+was pulsing quick with the excitement of this telling moment; "&mdash;and
+then the moon shines just as bright as silver and&mdash;and she marries him."</p>
+
+<p>She drew a deep breath. During the recital she had lost herself in the
+personating of the favorite characters from her one novel. While she
+stood there looking out on the lake and the Flamsted Hills with eyes
+that were still seeing the gardens and marble terraces of Isola Bella,
+Champney Googe had time to fix that picture on his mental retina and,
+recalling it in after years, knew that the impression was "more lasting
+than bronze."</p>
+
+<p>She came rather suddenly to herself when she grew aware of her larded
+hands pressed against her clean apron.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, gracious, but I'll catch it!" she exclaimed ruefully. "Wot'll I do
+now? She said I'd got to keep it clean till she got back, and she'll
+fire me and&mdash;and I want to stay awful; it's just like the story, yer
+know." She raised her gray eyes appealingly to his, and he saw at once
+that her childish fear was real. He comforted her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you what: we'll go back to Hannah and she'll fix it for you;
+and if it's spoiled I'll go down and get some like it in the village and
+my mother will make you a new one. So, cheer up, Miss Aileen Armagh
+and-don't-yer-forget-it! And to-morrow evening, if the moon is out,
+we'll have a serenade all by ourselves; what do you say to that?"</p>
+
+<p>"D' yer mane it?" she demanded, half breathless in her earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen clapped her hands and began to dance; then she stopped suddenly
+to say: "I ain't going to dance for yer now; but I will sometime," she
+added graciously. "I've got to go now and help Ann. What time are yer
+coming for the serenade?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be here about eight; the moon will be out by then and we must have
+a moon."</p>
+
+<p>She started away on the run, beckoning to him with her unwashed hands:
+"Come on, then, till I show yer my windy. It's the little one over the
+dining-room. There ain't a balcony, but&mdash;see there! there's the top of
+the bay windy and I can lean out&mdash;why didn't yer tell me yer could play
+the guitar?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"A harp, belike?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; guess again."</p>
+
+<p>"Yer no good;&mdash;but yer'll come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shurre; an' more be token it's at eight 'o the clock Oi'll be under yer
+windy." He gave the accent with such Celtic gusto that the little girl
+was captivated.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't you a corker!" she said admiringly and, waving her hand again to
+him, ran to the house. Champney followed more slowly to lay the case
+before Ann and Hannah.</p>
+
+<p>On his way homeward he found himself wondering if he had ever seen the
+child before. As she leaned on the rail and looked out over the lake, a
+certain grace of attitude, which the coarse clothing failed to conceal,
+the rapt expression in the eyes, the <i>timbre</i> of her voice, all awakened
+a dim certainty that he had seen her before at some time and place
+distinctly unusual; but where? He turned the search-light of
+concentrated thought upon his comings and goings and doings during the
+last year and more. Where had he seen just such a child?</p>
+
+<p>He looked up from the roadway, on which his eyes had been fixed while
+his absent thought was making back tracks over the last twelve months,
+and saw before him the high pastures of The Gore. In the long afterglow
+of the July sunset they enamelled the barren heights with a rich,
+yellowish green. In a flash it came to him: "The green hill far away
+without a city wall"; the child singing on the vaudeville stage; the
+hush in the audience. He smiled to himself. He was experiencing that
+satisfaction which is common to all who have run down the quarry of a
+long-hunted recollection.</p>
+
+<p>"She's the very one," he said to himself; "I wonder if Aunt Meda
+knows."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>That which proves momentous in our lives is rarely anticipated, seldom
+calculated. Its factors are for the most part unknown quantities; if not
+prime in themselves they are, at least, prime to each other. It cannot
+be measured in terms of time, for often it lies between two infinities.
+But the momentous decision, event, action, which reacts upon the life of
+a man or woman and influences that life so long as it is lived here on
+earth, is on the surface sufficiently finite for us to say: It was on
+such a day I made my decision; to such and such an event I can look back
+as the cause of all that has followed. The How thereof remains traceable
+to our purblind eyes for a month, a term of years, one generation,
+possibly two; the Where and When can generally be defined; but the <i>Why</i>
+we ask blindly, and are rarely answered satisfactorily.</p>
+
+<p>Had young Googe been told, while he was walking homewards up The Gore,
+that his life line, like the antenna of the wireless, was even then the
+recipient and transmitter of multiple influences that had been, as it
+were, latent in the storage batteries of a generation; that what he was
+to be in the future was at this very hour in germ for development, he
+would have scouted the idea. His young self-sufficiency would have
+laughed the teller to scorn. He would have maintained as a man his
+mastership of his fate and fortunes, and whistled as carelessly as he
+whistled now for the puppy, an Irish terrier which he had brought home
+with him, for training, to come and meet him.</p>
+
+<p>And the puppy, whose name was Ragamuffin and called Rag for short, came
+duly, unknowing, like his young master, to meet his fate. He wriggled
+broad-side down the walk as a puppy will in his first joy till,
+overpowered by his emotions, he rolled over on his back at Champney's
+feet, the fringes of his four legs waving madly in air.</p>
+
+<p>"Champney, I'm waiting for you." It was his mother calling from the
+door. He ran in through the kitchen, and hurried to make himself
+presentable for the table and their guest whom he saw on the front
+porch.</p>
+
+<p>As he entered the dining-room, his mother introduced him: "Father
+Honor&eacute;, my son, Champney."</p>
+
+<p>The two men shook hands, and Mrs. Googe took her seat. The priest bowed
+his head momentarily to make the sign of the cross. Champney Googe shot
+one keen, amazed look in his direction. When that head was lifted
+Champney "opened fire," so he termed it to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I've seen you before, sir." It was hard for him to give the
+title "Father." "I got in your way, didn't I, at the theatre one evening
+over a year ago?"</p>
+
+<p>His mother looked at him in amazement and something of anxiety. Was her
+son in his prejudice forgetting himself?</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I think it was the other way round, I was in your way, for I
+remember thinking when you ran up against me 'that young fellow has been
+half-back on a football team.'"</p>
+
+<p>Champney laughed. There was no withstanding this man's voice and the
+veiled humor of his introductory remarks.</p>
+
+<p>"Did I hit hard? I didn't think for a moment that you would recognize
+me; but I knew you as soon as mother introduced us. I see by your face,
+mother, that you need enlightening. It was only that I met Father
+Honor&eacute;"&mdash;he brought that out with no hesitation&mdash;"at the entrance to one
+of the New York theatres over a year ago, and in the crowd nearly ran
+him down. No wonder, sir, you sized me up by the pressure as a football
+fiend. That's rich!" His merry laugh reassured his mother; she turned to
+Father Honor&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether all my son's acquaintances are made at the theatre
+or not, but it is a coincidence that the other day he happened to
+mention the fact that the first time he saw Mr. Van Ostend he saw him
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"It's my strong impression, Mrs. Googe, that Mr. Googe saw us both at
+the same place, at the same time. Mr. Van Ostend spoke to me of your son
+just a few days before I left New York."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he?" Champney's eager blue eyes sought the priest's. "Do you know
+him well?"</p>
+
+<p>"As we all know him through his place in the world of affairs.
+Personally I have met him only a few times. You may know, perhaps, that
+he was instrumental in placing little Aileen Armagh, the orphan
+child,&mdash;you know whom I mean?&mdash;at Mrs. Champney's, your aunt, Mrs. Googe
+tells me."</p>
+
+<p>"I was just going to ask you if you would be willing to tell us
+something about her," said Mrs. Googe. "I've not seen her, but from all
+I hear she is a most unusual child, most interesting&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Interesting, mother!" Champney interrupted her rather explosively;
+"she's unique, the only and ever Aileen Armagh." He turned again to
+Father Honor&eacute;. "Do tell us about her; I've been so blockheaded I
+couldn't put two and two together, but I'm beginning to see daylight at
+last. I made her acquaintance this afternoon. That's why I was a little
+late, mother."</p>
+
+<p>How we tell, even the best of us, with reserves! Father Honor&eacute; told of
+his interest being roused, as well as his suspicions, by the wording of
+the poster, and of his determination to see for himself to what extent
+the child was being exploited. But of the thought-lever, the "Little
+Trout", that raised that interest, he made no mention; nor, indeed, was
+it necessary.</p>
+
+<p>"You see there is a class of foreigners on the East side that receive
+commissions for exploiting precocious children on the stage; they are
+very clever in evading the law. The children themselves are helpless. I
+had looked up a good many cases before this because it was in my line of
+work, and in this particular one I found that the child had been
+orphaned in Ireland almost from her birth; that an aunt, without
+relatives, had emigrated with her only a few months before I saw her on
+the stage, and the two had lived in an east side tenement with an old
+Italian. The child's aunt, a young woman about twenty-eight, developed
+quick consumption during the winter and died in the care of the Italian,
+Nonna Lisa they call her. This woman cared for the little girl, and
+began to take her out with her early in March on the avenues and streets
+of the upper west side. The old woman is an itinerant musician and plays
+the guitar with real feeling&mdash;I've heard her&mdash;and, by the way, makes a
+decent little living of her own. She found that Aileen had a good voice
+and could sing several Irish songs. She learned the accompaniments, and
+the two led, so far as I can discover, a delightful life of vagabondage
+for several weeks. It seems the old Italian has a grandson, Luigi, who
+sings in vaudeville with a travelling troop. He was in the west and
+south during the entire time that Aileen was with his grandmother; and
+through her letters he learned of the little girl's voice. He spoke of
+this to his manager, and he communicated with the manager of a Broadway
+vaudeville&mdash;they are both in the vaudeville trust&mdash;and asked him to
+engage her, and retain her for the troop when they should start on their
+annual autumn tour. But Nonna Lisa was shrewd.&mdash;It's wonderful, Mrs.
+Googe, how quickly they develop the sixth sense of cautious speculation
+after landing! She made a contract for six weeks only, hoping to raise
+her price in the autumn. So I found that the child was not being
+exploited, except legitimately, by the old Italian who was caring for
+her and guarding her from all contamination. But, of course, that could
+not go on, and I had the little girl placed in the orphan asylum on
+----nd Street&mdash;" He interrupted himself to say half apologetically:</p>
+
+<p>"I am prolix, I fear, but I am hoping you will be personally interested
+in this child whose future life will, I trust, be spent here far away
+from the metropolitan snares. I am sure she is worth your interest."</p>
+
+<p>"I know she is," said Champney emphatically; "and the more we know of
+her the better. You'll laugh at my experience when you have heard it;
+but first let us have the whole of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"You know, of course, where Mr. Van Ostend lives?" Champney nodded. "Did
+you happen to notice the orphan asylum just opposite on &mdash;&mdash;nd Street?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I don't recall any building of that sort."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled. "Probably not; that is not in your line and we men are apt to
+see only what is in the line of our working vision. It seems that Mr.
+Van Ostend has a little girl&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know, that's the Alice I told you of, mother; did you see her when
+she was here last month?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I only met Mr. Van Ostend on business. You were saying&mdash;?" She
+addressed Father Honor&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"His little daughter told him so much about two orphan children, with
+whom she had managed to have a kind of across-street-and-window
+acquaintance, that he proposed to her to have the children over for
+Christmas luncheon. The moment he saw Aileen, he recognized in her the
+child on the vaudeville stage to whom he had given the flowers&mdash;You
+remember that incident?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't I though!"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;Because she had sung his wife's favorite hymn. He was thoroughly
+interested in the child after seeing her, so to say, at close range, and
+took the first opportunity to speak with the Sister Superior in regard
+to finding for her a suitable and permanent home. The Sister Superior
+referred him to me. As you know, he came to Flamsted recently with this
+same little daughter; and the child talked so much and told so many
+amusing things about Aileen to Mrs. Champney, that Mr. Van Ostend saw at
+once this was an opportunity to further his plans, although he confided
+to me his surprise that his cousin, Mrs. Champney, should be willing to
+have so immature a child, in her house. Directly on getting home, he
+telephoned to me that he had found a home for her with a relation of his
+in Flamsted. You may judge of my surprise and pleasure, for I had
+received the appointment to this place and the work among the quarrymen
+only a month before. This is how the little girl happened to come up
+with me. I hear she is making friends."</p>
+
+<p>"She can't help making them, and a good deal more besides; for Romanzo
+Caukins, our neighbor's son, and Octavius Buzzby, my aunt's <i>charg&eacute;
+d'affaires</i>, are at the present time her abject slaves," said Champney,
+rising from the table at a signal from his mother. "Let's go out on the
+porch, and I'll tell you of the fun I've had with her&mdash;poor Roman!" He
+shook his head and chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped into the living-room as he passed through the hall and
+reached for his pipe in a rack above the mantel. "Do you smoke," he
+asked half-hesitatingly, but with an excess of courtesy in his voice as
+if he were apologizing for asking such a question.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes; a pipe, if you please." He held out his hand; Champney
+handed him a sweetbrier and a tobacco pouch. "You permit, Madam?" He
+spoke with old world courtesy. Aurora Googe smiled permission. She saw
+with satisfaction her son's puzzled look of inquiry as he noted the
+connoisseurship with which Father Honor&eacute; handled his after-supper tools.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Milton Caukins, their neighbor in the stone house across the bridge
+over the Rothel, stood for several minutes at her back door listening to
+Champney's continued arpeggios and wondered whose was the deep hearty
+laugh that answered them. In telling his afternoon's experience
+Champney, also, had his reserves: of the coming serenade he said never a
+word to the priest.</p>
+
+<p>"He's O.K. and a man, mother," was his comment on their guest, as he
+bade her good night. Aurora Googe answered him with a smile that
+betokened content, but she was wise enough not to commit herself in
+words. Afterwards she sat long in her room, planning for her son's
+future. The twenty thousand she had just received for the undeveloped
+quarry lands should serve to start him well in life.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>On the following day, mother and son constituted themselves a committee
+of ways and means as to the best investment of the money in furtherance
+of Champney's interests. Her ambition was gratified in that she saw him
+anxious to take his place in the world of affairs, to "get on" and, as
+he said, make his mark early in the world of finance.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that, during his college course, he had spent the five thousand
+received from the sale of the first quarry, plus the interest on the
+same without accounting for a penny of it, seemed to his mother
+perfectly legitimate; for she had sold the land and laid by the amount
+paid for it in order to put her son through college. Since he was twelve
+years old she had brought him up in the knowledge that it was to be his
+for that purpose. From the time he came, through her generosity, into
+possession of the property, she always replied to those who had the
+courage to criticise her course in placing so large a sum at the
+disposal of a youth:</p>
+
+<p>"My son is a man. I realize I can suggest, but not dictate; moreover I
+have no desire to."</p>
+
+<p>She drew the line there, and rarely had any one dared to expostulate
+further with her. When they ventured it, Aurora Googe turned upon them
+those dark eyes, in which at such times there burned a seemingly
+unquenchable light of self-feeding defiance, and gave them to
+understand, with a repelling dignity of manner that bordered hard on
+haughtiness, that what she and her son might or might not do was no
+one's concern but their own. This self-evident truth, when it struck
+home to her well-wishers, made her no friends. Nor did she regret this.
+She had dwelt, as it were, apart, since her marriage and early
+widowhood&mdash;her husband had died seven months before Champney was
+born&mdash;on the old Googe estate at The Gore. But she was a good neighbor,
+as Mrs. Caukins could testify; paid her taxes promptly, and minded her
+flocks, the source of her limited income, until wool-raising in New
+England became unprofitable. An opportunity was presented when her boy
+was ten years old to sell a portion of the barren sheep pastures for the
+first quarry. She counted herself fortunate in being able thus to
+provide for Champney's four college years.</p>
+
+<p>In all the village, there were only three men, whom Aurora Googe named
+friend. These men, with the intimacy born of New England's community of
+interest, called her to her face by her Christian name; they were
+Octavius Buzzby, old Joel Quimber, and Colonel Caukins. There had been
+one other, Louis Champney, who during his lifetime promised to do much
+for her boy when he should have come of age; but as the promises were
+never committed to black and white, they were, after his death, as
+though they had never been.</p>
+
+<p>"If only Aunt Meda would fork over some of hers!" Champney exclaimed
+with irritation. They were sitting on the porch after tea. "All I want
+is a seat in the Stock Exchange&mdash;and the chance to start in. I believe
+if I had the money Mr. Van Ostend would help me to that."</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't say anything to him about your plans, did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no; not exactly. But it isn't every fellow gets a chance to dine
+at such a man's table, and I thought the opportunity was too good to be
+wasted entirely. I let him know in a quiet way that I, like every other
+fellow, was looking for a job." Champney laughed aloud at the shocked
+look on his mother's face. He knew her independence of thought and
+action; it brooked no catering for favors.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, mother, men <i>have</i> to do it, or go under. It's about one
+chance in ten thousand that a man gets what he wants, and it's downright
+criminal to throw away a good opportunity to get your foot on a round.
+Run the scaling ladder up or down, it doesn't much matter&mdash;there are
+hundreds of applicants for every round; and only one man can stand on
+each&mdash;and climb, as I mean to. You don't get this point of view up here,
+mother, but you will when you see the development of these great
+interests. Then it will be each for himself and the devil gets the
+hindermost. Shouldn't I take every legitimate means to forge ahead? You
+heard what the priest said about Mr. Van Ostend's mentioning me to him?
+Let me tell you such men don't waste one breath in mentioning anything
+that does not mean a big interest per cent, <i>not one breath</i>. They
+can't, literally, afford to; and I'm hoping, only hoping, you know&mdash;",
+he looked up at her from his favorite seat on the lowest step of the
+front porch with a keen hard expectancy in his eyes that belied his
+words, "&mdash;that what he said to Father Honor&eacute; means something definite.
+Anyhow, we'll wait a while till we see how the syndicate takes hold of
+this quarry business before we decide on anything, won't we, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm willing to wait as long as you like if you will only promise me one
+thing."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" He rose and faced her; she saw that he was slightly on
+the defensive.</p>
+
+<p>"That you will never, <i>never</i>, in any circumstances, apply to your Aunt
+Almeda for funds, no matter how much you may want them. I couldn't bear
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke passionately in earnest, with such depth of feeling that she
+did not realize her son was not giving her the promise when he said
+abruptly, the somewhat hard blue eyes looking straight into hers:</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, why are you so hard on Aunt Meda? She's a stingy old screw, I
+know, and led Uncle Louis round by the nose, so everybody says; but why
+are you so down on her?"</p>
+
+<p>He was insistent, and his insistence was the one trait in his character
+which his mother had found hardest to deal with from his babyhood; from
+it, however, if it should develop happily into perseverance, she hoped
+the most. This trait he inherited from his father, Warren Googe, but in
+the latter it had deteriorated into obstinacy. She always feared for her
+self-control when she met it in her son, and just now she was under the
+influence of a powerful emotion that helped her to lose it.</p>
+
+<p>"Because," she made answer, again passionately but the earnestness had
+given place to anger, "I am a woman and have borne from her what no
+woman bears and forgets, or forgives! Are you any the wiser now?" she
+demanded. "It is all that I shall tell you; so don't insist."</p>
+
+<p>The two continued to look into each other's eyes, and something, it
+could hardly be called inimical, rather an aloofness from the tie of
+blood, was visible to each in the other's steadfast gaze. Aurora Googe
+shivered. Her eyes fell before the younger ones.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't Champney! Don't let's get upon this subject again; I can't bear
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"But, mother," he protested, "you mentioned it first."</p>
+
+<p>"It was what you said about Almeda's furnishing you with money that
+started it. Don't say anything more about it; only promise me, won't
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>She raised her eyes again to his, but this time in appeal. At forty-one
+Aurora Googe was still a very beautiful woman, and her appeal, made
+gently as if in apology for her former vehemence, rendered that beauty
+potent with her son's manhood.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me think it over, mother, before I promise." He answered her as
+gently. "It's a hard thing to exact of a man, and I don't hold much with
+promises. What did Uncle Louis' amount to?"</p>
+
+<p>The blood surged into his mother's face, and tears, rare ones, for she
+was not a weak woman neither was she a sentimental one, filled her eyes.
+Her son came up the steps and kissed her. They were seldom demonstrative
+to this extent save in his home-comings and leave-takings. He changed
+the subject abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going down to the village now. You know I have the serenade on my
+program, at eight. Afterwards I'll run down to The Greenbush for the
+mail and to see my old cronies. I haven't had a chance yet." He began to
+whistle for the puppy, but cut himself short, laughing. "I was going to
+take Rag, but he won't fit in with the serenade. Keep him tied up while
+I'm gone, please. Anything you want from the village, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't sit up for me; I may be late. Joel is long-winded and the Colonel
+is booming The Gore for all it is worth and more too; I want to hear the
+fun. Good night."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+
+
+
+<p>The afterglow of sunset was long. The dilated moon, rising from the
+waters of the Bay, shone pale at first; but as it climbed the shoulder
+of the mountain <i>Wave-of-the-Sea</i> and its light fell upon the farther
+margin of the lake, its clear disk was pure argent.</p>
+
+<p>Champney looked his approval. It was the kind of night he had been
+hoping for. He walked leisurely down the road from The Gore for the
+night was warm. It was already past eight, but he lingered, purposely, a
+few minutes longer on the lake shore until the moonlight should widen on
+the waters. Then he went on to the grounds.</p>
+
+<p>He entered by the lane and crossed the lawn to an arching rose-laden
+trellis near the bay window; beneath it was a wooden bench. He looked up
+at the window. The blinds were closed. So far as he could see there was
+no light in all the great house. Behind the rose trellis was a group of
+stately Norway spruce; he could see the sheen of their foliage in the
+moonlight. He took his banjo out of its case and sat down on the bench,
+smiling to himself, for he was thoroughly enjoying, with that enjoyment
+of youth, health, and vitality which belongs to twenty-one, this rustic
+adventure. He touched the strings lightly with preliminary thrumming. It
+was a toss-up between "Annie Rooney" and "Oft in the stilly night." He
+decided for the latter. Raising his eyes to the closed blinds, behind
+which he knew the witch was hiding, he began the accompaniment. The soft
+<i>thrum-thrum</i>, vibrating through the melody, found an echo in the
+whirring wings of all that ephemeral insect life which is abroad on such
+a night. The prelude was almost at an end when he saw the blinds begin
+to separate. Champney continued to gaze steadily upwards. A thin bare
+arm was thrust forth; the blinds opened wide; in the dark window space
+he saw Aileen, listening intently and gazing fixedly at the moon as if
+its every beam were dropping liquid music.</p>
+
+<p>He began to sing. His voice was clear, fine, and high, a useful first
+tenor for two winters in the Glee Club. When he finished Aileen deigned
+to look down upon him, but she made no motion of recognition. He rose
+and took his stand directly beneath the window.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Miss Aileen Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, that isn't playing
+fair! Where's my token?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a giggle for answer; then, leaning as far out as she dared,
+both hands stemmed on the window ledge, the child began to sing. Full,
+free, joyously light-hearted, she sent forth the rollicking Irish melody
+and the merry sentiment that was strung upon it; evidently it had been
+adapted to her, for the words had suffered a slight change:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Och! laughin' roses are my lips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forget-me-nots my ee,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It's many a lad they're drivin' mad;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall they not so wi' ye?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heigho! the morning dew!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heigho! the rose and rue!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Follow me, my bonny lad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I'll not follow you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Wi' heart in mout', in hope and doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My lovers come and go:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My smiles receive, my smiles deceive;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall they not serve you so?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heigho! the morning dew!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heigho! the rose and rue!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Follow me, my bonny lad,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I'll not follow you."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It was a delight to hear her.</p>
+
+<p>"There now, I'll give yer my token. Hold out yer hands!"</p>
+
+<p>Champney, hugging his banjo under one arm, made a cup of his hands.
+Carefully measuring the distance, she dropped one rosebud into them.</p>
+
+<p>"Put it on yer heart now," was the next command from above. He obeyed
+with exaggerated gesture, to the great delight of the serenadee. "And
+yer goin' to keep it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Forever and a day." Champney made this assertion with a
+hyper-sentimental inflection of voice, and, lifting the flower to his
+nose, drew in his breath&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Confound you, you little fiend&mdash;" he sneezed rather than spoke.</p>
+
+<p>The sneeze was answered by a peal of laughter from above and a
+fifteen-year-old's cracked "Haw-haw-haw" from the region of the Norway
+spruces. Every succeeding sneeze met with a like response&mdash;roars of
+laughter on the one hand and peal upon peal on the other. Even the
+kitchen door began to give signs of life, for Hannah and Ann made their
+appearance.</p>
+
+<p>The strong white pepper, which Romanzo managed to procure from Hannah,
+had been cunningly secreted by Aileen between the imbricate petals, and
+then tied, in a manner invisible at night, with a fine thread of pink
+silk begged from Ann. It was now acting and re-acting on the lining of
+the serenader's olfactory organ in a manner to threaten final
+decapitation. Champney was still young enough to resent being made a
+subject of such practical joking by a little girl; but he was also
+sufficiently wise to acknowledge to himself that he had been worsted
+and, in the end, to put a good face on it. It is true he would have
+preferred that Romanzo Caukins had not been witness to his defeat.</p>
+
+<p>The sneezing and laughter gradually subsided. He sat down again on the
+bench and taking up his banjo prepared, with somewhat elaborate effort,
+to put it into its case. He said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Say!" came in a sobered voice from above; "are yer mad with me?"</p>
+
+<p>Ignoring both question and questioner, he took out his handkerchief,
+wiped his face and forehead and, returning it to his pocket, heaved a
+sigh of apparent exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Mr. Champney Googe, are yer mad with me?"</p>
+
+<p>To Champney's delight, he heard an added note of anxiety. He bowed his
+head lower over the banjo case and in silence renewed his simulated
+struggle to slip that instrument into it.</p>
+
+<p>"Champney! Are yer <i>rale</i> mad with me?" There was no mistaking the
+earnestness of this appeal. He made no answer, but chuckled inwardly at
+the audacity of the address.</p>
+
+<p>"Champ!" she stamped her foot to emphasize her demand; "if yer don't
+tell me yer ain't mad with me, I'll lave yer for good and all&mdash;so now!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that I'm mad with you," he spoke at last in an aggrieved,
+a subdued tone; "I simply didn't think you could play me such a mean
+trick when I was in earnest, dead earnest."</p>
+
+<p>"Did yer mane it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course I did! You don't suppose a man walks three miles in a
+hot night to serenade a girl just to get an ounce of pepper in his nose
+by way of thanks, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought yer didn't mane it; Romanzo said yer was laughing at me for
+telling yer 'bout the lords and ladies a-making love with their
+guitars." The voice indicated some dejection of spirits.</p>
+
+<p>"He did, did he! I'll settle with Romanzo later." He heard a soft
+brushing of branches in the region of the Norway spruces and knew that
+the youth was in retreat. "And I'll settle it with you, too, Miss Aileen
+Armagh-and-don't-you-forget-it, in a way that'll make you remember the
+tag end of your name for one while!"</p>
+
+<p>This threat evidently had its effect.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot yer going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>He heard her draw her breath sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Come down here and I'll tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't. She might catch me. She told me I'd got to stay in my room
+after eight, and she's coming home ter-night. Wot yer going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>Champney laughed outright. "Don't you wish you might know, Aileen
+Armagh!" He took his banjo in one hand, lifted his cap with the other
+and, standing so, bareheaded in the moonlight, sang with all the
+simulated passion and pathos of which he was capable one of the few love
+songs that belong to the world, "Kathleen Mavoureen"; but he took pains
+to substitute "Aileen" for "Kathleen." Even Ann and Hannah, listening
+from the kitchen porch, began to feel sentimentally inclined when the
+clear voice rendered with tender pathos the last lines:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh! why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oh! why art thou silent, Aileen Mavoureen?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Without so much as another glance at the little figure in the window, he
+ran across the lawn and up the lane to the highroad.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>On his way to The Greenbush he overtook Joel Quimber, and without
+warning linked his arm close in the old man's. At the sudden contact
+Joel started.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Jo, old chap, how are you? This seems like home to see you
+round."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord bless me, Champ, how you come on a feller! Here, stan' still till
+I get a good look at ye;&mdash;growed, growed out of all notion. Why, I
+hain't seen ye for good two year. You warn't to home last summer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only for a week; I was off on a yachting cruise most of the time.
+Mother said you were up on the Bay then at your grandniece's&mdash;pretty
+girl. I remember you had her down here one Christmas."</p>
+
+<p>The old man made no definite answer, but cackled softly to himself:
+"Yachting cruise, eh? And you remember a pretty girl, eh?" He nudged him
+with a sharpened elbow and whispered mysteriously: "Devil of a feller,
+Champ! I've heerd tell, I've heerd tell&mdash;chip of the old block, eh?" He
+nudged him knowingly again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we're all devils more or less, we men, Uncle Jo; now, honor bright,
+aren't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've hit it, Champ; more or less&mdash;more or less. I heerd you was
+a-goin' it strong: primy donny suppers an' ortermobillies&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Uncle Jo, you know there's no use believing all you hear, but you
+can't plunge a country raised boy into a whirlpool like New York for
+four years and not expect him to strike out and swim with the rest.
+You've got to, Uncle Jo, or you're nobody. You'd go under."</p>
+
+<p>"Like 'nough you would, Champ; I can't say, fer I hain't ben thar. Guess
+twixt you an' me an' the post, I won't hev ter go thar sence Aurory's
+sold the land fer the quarries. I hear it talked thet it'll bring half
+New York right inter old Flamsted; I dunno, I dunno&mdash;you 'member 'bout
+the new wine in the old bottles, Champ?&mdash;highflyers, emigrants, Dagos
+and Polacks&mdash;Come ter think, Mis' Champney's got one on 'em now. Hev you
+seen her, Champ?"</p>
+
+<p>Champney's hearty laugh rang out with no uncertain sound. "Seen her! I
+should say so. She's worth any 'primy donny', as you call them, that
+ever drew a good silver dollar out of my pockets. Oh, it's too good to
+keep! I must tell you; but you'll keep mum, Uncle Jo?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mum's the word, ef yer say so, Champ." They turned from The Greenbush
+and arm in arm paced slowly up the street again. From time to time, for
+the next ten minutes, Augustus Buzzby and the Colonel in the tavern
+office heard from up street such unwonted sounds of hilarity and so long
+continued, that Augustus looked apprehensively at the Colonel who was
+becoming visibly uneasy lest he fail to place the joke.</p>
+
+<p>When the two appeared at the office door they bore unmistakable signs of
+having enjoyed themselves hugely. Augustus Buzzby gave them his warmest
+welcome and seated Uncle Joel in his deepest office chair, providing him
+at the same time with a pipe and some cut leaf. The Colonel was in his
+glory. With one arm thrown affectionately around young Googe's neck, he
+expatiated on the joy of the community as a whole in again welcoming
+its own.</p>
+
+<p>"Champney, my dear boy,&mdash;you still permit me the freedom of old
+friendship?&mdash;this town is already looking to you as to its future
+deliverer; I may say, as to a Moses who will lead us into the industrial
+Canaan which is even now, thanks to my friend, your honored mother,
+beckoning to us with its promise of abundant plenty. Never, in my
+wildest dreams, my dear boy, have I thought to see such a consummation
+of my long-cherished hopes."</p>
+
+<p>It was always one of Champney's prime youthful joys to urge the Colonel,
+by judiciously applied excitants, to a greater flowering of eloquence;
+so, now, as an inducement he wrung his neighbor's hand and thanked him
+warmly for his timely recognition of the new Flamsted about to be.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," he said, "the thing is for all of us to fall into line and forge
+ahead, Colonel. If we don't, we'll be left behind; and in these times to
+lag is to take to the backwoods."</p>
+
+<p>"Right you are, my dear fellow; deterioration can only set in when the
+members of a community, like ours, fail to present a solid front to the
+disintegrating forces of a supine civilization which&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"At it again, Milton Caukins!" It was Mr. Wiggins who, entering the
+office, interrupted the flow,&mdash;"dammed the torrent", he was wont to say.
+He extended a hand to young Googe. "Glad to see you, Champney. I hear
+there is a prospect of your remaining with us. Quimber tells us he heard
+something to the effect that a position might be offered you by the
+syndicate."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the first I've heard of it. How did you hear, Uncle Jo?" He
+turned upon the old man with a keen alertness which, taken in connection
+with the Colonel's oratory, was both disconcerting and confusing.</p>
+
+<p>"How'd I hear? Le' me see; Champ, what was we just talking 'bout up the
+street, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, never mind that now," he answered impatiently; "let's hear what you
+heard. I'm the interested party just now." But the old man looked only
+the more disturbed and was not to be hurried.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bout that little girl&mdash;" he began, but was unceremoniously cut short
+by Champney.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, damn the girl, just for once, Uncle Jo. What I want to know is, how
+you came to hear anything about me in connection with the quarry
+syndicate."</p>
+
+<p>The old man persisted: "I'm a-tryin' to get a-holt of that man's name
+that got her up here&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Van Ostend," Champney suggested; "is that the name you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's him, Van Ostend; that's the one. He an' the rest was hevin' a
+meetin' right here in this office 'fore they went to the train, an' I
+was settin' outside the winder an' heerd one on 'em say: 'Thet Mis'
+Googe's a stunner; what's her son like, does any one know?' An' I heerd
+Mr. Van Ostend say: 'She's very unusual; if her son has half her
+executive ability'&mdash;them's his very words&mdash;'we might work him in with
+us. It would be good business policy to interest, through him, the land
+itself in its own output, so to speak, besides being something of a
+courtesy to Mis' Googe. I've met him twice.' Then they fell to
+discussin' the lay of The Gore and the water power at The Corners."</p>
+
+<p>"Bully for you, Uncle Jo!" Champney slapped the rounded shoulders with
+such appreciative heartiness that the old man's pipe threatened to be
+shaken from between his toothless gums. "You have heard the very thing
+I've been hoping for. Tave never let on that he knew anything about it."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't, only what I told him." Old Quimber cackled weakly. "I guess
+Tave's got his hands too full at Champo to remember what's told him;
+what with the little girl an' Romanzo&mdash;no offence, Colonel." He looked
+apologetically at the Colonel who waved his hand with an airiness that
+disposed at once of the idea of any feeling on his part in regard to
+family revelations. "I heerd tell thet the little girl hed turned his
+head an' Tave couldn't git nothin' in the way of work out of him."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case I must look into the matter." The Colonel spoke with stern
+gravity. "Both Mrs. Caukins and I would deplore any undue influence that
+might be brought to bear upon any son of ours at so critical a period of
+his career."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wiggins laughed; but the laugh was only a disguised sneer. "Perhaps
+you'll come to your senses, Colonel, when you've got an immigrant for a
+daughter-in-law. Own up, now, you didn't think your 'competing
+industrial thousands' might be increased by some half-Irish
+grandchildren, now did you?"</p>
+
+<p>Champney listened for the Colonel's answer with a suspended hope that he
+might give Elmer Wiggins "one," as he said to himself. He still owed the
+latter gentleman a grudge because in the past he had been, as it were,
+the fountain head of all in his youthful misery in supplying ample
+portions of the never-to-be-forgotten oil of the castor bean and dried
+senna leaves. He felt at the present time, moreover, that he was
+inimical to his mother and her interests. And Milton Caukins was his
+friend and hers, past, present, and future; of this he was sure.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel took time to light his cigar before replying; then, waving
+it towards the ceiling, he said pleasantly:</p>
+
+<p>"My young friend here, Champney, to whom we are looking to restore the
+pristine vigor of a fast vanishing line of noble ancestors, is both a
+Googe <i>and</i> a Champney. <i>His</i> ancestors counted themselves honored in
+making alliances with foreigners&mdash;immigrants to our all-welcoming
+shores; 'a rose', Mr. Wiggins, 'by any other name'; I need not quote."
+His chest swelled; he interrupted himself to puff vigorously at his
+cigar before continuing: "My son, sir, is on the spindle side of the
+house a <i>Googe</i>, and a <i>Googe</i>, sir, has the blood of the Champneys and
+the Lord knows of how many noble <i>immigrants</i>" (the last word was
+emphasized by a fleeting glance of withering scorn at the small-headed
+Wiggins) "in his veins which, fortunately, cannot be said of you, sir.
+If, at any time in the distant future, my son should see fit to ally
+himself with a scion of the noble and long-suffering Hibernian race, I
+assure you"&mdash;his voice was increasing in dimensions&mdash;"both Mrs. Caukins
+and myself would feel honored, sir, yes, honored in the breach!"</p>
+
+<p>After this wholly unexpected ending to his peroration, he lowered his
+feet from their accustomed rest on the counter of the former bar and,
+ignoring Mr. Wiggins, remarked to Augustus that it was time for the
+mail. Augustus, glad to welcome any diversion of the Colonel's and Mr.
+Wiggins's asperities, said the train was on time and the mail would be
+there in a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"Tave's gone down to meet Mis' Champney," he added turning to Champney.
+"She's been in Hallsport for two days. I presume you ain't seen her."</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. If you can give me my mail first I can drive up to
+Champ-au-Haut with her to-night. There's the mail-wagon."</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, to be sure, Champney; and you might take out Mis'
+Champney's; Tave can't leave the hosses."</p>
+
+<p>"All right." He went out on the veranda to see if the Champ-au-Haut
+carriage was in sight. A moment later, when it drove up, he was at the
+door to open it.</p>
+
+<p>"Here I am, Aunt Meda. Will this hold two and all those bundles?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Champney, you here? Come in." She made room for him on the ample
+seat; he sprang in, and bent to kiss her before sitting down beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I call this luck. This is as good as a confessional, small and
+dark, and 'fess I've got to, Aunt Meda, or there'll be trouble for
+somebody at Campo."</p>
+
+<p>Had the space not been so "small and dark" he might have seen the face
+of the woman beside him quiver painfully at the sound of his cheery
+young voice and, when he kissed her, flush to her temples.</p>
+
+<p>"What devilry now, Champney?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's a girl, of course, Aunt Meda&mdash;your girl," he added laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"So you've found her out, have you, you young rogue? Well, what do you
+think of her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think you'll have a whole vaudeville show at Champ-au-Haut for the
+rest of your days&mdash;and gratis."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been coming to that conclusion myself," said Mrs. Champney,
+smiling in turn at the recollection of some of her experiences during
+the past three weeks. "She amuses me, and I've concluded to keep her.
+I'm going to have her with me a good part of the time. I've seen enough
+since she has been with me to convince me that my people will amount to
+nothing so long as she is with them." There was an edge to her words the
+sharpness of which was felt by Octavius on the front seat.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't blame them; I couldn't. Why Tave here is threatened already
+with a quick decline&mdash;sheer worry of mind, isn't it Tave?" Octavius
+nodded shortly; "And as for Romanzo there's no telling where he will
+end; even Ann and Hannah are infected."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, Champney?" She was laughing now.</p>
+
+<p>"Just wait till I run in and get the mail for us both, and I'll tell
+you; it's my confession."</p>
+
+<p>He sprang out, ran up the steps and disappeared for a moment. He
+reappeared thrusting some letters into his pocket. Evidently he had not
+looked at them. He handed the other letters and papers to Octavius, and
+so soon as the carriage was on the way to The Bow he regaled his aunt
+with his evening's experience under the bay window.</p>
+
+<p>"Serves you right," was her only comment; but her laugh told him she
+enjoyed the episode. He went into the house upon her invitation and sat
+with her till nearly eleven, giving an account of himself&mdash;at least all
+the account he cared to give which was intrinsically different from that
+which he gave his mother. Mrs. Champney was what he had once described
+to his mother as "a worldly woman with the rind on," and when he was
+with her, he involuntarily showed that side of his nature which was best
+calculated to make an impression on the "rind." He grew more worldly
+himself, and she rejoiced in what she saw.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>While walking homewards up The Gore, he was wondering why his mother had
+shown such strength of feeling when he expressed the wish that his aunt
+would help him financially to further his plans. He knew the two women
+never had but little intercourse; but with him it was different. He was
+a man, the living representative of two families, and who had a better
+right than he to some of his Aunt Meda's money? A right of blood,
+although on the Champney side distant and collateral. He knew that the
+community as a whole, especially now that his mother had become a factor
+in its new industrial life, was looking to him, as once they had looked
+to his Uncle Louis, to "make good" with his inheritance of race. To this
+end his mother had equipped him with his university training. Why
+shouldn't his aunt be willing to help him? She liked him, that is, she
+liked to talk with him. Sometimes, it is true, it occurred to him that
+his room was better than his company; this was especially noticeable in
+his young days when he was much with his aunt's husband whom he called
+"Uncle Louis." Since his death he had never ceased to visit her at
+Champ-au-Haut&mdash;too much was at stake, for he was the rightful heir to
+her property at least, if not Louis Champney's. She, as well as his
+father, had inherited twenty thousand from the estate in The Gore. His
+father, so he was told, had squandered his patrimony some two years
+before his death. His aunt, on the contrary, had already doubled hers;
+and with skilful manipulation forty thousand in these days might be
+quadrupled easily. It was wise, whatever might happen, to keep on the
+right side of Aunt Meda; and as for giving that promise to his mother he
+neither could nor would. His mind was made up on this point when he
+reached The Gore. He told himself he dared not. Who could say what unmet
+necessity might handicap him at some critical time?&mdash;this was his
+justification.</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of his wonderings, he suddenly remembered the evening's
+mail. He took it out and struck a match to look at the hand-writing.
+Among several letters from New York, he recognized one as having Mr. Van
+Ostend's address on the reverse of the envelope. He tore it open; struck
+another match and, the letter being type-written, hastily read it
+through with the aid of a third and fourth pocket-lucifer; read it in a
+tumult of expectancy, and finished it with an intense and irritating
+sense of disappointment. He vehemently voiced his vexation: "Oh, damn it
+all!"</p>
+
+<p>He did not take the trouble to return the letter to its cover, but kept
+flirting it in his hand as he strode indignantly up the hill, his arms
+swinging like a young windmill's. When he came in sight of the house, he
+looked up at his mother's bedroom window. Her light was still burning;
+despite his admonition she was waiting for him as usual. He must tell
+her before he slept.</p>
+
+<p>"Champney!" she called, when she heard him in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mother; may I come up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course." She opened wide her bedroom door and stood there, waiting
+for him, the lamp in her hand. Her beauty was enhanced by the
+loose-flowing cotton wrapper of pale pink. Her dark heavy hair was
+braided for the night and coiled again and again, crown fashion, on her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Meda never could hold a candle to mother!" was Champney
+Googe's thought on entering. The two sat down for the usual
+before-turning-in-chat.</p>
+
+<p>He was so full of his subject that it overflowed at once in abrupt
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, I've had a letter from Mr. Van Ostend&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Champney!" There was the joy of anticipation in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, mother, don't&mdash;don't expect anything," he pleaded, "for you'll be
+no end cut up over the whole thing. Now, listen." He read the letter;
+the tone of his voice indicated both disgust and indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, look at that!" He burst forth eruptively when he had finished.
+"Here we've been banking on an offer for some position in the syndicate,
+at least, something that would help clear the road to Wall Street where
+I should be able to strike out for myself without being dependent on any
+one&mdash;I didn't mince matters that day of the dinner when I told him what
+I wanted, either! And here I get an offer to go to Europe for five years
+and study banking systems and the Lord knows what in London, Paris, and
+Berlin, and act as a sort of super in his branch offices. Great Scott!
+Does he think a man is going to waste five years of his life in Europe
+at a time when twenty-four hours here at home might make a man! He's a
+donkey if he thinks that, and I'd have given him credit for more common
+sense&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Champney, stop right where you are. Don't boil over so." She
+repressed a smile. "Let's talk business and look at matters as they
+stand."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't;" he said doggedly; "I can't talk business without a business
+basis, and this here,"&mdash;he shook the letter much as Rag shook a
+slipper,&mdash;"it's just slop! What am I going to do over there, I'd like to
+know?" he demanded fiercely; whereupon his mother took the letter from
+his hand and, without heeding his grumbling, read it carefully twice.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, look here, Champney," she said firmly; "you must use some reason.
+I admit this isn't what you wanted or I expected, but it's something;
+many would think it everything. Didn't you tell me only yesterday that
+in these times a man is fortunate to get his foot on any round of the
+ladder&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if I did, I didn't mean the rung of a banking house fire-escape
+over in Europe." He interrupted her, speaking sulkily. Then of a sudden
+he laughed out. "Go on, mother, I'm a chump." His mother smiled and
+continued the broken sentence:</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;And that ten thousand fail where one succeeds in getting even a
+foothold&mdash;to climb, as you want to?"</p>
+
+<p>"But how can I climb? That's the point. Why, I shall be twenty-six in
+five years&mdash;if I live," he added lugubriously.</p>
+
+<p>His mother laughed outright. The splendid specimen of health, vitality,
+and strength before her was in too marked contrast to his words.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't care," he muttered, but joining heartily in her laugh;
+"I've heard of fellows like me going into a decline just out of pure
+homesickness over there."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you will be homesick for Flamsted; I saw no traces of
+that malady while you were in New York. On the contrary, I thought you
+accepted every opportunity to stay away."</p>
+
+<p>"New York is different," he replied, a little shamefaced in the presence
+of the truth he had just heard. "But, mother, you would be alone here."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm used to it, Champney;" she spoke as it were perfunctorily; "and I
+am ambitious to see you succeed as you wish to. I want to see you in a
+position which will fulfil both your hopes and mine; but neither you nor
+I can choose the means, not yet; we haven't the money. For my part, I
+think you should accept this offer; it's one in ten thousand. Work your
+way up during these five years into Mr. Van Ostend's confidence, and I
+am sure, <i>sure</i>, that by that time he will have something for you that
+will satisfy even your young ambition. I think, moreover, it is a
+necessity for you to accept this, Champney."</p>
+
+<p>"You do; why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, for a good many reasons. I doubt, in the first place, if these
+quarries can get under full running headway for the next seven years,
+and even if you had been offered some position of trust in connection
+with them, you haven't had an opportunity to prove yourself worthy of it
+in a business way. I doubt, too, if the salary would be any larger; it
+is certainly a fair one for the work he offers." She consulted the
+letter. "Twelve hundred for the first year, and for every succeeding
+year an additional five hundred. What more could you expect,
+inexperienced as you are? Many men have to give their services gratis
+for a while to obtain entrance into such offices and have their names,
+even, connected with such a financier. This opportunity is a business
+asset. I feel convinced, moreover, that you need just this discipline."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"For some other good reasons. For one, you would be brought into daily
+contact with men, experienced men, of various nationalities&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You can be that in New York. There isn't a city in the world where you
+can gain such a cosmopolitan experience." He was still protesting, still
+insisting. His mother made no reply, nor did she notice the
+interruption.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;Learn their ways, their point of view. All this would be of infinite
+help if, later on, you should come into a position of great
+responsibility in connection with the quarry syndicate.&mdash;It does seem so
+strange that hundreds will make their livelihood from our barren
+pastures!" She spoke almost to herself, and for a moment they were
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>"And look at this invitation to cross in his yacht with his family!
+Champney, you know perfectly well nothing could be more courteous or
+thoughtful; it saves your passage money, and it shows plainly his
+interest in you personally."</p>
+
+<p>"I know; that part isn't half bad." He spoke with interest and less
+reluctance. "I saw the yacht last spring lying in North River; she's a
+perfect floating palace they say. Of course, I appreciate the
+invitation; but supposing&mdash;only supposing, you know,"&mdash;this as a warning
+not to take too much for granted,&mdash;"I should accept. How could I live on
+twelve hundred a year? He spends twice that on a cook. How does he think
+a fellow is going to dress and live on that? 'T was a tight squeeze in
+college on thirteen hundred."</p>
+
+<p>His mother knew his way so well, that she recognized in this insistent
+piling of one obstacle upon another the budding impulse to yield. She
+was willing to press the matter further.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, clothes are cheaper abroad and living is not nearly so dear. You
+could be quite the gentleman on your second year's salary, and, of
+course, I can help out with the interest on the twenty thousand. You
+forget this."</p>
+
+<p>"By George, I did, mother! You're a trump; but I don't want you to think
+I want to cut any figure over there; I don't care enough about 'em. But
+I want enough to have a ripping good time to compensate for staying away
+so long."</p>
+
+<p>"You need not stay five consecutive years away from home. Look here,
+Champney; you have read this letter with your eyes but not with your
+wits. Your boiling condition was not conducive to clear-headedness."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I say mother! Don't rap a fellow too hard when he's down."</p>
+
+<p>"You're not down; you're up,"&mdash;she held her ground with him right
+sturdily,&mdash;"up on the second round already, my son; only you don't know
+it. Here it is in black and white that you can come home for six weeks
+after two years, and the fifth year is shortened by three months if all
+goes well. What more do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's something, anyway."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, I want you to think this over."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could run down to New York for a day or two; it would help a
+lot. I could look round and possibly find an opening in the direction I
+want. I want to do this before deciding."</p>
+
+<p>"Champney, I shall lose patience with you soon. You know you, can't run
+down to New York for even a day. Mr. Van Ostend states the fact baldly:
+'Your decision I must have by telegraph, at the latest, by Thursday
+noon.' That's day after to-morrow. 'We sail on Saturday.' Mr. Van Ostend
+is not a man to waste a breath, as you have said."</p>
+
+<p>Champney had no answer ready. He evaded the question. "I'll tell you
+to-morrow, mother. It's late; you mustn't sit up any longer." He looked
+at his watch. "One o'clock. Good night."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Champney. Leave your door into the hall wide open; it's so
+close."</p>
+
+<p>She put out her light and sat down by the window. The night was
+breathless; not a leaf of the elm trees quivered. She heard the Rothel
+picking its way down the rocky channel of The Gore. She gave herself up
+to thought, far-reaching both into the past and the future. Soon,
+mingled with the murmur of the brook, she heard her son's quiet measured
+breathing. She rose, walked noiselessly down the hall and stood at his
+bedroom door, to gaze&mdash;mother-like, to worship. The moonlight just
+touched the pillow. He lay with his head on his arm; the full white
+chest was partly bared; the spare length of the muscular body was
+outlined beneath the sheet. Her eyes filled with tears. She turned from
+the door, and, noiselessly as she had come, went back to her room and
+her couch.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>How little the pending decision weighed on his mind was proven by his
+long untroubled sleep; but directly after a late breakfast he told his
+mother he was going out to prospect a little in The Gore; and she,
+understanding, questioned him no further. He whistled to Rag and turned
+into the side road that led to the first quarry. There was no work going
+on there. This small ownership of forty acres was merged in the
+syndicate which had so recently acquired the two hundred acres from the
+Googe estate. He made his way over the hill and around to the head of
+The Gore. He wanted to climb the cliff-like rocks and think it out under
+the pines, landmarks of his early boyhood. He picked his way among the
+boulders and masses of sheep laurel; he was thinking not of the quarries
+but of himself; he did not even inquire of himself how the sale of the
+quarries might be about to affect his future.</p>
+
+<p>Champney Googe was self-centred. The motives for all his actions in a
+short and uneventful life were the spokes to his particular hub of self;
+the tire, that bound them and held them to him, he considered merely the
+necessary periphery of constant contact with people and things by which
+his own little wheel of fortune might be made to roll the more easily.
+He was following some such line of thought while turning Mr. Van
+Ostend's plan over and over in his mind, viewing it from all sides. It
+was not what he wanted, but it might lead to that. His eyes were on the
+rough ground beneath him, his thoughts busy with the pending decision,
+when he was taken out of himself by hearing an unexpected voice in his
+vicinity.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Mr. Googe. Am I poaching on your preserve?"</p>
+
+<p>Champney recognized the voice at once. It was Father Honor&eacute;'s hailing
+him from beneath the pines. He was sitting with his back against one; a
+violin lay on its cover beside him; on his lap was a drawing-board with
+rule and compass pencil. Champney realized on the instant, and with a
+feeling of pleasure, that the priest's presence was no intrusion even at
+this juncture.</p>
+
+<p>"No, indeed, for it is no longer my preserve," he answered cheerily, and
+added, with a touch of earnestness that was something of a surprise to
+himself, "and it wouldn't be if it were still mine."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Googe; I appreciate that. You must find it hard to see a
+stranger like myself pre&euml;mpting your special claim, as I fancy this one
+is."</p>
+
+<p>"It used to be when I was a youngster; but, to tell the truth, I haven't
+cared for it much of late years. The city life spoils a man for this. I
+love that rush and hustle and rubbing-elbows with the world in general,
+getting knocked about&mdash;and knocking." He laughed merrily, significantly,
+and Father Honor&eacute;, catching his meaning at once, laughed too. "But I'm
+not telling you any news; of course, you've had it all."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, all and a surfeit. I was glad to get away to this hill-quiet."</p>
+
+<p>Champney sat down on the thick rusty-red matting of pine needles and
+turned to him, a question in his eyes. Father Honor&eacute; smiled. "What is
+it?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask if it was your own choice coming up here to us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my deliberate choice. I had to work for it, though. The superior
+of my order was against my coming. It took moral suasion to get the
+appointment."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't suppose they wanted to lose a valuable man from the city," said
+Champney bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>"The question of value is not, happily, a question of environment. I
+simply felt I could do my best work here in the best way."</p>
+
+<p>"And you didn't consider yourself at all?" Champney put the question,
+which voiced his thought, squarely.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm human," he answered smiling at the questioner; "don't make any
+mistake on that point; and I don't suppose many of us can eliminate self
+wholly in a matter of choice. I did want to work here because I believe
+I can do the best work, but I also welcomed the opportunity to get away
+from the city&mdash;it weighs on me, weighs on me," he added, but it sounded
+as if he were merely thinking aloud.</p>
+
+<p>Champney failed to comprehend him. Father Honor&eacute;, raising his eyes,
+caught the look on the young man's face and interpreted it. He said
+quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"But then you're twenty-one and I'm forty-five; that accounts for it."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment, but a moment only, Champney was tempted to speak out to
+this man, stranger as he was. Mr. Van Ostend evidently had confidence in
+him; why shouldn't he? Perhaps he might help him to decide, and for the
+best. But even as the thought flashed into consciousness, he was aware
+of its futility. He was sure the man would repeat only what his mother
+had said. He did not care to hear that twice. And what was this man to
+him that he should ask his opinion, appeal to him for advice in
+directing this step in his career? He changed the subject abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you said you had met Mr. Van Ostend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, twice in connection with the orphan child, as I told you, and once
+I dined with him. He has a charming family: his sister and his little
+daughter. Have you met them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only once. He has just written me and asked me to join them on his
+yacht for a trip to Europe." Champney felt he was coasting on the edge,
+and enjoyed the sport.</p>
+
+<p>"And of course you're going? I can't imagine a more delightful host."
+Father Honor&eacute; spoke with enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>But Champney failed to respond in like manner. The priest took note of
+it.</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't made up my mind;" he spoke slowly; then, smiling merrily into
+the other's face, "and I came up here to try to make it up."</p>
+
+<p>"And I was here so you couldn't do it, of course!" Father Honor&eacute;
+exclaimed so ruefully that Champney's hearty laugh rang out. "No, no; I
+didn't mean for you to take it in that way. I'm glad I found you here&mdash;I
+liked what you said about the 'value'."</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; looked mystified for a moment; his brow contracted in the
+effort to recall at the moment what he had said about "value", and in
+what connection; but instead of any further question as to Champney's
+rather incoherent meaning, he handed him the drawing-board.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the plan for my shack, Mr. Googe. I have written to Mr. Van
+Ostend to ask if the company would have any objection to my putting it
+here near these pines. I understand the quarries are to be opened up as
+far as the cliff, and sometime, in the future, my house will be neighbor
+to the workers. I suppose then I shall have to 'move on'. I'm going to
+build it myself."</p>
+
+<p>"All yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? I'm a fairly good mason; I've learned that trade, and there is
+plenty of material, good material, all about." He looked over upon the
+rock-strewn slopes. "I'm going to use some of the granite waste too." He
+put his violin into its case and held out his hand for the board. "I'm
+going now, Mr. Googe; I shall be interested to know your decision as
+soon as you yourself know about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll let you know by to-morrow. I've nearly a day of grace. You play?
+You are a musician?" he asked, as Father Honor&eacute; rose and tucked the
+violin and drawing-board under his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"My matins," the priest answered, smiling down into the curiously eager
+face that with the fresh unlined beauty of young manhood was upturned to
+his. "Good morning." He lifted his hat and walked rapidly away without
+waiting for any further word from Champney.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure-footed as a mountain goat!" Champney said to himself as he watched
+him cross the rough hilltop. "I'd like to know where he gets it all!"</p>
+
+<p>He stretched out under the pines, his hands clasped under his head, and
+fell to thinking of his own affairs, into the as yet undecided course of
+which the memory of the priest's words, "The question of value is not,
+happily, a question of environment" fell with the force of gravity.</p>
+
+<p>"I might as well go it blind," he spoke aloud to himself: "it's all a
+matter of luck into which ring you shy your hat; I suppose it's the
+'value', after all, that does it in the end. Besides&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He did not finish that thought aloud; but he suddenly sat bolt upright,
+a fist pressed hard on each knee. His face hardened into determination.
+"By George, what an ass I've been! If I can't do it in one way I can in
+another.&mdash;Hoop! Hooray!"</p>
+
+<p>He turned a somersault then and there; came right side up; cuffed the
+dazed puppy goodnaturedly and bade him "Come on", which behest the
+little fellow obeyed to the best of his ability among the rough ways of
+the sheep walks.</p>
+
+<p>He did not stop at the house, but walked straight down to Flamsted, Rag
+lagging at his heels. He sent a telegram to New York. Then he went
+homewards in the broiling sun, carrying the exhausted puppy under his
+arm. His mother met him on the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"I've just telegraphed Mr. Van Ostend, mother, that I'll be in New York
+Friday, ready to sail on Saturday."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear boy!" That was all she said then; but she laid her hand on his
+shoulder when they went in to dinner, and Champney knew she was
+satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later, Champney Googe, having bade good-bye to his neighbors,
+the Caukinses large and small, to Octavius, Ann and Hannah,&mdash;Aileen was
+gone on an errand when he called last at Champ-au-Haut but he left his
+remembrance to her with the latter&mdash;to his aunt, to Joel Quimber and
+Augustus, to Father Honor&eacute; and a host of village well-wishers who, in
+their joyful anticipation of his future and his fortunes, laid aside all
+factional differences, said, at last, farewell to Flamsted, to The
+Corners, The Bow, and his home among the future quarries in The Gore.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_THIRD" id="PART_THIRD"></a>PART THIRD</h2>
+
+<h3>In the Stream</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Milton Caukins had her trials, but they were of a kind some people
+would call "blessed torments." The middle-aged mother of eight children,
+six boys, of whom Romanzo was the eldest, and twin girls, Elvira Caukins
+might with justice lay claim to a superabundance of a certain kind of
+trial. Every Sunday morning proved the crux of her experience, and Mrs.
+Caukins' nerves were correspondingly shaken. To use her own words, she
+"was all of a tremble" by the time she was dressed for church.</p>
+
+<p>On such occasions she was apt to speak her mind, preferably to the
+Colonel; but lacking his presence, to her family severally and
+collectively, to 'Lias, the hired man, or aloud to herself when busy
+about her work. She had been known, on occasion, to acquaint even the
+collie with her state of mind, and had assured the head of the family
+afterwards that there was more sense of understanding of a woman's
+trials in one wag of a dog's tail than in most men's head-pieces.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Caukins!" she called up the stairway. She never addressed her
+husband in the publicity of domestic life without this prefix; to her
+children she spoke of him as "your pa"; to all others as "the Colonel."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Elvira."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel's voice was leisurely, but muffled owing to the extra heavy
+lather he was laying about his mouth for the Sunday morning shave. His
+wife's voice shrilled again up the staircase:</p>
+
+<p>"It's going on nine o'clock and the boys are nowheres near ready; I
+haven't dressed the twins yet, and the boys are trying to shampoo each
+other&mdash;they've got your bottle of bay rum, and not a single shoe have
+they greased. I wish you'd hurry up and come down; for if there's one
+thing you know I hate it's to go into church after the beginning of the
+first lesson with those boys squeaking and scrunching up the aisle
+behind me. It makes me nervous and upsets me so I can't find the place
+in my prayer book half the time."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be down shortly." The tone was intended to be conciliatory, but it
+irritated Mrs. Caukins beyond measure.</p>
+
+<p>"I know all about your 'shortlies,' Mr. Caukins; they're as long as the
+rector's sermon this very Whit-sunday&mdash;the one day in the whole year
+when the children can't keep still any more than cows in fly time. Did
+you get their peppermints last night?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Gad, my dear, I forgot them! But really&mdash;", his voice was degenerating
+into a mumble owing to the pressure of circumstances, "&mdash;matters of
+such&mdash;er&mdash;supreme importance&mdash;came&mdash;er&mdash;to my knowledge last evening
+that&mdash;that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That what?"</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;That&mdash;that&mdash;mm&mdash;mm&mdash;" there followed the peculiar noise attendant
+upon a general clearing up of much lathered cuticle, "&mdash;I forgot them."</p>
+
+<p>"What matters were they? You didn't say anything about 'supreme
+importance' last night, Mr. Caukins."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell you later, Elvira; just at present I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Was it anything about the quarries?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mm&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>What</i> was it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard young Googe was expected next week."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I declare! I could have told you that much myself if you'd been
+at home in any decent season. It seems pretty poor planning to have to
+run down three miles to The Greenbush every Saturday evening to find out
+what you could know by just stepping across the bridge to Aurora's. She
+told me yesterday. Was that all?"</p>
+
+<p>"N&mdash;no&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"For mercy's sake, Mr. Caukins, don't keep me waiting here any longer!
+It's almost church time."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't aware that I was detaining you, Elvira." The Colonel's protest
+was mild but dignified. There were sounds above of renewed activity.</p>
+
+<p>"Dulcie," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to a little girl who was standing
+beside her, listening with erected ears to her mother's questions and
+father's answers, "go up stairs into mother's room and see if Doosie's
+getting ready, there's a good girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Doosie is with me, Elvira; I would let well enough alone for the
+present, if I were you," said the Colonel admonishingly. His wife wisely
+took the hint. "Come up, Dulcie," he called, "father's ready." Dulcie
+hopped up stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't said what matters of importance kept you last night." Mrs.
+Caukins returned to her muttons with redoubled energy.</p>
+
+<p>"Champney came home unexpectedly last evening, and the syndicate has
+offered him a position, a big one, in New York&mdash;treasurer of the
+Flamsted Quarries Company; and our Romanzo's got a chance too&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't say! What is it?" Mrs. Caukins started up stairs whence came
+sounds of an obstreperous bootjack.</p>
+
+<p>"Paymaster, here in town; I'll explain in more propitious circumstances.
+Has 'Lias harnessed yet, Elvira?"</p>
+
+<p>Without deigning to answer, Mrs. Caukins freed her mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Caukins, I must say you grow more and more like that old ram
+of 'Lias's that has learned to butt backwards just for the sake of going
+contrary to nature. I believe you'd rather tell a piece of news
+backwards than forwards any day! Why didn't you begin by telling me
+about Romanzo? If your own child that's your flesh and blood and bone
+isn't of most interest to you, I'd like to know what is!"</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel's reply was partly inaudible owing to a sudden outbreak of
+altercation among the boys in the room below. Mrs. Caukins, who had just
+reached the landing, turned in her tracks and hurried to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel smiled at the rosy, freshly-shaved face reflected in the
+mirror of the old-fashioned dressing-case, and, at the same time, caught
+the reflection of another image&mdash;that of his hired man, 'Lias, who was
+crossing the yard. He went to the window and leaned out, stemming his
+hands on the sill.</p>
+
+<p>"There seems to be the usual Sunday morning row going on below, 'Lias. I
+fear the boys are shampooing each other's heads with the backs of their
+brushes from the sounds."</p>
+
+<p>'Lias smiled, and nodded understandingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Just look in and lend a hand in case Mrs. Caukins should be
+outnumbered, will you? I'm engaged at present." And deeply engaged he
+was to the twins' unspeakable delight. Whistling softly an air from "Il
+Trovatore," he rubbed some orange-flower water on his chin and cheeks;
+then taking a fresh handkerchief, dabbed several drops on the two little
+noses that waited upon him weekly in expectation of this fragrant boon.
+He was rewarded by a few satisfactory kisses.</p>
+
+<p>"Now run away and help mother&mdash;coach leaves at nine forty-five
+<i>pre</i>-cisely. I forgot the peppermints, but&mdash;" he slapped his trousers'
+pockets significantly.</p>
+
+<p>The twins shouted with delight and rushed away to impart the news to the
+boys.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you would tell me the secret of your boys' conduct in church,
+Colonel Caukins; it's exemplary. I don't understand it, for boys will be
+boys," said the rector one Sunday several years before when all the boys
+were young. He had taken note of their want of restlessness throughout
+the sermon.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel's mouth twitched; he answered promptly, but avoided his
+wife's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"All in the method, I assure you. We Americans have spent a generation
+in experimenting with the inductive, the subjective method in education,
+and the result is, to all intents and purposes, a dismal failure. The
+future will prove the value of the objective, the deductive&mdash;which is
+mine," he added with a sententious emphasis that left the puzzled rector
+no wiser than before.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever the method, Colonel, you have a fine family; there is no
+mistake about that," he said heartily.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel beamed and responded at once:</p>
+
+<p>"'Blessed is the man that hath his quiver full'&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At this point Mrs. Caukins surreptitiously poked the admonitory end of
+her sunshade between the Colonel's shoulder blades, and the Colonel,
+comprehending, desisted from further quotation of scripture. It was not
+his strong point. Once he had been known to quote, not only unblushingly
+but triumphantly, during a touch-and-go discussion of the labor question
+in the town hall:&mdash;"The ass, gentlemen, is worthy of his hire"; and in
+so doing had covered Mrs. Caukins with confusion and made a transient
+enemy of every wage-earner in the audience.</p>
+
+<p>But his boys behaved&mdash;that was the point. What boys wouldn't when their
+heart's desire was conveyed to them at the beginning of the sermon by a
+secret-service-under-the-pew process wholly delightful to the young
+human male? Who wouldn't be quiet for the sake of the peppermints, a
+keen three-bladed knife, or a few gelatine fishes that squirmed on his
+warm moist palm in as lively a manner as if just landed on the lake
+shore? Their father had been a boy, and at fifty had a boy's heart
+within him&mdash;this was the secret of his success.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Caukins appeared at last, radiant in the consciousness of a new
+chip hat and silk blouse. Dulcie and Doosie in white lawn did their
+pains-taking mother credit in every respect. The Colonel gallantly
+presented his wife with a small bunch of early roses&mdash;an attention which
+called up a fine bit of color into her still pretty face. 'Lias helped
+her into the three-seated wagon, then lifted in the twins; the boys
+piled in afterwards; the Colonel took the reins. Mrs. Caukins waved her
+sunshade vigorously at 'Lias and gave a long sigh of relief and
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we're off at last! I declare I miss Maggie every hour in the day.
+I don't know what I should have done all these years without that girl!"</p>
+
+<p>The mention of "Maggie" emphasizes one of the many changes in Flamsted
+during the six years of Champney Googe's absence. Mrs. Caukins, urged by
+her favorite, Aileen, and advised by Mrs. Googe and Father Honor&eacute;, had
+imported Margaret O'Dowd, the "Freckles" of the asylum, as mother's
+helper six months after Aileen's arrival in Flamsted. For nearly six
+years Maggie loyally seconded Mrs. Caukins in the care of her children
+and her household. Slow, but sure and dependable, strong and willing,
+she made herself invaluable in the stone house among the sheep pastures;
+her stunted affections revived and flourished apace in that household of
+well-cared-for children to whom both parents were devoted. It cost her a
+heartache to leave them; but six months ago burly Jim McCann, one of the
+best workmen in the sheds&mdash;although of unruly spirit and a source of
+perennial trouble among the men&mdash;began to make such determined love to
+the mother's helper that the Caukinses found themselves facing
+inevitable loss. Maggie had been married three months; and already
+McCann had quarrelled with the foreman, and, in a huff, despite his
+wife's tears and prayers, sought of his own accord work in another and
+far distant quarry.</p>
+
+<p>"Maggie told me she'd never leave off teasing Jim to bring her back,"
+said the fifth eldest Caukins.&mdash;"Oh, look!" he cried as they rumbled
+over the bridge; "there's Mrs. Googe and Champney on the porch waving to
+us!"</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel took off his hat with a flourish; the boys swung theirs;
+Mrs. Caukins waved her sunshade to mother and son.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare, I'd like to stop just a minute," she said regretfully, for
+the Colonel continued to drive straight on. "I'm so glad for Aurora's
+sake that he's come home; I only hope our Romanzo will do as well."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be an intrusion at such a time, Elvira. The effusions of even
+the best-intentioned friends are injudicious at the inopportune moment
+of domestic reunion."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Caukins subsided on that point. She was always depressed by the
+Colonel's grandiloquence, which he usually reserved for The Greenbush
+and the town-meeting, without being able to account for it.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll see a good many changes here; it's another Flamsted we're living
+in," she remarked later on when they passed the first stone-cutters'
+shed on the opposite shore of the lake; and the family proceeded to
+comment all the way to church on the various changes along the route.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was in truth another Flamsted, the industrial Flamsted which the
+Colonel predicted six years before on that memorable evening in the
+office of The Greenbush.</p>
+
+<p>To watch the transformation of a quiet back-country New England village
+into the life-centre of a great and far-reaching industry, is in itself
+a liberal education, not only in economics, but in inherited
+characteristics of the human race. Those first drops of "the deluge,"
+the French priest and the Irish orphan, were followed by an influx of
+foreigners of many nationalities: Scotch, Irish, Italians, Poles,
+Swedes, Canadian French; and with these were associated a few
+American-born.</p>
+
+<p>Their life-problem, the earning of wages for the sustenance of
+themselves and their families, was one they had in common. Its solution
+was centred for one and all in their work among the granite quarries of
+The Gore and in the stone-cutters' sheds on the north shore of Lake
+Mesantic. These two things the hundreds belonging to a half-dozen
+nationalities possessed in common&mdash;these, and their common humanity
+together with the laws to which it is subject. But aside from this,
+their speech, habits, customs, religions, food, and pastimes were
+polyglot; on this account the lines of racial demarkation were apt, at
+times, to be drawn all too sharply. Yet this very fact of
+differentiation provided hundreds of others&mdash;farmers, shopkeepers,
+jobbers, machinists, mechanics, blacksmiths, small restaurant-keepers,
+pool and billiard room owners&mdash;with ample sources of livelihood.</p>
+
+<p>This internal change in the community of Flamsted corresponded to the
+external. During those six years the very face of nature underwent
+transformation. The hills in the apex of The Gore were shaved clean of
+the thin layer of turf, and acres of granite laid bare to the drill.
+Monster derricks, flat stone-cars, dummy engines, electric motors, were
+everywhere in evidence. Two glittering steel tracks wound downwards
+through old watercourses to the level of the lake, and to the huge
+stone-cutting sheds that stretched their gray length along the northern
+shore. Here the quarried stones, tons in weight, were unloaded by the
+great electric travelling crane which picks up one after the other with
+automatic perfection of silence and accuracy, and deposits them wherever
+needed by the workmen.</p>
+
+<p>A colony of substantial three-room houses, two large boarding-houses, a
+power house and, farther up beyond the pines, a stone house and a long
+low building, partly of wood, partly of granite waste cemented, circled
+the edges of the quarry.</p>
+
+<p>The usual tale of workmen in the fat years was five hundred quarrymen
+and three hundred stone-cutters. This population of working-men, swelled
+to three thousand by the addition of their families, increased or
+diminished according as the years and seasons proved fat or lean. A
+ticker on Wall Street was sufficient to give to the great industry
+abnormal life and activity, and draw to the town a surplus working
+population. A feeling of unrest and depression, long-continued in
+metropolitan financial circles, was responded to with sensitive pulse on
+these far-away hills of Maine and resulted in migratory flights, by tens
+and twenties, of Irish and Poles, of Swedes, Italians, French Canucks,
+and American-born to more favorable conditions. "Here one day and gone
+the next"; even the union did not make for stability of tenure.</p>
+
+<p>In this ceaseless tidal ebb and flow of industrials, the original
+population of Flamsted managed at times to come to the surface to
+breathe; to look about them; to speculate as to "what next?" for the
+changes were rapid and curiosity was fed almost to satiety. A fruitful
+source of speculation was Champney Googe's long absence from home,
+already six years, and his prospects when he should have returned.
+Speculation was also rife when Aurora Googe crossed the ocean to spend a
+summer with her son; at one time rumors were afloat that Champney's
+prospective marriage with a relation of the Van Ostends was near at
+hand, and this was said to be the cause of his mother's rather sudden
+departure. But on her return, Mrs. Googe set all speculation in this
+direction at rest by denying the rumor most emphatically, and adding the
+information for every one's benefit that she had gone over to be with
+Champney because he did not wish to come home at the time his contract
+with Mr. Van Ostend permitted.</p>
+
+<p>Once during the past year, the village wise heads foregathered in the
+office of The Greenbush to discuss the very latest:&mdash;the coming to
+Flamsted of seven Sisters, Daughters of the Mystic Rose, who, foreseeing
+the suppression of their home institution in France, had come to prepare
+a refuge for their order on the shores of America and found another home
+and school among the quarrymen in this distant hill-country of the new
+Maine&mdash;an echo of the old France of their ancestors. This was looked
+upon as an undreamed-of innovation exceeding all others that had come to
+their knowledge; it remained for old Joel Quimber to enter the lists as
+champion of the newcomers, their cause, and their school which, with
+Father Honor&eacute;'s aid, they at once established among the barren hills of
+The Gore.</p>
+
+<p>"Hounded out er France, poor souls, just like my own
+great-great-great-granther's father!" he said, referring to the subject
+again on that last Saturday evening when the frequenters of The
+Greenbush were to be stirred shortly by the news they considered best of
+all: Champney Googe's unexpected arrival. "I was up thar yisterd'y an'
+it beats all how snug they're fixed! The schoolroom's ez neat as a pin,
+an' pitchers on the walls wuth a day's journey to see. They're havin' a
+room built onto the farther end&mdash;a kind of er relief hospital, so
+Father Honor&eacute; told me&mdash;ter help out when the quarrymen git a jammed foot
+er finger, so's they needn't be took home to muss up their little cabins
+an' worrit their wives an' little 'uns. I heerd Aileen hed ben goin' up
+thar purty reg'lar lately for French an' sich; guess Mis' Champney's
+done 'bout the right thing by her, eh, Tave?"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius nodded. "And Aileen's done the right thing by Mrs. Champney. 'T
+isn't every young girl that would stick to it as Aileen's done the last
+six years&mdash;not in the circumstances."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, Tave. I heerd not long ago thet she was a-goin' on the
+stage when she'd worked out her freedom, and by A. J. she's got the
+voice for it! But I'd hate ter see <i>her</i> thar. She's made a lot er
+sunshine in this place, and I guess from all I hear there's them thet
+would stan' out purty stiff agin it; they say Luigi Poggi an' Romanzo
+Caukins purty near fit over her t' other night."</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't believe all you hear, Joel, but you can believe me when I
+tell you there'll be no going on the stage for Aileen&mdash;not if I know it,
+or Father Honor&eacute; either."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke so emphatically that his brother Augustus looked at him in
+surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"What's up, Tave?" he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean Aileen's got a level head and isn't going to leave just as
+things are beginning to get interesting. She's stood it six year and she
+can stand it six more if she makes up her mind to it, and I'd ought to
+know, seeing as I've lived with her ever since she come to Flamsted."</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, Tave, to be sure; nobody knows better'n you, 'bout Aileen,
+an' I guess she's come to look on you, from all I hear, as her special
+piece of property." His brother spoke appeasingly.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius smiled. "Well, I don't deny but she lays claim to me most of
+the time; it's 'Octavius' here and 'Octavius' there all day long.
+Sometimes Mrs. Champney ruffs up about it, but Aileen has a way of
+smoothing her down, generally laughs her out of it. Is that the
+Colonel?" He listened to a step on the veranda. "Don't let on 'bout
+anything 'twixt Romanzo and Aileen before the Colonel, Joel."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't hev ter say thet to me," said old Quimber resentfully;
+"anybody can see through a barn door when thar's a hole in it. All on us
+know Mis' Champney's a-breakin'; they do say she's hed a shock,
+leastwise I heerd so, an' Aileen'll look out for A No. 1. I ain't lived
+to be most eighty in Flamsted for nothin', an' I've seen an' heerd
+more'n I've ever told, Tave; more'n even you know 'bout some things. You
+don't remember the time old Square Googe took Aurory inter his home to
+bring up an' Judge Champney said he was sorry he'd got ahead of him for
+he wanted to adopt her for a daughter himself; them's his words; I heerd
+him. An' I can tell more'n&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, Quimber," said Octavius shortly; and Joel Quimber "shut up,"
+but, winking knowingly at Augustus Buzzby, continued to chuckle to
+himself till the Colonel entered who, beginning to expatiate upon the
+subject of Champney Googe's prospects when he should have returned to
+the home-welcome awaiting him, was happily interrupted by the
+announcement of that young man's unexpected arrival on the evening
+train.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>Champney Googe was beginning to realize, as he stood on the porch with
+his mother and waved to his old neighbors, the Caukinses, the changed
+conditions he was about to face. He was also realizing that he must
+change to meet these conditions. On his way up from the train Saturday
+evening, he noted the power house at The Corners and the substantial
+line of comfortable cottages that extended for a mile along the highroad
+to the entrance of the village. He found Main Street brilliant with
+electric lights and lined nearly its entire length with shops, large and
+small, which were thronged with week-end purchasers. An Italian fruit
+store near The Greenbush bore the proprietor's name, Luigi Poggi; as he
+drove past he saw an old Italian woman bargaining with smiles and lively
+gestures over the open counter. Farther on, from an improvised wooden
+booth, the raucous voice of the phonograph was jarring the night air and
+entertaining a motley group gathered in front of it. Across the street a
+flaunting poster announced "Moving Picture Show for a Nickel." Vehicles
+of all descriptions, from a Maine "jigger" to a "top buggy," were
+stationary along the village thoroughfare, their various steeds hitched
+to every available stone post. In front of the rectory some Italian
+children were dancing to the jingle of a tambourine.</p>
+
+<p>On nearing The Bow the confusion ceased; the polyglot sounds were
+distinguishable only as a murmur. In passing Champ-au-Haut, he looked
+up at the house; here and there a light shone behind drawn shades. Six
+years had passed since he was last there; six years&mdash;and time had not
+dulled the sensation of that white pepper in his nostrils! He smiled to
+himself. He must see Aileen before he left, for from time to time he had
+heard good reports of her from his mother with whom she had become a
+favorite. He thought she must be mighty plucky to stand Aunt Meda all
+this time! He gathered from various sources that Mrs. Champney was
+growing peculiar as she approached three score and ten. Her rare letters
+to him, however, were kind enough. But he was sure Aileen's anomalous
+place in the household at Champ-au-Haut&mdash;neither servant nor child of
+the house, never adopted, but only maintained&mdash;could have been no
+sinecure. Anyway, he knew she had kept the devotion of her two admirers,
+Romanzo Caukins and Octavius Buzzby. From a hint in his aunt's last
+letter, he drew the conclusion that Aileen and Romanzo would make a
+match of it before long, when Romanzo should be established. At any
+rate, Aileen had wit enough, he was sure, to know on which side her
+bread was buttered, and from all he heard by the way of letters, Romanzo
+Caukins was not to be sneezed at as a prospective husband&mdash;a
+steady-going, solid sort of a chap who, he was told, had a chance now
+like himself in the quarry business. He must credit Aunt Meda with this
+one bit of generosity, at least; Mr. Van Ostend told him she had applied
+to him for some working position for Romanzo in the Flamsted office, and
+not in vain; he was about to be put in as pay-master.</p>
+
+<p>As he drove slowly up the highroad towards The Gore, he saw the
+stone-cutters' sheds stretching dim and gray in the moonlight along the
+farther shore. A standing train of loaded flat-cars gleamed in the
+electric light like a long high-piled drift of new-fallen snow. Here and
+there, on approaching The Gore, an arc-light darkened the hills round
+about and sent its blinding glare into the traveller's eyes. At last,
+his home was in sight&mdash;his home!&mdash;he wondered that he did not experience
+a greater thrill of home-coming&mdash;and behind and above it the many
+electric lights in and around the quarries produced hazy white
+reflections concentrated in luminous spots on the clear sky.</p>
+
+<p>His mother met him on the porch. Her greeting was such that it caused
+him to feel, and for the first time, that where she was, there,
+henceforth, his true home must ever be.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"It will be hard work adjusting myself at first, mother," he said,
+turning to her after watching the wagonload of Caukinses out of sight,
+"harder than I had any idea of. A foreign business training may broaden
+a man in some ways, but it leaves his muscles flabby for real home work
+here in America. You make your fight over there with gloves, and here
+only bare knuckles are of any use; but I'm ready for it!" He smiled and
+squared his shoulders as to an imaginary load.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't regret it, do you, Champney?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes and no, mother. I don't regret it because I have gained a certain
+knowledge of men and things available only to one who has lived over
+there; but I do regret that, because of the time so spent, I am, at
+twenty-seven, still hugging the shore&mdash;just as I was when I left
+college. After all these years I'm not 'in it' yet; but I shall be
+soon," he added; the hard determined ring of steadfast purpose was in
+his voice. He sat down on the lower step: his mother brought forward
+her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Champney," she spoke half hesitatingly; she did not find it easy to
+question the man before her as she used to question the youth of
+twenty-one, "would you mind telling me if there ever was any truth in
+the rumor that somehow got afloat over here three years ago that you
+were going to marry Ruth Van Ostend? Of course, I denied it when I got
+home, for I knew you would have told me if there had been anything to
+it."</p>
+
+<p>Champney clasped his hands about his knee and nursed it, smiling to
+himself, before he answered:</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I may as well make a clean breast of the whole affair, which
+is little enough, mother, even if I didn't cover myself with glory and
+come out with colors flying. You see I was young and, for all my four
+years in college, pretty green when it came to the real life of those
+people&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You mean the Van Ostends?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, their kind. It's one thing to accept their favors, and it's quite
+another to make them think you are doing them one. So I sailed in to
+make Ruth Van Ostend interested in me as far as possible, circumstances
+permitting&mdash;and you'll admit that a yachting trip is about as favorable
+as they make it. You know she's three years older than I, and I think it
+flattered and amused her to accept my devotion for a while, but then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Champney, did you love her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, to be honest, mother, I hadn't got that far myself&mdash;don't know
+that I ever should have; any way, I wanted to get her to the point
+before I went through any self-catechism on that score."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Champney!" She spoke with whole-hearted protest.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded up at her understandingly. "I know the 'but', mother; but
+that's how it stood with me. You know they were in Paris the next spring
+and, of course, I saw a good deal of them&mdash;and of many others who were
+dancing attendance on the heiress to the same tune that I was. But I
+caught on soon, and saw all the innings were with one special man; and,
+well&mdash;I didn't make a fool of myself, that's all. As you know, she was
+married the autumn after your return, three years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"You're sure you really didn't mind, Champney?"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed out at that. "Mind! Well, rather! You see it knocked one of
+my little plans higher than a kite&mdash;a plan I made the very day I decided
+to accept Mr. Van Ostend's offer. Of course I minded."</p>
+
+<p>"What plan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wonder if I'd better tell you, mother? I'd like to stand well in your
+good graces&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Champney!"</p>
+
+<p>"Fact, I would. Well, here goes then: I decided&mdash;I was lying up under
+the pines, you know that day I didn't want to accept his offer?"&mdash;she
+nodded confirmatorily&mdash;"that if I couldn't have an opportunity to get
+rich quick in one way, I would in another; and, in accepting the offer,
+I made up my mind to try for the sister and her millions; if successful,
+I intended to take by that means a short cut to matrimony and fortune."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Champney!"</p>
+
+<p>"Young and fresh and&mdash;hardened, wasn't it, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"You were so young, so ignorant, so unused to that sort of living; you
+had no realization of the difficulties of life&mdash;of love&mdash;."</p>
+
+<p>She began speaking as if in apology for his weakness, but ended with the
+murmured words "life&mdash;love", in a voice so tense with pain that it
+sounded as if the major dominant of youth and ignorance suddenly
+suffered transcription into a haunting minor.</p>
+
+<p>Her son looked up at her in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, mother, don't take it so hard; I assure you I didn't. It brought
+me down to bed rock, for I was making a conceited ass of myself that's
+all, in thinking I could have roses for fodder instead of thistles&mdash;and
+just for the asking! It did me no end of good. I shall never rush in
+again where even angels fear to tread except softly&mdash;I mean the male
+wingless kind&mdash;worth a couple of millions; she has seven in her own
+right.&mdash;But we're the best of friends."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke without bitterness. His mother felt, however, at the moment,
+that she would have preferred to hear a note of keen disappointment in
+his explanation rather than this tone of lightest persiflage.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see how&mdash;" she began, but checked herself. A slight flush
+mounted in her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"See how what, mother? Please don't leave me dangling; I'm willing to
+take all you can give. I deserve it."</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't going to blame you, Champney. I'm the last one to do
+that&mdash;Life teaches each in her own way. I was only thinking I didn't see
+how any girl <i>could</i> resist loving you, dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ho! Don't you, mother mine! Well, commend me to a doting&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm <i>not</i> doting, Champney," she protested, laughing; "I know your
+faults better than you know them yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"A doting mother, I say, to brace up a man fallen through his pride. Do
+you mean to say"&mdash;, he sprang to his feet, faced her, his hands thrust
+deep in his pockets, his face alive with the fun of the moment,&mdash;"do you
+mean to say that if you were a girl I should prove irresistible to you?
+Come now, mother, tell me, honor bright."</p>
+
+<p>She raised her eyes to his. The flush faded suddenly in her cheeks,
+leaving them unnaturally white; her eyes filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"I should worship you," she said under her breath, and dropped her head
+into her hands. He sprang up the steps to her side.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, mother, mother, don't speak so. I'm not worthy of it&mdash;it shames
+me. Here, look up," he took her bowed head tenderly between his hands
+and raised it, "look into my face; read it well&mdash;interpret, and you will
+cease to idealize, mother."</p>
+
+<p>She wiped her eyes, half-smiling through her tears. "I'm not idealizing,
+Champney, and I didn't know I could be so weak; I think&mdash;I think the
+telegram and your coming so unexpectedly&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know, mother," he spoke soothingly, "it was too much; you've been too
+long alone. I'm glad I'm at home at last and can run up here almost any
+time." He patted her shoulder softly, and whistled for Rag. "Come, put
+on your shade hat and we'll go up to the quarries. I want to see them;
+do you realize they are the largest in the country? It's wonderful what
+a change they've made here! After all, it takes America to forge ahead,
+for we've got the opportunities and the money to back them&mdash;and what
+more is needed to make us great?" He spoke lightly, expecting no
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>She brought her hat and the two went up the side road under the elms to
+the quarry.</p>
+
+<p>Ay, what more is needed to make us great? That is the question. There
+comes a time when a man, whose ears are not wholly deafened by the roar
+of a trafficking commercialism, asks this question of himself in the
+hope that some answer may be vouchsafed to him. If it come at all, it
+comes like the "still small voice" <i>after the whirlwind</i>; and the man
+who asks that question in the expectation of a response, must first have
+suffered, repented, struggled, fought, at times succumbed to fateful
+overwhelming circumstance, before his soul can be attuned so finely that
+the "still small voice" becomes audible. Youth and that question are not
+synchronous.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"I've not been so much alone as you imagine, Champney," said his mother.
+They were picking their way over the granite slopes and around to Father
+Honor&eacute;'s house. "Aileen and Father Honor&eacute; and all the Caukinses and,
+during this last year, those sweet women of the sisterhood have brought
+so much life into my life up here among these old sheep pastures that
+I've not had the chance to feel the loneliness I otherwise should. And
+then there is that never-to-be-forgotten summer with you over the
+ocean&mdash;I feed constantly on the remembrance of all that delight."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad you had it, mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, this great industry is so many-sided that it keeps me
+interested in every new development in spite of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, mother, you wrote me that you had invested most of that
+twenty thousand from the quarry lands in bank stock, didn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Mr. Emlie is president now; he is considered safe. The deposits
+have quadrupled these last two years, and the dividends have been
+satisfactory."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know Emlie's safe enough, but you don't want to tie up your
+money so that you can't convert it at once into cash if advisable. You
+know I shall be on the inside track now and in a position to use a
+little of it at a time judiciously in order to increase it for you. I'd
+like to double it for you as Aunt Meda has doubled her inheritance from
+grandfather&mdash;Who's that?"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short and, shading his eyes with his hat, nodded in the
+direction of the sisterhood house that stood perhaps an eighth of a mile
+beyond the pines. His mother, following his look, saw the figure of a
+girl dodge around the corner of the house. Before she could answer, Rag,
+the Irish terrier, who had been nosing disconsolately about on the
+barren rock, suddenly lost his head. With one short suppressed yelp, he
+laid his heels low to the slippery granite shelves and scuttled,
+scurried, scrambled, tore across the intervening quarry hollow like a
+bundle of brown tow driven before a hurricane.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Googe laughed. "No need to ask 'who' when you see Rag go mad like
+that! It's Aileen; Rag has been devoted to her ever since you've been
+gone. I wonder why she isn't at church?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl disappeared in the house. Again and again Champney whistled for
+his dog but Rag failed to put in an appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"He'll need to be re-trained. It isn't well, even for a dog, to be under
+such petticoat government as that; it spoils him. Only I'm afraid I
+sha'n't be at home long enough to make him hear to reason."</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen has him in good training. She knows the dog adores her and makes
+the most of it. Oh, I forgot to tell you I sent word to Father Honor&eacute;
+this morning to come over to tea to-night. I knew you would like to see
+him, and he has been anticipating your return."</p>
+
+<p>"Has he? What for I wonder. By the way, where did he take his meals
+after he left you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Over in the boarding-house with the men. He stayed with me only three
+months, until his house was built. He has an old French Canadian for
+housekeeper now."</p>
+
+<p>"He's greatly beloved, I hear."</p>
+
+<p>"The Gore wouldn't be The Gore without him," Mrs. Googe spoke earnestly.
+"The Colonel"&mdash;she laughed as she always did when about to quote her
+rhetorical neighbor&mdash;"speaks of him to everyone as 'the heart of the
+quarry that responds to the throb of the universal human,' and so far as
+I know no one has ever taken exception to it, for it's true."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember&mdash;he was an all round fine man. I shall be glad to see him
+again. He must find some pretty tough customers up here to deal with,
+and the Colonel's office is no longer the soft snap it was for fifteen
+years, I'll bet."</p>
+
+<p>"No, that's true; but, on the whole, there is less trouble than you
+would expect among so many nationalities. Isn't it queer?&mdash;Father Honor&eacute;
+says that most of the serious trouble comes from disputes between the
+Hungarians and Poles about religious questions. They are apt to settle
+it with fists or something worse. But he and the Colonel have managed
+well between them; they have settled matters with very few arrests."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't imagine the Colonel in that r&ocirc;le." Champney laughed. "What does
+he do with all his rhetorical trumpery at such times? I've never seen
+him under fire&mdash;in fact, he never had been when I left."</p>
+
+<p>"I know he doesn't like it. He told me he shouldn't fill the office
+after another year. You know he was obliged to do it to make both ends
+meet; but since the opening of the quarries he has really prospered and
+has a market right here in town for all the mutton he can raise. I'm so
+glad Romanzo's got a chance."</p>
+
+<p>They rambled on, crossing the apex of The Gore and getting a good view
+of the great extent of the opened quarries. Their talk drifted from one
+thing to another, Champney questioning about this one and that, until,
+as they turned homewards, he declared he had picked up the many dropped
+stitches so fast, that he should feel no longer a stranger in his native
+place when he should make his first appearance in the town the next day.
+He wanted to renew acquaintance with all the people at Champ-au-Haut and
+the old habitu&eacute;s of The Greenbush.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>He walked down to Champ-au-Haut the next afternoon. Here and there on
+the mountain side and along the highroad he noticed the massed pink and
+white clusters of the sheep laurel. Every singing bird was in full
+voice; thrush and vireo, robin, meadow lark, song-sparrow and catbird
+were singing as birds sing but once in the whole year; when the mating
+season is at its height and the long migratory flight northwards is
+forgotten in the supreme instinctive joy of the ever-new miracle of
+procreation.</p>
+
+<p>When he came to The Bow he went directly to the paddock gate. He was
+hoping to find Octavius somewhere about. He wanted to interview him
+before seeing any one else, in regard to Rag who had not returned. The
+recalcitrant terrier must be punished in a way he could not forget; but
+Champney was not minded to administer this well-deserved chastisement in
+the presence of the dog's protectress. He feared to make a poor first
+impression.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped a moment at the gate to look down the lane&mdash;what a beautiful
+estate it was! He wondered if his aunt intended leaving anything of it
+to the girl she had kept with her all these years. Somehow he had
+received the impression, whether from Mr. Van Ostend or his sister he
+could not recall, that she once said she did not mean to adopt her. His
+mother never mentioned the matter to him; indeed, she shunned all
+mention, when possible, of Champ-au-Haut and its owner.</p>
+
+<p>In his mind's eye he could still see this child as he saw her on the
+stage at the Vaudeville, clad first in rags, then in white; as he saw
+her again dressed in the coarse blue cotton gown of orphan asylum order,
+sitting in the shade of the boat house on that hot afternoon in July,
+and rubbing her greasy hands in glee; as he saw her for the third time
+leaning from the bedroom window and listening to his improvised
+serenade. Well, he had a bone to pick with her about his dog; that would
+make things lively for a while and serve for an introduction. He reached
+over to unlatch the gate. At that moment he heard Octavius' voice in
+violent protest. It came from behind a group of apple trees down the
+lane in the direction of the milking shed.</p>
+
+<p>"Now don't go for to trying any such experiment as that, Aileen; you'll
+fret the cow besides mussing your clean dress."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care; it'll wash. Now, please, do let me, Tave, just this
+once."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you the cow won't give down her milk if you take hold of her.
+She'll get all in a fever having a girl fooling round her." There
+followed the rattle of pails and a stool.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, look here, Octavius Buzzby, who knows best about a cow, you or I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, seeing as I've made it my business to look after cows ever since
+I was fifteen year old, you can't expect me to give in to you and say
+<i>you</i> do."</p>
+
+<p>Her merry laugh rang out. Champney longed to echo it, but thought best
+to lie low for a while and enjoy the fun so unexpectedly provided.</p>
+
+<p>"Tavy, dear, that only goes to prove you are a mere man; a dear one to
+be sure&mdash;but then! Don't you flatter yourself for one moment that you,
+or any other man, really know any creature of the feminine gender from a
+woman to a cow. You simply can't, Tavy, because you aren't feminine.
+<i>Can</i> you comprehend that? Can you say on your honor as a man that you
+have ever been able to tell for certain what Mrs. Champney, or Hannah,
+or I, for instance, or this cow, or the cat, or Bellona, when she hasn't
+been ridden enough, or the old white hen you've been trying to force to
+sit the last two weeks, is going to do next? Now, honor bright, have
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius was grumbling some reply inaudible to Champney.</p>
+
+<p>"No, of course you haven't; and what's more you never will. Not that
+it's your fault, Tavy, dear, it's only your misfortune." Exasperating
+patronage was audible in her voice. Champney noted that a trace of the
+rich Irish brogue was left. "Here, give me that pail."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, Aileen, you can't do it; you've never learned to milk."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, haven't I? Look here, Tave, now no more nonsense; Romanzo taught me
+how two years ago&mdash;but we both took care you shouldn't know anything
+about it. Give me that pail." This demand was peremptory.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently Octavius was weakening, for Champney heard again the rattle of
+the pails and the stool; then a swish of starched petticoat and a cooing
+"There, there, Bess."</p>
+
+<p>He opened the gate noiselessly and closing it behind him walked down the
+lane. The golden light of the June sunset was barred, where it lay upon
+the brilliant green of the young grass, with the long shadows of the
+apple-tree trunks. He looked between the thick foliage of the
+low-hanging branches to the milking shed. The two were there. Octavius
+was looking on dubiously; Aileen was coaxing the giant Holstein mother
+to stand aside at a more convenient angle for milking.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold her tail, Tave," was the next command.</p>
+
+<p>She seated herself on the stool and laid her cheek against the warm,
+shining black flank; her hands manipulated the rosy teats; then she
+began to sing:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O what are you seeking my pretty colleen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So sadly, tell me now!"&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"O'er mountain and plain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I'm searching in vain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kind sir, for my Kerry cow."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The milk, now drumming steadily into the pail, served for a running
+accompaniment to the next verses.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Is she black as the night with a star of white<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Above her bonny brow?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And as clever to clear<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The dykes as a deer?"&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"That's just my own Kerry cow."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Then cast your eye into that field of wheat<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She's there as large as life."&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"My bitter disgrace!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Howe'er shall I face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The farmer and his wife?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What a voice! And what a picture she made leaning caressingly against
+the charmed and patient Bess! She was so slight, yet round and
+supple&mdash;strong, too, with the strength of perfect health! The thick
+fluffed black hair was rolled away from her face and gathered into a low
+knot in the nape of her neck. Her dress cut low at the throat enhanced
+the white purity of her face and the slim round grace of her neck which
+showed to advantage against the ebony flank of the mother of many milky
+ways. Her lips were red and full; the nose was a saucy stub; the eyes he
+could not see; they were downcast, intent upon her filling pail and the
+rising creamy foam; but he knew them to be an Irish blue-gray.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus3" id="illus3"></a>
+<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"What a picture she made leaning caressingly against the charmed and patient Bess"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Since the farmer's unwed you've no cause to dread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From his wife, you must allow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And for kisses three&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Tis myself is he&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The farmer will free your cow."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The song ceased; the singer was giving her undivided attention to her
+self-imposed task. Octavius took a stool and began work with another
+cow. Champney, nothing loath to prolong the pleasure of looking at the
+improvised milkmaid, waited before making his presence known until she
+should have finished.</p>
+
+<p>And watching her, he could but wonder at the ways of Chance that had
+cast this little piece of foreign flotsam upon the shores of America,
+only to sweep it inland to this village in Maine. He could not help
+comparing her with Alice Van Ostend&mdash;what a contrast! What an abyss
+between the circumstances of the two lives! Yet this one was decidedly
+charming, more so than the other; for he was at once aware that Aileen
+was already in possession of her womanhood's dower of command over all
+poor mortals of the opposite sex&mdash;her manner with Octavius showed him
+that; and Alice when he saw her last, now nearly six months ago, would
+have given any one the impression of something still unfledged&mdash;a tall,
+slim, overgrown girl of sixteen, and somewhat spoiled. This was indeed
+only natural, for her immediate world of father, aunt, and relations had
+circled ever since her birth in the orbit of her charming wilfulness.
+Champney acknowledged to himself that he had done her bidding a little
+too frequently ever since the first yachting trip, when as a little girl
+she attached herself to him, or rather him to her as a part of her
+special goods and chattels. At that time their common ground for
+conversation was Aileen; the child was never tired of his rehearsing for
+her delight the serenade scene. But in another year she lost this
+interest, for many others took its place; nor was it ever renewed.</p>
+
+<p>The Van Ostends, together with Ruth and her husband, had been living the
+last three winters in Paris, Mr. Van Ostend crossing and recrossing as
+his business interests demanded or permitted. Champney was much with
+them, for their home was always open to him who proved an ever welcome
+guest. He acknowledged to himself, while participating in the intimacy
+of their home life, that if the child's partiality to his companionship,
+so undisguisedly expressed on every occasion, should, in the transition
+periods of girlhood and young womanhood, deepen into a real attachment,
+he would cultivate it with a view to asking her in marriage of her
+father when the time should show itself ripe. In his first youthful
+arrogance of self-assertion he had miscalculated with Ruth Van Ostend.
+He would make provision that this "undeveloped affair"&mdash;so he termed
+it&mdash;with her niece should not miscarry for want of caution. He intended
+while waiting for Alice to grow up&mdash;a feat which her aunt was always
+deploring as an impossibility except in a physical sense&mdash;to make
+himself necessary in this young life. Thus far he had been successful;
+her weekly girlish letters conclusively proved it.</p>
+
+<p>While waiting for the milk to cease its vigorous flow, he was conscious
+of reviewing his attitude towards the "undeveloped affair" in some such
+train of thought, and finding in it nothing to condemn, rather to
+commend, in fact; for not for the fractional part of a second did he
+allow a thought of it to divert his mind from the constant end in view:
+the making for himself a recognized place of power in the financial
+world of affairs. He knew that Mr. Van Ostend was aware of this
+steadfast pursuit of a purpose. He knew, moreover, that the fact that
+the great financier was taking him into his New York office as treasurer
+of the Flamsted Quarries, was a tacit recognition not only of his six
+years' apprenticeship in some of the largest banking houses in Europe,
+but of his ability to acquire that special power which was his goal. In
+the near future he would handle and practically control millions both in
+receipt and disbursement. Many of the contracts, already signed, were to
+be filled within the next three years&mdash;the sound of the milking suddenly
+ceased.</p>
+
+<p>"My, how my wrists ache! See, Tave, the pail is almost full; there must
+be twelve or fourteen quarts in all."</p>
+
+<p>She began to rub her wrists vigorously. Octavius muttered: "I told you
+so. You might have known you couldn't milk steady like that without
+getting all tuckered out."</p>
+
+<p>Champney stepped forward quickly. "Right you are, Tave, every time. How
+are you, dear old chap?" He held out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Champ&mdash;Champney&mdash;why&mdash;" he stammered rather than spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"It's I, Tave; the same old sixpence. Have I changed so much?"</p>
+
+<p>"Changed? I should say so! I thought&mdash;I thought&mdash;" he was wringing
+Champney's hand; some strange emotion worked in his features&mdash;"I thought
+for a second it was Mr. Louis come to life." He turned to Aileen who had
+sprung from her stool. "Aileen, this is Mr. Champney Googe; you've
+forgotten him, I dare say, in all these years."</p>
+
+<p>The rich red mantled her cheeks; the gray eyes smiled up frankly into
+his; she held out her hand. "Oh, no, I've not forgotten Mr. Champney
+Googe; how could I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I think it is the other way round; if I remember rightly you
+gave me the opportunity of never forgetting you." He held her hand just
+a trifle longer than was necessary. The girl smiled and withdrew it.</p>
+
+<p>"Milky hands are not so sticky as spruce gum ones, Mr. Googe, but they
+are apt to be quite as unpleasant."</p>
+
+<p>Champney was annoyed without in the least knowing why. He was wondering
+if he should address her as "Aileen" or "Miss Armagh," when Octavius
+spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen, just go on ahead up to the house and tell Mrs. Champney Mr.
+Googe is here." Aileen went at once, and Octavius explained.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, Champney&mdash;Mr. Googe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Have I changed so much, Tave, that you can't use the old name?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've changed a sight; it don't come easy to call you Champ, any more
+than it did to call Mr. Louis by his Christian name. You look a Champney
+every inch of you, and you act like one." He spoke emphatically; his
+small keen eyes dwelt admiringly on the face and figure of the tall man
+before him. "I thought 't was better to send Aileen on ahead, for Mrs.
+Champney's broken a good deal since you saw her; she can't stand much
+excitement&mdash;and you're the living image." He called for the boy who had
+taken Romanzo's place. "I'll go up as far as the house with you. How
+long are you going to stay?"</p>
+
+<p>"It depends upon how long it takes me to investigate these quarries,
+learn the ropes. A week or two possibly. I am to be treasurer of the
+Company with my office in New York."</p>
+
+<p>"So I heard, so I heard. I'm glad it's come at last&mdash;no thanks to
+<i>her</i>," he added, nodding in the direction of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you still hold a grudge, Tave?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and always shall. Right's right and wrong's wrong, and there ain't
+a carpenter in this world that can dovetail the two. You and your mother
+have been cheated out of your rights in what should be yours, and it's
+ten to one if you ever get a penny of it."</p>
+
+<p>Champney smiled at the little man's indignation. "All the more reason to
+congratulate me on my job, Tave."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do; only it don't set well, this other business. She ain't
+helped you any to it?" He asked half hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a red cent, Tave. I don't owe her anything. Possibly she will leave
+some of it to this same Miss Aileen Armagh. Stranger things have
+happened." Octavius shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you believe it, Champney. She likes Aileen and well she may, but
+she don't like her well enough to give her a slice off of this estate;
+and what's more she don't like any living soul well enough to part with
+a dollar of it on their account."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any one Aunt Meda ever did love, Tave? From all I remember to
+have heard, when I was a boy, she was always bound up pretty thoroughly
+in herself."</p>
+
+<p>"Did she ever love any one? Well she did; that was her husband, Louis
+Champney, who loved you as his own son. And it's my belief that's the
+reason you don't get your rights. She was jealous as the devil of every
+word he spoke to you."</p>
+
+<p>"You're telling me news&mdash;and late in the day."</p>
+
+<p>"Late is better than never, and I'd always meant to tell you when you
+come to man's estate&mdash;but you've been away so long, I've thought
+sometimes you was never coming home; but I hoped you would for your
+mother's sake, and for all our sakes."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to do what I can, but you mustn't depend too much on me,
+Tave. I'm glad I'm at home for mother's sake although I always felt she
+had a good right hand in you, Tave; you've always been a good friend to
+her, she tells me."</p>
+
+<p>Octavius Buzzby swallowed hard once, twice; but he gave him no reply.
+Champney wondered to see his face work again with some emotion he failed
+to explain satisfactorily to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"There's Mrs. Champney on the terrace; I won't go any farther. Come in
+when you can, won't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be pretty apt to run in for a chat almost anytime on my way to
+the village." He waved his hand in greeting to his aunt and sprang up
+the steps leading to the terrace.</p>
+
+<p>He bent to kiss her and was shocked by the change in her that was only
+too apparent: the delicate features were sharpened; the temples sunken;
+her abundant light brown hair was streaked heavily with white; the
+hands had grown old, shrunken, the veins prominent.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss me again, Champney," she said in a low voice, closing her eyes
+when he bent again to fulfil her request. When she opened them he
+noticed that the lids were trembling and the corners of her mouth
+twitched. But she rallied in a moment and said sharply:</p>
+
+<p>"Now, don't say you're sorry&mdash;I know all about how I look; but I'm
+better and expect to outlive a good many well ones yet."</p>
+
+<p>She told Aileen to bring another chair. Champney hastened to forestall
+her; his aunt shook her finger at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't begin by spoiling her," she said. Then she bade her make ready
+the little round tea-table on the terrace and serve tea.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of her?" she asked him after Aileen had entered the
+house. She spoke with a directness of speech that warned Champney the
+question was a cloak to some other thought on her part.</p>
+
+<p>"That she does you credit, Aunt Meda. I don't know that I can pay you or
+her a greater compliment."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well said. You've learned all that over there&mdash;and a good deal
+more besides. There have been no folderols in her education. I've made
+her practical. Come, draw up your chair nearer and tell me something of
+the Van Ostends and that little Alice who was the means of Aileen's
+coming to me. I hear she is growing to be a beauty."</p>
+
+<p>"Beauty&mdash;well, I shouldn't say she was that, not yet; but 'little.' She
+is fully five feet six inches with the prospect of an additional inch."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't realize it. When are they coming home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Early in the autumn. Alice says she is going to come out next winter,
+not leak out as the other girls in her set have done; and what Alice
+wants she generally manages to have."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see&mdash;she must be sixteen; why that's too young!"</p>
+
+<p>"Seventeen next month. She's very good fun though."</p>
+
+<p>"Like her?" She looked towards the house where Aileen was visible with a
+tea-tray.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no; at least, not along her lines I should say. She seems to have
+Tave pretty well under her thumb."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney smiled. "Octavius thought he couldn't get used to it at
+first, but he's reconciled now; he had to be.&mdash;Call her Aileen,
+Champney; you mustn't let her get the upper hand of you by making her
+think she's a woman grown," she added in a low tone, for the girl was
+approaching them, slowly on account of the loaded tray she was carrying.</p>
+
+<p>Champney left his seat and taking the tea-things from her placed them on
+the table. Aileen busied herself with setting all in order and twirling
+the tea-ball in each cup of boiling water, as if she had been used to
+this ultra method of making tea all her life.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way, Aileen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He checked himself, for such a look of amazement was in the quickly
+lifted gray eyes, such a surprised arch was visible in the dark brows,
+that he realized his mistake in hearing to his aunt's request. He felt
+he must make himself whole, and if possible without further delay.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I see that it must still be Miss Aileen
+Armagh-and-don't-you-forget-it!" he exclaimed, laughing to cover his
+confusion.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed in turn; she could not help it at the memories this title
+called to mind. "Well, it's best to be particular with strangers, isn't
+it?" Down went the eyes to search in the bottom of a teacup.</p>
+
+<p>"I fancied we were not wholly that; I told Aunt Meda about our escapade
+six years ago; surely, that affair ought to establish a common ground
+for our continued acquaintance. But, if that's not sufficient, I can
+find another nearer at hand&mdash;where's my dog?"</p>
+
+<p>This brought her to terms.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I can't do anything with Rag, Mr. Googe; I'm so sorry. He's over in
+the coach house this very minute, and Tave was going to take him home
+to-night. Just think! That seven-year-old dog has to be carried home,
+old as he is!"</p>
+
+<p>"If it's come to that, I'll take him home under my arm to-night&mdash;that
+is, if he won't follow; I'll try that first."</p>
+
+<p>"But you're not going to punish him!&mdash;and simply because he likes me.
+That wouldn't be fair!"</p>
+
+<p>She made her protest indignantly. Champney looked at his aunt with an
+amused smile. She nodded understandingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no; not simply because he likes you, but because he is untrue to
+me, his master."</p>
+
+<p>"But that isn't fair!" she exclaimed again, her cheeks flushing rose
+red; "you've been away so long that the dog has forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, he hasn't; or if he has I must jog his memory. He's Irish, and
+the supreme characteristic of that breed is fidelity."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so am I Irish," she retorted pouting; she began to make him a
+second cup of tea by twirling the silver tea-ball in the shallow cup
+until the hot water flew over the edge; "but I shouldn't consider it
+necessary to be faithful to any one who had forgotten and left me for
+six years."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't?" Champney's eyes challenged hers, but either she did not
+understand their message or she was too much in earnest to heed it.</p>
+
+<p>"No I wouldn't; what for? I like Rag and he likes me, and we have been
+faithful to each other; it would be downright hypocrisy on his part to
+like you after all these years."</p>
+
+<p>"How about you?" Champney grew bold because he knew his aunt was
+enjoying the girl's entanglement as much as he was. She was amused at
+his daring and Aileen's earnestness. "Didn't you tell me in Tave's
+presence only just now that you couldn't forget me? How is that for
+fidelity? And why excuse Rag on account of a six years' absence?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course, he's your dog," she said loftily, so evading the
+question and ignoring the laugh at her expense.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he's my dog if he is a backslider, and that settles it." He turned
+to his aunt. "I'll run in again to-morrow, Aunt Meda, I mustn't wear my
+welcome out in the first two days of my return."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, do come in when you can. I suppose you will be here a month or
+two?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; only a week or two at most; but I shall run up often; the business
+will require it." He looked at Aileen. "Will you be so kind as to come
+over with me to the coach house, Miss Armagh, and hand my property over
+to me? Good-bye, Aunt Meda."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen rose. "I'll be back in a few minutes, Mrs. Champney, or will you
+go in now?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's no dew, and the air is so fresh I'll sit here till you come."</p>
+
+<p>The two went down the terrace steps side by side. Mrs. Champney watched
+them out of sight; there was a kindling light in her faded eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, we'll see," said Champney, as they neared the coach house and saw
+in the window the bundle of brown tow with black nose flattened on the
+pane and eyes filled with longing under the tangled topknot. The stub of
+a tail was marking time to the canine heartbeats. Champney opened the
+door; the dog scurried out and sprang yelping for joy upon Aileen.</p>
+
+<p>"Rag, come here!" The dog's day of judgment was in that masculine
+command. The little terrier nosed Aileen's hand, hesitated, then pressed
+more closely to her side. The girl laughed out in merry triumph.
+Champney noted that she showed both sets of her strong white teeth when
+she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Rag, dear old boy!" She parted with caressing fingers the skein of tow
+on the frowsled head.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Rag." Champney whistled and started up the driveway. The
+terrier fawned on Aileen, slavered, snorted, sniffed, then crept almost
+on his belly, tail stiff, along the ground after Champney who turned and
+laid his hand on him. The dog crouched in the road. He gently pulled the
+stumps of ears&mdash;"Now come!"</p>
+
+<p>He went whistling up the road, and the terrier, recognizing his master,
+trotted in a lively manner after him.</p>
+
+<p>Champney turned at the gate and lifted his hat. "How about fidelity now,
+Miss Armagh?" He wanted to tease in payment for that amazed look she
+gave him for taking a liberty with her Christian name.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course, he's your dog," she called merrily after him, "but <i>I</i>
+wouldn't have done it if I'd been Rag!"</p>
+
+<p>Champney found himself wondering on the homeward way if she really meant
+what she said.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>It was a careless question, carelessly put, and yet&mdash;Aileen Armagh,
+before she returned to the house, was also asking herself if she meant
+what she said, asking it with an unwonted timidity of feeling she could
+not explain. On coming in sight of the terrace, she saw that Mrs.
+Champney was still there. She hesitated a moment, then crossed the lawn
+to the boat house. She wanted to sit there a while in the shade, to
+think things out with herself if possible. What did this mean&mdash;this
+strange feeling of timidity?</p>
+
+<p>The course of her life was not wholly smooth. It was inevitable that two
+natures like hers and Mrs. Champney's should clash at times, and the
+impact was apt to be none of the softest. Twice, Aileen, making a
+confidant of Octavius, threatened to run away, for the check rein was
+held too tightly, and the young life became restive under it. When the
+child first came to Champ-au-Haut, its mistress recognized at once that
+in her mischief, her wilfulness, her emphatic assertion of her right of
+way, there was nothing vicious, and to Octavius Buzzby's amazement, she
+dealt with her, on the whole, leniently.</p>
+
+<p>"She amuses me," she would say when closing an eye to some of Aileen's
+escapades that gave a genuine shock to Octavius in the region of his
+local prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>There had been, indeed, no "folderols" in her education. Sewing,
+cooking, housework she was taught root and branch in the time not spent
+at school, both grammar and high. During the last year Mrs. Champney
+permitted her to learn French and embroidery in a systematic manner at
+the school established by the gentle Frenchwomen in The Gore; but she
+steadily refused to permit the girl to cultivate her voice through the
+medium of proper instruction. This denial of the girl's strongest desire
+was always a common subject of dissension and irritation; however, after
+Aileen was seventeen a battle royal of words between the two was a rare
+occurrence.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time she never objected to Aileen's exercising her talent in
+her own way. Father Honor&eacute; encouraged her to sing to the accompaniment
+of his violin, knowing well that the instrument would do its share in
+correcting faults. She sang, too, with Luigi Poggi, her "knothole boy"
+of the asylum days; and, as seven years before, Nonna Lisa often
+accompanied with her guitar. The old Italian, who had managed to keep in
+touch with her one-time <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;e</i>, and her grandson Luigi, made their
+appearance in the village one summer after Aileen had been two years in
+Flamsted. Luigi, now that his vaudeville days were over, was in search
+of work at the quarries; his grandmother was to keep house for him till
+he should be able to establish himself in trade&mdash;the goal of so many of
+his thrifty countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>These two Italians were typical of thousands of their nationality who
+come to our shores; whom our national life, through naturalization and
+community of interests, is able in a marvellously short time to
+assimilate&mdash;and for the public good. Intelligent, business-like, keen at
+a bargain, but honest and graciously gentle and friendly in manner,
+Luigi Poggi soon established himself in the affections of Flamsted&mdash;in
+no one's more solidly than in Elmer Wiggins', strange to say, who
+capitulated to the "foreigner's" progressive business methods&mdash;and after
+three years of hard and satisfactory work at the quarries and in the
+sheds, by living frugally and saving thriftily he was able to open the
+first Italian fruit stall in the quarry town. The business was
+flourishing and already threatened to overrun its quarters. Luigi was in
+a fair way to become fruit capitalist; his first presidential vote had
+been cast, and he felt prepared to enjoy to the full his new
+Americanhood.</p>
+
+<p>But with his young manhood and the fulfilment of its young aspirations,
+came other desires, other incentives for making his business a success
+and himself a respected and honored citizen of these United States.
+Luigi Poggi was ready to give into Aileen's keeping&mdash;whenever she might
+choose to indicate by a word or look that she was willing to accept the
+gift&mdash;his warm Italian heart that knew no subterfuge in love, but gave
+generously, joyfully, in the knowledge that there would be ever more and
+more to bestow. He had not as yet spoken, save with his dark eyes, his
+loving earnestness of voice, and the readiness with which, ever since
+his appearance in Flamsted he ran and fetched and carried for her.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen enjoyed this devotion. The legitimate pleasure of knowing she is
+loved&mdash;even when no response can be given&mdash;is a girl's normal emotional
+nourishment. Through it the narrows in her nature widen and the shallows
+deepen to the dimensions that enable the woman's heart to give, at last,
+even as she has received,&mdash;ay, even more than she can ever hope to
+receive. This novitiate was now Aileen's.</p>
+
+<p>As a foil, against which Luigi's silent devotion showed to the best
+advantage, Romanzo Caukins' dogged persistence in telling her on an
+average of once in two months that he loved her and was waiting for a
+satisfactory answer, served its end. For six years, while Romanzo
+remained at Champ-au-Haut, the girl teased, cajoled, tormented, amused,
+and worried the Colonel's eldest. Of late, since his twenty-first
+birthday, he had turned the tables on her, and was teasing and worrying
+her with his love-blind persistence. That she had given him a decided
+answer more than once made no impression on his determined spirit. In
+her despair Aileen went to Octavius; but he gave her cold comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"What'd I tell you two years ago, Aileen? Didn't I say you couldn't play
+with even a slow-match like Roman, if you didn't want a fire later on?
+And you wouldn't hear a word to me."</p>
+
+<p>"But I didn't know, Tave! How could I think that just because a boy tags
+round after you from morning till night for the sake of being amused,
+that when he gets to be twenty-one he is going to keep on tagging round
+after you for the rest of his days? I never saw such a leech! He simply
+won't accept the fact once for all that I won't have him; but he's got
+to&mdash;so now!"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius smiled at the sudden little flurry; he was used to them.</p>
+
+<p>"I take it Roman doesn't think you know your own mind."</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't! Well, he'll find out I do, then. Oh, dear, why couldn't he
+just go on being Romanzo Caukins with no nonsense about him, and not
+make such a goose of himself! Anyway, I'm thankful he's gone; it got so
+I couldn't so much as tell him to harness up for Mrs. Champney, that he
+didn't consider it a sign of 'yielding' on my part!" She laughed out.
+"Oh, Tavy dear, what should I do without you!&mdash;Now if I could make an
+impression on you, it might be worth while," she added mischievously.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius would have failed to be the man he was had he not felt
+flattered; he smiled on her indulgently. "Well, I shouldn't tag round
+after you much if I was thirty year younger; 't ain't my way. But
+there's one thing, Aileen, I want to say to you, and if you've got any
+common sense you'll heed me this time: I want you to be mighty careful
+how you manage with Luigi. You've got no slow-match to play with this
+time, let me tell you; you've got a regular sleeping volcano like some
+of them he was born near; and it won't do, I warn you. He ain't Romanzo
+Caukins&mdash;Roman's home made; but t'other is a foreigner; they're
+different."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't preach, Octavius." She always called him by his unabbreviated
+name when she was irritated. "I like well enough to sing with Luigi, and
+go rowing with him, and play tennis, and have the good times, but it's
+nonsense for you to think he means anything serious. Why, he never spoke
+a word of love to me in his life!"</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!&mdash;that silent kind's the worst; you don't give him a chance."</p>
+
+<p>"And I don't mean to&mdash;does that satisfy you?" she demanded. "If it
+doesn't, I'll tell you something&mdash;but it's a secret; you won't tell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if you don't want me to; I ain't that kind."</p>
+
+<p>"I know you're not, Tave; that's why I'm going to tell you. Here, let me
+whisper&mdash;"; she bent to his ear; he was seated on a stool in the coach
+house mending a strap; "&mdash;I've waited all this time for that prince to
+come, and do you suppose for one moment I'd look at any one else?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now that ain't fair to fool me like that, Aileen!"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius was really vexed, but he spoke the last words to empty air, for
+the girl caught up her skirt and ran like a deer up the lane. He could
+hear her laughing at his discomfiture; the sound grew fainter and
+fainter; when it ceased he resumed his work, from time to time shaking
+his head ominously and talking to himself as a vent for his outraged
+feelings.</p>
+
+<p>But Aileen spoke the truth. Her vivid imagination, a factor in the true
+Celtic temperament, provided her with another life, apart from the busy
+practical one which Mrs. Champney laid out for her. All her childish
+delights of day-dreaming and joyous romancing, fostered by that first
+novel which Luigi Poggi thrust through the knothole in the orphan asylum
+fence, was at once transferred to Alice Van Ostend and her surroundings
+so soon as the two children established their across-street
+acquaintance. Upon her arrival in Flamsted, the child's adaptability to
+changed circumstances and new environment was furthered by the play of
+this imagination that fed itself on what others, who lack it, might call
+the commonplace of life: the house at Champ-au-Haut became her lordly
+palace; the estate a park; she herself a princess guarded only too well
+by an aged duenna; Octavius Buzzby and Romanzo Caukins she looked upon
+as life-servitors.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then the evidence of this unreal life, which she was leading,
+was made apparent to Octavius and Romanzo by some stilted mode of
+speech. At such times they humored her; it provided amusement of the
+richest sort. She also continued to invent "novels" for Romanzo's
+benefit, and many a half-hour the two spent in the carriage
+house&mdash;Aileen aglow with the enthusiasm of narration, and Romanzo intent
+upon listening, charmed both with the tale and the narrator. In these
+invented novels, there was always a faithful prince returning after long
+years of wandering to the faithful princess. This was her one theme with
+variations.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she danced a minuet on the floor of the stable, with this
+prince as imaginary partner, and Romanzo grew jealous of the bewitching
+smiles and coquetries she bestowed upon the vacant air. At others she
+would induce the youth to enter a box stall, telling him to make believe
+he was at the theatre, and then, forgetting her r&ocirc;le of princess, she
+was again the Aileen Armagh of old&mdash;the child on the vaudeville stage,
+dancing the coon dance with such vigor and abandonment that once, when
+Aileen was nearly sixteen, Octavius, being witness to this flaunting
+performance, took her severely to task for such untoward actions now
+that she was grown up. He told her frankly that if Romanzo Caukins was
+led astray in the future it would be through her carryings-on; at which
+Aileen looked so dumbfoundered that Octavius at once perceived his
+mistake, and retreated weakly from his position by telling her if she
+wanted to dance like that, she'd better dance before him who understood
+her and her intentions.</p>
+
+<p>At this second speech Aileen stared harder than ever; then going up to
+him and throwing an arm around his neck, she whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Tave, dear, are you mad with me? What have I done?&mdash;Is it really
+anything so awful?"</p>
+
+<p>Her distress was so unfeigned that Octavius, not being a woman,
+comforted her by telling her he was a great botcher. Inwardly he cursed
+himself for an A No. 1 fool. Aileen never danced the "coon" again, but
+thereafter gave herself such grown-up and stand-off airs in Romanzo's
+presence, that the youth proceeded in all earnest to lose both head and
+heart to the girl's gracious blossoming womanhood. Octavius, observing
+this, groaned in spirit, and henceforth held his tongue when he heard
+the girl carolling her Irish love songs in the presence of the ingenuous
+Caukins.</p>
+
+<p>After this, the girl's exuberance of spirits and the sustaining inner
+life of the imagination helped her wonderfully during the three
+following years of patient waiting on a confirmed invalid. Of late, Mrs.
+Champney had come to depend more and more on the girl's strong youth; to
+demand more and more from her abundant vitality and lively spirits; and
+Aileen, although recognizing the anomalous position she held in the
+Champ-au-Haut household&mdash;neither servant nor child, neither companion
+nor friend&mdash;gave of herself; gave as her Irish inheritance prompted her
+to give: ungrudgingly, faithfully, without reward save the knowledge of
+a duty performed towards the woman who, in taking her into her household
+and maintaining her there, had placed her in a position to make
+friends&mdash;such friends!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When the soil is turned over carefully, enriched and prepared perfectly
+for the seed; when rain is abundant, sunshine plenteous and
+mother-earth's spring quickening is instinctive, is it to be wondered at
+that the rootlet delves, the plantlet lifts itself, the bud forms
+quickly, and unexpectedly spreads its petal-star to the sunlight which
+enhances its beauty and fructifies its work of reproduction? The natural
+laws, in this case, work to their prescribed end along lines of
+favoring circumstance&mdash;and Love is but the working out of the greatest
+of all Nature's laws. When conditions are adverse, there is only too
+often struggle, strife, wretchedness. The result is a dwarfing of the
+product, a lowering of the vital power, a recession from the type. But,
+on the contrary, when all conditions combine to further the working of
+this law, we have the rapid and perfect flowering, followed by the
+beneficent maturity of fruit and seed. Thus Life, the ever-new, becomes
+immortal.</p>
+
+<p>Small wonder that Aileen Armagh, trying to explain that queer feeling of
+timidity, should suddenly press her hand hard over her heart! It was
+throbbing almost to the point of suffocating her, so possessed was it by
+the joy of a sudden and wonderful presence of love.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge brought with it a sense of bewildering unreality. She knew
+now that her day dreams had a substantial basis. She knew now that she
+had <i>not</i> meant what she said.</p>
+
+<p>For years, ever since the night of the serenade, her vivid imagination
+had been dwelling on Champney Googe's home-coming; for years he was the
+central figure in her day dreams, and every dream was made half a
+reality to her by means of the praises in his behalf which she heard
+sounded by each man, woman, and child in the ever-increasing circle of
+her friends. It was always with old Joel Quimber: "When Champ gits back,
+we'll hev what ye might call the head of a fam'ly agin." Octavius Buzzby
+spent hours in telling her of the boy's comings and goings and doings at
+Champ-au-Haut, and the love Louis Champney bore him. Romanzo Caukins set
+him on the pedestal of his boyish enthusiasm. The Colonel himself was
+not less enthusiastic than his first born; he never failed to assure
+Aileen when she was a guest in his house&mdash;an event that became a weekly
+matter as she grew older&mdash;that her lot had fallen in pleasant places;
+that to his friend, Mrs. Googe, and her son, Champney, she was indebted
+for the new industrial life which brought with it such advantages to one
+and all in Flamsted.</p>
+
+<p>To Aurora Googe, the mother of her imaginative ideal, Aileen, attracted
+from the first by her beauty and motherly kindness towards an orphan
+waif, gave a child's demonstrative love, afterwards a girl's adoration.
+In all this devotion she was abetted by Elvira Caukins to whom Aurora
+Googe had always been an ideal of womanhood. Moreover, Aileen came to
+know during these years of Champney Googe's absence that his mother
+worshipped in reality where she herself worshipped in imagination.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the ground was made ready for the seed. Small wonder that the
+flowering of love in this warm Irish heart was immediate, when Champney
+Googe, on the second day after his home-coming, questioned her with that
+careless challenge in his eyes:</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't?"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The sun set before she left the boat house. She ran up the steps to the
+terrace and, not finding Mrs. Champney there, sought her in the house.
+She found her in the library, seated in her easy chair which she had
+turned to face the portrait of her husband, over the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you call me to help you in, Mrs. Champney? I blame myself
+for not coming sooner."</p>
+
+<p>"I really feel stronger and thought I might as well try it; there is
+always a first time&mdash;and you were with Champney, weren't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I? Why no&mdash;what made you think that?" Mrs. Champney noticed the slight
+hesitation before the question was put so indifferently, and the quick
+red that mounted in the girl's cheeks. "Mr. Googe went off half an hour
+ago with Rag tagging on behind."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he conquered as usual."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether I should call it 'conquering' or not; Rag didn't
+want to go, that was plain enough to see."</p>
+
+<p>"What made him go then?"</p>
+
+<p>Aileen laughed out. "That's just what I'd like to know myself."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who?&mdash;Rag or Mr. Googe?"</p>
+
+<p>She was always herself with Mrs. Champney, and her daring spirit of
+mischief rarely gave offence to the mistress of Champ-au-Haut. But by
+the tone of voice in which she answered, Aileen knew that, without
+intention, she had irritated her.</p>
+
+<p>"You know perfectly well whom I mean&mdash;my nephew, Mr. Googe."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen was silent for a moment. Her young secret was her own to guard
+from all eyes, and especially from all unfriendly ones. She was standing
+on the hearth, in front of Mrs. Champney. Turning her head slightly she
+looked up at the portrait of the man above her&mdash;looked upon almost the
+very lineaments of him whom at that very moment her young heart was
+adoring: the fine features, the blue eyes, the level brows, the firm
+curving lips, the abundant brown hair. It was as if Champney Googe
+himself were smiling down upon her. As she continued to look, the lovely
+light in the girl's face&mdash;a light reflected from no sunset fires over
+the Flamsted Hills, but from the sunrise of girlhood's first
+love&mdash;betrayed her to the faded watchful eyes beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"He looks just like your husband;" she spoke slowly; her voice seemed to
+linger on the last word; "when Tave saw him he said he thought it was
+Mr. Champney come to life, and I think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney interrupted her. "Octavius Buzzby is a fool." Sudden anger
+hardened her voice; a slight flush came into her wasted cheeks. "Tell
+Hannah I want my supper now, let Ann bring it in here to me. I don't
+need you; I'm tired."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen turned without another word&mdash;she knew too well that tone of voice
+and what it portended; she was thankful to hear it rarely now&mdash;and left
+the room to do as she was bidden.</p>
+
+<p>"Little fool!" Almeda Champney muttered between set teeth when the door
+closed upon the girl. She placed both hands on the arms of her chair to
+raise herself; walked feebly to the hearth where a moment before Aileen
+had stood, and raising her eyes to the smiling ones looking down into
+hers, confessed her woman's weakness in bitter words that mingled with a
+half-sob:</p>
+
+<p>"And I, too, was a fool&mdash;all women are with such as you."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Although Mrs. Champney remained the only one who read Aileen Armagh's
+secret, yet even she asked herself as the summer sped if she read
+aright.</p>
+
+<p>During the three weeks in which her nephew was making himself familiar
+with all the inner and outer workings of the business at The Gore and in
+the sheds, she came to anticipate his daily coming to Champ-au-Haut, for
+he brought with him the ozone of success. His laugh was so unaffectedly
+hearty; his interest in the future of Flamsted and of himself as a
+factor in its prosperity so unfeigned; his enjoyment of his own
+importance so infectious, his account of the people and things he had
+seen during his absence from home so entertaining that, in his presence,
+his aunt breathed a new atmosphere, the life-giving qualities of which
+were felt as beneficial to every member of the household at The Bow.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney took note that he never asked for Aileen. If the girl were
+there when he ran in for afternoon tea on the terrace or an hour's chat
+in the evening,&mdash;sometimes it happened that the day saw him three times
+at Champ-au-Haut&mdash;her presence to all appearance afforded him only an
+opportunity to tease her goodnaturedly; he delighted in her repartee.
+Mrs. Champney, keenly observant, failed to detect in the girl's frank
+joyousness the least self-consciousness; she was just her own merry self
+with him, and the "give and take" between them afforded Mrs. Champney a
+fund of amusement.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of his departure for New York, she was witness to their
+merry leave-taking. Afterwards she summoned Octavius to the library.</p>
+
+<p>"You may bring all the mail for the house hereafter to me, Octavius; now
+that I am feeling so much stronger, I shall gradually resume my
+customary duties in the household. You need not give any of the mail to
+Aileen to distribute&mdash;I'll do it after to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"What the devil is she up to now!" Octavius said to himself as he left
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>But no letter from New York came for Aileen. Mrs. Champney tried another
+tack: the next time her nephew came to Flamsted, later on in the autumn,
+she asked him to write her in detail concerning his intimacy with her
+cousins, the Van Ostends, and of their courtesies to him. Champney,
+nothing loath&mdash;always keeping in mind the fact that it was well to keep
+on the right side of Aunt Meda&mdash;wrote her all she desired to know. What
+he wrote was retailed faithfully to Aileen; but the frequent dinners at
+the Van Ostends', and the prospective coming-out reception and ball to
+be given for Alice and scheduled for the late winter, called forth from
+the eagerly listening girl only ejaculations of delight and pleasant
+reminiscence of the first time she had seen the little girl dressed for
+a party. If, inwardly she asked herself the question why Alice Van
+Ostend had dropped all her childish interest in her whom she had been
+the means of sending to Flamsted, why she no longer inquired for her,
+her common sense was apt to answer the question satisfactorily. Aileen
+Armagh was keen-eyed and quick-witted, possessing, without actual
+experience in the so-called other world of society, a wonderful
+intuition as to the relative value of people and circumstances in this
+ordinary world which already, during her short life, had presented
+various interesting phases for her inspection; consequently she
+recognized the abyss of circumstance between her and the heiress of
+Henry Van Ostend. But, with an intensity proportioned to her open-minded
+recognition of the first material differences, her innate womanliness
+and pride refused to acknowledge any abyss as to their respective
+personalities. Hence she kept silence in regard to certain things;
+laughed and made merry over the letters filled with the Van Ostends'
+doings&mdash;and held on her own way, sure of her own status with herself.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen kept her secret, and all the more closely because she was
+realizing that Champney Googe was far from indifferent to her. At first,
+the knowledge of the miracle of love, that was wrought so suddenly as
+she thought, sufficed to fill her heart with continual joy. But,
+shortly, that was modified by the awakening longing that Champney should
+return her love. She felt she charmed him; she knew that he timed his
+coming and going that he might encounter her in the house or about the
+grounds, whenever and wherever he could&mdash;sometimes alone in her boat on
+the long arm of the lake, that makes up to the west and is known as
+"lily-pad reach"; and afterwards, during the autumn, in the quarry woods
+above The Gore where with her satellites, Dulcie and Doosie Caukins, she
+went to pick checkerberries.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney was baffled; she determined to await developments, taking
+refuge from her defeat in the old saying "Love and a cough can't be
+hidden." Still, she could but wonder when four months of the late
+spring and early summer passed, and Champney made no further appearance
+in Flamsted. This hiatus was noticeable, and she would have found it
+inexplicable, had not Mr. Van Ostend written her a letter which
+satisfied her in regard to many things of which she had previously been
+in doubt; it decided her once for all to speak to Aileen and warn her
+against any passing infatuation for her nephew. For this she determined
+to bide her time, especially as Champney's unusual length of absence
+from Flamsted seemed to have no effect on the girl's joyous spirits. In
+July, however, she had again an opportunity to see the two together at
+Champ-au-Haut. Champney was in Flamsted on business for two days only,
+and so far as she knew there was no opportunity for Aileen to see her
+nephew more than once and in her presence. She managed matters in such a
+way that Aileen's services were in continual demand during Champney's
+two days' stay in his native town.</p>
+
+<p>But after that visit in July, the singing voice was heard ringing
+joyfully at all times of the day in the house and about the grounds of
+The Bow. Sometimes the breeze brought it to Octavius from across the
+lake waters&mdash;Luigi's was no longer with it&mdash;and he pitied the girl
+sincerely because the desire of her heart, the cultivation of such a
+voice, was denied her. Mrs. Champney, also, heard the clear voice,
+which, in this the girl's twentieth year, was increasing in volume and
+sweetness, carolling the many songs in Irish, English, French and
+Italian. She marvelled at the light-heartedness and, at the same time,
+wondered if, now that Romanzo Caukins could no longer hope, Aileen would
+show enough common sense to accept Luigi Poggi in due time, and through
+him make for herself an established place in Flamsted. Not that she was
+yet ready to part with her&mdash;far from it. She was too useful a member of
+the Champ-au-Haut household. Still, if it were to be Poggi in the end,
+she felt she could control matters to the benefit of all concerned,
+herself primarily. She was pleasing herself with the idea of such
+prospective control of Aileen's matrimonial interests one afternoon,
+just after Champney's flying visit in July, when she rose from her chair
+beneath the awning and, to try her strength, made her way slowly along
+the terrace to the library windows; they were French casements and one
+of them had swung outwards noiselessly in the breeze. She was about to
+step through, when she saw Aileen standing on the hearth before the
+portrait of Louis Champney. She was gazing up at it, her face illumined
+by the same lovely light that, a year before, had betrayed her secret to
+the faded but observant eyes of Louis Champney's widow.</p>
+
+<p>This was enough; the mistress of Champ-au-Haut was again on her
+guard&mdash;and well she might be, for Aileen Armagh was in possession of the
+knowledge that Champney Googe loved her. In joyful anticipation she was
+waiting for the word which, spoken by him when he should be again in
+Flamsted, was to make her future both fair and blest.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+
+<p>In entering on his business life in New York, Champney Googe, like many
+another man, failed to take into account the "minus quantities" in his
+personal equation. These he possessed in common with other men because
+he, too, was human: passions in common, ambitions in common, weaknesses
+in common, and last, but not least, the pursuance of a common end&mdash;the
+accumulation of riches.</p>
+
+<p>The sum of these minus quantities added to the total of temperamental
+characteristics and inherited traits left, unfortunately, in balancing
+the personal equation a minus quantity. Not that he had any realization
+of such a result&mdash;what man has? On the contrary, he firmly believed that
+his inherited obstinate perseverance, his buoyant temperament, his
+fortunate business connection with the great financier, his position as
+the meeting-point of the hitherto divided family interests in Flamsted,
+his intimacy with the Van Ostends&mdash;the distant tie of blood confirming
+this at all points&mdash;plus his college education and cosmopolitan business
+training in the financial capitals of Europe, were potent factors in
+finding the value of <i>x</i>&mdash;this representing to him an, as yet, unknown
+quantity of accumulated wealth.</p>
+
+<p>He had not yet asked himself how large a sum he wished to amass, but he
+said to himself almost daily, "I have shown my power along certain lines
+to-day," these lines converging in his consciousness always to monetary
+increment.</p>
+
+<p>He worked with a will. His energy was tireless. He learned constantly
+and much from other men powerful in the world of affairs&mdash;of their
+methods of speculation, some legitimate, others quite the contrary; of
+their manipulation of stocks, weak and strong; of their strengthening
+the market when the strengthening was necessary to fill a threatened
+deficit in their treasury and of their weakening a line of investment to
+prevent over-loading and consequent depletion of the same. He was
+thoroughly interested in all he heard and saw of the development of
+mines and industries for the benefit of certain banking cliques and land
+syndicates. If now and then a mine proved to have no bottom and the
+small investor's insignificant sums dropped out of sight in this
+bottomless pit, that did not concern him&mdash;it was all in the game, and
+the game was an enticing one to be played to the end. The two facts that
+nothing is certain at all times, and that everything is uncertain at
+some time, added the excitement of chance to his business interest.</p>
+
+<p>At times, for instance when walking up the Avenue on a bracing October
+day, he felt as if he owned all in sight&mdash;a condition of mind which
+those who know from experience the powerful electro-magnetic current
+generated by the rushing life of the New York metropolis can well
+understand. He struck out into the stream with the rest, and with
+overweening confidence in himself&mdash;in himself as master of circumstances
+which he intended to control in his own interests, in himself as the
+pivotal point of Flamsted affairs. The rapidity of the current acted as
+a continual stimulus to exertion. Like all bold swimmers, he knew in a
+general way that the channel might prove tortuous, the current threaten
+at times to overpower him; but, carried rapidly out into mid-stream with
+that gigantic propulsive force that is the resultant of the diverse
+onward-pressure of the metropolitan millions, he suddenly found himself
+one day in that mid-stream without its ever having occurred to him that
+he might not be able to breast it. Even had he thought enough about the
+matter to admit that certain untoward conditions might have to be met,
+he would have failed to realize that the shore towards which he was
+struggling might prove in the end a quicksand.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing: he failed to take into account the influence of any cross
+current, until he was made to realize the necessity of stemming his
+strength against it. This influence was Aileen Armagh.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever in walking up lower Broadway from the office he found himself
+passing Grace Church, he realized that, despite every effort of will, he
+was obliged to relive in thought the experience of that night seven
+years ago at the Vaudeville. Then for the first time he saw the little
+match girl crouching on the steps of the stage reproduction of this same
+marble church. The child's singing of her last song had induced in him
+then&mdash;wholly unawares, wholly unaccountably&mdash;a sudden mental nausea and
+a physical disgust at the course of his young life, the result being
+that the woman "who lay in wait for him at the corner" by appointment,
+watched that night in vain for his coming.</p>
+
+<p>In reliving this experience, there was always present in his thought the
+Aileen Armagh as he knew her now&mdash;pure, loyal, high-spirited, helpful,
+womanly in all her household ways, entertaining in her originality,
+endowed with the gift of song. She was charming; this was patent to all
+who knew her. It was a pleasure to dwell on this thought of her, and,
+dwelling upon it too often at off-times in his business life, the desire
+grew irresistible to be with her again; to chat with her; to see the
+blue-gray eyes lifted to his; to find in them something he found in no
+others. At such times a telegram sped over the wires, to Aurora Googe,
+and her heart was rejoiced by a two days' visit from her son.</p>
+
+<p>Champney Googe knew perfectly well that this cross current of influence
+was diametrically opposed to his own course of life as he had marked it
+out for himself; knew that this was a species of self-gratification in
+which he had no business to indulge; he knew, moreover, that from the
+moment he should make an earnest effort to win Alice Van Ostend and her
+accompanying millions, this self-gratification must cease. He told
+himself this over and over again; meanwhile he made excuse&mdash;a talk with
+the manager of the quarries, a new order of weekly payments to introduce
+and regulate with Romanzo Caukins, the satisfactory pay-master in the
+Flamsted office, a week-end with his mother, the consideration of
+contracts and the erection of a new shed on the lake shore&mdash;to visit
+Flamsted several times during the autumn, winter, and early spring.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, he called a halt.</p>
+
+<p>Alice Van Ostend, young, immature, amusing in her girlish abandon to the
+delight of at last "coming out", was, nevertheless, rapidly growing up,
+a condition of affairs that Champney was forced rather unwillingly to
+admit just before her first large ball. As usual he made himself useful
+to Alice, who looked upon him as a part of her goods and chattels. It
+was in the selection of the favors for the german to be given in the
+stone house on the occasion of the coming-out reception for its heiress,
+that his eyes were suddenly opened to the value of time, so to say; for
+Alice was beginning to patronize him. By this sign he recognized that
+she was putting the ten years' difference in their ages at something
+like a generation. It was not pleasing to contemplate, because the
+winning of Alice Van Ostend was, to use his own expression, in a line
+coincident with his own life lines. Till now he believed he was the
+favored one; but certain signs of the times began to be provocative of
+distrust in this direction.</p>
+
+<p>He asked boldly for the first dance, for the cotillon, and the privilege
+of giving her the flowers she was to wear that night. He assumed these
+favors to be within his rights; she was by no means of his way of
+thinking. It developed during their scrapping&mdash;Champney had often to
+scrap with Alice to keep on a level with her immaturity&mdash;that there was
+another rival for the cotillon, another, a younger man, who desired to
+give her the special flowers for this special affair. The final division
+of the young lady's favors was not wholly reassuring to Mr. Googe. As a
+result of this awakening, he decided to remain in New York without
+farther visits to Flamsted until the Van Ostends should have left the
+city for the summer.</p>
+
+<p>But in the course of the spring and summer he found it one thing to call
+a halt and quite another to make one. The cross current of influence,
+which had its source in Flamsted, was proving, against his will and
+judgment, too strong for him. He knew this and deplored it, for it
+threatened to carry him away from the shore towards which he was
+pushing, unawares that this apparently firm ground of attainment might
+prove treacherous in the end.</p>
+
+<p>"Every man has his weakness, and she's mine," he told himself more than
+once; yet in making this statement he was half aware that the word
+"weakness" was in no sense applicable to Aileen. It remained for the
+development of his growing passion for her to show him that he was
+wholly in the wrong&mdash;she was his strength, but he failed to realize
+this.</p>
+
+<p>Champney Googe was not a man to mince matters with himself. He told
+himself that he was not infatuated; infatuation was a thing to which he
+had yielded but few times in his selfish life. He was ready to
+acknowledge that his interest in Aileen Armagh was something deeper,
+more lasting; something that, had he been willing to look the whole
+matter squarely in the face instead of glancing askance at its profile,
+he would have seen to be perilously like real love&mdash;that love which
+first binds through passionate attachment, then holds through congenial
+companionship to bless a man's life to its close.</p>
+
+<p>"She suits me&mdash;suits me to a T;" such was his admission in what he
+called his weak moments. Then he called himself a fool; he cursed
+himself for yielding to the influence of her charming personality in so
+far as to encourage what he perceived to be on her part a deep and
+absorbing love for him. In yielding to his weakness, he knew he was
+deviating from the life lines he had laid with such forethought for his
+following. A rich marriage was the natural corollary of his
+determination to advance his own interests in his chosen career. This
+marriage he still intended to make, if possible with Alice Van Ostend;
+and the fact that young Ben Falkenburg, an old playmate of Alice's, just
+graduated from college, the "other man" of the cotillon favors, was the
+first invited guest for the prospective cruise on Mr. Van Ostend's
+yacht, did not dovetail with his intentions. It angered him to think of
+being thwarted at this point.</p>
+
+<p>"Why must such a girl cross my path just as I was getting on my feet
+with Alice?" he asked himself, manlike illogically impatient with Aileen
+when he should have lost patience with himself. But in the next moment
+he found himself dwelling in thought on the lovely light in the eyes
+raised so frankly to his, on the promises of loyalty those same eyes
+would hold for him if only he were to speak the one word which she was
+waiting to hear&mdash;which she had a right to hear after his last visit in
+July to Flamsted.</p>
+
+<p>If he had not kissed her that once! With a girl like Aileen there could
+be no trifling&mdash;what then?</p>
+
+<p>He cursed himself for his heedless folly, yet&mdash;he knew well enough that
+he would not have denied himself that moment of bliss when the girl in
+response to his whispered words of love gave him her first kiss, and
+with it the unspoken pledge of her loving heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm making another ass of myself!" he spoke aloud and continued to chew
+the end of a cold cigar.</p>
+
+<p>The New York office was deserted in these last days of August except for
+two clerks who had just left to take an early train to the beach for a
+breath of air. The treasurer of the Flamsted Quarries Company was
+sitting idle at his desk. It was an off-time in business and he had
+leisure to assure himself that he was without doubt the quadruped
+alluded to above&mdash;"An ass that this time is in danger of choosing
+thistles for fodder when he can get something better."</p>
+
+<p>Only the day before he had concluded on his own account a deal, that
+cost him much thought and required an extra amount of a certain kind of
+courage, with a Wall Street firm. Now that this was off his hands and
+there was nothing to do between Friday and Monday, when he was to start
+for Bar Harbor to join the Van Ostends and a large party of invited
+guests for a three weeks' cruise on the Labrador coast, he had plenty of
+time to convince himself that he possessed certain asinine qualities
+which did not redound to his credit as a man of sense. In his idle
+moments the thought of Aileen had a curious way of coming to the surface
+of consciousness. It came now. He whirled suddenly to face his desk
+squarely; tossed aside the cold cigar in disgust; touched the electric
+button to summon the office boy.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll put an end to it&mdash;it's got to be done sometime or other&mdash;just as
+well now." He wrote a note to the head clerk to say that he was leaving
+two days earlier for his vacation than he intended; left his address for
+the next four days in case anything should turn up that might demand his
+presence before starting on the cruise; sent the office boy off with a
+telegram to his mother that she might expect him Saturday morning for
+two days in Flamsted; went to his apartment, packed grip and steamer
+trunk for the yacht, and left on the night express for the Maine coast.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+
+
+<p>"I just saw Mr. Googe driving down from The Gore, Aileen, so he's in
+town again."</p>
+
+<p>Octavius was passing the open library window where Aileen was sitting at
+her work, and stopped to tell her the news.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he?"</p>
+
+<p>The tone was indifferent, but had she not risen quickly to shake some
+threads of embroidery linen into the scrap-basket beneath the library
+table, Octavius might have seen the quick blood mount into her cheeks,
+the red lips quiver. It was welcome news for which she had been waiting
+already six weeks.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius spoke again but in a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>"You might mention it to Mrs. Champney when she comes down; it don't set
+well, you know, if she ain't told everything that's going on." He passed
+on without waiting for an answer.</p>
+
+<p>The girl took her seat again by the window. Her work lay in her lap; her
+hands were folded above it; her face was turned to the Flamsted Hills.
+"Would he come soon? When and where could she see him again, and alone?"
+Her thoughts were busy with conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius recrossing the terrace called out to her:</p>
+
+<p>"You going up to Mrs. Caukins' later on this afternoon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Mrs. Champney said she didn't need me."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take you up."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Tave, not to-day. I'm going to row up as far as the upper
+shed. I promised the twins to meet them there; they want to see the new
+travelling crane at work. We'll go up afterwards to The Gore together."</p>
+
+<p>"It's pretty hot, but I guess you're all three seasoned by this time."</p>
+
+<p>"Through and through, Tave; and I'm not coming home till after
+supper&mdash;it's lovely then&mdash;there's Mrs. Champney coming!"</p>
+
+<p>She heard her step in the upper hall and ran upstairs to assist her in
+coming down.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you go out on the terrace now?" she asked her on entering the
+library.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll wait a while; it's too warm at this hour."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen drew Mrs. Champney's arm chair to the other casement window. She
+resumed her seat and work.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you getting on with the napkins?" the mistress of Champ-au-Haut
+inquired after a quarter of an hour's silence in which she was busied
+with some letters.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine&mdash;see?" She held up a corner for her inspection. "This is the
+tenth; I shall soon be ready for the big table cloth."</p>
+
+<p>"Bring them to me."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen obeyed, and showed her the monogram, A C, wrought by her own deft
+fingers in the finest linen.</p>
+
+<p>"There's no one like a Frenchwoman to teach embroidery; you've done them
+credit." Aileen dropped a mock courtesy. "Which one taught you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sister Ste. Croix."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she the little wrinkled one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I've fallen in love with every wrinkle, she's a perfect
+dear&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't imply she wasn't." Mrs. Champney was apt to snap out at Aileen
+when, according to her idea, she was "gushing" too much. The girl had
+ceased to mind this; she was used to it, especially during her three
+years of attendance on this invalid. "Who designed this monogram?"</p>
+
+<p>"She did; she can draw beautifully."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney put on her glasses to examine in detail the exquisite
+lettering, A C.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen leaned above her, smiling to herself. How many loving thoughts
+were wrought into those same initials! How many times, while her fingers
+were busy fashioning them, she had planned to make just such for her
+very own! How often, as she wrought, she had laid her lips to the A C,
+murmuring to herself over and over again, "Aileen&mdash;Champney,
+Champney&mdash;Aileen," so filling and satisfying with the sound of this
+pleasing combination her every loving anticipation!</p>
+
+<p>She was only waiting for the "word", schooling herself in these last six
+weeks to wait patiently for it&mdash;the "word" which should make these
+special letters her legitimate own!</p>
+
+<p>The singing thoughts that ring in the consciousness of a girl who gives
+for the first time her whole heart to her lover; the chanted prayers to
+her Maker, that rise with every muted throb of the young wife's heart
+which is beating for two in anticipation of her first motherhood&mdash;who
+shall dare enumerate them?</p>
+
+<p>The varied loving thoughts in this girl's quick brain, which was fed by
+her young pulsing heart&mdash;a heart single in its loyalty to one during all
+the years since her orphan childhood, were intensified and illumined by
+the inherent quickening power of a vivid imagination, and inwrought with
+these two letters that stood, at present, for their owner, Almeda
+Champney. Aileen's smile grew wonderfully tender, almost tremulous as
+she continued to lean above her work. Mrs. Champney looking up suddenly
+caught it and, in part, interpreted it. It angered her both unreasonably
+and unaccountably. This girl must be taught her place. She aspiring to
+Champney Googe! She handed her back the work.</p>
+
+<p>"Ann said just now she heard Octavius telling you that my nephew,
+Champney Googe, is in town&mdash;when did he come?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;Tave didn't say."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder Alice Van Ostend didn't mention that he was coming here before
+going on the yachting cruise they've planned. I had a letter from her
+yesterday&mdash;I know you'd like to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I should! It's the first one she has written you, isn't
+it?&mdash;Where is it?" She spoke with her usual animated interest.</p>
+
+<p>"I have it here."</p>
+
+<p>She took up one of several letters in her lap, opened it, turned it
+over, adjusted her glasses and began to read a paragraph here and there.
+Aileen listened eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose I may as well read it all&mdash;Alice wouldn't mind you," said
+Mrs. Champney, and proceeded to give the full contents. It was filled
+with anticipations of the yachting cruise, of a later visit to Flamsted,
+of Champney and her friends. Champney's name occurred many
+times,&mdash;Alice's attitude towards the possessor of it seemed to be that
+of private ownership,&mdash;but everything was written with the frankness of
+an accepted publicity of the fact that Mr. Googe was one of her social
+appendages. Aileen was amused at the whole tone of the rather lengthy
+epistle; it gave her no uneasiness.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney laid aside her glasses; she wanted to note the effect of
+the reading on the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"You can see for yourself from this how matters stand between these two;
+it needn't be spoken of in Flamsted outside the family, but it's just as
+well for you to know of it&mdash;don't you think so?"</p>
+
+<p>Aileen parried; she enjoyed a little bout with Champney Googe's aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, it's plain enough to see that they're the best of friends&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Friends!" Mrs. Champney interrupted her; there was a scornful note in
+her voice which insensibly sharpened; "you haven't your usual common
+sense, Aileen, if you can't read between these lines well enough to see
+that Miss Van Ostend and my nephew are as good as engaged."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen smiled, but made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you laughing at?" The tone was peremptory and denoted extreme
+irritation. Aileen put down her work and looked across to her
+interrogator.</p>
+
+<p>"I was only smiling at my thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be so good as to state what they are? They may prove decidedly
+interesting to me&mdash;at this juncture," she added emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen's look of amusement changed swiftly to one of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"To be honest, I was thinking that what she writes about Mr. Googe
+doesn't sound much like love, that was all&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That was all!" Mrs. Champney echoed sarcastically; "well, what more do
+you need to convince you of facts I should like to know?"</p>
+
+<p>Aileen laughed outright at this. "Oh, Mrs. Champney, what's the use of
+being a girl, if you can't know what other girls mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Please explain yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't you please read that part again where she mentions the people
+invited for the cruise."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney found the paragraph and re-read it aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Falkenburg&mdash;that's the name&mdash;Ben Falkenburg."</p>
+
+<p>"How did you ever hear of this Ben Falkenburg?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I heard of him years ago!" The mischief was in her voice and Mrs.
+Champney recognized it.</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"When I was in New York&mdash;in the asylum; he's the one that danced the
+minuet with the Marchioness; I told you about it years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know he was the boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because Alice told me his name then, and showed me the valentine and
+May-basket he sent her&mdash;just read the postscript again; if you want to
+crack a letter for its kernel, you'll generally find it in a postscript,
+that is with girls of Alice's age."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke as if there were years of seniority on her part. Mrs. Champney
+turned to the postscript again.</p>
+
+<p>"I see nothing in this&mdash;you're romancing again, Aileen; you'd better put
+it aside; it will get you into trouble sometime."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, never fear for me, Mrs. Champney; I'll take care of all the
+romancing as well as the romances&mdash;but can't you see by those few words
+that it's Mr. Ben Falkenburg who is going to make the yachting trip for
+Miss Van Ostend, and not your nephew?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I can't," Mrs. Champney answered shortly, "and neither could you if
+your eyes weren't blinded by your infatuation for him."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen rolled up her work deliberately. If the time had come for open
+war to be declared between the two on Champney Googe's account, it was
+best to fight the decisive battle now, before seeing him again. She rose
+and stood by the window.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, Mrs. Champney?" Her temper was rising quickly as it
+always did when Mrs. Champney went too far. She had spoken but once of
+her nephew in a personal way to Aileen since she asked that question a
+year ago, "What do you think of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean what I say." Her voice took on an added shrillness. "Your
+infatuation for my nephew has been patent for a year now&mdash;and it's time
+you should be brought to your senses; I can't suppose you're fool enough
+to think he'll marry you."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen set her lips close. After all, it was not best to answer this
+woman as she deserved to be answered. She controlled the increasing
+anger so far as to be able to smile frankly and answer lightly:</p>
+
+<p>"You've no need to worry, Mrs. Champney; your nephew has never asked me
+to be his wife."</p>
+
+<p>"His wife!" she echoed scornfully; "I should say not; and let me tell
+you for your own benefit&mdash;sometime you'll thank me for it&mdash;and mark my
+words, Aileen Armagh, he never will ask you to be his wife, and the
+sooner you accept this unvarnished truth the better it will be for you.
+I suppose you think because you've led Romanzo Caukins and young Poggi a
+chase, you can do the same with Champney Googe&mdash;but you'll find out your
+mistake; such men aren't led&mdash;they lead. He is going to marry Alice Van
+Ostend."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you <i>know</i> this for a fact, Mrs. Champney?" She turned upon her
+sharply. She was, at last, at bay; her eyes were dark with anger; her
+lips and cheeks white.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like you to fly off at a tangent, Aileen, and doubt a person's
+word simply because it happens to contain an unpleasant truth for
+you&mdash;here is the proof," she held up a letter; "it's from my cousin,
+Henry Van Ostend; he has written it out in black and white that my
+nephew has already asked for his daughter's hand. Now disabuse your mind
+of any notion you may have in regard to Champney Googe&mdash;I hope you won't
+disgrace yourself by crying for the moon after this."</p>
+
+<p>The girl's eyes fairly blazed upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Champney, after this I'll thank you to keep your advice and your
+family affairs to yourself&mdash;<i>I</i> didn't ask for either. And you've no
+need to tell me I'm only Aileen Armagh&mdash;for I know it perfectly well.
+I'm only an orphan you took into your home seven years ago and have
+kept, so far, for her service. But if I am only this, I am old enough to
+do and act as I please&mdash;and now you may mark <i>my</i> words: it's not I who
+will disgrace you and yours&mdash;not I, remember that!" Her anger threatened
+to choke her; but her voice although husky remained low, never rising
+above its level inflection. "And let me tell you another thing: I'm as
+good any day as Alice Van Ostend, and I should despise myself if I
+thought myself less; and if it's the millions that make the difference
+in the number of your friends&mdash;may God keep me poor till I die!" She
+spoke with passionate earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney smiled to herself; she felt her purpose was accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going up to Mrs. Caukins'?" she asked in a matter-of-fact voice
+that struck like cold iron on the girl's burning intensity of feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm going."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, be back by seven."</p>
+
+<p>The girl made no reply. She left the library at once, closing the door
+behind her with a force that made the hall ring. Mrs. Champney smiled
+again, and proceeded to re-read Alice Van Ostend's letter.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen went out through the kitchen and across the vegetable garden to
+the boat house. She cast loose one of the boats in the float, took her
+seat and rowed out into the lake&mdash;rowed with a strength and swiftness
+that accurately gauged her condition of mind. She rounded the peninsula
+of The Bow and headed her boat, not to the sheds on the north shore, but
+towards the west, to "lily-pad reach". To get away from that woman's
+presence, to be alone with herself&mdash;that was all she craved at the
+moment. The oars caught among the lily-pads; this gave her an excuse for
+pulling and wrenching at them. Her anger was still at white heat&mdash;not a
+particle of color as yet tinged her cheeks&mdash;and the physical exertion
+necessary to overcome such an obstacle as the long tough stems she felt
+to be a relief.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't true&mdash;it isn't true," she said over and over again to herself.
+She kept tugging and pulling till by sheer strength she forced the boat
+into the shallow water among the tall arrowhead along the margin of the
+shore.</p>
+
+<p>She stepped out on the landing stones, drew up the boat, then made her
+way across the meadow to the shade of the tall spreading willows. Here
+she threw herself down, pressing her face into the cool lush grass, and
+relived in thought that early morning hour she had spent alone with him,
+only a few weeks ago, on the misty lake among the opening water lilies.</p>
+
+<p>She had been awakened that morning in mid-July by hearing him singing
+softly beneath her open window that same song which seven years ago made
+such an unaccountable impression on her child's heart. He had often in
+jest threatened to repeat the episode of the serenade, but she never
+realized that beneath the jest there was any deeper meaning. Now she was
+aware of that meaning in her every fibre, physical and spiritual.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Aileen Mavoureen, the gray dawn is breaking&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And hearing that, realizing that the voice was calling for her alone in
+all the world, she rose; dressed herself quickly; beckoned joyously to
+him from the window; noiselessly made her way down the back stairs;
+softly unbolted the kitchen porch door&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He was there with hands outstretched for hers; she placed them in his,
+and again, in remembrance of their fun and frolic seven years before, he
+raced with her down the slate-laid garden walk, across the lawn to the
+boat house where his own boat lay moored.</p>
+
+<p>It was four o'clock on that warm midsummer morning. The mists lay light
+but impenetrable on the surface of the lake. The lilies were still
+closed.</p>
+
+<p>They spoke but little.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew no one could hear me&mdash;they all sleep on the other side, don't
+they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, all except the boy, and he sleeps like a log&mdash;Tave has to wake him
+every morning; alarm clocks are no good."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever seen the lilies open, Aileen?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, never; I've never been out early in the morning, but I've often
+seen them go to sleep under the starlight."</p>
+
+<p>"We will row round then till they open&mdash;it's worth seeing."</p>
+
+<p>The sun rose in the low-lying mists; it transfused them with crimson. It
+mounted above them; shot them through and through with gold and
+violet&mdash;then dispersed them without warning, and showed to the girl's
+charmed eyes and senses the gleaming blue of the lake waters blotched
+with the dull green of the lily-pads, and among them the lilies
+expanding the fragrant white of their corollas to its beneficent light
+and warmth....</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>When she left the boat his kiss was on her lips, his words of love
+ringing in her ears. One more of her day dreams was realized: she had
+given to the man she loved with all her heart her first kiss&mdash;and with
+it, on her part, the unspoken pledge of herself.</p>
+
+<p>A movement somewhere about the house, the lowing of the cattle, the
+morning breeze stirring in the trees&mdash;something startled them. They drew
+apart, smiling into each other's eyes. She placed her finger on her
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" she whispered. She was off on a run across the lawn, turning
+once to wave her hand to him.&mdash;And now <i>this</i>!</p>
+
+<p>How could this then that she had just been told be true?</p>
+
+<p>Her whole being revolted at the thought that he was tampering with what
+to her was the holiest in her young life&mdash;her love for him. In the past
+six weeks it never once occurred to her that he could prove unworthy of
+such trust as hers; no man would dare to be untrue to her&mdash;to her,
+Aileen Armagh, who never in all her wilfulness and love of romance had
+given man or boy occasion to use either her name or her lightly! How
+dared he do this thing? Did he not know with whom he had to deal?
+Because she was only Aileen Armagh, and at service with his relation,
+did he think her less the true woman?</p>
+
+<p>Suspicion was foreign to her open nature; doubt, distrust had no place
+in her young life; but like a serpent in the girl's Eden the words of
+the mistress of Champ-au-Haut, "He never will ask you to be his wife,"
+dropped poison in her ears.</p>
+
+<p>She sat up on the grass, thrust back her hair from her forehead&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Let him dare to hint even that what he said was love for me was not
+what&mdash;what&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She buried her face in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen&mdash;Aileen&mdash;where are you?"</p>
+
+<p>That voice, breaking in upon her wretched thought of him, brought her to
+her feet.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+
+<p>"Mother, don't you think Aunt Meda might open her purse and do something
+for Aileen Armagh now that the girl has been faithful to her interests
+so long?"</p>
+
+<p>He had remained at home since his arrival in the morning, and was now
+about to drive down into the town.</p>
+
+<p>His mother looked up from her sewing in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"What put that into your mind? I was thinking the same thing myself not
+a week ago; she has such a wonderful voice."</p>
+
+<p>"It seems unjust to keep her from utilizing it for herself so far as an
+income is concerned and to deprive others of the pleasure of hearing her
+voice after it is trained. But, of course, she can't do it herself."</p>
+
+<p>"I only wish I could do it for her." His mother spoke with great
+earnestness. "But even if I could help, there would be no use offering
+so long as she remains with Almeda."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not; anyway, I'm going down there now, and I shall do what I
+can to sound Aunt Meda on this point."</p>
+
+<p>"Good luck!" she called after him. He turned, lifted his hat, and smiled
+back at her.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He found Mrs. Champney alone on the terrace; she was sitting under the
+ample awning that protected her from the sun but was open on all sides
+for air.</p>
+
+<p>"All alone, Aunt Meda?" he inquired cheerfully, taking a seat beside
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; when did you come?"</p>
+
+<p>"This morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it rather unexpected?" She glanced sideways rather sharply at
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"My coming here is; I'm really on my way to Bar Harbor. The Van Ostends
+are off on Tuesday with a large party and I promised to go with them."</p>
+
+<p>"So Alice wrote me the other day. It's the first letter I have had from
+her. She says she is coming here on her way home in October, that she's
+'just crazy' to see Flamsted Quarries&mdash;but I can read between the lines
+even if my eyes are old." She smiled significantly.</p>
+
+<p>Champney felt that an answering smile was the safe thing in the
+circumstances. He wondered how much Aunt Meda knew from the Van Ostends.
+That she was astute in business matters was no guaranty that she would
+prove far-sighted in matrimonial affairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I've known Alice so long that she's gotten into the habit of taking me
+for granted&mdash;not that I object," he added with a glance in the direction
+of the boat house. Mrs. Champney, whom nothing escaped, noticed it.</p>
+
+<p>"I should hope not," she said emphatically. "I may as well tell you,
+Champney, that Mr. Van Ostend has not hesitated to write me of your
+continued attentions to Alice and your frankness with him in regard to
+the outcome of this. So far as I see, his only objection could be on
+account of her extreme youth&mdash;I congratulate you." She spoke with great
+apparent sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Aunt Meda," he said quietly; "your congratulations are
+premature, and the subject so far as Alice and I are concerned is taboo
+for three years&mdash;at Mr. Van Ostend's special request."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite right&mdash;a girl doesn't know her own mind before she is
+twenty-five."</p>
+
+<p>"Faith, I know one who knows her own mind on all subjects at
+twenty!"&mdash;he laughed heartily as if at some amusing remembrance&mdash;"and
+that's Aileen; by the way, where is she, Aunt Meda?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was going up to Mrs. Caukins'. I suppose she is there now&mdash;why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I want to talk about her, and I don't want her to come in on us
+suddenly."</p>
+
+<p>"What about Aileen?" She spoke indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"About her voice; you've never been willing, I understand, to have it
+cultivated?"</p>
+
+<p>"What if I haven't?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's just the 'what', Aunt Meda," he said pleasantly but earnestly;
+"I've heard her singing a good many times, and I've never heard her that
+I didn't wish some one would be generous enough to such talent to pay
+for cultivating it."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know why I haven't been willing?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't&mdash;and I'd like to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Because, if I had, she would have been on the stage before now&mdash;and
+where could I get another? I don't intend to impoverish myself for her
+sake&mdash;not after what I've done for her." She spoke emphatically. "What
+was your idea in asking me about her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it was a pity that such a talent should be left to go to
+seed. I wish you could look at it from my standpoint and give her the
+wherewithal to go to Europe for three or four years in order to
+cultivate it&mdash;she can take care of herself well enough."</p>
+
+<p>"And you really advise this?" She asked almost incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? You must have seen my interest in the girl. I can't think of a
+better way of showing it than to induce you to put her in the way of
+earning her livelihood by her talent."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney made no direct reply. After a moment's silence she asked
+abruptly:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever said anything to her about this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never a word."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't then; I don't want her to get any more new-fangled notions into
+her head."</p>
+
+<p>"Just as you say; but I wish you would think about it&mdash;it seems almost a
+matter of justice." He rose to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Over to the shed office; I want to see the foreman about the last
+contract. I'll borrow the boat, if you don't mind, and row up&mdash;I have
+plenty of time." He looked at his watch. "Can I do anything for you
+before I go?" he asked gently, adjusting an awning curtain to shut the
+rays of the sun from her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I wish you would telephone up to Mrs. Caukins and tell her to tell
+Aileen to be at home before six; I need her to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>He went into the house and telephoned. He did not think it necessary to
+return and report Mrs. Caukins' reply that Aileen "hadn't come up yet."
+He went directly to the boat house, wondering in the mean time where she
+was.</p>
+
+<p>One of the two boats was already gone; doubtless she had taken it&mdash;where
+could she be?</p>
+
+<p>He stepped into the boat, and pulled slowly out into the lake, keeping
+in the lee of the rocky peninsula of The Bow. He was fairly well
+satisfied with his effort in Aileen's behalf and with himself because he
+had taken a first step in the right direction. Neither his mother nor
+Aunt Meda could say now that he was not disinterested; if Father Honor&eacute;
+came over, as was his custom, to chat with him on the porch for an hour
+or two in the evening, he would broach the subject again to him who was
+the girl's best friend. If she could go to Europe there would be less
+danger&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Danger?&mdash;Yes; he was willing to admit it, less danger for them both;
+three years of absence would help materially in this matter in which he
+felt himself too deeply involved. Then, in the very face of this
+acknowledgment, he could not help a thought that whitened his cheek as
+it formulated itself instantaneously in his consciousness: if she were
+three years in Europe, there would be opportunity for him to see her
+sometime.</p>
+
+<p>He knew the thought could not be uttered in the girl's pure presence;
+yet, with many others, he held that a woman, if she loves a man
+absorbingly, passionately, is capable of any sacrifice&mdash;would she?
+Hardly; she was so high-spirited, so pure in thought&mdash;yet she loved him,
+and after all love was the great Subduer. But no&mdash;it could never be;
+this was his decision. He rowed out into the lake.</p>
+
+<p>Why must a man's action prove so often the slave of his thought!</p>
+
+<p>He was passing the arm of Mesantic that leads to "lily-pad reach". He
+turned to look up the glinting curve. Was she there?&mdash;should he seek
+her?</p>
+
+<p>He backed water on the instant. The boat responded like a live thing,
+quivered, came to a partial rest&mdash;stopped, undulating on the surface
+roughened by the powerful leverage of the oars. Champney sat motionless,
+the dripping blades suspended over the water. He knew that in all
+probability the girl was there in "lily-pad reach". Should he seek her?
+Should he go?&mdash;Should he?</p>
+
+<p>The hands that held the steady oars quivered suddenly, then gripped them
+as in a vise; the man's face flushed; he bent to the right oar, the
+craft whirled half way on her keel; the other oar fell&mdash;swiftly and
+powerfully the boat shot ahead up "lily-pad reach".</p>
+
+<p>Reason, discretion, judgment razed in an instant from the table of
+consciousness; desire rampant, the desire of possession to which
+intellect, training, environment, even that goodward-turning which men
+under various aspects term religion, succumb in a moment like the
+present one in which Champney Googe was bending all his strength to the
+oars that he might be the sooner with the girl he loved.</p>
+
+<p>He did not ask himself what next? He gave no thought to aught but
+reaching the willows as soon as he could. His eye was on the glinting
+curve before him; he rounded it swiftly&mdash;her boat was there tied to the
+stake among the arrowhead; his own dragged through the lily-pads beside
+it; he sprang out, ran up the bank&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen&mdash;Aileen&mdash;where are you?" he called eagerly, impatiently, and
+sought about him to find her.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen Armagh heard that call, and doubt, suspicion, anger dropped away
+from her. Instead, trust, devotion, anticipation clothed her thought of
+him; he was coming to speak the "word" that was to make her future fair
+and plain&mdash;the one "word" that should set him forever in her heart,
+enthrone him in her life. That word was not "love", but the sacrament
+of love; the word of four letters which a woman writes large with
+legitimate loving pride in the face of the world. She sprang to her feet
+and waited for him; the willows drooped on either side of her&mdash;so he saw
+her again.</p>
+
+<p>He took her in his arms. "Aileen&mdash;Aileen," he said over and over again
+between the kisses that fell upon her hair, forehead, lips.</p>
+
+<p>She yielded herself to his embrace, passionately given and returned with
+all a girl's loving ardor and joy in the loved man's presence. Between
+the kisses she waited for the "word."</p>
+
+<p>It was not forthcoming.</p>
+
+<p>She drew away from him slightly and looked straight into his eyes that
+were devouring her face and form. The unerring instinct of a pure nature
+warned her against that look. He caught her to him&mdash;but she stemmed both
+hands against his breast to repulse him.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go, Champney," she said faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I let you go? Aileen, my Aileen, why should I ever let you
+go?" A kiss closed the lips that were about to reply&mdash;a kiss so long and
+passionate that the girl felt her strength leaving her in the close
+embrace.</p>
+
+<p>"He will speak the 'word' now surely," she told herself. Between their
+heart-throbs she listened for it.</p>
+
+<p>The "word" was not spoken.</p>
+
+<p>Again she stemmed her hands against him, pressing them hard against his
+shoulders. "Let me go, Champney." She spoke with spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The act of repulsion, the ring in her voice half angered him; at the
+same time it added fuel to desire.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not let you go&mdash;you love me&mdash;tell me so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He waited for no reply but caught her close; the girl struggled in his
+arms. It was dawning on her undaunted spirit that this, which she was
+experiencing with Champney Googe, the man she loved with all her heart,
+was not love. Of a sudden, all that brave spirit rose in arms to ward
+off from herself any spoken humiliation to her womanhood, ay more, to
+prevent the man she loved from deepening his humiliation of himself in
+her presence.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go" she said, but despite her effort for control her voice
+trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"You know I love you&mdash;why do you repel me so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go," she said again; this time her voice was firm, the tone
+peremptory; but she made no further struggle to free herself from his
+arms.&mdash;"Oh, what are you doing!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am making the attempt to find out if you love me as I love you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You have no right to kiss me so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I have the right because I love you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't love you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes you do, Aileen Armagh&mdash;don't say that again."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not love you&mdash;let me go, I say."</p>
+
+<p>He let her go at last. She stood before him, pale, but still undaunted.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what you are saying?" he demanded almost fiercely under his
+breath. He took her head between his hands and bent it back to close her
+lips with another kiss.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know. I do not love you&mdash;don't touch me!" She held out her
+hands to him, palm outwards, as if warding off some present danger.</p>
+
+<p>He paid no heed to her warning, but caught her to him again. "Tell me
+now you don't love me, Aileen," he whispered, laying his cheek to hers.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you I do not love you," she said aloud; her voice was clear and
+firm.</p>
+
+<p>He drew back then to look at her in amazement; turned away for a moment
+as if half dazed; then, holding her to his side with his left arm he
+laid his ear hard over her heart. What was it that paled the man's
+flushed cheeks?</p>
+
+<p>The girl's heart was beating slowly, calmly, even faintly. He caught her
+wrist, pressing his fingers on her pulse&mdash;there was not the suspicion of
+a flutter. He let her go then. She stood before him; her eyes were
+raised fearlessly to his.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to row back now&mdash;no, don't speak&mdash;not a word&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She turned and walked slowly down to the boat; cast it off; poled it
+with one oar out of the tall arrowhead and the thick fringe of
+lily-pads; took her seat; fitted the oars to the rowlocks, dipped them,
+and proceeded to row steadily down the reach towards The Bow.</p>
+
+<p>Champney Googe stood where she had left him till he watched her out of
+sight around the curve; then he went over to the willows and sat down.
+It took time for him to recover from his debauch of feeling. He made
+himself few thoughts at first; but as time passed and the shadows
+lengthened on the reach, he came slowly to himself. The night fell; the
+man still sat there, but the thoughts were now crowding fast,
+uncomfortably fast. He dropped his head into his hands, so covering his
+face in the dark for very shame that he had so outraged his manhood. He
+knew now that she knew he had not intended to speak that "word" between
+them; but no finer feeling told him that she had saved him from himself.</p>
+
+<p>In that hour he saw himself as he was&mdash;unworthy of a good woman's love.</p>
+
+<p>He saw other things as well; these he hoped to make good in the near
+future, but this&mdash;but this!</p>
+
+<p>He rowed back under cover of the dark to Champ-au-Haut. Octavius, who
+was wondering at his non-appearance with the boat, met him with a
+lantern at the float.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a telegram just come up; the operator gave it to me for you. I
+told him you was out in the boat and would be here 'fore you went up
+home."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Tave." He opened it; read it by the light of the lantern.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to go back to New York&mdash;it's a matter of business. It's all up
+with my vacation and the yachting cruise now,"&mdash;he looked at his
+watch,&mdash;"seven; I can get the eight-thirty accommodation to Hallsport,
+and that will give me time to catch the Eastern express."</p>
+
+<p>"Hold on a minute and I'll get your trap from the stable&mdash;it's all ready
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'll get it myself&mdash;good-bye, Tave, I'm off."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, Champney."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"Champ's worried about something," he said to himself; he was making
+fast the boat. "I never see him look like that&mdash;I hope he hasn't got
+hooked in with any of those Wall Street sharks."</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes he heard the carriage wheels on the gravel in the
+driveway. He stopped on his way to the stable to listen.</p>
+
+<p>"He's driving like Jehu," he muttered. He was still listening; he heard
+the frequent snorting of the horse, the rapid click of hoofs on the
+highroad&mdash;but he did not hear what was filling the driver's ears at that
+moment: the roar of an unseen cataract.</p>
+
+<p>Champney Googe was realizing for the first time that he was in
+mid-stream; that he might not be able to breast the current; that the
+eddying water about him was in fact the whirlpool; that the rush of what
+he had deemed mere harmless rapids was the prelude to the thunderous
+fall of a cataract ahead.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>For several weeks after her nephew's visit, Mrs. Champney occupied many
+of her enforced leisure half-hours in trying to put two and two together
+in their logical combination of four; but thus far she had failed. She
+learned through Octavius that Champney had returned to New York on
+Saturday evening; that in consequence he was obliged to give up the
+cruise with the Van Ostends; from Champney himself she had no word. Her
+conclusion was that there had been no chance for him to see Aileen
+during the twelve hours he was in town, for the girl came home as
+requested shortly before six, but with a headache, and the excuse for it
+that she had rowed too far in the sun on the way up to the sheds.</p>
+
+<p>"My nephew told me he was going to row up to the sheds, too&mdash;did you
+happen to meet him there?" she inquired. She was studying the profile of
+the girl's flushed and sunburned face. Aileen had just said good night
+and was about to leave Mrs. Champney's room. She turned quickly to face
+her. She spoke with sharp emphasis:</p>
+
+<p>"I did <i>not</i> meet your nephew at the sheds, Mrs. Champney, nor did I see
+him there&mdash;and I'll thank you, after what you said to me this morning,
+to draw no more conclusions in regard to your nephew's seeing or meeting
+me at the sheds or anywhere else&mdash;it's not worth your while; for I've no
+desire either to see or meet him again. Perhaps this will satisfy you."
+She left the room at once without giving Mrs. Champney time to reply.</p>
+
+<p>A self-satisfied smile drew apart Mrs. Champney's thin lips; evidently
+the girl's lesson was a final and salutary one. She would know her place
+after this. She determined not to touch on this subject again with
+Aileen; she might run the risk of going too far, and she desired to keep
+her with her as long as possible. But she noticed that the singing voice
+was heard less and less frequently about the house and grounds. Octavius
+also noticed it, and missed it.</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen, you don't sing as much as you did a while ago&mdash;what's the
+matter?" he asked her one day in October when she joined him to go up
+street after supper on an errand.</p>
+
+<p>"Matter?&mdash;I've sung out for one while; I'm taking a rest-cure with my
+voice, Tave."</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't the kind of rest-cure that'll agree with you, nor I guess any
+of us at Champo. There ain't no trouble with her that's bothering you?"
+He pointed with a backward jerk of his thumb to the house.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"She's acted mad ever since I told her Champney had to go back that
+night and tend to business; guess she'd set her heart on his making a
+match on that yachting cruise&mdash;well, 't would be all in the family,
+seeing there's Champney blood in the Van Ostends, good blood
+too,&mdash;there's no better," he added emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Tave, you're always blowing the Champneys' horn&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And why shouldn't I?"&mdash;he was decidedly nettled. "The Champneys are my
+folks, my townspeople, the founders of this town, and their interests
+have always been mine&mdash;why shouldn't I speak up for 'em, I'd like to
+know? You won't find no better blood in the United States than the
+Champneys'."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen made no reply; she was looking up the street to Poggi's fruit
+stall, where beneath a street light she saw a crowd of men from the
+quarries.</p>
+
+<p>"Romanzo said there was some trouble in the sheds&mdash;do you know what it
+is?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I can't get at the rights of it; they didn't get paid off last
+week, so Romanzo told me last night, but he said Champney telegraphed
+he'd fix it all right in another week. He says dollars are scarce just
+at this time&mdash;crops moving, you know, and market dull."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a little scornfully. "You seem to think Mr. Googe can fix
+everything all right, Tave."</p>
+
+<p>"Champney's no fool; he's 'bout as interested in this home work as
+anybody, and if he says it'll be all right, you may bet your life it
+will be&mdash;There's Jo Quimber coming; p'raps he's heard something and can
+tell us."</p>
+
+<p>"What's that crowd up to, Uncle Jo?" said Aileen, linking her arm in the
+old man's and making him right about face to walk on with them.</p>
+
+<p>"Talkin' a strike. I heerd 'em usin' Champ's name mighty free, Tave,
+just now&mdash;guess he'd better come home an' calm 'em down some, or
+there'll be music in the air thet this town never danced to yet. By A.
+J., it riles me clear through to hear 'em!"</p>
+
+<p>"You can't blame them for wanting their pay, Uncle Jo." There was a
+challenge in the girl's voice which Uncle Jo immediately accepted.</p>
+
+<p>"So ye've j'ined the majority in this town, hev ye, Aileen? I don't say
+ez I'm blamin' anybody fer wantin' his pay; I'm jest sayin' it don't set
+well on me the way they go at it to get it. How's the quickest way to
+git up a war, eh? Jest keep talkin' it up&mdash;talkin' it up, an' it's sure
+to come. They don't give a man like Champ a chance&mdash;talkin' behind his
+back and usin' a good old Flamsted name ez ef 't wuz a mop rag!" Joel's
+indignation got the better of his discretion; his voice was so loud that
+it began to attract the attention of some men who were leaving Poggi's;
+the crowd was rapidly dispersing.</p>
+
+<p>"Sh&mdash;Joel! they'll hear you. You've been standing up for everything
+foreign that's come into this town for the last seven years&mdash;what's come
+over you that you're going back on all your preaching?"</p>
+
+<p>"I ain't goin' back on nothin'," the old man replied testily; "but a
+man's a man, I don't keer whether he's a Polack or a 'Merican&mdash;I don't
+keer nothin' 'bout thet; but ef he's a man he knows he'd oughter stop
+backbitin' and hittin' out behind another man's back&mdash;he'd oughter come
+out inter the open an' say, 'You ain't done the right thing by me, now
+let's both hev it out', instead of growlin' and grumblin' an' spittin'
+out such all-fired nonsense 'bout the syndicaters and Champ&mdash;what's
+Champ got to do with it, anyway? He can't make money for 'em."</p>
+
+<p>The crowds were surging past them; the men were talking together; their
+confused speech precluded the possibility of understanding what was
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"He's no better than other men, Uncle Jo," the girl remarked after the
+men had passed. She laughed as she spoke, but the laugh was not a
+pleasant one; it roused Octavius.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, look here, Aileen, you stop right where you are&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted him, and her voice was again both merry and pleasant,
+for they were directly opposite Luigi's shop: "I'm going to, Tave; I'm
+going to stop right here; Mrs. Champney sent me down on purpose to get
+some of those late peaches Luigi keeps; she said she craved them, and
+I'm going in this very minute to get them&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She waved her hand to both and entered the shop.</p>
+
+<p>Old Quimber caught Octavius by the arm to detain him a moment before he
+himself retraced his steps up street.</p>
+
+<p>"What d'ye think, Tave?&mdash;they goin' to make a match on't, she an' Poggi?
+I see 'm together a sight."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't tell 'bout Aileen any more'n a weather-cock. She might go
+farther and fare worse."</p>
+
+<p>"Thet's so, Tave; Poggi's a man, an' a credit to our town. I guess from
+all I hear Romanzo's 'bout give it up, ain't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Romanzo never had a show with Aileen," Octavius said decidedly; "he
+ain't her kind."</p>
+
+<p>"Guess you're right, Tave&mdash;By A. J. there they go now!" He nudged
+Octavius with his elbow. Octavius, who had passed the shop and was
+standing on the sidewalk with old Quimber, saw the two leave it and walk
+slowly in the direction of The Bow. He listened for the sound of
+Aileen's merry laugh and chat, but he heard nothing. His grave face at
+once impressed Joel.</p>
+
+<p>"Something's up 'twixt those two, eh, Tave?" he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius nodded in reply; he was comprehending all that old man's words
+implied. He bade Quimber good night and walked on to The Greenbush. The
+Colonel found him more taciturn than usual that evening....</p>
+
+<p>"I can't, Luigi,&mdash;I can't marry you," she answered almost irritably. The
+two were nearing the entrance to Champo; the Italian was pleading his
+cause. "I can't&mdash;so don't say anything more about it."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Aileen, I will wait&mdash;I can wait; I've waited so long already. I
+believe I began to love you through that knothole, you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"I haven't forgotten;" she half smiled at the remembrance; "but that
+seems so long ago, and things have changed so&mdash;I've changed, Luigi."</p>
+
+<p>The tone of her voice was hard. Luigi looked at her in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"What has changed you, Aileen? Tell me&mdash;can't you trust me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Luigi!"&mdash;she faced him suddenly, looking straight up into his handsome
+face that turned white as he became aware that what she was about to say
+was final&mdash;"I'd give anything if I could say to you what you want me
+to&mdash;you deserve all my love, if I could only give it to you, for you are
+faithful and true, and mean what you say&mdash;it would be the best thing for
+me, I know; but I can't, Luigi; I've nothing to give, and it would be
+living a lie to you from morning till night to give you less than you
+deserve. I only blame myself that I'm not enough like other girls to
+know a good man when I see him, and take his love with a thankful heart
+that it's mine&mdash;but it's no use&mdash;don't blame me for being myself&mdash;" Her
+lips trembled; she bit the lower one white in her effort to steady it.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Luigi made no reply. Suddenly he leaned towards her&mdash;she
+drew away from him quickly&mdash;and said between his teeth, all the
+long-smouldering fire of southern passion, passion that is founded on
+jealousy, glowing in his eyes:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Aileen Armagh, is there another man you love?&mdash;tell me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Rag who had been with her all the afternoon moved with a quick
+threatening motion to her side and a warning <i>gurr&mdash;rrrr</i> for the one
+who should dare to touch her.</p>
+
+<p>"No." She spoke defiantly. Luigi straightened himself. Rag sprang upon
+her fawning and caressing; she shoved him aside roughly, for the dog was
+at that moment but the scapegoat for his master; Rag cowered at her
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;" It was a long-drawn breath of relief. Luigi Poggi's eyes
+softened; the fire in them ceased to leap and blaze; something like hope
+brightened them.</p>
+
+<p>"I could bear anything but that&mdash;I was afraid&mdash;" He hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid of what?" She caught up his words sharply, and began to walk
+rapidly up the driveway.</p>
+
+<p>He answered slowly: "I was afraid you were in love with Mr. Googe&mdash;I saw
+you once out rowing with him&mdash;early one morning&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I in love with Mr. Googe!" she echoed scornfully, "you needn't ever be
+afraid of that; I&mdash;I hate him!"</p>
+
+<p>Luigi stared at her in amazement. He scarce could keep pace with her
+rapid walk that was almost a run. Her cheeks were aflame; her eyes
+filled with tears. All her pent up wretchedness of the last two months,
+all her outraged love, her womanhood's humiliation, a sense of life's
+bitter injustice and of her impotence to avenge the wrong put upon her
+affections, found vent in these three words. And Luigi, seeing Aileen
+Armagh changed into something that an hour before he would not have
+believed possible, was gripped by a sudden fear,&mdash;he must know the truth
+for his own peace of mind,&mdash;and, under its influence, he laid his hand
+on her arm and brought her to a standstill.</p>
+
+<p>Rag snarled another warning; Aileen thrust him aside with her foot.</p>
+
+<p>"What has he done to you to make you hate him so?"</p>
+
+<p>Because he spoke slowly, Aileen thought he was speaking calmly. Had she
+not been carried away by her own strength of feeling, she would have
+known that she might not risk the answer she gave him.</p>
+
+<p>"Done to me?&mdash;nothing; what could he do?&mdash;but I hate him&mdash;I never want
+to see his face again!"</p>
+
+<p>She was beside herself with anger and shame. It was the tone of Luigi's
+voice that brought her to her senses; in a flash she recalled Octavius
+Buzzby's warning about playing with "volcanic fires." It was too late,
+however, to recall her words.</p>
+
+<p>"Luigi, I've said too much; you don't understand&mdash;now let's drop it."
+She drew away her arm from beneath his hand, and resumed her rapid walk
+up the driveway, Rag trotting after her.</p>
+
+<p>"And you mean what you say&mdash;you never want to see him again?" He spoke
+again slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Never," she said firmly.</p>
+
+<p>Luigi made no reply. They were nearing the house. She turned to him when
+they reached the steps.</p>
+
+<p>"Luigi,"&mdash;she put out her hand and he took it in both his,&mdash;"forget what
+I've said about another and forgive me for what I've had to say to
+yourself&mdash;we've always been such good friends, that now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She was ready with the smile that captivated him, but it was a tremulous
+one for she smiled through tears; she was thinking of the contrast.</p>
+
+<p>"And always will be, Aileen, when we both know for good and all that we
+can be nothing more to each other," he answered gently.</p>
+
+<p>She was grateful to him; but she turned away and went up the steps
+without saying good-bye.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>"'Gad, I wish I was well out of it!"</p>
+
+<p>For the first time within the memory of Elmer Wiggins and Lawyer Emlie,
+who heard the Colonel's ejaculation, his words and tone proclaimed the
+fact that he was not in his seemingly unfailing good spirits. He was
+standing with the two at the door of the drug shop and watching the
+crowds of men gathered in groups along the main street.</p>
+
+<p>It was Saturday afternoon and the men were idle, a weekly occurrence the
+Colonel had learned to dread since his incumbency as deputy sheriff and,
+in consequence of his office, felt responsible for the peace of the
+community at large until Monday morning.</p>
+
+<p>Something unusual was in the air, and the three men were at once aware
+of it. The uneasiness, that had prevailed in the sheds and at The Gore
+during the past month, was evidently coming to a crisis now that the
+men's pay was two weeks overdue.</p>
+
+<p>Emlie looked grave on replying, after a pause in which the three were
+busy taking note of the constantly increasing crowd in front of the town
+hall:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't blame you, Colonel; there'll be the deuce to pay if the men
+don't get paid off by Monday noon. They've been uneasy now so long about
+the piece work settlement, that this last delay is going to be the match
+that fires the train&mdash;and no slow match either from the looks; I don't
+understand this delay. When did Romanzo send his last message?"</p>
+
+<p>"About an hour ago, but he hasn't had any answer yet," replied the
+Colonel, shading his eyes with his hat to look up street at the town
+hall crowd. "He has been telephoning and telegraphing off and on for the
+last two weeks; but he can't get any satisfaction&mdash;corporations, you
+know, don't materialize just for the rappings."</p>
+
+<p>"What does Champney say?" inquired Mr. Wiggins.</p>
+
+<p>"State of the market," said the Colonel laconically.</p>
+
+<p>The men did not look at one another, for each was feeling a certain
+degree of indignation, of humiliation and disappointment that one of
+their own, Champney Googe, should go back on Flamsted to the extent of
+allowing the "market" to place the great quarry interests, through
+non-payment of the workers, in jeopardy.</p>
+
+<p>"Has Romanzo heard direct from him to-day?" asked Emlie.</p>
+
+<p>"No; the office replied he was out of the city for Saturday and Sunday;
+didn't give his address but asked if we could keep the men quiet till
+the middle of next week when the funds would be forwarded."</p>
+
+<p>"I wired our New York exchange yesterday," said Emlie, "but they can't
+give us any information&mdash;answered things had gone to pot pretty
+generally with certain securities, but Flamsted was all right,&mdash;not tied
+up in any of them. Of course, they know the standing of the syndicate.
+There'll have to be some new arrangement for a large reserve fund right
+here on home soil, or we'll be kept in hot water half the time. I don't
+believe in having the hands that work in one place, and the purse that
+holds their pay in another; it gets too ticklish at such times when the
+market drops and a plank or two at the bottom falls out."</p>
+
+<p>"Neither do I;" Mr. Wiggins spoke emphatically. "The Quarries Company's
+liabilities run up into the millions on account of the contracts they
+have signed and the work they have undertaken, and there ought to be a
+million of available assets to discount panics like this one that looks
+pretty threatening to us away off here in Maine. Our bank ought to have
+the benefit of some of the money."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, so far, we've had our trouble for nothing, you might say. You, as
+a director, know that Champney sends up a hundred thousand say on
+Thursday, and Romanzo draws it for the pay roll and other disbursements
+on Saturday morning; they hold it at the other end to get the use of it
+till the last gun is fired." He spoke with irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks to me as if some sort of a gun had been fired already," said
+Mr. Wiggins, pointing to the increasing crowd before the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Something's up," said Emlie, startled at the sight of the gathering
+hundreds.</p>
+
+<p>"Then there's my place," said the Colonel&mdash;the other two thought they
+heard him sigh&mdash;and started up the street.</p>
+
+<p>Emlie turned to Mr. Wiggins.</p>
+
+<p>"It's rough on the Colonel; he's a man of peace if ever there was one,
+and likes to stand well with one and all. This rough and tumble business
+of sheriff goes against the grain; his time is up next month; he'll be
+glad enough to be out of it. I'll step over to the office for the paper,
+I see they've just come&mdash;the men have got them already from the stand&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Elmer Wiggins caught his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" he cried under his breath, pointing to the crowd and a man who
+was mounting the tail of an express wagon that had halted on the
+outskirts of the throng. "That's one of the quarrymen&mdash;he's ring-leader
+every time&mdash;he's going to read 'em something&mdash;hark!"</p>
+
+<p>They could hear the man haranguing the ever-increasing crowd; he was
+waving a newspaper. They could not hear what he was saying, but in the
+pauses of his speechifying the hoarse murmur of approval grew louder and
+louder. The cart-tail orator pointed to the headlines; there was a
+sudden deep silence, so deep that the soft scurrying of a mass of fallen
+elm leaves in the gutter seemed for a moment to fill all the air. Then
+the man began to read. They saw the Colonel on the outside of the crowd;
+saw him suddenly turn and make with all haste for the post-office; saw
+him reappear reading the paper.</p>
+
+<p>The two hurried across the street to him.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter?" Emlie demanded.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel spoke no word. He held the sheet out to them and with
+shaking forefinger pointed to the headlines:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>BIG EMBEZZLEMENT BY FLAMSTED QUARRIES CO. OFFICIAL</p>
+
+<p>GUILTY MAN A FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE</p>
+
+<p>SEARCH WARRANTS OUT</p>
+
+<p>DETECTIVES ON TRAIL</p>
+
+<p>"New York&mdash;Special Despatch: L. Champney Googe, the treasurer of
+the Flamsted Quarries Co.&mdash;" etc., etc.</p></div>
+
+<p>The men looked at one another. There was a moment of sickening silence;
+not so much as a leaf whirled in the gutter; it was broken by a great
+cheer from the assembled hundreds of workmen farther up the street,
+followed by a conglomerate of hootings, cat-calls, yells and falsetto
+hoorays from the fringe of small boys. The faces of the three men in
+front of the post-office grew white at their unspoken thought. Each
+waited for the other.</p>
+
+<p>"His mother&mdash;" said Emlie at last.</p>
+
+<p>Elmer Wiggins' lips trembled. "You must tell her, Colonel&mdash;she mustn't
+hear it this way&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My God, how can I!" The Colonel's voice broke, but only for a second,
+then he braced himself to his martyrdom. "You're right; she mustn't hear
+it from any one but me&mdash;telephone up at once, will you, Elmer, that I'm
+coming up to see her on an important matter?&mdash;Emlie, you'll drive me up
+in your trap&mdash;we can get there before the men have a chance to get
+home&mdash;keep a watch on the doings here in the town, Elmer, and telephone
+me if there's any trouble&mdash;there's Romanzo coming now, I suppose he's
+got word from the office&mdash;if you happen to see Father Honor&eacute;, tell him
+where I am, he will help&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stepped into the trap that had been hitched in front of the drug
+store, and Emlie took the reins. Elmer Wiggins reached up his hand to
+the Colonel, who gripped it hard.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Elmer," he said in answer to the other's mute question, "this is
+one of the days when a man, who is a man, may wish he'd never been
+born&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They were off, past the surging crowds who were now thronging the entire
+street, past The Bow, and over the bridge on their way to The Gore.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+
+<p>"Run on ahead, girlies," said Aileen to the twins who were with her for
+their annual checkerberry picnic, "I'll be down in a few minutes."</p>
+
+<p>They were on the edge of the quarry woods which sheltered the Colonel's
+outlying sheep pastures and protected from the north wind the two
+sheepfolds that were used for the autumn and early spring. Dulcie and
+Doosie, obedient to Aileen's request, raced hand in hand across the
+short-turfed pastures, balancing their baskets of red berries.</p>
+
+<p>The late afternoon sunshine of the last of October shone clear and warm
+upon the fading close-cropped herbage that covered the long slopes. The
+sheep were gathering by flocks at the folds. The collie, busy and
+important, was at work with 'Lias rounding up the stragglers. Aileen's
+eyes were blinded to the transient quiet beauty of this scene, for she
+was alive to but one point in the landscape&mdash;the red brick house with
+granite trimmings far away across the Rothel, and the man leaving the
+carriage which had just stopped at the front porch. She could not
+distinguish who it was, and this fact fostered conjecture&mdash;Could it be
+Champney Googe who had come home to help settle the trouble in the
+sheds?</p>
+
+<p>How she hated him!&mdash;yet her heart gave a sudden sick throb of
+expectation. How she hated herself for her weakness!</p>
+
+<p>"You look tired to death, Aileen," was Mrs. Caukins' greeting a few
+minutes afterwards, "come in and rest yourself before supper. Luigi was
+here just now and I've sent Dulcie over with him to Aurora's to get the
+Colonel; I saw him go in there fifteen minutes ago, and he's no notion
+of time, not even meal-time, when he's talking business with her. I know
+it's business, because Mr. Emlie drove up with him; he's waiting for him
+to come out. Romanzo has just telephoned that he can't get home for
+supper, but he'll be up in time to see you home."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Caukins was diplomatic; she looked upon herself as a committee of
+one on ways and means to further her son's interest so far as Aileen
+Armagh was concerned; but that young lady was always ready with a check
+to her mate.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mrs. Caukins, but I'll not trouble him; Tave is coming up to
+drive me home about eight; he knows checkerberry picking isn't easy
+work."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Caukins was looking out of the window and did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare," she exclaimed, "if there isn't Octavius this very minute
+driving up in a rush to Aurora's too&mdash;and Father Honor&eacute;'s with
+him!&mdash;Why, what&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Without waiting to finish her thought, she hurried to the door to call
+out to Dulcie, who was coming back over the bridge towards the house,
+running as fast as she could:</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, Dulcie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mother&mdash;mother&mdash;" the child panted, running up the road, "father
+wants you to come over to Mrs. Googe's right off, as quick as you
+can&mdash;he says not to stop for anything&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The words were scarcely out of her mouth before Mrs. Caukins, without
+heeding Aileen, was hurrying down the road. The little girl, wholly out
+of breath, threw herself down exhausted on the grass before the door.
+Aileen and Doosie ran out to her.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Dulcie&mdash;can't you tell me?" said Aileen.</p>
+
+<p>Between quickened breaths the child told what she knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Luigi stopped to speak to Mr. Emlie&mdash;and Mr. Emlie said something
+dreadful for Flamsted&mdash;had happened&mdash;and Luigi looked all of a sudden so
+queer and pale,"&mdash;she sat up, and in the excitement and importance of
+imparting such news forgot her over-exertion,&mdash;"and Mr. Emlie said
+father was telling Mrs. Googe&mdash;and he was afraid it would kill her&mdash;and
+then father came to the door looking just like Luigi, all queer and
+pale, and Mr. Emlie says, 'How is she?' and father shook his head and
+said, 'It's her death blow,' then I squeezed Luigi's hand to make him
+look at me, and I asked him what it was Mrs. Googe's was sick of, for I
+must go and tell mother&mdash;and he looked at Mr. Emlie and he nodded and
+said, 'It's town talk already&mdash;it's in the papers.' And then Luigi told
+me that Mr. Champney Googe had been stealing, Aileen!&mdash;and if he got
+caught he'd have to go to prison&mdash;then father sent me over home for
+mother and told me to run, and I've run so&mdash;Oh, Aileen!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a frightened cry, and her twin echoed it. While Aileen Armagh was
+listening with shortened breaths to the little girl, she felt as if she
+were experiencing the concentrated emotions of a lifetime; as a result,
+the revulsion of feeling was so powerful that it affected her
+physically; her young healthy nerves, capable at other times of almost
+any tension, suddenly played her false. The effect upon her of what she
+heard was a severe nervous shock. She had never fainted in her life, nor
+had she known the meaning of an hysterical mood; she neither fainted nor
+screamed now, but began to struggle horribly for breath, for the shocked
+heart began beating as it would, sending the blood in irregular spurts
+through the already over-charged arteries. From time to time she groaned
+heavily as her struggle continued.</p>
+
+<p>The two children were terrified. Doosie raced distractedly across the
+pastures to get 'Lias, and Dulcie ran into the house for water. Her
+little hand was trembling as she held the glass to Aileen's white
+quivering lips that refused it.</p>
+
+<p>By the time, however, that 'Lias got to the house, the crisis was past;
+she could smile at the frightened children, and assure 'Lias that she
+had had simply a short and acute attack of indigestion from eating too
+many checkerberries over in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>"It serves me right," she said smiling into the woe-begone little faces
+so near to hers; "I've always heard they are the most indigestible
+things going&mdash;now don't you eat any more, girlies, or you'll have a
+spasm like mine. I'm all right, 'Lias; go back to your work, I'll just
+help myself to a cup of hot water from the tea-kettle and then I'll go
+home with Tave&mdash;I see him coming for me&mdash;I didn't expect him now."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Aileen, won't you stay to supper?" said the twins at one and the
+same time; "we always have you to celebrate our checkerberry picnic."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear knows, I've celebrated the checkerberries enough already," she
+said laughing,&mdash;but 'Lias noticed that her lips were still
+colorless,&mdash;"and I think, dearies, that it's no time for us to be
+celebrating any more to-day when poor Mrs. Googe is in such trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"What's up?" said 'Lias.</p>
+
+<p>The twins' eagerness to impart their knowledge of recent events to 'Lias
+was such that the sorrow of parting was greatly mitigated; moreover,
+Aileen left them with a promise to come up again soon.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm ready, Tave," she said as he drew up at the door. 'Lias helped her
+in.</p>
+
+<p>"Come again soon, Aileen&mdash;you've promised," the twins shouted after her.</p>
+
+<p>She turned and waved her hand to them. "I'll come," she called back in
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>They drove in silence over the Rothel, past the brick house where
+Emlie's trap was still standing, but now hitched. Octavius Buzzby's face
+was gray; his features were drawn.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear, Aileen?" he said, after they had driven on a while and
+begun to meet the quarrymen returning from Flamsted, many of whom were
+talking excitedly and gesticulating freely.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;Dulcie told me something. I don't know how true it is," she
+answered quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"It's true," he said grimly, "and it'll kill his mother."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about that;" she spoke almost indifferently; "you can
+stand a good deal when it comes to the point."</p>
+
+<p>Octavius turned almost fiercely upon her.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know about it?" he demanded. "You're neither wife nor
+mother, but you might show a little more feeling, being a woman. Do you
+realize what this thing means to us&mdash;to Flamsted&mdash;to the family?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tave," she turned her gray eyes full upon him, the pupils were
+unnaturally enlarged, "I don't suppose I do know what it means to all of
+you&mdash;but it makes me sick to talk about it&mdash;please don't&mdash;I can't bear
+it&mdash;take me home as quick as you can."</p>
+
+<p>She grew whiter still.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't you well, Aileen?" he asked in real anxiety, repenting of his
+hard word to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Not very, Tave; the truth is I ate too many checkerberries and had an
+attack of indigestion&mdash;I shall be all right soon&mdash;and they sent over for
+Mrs. Caukins just at that time, and when Dulcie came back she told
+me&mdash;it's awful&mdash;but it's different with you; he belongs to you all here
+and you've always loved him."</p>
+
+<p>"Loved him!"&mdash;Octavius Buzzby's voice shook with suppressed emotion&mdash;"I
+should say loved him; he's been dear to me as my own&mdash;I thank God Louis
+Champney isn't living to go through this disgrace!"</p>
+
+<p>He drew up in the road to let a gang of workmen separate&mdash;he had been
+driving the mare at full speed. Both he and Aileen caught fragments of
+what they were saying.</p>
+
+<p>"It's damned hard on his mother&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They say there's a woman in the case&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Generally is with them highflyers&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet he'll make for the old country, if he can get clear he'll&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Europe's full of 'em&mdash;reg'lar cesspool they say&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Any reward offered?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Company'll have to fork over or there'll be the biggest strike in
+Flamsted that the stone-cutting business has seen yet&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The papers don't say what the shortage is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What's Van Ostend's daughter's name, anybody know?&mdash;they say he was
+sweet on her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She's a good haul," a man laughed hoarsely, insultingly, "but she
+didn't bite, an' lucky for her she didn't."</p>
+
+<p>"You're 'bout right&mdash;them high rollers don't want to raise nothing but
+game cocks&mdash;no prison birds, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>The men passed on, twenty or more. Octavius Buzzby, and the one who in
+the last hour had left her girlhood behind her, drove homewards in
+silence. Her eyes were lowered; her white cheeks burned again, but with
+shame at what she was obliged to hear.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>XII</h4>
+
+
+<p>The strike was averted; the men were paid in full on the Wednesday
+following that Saturday the events of which brought for a time Flamsted,
+its families, and its great industry into the garish light of
+undesirable publicity. In the sheds and the quarries the routine work
+went on as usual, but speculation was rife as to the outcome of the
+search for the missing treasurer. A considerable amount of money was put
+up by the sporting element among the workmen, that the capture would
+take place within three weeks. Meanwhile, the daily papers furnished
+pabulum for the general curiosity and kept the interest as to the
+outcome on the increase. Some reports had it that Champney Googe was
+already in Europe; others that he had been seen in one of the Central
+American capitals. Among those who knew him best, it was feared he was
+already in hiding in his native State; but beyond their immediate circle
+no suspicion of this got abroad.</p>
+
+<p>Among the native Flamstedites, who had known and loved Champney from a
+child, there was at first a feeling of consternation mingled with shame
+of the disgrace to his native town. They felt that Champney had played
+false to his two names, and through the honored names of Googe and
+Champney he had brought disgrace upon all connections, whether by ties
+of blood or marriage. To him they had looked to be a leader in the new
+Flamsted that was taking its place in the world's work. For a few days
+it seemed as if the keystone of the arch of their ambition and pride
+had fallen and general ruin threatened. Then, after the first week
+passed without news as to his whereabouts, there was bewilderment,
+followed on the second Monday by despair deepened by a suspense that was
+becoming almost unbearable.</p>
+
+<p>It was a matter of surprise to many to find the work in sheds and
+quarries proceeding with its accustomed regularity; to find that to the
+new comers in Flamsted the affair was an impersonal one, that Champney
+Googe held no place among the workmen; that his absconding meant to them
+simply another one of the "high rollers" fleeing from his deserts.
+Little by little, during that first week, the truth found its way home
+to each man and woman personally interested in this erring son of
+Flamsted's old families, that a man is but one working unit among
+millions, and that unit counts in a community only when its work is
+constructive in the communal good.</p>
+
+<p>At a meeting of the bank directors the telling fact was disclosed that
+all of Mrs. Googe's funds&mdash;the purchase money of the quarry lands&mdash;had
+been withdrawn nine months previous; but this, they ascertained later,
+had been done with her full consent and knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Romanzo was summoned with the Company's books to the New York office.
+The Colonel seemed to his friends to have aged ten years in seven days.
+He wore the look of a man haunted by the premonition of some impending
+catastrophe. But he confided his trouble to no one, not even to his
+wife. Aurora Googe's friends suffered with her and for her; they began,
+at last, to fear for her reason if some definite word should not soon be
+forthcoming.</p>
+
+<p>The tension in the Champ-au-Haut household became almost intolerable as
+the days passed without any satisfaction as to the fugitive's
+whereabouts. After the first shock, and some unpleasant recrimination on
+the part of Mrs. Champney, this tension showed itself by silently
+ignoring the recent family event. Mrs. Champney found plausible excuse
+in the state of her health to see no one. Octavius Buzzby attended to
+his daily duties with the face of a man who has come through a severe
+sickness; Hannah complained that "he didn't eat enough to keep a cat
+alive." His lack of appetite was an accompaniment to sleepless,
+thought-racked nights.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen Armagh said nothing&mdash;what could she say?&mdash;but sickened at her own
+thoughts. She made excuse to be on the street, at the station, in The
+Gore at the Caukinses', with Joel Quimber and Elmer Wiggins, as well as
+among the quarrymen's families, whose children she taught in an
+afternoon singing class, in the hope of hearing some enlightening word;
+of learning something definite in regard to the probabilities of escape;
+of getting some inkling of the whole truth. She gathered a little here,
+a little there; she put two and two together, and from what she heard as
+a matter of speculation, and from what she knew to be true through Mrs.
+Caukins via Romanzo in New York, she found that Champney Googe had
+sacrificed his honor, his mother, his friends, and the good name of his
+native town for the unlawful love of gain. She was obliged to accept
+this fact, and its acceptance completed the work of destruction that the
+revelation of Champney Googe's unfaith, through the declaration of a
+passion that led to no legitimate consummation in marriage, had wrought
+in her young buoyant spirit. She was broken beneath the sudden
+cumulative and overwhelming knowledge of evil; her youth found no
+abiding-place either for heart or soul. To Father Honor&eacute; she could not
+go&mdash;not yet!</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On the afternoon of Monday week, a telegram came for the Colonel. He
+opened it in the post office. Octavius coming in at the same time for
+his first mail noticed at once the change in his face&mdash;he looked
+stricken.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Colonel?" he asked anxiously, joining him.</p>
+
+<p>For answer Milton Caukins held out the telegram. It was from the State
+authorities; its purport that the Colonel was to form a posse and be
+prepared to aid, to the extent of his powers, the New York detectives
+who were coming on the early evening train. The fugitive from justice
+had left New York and been traced to Hallsport.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had a premonition of this&mdash;it's the last stroke, Tave&mdash;here, in
+his home&mdash;among us&mdash;and his mother!&mdash;and, in duty bound, I, of all
+others, must be the man to finish the ugly job&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius Buzzby's face worked strangely. "It's tough for you, Colonel,
+but I guess a Maine man knows his whole duty&mdash;only, for God's sake,
+don't ask me!" It was a groan rather than an ejaculation. The two
+continued to talk in a low tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall call for volunteers and then get them sworn in&mdash;it means stiff
+work for to-night. We'll keep this from Aurora, Tave; she mustn't know
+<i>this</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, if we can. Are you going to ask any of our own folks to volunteer,
+Milton?" In times of great stress and sorrow his townspeople called the
+Colonel by his Christian name.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I'm going to ask some of the men who don't know him well&mdash;some of
+the foreigners; Poggi's one. He'll know some others up in The Gore. And
+I don't believe, Tave, there's one of our own would volunteer, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't. We can't go that far; it would be like cutting our own
+throats."</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, Tave&mdash;that's the way I feel; but"&mdash;he squared his
+shoulders&mdash;"it's got to be done and the sooner it's over the better for
+us all&mdash;but, Tave, I hope to God he'll keep out of our way!"</p>
+
+<p>"Amen," said Octavius Buzzby.</p>
+
+<p>The two stood together in the office a moment longer in gloomy silence,
+then they went out into the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must get to work," said the Colonel finally, "the time's scant.
+I'll telephone my wife first. We can't keep this to ourselves long;
+everybody, from the quarrymen to the station master, will be keen on the
+scent."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad no reward was offered," said Octavius.</p>
+
+<p>"So am I." The Colonel spoke emphatically. "The roughscuff won't
+volunteer without that, and I shall be reasonably certain of some good
+men&mdash;God! and I'm saying this of Champney Googe&mdash;it makes me sick; who'd
+have thought it&mdash;who'd have thought it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head, and stepped into the telephone booth. Octavius waited
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've warned Mrs. Caukins," he said when he came out, "and told her how
+things stand; that I'd try to get Poggi, and that I sha'n't be at home
+to-night. She says tell Aileen to tell Mrs. Champney she will esteem it
+a great favor if she will let her come up to-night; she has one of her
+nervous headaches and doesn't want to be alone with the children and
+'Lias. You could take her up, couldn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I guess she can come, and I'll take her up 'fore supper; I don't want
+to be gone after dark," he added with meaning emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"I understand, Tave; I'm going over to Poggi's now."</p>
+
+<p>The two parted with a hand-clasp that spoke more than any words.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>XIII</h4>
+
+
+<p>About four, Octavius drove Aileen up to the Colonel's. He said nothing
+to her of the coming crucial night, but Aileen had her thoughts. The
+Colonel's absence from home, but not from town, coupled with yesterday's
+New York despatch which said that there was no trace of the guilty man
+in New York, and affirmed on good authority that the statement that he
+had not left the country was true, convinced her that something
+unforeseen was expected in the immediate vicinity of Flamsted. But he
+would never attempt to come here!&mdash;She shivered at the thought.
+Octavius, noticing this movement, remarked that he thought there was
+going to be a black frost. Aileen maintained that the rising wind and
+the want of a moon would keep it off.</p>
+
+<p>Although Octavius was inclined to take exception to the feminine
+statement that the moon, or the want of it, had an effect on frost,
+nevertheless this apparently innocent remark on Aileen's part recalled
+to him the fact that the night was moonless&mdash;he wondered if the Colonel
+had thought of this&mdash;and he hoped with all his soul that it would prove
+to be starless as well. "Champney knows the Maine woods&mdash;knows 'em from
+the Bay to the head of Moosehead as well as an Oldtown Indian, yes and
+beyond." So he comforted himself in thought.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Caukins met them with effusion.</p>
+
+<p>"I declare, Aileen, I don't know what I should have done if you couldn't
+have come up; I'm all of a-tremble now and I've got such a nervous
+headache from all I've been through, and all I've got to, that I can't
+see straight out of my eyes.&mdash;Won't you stop to supper, Tave?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't to-night, Elvira, I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd no business to ask you, I know," she said, interrupting him; "I
+might have known you'd want to be on hand for any new developments. I
+don't know how we're going to live through it up here; you don't feel it
+so much down in the town&mdash;I don't believe I could go through it without
+Aileen up here with me, for the twins aren't old enough to depend on or
+to be told everything; they're no company at such times, and of course I
+sha'n't tell them, they wouldn't sleep a wink; I miss my boys
+dreadfully&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell them what? What do you mean by 'to-night'?" Aileen demanded, a
+sudden sharpness in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, don't you know?"&mdash;She turned to Octavius, "Haven't you told her?"</p>
+
+<p>Her appeal fell on departing and intentionally deaf ears; for Octavius,
+upon hearing Aileen's sudden and amazed question, abruptly bade them
+good-night, spoke to the mare and was off at a rapid pace before Mrs.
+Caukins comprehended that the telling of the latest development was left
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>She set about it quickly enough, and what with her nervousness, her
+sympathy for that mother across the Rothel, her anxiety for the Colonel,
+her fear of the trial to which his powers of endurance were about to be
+put, and the description of his silent suffering during the last week,
+she failed to notice that Aileen said nothing. The girl busied herself
+with setting the table and preparing tea, Mrs. Caukins, meanwhile,
+rocking comfortably in her chair and easing her heart of its heavy
+burden by continual drippings of talk after the main flow of her tale
+was exhausted.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, just after sunset, the twins came rushing in. Evidently they
+were full of secrets&mdash;they were always a close corporation of two&mdash;and
+their inane giggles and breathless suppression of what they were
+obviously longing to impart to their mother and Aileen, told on Mrs.
+Caukins' already much worn nerves.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you wouldn't stay out so long after sundown, children, you worry
+me to death. I don't say but the quarries are safe enough, but I do say
+you never can tell who's round after dusk, and growing girls like you
+belong at home."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke fretfully. The twins exchanged meaning glances that were lost
+on their mother, who was used to their ways, but not on Aileen.</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been all this time, Dulcie?" she asked rather
+indifferently. Her short teaching experience had shown her that the only
+way to gain children's confidence is not to display too great a
+curiosity in regard to their comings and goings, their doings and
+undoings. "Tave and I didn't see you anywhere when we drove up."</p>
+
+<p>The twins looked at each other and screwed their lips into a violently
+repressive contortion.</p>
+
+<p>"We've been over to the sheepfolds with 'Lias."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, 'Lias has been out in the barn for the last half hour&mdash;what were
+you doing over there, I'd like to know?" Their mother spoke sharply, for
+untruth she would not tolerate.</p>
+
+<p>"We did stay with 'Lias till he got through, then we played ranchmen and
+made believe round up the cattle the way the boys wrote us they do." Two
+of their brothers were in the West trying their fortune on a ranch and
+incidentally "dovetailing into the home business," as the Colonel
+defined their united efforts along the line of mutton raising.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I never!" their mother ejaculated; "I suppose now you'll be
+making believe you're everything the other boys are going to be."</p>
+
+<p>The little girls giggled and nodded emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Aileen," she said as she took her seat at the table, "times have
+changed since I was a girl, and that isn't so very long ago. Then we
+used to content ourselves with sewing, and housework, and reading all
+the books in the Sunday school library, and making our own clothes, and
+enjoying ourselves as much as anybody nowadays for all I see, what with
+our picnics and excursions down the Bay and the clam bakes and winter
+lecture course and the young folks 'Circle' and two or three dances to
+help out&mdash;and now here are my girls that can't be satisfied to sit down
+and hem good crash towels for their mother, but must turn themselves
+into boys, and play ranchmen and baseball and hockey on the ice, and
+Wild West shows with the dogs and the pony&mdash;and even riding him
+a-straddle&mdash;and want to go to college just because their two brothers
+are going, and, for all I know, join a fraternity and have secrets from
+their own mother and a football team!" She paused long enough to help
+the twins bountifully.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes I think it's their being brought up with so many boys, and
+then again I'm convinced it's the times, for all girls seem to have
+caught the male fever. What with divided skirts, and no petticoats, and
+racing and running and tumbling in basket ball, and rowing races, and
+entering for prize championships in golf and the dear knows what, it'll
+be lucky if a mother of the next generation can tell whether she's
+borned girls or boys by the time her children are ten years old. The
+land knows it's hard enough for a married woman to try to keep up with
+one man in a few things, but when it comes to a lot of old maids and
+unmarried girls trying to catch up all the time with the men in
+<i>everything</i>, and catch on too, I must say <i>I</i>, for one, draw the line."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen could not help smiling at this diatribe on "the times." The twins
+laughed outright; they were used to their mother by this time, and
+patronized her in a loving way.</p>
+
+<p>"We weren't there <i>all</i> the time," Doosie said meaningly, and Dulcie
+added her little word, which she intended should tantalize her mother
+and Aileen to the extent that many pertinent questions should be
+forthcoming, and the news they were burning to impart would, to all
+appearance, be dragged out of them&mdash;a process in which the twins
+revelled.</p>
+
+<p>"We met Luigi on the road near the bridge."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you suppose Luigi's doing up here at this time, I'd like to
+know," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to Aileen and ignoring the children.</p>
+
+<p>"He come up on an errand to see some of the quarrymen," piped up both
+the girls at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, is that all?" said their mother indifferently; then, much to the
+twins' chagrin, she suddenly changed the subject. "I want you to take
+the glass of wine jell on the second shelf in the pantry over to Mrs.
+Googe's after you finish your supper&mdash;you can leave it with the girl and
+tell her not to say anything to Mrs. Googe about it, but just put some
+in a saucer and give it to her with her supper. Maybe it'll tempt her to
+taste it, poor soul!"</p>
+
+<p>The twins sat up very straight on their chairs. A look of consternation
+came into their faces.</p>
+
+<p>"We don't want to go," murmured Dulcie.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't want to go!" their mother exclaimed; decided irritation was
+audible in her voice. "For pity's sake, what is the matter now, that you
+can't run on an errand for me just over the bridge, and here you've been
+prowling about in the dusk for the last hour around those lonesome
+sheepfolds and 'Lias nowheres near&mdash;I declare, I could understand my six
+boys even if they were terrors when they were little. You could always
+count on their being somewheres anyway, even if 't was on the top of
+freight cars at The Corners or at the bottom of the pond diving for
+pebbles that they brought up between their lips and run the risk of
+choking besides drowning; and they did think the same thoughts for at
+least twenty-four hours on a stretch, when they were set on having
+things&mdash;but when it come to my having two girls, and I forty at the
+time, I give it up! They don't know their own minds from one six minutes
+to the next.&mdash;Why don't you want to go?" she demanded, coming at last to
+the point. Aileen was listening in amused silence.</p>
+
+<p>"'Coz we got scared&mdash;awful scared," said Dulcie under her breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Scared most to death," Doosie added solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>Both Mrs. Caukins and Aileen saw at once that the children were in
+earnest.</p>
+
+<p>"You look scared!" said Mrs. Caukins with withering scorn; "you've eaten
+a good supper if you were 'scared' as you say.&mdash;What scared you?"</p>
+
+<p>The twins looked down into their plates, the generally cleared-up
+appearance of which seemed fully to warrant their mother's sarcasm.</p>
+
+<p>"Luigi told us not to tell," said Dulcie in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Luigi told you not to tell!" echoed their mother. "I'd like to know
+what right Luigi Poggi has to tell my children not to tell their mother
+anything and everything!" She spoke with waxing excitement; every
+motherly pin-feather was erect.</p>
+
+<p>"He was 'fraid it would scare you," ventured Doosie.</p>
+
+<p>"Scare me! He must have a pretty poor opinion of a woman that can raise
+six boys of her own and then be 'scared' at what two snips of girls can
+tell her. You'll tell me now, this very minute, what scared you&mdash;this
+all comes of your being away from the house so far and so late&mdash;and I
+won't have it."</p>
+
+<p>"We saw a bear&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A big one&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He was crawling on all fours&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Back of the sheepfold wall&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He scrooched down as if he was nosing for something&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just where the trees are so thick you can't see into the woods&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And we jumped over the wall and right down into the sheep, and they
+made an awful fuss they were so scared too, huddling and rushing round
+to get out&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then we found the gate&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But I <i>heard</i> him&mdash;" Dulcie's eyes were very big and bright with
+remembered terror.</p>
+
+<p>"And then we climbed over the gate&mdash;'Lias had locked it&mdash;and run home
+lickety-split and most run into Luigi at the bridge&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"'Coz we come down the road after we got through the last pasture&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he was so big!" Doosie shuddered as her imagination began to work
+more vigorously with the recital&mdash;"bigger'n a man&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>The twins had been telling all this at the same time, and their mother's
+common sense and downright exclamation brought them to a full stop. They
+looked crestfallen.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't tell me there's a bear between here and Moosehead&mdash;I know
+better. Did you tell Luigi all this?" she questioned sharply.</p>
+
+<p>The two nodded affirmatively.</p>
+
+<p>"And he told you not to tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>Another nod.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say anything more?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said he'd go up and see."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm&mdash;m&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Caukins turned a rather white face to Aileen; the two, looking into
+each other's eyes, read there a common fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you'll take the jelly over for me, Aileen; I'll just step to
+the back door and holler to 'Lias to bring in the collie and the
+hound&mdash;'t isn't always safe to let the dogs out after dark if there
+<i>should</i> happen to be anything stirring in the quarry woods."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go," said Aileen. She went into the pantry to get the glass of
+jelly.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go with you, we won't mind a bit with you or Luigi," chorussed
+the twins.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't go one step," said their mother, entering at that moment from
+the kitchen, and followed by the two dogs; "you'll stay right where you
+are, and what's more, you'll both go to bed early to make you remember
+that I mean what I say about your being out so long another time after
+sundown&mdash;no good comes of it," she muttered.</p>
+
+<p>The twins knew by the tone of her voice that there was no further appeal
+to be made.</p>
+
+<p>"You can wash up the dishes while Aileen's gone; my head is so
+bad.&mdash;Don't be gone too long, Aileen," she said, going to the door with
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"I sha'n't stay unless I can do something&mdash;but I'll stop a little while
+with Ellen, poor girl; she must be tired of all this excitement, sitting
+there alone so much as she has this last week."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, but Aurora won't see you; it's as much as ever I can do to
+get a look at her, and as to speaking a word of comfort, it's out of the
+question.&mdash;Why!" she exclaimed, looking out into the dusk that was
+settling into night, "they never light the quarries so early, not with
+all the arc-lights, I wonder&mdash;Oh, Aileen!" she cried, as the meaning of
+the great illumination in The Gore dawned upon her.</p>
+
+<p>The girl did not answer. She ran down the road to the bridge with every
+nerve in her strained to its utmost.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>XIV</h4>
+
+<p>She hurried over to the brick house across the Rothel; rapped at the
+kitchen door and, upon the girl's opening it, gave the jelly to her with
+Mrs. Caukins' message. She assured Ellen, who begged her to come in,
+that she would run over if possible a little later in the evening. A low
+whine and prolonged snuffing made themselves audible while the two
+talked together in low tones at the door. They seemed to proceed from
+the vicinity of the dining-room door.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Rag?" said Aileen, listening intently to the muffled sounds.</p>
+
+<p>"I shut him up in the dining-room closet when I see you come up the
+walk; he goes just wild to get with you any chance he can, and Mrs.
+Googe told me she wanted to keep him round the house nights."</p>
+
+<p>"Then be careful he doesn't get out to-night&mdash;supposing you chain him up
+just for once."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I couldn't do that; Mrs. Googe wouldn't let me; but I'll see he
+doesn't follow you. I do wish you would come in&mdash;it's so lonesome," she
+said again wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't now, Ellen; but if I can get away after eight, I may run over
+and sit with you a while. I'm staying with Mrs. Caukins because the
+Colonel is away to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"So I heard; 'Lias told me just now on his way down to the village. He
+said he wouldn't be gone long, for the Colonel wasn't to home.&mdash;I
+wonder what they've turned on all the lights for?" she said, craning her
+neck to look farther up the road.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen made no reply. She cautioned her again to keep Rag at home. A
+series of muffled but agonized yelps followed her down the walk.</p>
+
+<p>She stood still in the road and looked about her. Everywhere the great
+quarry arc-lights were sending their searching rays out upon the
+quarries and their approaches.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do&mdash;oh, what <i>shall</i> I do!" was her hopeless unuttered
+cry.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Aileen Armagh, standing there in the road at the entrance
+to the bridge, as if a powerful X-ray were being directed at that moment
+upon her whole life so far as she remembered it; and not only upon that,
+but upon her heart and soul&mdash;her thoughts, desires, her secret agony; as
+if the ray, in penetrating her body and soul, were laying bare her
+secret to the night:&mdash;she still loved him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what shall I do&mdash;what <i>shall</i> I do!" was the continual inner cry.</p>
+
+<p>Life was showing itself to her in this experience, as seen through the
+lens of a quickened imagination, in all its hideousness. Never had she
+experienced such a sense of loneliness. Never had she realized so
+forcibly that she was without father and mother, without kin in a
+foreign country, without a true home and abiding-place. Never had it
+been brought home to her with such keen pain that she was, in truth, a
+waif in this great world; that the one solid support for her in this
+world, her affections, had been ruthlessly cut away from under her by
+the hand of the man she had loved with all the freshness and joy of her
+young loving heart. He had been all the more to her because she was
+alone; the day dreams all the brighter because she believed he was the
+one to realize them for her&mdash;and now!</p>
+
+<p>She walked on slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I do&mdash;what shall I do!" was her inward cry, repeated at
+intervals. She crossed the bridge. All was chaotic in her thoughts. She
+had supposed, during the last two months, that all her love was turned
+to hate,&mdash;she hoped it was, for it would help her to bear,&mdash;that all her
+feeling for him, whom she knew she ought to despise, was dead. Why,
+then, if it were dead, she asked herself now, had she spoken so
+vehemently to Luigi? And Luigi&mdash;where was he&mdash;what was he doing?</p>
+
+<p>What was it produced that nervous shock when she learned the last truth
+from Dulcie Caukins? Was it her shame at his dishonor? No&mdash;she knew by
+the light of the X-ray piercing her soul that the thought of his
+imprisonment meant absence from her; after all that had occurred, she
+was obliged to confess that she was still longing for his presence. She
+hated herself for this confession.&mdash;Where was he now?</p>
+
+<p>She looked up the road towards the quarry woods&mdash;Thank God, those, at
+least, were dark! Oh, if she but dared to go! dared to penetrate them;
+to call to him that the hours of his freedom were numbered; to
+help&mdash;someway, somehow! A sudden thought, over-powering in its intimation
+of possibilities, stopped her short in the road just a little way beyond
+the Colonel's; but before she could formulate it sufficiently to follow
+it up with action, before she had time to realize the sensation of
+returning courage, she was aware of the sound of running feet on the
+road above her. On a slight rise of ground the figure of a man showed
+for a moment against the clear early dark of the October night; he was
+running at full speed.</p>
+
+<p>Could it be&mdash;?</p>
+
+<p>She braced herself to the shock&mdash;he was rapidly nearing her&mdash;a powerful
+ray from an arc-light shot across his path&mdash;fell full upon his hatless
+head&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You!</i>&mdash;Luigi!" she cried and darted forward to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>He thrust out his arm to brush her aside, never slackening his pace; but
+she caught at it, and, clasping it with both hands, hung upon it her
+full weight, letting him drag her on with him a few feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Luigi Poggi!&mdash;Stop, I tell you, or I'll scream for help&mdash;stop, I
+say!"</p>
+
+<p>He was obliged to slacken his speed in order not to hurt her. He tried
+to shake her off, untwist her hands; she clung to him like a leech. Then
+he stopped short, panting. She could see the sweat dropping from his
+forehead; his teeth began to chatter. She still held his arm tightly
+with both hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go&mdash;" he said, catching his breath spasmodically.</p>
+
+<p>"Not till you tell me where you've been&mdash;what you've been doing&mdash;tell
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Doing&mdash;" He brought out the word with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, doing, don't you hear?" She shook his arm violently in her anxious
+terror.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;" the words were a long groan.</p>
+
+<p>"Where have you been then?&mdash;quick, tell me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He began to shake with a hard nervous chill.</p>
+
+<p>"With him&mdash;over in the quarry woods&mdash;I tried to take him&mdash;he fought
+me&mdash;" The chill shook him till he could scarcely stand.</p>
+
+<p>She dropped his arm; drew away from him as if touching were
+contamination; then her eyes, dilating with a still greater horror,
+fixed themselves on the bosom of his shirt&mdash;there was a stain&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Have you killed him&mdash;" she whispered hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>The answer came through the clattering teeth:</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't know&mdash;you said&mdash;you said you&mdash;never wanted to see him
+again&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Luigi found himself speaking the last words to the empty air; he was
+alone, in the middle of the road, in the full glare of an electric
+light. He was conscious of a desire to escape from it, to escape
+detection&mdash;to rid himself of his over-powering misery in the quietest way
+possible. He gathered himself together; his limbs steadied; the
+shivering grew less; he went on down the road at a quick walk. Already
+the quarrymen were coming out in force to see what might be up. He must
+avoid them at all hazards.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>One thought was the motive power which sent Aileen running up the road
+towards the pastures, by crossing which she could reach in a few minutes
+the quarry woods: "I must know if he is dead; if he is not dead, I must
+try to save him from a living death."</p>
+
+<p>This thought alone sent her speeding over the darkened slopes. She was
+light of foot, but sometimes she stumbled; she was up and on again&mdash;the
+sheepfold her goal. The quarry woods stood out dark against the clear
+sky; there seemed to be more light on these uplands than below in The
+Gore; she saw the sheepfold like a square blot on the pasture slope. She
+reached it&mdash;should she call aloud&mdash;call his name? How find him?</p>
+
+<p>She listened intently; the wind had died down; the sheep were huddling
+and moving restlessly within the fold; this movement seemed unusual.
+She climbed the rough stone wall; the sheep were massed in one corner,
+heads to the wall, tails to the bare centre of the fold; they kept
+crowding closer and more close.</p>
+
+<p>In that bared space of hoof-trampled earth she saw him lying.</p>
+
+<p>She leaped down, the frightened sheep riding one another in their
+frantic efforts to get away from the invaders of their peace. She knelt
+by him; lifted his head on her knee; her hands touched his sleeve, she
+drew back from something warm and wet.</p>
+
+<p>"Champney&mdash;O Champney, what has he done to you!" she moaned in hopeless
+terror; "what shall I do&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it you&mdash;Aileen?&mdash;help me up&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>With her aid he raised himself to a sitting posture.</p>
+
+<p>"It must have been the loss of blood&mdash;I felt faint suddenly." He spoke
+clearly. "Can you help me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, oh, yes&mdash;only tell me how."</p>
+
+<p>"If you could bind this up&mdash;have you anything&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, oh, yes&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He used his left hand entirely; it was the right arm that had received
+the full blow of some sharp instrument. "Just tear away the
+shirt&mdash;that's right&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She did as he bade her. She took her handkerchief and bound the arm
+tightly above the wound, twisting it with one of her shell hairpins. She
+slipped off her white petticoat, stripped it, and under his directions
+bandaged the arm firmly.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke to her then as if she were a personality and not an instrument.</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen, it's all up with me if I am found here&mdash;if I don't get out of
+this&mdash;tell my mother I was trying to see her&mdash;to get some funds, I have
+nothing. I depended on my knowledge of this country to escape&mdash;put them
+off the track&mdash;they're after me now&mdash;aren't they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought so; I should have got across to the house if the quarry
+lights hadn't been turned on so suddenly&mdash;I knew they'd got word when I
+saw that&mdash;still, I might have made the run, but that man throttled me&mdash;I
+must go&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He got on his feet. At that moment they both started violently at the
+sound of something worrying at the gate; there was a rattle at the bars,
+a scramble, a frightened bleating among the sheep, a joyous bark&mdash;and
+Rag flung himself first upon Aileen then on Champney.</p>
+
+<p>He caught the dog by the throat, choking him into silence, and handed
+him to Aileen.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, keep the dog away&mdash;don't let him come&mdash;keep him quiet,
+or I'm lost&mdash;" he dropped over the wall and disappeared in the woods.</p>
+
+<p>Here and there across the pastures a lantern shot its unsteady rays. The
+posse had begun their night's work.</p>
+
+<p>The dog struggled frantically to free himself from Aileen's arms; again
+and again she choked him that he might not bark and betray his master.
+The terrified sheep bleated loud and long, trampling one another in vain
+efforts to get through or over the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Rag, Rag,&mdash;stop, or I must kill you, dear, dear little Rag&mdash;oh, I
+can't choke you&mdash;I can't&mdash;I can't! Rag, be still, I say&mdash;oh&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Between his desire to free his limbs, to breathe freely, and the
+instinctive longing to follow his master, the dog's powerful muscles
+were doing double work.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what shall I do&mdash;what shall I do&mdash;" she groaned in her
+helplessness. The dog's frantic struggles were proving too much for her
+strength, for she had to hold him with one hand; the other was on his
+windpipe. She knew 'Lias would soon be coming home; he could hear the
+sheep from the road, as she already heard the subdued bay of the hound
+and the muffled bark of the collie, shut&mdash;thanks to Mrs. Caukins'
+premonition of what might happen&mdash;within four walls. She looked about
+her&mdash;a strip of her white skirt lay on the ground&mdash;<i>Could she&mdash;?</i></p>
+
+<p>"No, Rag darling&mdash;no, I can't, I can't&mdash;" she began to cry. Through her
+tears she saw something sticking up from the hoof-trampled earth near
+the strip of cotton&mdash;a knife&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She was obliged to take her hand from the dog's throat in order to pick
+it up&mdash;there was one joyous bark....</p>
+
+<p>"O Rag, forgive me&mdash;forgive!" she cried under her breath, sobbing as if
+her heart would break.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>She picked up the piece of skirt, and fled with the knife in her
+hand&mdash;over the wall, over the pastures, that seemed lighter beneath the
+rising stars, down the highroad into the glare of an arc-light. She
+looked at the instrument of death as she ran; it was a banana knife such
+as Luigi used continually in his shop. She crossed the bridge, dropped
+the knife over the guard into the rushing Rothel; re-crossed the bridge
+and, throwing back the wings of the Scotch plaid cape she wore, examined
+in the full light of the powerful terminal lamp her hands, dress, waist,
+cuffs.&mdash;There was evidence.</p>
+
+<p>She took off her cape, wrapped it over head and shoulders, folded it
+close over both arms, and went back to the house. She heard carriages
+coming up the road to The Gore.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Caukins, in a quivering state of excitement, called to her from the
+back porch:</p>
+
+<p>"Come out here, Aileen; 'Lias hasn't got back yet&mdash;the sheep are making
+the most awful noise; something's the matter over there, you may
+depend&mdash;and I can see lights, can you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered unsteadily. "I saw them a few minutes ago. I didn't
+stay with Ellen, but went up the road a piece, for my head was aching
+too, and I thought a little air would do me good&mdash;and I believe I got
+frightened seeing the lights&mdash;I heard the sheep too&mdash;it's dreadful to
+think what it means."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Caukins turned and looked at her sharply; the light from the
+kitchen shone out on the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must say you look as if you'd seen a ghost; you're all of a
+shiver; you'd better go in and warm you and take a hot water bag up to
+bed with you; it's going to be a frosty night. I'm going to stay here
+till 'Lias comes back. I'm thankful the twins are abed and asleep, or I
+should have three of you on my hands. Just as soon as 'Lias gets back,
+I'm going into my room to lie down&mdash;I can't sleep, but if I stay up on
+my feet another hour I shall collapse with my nerves and my head; you
+can do what you've a mind to."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen went into the kitchen. When Mrs. Caukins came in, fifteen minutes
+later, with the information that she could see by the motion of 'Lias'
+lantern that he was near the house, she found the girl huddled by the
+stove; she was still wrapped in her cape. A few minutes afterwards she
+went up to her room for the night.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the evening there was a rumor about town that Champney Googe had
+been murdered in the Colonel's sheepfold. Before midnight this was
+contradicted, and the fact established that 'Lias had found his dog
+stabbed to death in the fold, and that he said he had seen traces of a
+terrific struggle. The last news, that came in over the telephone from
+the quarries, was to the effect that no trace of the fugitive was found
+in the quarry woods and the posse were now on the county line scouring
+the hills to the north. The New York detectives, arriving on the evening
+train, were carried up to join the Flamsted force.</p>
+
+<p>The next day the officers of the law returned, and confirmed the report,
+already current in the town, that Champney Googe had outwitted them and
+made his escape. Every one believed he would attempt to cross the Canada
+border, and the central detective agency laid its lines accordingly.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>XV</h4>
+
+<p>Since Champney Googe's escape on that October night, two weeks had been
+added to the sum of the hours that his friends were counting until they
+should obtain some definite word of his fate. During that time the love
+of the sensational, which is at the root of much so-called communal
+interest, was fed by the excitement of the nominal proceedings against
+Luigi Poggi. On the night of Champney's flight he went to Father Honor&eacute;
+and Elmer Wiggins, and confessed his complicity in the affair at the
+sheepfold. Within ten days, however, the Italian had been exonerated for
+his attack on the escaped criminal; nor was the slightest blame attached
+to such action on his part. He had been duly sworn in by the Colonel,
+and was justified in laying hands on the fugitive, although the wisdom
+of tackling a man, who was in such desperate straits, of his own accord
+and alone was questioned. Not once during the sharp cross examination,
+to which he was subjected by Emlie and the side-judge, was Aileen's name
+mentioned&mdash;nor did he mention it to Father Honor&eacute;. Her secret was to be
+kept.</p>
+
+<p>During those two weeks of misery and suspense for all who loved Champney
+Googe, Octavius Buzzby was making up his mind on a certain subject. Now
+that it was fully made up, his knock on the library door sounded more
+like a challenge than a plea for admittance.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Octavius."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney was writing. She pushed aside the pad and, moving her
+chair, faced him. Octavius noted the uncompromising tone of voice when
+she bade him enter, and the hard-set lines of her face as she turned
+inquiringly towards him. For a moment his courage flagged; then the
+righteousness of his cause triumphed. He closed the door behind him.
+This was not his custom, and Mrs. Champney looked her surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything unusual, Octavius?"</p>
+
+<p>"I want a talk with you, Mrs. Champney."</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down then." She motioned to a chair; but Octavius shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I can say all I've got to say standing; it ain't much, but it's to the
+point."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney removed her glasses and swung them leisurely back and
+forth on their gold chain. "Well, to the point, then."</p>
+
+<p>He felt the challenge implied in her words and accepted it.</p>
+
+<p>"I've served this estate pretty faithful for hard on to thirty-seven
+years. I've served the Judge, and I've served his son, and now I'm going
+to work to save the man that's named for that son&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney interrupted him sharply, decisively.</p>
+
+<p>"That will do, Octavius. There is no occasion for you to tell me this; I
+knew from the first you would champion his cause&mdash;no matter how bad a
+one. We'll drop the subject; you must be aware it is not a particularly
+pleasant one to me."</p>
+
+<p>Octavius winced. Mrs. Champney smiled at the effect of her words; but he
+ignored her remark.</p>
+
+<p>"I like to see fair play, Mrs. Champney, and I've seen some things here
+in Champo since the old Judge died that's gone against me. Right's right
+and wrong's wrong, and I've stood by and kept still when I'd ought to
+have spoken; perhaps 't would have been better for us all if I had&mdash;and
+I'm including Champney Googe. When his father died&mdash;" Mrs. Champney
+started, leaned forward in her chair, her hands tightly grasping the
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>"His father&mdash;" she caught up her words, pressed her thin lips more
+closely together, and leaned back again in her chair. Octavius looked at
+her in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he repeated, "his father, Warren Googe; who else should I mean?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney made no reply, and Octavius went on, wetting his lips to
+facilitate articulation, for his throat was going dry:</p>
+
+<p>"His father made me promise to look out for the child that was a-coming;
+and another man, Louis Champney, your husband,"&mdash;Mrs. Champney sat up
+rigid, her eyes fixed in a stare upon the speaker's lips,&mdash;"told me when
+the boy come that he'd father him as was fatherless&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted him again, a sneering smile on her lips:</p>
+
+<p>"You know as well as I, Octavius Buzzby, what Mr. Champney's will
+was&mdash;too feeble a thing to place dependence on for any length of time;
+if he said that, he didn't mean it&mdash;not as you think he did," she added
+in a tone that sent a shiver along Octavius' spine. But he did not
+intend to be "downed," as he said to himself, "not this time by Almeda
+Champney." He continued undaunted:</p>
+
+<p>"I do know what he meant better'n anybody living, and I know what he was
+going to do for the boy; and <i>I</i> know, too, Mrs. Champney, who hindered
+him from having his will to do for the boy; and right's right, and
+now's your time to make good to his memory and intentions&mdash;to make good
+your husband's will for Champney Googe and save your husband's name from
+disgrace and more besides. <i>You</i> know&mdash;but you never knew I did till
+now&mdash;what Louis Champney promised to do for the boy&mdash;and he told me more
+than once, Mrs. Champney, for he trusted <i>me</i>. He told me he was going
+to educate the boy and start him well in life, and that he wasn't going
+to end there; he told me he was going to leave him forty thousand
+dollars, Mrs. Champney&mdash;and he told me this not six weeks before he
+died; and the interest on forty thousand has equalled the principal by
+this time,&mdash;and you know best <i>why</i> he hasn't had his own&mdash;I ain't blind
+and nobody else here in Flamsted. And now I've come to ask you, if
+you've got a woman's heart instead of a stone in your bosom, to make
+over that principal and interest to the Quarry Company and save the boy
+Louis Champney loved; he told me once what I knew, that his blood flowed
+in that child's veins&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's a lie&mdash;take that back!" she almost shrieked under her breath.
+She started to her feet, trembling in every limb, her face twitching
+painfully.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius was appalled at the effect of his words; but he dared not
+falter now&mdash;too much was at stake&mdash;although fearful of the effect of any
+further excitement upon the woman before him. He spoke appeasingly:</p>
+
+<p>"I can't take that back, for it's true, Mrs. Champney. You know as well
+as I do that far back his mother was a Champney."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;I forgot." She dropped into her chair and drew a long breath as of
+exhaustion. "What were you saying?" She passed her hand slowly over her
+eyes, then put on her glasses. Octavius saw by that one movement that
+she had regained her usual control. He, too, felt relieved, and spoke
+more freely:</p>
+
+<p>"I said I want you to make good that eighty thousand dollars&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be a fool, Octavius Buzzby,"&mdash;she broke in upon him coldly, a
+world of scornful pity in her voice,&mdash;"you mean well, but you're a fool
+to think that at my time of life I'm going to impoverish myself and my
+estate for Champney Googe. You've had your pains for nothing. Let him
+take his punishment like any other man&mdash;he's no better, no worse; it's
+the fault of his bringing up; Aurora has only herself to thank."</p>
+
+<p>Octavius took a step forward. By a powerful effort he restrained himself
+from shaking his fist in her face. He spoke under his breath:</p>
+
+<p>"You leave Aurora's name out of this, Mrs. Champney, or I'll say things
+that you'll be sorry to hear." His anger was roused to white heat and he
+dared not trust himself to say more.</p>
+
+<p>She laughed out loud&mdash;the forced, mocking laugh of a miserable old age.
+"I knew from the first Aurora Googe was at the bottom of this&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't know anything about this, I came of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You keep still till I finish," she commanded him, her faded eyes
+sending forth something from behind her glasses that resembled blue
+lightning; "I say she's at the bottom of this as she's been at the
+bottom of everything else in Flamsted. She'll never have a penny of my
+money, that was Louis Champney's, to clear either herself or her
+state's-prison brat! Tell her that for me with my compliments on her
+son's career.&mdash;And as for you, Octavius Buzzby, I'll repeat what you
+said: I'm not blind and nobody else is in Flamsted, and I know, and
+everybody here knows, that you've been in love with Aurora Googe ever
+since my father took her into his home to bring up."</p>
+
+<p>She knew that blow would tell. Octavius started as if he had been struck
+in the face by the flat of an enemy's hand. He stepped forward quickly
+and looked her straight in the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You she-devil," he said in a low clear voice, turned on his heel and
+left the room. He closed the door behind him, and felt of the knob to
+see that he had shut it tight. This revelation of a woman's nature was
+sickening him; he wanted to make sure that the library door was shut
+close upon the malodorous charnel house of the passions. He shivered
+with a nervous chill as he hurried down the hall and went upstairs to
+his room in the ell.</p>
+
+<p>He sat down on the bed and leaned his head on his hands, pressing his
+fingers against his throbbing temples. Half an hour passed; still he sat
+there trying to recover his mental poise; the terrible anger he had
+felt, combined with her last thrust, had shocked him out of it.</p>
+
+<p>At last he rose; went to his desk; opened a drawer, took out a tin box,
+unlocked it, and laid the papers and books it contained one by one on
+the table to inspect them. He selected a few, snapped a rubber about the
+package and thrust it into the inner breast pocket of his coat. Then he
+reached for his hat, went downstairs, left word with Ann that he was
+going to drive down for the mail but that he should not be back before
+ten, proceeded to the stable, harnessed the mare into a light driving
+trap and drove away. He took the road to The Gore.</p>
+
+<p>On approaching the house he saw a light in Aurora's bedroom. He drove
+around to the kitchen door and tied the mare to the hitching-post. His
+rap was answered by Ellen, a quarryman's daughter whom Mrs. Googe
+employed for general help; but she spoke behind the closed door:</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's me, Octavius Buzzby."</p>
+
+<p>She drew the bolt and flung open the door. "Oh, it's you, is it, Mr.
+Buzzby? I've got so nervous these last three weeks, I keep the door
+bolted most of the time. Have you heard anything?" she asked eagerly,
+speaking under her breath.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Octavius shortly; "I want to see Mrs. Googe. Tell her I must
+see her; it's important."</p>
+
+<p>The girl hesitated. "I don't believe she will&mdash;and I hate to ask
+her&mdash;she looks awful, Mr. Buzzby. It scares me just to see her goin'
+round without saying a word from morning to night, and then walking half
+the night up in her room. I don't believe she's slept two hours a night
+since&mdash;you know when."</p>
+
+<p>"I guess she'll see me, Ellen; you go and ask her, anyway. I'll stay in
+the lower hall."</p>
+
+<p>He heard her rap at the bedroom door and deliver the message. There
+followed the sharp click of a lock, the opening of the door and the
+sound of Aurora's voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him to come up."</p>
+
+<p>Octavius started upstairs. He had seen her but once in the past three
+weeks; that was when he went to her on the receipt of the news of
+Champney's flight; he vowed then he would not go again unless sent for;
+the sight of the mother's despair, that showed itself in speechless
+apathy, was too much for him. He could only grasp her hand at that time,
+press it in both his, and say: "Aurora, if you need me, call me; you
+know me. We'll help all we can&mdash;both of you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But there was no response. He tiptoed out of the room as if leaving the
+presence of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as he mounted the stairs, he had time to wonder what her attitude
+would be after these three weeks of suspense. A moment more and he stood
+in her presence, mute, shocked, heartsick at the change that this month
+of agony had wrought in her. Her face was ghastly in its pallor; deep
+yellowish-purple half-circles lay beneath her sunken eyes; every
+feature, every line of the face was sharpened, and on each cheek bone
+burned a fever spot of vivid scarlet; her dry eyes also burned with
+unnatural and fevered brightness, the heavy eyelids keeping up a
+continuous quivering, painful to see. The hand she held out to him
+throbbed quick and hard in his grasp.</p>
+
+<p>"Any news, Tave?" Her voice was dull from despair.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head; the slow tears coursed down his cheeks; he could not
+help it.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down, Tave; you said it was important."</p>
+
+<p>He controlled his emotion as best he could. "Aurora, I've been thinking
+what can be done when he's found&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If he ever is! Oh, Tave, Tave&mdash;if I could only know something&mdash;where he
+is&mdash;if living; I can't sleep thinking&mdash;" She wrung her clasped hands and
+began to walk nervously back and forth in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Aurora, I feel sure he's living, but when he's found&mdash;then's the time
+to help."</p>
+
+<p>"How?" She turned upon him almost savagely; it looked as if her
+primitive mother-passion were at bay for her young. "Where's help to
+come from? I've nothing left."</p>
+
+<p>"But I have." He spoke with confidence and took out the package from
+his breast pocket. He held it out to her. "See here, Aurora, here's the
+value of twenty thousand dollars&mdash;take it&mdash;use it as your own."</p>
+
+<p>She drew away from it.&mdash;"Money!" She spoke almost with horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Aurora, honest money. Take it and see how far 't will go towards
+saving prosecution for him."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean&mdash;," she hesitated; her dry eyes bored into his that dropped
+before her unwavering gaze, "&mdash;you mean you're giving your hard-earned
+wages to me to help save my boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and glad to give them&mdash;if you knew how glad, Aurora&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She covered her face with her hands. Octavius took her by the arm and
+drew her to a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," he said gently; "you're all worn out."</p>
+
+<p>She obeyed him passively, still keeping her hands before her face. But
+no sooner was she seated than she began to rock uneasily back and forth,
+moaning to herself, till suddenly the long-dried fount was opened up;
+the merciful blessing of tears found vent. She shook with uncontrollable
+sobbing; she wept for the first time since Champney's flight, and the
+tears eased her brain for the time of its living nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius waited for her weeping to spend itself. His heart was wrung
+with pity, but he was thankful for every tear she shed; his
+gratefulness, however, found a curious inner expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn her&mdash;damn her&mdash;damn her&mdash;" he kept saying over and over to
+himself, and the mere repetition seemed to ease him of his over-powering
+surcharge of pity. But it was Almeda Champney he had in mind, and, after
+all, his unuttered inner curses were only a prayer for help, read
+backwards.</p>
+
+<p>At last, Aurora Googe lifted her face from her hands and looked at
+Octavius Buzzby. He reddened and rose to go.</p>
+
+<p>"Tave, wait a little while; don't go yet."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought&mdash;I felt all was lost&mdash;no one cared&mdash;I was alone&mdash;there was no
+help. You have shown me that I have been wrong&mdash;all wrong&mdash;such
+friends&mdash;such a friend as you&mdash;" Her lips quivered; the tears welled
+from the red and swollen lids. "I can't take the money, Tave, I
+can't&mdash;don't look so&mdash;only on one condition. I've been coming to a
+decision the last two days. I'm going straight to Almeda, Tave, and ask
+her, beg her, if I have to, on my bended knees to save my boy&mdash;she has
+more than enough&mdash;you know, Tave, what Champney should have had&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius nodded emphatically and found his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't I know? You may bet your life I know more'n I've ever told,
+Aurora. Don't I know how Louis Champney said to me: 'Tave, I shall see
+the boy through; forty thousand of mine is to be his'; and that was six
+weeks before he died; and don't I know, too, how I didn't get a glimpse
+of Louis Champney again till two weeks before his death, and then he was
+unconscious and didn't know me or any one else?"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius paused for breath. Aurora Googe rose and went to the closet.</p>
+
+<p>"I must go now, Tave; take me with you." She took out a cloak and
+burnous.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate to say it, Aurora, but I'm afraid it won't do no good; she's a
+tough cuss when it comes to money&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But she must; he's her own flesh and blood and she's cheated him out of
+what is rightfully his. It's been my awful pride that kept me from going
+sooner&mdash;and&mdash;oh, Tave, Tave,&mdash;I tried to make my boy promise never to
+ask her for money! I've been hoping all along she would offer&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Offer! Almeda Champney offer to help any one with her money that was
+Louis Champney's!"</p>
+
+<p>"But she has enough of her own, Tave; the money that was my boy's
+grandfather's."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know her, Aurora, not yet, after all you've suffered from
+her. If you'd seen her and lived with her as I have, year out and year
+in, you'd know her love of money has eat into her soul and gangrened it.
+'T ain't no use to go, I tell you, Aurora." He put out his hand to
+detain her, for she had thrown on her cloak and was winding the burnous
+about her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Tave, I'm going; don't say another word against it; and you must take
+me down. She isn't the only one who has loved money till it blinded them
+to duty&mdash;I can't throw stones&mdash;and after all she's a woman; I am going
+to ask her to help with the money that is rightfully my boy's&mdash;and if
+she gives it, I will take your twenty thousand to make up the amount."
+She pressed the package into his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"But what if she doesn't?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll ask Father Honor&eacute; to do what he proposed to do last week: go
+to Mr. Van Ostend and ask him for the money&mdash;there's nothing left but
+that." She drew her breath hard and led the way from the room,
+hurriedly, as if there were not a moment to lose. Octavius followed her,
+protesting:</p>
+
+<p>"Try Mr. Van Ostend first, Aurora; don't go to Mrs. Champney now."</p>
+
+<p>"Now is the only time. If I hadn't asked my own relation, Mr. Van Ostend
+would have every reason to say, 'Why didn't you try in your own family
+first?'"</p>
+
+<p>"But, Aurora, I'm afraid to have you."</p>
+
+<p>"Afraid! I, of Almeda Champney?"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped short on the stairs to look back at him. There was a trace
+of the old-time haughtiness in her bearing. Octavius welcomed it, for he
+was realizing that he could not move her from her decision, and as for
+the message from Almeda Champney, he knew he never could deliver it&mdash;he
+had no courage.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't sit up for me, Ellen," she said to the surprised girl as
+they went out; "it may be late before I get home; bolt the back door,
+I'll take the key to the front."</p>
+
+<p>He helped her into the trap, and in silence they drove down to The Bow.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>XVI</h4>
+
+
+<p>Aurora Googe spoke for the first time when Octavius left her at the door
+of Champ-au-Haut.</p>
+
+<p>"Tave, don't leave me; I want you to be near, somewhere in the hall, if
+she is in the library. I want a witness to what I must say and&mdash;I trust
+you. But don't come into the room no matter what is said."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't, Aurora, and I'll be there in a few minutes. I'm just going to
+drive to the stable and send the boy down for the mail, and I'll be
+right back. There's Aileen."</p>
+
+<p>The girl answered the knock, and on recognizing who it was caught her
+breath sharply. She had not seen Mrs. Googe during the past month of
+misery and shame and excitement, and previous to that she had avoided
+Champney Googe's mother on account of the humiliation her love for the
+son had suffered at that son's hands&mdash;a humiliation which struck at the
+roots of all that was truest and purest in that womanhood, which was
+drying up the clear-welling spring of her buoyant temperament, her young
+enjoyment in life and living and all that life offers of best to
+youth&mdash;offers once only.</p>
+
+<p>She started back at the sight of those dark eyes glowing with an
+unnatural fire, at the haggard face, its pallor accentuated by the white
+burnous. One thought had time to flash into consciousness before the
+woman standing on the threshold could speak: here was suffering to
+which her own was as a candle light to furnace flame.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come to see Mrs. Champney, Aileen; is she in the library?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,"&mdash;the girl's lips trembled,&mdash;"shall I tell her you are here?"</p>
+
+<p>"No." She threw aside her cloak as if in great haste; Aileen took it and
+laid it on a chair. Mrs. Googe went swiftly to the library door and
+rapped. Aileen heard the "Come in," and the exclamation that followed:
+"So you've come at last, have you!"</p>
+
+<p>She knew that tone of voice and what it portended. She put her fingers
+in her ears to shut out further sound of it, and ran down the hall to
+the back passageway, closed the door behind her and stood there
+trembling from nervousness.&mdash;Had Mrs. Googe obtained some inkling that
+she had a message to deliver from that son?&mdash;a message she neither could
+nor would deliver? Did Champney Googe's mother know that she had seen
+that son in the quarry woods? Mrs. Googe's friends had told her the
+truth of the affair at the sheepfold, when it was found that her
+unanswered suspicions were liable to unsettle her reason.&mdash;Could she
+know of that message? Could any one?</p>
+
+<p>The mere presence in the house of this suffering woman set Aileen's
+every nerve tingling with sickening despair. She determined to wait
+there in the dimly lighted back hall until Octavius should make his
+appearance, be it soon or late; he always came through here on his way
+to the ell.</p>
+
+<p>Aurora Googe looked neither to right nor left on entering the room. She
+went straight to the library table, on the opposite side of which Mrs.
+Champney was still sitting where Octavius had left her nearly two hours
+before. She stemmed both hands on it as if finding the support
+necessary. Fixing her eyes, already beginning to glaze with the
+increasing fever, upon her sister-in-law, she spoke, but with apparent
+effort:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I've come, at last, Almeda&mdash;I've come to ask help for my boy&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney interrupted her; she was trembling visibly, even Aurora
+Googe saw that.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose this is Octavius Buzzby's doings. When I gave him that
+message it was final&mdash;<i>final</i>, do you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>She raised her voice almost an octave in the intense excitement she was
+evidently trying to combat. The sound penetrated to Aileen, shut in the
+back hall, and again she thrust her fingers into her ears. At that
+moment Octavius entered from the outer door.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing here, Aileen?" For the first time in his life he
+spoke roughly to her.</p>
+
+<p>She turned upon him her white scared face. "What is <i>she</i> doing?" she
+managed to say through chattering teeth.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius repented him, that under the strain of the situation he had
+spoken to her as he had. "Go to bed, Aileen," he said firmly, but
+gently; "this ain't no place for you now."</p>
+
+<p>She needed but that word; she was half way up the stairs before he had
+finished. He heard her shut herself into the room. He hung up his coat,
+noiselessly opened the door into the main hall, closed it softly behind
+him and took his stand half way to the library door. He saw nothing, but
+he heard all.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment there was silence in the room; then Aurora spoke in a dull
+strained voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what you mean&mdash;I haven't had any message, and&mdash;and"&mdash;she
+swallowed hard&mdash;"nothing is final&mdash;nothing&mdash;not yet&mdash;that's why I've
+come. You must help me, Almeda&mdash;help me to save Champney; there is no
+one else in our family I can call upon or who can do it&mdash;and there is a
+chance&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What chance?"</p>
+
+<p>"The chance to save him from&mdash;from imprisonment&mdash;from a living death&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Has he been taken?"</p>
+
+<p>"Taken!"&mdash;she swayed back from the table, clutching convulsively the
+edge to preserve her balance&mdash;"don't&mdash;don't, Almeda; it will kill me. I
+am afraid for him&mdash;afraid&mdash;don't you understand?&mdash;Help me&mdash;let me have
+the money, the amount that will save my son&mdash;free him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She swayed back towards the table and leaned heavily upon it, as fearing
+to lose her hold lest she should sink to her knees. Mrs. Champney was
+recovering in a measure from the first excitement consequent upon the
+shock of seeing the woman she hated standing so suddenly in her
+presence. She spoke with cutting sarcasm:</p>
+
+<p>"What amount, may I inquire, do you deem necessary for the present to
+insure prospective freedom for your son?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know well enough, Almeda; I must have eighty thousand at least."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney laughed aloud&mdash;the same mocking laugh of a miserable old
+age that had raised Octavius Buzzby's anger to a white heat of rage.
+Hearing it again, the man of Maine, without fully realizing what he was
+doing, turned back his cuffs. He could scarce restrain himself
+sufficiently to keep his promise to Aurora.</p>
+
+<p>"Eighty thousand?&mdash;hm&mdash;m; between you and Octavius Buzzby there would be
+precious little left either at Champ-au-Haut or of it." She turned in
+her chair in order to look squarely up into the face of the woman on the
+opposite side of the table. "And you expect me to impoverish myself for
+the sake of Champney Googe?"</p>
+
+<p>"It wouldn't impoverish you&mdash;you have your father's property and more
+too; he is of your own blood&mdash;why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" she repeated and laughed out again in her scorn; "why should
+I, answer me that?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is your brother, Warren Googe's son&mdash;don't make me say any more,
+Almeda Champney; you know that nothing but this, nothing on earth&mdash;could
+have brought me here to ask anything of <i>you</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>There was a ring of the old-time haughty independence in her voice;
+Octavius rejoiced to hear it. "She's getting a grip on herself," he said
+to himself; "I hope she'll give her one 'fore she gets through with
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't my brother save his money for him then&mdash;if he's his son?"
+she demanded sharply, but breathing short as she spoke the last words in
+a tone that conveyed the venom of intense hatred.</p>
+
+<p>"Almeda, don't; you know well enough 'why'; don't keep me in such
+suspense&mdash;I can't bear it; only tell me if you will help."</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to gather herself together; she swept round the table; came
+close to the woman in the armchair; bent to her; the dark burning eyes
+fixed the faded blue ones. "Tell me quick, I say,&mdash;I can bear no more."</p>
+
+<p>"Aurora Googe, I sent word to you by Octavius Buzzby that I would not
+help your state's-prison bird&mdash;fledged from your nest, not mine,&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She did not finish, for the woman she was torturing suddenly laid a hot
+hand hard and close, for the space of a few seconds, over those
+malevolent lips. Mrs. Champney drew back, turned in her chair and
+reached for the bell.</p>
+
+<p>Aurora removed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop there, you've said enough, Almeda Champney!" she commanded her.
+She pointed to the portrait over the fireplace. "By the love he bore my
+son&mdash;by the love we two women bore him&mdash;help&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Champney rose suddenly by great effort from her chair. The two
+women stood facing each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Go&mdash;go!" she cried out shrilly, hoarsely; her face was distorted with
+passion, her hands were clenched and trembling violently, "leave my
+sight&mdash;leave my house&mdash;you&mdash;<i>you</i> ask <i>me</i>, by the love we bore Louis
+Champney, to save from his just deserts Louis Champney's bastard!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice rose to a shriek; she shook her fist in Aurora's face, then
+sank into her chair and, seizing the bell, rang it furiously.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius darted forward, but stopped short when he heard Aurora's
+voice&mdash;low, dull, as if a sickening horror had quenched forever its
+life:</p>
+
+<p>"You have thought <i>that</i> all these years?&mdash;O God!&mdash;Louis&mdash;Louis, what
+more&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She fell before Octavius could reach her. Aileen and Ann, hearing the
+bell, came running through the hall into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Help me up stairs, Aileen,"&mdash;the old woman was in command as
+usual,&mdash;"give me my cane, Ann; don't stand there staring like two
+fools."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen made a sign to Octavius to call Hannah; the two women helped the
+mistress of Champ-au-Haut up to her room.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Googe seemed not to have lost consciousness, for as Hannah bent
+over her she noticed that her eyelids quivered.</p>
+
+<p>"She's all wore out, poor dear, that's what's the matter," said Hannah,
+raising her to a sitting position; she passed her hand tenderly over the
+dark hair.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen came running down stairs bringing salts and cologne. Hannah
+bathed her forehead and chafed her wrists.</p>
+
+<p>In a few minutes the white lips quivered, the eyes opened; she made an
+effort to rise. Octavius helped her to her feet; but for Aileen's arm
+around her she would have fallen again.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me home, Tave." She spoke in a weak voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I will, Aurora," he answered promptly, soothingly, although his hands
+trembled as he led her to a sofa; "I'll just hitch up the pair in the
+carryall and Hannah'll ride up with us, won't you, Hannah?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, to be sure. Don't you grieve yourself to death, Mis'
+Googe," she said tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't wait to harness into the carryall, Tave&mdash;take me now&mdash;in the
+trap&mdash;take me away from here. I don't need you, Hannah. I didn't know I
+was so weak&mdash;the air will make me feel better; give me my cloak,
+Aileen."</p>
+
+<p>The girl wrapped her in it, adjusted the burnous, that had fallen from
+her head, and went with her to the door. Aurora turned and looked at
+her. The girl's heart was nigh to bursting. Impulsively she threw her
+arms around the woman's neck and whispered: "If you need me, do send for
+me&mdash;I'll come."</p>
+
+<p>But Aurora Googe went forth from Champ-au-Haut without a word either to
+the girl, to Hannah, or to Octavius Buzzby.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>For the first two miles they drove in silence. The night was clear but
+cold, the ground frozen hard; a northwest wind roared in the pines along
+the highroad and bent the bare treetops on the mountain side. From time
+to time Octavius heard the woman beside him sigh heavily as from
+physical exhaustion. When, at last, he felt that she was shivering, he
+spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you cold, Aurora? I've got something extra under the seat."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not cold; I feel burning up."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to look at her face in the glare of an electric light they
+were passing. It was true; the rigor was that of increasing fever; her
+cheeks were scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you'd have let me telephone for the doctor; I don't feel right
+not to leave you in his hands to-night, and Ellen hasn't got any head on
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;no; I don't need him; he couldn't do me any good&mdash;nobody
+can.&mdash;Tave, did you hear her, what she said?" She leaned towards him to
+whisper her question as if she feared the dark might have ears.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I heard her&mdash;damn her! I can't help it, Aurora."</p>
+
+<p>"And you don't believe it&mdash;you <i>know</i> it isn't true?"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius drew rein for a moment; lifted his cap and passed the back of
+his hand across his forehead to wipe off the sweat that stood in beads
+on it. He turned to the woman beside him; her dark eyes were devouring
+his face in the effort, or so it seemed, to anticipate his answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Aurora, I've known you" (how he longed to say "loved you," but those
+were not words for him to speak to Aurora Googe after thirty years of
+silence) "ever since you was sixteen and old Mr. Googe took you, an
+orphan girl, into his home; and I knew Louis Champney from the time he
+was the same age till he died. What I've seen, I've seen; and what I
+know, I know. Louis Champney loved you better'n he loved his life, and I
+know you loved him; but if the Almighty himself should swear it's true
+what Almeda Googe said, I wouldn't believe him&mdash;I wouldn't!"</p>
+
+<p>The terrible nervous strain from which the woman was suffering lessened
+under the influence of his speech. She leaned nearer.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not true," she whispered again; "I know you'll believe me."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice sounded weaker than before, and Octavius grew alarmed lest she
+have another of what Hannah termed a "sinking spell" then and there. He
+drew rein suddenly, and so tightly that the mare bounded forward and
+pulled at a forced pace up the hill to The Gore.</p>
+
+<p>"And she thought <i>that</i> all these years&mdash;and I never knew. That's why
+she hates my boy and won't help&mdash;oh, how could she!"</p>
+
+<p>She shivered again. Octavius urged the mare to greater exertion. If only
+he could get the stricken woman home before she had another turn.</p>
+
+<p>"How could she?" he repeated with scathing emphasis; "just as any
+she-devil can set brooding on an evil thought for years till she's
+hatched out a devil's dozen of filthy lies." He drew the reins a little
+too tightly in his righteous wrath, and the mare reared suddenly. "What
+the dev&mdash;whoa, there Kitty, what you about?"</p>
+
+<p>He calmed the resentful beast, and they neared the house in The Gore at
+a quick trot.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think she has ever spoken to any one before&mdash;not so, do you,
+Tave? not to Louis ever?&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't, Aurora. Louis Champney wouldn't have stood that&mdash;I know
+him well enough for that; but she might have hinted at a something, and
+it's my belief she did. But don't you fret, Aurora; she'll never speak
+again&mdash;I'd take my oath on that&mdash;and if I dared, I'd say I wish Almighty
+God would strike her dumb for saying what she has."</p>
+
+<p>They had reached the house. She lifted her face to the light burning in
+her bedroom.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my boy&mdash;my boy&mdash;" she moaned beneath her breath. Octavius helped
+her out, and holding the reins in one hand, with the other supported her
+to the steps; her knees gave beneath her.&mdash;"Oh, where is he
+to-night&mdash;what shall I do!&mdash;Think for me, Tave, act for me, or I shall
+go mad&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius leaned to the carriage and threw the reins around the
+whipstock.</p>
+
+<p>"Aurora," he grasped her firmly by the arm, "give me the key."</p>
+
+<p>She handed it to him; he opened the door; led her in; called loudly for
+Ellen; and when the frightened girl came hurrying down from her room, he
+bade her see to Mrs. Googe while he went for the doctor.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>XVII</h4>
+
+
+<p>"The trouble is she has borne up too long."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was talking to Father Honor&eacute; while untying the horse from the
+hitching-post at the kitchen porch.</p>
+
+<p>"She has stood it longer than I thought she could; but without the
+necessary sleep even her strong constitution and splendid physique can't
+supply sufficient nerve force to withstand such a strain&mdash;it's fearful.
+Something had to give somewhere. Practically she hasn't slept for over
+three weeks, and, what's more, she won't sleep till&mdash;she knows one way
+or the other. I can't give her opiates, for the strain has weakened her
+heart&mdash;I mean functionally." He stepped into the carriage. "You haven't
+heard anything since yesterday morning, have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but I'm inclined to think that now he has put them off the track
+and got them over the border, he will make for New York again. It's my
+belief he will try to get out of the country by that door instead of by
+way of Canada."</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of that." He gathered up the reins, and, leaning
+forward from the hood, looked earnestly into the priest's eyes. "Make
+her talk if you can&mdash;it's her only salvation. She hasn't opened her lips
+to me, and till she speaks out&mdash;you understand&mdash;I can do nothing. The
+fever is only the result of the nerve-strain."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish it were in my power to help her. I may as well tell you
+now&mdash;but I'd like it to remain between ourselves, of course I've told
+the Colonel&mdash;that I determined last night to go down to New York and see
+if I can accomplish anything. I shall have two private detectives there
+to work with me. You know the city agency has its men out there
+already?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I didn't. I thought all the force was centred here in this State
+and on the Canada line. It strikes me that if she could know you were
+going&mdash;and for what&mdash;she might speak. You might try that, and let me
+know the result."</p>
+
+<p>"I will."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor drove off. Father Honor&eacute; stood for a few minutes on the back
+porch; he was thinking concentratedly:&mdash;How best could he approach the
+stricken mother and acquaint her with his decision to search for her
+son?</p>
+
+<p>He was roused by the sound of a gentle voice speaking in French:</p>
+
+<p>"Good-morning, Father Honor&eacute;; how is Mrs. Googe? I have just heard of
+her illness."</p>
+
+<p>It was Sister Ste. Croix from the sisterhood home in The Gore.</p>
+
+<p>The crisp morning air tinged with a slight color her wrinkled and
+furrowed cheeks; her eyelids, also, were horribly wrinkled, as could be
+plainly seen when they drooped heavily over the dark blue eyes. Yet
+Sister Ste. Croix was still in middle life.</p>
+
+<p>"There is every cause for great anxiety, I grieve to say. The doctor has
+just gone."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is with her, do you know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Caukins, so Ellen says."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think she would object to having me nurse her for a while? She
+has been so lovely to me ever since I came here, and in one way and
+another we have been much together. I have tried again and again to see
+her during these dreadful weeks, but she has steadily refused to see me
+or any of us&mdash;just shut herself out from her friends."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish she would have you about her; it would do her good; and surely
+Mrs. Caukins can't leave her household cares to stay with her long, nor
+can she be running back and forth to attend to her. I am going to make
+the attempt to see her, and if I succeed I will tell her that you are
+ready to come at any minute&mdash;and only waiting to come to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Do; and won't you tell Ellen I will come down and see her this
+afternoon? Poor girl, she has been so terrified with the events of these
+last weeks that I have feared she would not stay. If I'm here, I feel
+sure she would remain."</p>
+
+<p>"If Mrs. Googe will not heed your request, I do hope you will make it
+your mission work to induce Ellen to stay."</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, I will; I thought she might stay the more willingly if I were
+with her."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sure of it," Father Honor&eacute; said heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going in now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, please tell Ellen that if Mrs. Googe wants me, she is to come up
+at once to tell me. Good morning."</p>
+
+<p>She walked rapidly down the road beside the house. Father Honor&eacute; turned
+to look after her. How many, many lives there were like
+that!&mdash;unselfish, sacrificing, loving, helpful, yet unknown, unthought
+of. He watched the slight figure, the shoulders bowed already a little,
+but the step still firm and light, till it passed from sight. Then he
+entered the kitchen and encountered Mrs. Caukins.</p>
+
+<p>"I never was so glad to see any living soul as I am you, Father Honor&eacute;,"
+was her greeting; she looked up from the lemon she was squeezing; "I
+don't dare to leave her till she gets a regular nurse. It's enough to
+break your heart to see her lying there staring straight before her and
+not saying a word&mdash;not even to the doctor. I told the Colonel when he
+was here a little while ago that I couldn't stand it much longer; it's
+getting on my nerves&mdash;if she'd only say <i>something</i>, I don't care what!"</p>
+
+<p>She paused in concocting the lemonade to wipe her eyes on a corner of
+her apron.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Caukins, I wish you would say to Mrs. Googe that I am here and
+would like to speak with her before I leave town this afternoon. You
+might say I expect to be away for a few days and it is necessary that I
+should see her now."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean to say you're going to leave us right in the lurch,
+'fore we know anything about Champney!&mdash;Why, what will the Colonel do
+without you? You've been his right hand man. He's all broken up; that
+one night's work nearly killed him, and he hasn't seemed himself
+since&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; interrupted this flow of ejaculatory torrent.</p>
+
+<p>"I've spoken to the Colonel about my going, Mrs. Caukins. He agrees with
+me that no harm can come of my leaving here for a few days just at this
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll tell her, Father Honor&eacute;; I'm going up this minute with the
+lemonade; but it's ten to one she won't see you; she wouldn't see the
+rector last week&mdash;oh, dear me!" She groaned and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>She was back again in a few minutes, her eyes wide with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"She says you can come up, Father Honor&eacute;, and you'd better go up quick
+before she gets a chance to change her mind."</p>
+
+<p>He went without a word. When Mrs. Caukins heard him on the stair and
+caught the sound of his rap on the door, she turned to Ellen and spoke
+emphatically, but with trembling lips:</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe the archangel Gabriel himself could look at you more
+comforting than Father Honor&eacute; does; if <i>he</i> can't help her, the Lord
+himself can't, and I don't mean that for blasphemy either. Poor
+soul&mdash;poor soul"&mdash;she wiped the tears that were rolling down her
+cheeks,&mdash;"here I am the mother of eight children and never had to lose a
+night's sleep on account of their not doing right, and here's Aurora
+with her one and can't sleep nor eat for the shame and trouble he's
+brought on her and all of us&mdash;for I'm a Googe. Life seems sometimes to
+get topsy-turvy, and I for one can't make head nor tail of it. The
+Colonel's always talking about Nature's 'levelling up,' but I don't see
+any 'levelling'; seems to me as if she was turning everything up on edge
+pretty generally.&mdash;Give me that rice I saw in the pantry, Ellen; I'm
+going to make her a little broth; I've got a nice foreshoulder piece at
+home, and it will be just the thing."</p>
+
+<p>Ellen, rejoicing in such talkative companionship, after the three weeks
+of dreadful silence in the house, did her bidding, at the same time
+taking occasion to ask some questions on her own part, among them one
+which set Mrs. Caukins speculating for a week: "Who do you suppose
+killed Rag?"</p>
+
+<p>Aurora was in bed, but propped to a sitting position by pillows. When
+Father Honor&eacute; entered she started forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard anything?" Her voice was weak from physical exhaustion.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mrs. Googe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She sank back on the pillows; he drew a chair to the bedside.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;But I have decided to go down to New York and search for myself. I
+have a feeling he is there, not in Maine or Canada; and I know that city
+from Washington Heights to the Battery."</p>
+
+<p>"You think he'll be found?" She could scarcely articulate the words;
+some terror had her by the throat; her eyes showed deadly fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I think he will."</p>
+
+<p>"But she won't do anything&mdash;I&mdash;I went to her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't exert yourself too much, Mrs. Googe, but if you can tell me whom
+you mean, to whom you have applied, it might help me to act
+understandingly."</p>
+
+<p>"To his aunt&mdash;I went last night."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Champney?"</p>
+
+<p>She closed her eyes and made a motion of assent.</p>
+
+<p>"And she will do nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I fail to understand this. Surely she might give of her abundance to
+save one who is of her own blood. Would it do any good, do you think,
+for me to see her? I'll gladly go."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "You don't understand."</p>
+
+<p>He waited in silence for some further word; for her to open her eyes at
+least. But none was forthcoming; the eyes remained closed. After a while
+he said gently:</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I might understand, if you felt willing to tell me, if the
+effort is not too great."</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes and fixed them apathetically on the strong helpful
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if you could understand&mdash;I don't know&mdash;you're not a woman&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I am human, Mrs. Googe; and human sympathy is a great
+enlightener."</p>
+
+<p>"The weight here&mdash;and here!" She raised one hand to her head, the other
+she laid over her heart. "If I could get rid of that for one hour&mdash;I
+should be strong again&mdash;to live&mdash;to endure."</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; was silent. He knew the long pent stream of grief and
+misery must flow in its own channel when once it should burst its
+bounds.</p>
+
+<p>"My son must never know&mdash;you will give me your word?"</p>
+
+<p>"I give you my word, Mrs. Googe."</p>
+
+<p>She leaned forward from her pillows, looked anxiously at the door, which
+was open into the hall, then whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"She said&mdash;my son was Louis Champney's&mdash;bastard;&mdash;<i>you</i> don't believe
+it, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>For the space of a second Father Honor&eacute; shrank within himself. He could
+not tell at that moment whether he had here to do with an overwrought
+brain, with a mind obsessed, or with an awful fact. But he answered
+without hesitation and out of his inmost conviction:</p>
+
+<p>"No, I do not believe it, Mrs. Googe."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you wouldn't&mdash;Octavius didn't." She sighed profoundly as if
+relieved from pain. "That's why she hates me&mdash;why she will not help."</p>
+
+<p>"In that case I will go to Mr. Van Ostend. I asked to see you that I
+might tell you this."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you&mdash;oh, will you?" She sighed again&mdash;a sigh of great physical
+relief, for she placed her hand again over her heart, pressing it hard.</p>
+
+<p>"That helps here," she said, passing her other hand over her forehead;
+"perhaps I can tell you now, before you go&mdash;perhaps it will help more."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice grew stronger with every full breath she was now able to draw.
+Gradually a look of comprehension replaced the apathetic stare. She
+looked squarely at the priest for the first time since his entrance.
+Father Honor&eacute; could but wonder if the thought behind that look would
+find adequate expression.</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't said 'God' to me once since that&mdash;that night. Don't speak
+to me about Him now, will you? He's too far away&mdash;it doesn't mean
+anything to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Googe, there comes a time in most lives when God seems so far away
+that we can find Him only through the Human;&mdash;perhaps such a time has
+come in your life."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know; I never thought much about that. But&mdash;my god was human,
+oh, for so many years!&mdash;I loved Louis Champney."</p>
+
+<p>Again there was a long inhalation and exhalation. It seemed as if each
+admission, which she forced herself to make, loosened more and more the
+tension of the long-racked nerves; as a result the muscles of the throat
+relaxed, the articulation grew distinct, the voice stronger.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;And he loved me&mdash;better than life itself. I was so young when it
+began&mdash;only sixteen. My husband's father took me into his home then to
+bring up; I was an orphan. And Louis Champney loved me then and
+always&mdash;but Almeda Googe, my husband's sister, loved him too&mdash;in her
+way. Her own father could do nothing with her awful will&mdash;it crushed
+everybody that came in contact with it&mdash;that opposed it; it crushed
+me&mdash;and in the end, Louis."</p>
+
+<p>She took a little of the lemonade to moisten her lips and went on:</p>
+
+<p>"She was twelve years older than he. She took him when he was in
+college; worked on him, lied to him about me; told him I loved her
+brother; worked backwards, forwards, underhanded&mdash;any way to influence
+him against me and get her hold upon him. He went to Europe; she
+followed; wrote lying letters to her brother&mdash;said she was engaged to be
+married to Louis before her return; told Louis I was going to marry her
+brother, Warren Googe&mdash;in the end she had her way, and always has had
+it, and will have it. I married Warren Googe; she was forty when she
+married Louis at twenty-eight."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, straightened herself. Something like animation came into her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"It does me good to speak&mdash;at last. I've never spoken in all these
+years&mdash;and I can tell you. My child was born seven months after my
+husband's death. Louis Champney came to see me then&mdash;up here, in this
+room; it was the first time we had dared to see each other alone&mdash;but
+the baby lay beside me; <i>that kept us</i>. He said but little; but he took
+up the child and looked at him; then he turned to me. 'This should have
+been our son, Aurora,' he said, and I&mdash;oh, what will you think of me!"
+She dropped her head into her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew in my heart that during all those months I was carrying Warren
+Googe's child, I had only one thought: 'Oh, if it were only Louis' and
+mine!' And because I was a widow, I felt free to dwell upon that one
+thought night and day. Louis' face was always before me. I came in
+thought to look upon him as the true father of my boy&mdash;not that other
+for whom I had had no love. And I took great comfort in that
+thought&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;my boy is the living image of Louis Champney."</p>
+
+<p>She withdrew her hands, clasping them nervously and rubbing them in each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I sinned, I sinned in thought, and I've been punished, but there
+was never anything more&mdash;and last night I had to hear that from her!"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment the look of deadly fear returned to the eyes, but only for
+a moment; her hands continued to work nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Never anything more; only that day when he took my boy in his arms and
+said what he did, we both knew we could not see much of each other for
+the rest of our lives&mdash;that's why I've kept so much to myself. He kissed
+the baby then, laid him in my arms and, stooping, kissed me once&mdash;only
+once&mdash;I've lived on that&mdash;and said: 'I will do all I can for this boy.'
+And&mdash;and"&mdash;her lips trembled for the first time&mdash;"that little baby, as
+it lay on my breast, saved us both. It was renunciation&mdash;but it made me
+hard; it killed Louis.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Louis seldom and always in the presence of my boy. But Almeda
+Champney was not satisfied with what she had done; she transferred her
+jealousy to my son. She was jealous of every word Louis spoke to him;
+jealous of every hour he was with him. When Louis died, still young&mdash;my
+son was left unprovided for. That was Almeda Champney's work&mdash;she
+wouldn't have it.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I sold the first quarry for means to send Champney to college; and
+I sold the rest in order to start him well in business, in the world.
+But I know that at the bottom of my ambition for him, was the desire
+that he might succeed in spite of the fact that his aunt had kept from
+him the property which Louis Champney intended to be his. My ambition
+has been overweening for Champney's material success&mdash;I have urged him
+on, when I should have restrained. I have aided him to the extent of my
+ability to attain his end. I longed to see him in a position that,
+financially, would far out-shine hers. I felt it would compensate in
+part. I loved my son&mdash;and I loved in him Louis Champney. I alone am to
+blame for what has come of it&mdash;I&mdash;his mother."</p>
+
+<p>Her lips trembled excessively. She waited to control them before she
+could continue.</p>
+
+<p>"Last night, when I begged her to help me, she answered me with what I
+told you. I could bear no more&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She leaned back on the pillows, exhausted for a while with her great
+effort, but the light of renewed life shone from every feature.</p>
+
+<p>"I am better now," she said, turning to Father Honor&eacute; the dark hollow
+eyes so full of gratitude that the priest looked away from her.</p>
+
+<p>While this page in human history was being laid open before him, Father
+Honor&eacute; said nothing. The confession it contained was so awful in its
+still depths of pure passion, so far-reaching in its effects on a human
+soul, that he felt suddenly the utter insignificance of his own
+existence, the futility of all words, the meagreness of all sympathetic
+expression. And he was honest enough to withhold all attempt at such.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear you are very tired," he said, and rose to go.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; I am better already. The telling has done me such good. I shall
+soon be up and about. When do you go?"</p>
+
+<p>"This afternoon; and you may expect telegrams from me at almost any
+time; so don't be alarmed simply because I send them. I thought you
+would prefer to know from day to day."</p>
+
+<p>"You are good&mdash;but I can say nothing." The tears welled at last and
+overflowed on her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't say that&mdash;I beg of you." He spoke almost sharply, as if hurt
+physically. "Nothing is needed&mdash;and I hope you will let Sister Ste.
+Croix come in for a few days and care for you. She wants to come."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell her to come. I think I am willing to see any one now&mdash;something
+has given way here;" she pressed her hand to her head; "it's a great
+relief."</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye." He held out his hand and she placed hers in it; the tears
+kept rolling down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell my darling boy, when you see him, that it was my fault&mdash;and I love
+him so&mdash;oh, how I love him&mdash;" Her voice broke in a sob.</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; left the room to cover his emotion. He spoke to Ellen from
+the hall, and went out at the front door in order to avoid Mrs. Caukins.
+He had need to be alone.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>That afternoon at the station, Octavius Buzzby met him on the platform.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Buzzby, is there any truth in the rumor I heard, as I came to the
+train, that Mrs. Champney has had a stroke?"</p>
+
+<p>The face of Champ-au-Haut's factotum worked strangely before he made
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she's had a slight shock. The doctor told me this morning that he
+knew she'd had the first one over three years ago; this is the second.
+I've come down for a nurse he telegraphed for; I expect her on the next
+train up&mdash;and, Father Honor&eacute;&mdash;" he hesitated; his hands were working
+nervously in each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Buzzby?"</p>
+
+<p>"I come down to see you, too, on purpose&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To see me?" Father Honor&eacute; looked his surprise; his thoughts leaped to a
+possible demand on Mrs. Champney's part for his presence at
+Champ-au-Haut&mdash;she might have repented her words, changed her mind;
+might be ready to help her nephew. In that case, he would wait for the
+midnight train.</p>
+
+<p>The man of Maine's face was working painfully again; he was struggling
+for control; his feelings were deep, tender, loyal; he was capable of
+any sacrifice for a friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;&mdash;I don't want to butt in anywhere&mdash;into what ain't my
+business, but I do want to know if you're going to New York?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to try to see <i>him</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to try to find him&mdash;for his mother's sake and his own."</p>
+
+<p>Octavius Buzzby grasped his hand and wrung it. "God bless you!" He
+fumbled with his left hand in his breast pocket and drew forth a
+package. "Here, you take this&mdash;it's honest money, all mine&mdash;you use it
+for Champney&mdash;to help out, you know, in any way you see fit."</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; was so moved he could not speak at once.</p>
+
+<p>"If Mr. Googe could know what a friend he has in you, Mr. Buzzby," he
+said at last, "I don't think he could wholly despair, whatever might
+come,"&mdash;he pressed the package back into Octavius' hand,&mdash;"keep it with
+you, it's safer; and I promise you if I need it I will call on you."
+Suddenly his indignation got the better of him&mdash;"But this is
+outrageous!"&mdash;he spoke in a low voice but vehemently,&mdash;"Mrs. Champney is
+abundantly able to do this for her nephew, whereas you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, sir, it's a damned outrage&mdash;I beg your pardon, Father
+Honor&eacute;, I hadn't ought to said that, but I've seen so much, and I'm all
+broke up, I guess, with what I've been through since yesterday. I went
+to her myself then and made bold to ask her to help with her riches
+that's bringing her in eight per cent, and told her some plain truths&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You went&mdash;!" Father Honor&eacute; exclaimed; he had almost said "too," but
+caught himself in time.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I went, and all I got was an insult for my pains. She's a
+she-dev&mdash;I beg your pardon, sir; it would serve me right if the Almighty
+struck me dumb with a stroke like hers, only hers don't affect her
+speech any, Aileen says&mdash;I guess her tongue's insured against shock for
+life, but it hadn't ought to be, sir, not after the blasphemy it's
+uttered. But I ain't the one to throw stones, not after what I've just
+said in your presence, sir, and I do beg your pardon, I know what's due
+to the clo&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The train, rounding the curve, whistled deafeningly.</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; grasped both Octavius' hands; held them close in a firm
+cordial grip; looked straight into the small brown eyes that were filled
+with tears, the result of pure nervousness.</p>
+
+<p>"We men understand each other, Mr. Buzzby; no apology is necessary&mdash;let
+me have your prayers while I am away, I shall need them&mdash;good-bye&mdash;" He
+entered the car.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius Buzzby lifted his hat and stood bareheaded on the platform till
+the train drew out.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_FOURTH" id="PART_FOURTH"></a>PART FOURTH</h2>
+
+<h3>Oblivion</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+
+<p>"I have called to see Mr. Van Ostend, by appointment," said Father
+Honor&eacute; to the footman in attendance at the door of the mansion on the
+Avenue.</p>
+
+<p>He was shown into the library. Mr. Van Ostend rose from the armchair to
+greet him.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to see you, Father Honor&eacute;." He shook hands cordially and drew
+up a chair opposite to his own before the blazing hearth. "Be seated; I
+have given orders that we are not to be interrupted. I cannot pretend
+ignorance as to the cause of your coming&mdash;a sad, bad matter for us all.
+Have you any news?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only that he is here in New York."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Ostend looked startled. "Here? Since when? My latest advice was
+this afternoon from the Maine detectives."</p>
+
+<p>"I heard yesterday from headquarters that he had been traced here, but
+he must be in hiding somewhere; thus far they've found no trace of him.
+I felt sure, from the very first, he would return; that is why I came
+down. He couldn't avoid detection any longer in the country, nor could
+he hold out another week in the Maine wilderness&mdash;no man could stand it
+in this weather."</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been here, Father Honor&eacute;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three days. I promised Mrs. Googe to do what I could to find him; the
+mother suffers most."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;I know; it's awful for her; but, for God's sake, what did he do
+it for!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why do we all sin at times?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes&mdash;I know; that's your point of view, but that does not answer
+me in this case. He had every opportunity to work along legitimate lines
+towards the end he professed to wish to attain&mdash;and he had the ability
+to attain it; I know this from my experience with him. What could have
+possessed him to put himself in the place of a sneak thief&mdash;he, born a
+gentleman, with Champney blood in his veins?"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; did not answer his question which was more an indignant
+ejaculation.</p>
+
+<p>"You spoke of my 'point of view,' Mr. Van Ostend. I think I know what
+that implies; you mean from the point of view of the priesthood?"</p>
+
+<p>The man on the opposite side of the fire-lighted hearth looked at him in
+surprise. "Yes, just that; but I intended no reflection on your opinion;
+perhaps I ought to say frankly, that it implied a doubt of your powers
+of judgment in a business matter like the one in question. Naturally, it
+does not lie in your line."</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; smiled a little sadly. "Perhaps you may recall that old
+saying of the Jew, Nathan the Wise: 'A man is a man before he is either
+Christian or Jew.' And we are men, Mr. Van Ostend; men primarily before
+we are either financier or priest. Let us speak as man to man; put aside
+all points of view entailed by difference of training, and meet on the
+common ground of our manhood, I am sure the perspective and
+retrospective ought to be in the same line of vision from that
+standpoint."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Ostend was silent. He was thinking deeply. The priest saw this,
+and waited for the answer which he felt sure would be well thought out
+before it found expression. He spoke at last, slowly, weighing his
+words:</p>
+
+<p>"I am questioning whether, with the best intentions as men to meet in
+the common plane of our manhood, to see from thence alike in a certain
+direction, you and I, at our age, can escape from the moulded lines of
+our training into that common plane."</p>
+
+<p>"I think we can if we keep to the fundamentals of life."</p>
+
+<p>"We can but try; but there must be then an absolutely unclouded
+expression of individual opinion on the part of each." His assertion
+implied both a challenge and a doubt. "What is your idea of the reason
+for his succumbing to such a temptation?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it was the love of money and the power its acquisition
+carries with it. I know, too, that Mrs. Googe blames herself for having
+fostered this ambition in him. She would only too gladly place anything
+that is hers to make good, but there is nothing left; it all went." He
+straightened himself. "What I have come to you for, Mr. Van Ostend, is
+to ask you one direct question: Are you willing to make good the amount
+of the embezzlement to the syndicate and save prosecution in this
+special case&mdash;save the man, Champney Googe, and so give him another
+chance in life? You know, but not so well, perhaps, as I, what years in
+a penitentiary mean for a man when he leaves it."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you aware that you are asking me to put a premium on crime?" Mr.
+Van Ostend asked coldly. He looked at the priest as if he thought he had
+taken leave of his senses.</p>
+
+<p>"That is one way of putting it, I admit; but there is another. Let me
+put it to you: if you had had a son; if he were fatherless; if he had
+fallen through emulation of other men, wouldn't you like to know that
+some man might lend a hand for the sake of the mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Stealing is stealing, whether my son were the thief or
+another man's. Why shouldn't a man take his punishment? You know the
+everyday argument: the man who steals a loaf of bread gets nine months,
+and the man who steals a hundred thousand gets clear. If the law is for
+the one and not for the other, the result is, logically, anarchy.
+Besides, the man, not he of the street who steals because he is hungry,
+but the one who has every advantage of education and environment to make
+his way right in life, goes wrong knowingly. Are we in this case to
+coddle, to sympathize, to let ourselves be led into philanthropic drivel
+over 'judge not that ye be not judged'? I cannot see it so."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right in your reasoning, but you are reasoning according to the
+common law, man-made; and I said we could agree only if we keep to the
+fundamentals of life."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if the law isn't a fundamental, what is?"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard Bishop Brooks once say: 'The Bible <i>was</i> before ever it was
+written.' And perhaps I can best answer your question by saying the law
+of the human existed before the law of which you are thinking was ever
+written. Love, mercy, long-suffering <i>were</i> before the law formulated
+'an eye for an eye,' or this world could not have existed to the
+present time for you and me. It is in recognition of that, in dealing
+with the human, that I make my appeal to you&mdash;for the mother, first and
+foremost, who suffers through the son, her first-born and only child, as
+your daughter is your only&mdash;" Mr. Van Ostend interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>"I must beg you, Father Honor&eacute;, not to bring my daughter's name into
+this affair. I have suffered enough&mdash;enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Van Ostend, pardon me the seeming discourtesy in your own house,
+but I am compelled to mention it. After you have given your final
+decision to my importuning, there can be no further appeal. The man, if
+living, must go to prison. Mrs. Champney positively refuses to help her
+nephew in any way. She has been approached twice on the subject of
+advancing four-fifths of the hundred thousand; she can do it, but she
+won't. She is not a mother; neither has she any real love for her
+nephew, for she refuses to aid him in his extremity. I mentioned your
+daughter, because you must know that her name has been in the past
+connected with the man for whom I am asking the boon of another chance
+in life. I have felt convinced that for her sake, if for no other, you
+would make this sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter, I am glad to inform you, never cared for the man. She is
+too young, too undeveloped. It is the one thing that makes it possible
+for me to contemplate what he has done with any degree of sanity. Had he
+won her affections, had she loved him&mdash;" He paused: it was impossible
+for him to proceed.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God that she was spared that!" Father Honor&eacute; ejaculated under his
+breath. Mr. Van Ostend looking at him keenly, perceived that he was
+under the influence of some powerful emotion. He turned to him, a mute
+question on his lips. Father Honor&eacute; answered that mute query with
+intense earnestness, by repeating what, apparently, he had said to
+himself:</p>
+
+<p>"I thank my God that she never cared for him in that way, for otherwise
+her life would have been wrecked; nor could you, who would lay down your
+life for her happiness, have spared or saved her,&mdash;her young affections,
+her young faith and joy in life, all shattered, and Life the iconoclast!
+That is the saddest part of it. It is women who suffer most and always.
+In making this appeal to you, I have had continually in mind his mother,
+and you, the father of a woman. I know how your pride must have suffered
+in the knowledge that his name, even, has been connected with hers&mdash;but
+your suffering is as naught compared with that mother's who, at this
+very moment, is waiting for some telegram from me that shall tell her
+her son is found, is saved. But I will not over urge, Mr. Van Ostend. If
+you feel you cannot do this, that it is a matter of principle with you
+to refuse, there is no need to prolong this interview which is painful
+to us both. I thank you for the time you have given me." He rose to go.
+Mr. Van Ostend did likewise.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment a girl's joyous voice sounded in the hall just outside
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, never mind that, Beales; papa never considers me an interruption.
+I'm going in, anyway, to say good night; I don't care if all Wall Street
+is there. Has the carriage come?"</p>
+
+<p>There was audible the sound of a subdued protest; then came a series of
+quick taps on the door and the sound of the gay voice again:</p>
+
+<p>"Papa&mdash;just a minute to say good night; if I can't come in, do you come
+out and give me a kiss&mdash;do you hear?"</p>
+
+<p>The two men looked at each other. Mr. Van Ostend stepped quickly to the
+door and, opening it, stood on the threshold. Something very like a
+diaphanous white cloud enwrapped him; two thin arms, visible through it,
+went suddenly round his neck; then his arms enfolded her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Papsy dear, don't hug me so hard! You'll crush all my flowers. Ben
+sent them; wasn't he a dear? I've promised him the cotillon to-night for
+them. Good night." She pecked at his cheek again as he released her; the
+cloud of white liberty silk tulle drifted away from the doorway and left
+it a blank.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Ostend closed the door; came back to the hearth; stood there,
+his arms folded tightly over his chest, his head bowed. For a few
+minutes neither man spoke. When the clock on the mantel chimed a quarter
+to nine, Father Honor&eacute; made a movement to go. Mr. Van Ostend turned
+quickly to him and put out a detaining hand.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask if you are going to continue the search this evening; it's a
+bad night."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I've had the feeling that, after he has been so long in hiding,
+he'll have to come out&mdash;he must be at the end of his strength. I am
+going out with two detectives now; they have been on the case with me.
+This is quite apart from the general detective agency's work."</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;," Mr. Van Ostend spoke with apparent effort, "I know I am
+right in my reasoning&mdash;and you are right in your fundamentals. We both
+may be wrong in the end, you in appealing to me for this aid to restrain
+prosecution, and I in giving it. Time alone will show us. But if we are,
+we must take the consequences of our act. If, by yielding, I make it
+easier for another man to do as Champney Googe has done, may God forgive
+me; I could never forgive myself. If you, in asking this, have erred in
+freeing from his punishment a man who deserves every bit he can get, you
+will have to reckon with your own conscience.&mdash;Don't misunderstand me.
+No spirit of philanthropy influences me in my act. Don't credit me with
+any 'love-to-man' attitude. I am going to advance the sum necessary to
+avoid prosecution if you find him; but I do it solely on that mother's
+account, and"&mdash;he hesitated&mdash;"because I don't want her, whom you have
+just seen, connected, even remotely, by the thought of what a
+penitentiary term implies. I don't want to entertain the thought that
+even the hem of <i>my</i> child's garment has been so much as touched by a
+hand that will work at hard labor for seven, perhaps fifteen, years. And
+I want you to understand that, in yielding, my principle remains
+unchanged. I owe it to you to say this much, for you have dealt with me
+as man to man."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Van Ostend, we may both be in the wrong, as you say; if it prove
+so, I shall be the first to acknowledge my error to you. My one thought
+has been to save that mother further agony and to give a man, still
+young, another chance."</p>
+
+<p>"I've understood it so."</p>
+
+<p>He went to his writing table, sat down at it, and, for a moment, busied
+himself with making out his personal check for one hundred thousand
+dollars payable to the Flamsted Granite Quarries Company. He handed it
+to Father Honor&eacute; to look at. The priest read it.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever bail is needed, if an arrest should follow now," said Mr. Van
+Ostend further and significantly, "I will be responsible for."</p>
+
+<p>The two men clasped hands and looked understandingly into each other's
+eyes. What each read therein, what each felt in the other's palm beats,
+they realized there was no need to express in words.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me hear, Father Honor&eacute;, so soon as you learn anything definite;
+I'll keep you posted so far as I hear."</p>
+
+<p>"I will. Good night, Mr. Van Ostend."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On reaching the iron gates to the courtyard, the priest stepped aside to
+give unimpeded passage to a carriage just leaving the house. As it
+passed him, the electric light flashed athwart the bowed glass front,
+already dripping with sleet, and behind it he caught a glimpse of a
+girl's delicate face that rose from out the folds of a chinchilla wrap,
+like a flower from its sheath. She was chatting gaily with her maid.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+
+<p>The night was wild. New York can show such in late November. A gale from
+the northeast was driving before it a heavy sleet that froze as it
+fell, coating the overhead wires and glazing the asphalt and sidewalks.</p>
+
+<p>It lacked an hour of midnight. From Fleischmann's bakery, the goal of
+each man among the shivering hundreds lined up on Tenth Street, the
+light streamed out upon a remnant of Life's jetsam&mdash;that which is
+submerged, which never comes to the surface unless drawn there by some
+searching and rescuing hand; that which the home-sheltered never see by
+daylight, never know, save from hearsay. In the neighboring rectory of
+Grace Church one dim light was burning in an upper room. The marble
+church itself looked a part of the winter scene; its walls and
+pinnacles, already encrusted with ice crystals, glittered fantastically
+in the rays of the arc-light; beneath them, the dark, shuffling,
+huddling line of humanity moved uneasily in the discomfort of the keen
+wind.</p>
+
+<p>At twelve o 'clock, each unknown, unidentified human unit in that line,
+as he reaches the window, puts forth his hand for the loaf, and
+thrusting it beneath his coat, if he be so fortunate as to have one, or
+under his arm, vanishes....</p>
+
+<p>Whither? As well ask: Whence came he?</p>
+
+<p>Well up towards the bakery, because the hour was early, stood Champney
+Googe, unknown, unidentified as yet by three men, Father Honor&eacute; and two
+detectives, who from the dark archway of a sunken area farther down the
+street were scanning this bread-line. The man for whom they were
+searching held his head low. An old broad-brimmed felt hat was jammed
+over his forehead, almost covering his eyes. The face beneath its shadow
+was sunken, drawn; the upper lip, chin, and cheeks covered with a three
+weeks' growth of hair that had been blackened with soot. The long period
+of wandering in the Maine wilderness had reduced his clothes to a
+minimum. His shoes were worn, the leather split, showing bare flesh.
+Like hundreds of others in like case, he found himself forced into this
+line, even at the risk of detection, through the despairing desperation
+of hunger. There was nothing left for him but this&mdash;that is, if he were
+not to starve. And after this, there remained for him but one thing, one
+choice out of three final ones&mdash;he knew this well: flight and
+expatriation, the act of grace by which a man frees himself from this
+life, or the penitentiary. Which should it be?</p>
+
+<p>"Never that last, never!" he said over and over again to himself during
+this last month. "Never, never <i>that</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the horror of that which spurred him to unimaginable exertion in
+the wilderness in order to escape the detectives on his track; to put
+them off the scent; to lead them to the Canada border and so induce them
+to cross it in their search. He had succeeded; and thereafter his one
+thought was to get to New York, to that metropolis where the human unit
+is reduced to the zero power, and can dive under, even vanish, to
+reappear only momently on the surface to breathe. But having reached the
+city, by stolen rides on the top of freight cars, and plunging again
+into its maelstrom, he found himself still in the clutch of this
+unnamable horror. Docks, piers, bridges, stations were become mere
+detective terminals to him&mdash;things to be shunned at all cost. The long
+perspective of the avenues, the raking view from river to river in the
+cross streets, afforded him no shelter from watching eyes&mdash;in every
+passing glance he read his doom; these, too, were things to be avoided
+at all hazard.</p>
+
+<p>For four nights, since he sought refuge in New York, he had crawled into
+an empty packing-box in a black alley behind a Water Street wholesale
+house. Twice, during this time, he had made the attempt to board as
+stowaway an outward-bound steamship and sailing vessel for a South
+American port; but he had failed, for the Eyes were upon him&mdash;always the
+Eyes wherever he went, whenever he looked, Eyes that were spotting him.
+In the weakness consequent upon prolonged fasting and the protracted
+exposure during his journey from Maine, this horror was becoming an
+obsession bordering on delirium. It was even now beginning to dull the
+two senses of sight and hearing&mdash;at least, he imagined it&mdash;as he stood
+in line waiting for the loaf that should keep him another day, keep him
+for one of two alternatives: flight, if possible to South America,
+or ...</p>
+
+<p>As he stood there, the fear that his sight might grow suddenly dim, that
+he might in consequence fail in recognition of those Eyes so constantly
+on the lookout for him, suddenly increased. He grew afraid, at last, to
+look up&mdash;What if the Eyes should be there! He bore the ever-increasing
+horror as long as he could, then&mdash;better starve and have done with it
+than die like a dog from sheer fright!&mdash;he stepped cautiously, softly,
+starting at the crackle of the ice under his tread, off the curbstone
+into the street. So far he was safe. He kept his head low, and walked
+carelessly towards Third Avenue. When nearing the corner he determined
+he would look up. He took the middle of the street. It cost him a
+supreme effort to raise his eyes, to look stealthily about him, behind,
+before, to right, to left&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>What was that in the dark area archway!</i> His sight blurred for the
+moment, so increasing the blackness of impending horror; then, under the
+influence of this last applied stimulus, his sight grew preternaturally
+keen. He discerned one moving form&mdash;two&mdash;three; to his over-strained
+nerves there seemed a whole posse behind them. Oh, the Eyes, the Eyes
+that were so constantly on him! Could he never rid himself of them! He
+bent his head to the sleeting blast and darted down the middle of the
+street to Second Avenue.</p>
+
+<p><i>He knew now the alternative.</i></p>
+
+<p>After a possible five seconds of hesitation the three men gave chase. It
+was the make of the man, his motion as he started to run, the running
+itself as Champney took the middle of the street, by which Father Honor&eacute;
+marked him. It was just such a start, just such running, as the priest
+had seen many a time on the football field when the goal, which should
+decide for victory, was to be made. He recognized it at once.</p>
+
+<p>"That's he!" He spoke under his breath to the two men; the three started
+in pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>But Champney Googe was running to goal, and the old training stood him
+in good stead. He was across Second Avenue before the men were half way
+down Tenth Street; down Eighth Street towards East River he fled, but at
+First he doubled on his tracks and eluded them. They lost him as he
+turned into Second Avenue again; not a footstep showed on the
+ice-coated pavement. They stopped at a telephone station to notify the
+police at the Brooklyn Bridge terminals, then paused to draw a long
+breath.</p>
+
+<p>"You're sure 't was him?" One of the detectives appealed to Father
+Honor&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>"He give us the slip this time; he knew we was after him," the other
+panted rather than spoke, for the long run had winded him. "I never see
+such running&mdash;and look at the glare of ice! He'd have done me up in
+another block."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the hunt's up for to-night, anyway. There's no use tobogganning
+round after such a hare at this time of night," said the other, wiping
+the wet snow from the inside of his coat collar.</p>
+
+<p>"We've spotted him sure enough," said the first, "and I think, sir, with
+due notifications at headquarters for all the precincts to-night, we can
+run him down and in to-morrow. If you've no more use for me, I'll just
+step round to headquarters and get the lines on him before
+daylight&mdash;that is, if they'll work." He looked dubiously at the sagging
+ice-laden wires.</p>
+
+<p>"You won't need me any longer?" The second man spoke inquiringly, as if
+he would like to know Father Honor&eacute;'s next move.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't need you both, but I'd like one of you to volunteer to keep me
+company, for a while, at least. I can't give up this way, although I
+know no more of his whereabouts than you do. I've a curious unreasoning
+feeling that he'll try the ferries next."</p>
+
+<p>"He can't get at the bridge&mdash;we've headed him off there, and it's a bad
+night. It's been my experience that this sort don't take to water, not
+naturally, on such nights as this. We might try one of the Bowery
+lodging houses that I know this sort finds out sometimes. I'll go with
+you, if you like."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, I want to try the ferries first; we'll begin at the Battery
+and work up. How long does the Staten Island boat run?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not after one; but they'll be behind time to-night; it's getting to be
+a smothering snow. I don't believe the elevated can run on time either,
+and we've got three blocks to walk to the next station."</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better be going, then." Father Honor&eacute; bade the other man good
+night, and the two walked rapidly to the nearest elevated station on
+Second Avenue. It was an up-town train that rolled in covered with sleet
+and snow, and they were obliged to wait fully a quarter of an hour
+before a south bound one took them to the Battery.</p>
+
+<p>The wind was lessening, but a heavy snowfall had set in. They made their
+way across the park to the "tongue that laps the commerce of the world."</p>
+
+<p>Where was that commerce now? Wholly vanished with the multiple daytime
+activities that centre near this spot. The great fleet of incoming and
+out-going ocean liners, of vessels, barges, tows, ferries, tugs&mdash;where
+were they in the drifting snow that was blotting out the night in opaque
+white? The clank and rush of the elevated, the strident grinding of the
+trolleys, the polyglot whistling and tooting of the numerous small river
+craft, the cries of 'longshoremen, the roaring basal note of
+metropolitan mechanism&mdash;all were silenced. Nothing was to be heard, at
+the moment of their arrival, but the heavy wash of the harbor waters
+against the sea wall and its yeasting churn in the ferry slip.</p>
+
+<p>Near the dock-house they saw some half-obliterated tracks in the snow.
+Father Honor&eacute; bent to examine them; it availed him nothing. He looked at
+his watch; at the same moment he heard the distant hoarse half-smothered
+whistle repeated again and again and the deadened beat of the paddle
+wheels. Gradually the boat felt her way into the slip. The snow was
+falling heavily.</p>
+
+<p>"We will wait here until the boat leaves," said Father Honor&eacute;, stepping
+inside to a dark wind-sheltered angle of the house.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a wild goose chase we're on," muttered his companion after a
+while. The next moment he laid a heavy hand on the priest's arm,
+gripping it hard, every muscle tense.</p>
+
+<p>A heavy brewery team, drawn by noble Percherons, rumbled past them down
+the slip. On it, behind the driver's seat, was the figure of a man,
+crouched low. Had it not been for the bandaged arm and the unnatural
+contour it gave to the body's profile, they might have failed to
+recognize him. The two stood motionless in the blackness of the inner
+angle, pressing close to the iron pillars as their man passed them at a
+distance of something less than twelve feet. The warning bell rang; they
+hurried on board.</p>
+
+<p>After the boat was well out into the harbor, the detective entered the
+cabin to investigate. He returned to report to Father Honor&eacute; that the
+man was not inside.</p>
+
+<p>"Outside then," said the priest, drawing a sharp short breath.</p>
+
+<p>The two made their way forward, keeping well behind the team. Father
+Honor&eacute; saw Champney standing by the outside guard chain. He was whitened
+by the clinging snow. The driver of the team sang out to him: "I say,
+pardner, you'd better come inside!"</p>
+
+<p>He neither turned nor spoke, but, bracing himself, suddenly crouched to
+the position for a standing leap, fist clenched....</p>
+
+<p>A great cry rang out into the storm-filled night:</p>
+
+<p>"Champney!"</p>
+
+<p>The two men flung themselves upon him as he leaped, and in the ensuing
+struggle the three rolled together on the deck. He fought them like a
+madman, using his bandaged arm, his feet, his head. He was powerful with
+the fictitious strength of desperation and thwarted intent. But the two
+men got the upper hand, and, astride the prostrate form, the detective
+forced on the handcuffs. At the sound of the clinking irons, the
+prisoner suffered collapse then and there.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!" said Father Honor&eacute; as he lifted the limp head and
+shoulders. With the other's aid he carried him into the cabin and laid
+him on the floor. The priest took off his own wet cloak, then his coat;
+with the latter he covered the poor clay that lay apparently
+lifeless&mdash;no one should look upon that face either in curiosity,
+contempt, or pity.</p>
+
+<p>The detective went out to interview the driver of the team.</p>
+
+<p>"Where'd you pick him up?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Long on West Street, just below Park Place. I see by the way he spoke
+he'd broke his wind&mdash;asked if I was goin' to a ferry an' if I'd give him
+a lift. I said 'Come along,' and asked no questions. He ain't the first
+I've helped out o' trouble, but I guess I've got him in sure enough this
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"You're going to put up on the Island?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but what business is it o' a decent-looking cove like youse, I'd
+like to know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's this way: we've got to get this man back to New York
+to-night; it's the boat's last trip and there ain't a chance of getting
+a cab or hack in this blizzard, and at this time of night, to get him up
+from the ferry. If you'll take the job, I'll give you fifteen dollars
+for it."</p>
+
+<p>"That ain't so easy earned in a reg'lar snow-in; besides, I don't want
+to be a party to gettin' him furder into your grip by takin' him over."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's all right. He's got a friend with him who'll see to him for
+the rest of the night."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't mind then. It's goin' on one now, an' I might as well
+make a night o' it on t' other side. It's damned hard on the hosses,
+though, an' it's ten to one I don't get lifted myself by one o' them
+cussed cruelty to animil fellers that sometimes poke their noses into
+the wrong end o' their business.&mdash;Make it twenty an' it is done."</p>
+
+<p>The detective smiled. "Twenty it is." He patted the noble Percherons and
+felt their warmth under the blankets. "You're not the kind they're
+after. What have you got in your team?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing but the hosses' feed-bags."</p>
+
+<p>"That'll do. We'll put him in now in case any one comes on at Staten
+Island for the return trip. You don't know nothing about <i>this</i>, you
+know." He looked at him knowingly.</p>
+
+<p>"All right, Cap'n; I'd be willin' to say I was a bloomin' idjot for two
+saw-horses. Come, rake out."</p>
+
+<p>The detective laughed. "Here's ten to bind the bargain&mdash;the rest when
+you've landed him."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+
+<p>The brewery team made its way slowly up from the ferry owing to the
+drifting snow and icy pavements. From time to time a plough ran on the
+elevated, or on the trolley tracks, and sent the snow in fan-like spurts
+from the fender. The driver drew rein in a west-side street off lower
+Seventh Avenue. It was a brotherhood house where the priest had taken a
+room for an emergency like the present one. He knew that within these
+walls no questions would be asked, yet every aid given, if required, in
+just these circumstances. The man beneath the horse-blankets was still
+unconscious when they lifted him out, and carried him up to a large room
+in the topmost story. The detective, after removing the handcuffs, asked
+if he could be of any further use that night. He stepped to the side of
+the cot and looked searchingly into the passive face on the pillow.</p>
+
+<p>"No; he's safe here," Father Honor&eacute; replied. "You will notify the police
+and the other detectives. I will go bail for him if any should be
+needed; but I may as well tell you now that the case will probably never
+come to trial; the amount has been guaranteed." He wrote a telegram and
+handed it to the man. "Would you do me the favor to get this off as
+early as you can?"</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! Poor devil, he's got off easy; but from his looks and the tussle
+we had with him, I don't think he'll be over grateful to you for
+bringing him through this. I've seen so much of this kind, that I've
+come to think it's better when they drop out quietly, no fuss, like as
+he wanted to."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't agree with you. Thank you for your help."</p>
+
+<p>"Not worth mentioning; it's all in the night's work, you know. Good
+night. I'll send the telegram just as soon as the wires are working. You
+know my number if you want me." He handed him a card.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you; good night."</p>
+
+<p>When the door closed upon him, Father Honor&eacute; drew a long breath that was
+half a suppressed groan; then he turned to the passive form on the cot.
+There was much to be done.</p>
+
+<p>He administered a little stimulant; heated some water over a small gas
+stove; laid out clean sheets, a shirt, some bandages and a few surgical
+instruments from a "handy closet," that was kept filled with simple
+hospital emergency requirements, and set to work. He cut the shoes from
+the stockingless feet; cut away the stiffened clothing, what there was
+of it; laid bare the bandaged arm; it was badly swollen, stiff and
+inflamed. He soaked from a clotted knife-wound above the elbow the piece
+of cloth with which it had first been bound. He looked at the discolored
+rag as it lay in his hand, startled at what he saw: a handkerchief&mdash;a
+small one, a woman's! With sickening dread he searched in the corners;
+he found them: A. A., wreathed around with forget-me-nots, all in
+delicate French embroidery.</p>
+
+<p>"My God, my God!" he groaned. He recalled having seen Aileen
+embroidering these very handkerchiefs last summer up under the pines.
+One of the sisterhood, Sister Ste. Croix, was with her giving
+instruction, while she herself wrought on a convent-made garment.</p>
+
+<p>What did it mean? With multiplied thoughts that grasped helplessly
+hither and thither for some point of attachment, he went on with his
+work. Two hours later, he had the satisfaction of knowing the man before
+him was physically cared for as well as it was possible for him to be
+until he should regain consciousness. His practised eye recognized this
+to be a case of collapse from exhaustion, physical and mental. Now
+Nature must work to replenish the depleted vitality. He could trust her
+up to a certain point.</p>
+
+<p>He sat by the cot, his elbows on his knees, his head dropped into his
+hands, pondering the mystery of this life before him&mdash;of all life, of
+death, of the Beyond; marvelling at the strange warp and woof of
+circumstance, his heart wrung for the anguish of that mother far away in
+the quarries of The Gore, his soul filled with thankfulness that she was
+spared the sight of <i>this</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The gray November dawn began to dim the electric light in the room. He
+went to a window, opened the inner blinds and looked out. The storm was
+not over, but the wind had lessened and the flakes fell sparsely. He
+looked across over the neighboring roofs weighted with snow; the wires
+were down. A muffled sound of street traffic heralded the beginning day.
+As he turned back to the cot he saw that Champney's eyes were open; but
+the look in them was dazed. They closed directly. When they opened
+again, the full light of day was in the room; semi-consciousness had
+returned. He spoke feebly:</p>
+
+<p>"Where am I?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here, safe with me, Champney." He leaned over him, but saw that he was
+not recognized.</p>
+
+<p>"Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your friend, Father Honor&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;&mdash;" he murmured, "I don't know you." He gave a convulsive
+start&mdash;"Where are the Eyes gone?" he whispered, a look of horror
+creeping into his own.</p>
+
+<p>"There are none here, none but mine, Champney. Listen; you are safe with
+me, safe, do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p>He gave no answer, but the dazed look returned. He moistened his parched
+lips with his tongue and swallowed hard. Father Honor&eacute; held a glass of
+water to his mouth, slipping an arm and hand beneath his head to raise
+him. He drank with avidity; tried to sit up, but fell back exhausted.
+The priest busied himself with preparing some hot beef extract on the
+little stove. When it was ready he sat down by the cot and fed it to him
+spoonful by spoonful.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," Champney said quietly when the priest had finished his
+ministration. He turned a little on his side and fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>The sleep was that which follows exhaustion; it was profound and
+beneficial. Evidently no distress of mind or body marred it, and for
+every sixty minutes of the blessed oblivion, there was renewed activity
+in nature's ever busy laboratory to replenish the strength that had been
+sacrificed in this man's protracted struggle to escape his doom, and, by
+means of it, to restore the mental balance, fortunately not too long
+lost....</p>
+
+<p>When he awoke, it was to full consciousness. The sun was setting. Behind
+the Highlands of the Navesink it sank in royal state: purple, scarlet,
+and gold. Upon the crisping blue waters of Harbor, Sound, and River, the
+reflection of its transient glory lay in quivering windrows of gorgeous
+color. It crimsoned faintly the snow that lay thick on the multitude of
+city roofs; it blazoned scarlet the myriad windows in the towers and
+skyscrapers; it filled the keen air with wonderful fleeting lights that
+bewildered and charmed the unaccustomed eyes of the metropolitan
+millions.</p>
+
+<p>Champney waited for it to fade; then he turned to the man beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;&mdash;" he half rose from the cot. The priest bent over him.
+Champney laid one arm around his neck, drew him down to him and, for a
+moment only, the two men remained cheek to cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Champney&mdash;my son," was all he could say.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; now tell me all&mdash;the worst; I can bear it."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"I can't see my way, yet." These were the first words he spoke after
+Father Honor&eacute; had finished telling him of his prospective relief from
+sentence and the means taken to obtain it. He had listened intently,
+without interruption, sitting up on the cot, his look fixed unwaveringly
+on the narrator. He put his hand to his face as he spoke, covering his
+eyes for a moment; then he passed it over the three weeks' stubble on
+his cheeks and chin.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it possible for me to shave here? I must get up&mdash;out of this. I
+can't think straight unless I get on my feet."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel strong enough, Champney?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall get strength quicker when I'm up. Thank you," he said, as
+Father Honor&eacute; helped him to his feet. He swayed as if dizzy on crossing
+the room to a small mirror above a stand. Father Honor&eacute; placed the hot
+water and shaving utensils before him. He declined his further
+assistance.</p>
+
+<p>"Are there&mdash;are there any clothes I could put on?" He asked
+hesitatingly, as he proceeded to shave himself awkwardly with his one
+free hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Such as they are, a plenty." Father Honor&eacute; produced a common tweed suit
+and fresh underwear from the "handy closet." These together with some
+other necessaries from a drawer in the stand supplied a full equipment.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I tub anywhere?" was his next question after he had finished
+shaving.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; this bath closet here is at your disposal." He opened a door into
+a small adjoining hall-room. Champney took the clothes and went in. While
+he was bathing, Father Honor&eacute; used the room telephone to order in a
+substantial evening meal. After the noise of the splashing ceased, he
+heard a half-suppressed groan. He listened intently, but there was no
+further sound, not even of the details of dressing.</p>
+
+<p>A half-hour passed. He had taken in the tray, and was becoming anxious,
+when the door opened and Champney came in, clean, clothed, but with a
+look in his eyes that gave the priest all the greater cause for anxiety
+because, up to that time, the man had volunteered no information
+concerning himself; he had received what the priest said passively,
+without demonstration of any kind. There had been as yet no spiritual
+vent for the over-strained mind, the over-charged soul. The priest knew
+this danger and what it portended.</p>
+
+<p>He ate the food that was placed before him listlessly. Suddenly he
+pushed the plate away from him across the table at which he was sitting.
+"I can't eat; it nauseates me," he said; then, leaning his folded arms
+on the edge, he dropped his head upon them groaning heavily in an agony
+of despair, shame, remorse: "God! What's the use&mdash;what's the use!
+There's nothing left&mdash;nothing left."</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; knew that the crucial hour was striking, and his prayer
+for help was the wordless outreaching of every atom of his consciousness
+for that One more powerful than weak humanity, to guide, to aid him.</p>
+
+<p>"Your manhood is left." He spoke sternly, with authority. This was no
+time for pleading, for sympathy, for persuasion.</p>
+
+<p>"My manhood!" The bitterest self-contempt was voiced in those two words.
+He raised his head, and the look he gave to the man opposite bordered on
+the inimical.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, your manhood. Do you, in your supreme egotism, suppose that you,
+Champney Googe, are the only man in this world who has sinned, suffered,
+gone under for a time? Are you going to lie down in the ditch like a
+craven, simply because you have failed to withstand the first assaults
+of the devil that is in you? Do you think, because you have sinned,
+there is no longer a place for you and your work in this world where all
+men are sinners at some time in their lives? I tell you, Champney
+Googe,&mdash;and mark well what I say,&mdash;your sin, as sin, is not so
+despicable as your attitude towards your own life. Why, man, you're
+alive&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, alive&mdash;thanks to you; but knocked out after the first round," he
+muttered. The priest noted, however, that he still held his head erect.
+He took fresh courage.</p>
+
+<p>"And what would you say of a man who, because he has been knocked out in
+the first round, does not dare to enter the ring again? So far as I've
+seen anything of life, it is a man's duty to get on his feet as quickly
+as he can&mdash;square away and at it again."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing left to fight&mdash;it's all gone&mdash;my honor&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"True, your honor's gone; you can't get that back; but you can put
+yourself in the running to obtain a standard for your future honor.
+Champney, listen;" he drew his chair nearer to him that the table might
+not separate them; "hear me, a man like yourself, erring, because human,
+who has sinned, suffered&mdash;let me speak out of my own experience. Put
+aside regret; it clogs. Regret nothing; what's done is done past recall.
+Live out your life, no matter what the struggle. Count this life as
+yours to make the best of. Live, I say; live, work, make good; it is in
+any man's power who has received a reprieve like yours. I know whereof I
+am speaking. I'll go further: it would be in your power even if you had
+been judged and committed."</p>
+
+<p>The man, to whom he was appealing, shuddered as he heard the word
+"committed."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>That</i> would be death," he said under his breath; "last night was
+nothing, nothing to that&mdash;but you can't understand&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Better, perhaps, than you think. But what I want you to see is that
+there is something left to live for; Champney&mdash;your mother." He had
+hesitated to speak of her, not knowing what the effect might be.</p>
+
+<p>Champney started to his feet, his hand clenched on the table edge. He
+breathed short, hard. "O God, O God! Why didn't you let me go? How can I
+face her and live!" He began to pace the room with rapid jerky steps.
+Father Honor&eacute; rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Champney Googe,"&mdash;he spoke calmly, but with a concentrated energy of
+tone that made its impression on the man addressed,&mdash;"when you lay there
+last night," he motioned towards the cot, "I thanked my God that she
+was not here to see you. I have telegraphed her that you are alive. In
+the hope that you yourself might send some word, either directly or
+through me, I have withheld all detail of your condition, all further
+news; but, for her sake, I dare not keep her longer in suspense. Give me
+some word for her&mdash;some assurance from yourself that you will live for
+her sake, if not for your own. Reparation must begin here and <i>now</i>, and
+no time be lost; it's already late." He looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>Champney turned upon him fiercely. "Don't force me to anything. I can't
+see my way, I tell you. You have said I was a man. Let me take my stand
+on that assurance, and act as one who must first settle a long-standing
+account with himself before he can yield to any impulse of emotion. Go
+to bed&mdash;do; you're worn out with watching with me. I'll sit here by the
+window; <i>I promise you</i>. There's no sleep in me or for me&mdash;I want to be
+alone&mdash;alone."</p>
+
+<p>It was an appeal, and the priest recognized in it the cry of the
+individual soul when the full meaning of its isolation from humankind is
+first revealed to it. He let him alone. Without another word he drew off
+his boots, turned out the electric light, opened the inner blinds, and
+laid himself down on the cot, worn, weary, but undaunted in spirit. At
+times he lost himself for a few minutes; for the rest he feigned the
+sleep he so sorely needed. The excitation of his nerves, however, kept
+him for the greater part of the night conscious of all that went on in
+the room.</p>
+
+<p>Champney sat by the window. During that night he never left his seat.
+Father Honor&eacute; could see his form silhouetted against the blank of the
+panes; his head was bowed into his hands. From time to time he drew
+deep, deep, shuddering breaths. The struggle going on in that human
+breast beside the window, the priest knew to be a terrible one&mdash;a
+spiritual and a mental hand-to-hand combat, against almost over-powering
+odds, in the arena of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was reddening the east when Champney turned from the window,
+rose quietly, and stepped to the side of the cot. He stood there a few
+minutes looking down on the strong, marked face that, in the morning
+light, showed yellow from watching and fatigue. Father Honor&eacute; knew he
+was there; but he waited those few minutes before opening his eyes. He
+looked up then, not knowing what he was to expect, and met Champney's
+blue ones looking down into his. That one look was sufficient to assure
+him that the man who stood there so quietly beside him was the Champney
+Googe of a new birth. The "old man" had been put away; he was ready for
+the race, "<i>forgetting those things that are behind</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"I've won out," he said with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>The two men clasped hands and were silent for a few minutes. Then
+Champney drew a chair to the cot.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to talk with you, if you don't mind," he said.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>In the priest's soul there was rejoicing. He was anticipating the
+victorious outcome of the struggle to which, in part, he had been
+witness. But he acknowledged afterwards that he had had not the faintest
+conception, not the remotest intimation of the actual truth. It remained
+for Champney Googe to enlighten him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been digging for the root of the whole matter," he began simply.
+His hand was clenched and pressed hard on his knee, otherwise he showed
+no sign of the effort that speech cost him. "I've been clearing away all
+obstructions, trying to look at myself outside of myself; and I find
+that, ever since I can remember, I've had the ambition to be rich&mdash;and
+rich for the power it apparently gives over other men, for the amplitude
+of one kind of living it affords, for the extension of the lines of
+personal indulgence and pleasure seemingly indefinitely, for the
+position it guarantees. There has been but one goal always: the making
+of money.</p>
+
+<p>"I rebelled at first at the prospect of the five years' apprenticeship
+in Europe. I can see now that those six years, as they proved to be,
+fostered my ambition by placing me in direct and almost daily contact
+with those to whom great wealth is a natural, not an acquired thing."
+(Father Honor&eacute; noted that throughout his confession he avoided the
+mention of any name, and he respected him for it.) "On my return, as
+you know, I was placed in a position of great responsibility, as well
+as one affording every opportunity to further my object in life. I began
+to make use of these opportunities at once; the twenty thousand received
+from the quarry lands I invested, and in a short time doubled the sum. I
+was in a position to gain the inside knowledge needed to manipulate
+money with almost a certainty of increment; this knowledge, I was given
+to understand, I might use for any personal investment of funds; I took
+advantage of the privilege.</p>
+
+<p>"I soon found that to operate successfully and largely, as I needed to
+in order to gain my end and gain it quickly, I must have a larger amount
+of cash. For this reason, I re-invested the forty thousand on the
+strength of my knowledge of a rise that was to be brought about in
+certain stocks within two months. This rise was guaranteed, you
+understand; guaranteed by three influential financiers. It would double
+my investment. They let it be known in a quiet way and in certain
+quarters, that this rise would occur at about such a date, and then
+forced the market up till they themselves had a good surplus. All this I
+know for a fact, because I was on the inside. Just at this time the
+syndicate intrusted to me three hundred thousand as a workable margin
+for certain future investments. My orders were to invest in this
+prepared stock only <i>after</i> October fifteenth. Meanwhile the
+manipulation of this amount was in my hands for eight weeks.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew the forty thousand I had purposely invested in these stocks
+would double itself by the fifteenth of October; this was the date set.
+I knew this because I had the guaranty of the three men behind me; and,
+knowing this, I took a hundred thousand of the sum intrusted to me, in
+order to make a deal with a Wall Street firm which would net me twenty
+thousand within two weeks.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew perfectly well what I was doing&mdash;but there was never any
+intention on my part of robbery or embezzlement. I knew the sum eighty
+thousand, from my personal investment of forty thousand, was due on
+October fifteenth; this, plus the twenty thousand due from the Wall
+Street deal, would insure the syndicate from any loss. In fact, they
+would never know that the money had been used by me to antedate the
+investment of the three hundred thousand&mdash;a part of the net yearly
+working profits from the quarries&mdash;intrusted to me."</p>
+
+<p>He paused for a moment to pass his hand over his forehead; his eyebrows
+contracted suddenly as if he were in pain.</p>
+
+<p>"The temptation to take this money, although knowing well enough it was
+not mine to take, was too great for me. It was the resultant of every
+force of, I might say, my special business propulsion. This temptation
+lay along the lines on which I had built up my life: the pursuance of a
+line of action by which I might get rich quick.&mdash;Then came the crash.
+That special guaranteed stock broke&mdash;never to rally in time to save
+me&mdash;sixty-five points. The syndicate sent out warning signals to me that
+I was just in time to save any part of the three hundred thousand from
+investment in those stocks. Of course, I got no return from the forty
+thousand of my personal investment, and the hundred thousand I had used
+for the deal went down too. So much for the guaranty of the
+multi-millionaires.&mdash;Just then, when everything was chaotic and a big
+panic threatened, came a call from the manager of the quarries for
+immediate funds; the men were getting uneasy because pay was two weeks
+overdue. The syndicate told me to apply the working margin of three
+hundred thousand at once for this purpose. Of course there was a
+shortage; it was bound to be discovered. I tried to procrastinate&mdash;tried
+to put off the payment of the men; then came the threatened strike on
+account of non-payment of wages. I knew it was all up with me. When I
+saw I must be found out, I fled&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I never meant to rob them&mdash;to rob any one, never&mdash;never&mdash;" His voice
+broke slightly on those words.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you." Father Honor&eacute; spoke for the first time. "Not one man in
+ten thousand begins by meaning to steal."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it; that's what makes the bitterer cud-chewing."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;I know." The priest spoke under his breath. He was sitting on
+the side of the cot, and leaned forward suddenly, his elbows on his
+knees, his chin resting in his palms, his eyes gazing beyond Champney to
+something intangible, some inner vision that was at that moment
+projecting itself from the sensitive plate of consciousness upon the
+blank of reality.</p>
+
+<p>Champney looked at him keenly. He was aware that, for the moment, Father
+Honor&eacute; was present with him only in the body. He waited, before
+speaking, until the priest's eyes turned slowly to his; his position
+remained the same. Champney went on:</p>
+
+<p>"All that you have done to obtain this reprieve, has been done for
+me&mdash;for mine&mdash;"; his voice trembled. "A man comes to know the measure of
+such sacrifice after an experience like mine&mdash;I have no words&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't, Champney&mdash;don't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I won't, because I can't&mdash;because nothing is adequate. I thought it
+all out last night. There is but one way to show you, to prove anything
+to you; I am going to do as you said: make good my manhood&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute;'s hand closed upon Champney's.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;And there is but one way in which I can make it good. I can take only
+a step at a time now, but it's this first step that will start me
+right."</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment as if to gather strength to voice his decision.</p>
+
+<p>"I should disown my manhood if I shirked now. The horror of prospective
+years of imprisonment has been more to me than death&mdash;I welcomed <i>that</i>
+as the alternative. But now, the manhood that is left in me demands that
+if I am willing to live as a man, I must take my punishment like a man.
+I am going to let things take their usual course; accept no relief from
+the money guaranteed to reimburse the syndicate; plead guilty, and let
+the sentence be what it may: seven, fifteen, or twenty years&mdash;it's all
+one."</p>
+
+<p>He drew a long breath as of deliverance. The mere formulating of his
+decision in the presence of another man gave him strength, almost
+assurance to act for himself in furthering his own commitment. But the
+priest bowed his head into his hands and a groan burst from his lips, so
+laden with wretchedness, with mental and spiritual suffering, that even
+Champney Googe was startled from his hard-won calm.</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;, what is it? Don't take it so hard." He laid his hand on
+his shoulder. "I can't ask you if I've done right, because no man can
+decide that for me; but wouldn't you do the same if you were in my
+place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, would to God I had!&mdash;would to God I had!" he groaned rather than
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Champney was startled. He realized, for the first time, perhaps, in his
+self-centred life, that he was but a unit among suffering millions. He
+was realizing, moreover, that, with the utterance of his decision, he
+had, as it were, retired from the stage for many years to come; the
+curtain had fallen on his particular act in the life-drama; that others
+now occupied his place, and among them was this man before him who,
+active for good, foremost in noble works, strong in the faith, helpful
+wherever help might be needed, a refuge for the oppressed of soul, a
+friend to all humanity because human, <i>his</i> friend&mdash;his mother's, was
+suffering at this moment as he himself had suffered, but without the
+relief that is afforded by renunciation. Out of a great love and pity he
+spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? Can't you tell me? Won't it help, just as man to man&mdash;as it
+has helped me?"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; regained his control before Champney ceased questioning.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that it will help; but I owe it to you to tell you, after
+what you have said&mdash;told me. I can preach&mdash;oh yes! But the practice&mdash;the
+practice&mdash;" He wiped the sweat from his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"What you have just told me justifies me in telling you what I thought
+never to speak of again in this world. You have done the only thing to
+do in the circumstances&mdash;it has taken the whole courage of a man; but I
+never for a moment credited you with sufficient manhood to dare it. It
+only goes to show how shortsighted we humans are, how incomprehensive of
+the workings of the human heart and soul; we think we know&mdash;and find
+ourselves utterly confounded, as I am now." He was silent for a few
+minutes, apparently deep in meditation.</p>
+
+<p>"Had I done, when I was twenty years old, as you are going to do, I
+should have had no cause to regret; all my life fails to make good in
+that respect.&mdash;When I was a boy, an orphan, my heartstrings wound
+themselves about a little girl in France who was kind to me. I may as
+well tell you now that the thought of that child was one of the motives
+that induced me to investigate Aileen's case, when we saw her that night
+at the vaudeville."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at Champney, who, at the mention of Aileen's name, had started
+involuntarily. "You remember that night?" Champney nodded. How well he
+remembered it! But he gave no further sign.</p>
+
+<p>"I was destined for the priesthood later on, but that did not stifle the
+love in my heart for the young girl. It was in my novitiate years. I
+never dared ask myself what the outcome of it all would be; I wanted to
+finish my novitiate first. I knew she loved me with a charming, open,
+young girl's love that in the freedom of our household life&mdash;her
+grandfather was my great-uncle on my mother's side&mdash;found expression in
+a sisterly way; and in the circumstances I could not tell her of my
+love. It was the last year of my novitiate when I discovered the fact
+that a young man, in the employ of her grandfather, was paying her
+attention with the intention of asking her of him in marriage. The mere
+thought of the loss of her drove me half mad. I took the first
+opportunity, when at home for the holidays, to tell her my love, and I
+threatened, that, if she gave herself to another, I would end
+all&mdash;either for myself or for him. The girl was frightened, indignant,
+horrified almost, at the force of the passion that was consuming me;
+she repelled me&mdash;that ended it; I took it for granted that she loved
+that other. I lay in wait for him one night as he was going to the
+house; taunted him; heaped upon him such abuse as makes a man another's
+murderer; I goaded him into doing what I had intended. He struck me in
+the face; closed with me, and I fought him; but he was wrestling with a
+madman. We were on the cliff at Dieppe; the night was dark;
+intentionally I forced him towards the edge. He struggled manfully,
+trying to land a blow on my head that would save him; he wrestled with
+me and he was a man of great strength; but I&mdash;I knew I could tire him
+out. It was dark&mdash;I knew when he went over the edge, but I could see
+nothing, I heard nothing....</p>
+
+<p>"I fled; hid myself; but I was caught; held for a time awaiting the
+outcome of the man's hurt. Had he died it would have been manslaughter.
+As it was I knew it was murder, for there had been murder in my heart.
+He lived, but maimed for life. The lawyer, paid for by my great-uncle,
+set up the plea of self-defence. I was cleared in the law, and fled to
+America to expiate. I know now that there was but one expiation for
+me&mdash;to do what you are to do; plead guilty and take my punishment like a
+man. I failed to do it&mdash;and <i>I</i> preach of manhood to you!"</p>
+
+<p>There was silence in the room. Champney broke it and his voice was
+almost unrecognizable; it was hoarse, constrained:</p>
+
+<p>"But your love was noble&mdash;you loved her with all the manhood that was in
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"God knows I did; but that does not alter the fact of my consequent
+crime."</p>
+
+<p>He looked again at Champney as he spoke out his conviction, and his own
+emotion suffered a check in his amazement at the change in the
+countenance before him. He had seen nothing like this in the thirty-two
+hours he had been in his presence; his jaw was set; his nostrils white
+and sharpened; the pupils of his eyes contracted to pin points; and into
+the sallow cheeks, up to the forehead knotted as with intense pain, into
+the sunken temples, the blood rushed with a force that threatened
+physical disaster, only to recede as quickly, leaving the face ghastly
+white, the eyelids twitching, the muscles about the mouth quivering.</p>
+
+<p>Noting all this Father Honor&eacute; read deeper still; he knew that Champney
+Googe had not told him the whole, possibly not the half&mdash;<i>and never
+would tell</i>. His next question convinced him of that.</p>
+
+<p>"May I ask what became of the young girl you loved?&mdash;Don't answer, if I
+am asking too much."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. I have never heard from her. I can only surmise. But I
+did receive a letter from her when I was in prison, before my trial&mdash;she
+was summoned as witness; and oh, the infinite mercy of a loving woman's
+heart!" He was silent a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"She took so much blame upon herself, telling me that she had not known
+her own heart; that she tried to think she loved me as a brother; that
+she had been willing to let it go on so, and because she had not been
+brave enough to be honest with herself, all this trouble had come upon
+me whom she acknowledged she loved&mdash;upon her and her household. She
+begged me, if acquitted, never to see her, never to communicate with her
+again. There was but one duty for us both she said, guilty as we both
+were of what had occurred to wreck a human being for life; to go each
+<i>the way apart</i> forever&mdash;I mine, she hers&mdash;to expiate in good works, in
+loving kindness to those who might need our help....</p>
+
+<p>"I have never known anything further&mdash;heard no word&mdash;made no inquiry. At
+that time, after my acquittal, my great-uncle, a well-to-do baker,
+settled a sum of money on the man who had been in his employ; the
+interest of it would support him in his incapacity to do a man's work
+and earn a decent livelihood. My uncle said then I was never again to
+darken his doors. He desired me to leave no address; to keep secret to
+myself my destination, and forever after my whereabouts. I obeyed to the
+letter&mdash;now enough of myself. I have told you this because, as a man, I
+had not the face to sit here in your presence and hear your decision,
+without showing you my respect for your courage&mdash;and I have taken this
+way to show it."</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand and Champney wrung it. "You don't know all, or you
+would have no respect," he said brokenly.</p>
+
+<p>The two men looked understandingly into each other's eyes, but they both
+felt intuitively that any prolongation of this unwonted emotional strain
+would be injurious to both, and the work in hand. They, at once, in
+tacit understanding of each other's condition, put aside "the things
+that were behind" and "reached forth to those that were before": they
+laid plans for the speedy execution of all that Champney's decision
+involved.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one thing I cannot do," he spoke with decision; "that is to
+see my mother before my commitment&mdash;or after. It is the only thing that
+will break me down. I need all the strength of control I possess to go
+through this thing."</p>
+
+<p>The priest knew better than to protest.</p>
+
+<p>"Telegraph her to-day what you think best to ease her suspense. I will
+write her, and ask you to deliver my letter to her after you have seen
+me through. I want <i>you</i> to go up with me&mdash;to the very doors; and I want
+yours to be the last known face I see on entering. Another request: I
+don't want you, my mother, or any one else known to me, to communicate
+with me by letter, message, or even gift of any kind during my term,
+whether seven years or twenty. This is oblivion. I cease to exist, as an
+identity, outside the walls. I will make one exception: if my mother
+should fall ill, write me at once.&mdash;How she will live, I don't know! I
+dare not think&mdash;it would unsettle my reason; but she has friends; she
+has you, the Colonel, Tave, Elvira, Caukins; they will not see her want,
+and there's the house; it's in her name."</p>
+
+<p>He rose, shook himself together, drew a long breath. "Now let us go to
+work; the sooner it's over the better for all concerned.&mdash;I suppose the
+clothes I had on are worth nothing, but I'd like to look them over."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke indifferently and went into the adjoining bath closet where
+Father Honor&eacute;, not liking to dispose of them until Champney should have
+spoken of them at least, had left the clothes in a bundle. He had put
+the little handkerchief, discolored almost beyond recognition, in with
+them. Champney came out in a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"They're no good," he said. "I'll have to wear these, if I may. I
+believe it's one of the regulations that what a man takes in of his own,
+is saved for him to take out, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." An hour later when Father Honor&eacute; disposed of the bundle to the
+janitor, he knew that Aileen's handkerchief had been abstracted&mdash;and he
+read still deeper into the ways of the human heart....</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Within ten days sentence was passed: seven years with hard labor.</p>
+
+<p>There was no appeal for mercy, and speedy commitment followed. A
+paragraph in the daily papers conveyed a knowledge of the fact to the
+world in general; and within ten days, the world in general, as usual,
+forgot the circumstance; it was only one of many.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_FIFTH" id="PART_FIFTH"></a>PART FIFTH</h2>
+
+<h3>Shed Number Two</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+
+<p>"It's a wonder ye're not married yet, Aileen, an' you twenty-six."</p>
+
+<p>It was Margaret McCann, the "Freckles" of orphan asylum days, who spoke.
+Her utterance was thick, owing to the quantity of pins she was
+endeavoring to hold between tightly pressed lips. She was standing on a
+chair putting up muslin curtains in her new home at The Gore, or Quarry
+End Park, as it was now named, and Aileen had come to help her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's like ye're too purticular," she added, her first remark not having
+met with any response. She turned on the chair and looked down upon her
+old chum.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting on the floor surrounded by a pile of fresh-cut muslin;
+the latest McCann baby was tugging with might and main at her apron in
+vain endeavor to hoist himself upon his pudgy uncertain legs. Aileen was
+laughing at his efforts. Catching him suddenly in her arms, she covered
+the little soft head, already sprouting a suspicion of curly red hair,
+with hearty kisses; and Billy, entering into the fun, crowed and
+gurgled, clutching wildly at the dark head bent above him and managing
+now and then, when he did not grasp too wide of the mark, to bury his
+chubby creased hands deep in its heavy waves.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Maggie, you're like all the rest! Because you've a good husband of
+your own, you think every other girl must go and do likewise."</p>
+
+<p>"Now ye're foolin', Aileen, like as you used to at the asylum. But I
+mind the time when Luigi was the wan b'y for you&mdash;I wonder, now, you
+couldn't like him, Aileen? He's so handsome and stiddy-like, an' doin'
+so well. Jim says he'll be one of the rich men of the town if he kapes
+on as he's begun. They do say as how Dulcie Caukins'll be cuttin' you
+out."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't love him, Maggie; that's reason enough." She spoke shortly.
+Maggie turned again from her work to look down on her in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"You was always that way, Aileen!" she exclaimed impatiently, "thinkin'
+nobody but a lord was good enough for you, an' droppin' Luigi as soon as
+ever you got in with the Van Ostend folks; and as for 'love'&mdash;let me
+give you as good a piece of advice as you'll get between the risin' of a
+May sun and its settin':&mdash;if you see a good man as loves you an' is
+willin' to marry you, take him, an' don't you leave him the chanct to
+get cool over it. Ye'll love him fast enough if he's good to you&mdash;like
+my Jim," she added proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, your Jim! You're always quoting him; he isn't quite perfection even
+if he is 'your Jim.'"</p>
+
+<p>"An' is it parfection ye're after?" Maggie was apt in any state of
+excitement to revert in her speech to the vernacular. "'Deed an' ye'll
+look till the end of yer days an' risk dyin' a downright old maid, if
+it's parfection ye're after marryin' in a man! An' I don't need a gell
+as has niver been married to tell me my Jim ain't parfection nayther!"</p>
+
+<p>Maggie resumed her work in a huff; Aileen smiled to herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't mean to say anything against your husband, Maggie; I was only
+speaking in a general way."</p>
+
+<p>"An' how could ye mane anything against me husband in a gineral or a
+purticular way? Sure I know he's got a temper; an' what man of anny
+sinse hasn't, I'd like to know? An' he's not settled-like to work in
+anny wan place, as I'd like to have him be. But Jim's young; an' a man,
+he says, can't settle to anny regular work before he's thirty. He says
+all the purfessional men can't get onto their feet in a business way
+till they be thirty; an' stone-cuttin', Jim says, is his purfession like
+as if 't was a lawyer's or a doctor's or a priest's; an' Jim says he
+loves it. An' there ain't a better worker nor Jim in the sheds, so the
+boss says; an' if he will querrel between whiles&mdash;an' I'm not denyin' he
+don't&mdash;it's sure the other man's fault for doin' something mane; Jim
+can't stand no maneness. He's a good worker, is Jim, an' a good husband,
+an' a lovin' father, an' a good provider, an' he don't drink, an' he
+ain't the slithery kind&mdash;if he'd 'a' been that I wouldn't married him."</p>
+
+<p>There was a note of extreme authority in what Maggie in her excitement
+was giving expression to. Now that Jim McCann was back and at work in
+the sheds after a seven years absence, it was noted by many, who knew
+his wife of old, that, in the household, it was now Mrs. McCann who had
+the right of way. She was evidently full of her subject at the present
+moment and, carried away by the earnestness of her expressed
+convictions, she paid no heed to Aileen's non-responsiveness.</p>
+
+<p>"An' I'm that proud that I'm Mrs. James Patrick McCann, wid a good house
+over me head, an' a good husband to pay rint that'll buy it on the
+insthalment plan, an' two little gells an' a darlin' baby to fill it,
+that I be thankin' God whiniver Jim falls to swearin'&mdash;an' that's ivery
+hour in the day; but it's only a habit he can't be broke of, for Father
+Honor&eacute; was after talkin' wid him, an' poor Jim was that put out wid
+himself, that he forgot an' swore his hardest to the priest that he'd
+lave off swearin' if only he knew whin he was doin' it! But he had to
+give up tryin', for he found himself swearin' at the baby he loved him
+so. An' whin he told Father Honor&eacute; the trouble he had wid himself an'
+the b'y, that darlin' man just smiled an' says:&mdash;'McCann, there's other
+ways of thankin' God for a good home, an' a lovin' wife, and a foine b'y
+like yours, than tellin' yer beads an' sayin' your prayers.'&mdash;He said
+that, he did; an' I say, I'm thankin' God ivery hour in the day that
+I've got a good husband to swear, an' a cellar to fill wid fuel an'
+potaters, an' a baby to put to me breast, an'&mdash;an'&mdash;it's the same I'm
+wishin' for you, me dear."</p>
+
+<p>There was a suspicious tremble in Maggie's voice as she turned again to
+her work.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen spoke slowly: "Indeed, I wish I had them all, Maggie; but those
+things are not for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Not for you!" Maggie dashed a tear from her eyes. "An' why not for you,
+I'd like to know? Isn't ivery wan sayin' ye've got the voice fit for the
+oppayra? An' isn't all the children an' the quarrymen just mad over yer
+teachin' an' singin'? An' look at what yer know an' can do! Didn't wan
+of the Sisters tell me the other day: 'Mrs. McCann,' says she, 'Aileen
+Armagh is an expurrt in embroidery, an' could earn her livin' by it.'
+An' wasn't Mrs. Caukins after praisin' yer cookin' an' sayin' you beat
+the whole Gore on yer doughnuts? An' didn't the Sisters come askin' me
+the other day if I had your receipt for the milk-rice? Jim says there's
+a man for ivery woman if she did but know it.&mdash;There now, I'm glad to
+see yer smilin' an' lookin' like yer old self! Just tell me if the
+curtains be up straight? Jim can't abide annything that ain't on the
+square. Straight, be they?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, straight as a string," said Aileen, laughing outright at Freckles'
+eloquence&mdash;the eloquence of one who was wont to be slow of speech before
+matrimony loosened her tongue and home love taught her the right word in
+the right place.</p>
+
+<p>"Straight, is it? Then I'll mount down an' we'll sit out in the kitchen
+an' hem the rest. It's Doosie Caukins has begged the loan of the two
+little gells for the afternoon. The twins seem to me most like my
+own&mdash;rale downright swate gells, an' it's hopin' I am they'll do well
+when it' comes to their marryin'."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen laughed merrily at the matrimonial persistence of her old chum's
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Maggie, you are an incorrigible matchmaker!"</p>
+
+<p>She picked up the baby and the yards of muslin she had been measuring
+for window lengths; leaving Maggie to follow, she went out into the
+kitchen and deposited Billy in the basket-crib beside her chair. Maggie
+joined her in a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems like old times for you an' me to be chattin' together again so
+friendly-like&mdash;put a finger's length into the hem of the long ones; do
+you remember when Sister Angelica an' you an' me was cuddled together to
+watch thim dance the minute over at the Van Ostends'?&mdash;Och, you
+darlin'!"</p>
+
+<p>She rose from her chair and caught up the baby who was holding out both
+arms to her and trying in his semi-articulate way to indicate his
+preference of her lap to the basket.</p>
+
+<p>"What fun we had!" Aileen spoke half-heartedly; the mention of that name
+intensified the pain of an ever present thought.</p>
+
+<p>"An' did ye read her marriage in the papers, I guess 't was a year
+gone?"</p>
+
+<p>Aileen nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Jim read it out to me wan night after supper, an' I got so homesick of
+a suddin' for the Caukinses, an' you, an' the quarries, an' Mrs.
+Googe&mdash;it was before me b'y come&mdash;that I fell to cryin' an' nearly cried
+me eyes out; an' Jim promised me then and there he'd come back to
+Flamsted for good and all. But he couldn't help sayin': 'What the divil
+are ye cryin' about, Maggie gell? I was readin' of the weddin' to ye,
+and thinkin' to hearten ye up a bit, an' here ye be cryin' fit to break
+yer heart, an' takin' on as if ye'd niver had a weddin' all by yerself!'
+An' that made me laugh; but, afterwards, I fell to cryin' the harder,
+an' told him I couldn't help it, for I'd got such a good lovin' husband,
+an' me an orphan as had nobody&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"An' then I stopped, for Jim took me in his arms&mdash;he was in the
+rockin'-chair&mdash;and rocked back an' forth wid me like a mother does wid a
+six-months' child, an' kept croonin' an' croonin' till I fell asleep wid
+my head on his shoulder&mdash;" Mrs. McCann drew a long breath&mdash;"Och, Aileen,
+it's beautiful to be married!"</p>
+
+<p>For a while the two worked in silence, broken only by little Billy
+McCann, who was blissfully gurgling emphatic endorsement of everything
+his mother said. The bright sunshine of February filled the barren Gore
+full to the brim with sparkling light. From time to time the sharp
+crescendo <i>sz-szz-szzz</i> of the trolleys, that now ran from The Corners
+to Quarry End Park at the head of The Gore, teased the still cold air.
+Maggie was in a reminiscent mood, being wrought upon unwittingly by the
+sunny quiet and homey kitchen warmth. She looked over the head of her
+baby to Aileen.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember the B'y who danced with the Marchioness, and when they
+was through stood head downwards with his slippers kicking in the air?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and the butler, and how he hung on to his coat-tails!"</p>
+
+<p>Maggie laughed. "I wonder now could it be <i>the</i> B'y&mdash;I mane the man she
+married?"</p>
+
+<p>Aileen looked up from her work. "Yes, he's the one."</p>
+
+<p>"An' how did you know that?" Maggie asked in some surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Champney told me&mdash;and then I knew she liked him."</p>
+
+<p>"Who, the Marchioness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I knew by the way she wrote about him that she liked him."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, now, who'd 'a' thought that! The very same B'y!" she exclaimed,
+at the same time looking puzzled as if not quite grasping the situation.
+"Why, I thought&mdash;I guess 't was Romanzo wrote me just about that
+time&mdash;that she was in love with Mr. Champney Googe." Her voice sank to a
+whisper on the last words. "Wouldn't it have been just awful if she
+had!"</p>
+
+<p>"She might have done a worse thing than to love him." Aileen's voice was
+hard in spite of her effort to speak naturally.</p>
+
+<p>Maggie broke forth in protest.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, how can you say that, Aileen! What would the poor gell's life have
+been worth married to a man that's in for seven years! Jim says when he
+comes out he can't niver vote again for prisident, an' it's ten chanct
+to wan that he'll get a job."</p>
+
+<p>In her earnestness she failed to notice that Aileen's face had borrowed
+its whiteness from the muslin over which she was bending.</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Maggie."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm goin' to tell you something. Jim told me the other day; he wouldn't
+mind my tellin' you, but he says he don't want anny wan of the fam'ly to
+get wind of it."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?" Aileen looked up half fearfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Gracious, you look as if you'd seen a ghost! 'T isn't annything so rale
+dreadful, but it gives you a kind of onaisy feelin' round your heart."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? Tell me quick." She spoke again peremptorily in order to
+cover her fear. Maggie looked at her wonderingly, and thought to herself
+that Aileen had changed beyond her knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"There was a man Jim knew in the other quarries we was at, who got put
+into that same prison for two years&mdash;for breakin' an' enterin'&mdash;an' Jim
+see him not long ago; an' when Jim told him where he was workin' the man
+said just before he was comin' out, Mr. Googe come in, an' he see him
+<i>breakin' stones wid a prison gang</i>&mdash;rale toughs; think of that, an' he
+a gentleman born! Jim said that was tough; he says it's back-breakin'
+work; that quarryin' an' cuttin' ain't nothin' to that&mdash;ten hours a day,
+too. My heart's like to break for Mrs. Googe. I think of it ivery time I
+see her now; an' just look how she's workin' her fingers to the bone to
+support herself widout help! Mrs. Caukins says she's got seventeen
+mealers among the quarrymen now, an' there'll be more next spring. What
+do you s'pose her son would say to that?"</p>
+
+<p>She pressed her own boy a little more closely to her breast; the young
+mother's heart was stirred within her. "Mrs. Caukins says Mrs. Champney
+could help her an' save her lots, but she won't; she's no mind to."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe Mrs. Googe would accept any help from Mrs.
+Champney&mdash;and I don't blame her, either. I'd rather starve than be
+beholden to her!" The blood rushed into the face bent over the muslin.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you lave her, Aileen? I would&mdash;the stingy old screw!"</p>
+
+<p>Aileen folded her work and laid it aside before she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>am</i> going soon, Maggie; I've stood it about as many years as I
+can&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I'm glad! It'll be like gettin' out of the jail yerself, for
+all you've made believe you've lived in a palace&mdash;but ye're niver goin'
+so early?" she protested earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I must, Maggie. You are not to tell anyone what I've said about
+leaving Mrs. Champney&mdash;not even Jim."</p>
+
+<p>Maggie's face fell. "Dear knows, I can promise you not to tell Jim; but
+it's like I'll be tellin' him in me slape. It's a trick I have, he says,
+whin I'm tryin' to kape something from him."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed happily, and bade Billy "shake a day-day" to the pretty
+lady; which behest Billy, half turning his rosy little face from the
+maternal fount, obeyed perfunctorily and then, smiling, closed his
+sleepy eyes upon his mother's breast.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+
+<p>Aileen took that picture of intimate love and warmth with her out into
+the keen frosty air of late February. But its effect was not to soften,
+to warm; it hardened rather. The thought of Maggie with her baby boy at
+her breast, of her cosy home, her loyalty to her husband and her love
+for him, of her thankfulness for the daily mercy of the wherewithal to
+feed the home mouths, reacted sharply, harshly, upon the mood she was
+in; for with the thought of that family life and family ties&mdash;the symbol
+of all that is sane and fruitful of the highest good in our
+humanity&mdash;was associated by extreme contrast another thought:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And <i>he</i> is breaking stones with a 'gang of toughs'&mdash;breaking stones!
+Not for the sake of the pittance that will procure for him his daily
+bread, but because he is forced to the toil like any galley slave. The
+prison walls are frowning behind him; the prison cell is his only home;
+the tin pan of coarse food, which is handed to him as he lines up with
+hundreds of others after the day's work, is the only substitute for the
+warm home-hearth, the lighted supper table, the merry give-and-take of
+family life that eases a man after his day's toil."</p>
+
+<p>Her very soul was in rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped short and looked about her. She was on the road to Father
+Honor&eacute;'s house. It was just four o'clock, for the long whistle was
+sounding from the stone sheds down in the valley. She saw the quarrymen
+start homewards. Dark irregular files of them began crawling up over the
+granite ledges, many of which were lightly covered with snow. Although
+it was February, the winter was mild for this latitude, and the twelve
+hundred men in The Gore had lost but a few days during the last three
+months on account of the weather. Work had been plenty, and the spring
+promised, so the manager said, a rush of business. She watched them for
+a while.</p>
+
+<p>"And they are going to their homes&mdash;and he is still breaking stones!"
+Her thoughts revolved about that one fact.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden rush of tears blinded her; she drew her breath hard. What if
+she were to go to Father Honor&eacute; and tell him something of her trouble?
+Would it help? Would it ease the intolerable pain at her heart, lessen
+the load on her mind?</p>
+
+<p>She dared not answer, dared not think about it. Involuntarily she
+started forward at a quick pace towards the stone house over by the
+pines&mdash;a distance of a quarter of a mile.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was nearing the rim of the Flamsted Hills. Far beyond them, the
+mighty shoulder of Katahdin, mantled with white, caught the red gleam
+and lent to the deep blue of the northern heavens a faint rose
+reflection of the setting sun. The children, just from school, were
+shouting at their rough play&mdash;snow-balling, sledding, skating and
+tobogganning on that portion of the pond which had been cleared of snow.
+The great derricks on the ledges creaked and groaned as the remaining
+men made all fast for the night; like a gigantic cobweb their supporting
+wires stretched thick, enmeshed, and finely dark over the white expanse
+of the quarries. From the power-house a column of steam rose straight
+and steady into the windless air.</p>
+
+<p>Hurrying on, Aileen looked upon it with set lips and a hardening heart.
+She had come to hate, almost, the sight of this life of free toil for
+the sake of love and home.</p>
+
+<p>It was a woman who was thinking these thoughts in her rapid walk to the
+priest's house&mdash;a woman of twenty-six who for more than seven years had
+suffered in silence; suffered over and over again the humiliation that
+had been put upon her womanhood; who, despite that humiliation, could
+not divest herself of the idea that she still clung to her girlhood's
+love for the man who had humiliated her. She told herself again and
+again that she was idealizing that first feeling for him, instead of
+accepting the fact that, as a woman, she would be incapable, if the
+circumstances were to repeat themselves now, of experiencing it.</p>
+
+<p>Since that fateful night in The Gore, Champney Googe's name had never
+voluntarily passed her lips. So far as she knew, no one so much as
+suspected that she was a factor in his escape&mdash;for Luigi had kept her
+secret. Sometimes when she felt, rather than saw, Father Honor&eacute;'s eyes
+fixed upon her in troubled questioning, the blood would rush to her
+cheeks and she could but wonder in dumb misery if Champney had told him
+anything concerning her during those ten days in New York.</p>
+
+<p>For six years there had been a veil, as it were, drawn between the
+lovely relations that had previously existed between Father Honor&eacute; and
+this firstling of his flock in Flamsted. For a year after his experience
+with Champney Googe in New York, he waited for some sign from Aileen
+that she was ready to open her heart to him; to clear up the mystery of
+the handkerchief; to free herself from what was evidently troubling her,
+wearing upon her, changing her in disposition&mdash;but not for the better.
+Aileen gave no sign. Another year passed, but Aileen gave no sign, and
+Father Honor&eacute; was still waiting.</p>
+
+<p>The priest did not believe in forcing open the portals to the secret
+chambers of the human heart. He respected the individual soul and its
+workings as a part of the divinely organized human. He believed that, in
+time, Aileen would come to him of her own accord and seek the help she
+so sorely needed. Meanwhile, he determined to await patiently the
+fulness of that time. He had waited already six years.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>He was looking over and arranging some large photographs of
+cathedrals&mdash;Cologne, Amiens, Westminster, Mayence, St. Mark's, Chester,
+and York&mdash;and the detail of nave, chancel, and choir. One showed the
+exquisite sculpture on a flying buttress; another the carving of a
+choir-stall canopy; a third the figure-crowded fa&ccedil;ade of a western
+porch. Here was the famous rose window in the Antwerp transept; the
+statue of one of the apostles in Naumburg; the nave of Cologne; the
+conglomerate of chapels about the apse of Mayence; the Angel's Pillar at
+Strasburg&mdash;they were a joy in line and proportion to the eye, in effect
+and spirit of purpose to the understanding mind, the receptive soul.</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; was revelling in the thought of the men's appreciative
+delight when he should show them these lovely stones&mdash;across-the-sea kin
+to their own quarry granite. His semi-monthly talks with the quarrymen
+and stone-cutters were assuming, after many years, the proportions of
+lectures on art and scientific themes. Already many a professor from
+some far-away university had accepted his invitation to give of his best
+to the granite men of Maine. Rarely had they found a more fitting or
+appreciative audience.</p>
+
+<p>"How divine!" he murmured to himself, his eyes dwelling lovingly&mdash;at the
+same time his pencil was making notes&mdash;on the 'Prentice Pillar in Roslyn
+Chapel. Then he smiled at the thought of the contrast it offered to his
+own chapel in the meadows by the lake shore. In that, every stone, as in
+the making of the Tabernacle of old, had been a free-will offering from
+the men&mdash;each laid in its place by a willing worker; and, because
+willing, the rough walls were as eloquent of earnest endeavor as the
+famed 'Prentice Pillar itself.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to see such a one as this in our chapel!" He was talking to
+himself as was his way when alone. "I believe Luigi Poggi, if he had
+kept on in the sheds, would in time have given this a close second."</p>
+
+<p>He took up the magnifying glass to examine the curled edges of the stone
+kale leaves.</p>
+
+<p>There was a knock at the door.</p>
+
+<p>He hastily placed the photographs in a long box beside the table, and,
+instead of saying "Come in," stepped to the door and opened it.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen stood there. The look in her eyes as she raised them to his, and
+said in a subdued voice, "Father Honor&eacute;, can you spare me a little time,
+all to myself?" gave him hope that the fulness of time was come.</p>
+
+<p>"I always have time for you, Aileen; come in. I'll start up the fire a
+bit; it's growing much colder."</p>
+
+<p>He laid the wood on the hearth, and with the bellows blew it to a
+leaping flame. While he was thus occupied, Aileen looked around her. She
+knew this room and loved it.</p>
+
+<p>The stone fireplace was deep and ample, built by Father Honor&eacute;,&mdash;indeed,
+the entire one storey house was his handiwork. Above it hung a large
+wooden crucifix. On the shelf beneath were ranged some superb specimens
+of quartz and granite. The plain deal table, also of ample proportions,
+was piled at one end high with books and pamphlets. Two large windows
+overlooked the pond, the sloping depression of The Gore, the course of
+the Rothel, and the headwaters of Lake Mesantic. Some plain wooden
+armchairs were set against the walls that had been rough plastered and
+washed with burnt sienna brown. On them was hung an exquisite
+engraving&mdash;the Sistine Madonna and Child. There were also a few
+etchings, among them a copy of Whistler's <i>The Thames by London Bridge</i>,
+and a view of Niagara by moonlight. A mineral cabinet, filled to
+overflowing with fine specimens, extended the entire length of one wall.
+The pine floor was oiled and stained; large hooked rugs, genuine
+products of Maine, lay here and there upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Many a man coming in from the quarries or the sheds with a grievance, a
+burden, or a joy, felt the influence of this simple room. Many a woman
+brought here her heavy over-charged heart and was eased in its
+fire-lighted atmosphere of welcome. Many a child brought hither its
+spring offering of the first mitchella, or its autumn gift of
+checkerberries. Many a girl, many a boy had met here to rehearse a
+Christmas glee or an Easter anthem. Many a night these walls echoed to
+the strains of the priest's violin, when he sat alone by the fireside
+with only the Past for a guest. And these combined influences lingered
+in the room, mellowed it, hallowed it, and made themselves felt to one
+and all as beneficent&mdash;even as now to Aileen.</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; placed two of the wooden chairs before the blazing fire.
+Aileen took one.</p>
+
+<p>"Draw up a little nearer, Aileen; you look chilled." He noticed her
+extreme pallor and the slight trembling of her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced out of the window at some quarrymen who were passing.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't think we shall be interrupted, do you?" she asked rather
+nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. I'll just step to the kitchen and give a word to Th&eacute;r&egrave;se. She
+is a good watchdog when I am not to be disturbed." He opened a door at
+the back of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Th&eacute;r&egrave;se."</p>
+
+<p>"On y va."</p>
+
+<p>An old French Canadian appeared in answer to his call. He addressed her
+in French.</p>
+
+<p>"If any one should knock, Th&eacute;r&egrave;se, just step to the kitchen porch door
+and say that I am engaged for an hour, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"Oui, oui, P&egrave;re Honor&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>He closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>"There, now you can have your chat 'all to yourself' as you requested,"
+he said smiling. He sat down in the other chair he had drawn to the
+fire.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been over to Maggie's this afternoon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated; it was not easy to find an opening for her long pent
+trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; spread his hands to the blaze.</p>
+
+<p>"She has a fine boy. I'm glad McCann is back again, and I hope anchored
+here for life. He's trying to buy his home he tells me."</p>
+
+<p>"So Maggie said&mdash;Father Honor&eacute;;" she clasped and unclasped her hands
+nervously; "I think it's that that has made me come to you to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"That?&mdash;I think I don't quite understand, Aileen."</p>
+
+<p>"The home&mdash;I think I never felt so alone&mdash;so homeless as when I was
+there with her&mdash;and the baby&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She looked down, struggling to keep back the tears. Despite her efforts
+the bright drops plashed one after the other on her clasped hands. She
+raised her eyes, looking almost defiantly through the falling tears at
+the priest; the blood surged into her white cheeks; the rush of words
+followed:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I have no home&mdash;I've never had one&mdash;never shall have one&mdash;it's not for
+me, that paradise; it's for men and women like Jim McCann and
+Maggie.&mdash;Oh, why did I come here!" she cried out wildly; "why did you
+put me there in that house?&mdash;Why didn't Mr. Van Ostend let me alone
+where I was&mdash;happy with the rest! Why," she demanded almost fiercely,
+"why can't a child's life be her own to do with what she chooses? Why
+has any human being a right to say to another, whether young or old,
+'You shall live here and not there'? Oh, it is tyrannical&mdash;it is tyranny
+of the worst kind, and what haven't I had to suffer from it all! It is
+like Hell on earth!"</p>
+
+<p>Her breath caught in great sobs that shook her; her eyes flashed through
+blinding tears; her cheeks were crimson; she continued to clasp and
+unclasp her hands.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar ivory tint of the strong pock-marked face opposite her took
+on, during this outburst, a slightly livid hue. Every word she uttered
+was a blow; for in it was voiced misery of mind, suffering and hardness
+of heart, despair, ingratitude, undeserved reproach, anger, defiance and
+the ignoring of all facts save those in the recollection of which she
+had lost all poise, all control&mdash;And she was still so young! What was
+behind these facts that occasioned such a tirade?</p>
+
+<p>This was the priest's problem.</p>
+
+<p>He waited a moment to regain his own control. The ingratitude, the
+bitter injustice had shocked him out of it. Her mood seemed one of
+defiance only. The woman before him was one he had never known in the
+Aileen Armagh of the last fourteen years. He knew, moreover, that he
+must not speak&mdash;dare not, as a sacred obligation to his office, until he
+no longer felt the touch of anger he experienced upon hearing her
+unrestrained outburst. It was but a moment before that touch was
+removed; his heart softened towards her; filled suddenly with a pitying
+love, for with his mind's eye he saw the small blood-stained
+handkerchief in his hand, the initials A. A., the man on the cot from
+whose arm he had taken it more than six years before. Six years! How she
+must have suffered&mdash;and in silence!</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen," he said at last and very gently, "whatever was done for you at
+that time was done with the best intentions for your good. Believe me,
+could Mr. Van Ostend and I have foreseen such resulting wretchedness as
+this for our efforts, we should never have insisted on carrying out our
+plan for you. But, like yourself, we are human&mdash;we could not foresee
+this any more than you could. There is, however, one course always open
+to you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" she demanded; her voice was harsh from continued struggle with
+her complex emotions. She was past all realization of what she owed to
+the dignity of his office.</p>
+
+<p>"You have long been of age; you are at liberty to leave Mrs. Champney
+whenever you will."</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to." The response came prompt and hard.</p>
+
+<p>"And what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know&mdash;yet&mdash;;" her speech faltered; "but I want to try the
+stage. Every one says I have the voice for it, and I suppose I could
+make a hit in light operetta or vaudeville as well now as when I was a
+child. A few years more and I shall be too old."</p>
+
+<p>"And you think you can enter into such publicity without protection?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm able to protect myself&mdash;I've done that already." She spoke with
+bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>"True, you are a woman now&mdash;but still a young woman&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; stopped there. He was making no headway with her. He knew
+only too well that, as yet, he had not begun to get beneath the surface.
+When he spoke it was as if he were merely thinking aloud.</p>
+
+<p>"Somehow, I hadn't thought that you would be so ready to leave us
+all&mdash;so many friends. Are we nothing to you, Aileen? Will you make
+better, truer ones among strangers? I can hardly think so."</p>
+
+<p>She covered her face with her hands and began to sob again, but
+brokenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen, my daughter, what is it? Is there any new trouble preparing for
+you at The Bow?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. The tears trickled through her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Does Mrs. Champney know that you are going to leave her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Has it become unbearable?"</p>
+
+<p>Another shake of the head. She searched blindly for her handkerchief,
+drew it forth and wiped her eyes and face.</p>
+
+<p>"No; she's kinder than she's been for a long time&mdash;ever since that last
+stroke. She wants me with her most of the time."</p>
+
+<p>"Has she ever spoken to you about remaining with her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a good many times. She tried to make me promise I would stay
+till&mdash;till she doesn't need me. But, I couldn't, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why&mdash;but of course I know you are worn out by her long invalidism
+and tired of the fourteen years in that one house. Still, she has been
+lenient since you were twenty-one. She has permitted you&mdash;although of
+course you had the undisputed right&mdash;to earn for yourself in teaching
+the singing classes in the afternoon and evening school, and she pays
+you something beside&mdash;fairly well, doesn't she? I think you told me you
+were satisfied."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, in a way&mdash;so far as it goes. She doesn't begin to pay me as she
+would have to pay another girl in my position&mdash;if I have any there. I
+haven't said anything about it to her, because I wanted to work off my
+indebtedness to her on account of what she spent on me in bringing me
+up&mdash;she never let me forget that in those first seven years! I want to
+give more than I've had," she said proudly, "and sometime I shall tell
+her of it."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have never given her any love?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I couldn't give her that.&mdash;Do you blame me?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; you have done your whole duty by her. May I suggest that when you
+leave her you still make your home with us here in Flamsted? You have no
+other home, my child."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I have no other home," she repeated mechanically.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, at least, two that are open to you at any time you choose to
+avail yourself of their hospitality. Mrs. Caukins would be so glad to
+have you both for her daughters' sake and her own. The Colonel desires
+this as much as she does and&mdash;" he hesitated a moment, "now that Romanzo
+has his position in the New York office, and has married and settled
+there, there could be no objection so far as I can see."</p>
+
+<p>There was no response.</p>
+
+<p>"But if you do not care to consider that, there is another. About seven
+months ago, Mrs. Googe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Googe?"</p>
+
+<p>She turned to him a face from which every particle of color had faded.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mrs. Googe. She would have spoken to you herself long before this,
+but, you know, Aileen, how she would feel in the circumstances&mdash;she
+would not think of suggesting your coming to her from Mrs. Champney. I
+feel sure she is waiting for you to take the initiative."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Googe?" she repeated, continuing to stare at him&mdash;blankly, as if
+she had heard but those two words of all that he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, yes, Mrs. Googe. Is there anything so strange in that? She has
+always loved you, and she said to me, only the other day, 'I would love
+to have her young companionship in my house'&mdash;she will never call it
+home, you know, until her son returns&mdash;'to be as a daughter to me'&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Daughter!&mdash;I&mdash;want air&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She swayed forward in speaking. Father Honor&eacute; sprang and caught her or
+she would have fallen. He placed her firmly against the chair back and
+opened the window. The keen night air charged with frost quickly revived
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"You were sitting too near the fire; I should have remembered that you
+had come in from the cold," he said, delicately regarding her feelings;
+"let me get you a glass of water, Aileen."</p>
+
+<p>She put out her hand with a gesture of dissent. She began to breathe
+freely. The room chilled rapidly. Father Honor&eacute; closed the window and
+took his stand on the hearth. Aileen raised her eyes to him. It seemed
+as if she lifted the swollen reddened lids with difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;," she said in a low voice, tense with suppressed feeling,
+"dear Father Honor&eacute;, the only father I have ever known, don't you know
+<i>why</i> I cannot go to Mrs. Googe's?&mdash;why I must not stay too long in
+Flamsted?"</p>
+
+<p>And looking into those eyes, that were incapable of insincerity, that,
+in the present instance, attempted to veil nothing, the priest read all
+that of which, six years ago on that never to be forgotten November
+night in New York, he had had premonition.</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter&mdash;is it because of Champney's prospective return within a
+year that you feel you cannot remain longer with us?"</p>
+
+<p>Her quivering lips gave an almost inaudible assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" He dared not spare her; he felt, moreover, that she did not wish
+to be spared. His eyes held hers.</p>
+
+<p>Bravely she answered, bracing soul and mind and body to steadfastness.
+There was not a wavering of an eyelid, not a suggestion of faltering
+speech as she spoke the words that alone could lift from her
+overburdened heart the weight of a seven years' silence:</p>
+
+<p>"Because I love him."</p>
+
+<p>The answer seemed to Father Honor&eacute; supreme in its sacrificial
+simplicity. He laid his hand on her head. She bowed beneath his touch.</p>
+
+<p>"I have tried so hard," she murmured, "so hard&mdash;and I cannot help it. I
+have despised myself for it&mdash;if only he hadn't been put <i>there</i>, I think
+it would have helped&mdash;but he is there, and my thoughts are with him
+there&mdash;I see him nights&mdash;in that cell&mdash;I see him daytimes <i>breaking
+stones</i>&mdash;I can't sleep, or eat, without comparing&mdash;you know. Oh, if he
+hadn't been put <i>there</i>, I could have conquered this weakness&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen, <i>no</i>! It is no weakness, it is strength."</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; withdrew his hand, that had been to the broken woman a
+silent benediction, and walked up and down the long room. "You would
+never have conquered; there was&mdash;there is no need to conquer. Such love
+is of God&mdash;trust it, my child; don't try any longer to thrust it forth
+from your heart, your life; for if you do, your life will be but a poor
+maimed thing, beneficial neither to yourself nor to others. I say,
+cherish this supreme love for the man who is expiating in a prison; hold
+it close to your soul as a shield and buckler to the spirit against the
+world; truly, you will need no other if you go forth from us into a
+world of strangers&mdash;but why, why need you go?"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke gently, but insistently. He saw that the girl was hanging upon
+his every word as if he bespoke her eternal salvation. And, in truth,
+the priest was illumining the dark and hidden places of her life and
+giving her courage to love on which, to her, meant courage to live
+on.&mdash;Such were the demands of a nature, loyal, impulsive, warmly
+affectionate, sincere, capable of an all-sacrificing love that could
+give without return if need be, but a nature which, without love
+developing in her of itself just for the sake of love, would shrivel,
+become embittered, and like withered fruit on a tree drop useless to the
+ground to be trodden under the careless foot of man.</p>
+
+<p>In the darkening room the firelight leaped and showed to Father Honor&eacute;
+the woman's face transfigured under the powerful influence of his words.
+She smiled up at him&mdash;a smile so brave in its pathos, so winning in its
+true womanliness, that Father Honor&eacute; felt the tears bite his eyeballs.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I don't need to go then."</p>
+
+<p>"This rejoices me, Aileen&mdash;it will rejoice us all," he answered heartily
+to cover his emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"But it won't be easy to stay where I am."</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;I know; you speak as one who has suffered; but has not Champney
+suffered too? Think of his home-coming!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he has suffered&mdash;in a way&mdash;but not my way."</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; had a vision at that moment of Champney Googe's face when
+he said, "But you loved her with your whole manhood." He made no reply,
+but waited for Aileen to say more if she should so choose.</p>
+
+<p>"I believed he loved me&mdash;and so I told him my love&mdash;I shall never, never
+get over that!" she exclaimed passionately. "But I know now&mdash;I knew
+before he went away the last time, that I was mistaken; no man could
+say what he did and know even the first letter of love."</p>
+
+<p>Her indignation was rising, and Father Honor&eacute; welcomed it; it was a
+natural trait with her, and its suppression gave him more cause for
+anxiety than its expression.</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't love me&mdash;not really&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure of this, Aileen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am sure."</p>
+
+<p>"You have good reason to know that you are telling a fact in asserting
+this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, altogether too good a reason." There was a return of bitterness in
+her answer.</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; was baffled. Aileen spoke without further questioning.
+Evidently she was desirous of making her position as well as Champney's
+plain to him and to herself. Her voice grew more gentle as she
+continued:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;, I've loved him so long&mdash;and so truly, without hope, you
+know&mdash;never any hope, and hating myself for loving where I was not
+loved&mdash;that I think I do know what love is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; smiled to himself in the half-dark; this voice was still
+young, and its love-wisdom was young-wise, also. There was hope, he told
+himself, that all would come right in the end&mdash;work together for good.</p>
+
+<p>"But Mr. Googe never loved me as I loved him&mdash;and I couldn't accept
+less."</p>
+
+<p>The priest caught but the lesser part of her meaning. Even his wisdom
+and years failed to throw light on the devious path of Aileen's thoughts
+at this moment. Of the truth contained in her expression, he had no
+inkling.</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen, I don't know that I can make it plain to you, but&mdash;a man's
+love is so different from a woman's that, sometimes, I think such a
+statement as you have just made is so full of flaws that it amounts to
+sophistry; but there is no need to discuss that.&mdash;Let me ask you if you
+can endure to stay on with Mrs. Champney for a few months longer? I have
+a very special reason for asking this. Sometime I will tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes;" she spoke wearily, indifferently; "I may as well stay there
+as anywhere now." Then with more interest and animation, "May I tell you
+something I have kept to myself all these years? I want to get rid of
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"Surely&mdash;the more the better when the heart is burdened."</p>
+
+<p>He took his seat again, and with pitying love and ever increasing
+interest and amazement listened to her recital of the part she played on
+that October night in the quarry woods&mdash;of her hate that turned to love
+again when she found the man she had both loved and hated in the extreme
+of need, of the 'murder'&mdash;so she termed it in her contrition&mdash;of Rag, of
+her swearing Luigi to silence. She told of herself&mdash;but of Champney
+Googe's unmanly temptation of her honor, of his mad passion for her, she
+said never a word; her two pronounced traits of chastity and loyalty
+forbade it, as well as the desire of a loving woman to shield him she
+loved in spite of herself.</p>
+
+<p>Of the little handkerchief that played its part in that night's
+threatened tragedy she said nothing&mdash;neither did Father Honor&eacute;;
+evidently, she had forgotten it.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she clasped her hands hard over her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"That dear loving little dog's death has lain here like a stone all
+these years," she said, and rose to go.</p>
+
+<p>"You are absolved, Aileen," he said smiling. "It was, like many others,
+a little devoted life sacrificed to a great love."</p>
+
+<p>He reached to press the button that turned on the electric lights. Their
+soft brilliance caught in sparkling gleams on the points of a small
+piece of almost pure white granite among the specimens on the shelf
+above them. Father Honor&eacute; rose and took it from its place.</p>
+
+<p>"This is for you, Aileen," he said handing it to her.</p>
+
+<p>"For me?" She looked at him in wonder, not understanding what he meant
+by this insignificant gift at such a time.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her look of amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder you look puzzled. You must be thinking you have 'asked me for
+bread and I am giving you a stone.' But this is for remembrance."</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"You said once this afternoon, that for years it had been a hell on
+earth for you&mdash;a strong expression to fall from a young woman's lips;
+and I said nothing. Sometime, perhaps, you will see things differently.
+But if I said nothing, it was only because I thought the more; for just
+as you spoke those words, my eye caught the glitter of this piece of
+granite in the firelight, and I said to myself&mdash;'that is like what
+Aileen's life will be, and through her life what her character will
+prove to be.' This stone has been crushed, subjected to unimaginable
+heat, upheaved, submerged, ground again to powder, remelted,
+overwhelmed, made adamant, rent, upheaved again,&mdash;and now, after &aelig;ons,
+it lies here so near the blue above our Flamsted Hills, worthy to be
+used and put to all noble uses; fittest in all the world for foundation
+stone&mdash;for it is the foundation rock of our earth crust&mdash;for all
+lasting memorials of great deed and noble thought; for all temples and
+holies of holies. Take it, Aileen, and&mdash;remember!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will, oh, I will; and I'll try to fit myself, too; I'll try, dear,
+dear Father Honor&eacute;," she said humbly, gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand and she placed hers in it. He opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Aileen, and God bless you."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night, Father Honor&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>She went out into the clear winter starlight. The piece of granite, she
+held tightly clasped in her hand.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The priest, after closing the door, went to the pine table and opening a
+drawer took out a letter. It bore a recent date. It was from the
+chaplain of the prison and informed him there was a strong prospect of
+release for Champney Googe at least three months before the end of his
+term. Father Honor&eacute; smiled to himself. He refolded it and laid it in the
+drawer.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>III</h4>
+
+
+<p>Early in the following March, on the arrival of the 3 <span class="smcap">P.M.</span> train from
+Hallsport, there was the usual crowd at The Corners' station to meet it.
+They watched the passengers as they left the train and commented freely
+on one and another known to them.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet that's the new boss at the upper quarries," said one, pointing
+to a short thickset man making his way up the platform.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's him; and they're taking on a gang of new men with him;
+they're in the last car&mdash;there they come! There's going to be a regular
+spring freshet of 'em coming along now&mdash;the business is booming."</p>
+
+<p>They scanned the men closely as they passed, between twenty and thirty
+of them of various nationalities. They were gesticulating wildly,
+vociferating loudly, shouldering bundle, knapsack or tool-kit. Behind
+them came a few stone-cutters, mostly Scotch and Irish. The last to
+leave the train was evidently an American.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd on the platform surged away to the electric car to watch
+further proceedings of the newly arrived "gang." The arrival of the
+immigrant workmen always afforded fun for the natives. The men shivered
+and hunched their shoulders; the raw March wind was searching. The
+gesticulating and vociferating increased. To any one unacquainted with
+foreign ways, a complete rupture of international peace and relations
+seemed imminent. They tumbled over one another into the cars and filled
+them to overflowing, even to the platform where they clung to the
+guards.</p>
+
+<p>The man who had been the last to leave the train stood on the emptied
+platform and looked about him. He carried a small bundle. He noted the
+sign on the electric cars, "To Quarry End Park". A puzzled look came
+into his face. He turned to the baggage-master who was wrestling with
+the immigrants' baggage:&mdash;iron-bound chests, tin boxes and trunks, sacks
+of heavy coarse linen filled with bedding.</p>
+
+<p>"Does this car go to the sheds?"</p>
+
+<p>The station master looked up. "It goes past there, but this is the
+regular half-hour express for the quarries and the Park. You a stranger
+in these parts?"</p>
+
+<p>"This is all strange to me," the man answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Any baggage?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment there was a rapid clanging of the gong; the motorman let
+fly the whirling rod; the over full cars started with a jerk&mdash;there was
+a howl, a shout, followed by a struggle to keep the equilibrium; an
+undersized Canuck was seen to be running madly alongside with one hand
+on the guard and endeavoring to get a foothold; he was hauled up
+unceremoniously by a dozen hands. The crowd watching them, cheered and
+jeered:</p>
+
+<p>"Goin' it some, Antoine! Don't get left!"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep on your pins, you Dagos!"</p>
+
+<p>"Steady, Polacks&mdash;there's the strap!"</p>
+
+<p>"Gee up, Johnny!" This to the motorman.</p>
+
+<p>"Gosh, it's like a soda bottle fizzin' to hear them Rooshians talkin'."</p>
+
+<p>"Hooray for you!"</p>
+
+<p>The cars were off swiftly now; the men on the platforms waved their
+hats, their white teeth flashing, their gold earrings twinkling, and
+echoed the American cheer:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Horray!"</p>
+
+<p>The station master turned away laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"They look like a tough crowd, but they're O. K. in the end," he said to
+the man beside him who was looking after the vanishing car and its
+trailer. "There's yours coming down the switch. That'll take you up to
+Flamsted and the sheds." He pushed the loaded truck up the platform.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger entered the car and took a seat at the rear; there were no
+other passengers. He told the conductor to leave him as near as possible
+to the sheds.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess you don't know these parts?" The conductor put the question.</p>
+
+<p>"This here is new to me," the man answered; he seemed nothing loath to
+enter into conversation. "When was this road built?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Bout five years ago. You'll see what a roadway they've made clear
+along the north shore of the lake; it's bein' built up with houses just
+as fast as it's taken up."</p>
+
+<p>He rang the starting bell. The car gathered headway and sped noisily
+along the frozen road-bed. In a few minutes it stopped at the Flamsted
+station; then it followed the shore of the lake for two miles until it
+reached the sheds. It stopped here and the man got out.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you tell me where the manager's office is?" he asked a workman who
+was passing.</p>
+
+<p>"Over there." He pointed with his thumb backwards across some railroad
+tracks and through a stone-yard to a small two-storey office building at
+the end of three huge sheds.</p>
+
+<p>The man made his way across to them. Once he stopped to look at the
+leaden waters of the lake, rimmed with ice; and up at the leaden sky
+that seemed to be shutting down close upon them like a lid; and around
+at the gray waste of frozen ground, the meadows covered lightly with
+snow and pools of surface ice that here and there showed the long
+bleached grass pricking through in grayish-yellow tufts. Beyond the
+meadows he saw a rude stone chapel, and near by the foundations, capped
+with wood, of a large church. He shivered once; he had no overcoat. Then
+he went on to the manager's office. He rang and opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I see the manager?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's out now; gone over to the engine-house to see about the new smoke
+stack; he'll be back in a few minutes. Guess you'll find a stool in the
+other room."</p>
+
+<p>The man entered the room, but remained standing, listening with
+increasing interest to the technical talk of the other two men who were
+half lying on the table as they bent over some large plans&mdash;an
+architect's blue prints. Finally the man drew near.</p>
+
+<p>"May I look too?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. These are the working plans for the new Episcopal cathedral at
+A.;" he named a well known city; "you've heard of it, I s'pose?"</p>
+
+<p>The man shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Here for a job?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Is all this work to be done by the company?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every stone. We got the contract eleven months ago. We're at work on
+these courses now." He turned the plates that the man might see.</p>
+
+<p>He bent over to examine them, noting the wonderful detail of arch and
+architrave, of keystone, cornice and foundation course. Each stone,
+varying in size and shape, was drawn with utmost accuracy, dimensions
+given, numbered with its own number for the place of its setting into
+the perfect whole. The stability of the whole giant structure was
+dependent upon the perfection and right placing of each individual stone
+from lowest foundation to the keystones of the vaulting arches of the
+nave; the harmony of design dependent on rightly maintained proportions
+of each granite block, large or small&mdash;and all this marvellous structure
+was the product of the rude granite veins in The Gore! That adamantine
+mixture of gneiss and quartz, prepared in nature's laboratory throughout
+millions of years, was now furnishing the rock which, beneath human
+manipulation, was flowering into the great cathedral! And that perfect
+whole was <i>ideaed</i> first in the brain of man, and a sketch of it
+transferred by the sun itself to the blue paper which lay on the table!</p>
+
+<p>What a combination and transmutation of those forceful powers that
+originate in the Unnamable!</p>
+
+<p>The manager entered, passed into the next room and, sitting down at his
+desk, began to make notes on a pad. At a sign from the two men, the
+stranger followed him, cap in hand.</p>
+
+<p>The manager spoke without looking at him:&mdash;"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like a job in the sheds."</p>
+
+<p>At the sound of that voice, the manager glanced up quickly, keenly. He
+saw before him a man evidently prematurely gray. The broad shoulders
+bowed slightly as if from long-continued work involving much stooping.
+He looked at the hands; they were rough, calloused with toil, the
+knuckles spread, the nails broken and worn. Then he looked again into
+the face; that puzzled him. It was smooth-shaven, square in outline and
+rather thin, but the color was good; the eyes&mdash;what eyes!</p>
+
+<p>The manager found himself wondering if there were a pair to match them
+in the wide world. They were slightly sunken, large, blue, of a depth
+and beauty and clarity rarely seen in that color. Within them, as if at
+home, dwelt an expression of inner quiet, and sadness combined with
+strength and firmness. It was not easy to look long into them without
+wanting to grasp the possessor's hand in fellowship. They smiled, too,
+as the manager continued to stare. That broke the spell; they were
+undeniably human. The manager smiled in response.</p>
+
+<p>"Learned your trade?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been working at it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Between six and seven years."</p>
+
+<p>"Any tools with you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Union man?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Hm-m."</p>
+
+<p>The manager chewed the handle of his pen, and thought something out with
+himself; his eyes were on the pad before him.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got to take on a lot of new men for the next two years&mdash;as many
+as we can of skilled workmen. The break will have to be made sometime.
+Anyhow, if you'll risk it they've got a job for you in Shed Number
+Two&mdash;cutting and squaring for a while&mdash;forty cents an hour&mdash;eight hour
+day. I'll telephone to the boss if you want it."</p>
+
+<p>"I do."</p>
+
+<p>He took up the desk-telephone and gave his message.</p>
+
+<p>"It's all right." He drew out a ledger from beneath the desk. "What's
+your letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Letter?" The man looked startled for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, initial of your last name."</p>
+
+<p>"G."</p>
+
+<p>The manager found the letter, thrust in his finger, opened the page
+indicated and shoved the book over the desk towards the applicant. He
+handed him his pen.</p>
+
+<p>"Write your name, your age, and what you're native of." He indicated the
+columns.</p>
+
+<p>The man took the pen. He seemed at first slightly awkward in handling
+it. The entry he made was as follows:</p>
+
+<p>"Louis C. Googe&mdash;thirty-four&mdash;United States."</p>
+
+<p>The manager glanced at it. "That's a common enough name in Maine and
+these parts," he said. Then he pointed through the window. "That's the
+shed over there&mdash;the middle one. The boss'll give you some tools till
+you get yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you." The man put on his cap and went out.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll be hanged!" was all the manager said as he looked after the
+applicant. Then he rose, went to the office door and watched the man
+making his way through the stone-yards towards the sheds. "Well, boys,"
+he said further, turning to the two men bending over the plans, "that
+suit ain't exactly a misfit, but it hasn't seen the light of day for a
+good many years&mdash;and it's the same with the man. What in thunder is he
+doing in the sheds! Did he say anything specially to you before I came
+in?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; only he seemed mighty interested in the plans, examined the detail
+of some of them&mdash;as if he knew."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll keep our eyes on him." The manager went back to his desk.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>IV</h4>
+
+<p>Perhaps the dreariest environment imaginable is a stone-cutters' shed on
+a bleak day in the first week in March. The large ones stretching along
+the north shore of Lake Mesantic are no exception to this statement. A
+high wind from the northeast was driving before it particles of ice, and
+now and then a snow flurry. It penetrated every crack and crevice of the
+huge buildings, the second and largest of which covered a ground space
+of more than an acre. Every gust made itself both felt and heard among
+the rafters. Near the great doors the granite dust whirled in eddies.</p>
+
+<p>At this hour in the afternoon Shed Number Two was a study in black and
+gray and white. Gray dust several inches thick spread underfoot; all
+about were gray walls, gray and white granite piles, gray columns,
+arches, uncut blocks, heaps of granite waste, gray workmen in gray
+blouses and canvas aprons covered with gray dust. In one corner towered
+the huge gray-black McDonald machine in mighty strength, its multiple
+revolving arms furnished with gigantic iron fists which manipulate the
+unyielding granite with Herculean automatonism&mdash;an invention of the
+film-like brain of man to conquer in a few minutes the work of nature's
+&aelig;ons! Gray-black overhead stretched the running rails for the monster
+electric travelling crane; some men crawling out on them looked like
+monkeys. Here and there might be seen the small insignificant "Lewis
+Key"&mdash;a thing that may be held on a woman's palm&mdash;sustaining a granite
+weight of many tons.</p>
+
+<p>There were three hundred men at work in this shed, and the ringing
+<i>chip-chip-chipping</i> monotone from the hundreds of hammers and chisels,
+filled the great space with industry's wordless song that has its
+perfect harmony for him who listens with open ears and expansive mind.</p>
+
+<p>Jim McCann was at work near the shed doors which had been opened several
+times since one o'clock to admit the flat cars with the granite. He was
+alternately blowing on his benumbed fingers and cursing the doors and
+the draught that was chilling him to the marrow. The granite dust was
+swirling about his legs and rising into his nostrils. It lacked a
+half-hour to four.</p>
+
+<p>Two cars rolled in silently.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut thim damned doors, man!" he shouted across to the door-tender;
+"God kape us but we' it's our last death we'll be ketchin' before we can
+clane out our lungs o' the dust we've swallowed the day. It's after
+bein' wan damned slitherin' whorl of grit in the nose of me since eight
+the morn."</p>
+
+<p>He struck hard on his chisel and a spark flew. A workman, an Italian,
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"That's arll-rright, Jim&mdash;fire up!"</p>
+
+<p>"You kape shet," growled McCann. He was unfriendly as a rule to the
+Dagos. "It's in me blood," was his only excuse.</p>
+
+<p>"An' if it's a firin' ye be after," he continued, "ye'll get it shurre
+if ye lave off workin' to warm up yer tongue wid such sass.&mdash;Shut thim
+doors!" he shouted again; but a gust of wind failed to carry his voice
+in the desired direction.</p>
+
+<p>In the swirling roar and the small dust-spout that followed in its
+wake, Jim and the workmen in his cold section were aware of a man who
+had been half-blown in with the whirling dust. He took shelter for a
+moment by the inner wall. The foreman saw him and recognized him for the
+man who, the manager had just telephoned, was coming over from the
+office. He came forward to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the man who has just taken on a job in Shed Number Two?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>The foreman signed to one of the men and told him to bring an extra set
+of tools.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's your section," he said indicating McCann's; "you can begin on
+this block&mdash;just squaring it for to-night."</p>
+
+<p>The man took his tools with a "Thank you," and went to work. The others
+watched him furtively, as Jim told Maggie afterwards "from the tail of
+me eye."</p>
+
+<p>He knew his work. They soon saw that. Every stroke told. The doors were
+shut at last and the electric lights turned on. Up to the stroke of four
+the men worked like automatons&mdash;<i>chip-chip-chipping</i>. Now and then there
+was some chaffing, good-natured if rough.</p>
+
+<p>The little Canuck, who by dint of running had caught the car, was
+working nearby. McCann called out to him:</p>
+
+<p>"I say, Antwine, where you'd be after gettin' that cap with the monkey
+ears?"</p>
+
+<p>"Bah gosh, Ah have get dis &agrave; Mo'real&mdash;at good march&eacute;&mdash;sheep." He stroked
+the small skin earlaps caressingly with one hand, then spat upon his
+palm and fell to work again.</p>
+
+<p>"Montreal is it? When did you go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah was went tree day&mdash;le P&egrave;re Honor&eacute; tol' mah Ah better was go to mon
+ma&icirc;tre; he was dead las' week."</p>
+
+<p>"Wot yer givin' us, Antwine? Three days to see yer dead mater an' lavin'
+yer stiddy job for the likes of him, an' good luck yer come back this
+afternoon or the new man 'ud 'a' had it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, non&mdash;ah, non! De boss haf tol' mah, Ah was keep mah shob. Ah,
+non&mdash;ah, non. Ah was went pour l'amour de P&egrave;re Honor&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>"Damn yer lingo&mdash;shpake English, I tell you."</p>
+
+<p>Antoine grinned and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Wot yer givin' us about his Riverince, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Le P&egrave;re Honor&eacute;, hein? Ah-h-h-rr, le bon P&egrave;re Honor&eacute;! Attendez&mdash;he tol'
+mah Ah was best non raconter&mdash;mais, Ah raconte you, Shim&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Go ahead, Johnny Frog; let's hear."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah was been lee'l gar&ccedil;on&mdash;lee'l b&eacute;b&eacute;, no p&egrave;re; ma m&egrave;re was been&mdash;how
+you say?&mdash;gypsee &agrave; cheval, hein?" he appealed to McCann.</p>
+
+<p>"You mane a gypsy that rides round the counthry?"</p>
+
+<p>Antoine nodded emphatically. "Yah&mdash;oui, gypsee &agrave; cheval, an' bars&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Bears?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mais oui, bruins&mdash;bars; pour les faire dancer&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You mane your mother was a gypsy that went round the counthry showin'
+off dancin' bears?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yah-oui. Ah mane so. She haf been seek&mdash;malade&mdash;how you say, petite
+v&eacute;role&mdash;so like de P&egrave;re Honor&eacute;?" He made with his forefinger dents in
+his face and forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"An' is it the shmall pox yer mane?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yah-oui, shmall pookes. She was haf it, an' tout le monde&mdash;how you
+say?&mdash;efferybodyee was haf fear. She was haf nottin' to eat&mdash;nottin' to
+drrink; le P&egrave;re Honor&eacute; was fin' her in de bois&mdash;for&ecirc;t, an' was been tak'
+ma pauvre m&egrave;re in hees ahrms, an' he place her in de sugair-house, an'
+il l'a soign&eacute;e&mdash;how you say?" He appealed to the Italian whose interest
+was on the increase.</p>
+
+<p>"Nurrsed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yah&mdash;oui, nurrsed her, an' moi aussi&mdash;lee'l b&eacute;b&eacute;'&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"D' yer mane his Riverince nursed you and yer mother through the shmall
+pox?" demanded McCann. Several of the workmen stopped short with hammers
+uplifted to hear Antoine's answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Mais oui, il l'a soign&eacute;e jusqu'&agrave; ce qu'elle was been dead; he l'a
+enterr&eacute;e&mdash;place in de terre&mdash;airth, an' moi he haf place chez un farmyer
+&agrave; Mo'real. An' le P&egrave;re Honor&eacute; was tak' la petite v&eacute;role&mdash;shmall pookes
+in de sugair-house, an' de farmyer was gif him to eat an' to drrink par
+la porte&mdash;de door; de farmyer haf non pass&eacute; par de door. Le P&egrave;re Honor&eacute;
+m'a sauv&eacute;&mdash;haf safe, hein? An' Ah was been work ten, twenty, dirty year,
+Ah tink. Ah gagne&mdash;gain, hein?&mdash;two hundert pi&egrave;ces. Ah been come to de
+quairries, pour l'amour de bon P&egrave;re Honor&eacute; qui m'a safe, hein? Ah be
+tr&egrave;s content; Ah gagne, gain two, tree pi&egrave;ces&mdash;dollaires&mdash;par jour."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded at one and all, his gold half-moon earrings twinkling in his
+evident satisfaction with himself and "le bon P&egrave;re Honor&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>The men were silent. Jim McCann's eyes were blurred with tears. The
+thought of his own six-months boy presented itself in contrast to the
+small waif in the Canada woods and the dying gypsy mother, nursed by the
+priest who had christened his own little Billy.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a bad night for the lecture," said a Scotchman, and broke
+therewith the emotional spell that was holding the men who had made out
+the principal points of Antoine's story.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but Father Honor&eacute; says it's all about the cathedrals, an' not many
+will want to miss it," said another. "They say there's a crowd coming
+down from the quarries to-night to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"Faith, an' it's Mr. Van Ostend will be after havin' to put on an a
+trailer to his new hall," said McCann; "the b'ys know a good thing whin
+they see it, an' we was like to smother, the whole kit of us, whin they
+had the last pitchers of them mountins in Alasky on the sheet. It's the
+stairioptican that takes best wid the b'ys."</p>
+
+<p>The four o'clock whistle began to sound. Three hundred chisels and
+hammers were dropped on the instant. The men hurried to the doors that
+were opened their full width to give egress to the hastening throngs.
+They streamed out; there was laughing and chaffing; now and then, among
+the younger ones, some good-natured fisticuffs were exchanged. Many
+sought the electrics to The Gore; others took the car to The Corners.
+From the three sheds, the power-house, the engine-house, the office, the
+dark files streamed forth from their toil. Within fifteen minutes the
+lights were turned out, the watchman was making his first round. Instead
+of the sounds of a vast industry, nothing was heard but the
+<i>sz-szz-szzz</i> of the vanishing trams, the sputter of an arc-light, the
+barking of a dog. The gray twilight of a bleak March day shut down
+rapidly over frozen field and ice-rimmed lake.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>V</h4>
+
+<p>Champney Googe left the shed with the rest; no one spoke to him,
+although many a curious look was turned his way when he had passed, and
+he spoke to no one. He waited for a car to Flamsted. There he got out.
+He found a restaurant near The Greenbush and ordered something to eat.
+Afterwards he went about the town, changed almost beyond recognition. He
+saw no face he knew. There were foreigners everywhere&mdash;men who were to
+be the fathers of the future American race. A fairly large opera house
+attracted his attention; it was evidently new. He looked for the
+year&mdash;1901. A little farther on he found the hall, built, so he had
+gathered from the few words among the men in the sheds, by Mr. Van
+Ostend. The name was on the lintel: "Flamsted Quarries Hall." Every few
+minutes an electric tram went whizzing through Main Street towards The
+Bow. Crowds of young people were on the street.</p>
+
+<p>He looked upon all he saw almost indifferently, feeling little, caring
+little. It was as if a mental and spiritual numbness had possession of
+every faculty except the manual; he felt at home only while he was
+working for that short half-hour in the shed. He was not at ease here
+among this merry careless crowd. He stopped to look in at the windows of
+a large fine shop for fruits and groceries; he glanced up at the
+sign:&mdash;"Poggi and Company."</p>
+
+<p>"Poggi&mdash;Poggi" he said to himself; he was thinking it out. "Luigi
+Poggi&mdash;Luigi&mdash;Ah!" It was a long-drawn breath. He had found his clew.</p>
+
+<p>He heard again that cry: "Champney,&mdash;O Champney! what has he done to
+you!" The night came back to him in all its detail. It sickened him.</p>
+
+<p>He was about to turn from the window and seek the quiet of The Bow until
+the hall should be open&mdash;at "sharp seven" he heard the men say&mdash;when a
+woman passed him and entered the shop. She took a seat at the counter
+just inside the show-window. He stood gazing at her, unable to move his
+eyes from the form, the face. It was she&mdash;Aileen!</p>
+
+<p>The sickening feeling increased for a moment, then it gave place to
+strange electric currents that passed and repassed through every nerve.
+It was a sensation as if his whole body&mdash;flesh, muscles, nerves,
+arteries, veins, every lobe of his brain, every cell within each lobe,
+had been, as the saying is of an arm or leg, "asleep" and was now
+"coming to." The tingling sensation increased almost to torture; but he
+could not move. That face held him.</p>
+
+<p>He must get away before she came out! That was his one thought. The
+first torment of awakening sensation to a new life was passing. He
+advanced a foot, then the other; he moved slowly, but he moved at last.
+He walked on down the street, not up towards The Bow as he had intended;
+walked on past The Greenbush towards The Corners; walked on and on till
+the nightmare of this awakening from a nearly seven-years abnormal sleep
+of feeling was over. Then he turned back to the town. The town clock was
+striking seven. The men were entering the hall by tens and twenties.</p>
+
+<p>He took his seat in a corner beneath the shadow of a large gallery at
+the back, over the entrance.</p>
+
+<p>There were only men admitted. He looked upon the hundreds assembled, and
+realized for the first time in more than six years that he was again a
+free man among free men. He drew a long breath of relief, of
+realization.</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter past seven Father Honor&eacute; made his appearance on the
+platform. The men settled at once into silence, and the priest began
+without preface:</p>
+
+<p>"My friends, we will take up to-night what we may call the Brotherhood
+of Stone."</p>
+
+<p>The men looked at one another and smiled. Here was something new.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the right thought for all of you to take with you into the
+quarries and the sheds. Don't forget it!"</p>
+
+<p>He made certain distinct pauses after a few sentences. This was done
+with intention; for the men before him were of various nationalities,
+although he called this his "English night." But many were learning and
+understood imperfectly; it was for them he paused frequently. He wanted
+to give them time to take in what he was saying. Sometimes he repeated
+his words in Italian, in French, that the foreigners might better
+comprehend his meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps some of you have worked in the limestone quarries on the Bay?
+All who have hold up hands."</p>
+
+<p>A hundred hands, perhaps more, were raised.</p>
+
+<p>"Any worked in the marble quarries of Vermont?"</p>
+
+<p>A dozen or more Canucks waved their hands vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>"Here are three pieces&mdash;limestone, marble, and granite." He held up
+specimens of the three. "All of them are well known to most of you. Now
+mark what I say of these three:&mdash;first, the limestone gets burned
+principally; second, the marble gets sculptured principally; third, the
+granite gets hammered and chiselled principally. Fire, chisel, and
+hammer at work on these three rocks; but, they are all <i>quarried</i> first.
+This fact of their being quarried puts them in the Brotherhood&mdash;of
+Labor."</p>
+
+<p>The men nudged one another, and nodded emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"They are all three taken from the crust of the earth; this Earth is to
+them the earth-mother. Now mark again what I say:&mdash;this fact of their
+common earth-mother puts them in the Brotherhood&mdash;of Kin."</p>
+
+<p>He took up three specimens of quartz crystals.</p>
+
+<p>"This quartz crystal"&mdash;he turned it in the light, and the hexagonal
+prisms caught and reflected dazzling rays&mdash;"I found in the limestone
+quarry on the Bay. This," he took up another smaller one, "I found after
+a long search in the marble quarries of Vermont. This here," he held up
+a third, a smaller, less brilliant, less perfect one&mdash;"I took out of our
+upper quarry after a three weeks' search for it.</p>
+
+<p>"This fact, that these rocks, although of different market value and put
+to different uses, may yield the same perfect crystal, puts the
+limestone, the marble, the granite in the Brotherhood&mdash;of Equality.</p>
+
+<p>"In our other talks, we have named the elements of each rock, and given
+some study to each. We have found that some of their elements are the
+basic elements of our own mortal frames&mdash;our bodies have a common
+earth-mother with these stones.</p>
+
+<p>"This last fact puts them in the Brotherhood&mdash;of Man."</p>
+
+<p>The seven hundred men showed their appreciation of the point made by
+prolonged applause.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I want to make clear to you that, although these rocks have
+different market values, are put to different uses, the real value for
+us this evening consists in the fact that each, in its own place, can
+yield a crystal equal in purity to the others.&mdash;Remember this the next
+time you go to work in the quarries and the sheds."</p>
+
+<p>He laid aside the specimens.</p>
+
+<p>"We had a talk last month about the guilds of four hundred years ago. I
+asked you then to look upon yourselves as members of a great twentieth
+century working guild. Have you done it? Has every man, who was present
+then, said since, when hewing a foundation stone, a block for a bridge
+abutment, a corner-stone for a cathedral or a railroad station, a
+cap-stone for a monument, a milestone, a lintel for a door, a
+hearthstone or a step for an altar, 'I belong to the great guild of the
+makers of this country; I quarry and hew the rock that lays the enduring
+bed for the iron or electric horses which rush from sea to sea and carry
+the burden of humanity'?&mdash;Think of it, men! Yours are the hands that
+make this great track of commerce possible. Yours are the hands that
+curve the stones, afterwards reared into noble arches beneath which the
+people assemble to do God reverence. Yours are the hands that square the
+deep foundations of the great bridges which, like the Brooklyn, cross
+high in mid-air from shore to shore! Have you said this? Have you done
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay.&mdash;Sure.&mdash;We done it." The murmuring assent was polyglot.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well&mdash;see that you keep on doing it, and show that you do it by
+the good work you furnish."</p>
+
+<p>He motioned to the manipulators in the gallery to make ready for the
+stereopticon views. The blank blinding round played erratically on the
+curtain. The entire audience sat expectant.</p>
+
+<p>There was flashed upon the screen the interior of a Canadian "cabin."
+The family were at supper; the whole interior, simple and homely, was
+indicative of warmth and cheerful family life.</p>
+
+<p>The Canucks in the audience lost their heads. The clapping was frantic.
+Father Honor&eacute; smiled. He tapped the portrayed wall with the end of his
+pointer.</p>
+
+<p>"This is comfort&mdash;no cold can penetrate these walls; they are double
+plastered. Credit limestone with that!"</p>
+
+<p>The audience showed its appreciation in no uncertain way.</p>
+
+<p>"The crystal&mdash;can any one see that&mdash;find that in this interior?"</p>
+
+<p>The men were silent. Father Honor&eacute; was pointing to the mother and her
+child; the father was holding out his arms to the little one who, with
+loving impatience, was reaching away from his mother over the table to
+his father. They comprehended the priest's thought in the lesson of the
+limestone:&mdash;the love and trust of the human. No words were needed. An
+emotional silence made itself felt.</p>
+
+<p>The picture shifted. There was thrown upon the screen the marble
+Cathedral of Milan. A murmur of delight ran through the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Here we have the limestone in the form of marble. Its beauty is the
+price of unremitting toil. This, too, belongs in the brotherhoods of
+labor, kin, and equality.&mdash;Do you find the crystal?"</p>
+
+<p>His pointer swept the hierarchy of statues on the roof, upwards to the
+cross on the pinnacle, where it rested.</p>
+
+<p>"This crystal is the symbol of what inspires and glorifies humanity. The
+crystal is yours, men, if with believing hearts you are willing to say
+'Our Father' in the face of His works."</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment. It was an understood thing in the semi-monthly
+talks, that the men were free to ask questions and to express an
+opinion, even, at times, to argue a point. The men's eyes were fixed
+with keen appreciation on the marble beauty before them, when a voice
+broke the silence.</p>
+
+<p>"That sounds all right enough, your Reverence, what you've said about
+'Our Father' and the brotherhoods, but there's many a man says it that
+won't own me for a brother. There's a weak joint somewhere&mdash;and no
+offence meant."</p>
+
+<p>Some of the men applauded.</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; turned from the screen and faced the men; his eyes
+flashed. The audience loved to see him in this mood, for they knew by
+experience that he was generally able to meet his adversary, and no odds
+given or taken.</p>
+
+<p>"That's you, is it, Szchenetzy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it's me."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember in last month's talk that I showed you the
+Dolomites&mdash;the curious mountains of the Tyrol?&mdash;and in connection with
+those the Brenner Pass?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, something like seven hundred years ago a poor man, a poet and
+travelling musician, was riding over that pass and down into that very
+region of the Dolomites. He made his living by stopping at the
+stronghold-castles of those times and entertaining the powerful of the
+earth by singing his poems set to music of his own making. Sometimes he
+got a suit of cast-off clothes in payment; sometimes only bed and board
+for a time. But he kept on singing his little poems and making more of
+them as he grew rich in experience of men and things; for he never grew
+rich in gold&mdash;money was the last thing they ever gave him. So he
+continued long his wandering life, singing his songs in courtyard and
+castle hall until they sang their way into the hearts of the men of his
+generation. And while he wandered, he gained a wonderful knowledge of
+life and its ways among rich and poor, high and low; and, pondering the
+things he had seen and the many ways of this world, he said to himself,
+that day when he was riding over the Brenner Pass, the same thing that
+you have just said&mdash;in almost the same words:&mdash;'Many a man calls God
+"Father" who won't acknowledge me for a brother.'</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how he reconciled facts&mdash;for your fact seems plain
+enough&mdash;nor do I know how you can reconcile them; but what I do know is
+this:&mdash;that man, poor in this world's goods, but rich in experience and
+in a natural endowment of poetic thought and musical ability, <i>kept on
+making poems, kept on singing them</i>, despite that fact to which he had
+given expression as he fared over the Brenner; despite the fact that a
+suit of cast-off clothes was all he got for his entertainment of those
+who would not call him 'brother.' Discouraged at times&mdash;for he was very
+human&mdash;he kept on giving the best that was in him, doing the work
+appointed for him in this world&mdash;and doing it with a whole heart
+Godwards and Christwards, despite his poverty, despite the broken
+promises of the great to reward him pecuniarily, despite the world,
+despite <i>facts</i>, Szchenetzy! He sang when he was young of earthly love
+and in middle age of heavenly love, and his songs are cherished, for
+their beauty of wisdom and love, in the hearts of men to this day."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled genially across the sea of faces to Szchenetzy.</p>
+
+<p>"Come up some night with your violin, Szchenetzy, and we will try over
+some of those very songs that the Germans have set to music of their
+own, those words of Walter of the Bird-Meadow&mdash;so they called him then,
+and men keep on calling him that even to this day."</p>
+
+<p>He turned again to the screen.</p>
+
+<p>"What is to be thrown on the screen now&mdash;in rapid succession for our
+hour is brief&mdash;I call our Marble Quarry. Just think of it! quarried by
+the same hard work which you all know, by which you earn your daily
+bread; sculptured into forms of exceeding beauty by the same hard toil
+of other hands. And behind all the toil there is the <i>soul of art</i>, ever
+seeking expression through the human instrument of the practised hand
+that quarries, then sculptures, then places, and builds! I shall give a
+word or two of explanation in regard to time and locality; next month we
+will take the subjects one by one."</p>
+
+<p>There flashed upon the screen and in quick succession, although the men
+protested and begged for an extension of exposures, the noble Pisan
+group and Niccola Pisano's pulpit in the baptistery&mdash;the horses from the
+Parthenon frieze&mdash;the Zeus group from the great altar at
+Pergamos&mdash;Theseus and the Centaur&mdash;the Wrestlers&mdash;the Discus Thrower
+and, last, the exquisite little church of Saint Mary of the Thorn,&mdash;the
+Arno's jewel, the seafarers' own,&mdash;that looks out over the Pisan waters
+to the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>It was a magnificent showing. No words from Father Honor&eacute; were needed to
+bring home to his audience the lesson of the Marble Quarry.</p>
+
+<p>"I call the next series, which will be shown without explanation and
+merely named, other members of the Brotherhood of Stone. We study them
+separately later on in the summer."</p>
+
+<p>The cathedrals of York, Amiens, Westminster, Cologne, Mayence, St.
+Mark's&mdash;a noble array of man's handiwork, were thrown upon the screen.
+The men showed their appreciation by thunderous applause.</p>
+
+<p>The screen was again a blank; then it filled suddenly with the great
+Upper Quarry in The Gore. The granite ledges sloped upward to meet the
+blue of the sky. The great steel derricks and their crisscrossing cables
+cast curiously foreshortened shadows on the gleaming white expanse. Here
+and there a group of men showed dark against a ledge. In the centre, one
+of the monster derricks held suspended in its chains a forty-ton block
+of granite just lifted from its eternal bed. Beside it a workman showed
+like a pigmy.</p>
+
+<p>Some one proposed a three times three for the home quarries. The men
+rose to their feet and the cheers were given with a will. The ringing
+echo of the last had not died away when the quarry vanished, and in its
+place stood the finished cathedral of A.&mdash;the work which the hands of
+those present were to create. It was a reproduction of the architect's
+water-color sketch.</p>
+
+<p>The men still remained standing; they gave no outward expression to
+their admiration; that, indeed, although evident in their faces, was
+overshadowed by something like awe. <i>Their</i> hands were to be the
+instruments by which this great creation of the mind of man should
+become a fact. Without those hands the architect's idea could not be
+materialized; without the "idea" their daily work would fail.</p>
+
+<p>The truth went home to each man present&mdash;even to that unknown one
+beneath the gallery who, when the men had risen to cheer, shrank farther
+into his dark corner and drew short sharp breaths. The Past would not
+down at his bidding; he was beginning to feel his weakness when he had
+most need of strength.</p>
+
+<p>He did not hear Father Honor&eacute;'s parting words:&mdash;"Here you find the third
+crystal&mdash;strength, solidity, the bedrock of endeavor. Take these three
+home with you:&mdash;the pure crystal of human love and trust, the heart
+believing in its Maker, the strength of good character. There you have
+the three that make for equality in this world&mdash;and nothing else does.
+Good night, my friends."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>VI</h4>
+
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; got home from the lecture a little before nine. He renewed
+the fire, drew up a chair to the hearth, took his violin from its case
+and, seating himself before the springing blaze, made ready to play for
+a while in the firelight. This was always his refreshment after a
+successful evening with the men. He drew his thumb along the bow&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>There was a knock at the door. He rose and flung it wide with a human
+enough gesture of impatience; his well-earned rest was disturbed too
+soon. He failed to recognize the man who was standing bareheaded on the
+step.</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;, I've come home&mdash;don't you know me, Champney?"</p>
+
+<p>There was no word in response, but his hands were grasped hard&mdash;he was
+drawn into the room&mdash;the door was shut on the chill wind of that March
+night. Then the two men stood silent, gazing into each other's eyes,
+while the firelight leaped and showed to each the other's face&mdash;the
+priest's working with a powerful emotion he was struggling to control;
+Champney Googe's apparently calm, but in reality tense with anxiety. He
+spoke first:</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know about my mother&mdash;is she well?"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; found his voice, an uncertain one but emphatic; it left no
+room for further anxiety in the questioner's mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, well, thank God, and looking forward to this&mdash;but it's so soon! I
+don't understand&mdash;when did you come?"</p>
+
+<p>He kept one hand on Champney's as if fearing to lose him, with the other
+he pulled forward a chair from the wall and placed it near his own; he
+sat down and drew Champney into the other beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"I came up on the afternoon train; I got out yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>"It's so unexpected. The chaplain wrote me last month that there was a
+prospect of this within the next six months, but I had no idea it would
+be so soon&mdash;neither, I am sure, had he."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I&mdash;I don't know that I feel sure of it yet. Has my mother any idea
+of this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't at liberty to tell her&mdash;the communication was confidential.
+Still she knows that it is customary to shorten the&mdash;" he caught up his
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;Term for exemplary conduct?" Champney finished for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I can't realize this, Champney; it's six years and four months&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Years&mdash;months! You might say six eternities. Do you know, I can't get
+used to it&mdash;the freedom, I mean. At times during these last twenty-four
+hours, I have actually felt lost without the work, the routine&mdash;the
+solitude." He sighed heavily and spoke further, but as if to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"Last Thanksgiving Day we were all together&mdash;eight hundred of us in the
+assembly room for the exercises. Two men get pardoned out on that day,
+and the two who were set free were in for manslaughter&mdash;one for twenty
+years, the other for life. They had been in eighteen years. I watched
+their faces when their numbers were called; they stepped forward to the
+platform and were told of their pardon. There wasn't a sign of
+comprehension, not a movement of a muscle, the twitch of an
+eyelid&mdash;simply a dead stolid stare. The truth is, they were benumbed as
+to feeling, incapable of comprehending anything, of initiating anything,
+as I was till&mdash;till this afternoon; then I began to live, to feel
+again."</p>
+
+<p>"That's only natural. I've heard other men say the same thing. You'll
+recover tone here among your own&mdash;your friends and other men."</p>
+
+<p>"Have I any?&mdash;I mean outside of you and my mother?" he asked in a low
+voice, but subdued eagerness was audible in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any? Why, man, a friend is a friend for life&mdash;and beyond. Who
+was it put it thus: 'Said one: I would go up to the gates of hell with a
+friend.&mdash;Said the other: I would go in.' That last is the kind you have
+here in Flamsted, Champney."</p>
+
+<p>The other turned away his face that the firelight might not betray him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's too much&mdash;it's too much; I don't deserve it."</p>
+
+<p>"Champney, when you decided of your own accord to expiate in the manner
+you have through these six years, do you think your friends&mdash;and
+others&mdash;didn't recognize your manhood? And didn't you resolve at that
+time to 'put aside' those things that were behind you once and
+forever?&mdash;clear your life of the clogging part?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes,&mdash;but others won't&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind others&mdash;you are working out your own salvation."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's going to be harder than I thought&mdash;I find I am beginning to
+dread to meet people&mdash;everything is so changed. It's going to be harder
+than I realized to carry out that resolution. The Past won't
+down&mdash;everything is so changed&mdash;everything&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; rose to turn on the electric lights. He did not take his
+seat again, but stood on the hearth, back to the fire, his hands clasped
+behind him. The clear light from the shaded bulbs shone full upon the
+face of the man before him, and the priest, searching that face to read
+its record, saw set upon it, and his heart contracted at the sight, the
+indelible seal of six years of penal servitude. The close-cut hair was
+gray; the brow was marked by two horizontal furrows; the cheeks were
+deeply lined; and the broad shoulders&mdash;they were bent. Formerly he stood
+before the priest with level eyes, now he was shorter by an inch of the
+six feet that were once his. He noticed the hands&mdash;the hands of the
+day-laborer.</p>
+
+<p>He managed to reply to Champney's last remark without betraying the
+emotion that threatened to master him.</p>
+
+<p>"Outwardly, yes; things have changed and will continue to change. The
+town is making vast strides towards citizenship. But you will find those
+you know the same&mdash;only grown in grace, I hope, with the years; even Mr.
+Wiggins is convinced by this time that the foreigners are not
+barbarians."</p>
+
+<p>Champney smiled. "It was rough on Elmer Wiggins at first."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but things are smoothing out gradually, and as a son of Maine he
+has too much common sense at bottom to swim against the current. And
+there's old Joel Quimber&mdash;I never see him that he doesn't tell me he is
+marking off the days in his 'almanack,' he calls it, in anticipation of
+your return."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Jo!&mdash;No!&mdash;Is that true? Old Jo doing that?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, why not? And there's Octavius Buzzby&mdash;I don't think he
+would mind my telling you now&mdash;indeed, I don't believe he'd have the
+courage to tell you himself&mdash;" Father Honor&eacute; smiled happily, for he saw
+in Champney's face the light of awakening interest in the common life of
+humanity, and he felt a prolongation of this chat would clear the
+atmosphere of over-powering emotion,&mdash;"there have never three months
+passed by these last six years that he hasn't deposited half of his
+quarterly salary with Emlie in the bank in your name&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't&mdash;don't! I can't bear it&mdash;dear old Tave&mdash;" he groaned rather
+than spoke; the blood mounted to his temples, but his friend proved
+merciless.</p>
+
+<p>"And there's Luigi Poggi! I don't know but he will make you a
+proposition, when he knows you are at home, to enter into partnership
+with him and young Caukins&mdash;the Colonel's fourth eldest. Champney, he
+wants to atone&mdash;he has told me so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Is&mdash;is he married?"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; noticed that his lips suddenly went dry and he swallowed
+hard after his question.</p>
+
+<p>"No," the priest hastened to say, then he hesitated; he was wondering
+how far it was safe to probe; "but it is my strong impression that he is
+thinking seriously of it&mdash;a lovely girl, too, she is&mdash;" he saw the man's
+face before him go white, the jaw set like a vise&mdash;"little Dulcie
+Caukins, you remember her?"</p>
+
+<p>Champney nodded and wet his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"He has been thrown a good deal with the Caukinses since he took their
+son into partnership; the Colonel's boys are all doing well. Romanzo is
+in New York."</p>
+
+<p>"Still with the Company?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, in the main office. He married in that city two years ago&mdash;rather
+well, I hear, but Mrs. Caukins is not reconciled yet. Now, there's a
+friend! You don't know the depth of her feeling for you&mdash;but she has
+shown it by worshipping your mother."</p>
+
+<p>Champney Googe's eyes filled to overflowing, but he squeezed the
+springing drops between his eyelids, and asked with lively interest:</p>
+
+<p>"Why isn't Mrs. Caukins reconciled?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, because&mdash;I suppose it's no secret now, at least Mrs. Caukins has
+never made one of it, in fact, has aired the subject pretty thoroughly,
+you know her way&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Champney looked up and smiled. "I'm glad she hasn't changed."</p>
+
+<p>"But of course you don't know it. The fact is she had set heart on
+having for a daughter-in-law Aileen Armagh&mdash;you remember little Aileen?"</p>
+
+<p>Champney Googe's hands closed spasmodically on the arms of his chair. To
+cover this involuntary movement, he leaned forward suddenly and kicked a
+burning brand, that had fallen on the hearth, back into the fireplace. A
+shower of sparks flew up chimney.</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; went on without waiting for the answer he knew would not
+be forthcoming: "Aileen gave me a fright the other day. I met her on the
+street, and she took that occasion, in the midst of a good deal of noise
+and confusion, to inform me with her usual vivacity of manner that she
+was to be housekeeper to a man&mdash;'a job for life,' she added with the old
+mischief dancing in her eyes and the merry laugh that is a tonic for the
+blues. Upon my asking her gravely who was the fortunate man&mdash;for I had
+no one in mind and feared some impulsive decision&mdash;she pursed her lips,
+hesitated a moment, and, manufacturing a charming blush, said:&mdash;'I don't
+mind telling you; it's Mr. Octavius Buzzby. I'm to be his housekeeper
+for life and take care of him in his old age after his work and mine is
+finished at Champo.' I confess, I was relieved."</p>
+
+<p>"My aunt is still living, then?" Champney asked with more eagerness and
+energy than the occasion demanded. His eyes shone with suppressed
+excitement, and ever-awakening life animated every feature. Father
+Honor&eacute;, noting the sudden change, read again, as once six years before,
+deep into this man's heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but it is death in life. Aileen is still with her&mdash;faithful as the
+sun, but rebelling at times as is only natural. The girl gave promise of
+rich womanhood, but even you would wonder at such fine development in
+such an environment of continual invalidism. Mrs. Champney has had two
+strokes of paralysis; it is only a question of time."</p>
+
+<p>"There is <i>one</i> who never was my friend&mdash;I've often wondered why."</p>
+
+<p>Into the priest's inner vision flashed that evening before his departure
+for New York&mdash;the bedroom&mdash;the mother&mdash;that confession&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It looks that way, I admit, but I've thought sometimes she has cared
+for you far more than any one will ever know."</p>
+
+<p>Champney started suddenly to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"What time is it? I must be going."</p>
+
+<p>"Going?&mdash;You mean home&mdash;to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I must go home. I came to ask you to go to my mother to prepare
+her for this&mdash;I dared not shock her by going unannounced. You'll go
+with me&mdash;you'll tell her?"</p>
+
+<p>"At once."</p>
+
+<p>He reached for his coat and turned off the lights. The two went out arm
+and arm into the March night. The wind was still rising.</p>
+
+<p>"It's only half-past nine, and Mrs. Googe will be up; she is a busy
+woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me&mdash;" he drew his breath short&mdash;"what has my mother done all these
+years&mdash;how has she lived?"</p>
+
+<p>"As every true woman lives&mdash;doing her full duty day by day, living in
+hope of this joy."</p>
+
+<p>"But I mean <i>what</i> has she done to live&mdash;to provide for herself; she has
+kept the house?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure, and by her own exertions. She has never been willing to
+accept pecuniary aid from any friend, not even from Mr. Buzzby, or the
+Colonel. I am in a position to know that Mr. Van Ostend did his best to
+persuade her to accept something just as a loan."</p>
+
+<p>"But what has she been doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"She has been taking the quarrymen for meals the last six years,
+Champney&mdash;at times she has had their families to board with her, as many
+as the house could accommodate."</p>
+
+<p>The arm which his own held was withdrawn with a jerk. Champney Googe
+faced him: they were on the new iron bridge over the Rothel.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean to say my mother&mdash;<i>my</i> mother, Aurora Googe, has been keeping
+a quarrymen's boarding-house all these years?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it is legitimate work."</p>
+
+<p>"My mother&mdash;<i>my</i> mother&mdash;" he kept repeating as he stood motionless on
+the bridge. He seemed unable to grasp the fact for a moment; then he
+laid his hand heavily on Father Honor&eacute;'s shoulder as if for support; he
+spoke low to himself, but the priest caught a few words:</p>
+
+<p>"I thank Thee&mdash;thank&mdash;for life&mdash;work&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to come gradually to himself, to recognize his whereabouts. He
+began to walk on, but very slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;," he said, and his tone was deeply earnest but at the
+same time almost joyful, "I'm not going home to my mother empty-handed,
+I never intended to&mdash;I have work. I can work for her, free her from
+care, lift from her shoulders the burden of toil for my sake."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, Champney?"</p>
+
+<p>"I made application to the manager of the Company this afternoon; I saw
+they were all strangers to me, and they took me on in the sheds&mdash;Shed
+Number Two. I went to work this afternoon. You see I know my trade; I
+learned it during the last six years. I can support her now&mdash;Oh&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short just as they were leaving the bridge; raised his head
+to the black skies above him, reached upwards with both hands palm
+outwards&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;I thank my Maker for these hands; I thank Him that I can labor with
+these hands; I thank Him for the strength of manhood that will enable me
+to toil with these hands; I thank Him for my knowledge of good and evil;
+I thank Him that I have 'won sight out of blindness&mdash;'" his eyes
+strained to the skies above The Gore.</p>
+
+<p>The moon, struggling with the heavy drifting cloud-masses, broke through
+a confined ragged circle and, for a moment, its splendor shone upon the
+heights of The Gore; its effulgence paled the arc-lights in the
+quarries; a silver shaft glanced on the Rothel in its downward course,
+and afar touched the ruffled waters of Lake Mesantic....</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>"I'll stay here on the lawn," he said five minutes afterwards upon
+reaching the house. A light was burning in his mother's bedroom; another
+shone from her sitting-room on the first floor.</p>
+
+<p>The priest entered without knocking; this house was open the year round
+to the frequent comers and goers among the workmen. He rapped at the
+sitting-room door. Mrs. Googe opened it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Father Honor&eacute;, I didn't expect you to-night&mdash;didn't you have
+the&mdash;What is it?&mdash;oh, what is it!" she cried, for the priest's face
+betrayed him.</p>
+
+<p>"Joyful news, Mrs. Googe,"&mdash;he let her read his face&mdash;"your son is a
+free man to-night."</p>
+
+<p>There was no outcry on the mother's part; but her hands clasped each
+other till the nails showed white.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is he now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here, in Flamsted&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go&mdash;let me go to him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He has come to you&mdash;he is just outside&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She was past him with a rush&mdash;at the door&mdash;on the porch&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Champney!&mdash;My son!&mdash;where are you?" she cried out into the night.</p>
+
+<p>Her answer came on swift feet. He sprang up the steps two at a time,
+they were in each other's arms&mdash;then he had to be strong for both.</p>
+
+<p>He led her in, half carrying her; placed her in a chair; knelt before
+her, chafing her hands....</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; made his escape; they were unconscious of his presence or
+his departure. He closed the front door softly behind him, and on feet
+shod with light-heartedness covered the road to his own house in a few
+minutes. He flung aside his coat, took his violin, and played and played
+till late into the night.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the sisters of The Mystic Rose, who had been over to Quarry End
+Park nursing a sick quarryman's wife throughout the day, paused to
+listen as they passed the house. One of them was Sister Ste. Croix.</p>
+
+<p>The violin exulted, rejoiced, sang of love heavenly, of love earthly, of
+all loves of life and nature; it sang of repentance, of expiation, of
+salvation&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I can bear no more," whispered Sister Ste. Croix to her companion, and
+the hand she laid on the one that was raised to hush her, was not only
+cold, it was damp with the sweat of the agony of remembrance.</p>
+
+<p>The strains of the violin's song accompanied them to their own door.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>VII</h4>
+
+
+<p>The Saturday-night frequenters of The Greenbush have changed with the
+passing years like all else in Flamsted. The Greenbush itself is no
+longer a hostelry, but a cosy club-house purveyed for, to the
+satisfaction of every member, by its old landlord, Augustus Buzzby. The
+Club's membership, of both young and old men, is large and increasing
+with the growth of the town; but the old frequenters of The Greenbush
+bar-room head the list&mdash;Colonel Caukins and Octavius Buzzby paying the
+annual dues of their first charter member, old Joel Quimber, now in his
+eighty-seventh year.</p>
+
+<p>The former office is a grill room, and made one with the back parlor,
+now the club restaurant. On this Saturday night in March, the
+white-capped chef&mdash;Augustus prided himself in keeping abreast the
+times&mdash;was busy in the grill room, and Augustus himself was
+superintending the laying of a round table for ten. The Colonel was to
+celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday by giving a little supper.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing elaborate, Buzzby," he said a week before the event, "a fine
+saddle of mutton&mdash;Southdown&mdash;some salmon trout, a stiff bouillon for
+Quimber, you know his masticatory apparatus is no longer equal to this
+whole occasion, and a chive salad. <i>The</i> cake Mrs. Caukins elects to
+provide herself, and I need not assure you, who know her culinary
+powers, that it will be a <i>ne plus ultra</i> of a cake, both in material
+and execution; fruits, coffee and cheese&mdash;Roquefort. Your accomplished
+chef can fill in the interstices. Here are the cards&mdash;Quimber at my
+right, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>Augustus looked at the cards and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"All the old ones included, I see, Colonel," he ran over the names,
+"Quimber, Tave, Elmer Wiggins, Emlie, Poggi and Caukins"&mdash;he laughed
+outright; "that's a good firm, Colonel," he said slyly, and the Colonel
+smiled his appreciation of the gentle insinuation&mdash;"the manager at the
+sheds, and the new boss of the Upper Quarry?" He looked inquiringly at
+the Colonel on reading the last name.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, Buzzby; he's due here next Saturday, the festal day;
+and I want to give some substantial expression to him, as a stranger and
+neighbor, of Flamsted's hospitality."</p>
+
+<p>Augustus nodded approval, and continued: "And me! Thank you kindly,
+Colonel, but you'll have to excuse me this time. I want everything to go
+right on this special occasion. I'll join you with a pipe afterwards."</p>
+
+<p>"As you please, Buzzby, only make it a cigar; and consider yourself
+included in the spirit if not in the flesh. Nine sharp."</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter of nine, just as Augustus finished putting the last touch
+to an already perfect table, the Colonel made his appearance at The
+Greenbush, a pasteboard box containing a dozen boutonni&egrave;res under his
+arm. He laid one on the table cloth by each plate, and stood back to
+enjoy the effect. He rubbed his hands softly in appreciation of the
+"color scheme" as he termed it&mdash;a phrase that puzzled Augustus. He saw
+no "scheme" and very little "color" in the dark-wainscoted room, except
+the cheerful fire on the hearth and some heavy red half-curtains at the
+windows to shut out the cold and dark of this March night. The walls
+were white; the grill of dark wood, and the floor painted dark brown.
+But the red carnations on the snow-white damask did somehow "touch the
+whole thing up," as he confided later to his brother.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel's welcome to his companions was none the less cordial
+because he repressed his usual flow of eloquence till "the cloth should
+be removed." He purposed then to spring a surprise, oratorical and
+otherwise, on those assembled.</p>
+
+<p>After the various toasts,&mdash;all given and drunk in sweet cider made for
+the occasion from Northern Spies, the Colonel being prohibitive for
+example's sake,&mdash;the good wishes for many prospective birthdays and
+prosperous years, the Colonel filled his glass to the brim and, holding
+it in his left hand, literally rose to the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," he began in full chest tones, "some fourteen years ago,
+five of us now present were wont to discuss in the old office of this
+hospitable hostelry, now the famous grill room of the Club, the Invasion
+of the New&mdash;the opening of the great Flamsted Quarries&mdash;the migrations
+of the nations hitherwards and the consequent prospective industrial
+development of our native village."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and looked about him impressively; finally his eye settled
+sternly on Elmer Wiggins who, satisfied inwardly with the choice and
+bounteous supper provided by the Colonel, had made up his mind to "stand
+fire", as he said afterwards to Augustus.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel resumed his speech, his voice acquiring as he proceeded a
+volume and depth that carried it far beyond the grill room's walls to
+the ears of edified passers on the street:</p>
+
+<p>"There were those among us who maintained&mdash;in the face of extreme
+opposition, I am sorry to say&mdash;that this town of Flamsted would soon
+make itself a factor in the vast industrial life of our marvellous
+country. In retrospect, I reflect that those who had this faith, this
+trust in the resources of their native town, were looked upon with
+scorn; were subjected to personal derision; were termed, to put it
+mildly, 'mere dreamers'&mdash;if I am not mistaken, the original expression
+was 'darned boomers.' Mr. Wiggins, here, our esteemed wholesale and
+retail pharmacist, will correct me if I am wrong on this point&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused again as if expecting an answer; nothing was forthcoming but a
+decidedly embarrassed "Hem," from the afore-named pharmacist. The
+Colonel was satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, gentlemen, in refutation of that term&mdash;I will not repeat
+myself&mdash;and what it implied, after fourteen years, comparable to those
+seven fat kine of Pharaoh's dream, our town can point throughout the
+length and breadth of our land to its monumental works of art and
+utility that may well put to blush the renowned record of the Greeks and
+Romans."</p>
+
+<p>Prolonged applause and a ringing cheer.</p>
+
+<p>"All over our fair land the granite monoliths of <i>Flamsted</i>, beacon or
+battle, point heavenwards. The transcontinental roads, that track and
+nerve our country, cross and re-cross the raging torrents of western
+rivers on granite abutments from the <i>Flamsted</i> quarries! The laws,
+alike for the just and unjust,"&mdash;the Colonel did not perceive his slip,
+but Elmer Wiggins smiled to himself,&mdash;"are promulgated within the
+stately granite halls of the capitals of our statehood&mdash;<i>Flamsted</i>
+again! The gospel of praise and prayer will shortly resound beneath the
+arches of the choir and nave of the great granite cathedral&mdash;the product
+of the quarries in The Gore!"</p>
+
+<p>Deafening applause, clinking of glasses, and cries of "Good!
+True&mdash;Hear&mdash;Hear!"</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel beamed and gathered himself together with a visible effort
+for his peroration. He laid his hand on his heart.</p>
+
+<p>"A man of feeling, gentlemen, has a heart. He is not oblivious either of
+the needs of his neighbor, his community, or the world in general.
+Although he is vulnerable to wounds in the house of his friends,"&mdash;a
+severe look falls upon Wiggins,&mdash;"he is not impervious to appeal for
+sympathy from without. I trust I have defined a man of feeling,
+gentlemen, a man of heart, as regards the world in general. And now, to
+make an abrupt descent from the abstract to the concrete, from the
+general to the particular, I will permit myself to say that those
+aspersions cast upon me fourteen years ago as a mere promoter,
+irrespective of my manhood, hurt me as a man of feeling&mdash;a man of heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir&mdash;" he turned again to Elmer Wiggins who was apparently the
+lightning conductor for the Colonel's fourteen years of pent-up
+injury&mdash;"a father has his feelings. You are <i>not</i> a father&mdash;I draw no
+conclusions; but <i>if</i> you had been a father fourteen years ago in this
+very room, I would have trusted to your magnanimity not to give
+expression to your decided views on the subject of the native Americans'
+intermarriage with those of a race foreign to us. I assure you, sir,
+such a view not only narrows the mind, but constricts humanity, and
+ossifies the heart&mdash;that special organ by which the world, despite
+present-day detractors, lives and moves and has its being." (Murmuring
+assent.)</p>
+
+<p>"But, sir, I believe you have come to see otherwise, else as my guest on
+this happy occasion, I should not permit myself to apply to you so
+personal a remark. And, gentlemen," the Colonel swelled visibly, but
+those nearest him caught the shimmer of a suspicious moisture in his
+eyes, "I am in a position to-night&mdash;this night whereon you have added to
+my happiness by your presence at this board&mdash;to repeat now what I said
+fourteen years ago in this very room: I consider myself honored in that
+a member of my immediate family, one very, very dear to me," his voice
+shook in spite of his effort to strengthen it, "is contemplating
+entering into the solemn estate of matrimony at no distant date with&mdash;a
+foreigner, gentlemen, but a naturalized citizen of our great and
+glorious United States. Gentlemen," he filled his glass again and held
+it high above his head,&mdash;"I give you with all my heart Mr. Luigi Poggi,
+an honored and prosperous citizen of Flamsted&mdash;my future son-in-law&mdash;the
+prospective husband of my youngest daughter, Dulcibella Caukins."</p>
+
+<p>The company rose to a man, young Caukins assisting Quimber to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>With loud and hearty acclaim they welcomed the new member of the Caukins
+family; they crowded about the Colonel, and no hand that grasped his and
+Luigi's in congratulation was firmer and more cordial than Elmer
+Wiggins'. The Colonel's smile expanded; he was satisfied&mdash;the old score
+was wiped out.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards with cigars and pipes they discussed for an hour the affairs
+of Flamsted. The influx of foreigners with their families was causing a
+shortage of houses and housing. Emlie proposed the establishment of a
+Loan and Mortgage Company to help out the newcomers. Poggi laid before
+them his plan for an Italian House to receive the unmarried men on their
+arrival.</p>
+
+<p>"By the way," he said, turning to the new head of the Upper Quarry, "you
+brought up a crowd with you this afternoon, didn't you?&mdash;mostly my
+countrymen?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, a mixed lot&mdash;about thirty. A few Scotch and English came up on the
+same train. Have they applied to you?" He addressed the manager of the
+Company's sheds.</p>
+
+<p>"No. I think they'll be along Monday. I've noticed that those two
+nationalities generally have relations who house and look out for them
+when they come. But I had an application from an American just after the
+train came in; I don't often have that now."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you take him on?" the Colonel asked between two puffs of his
+Havana.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; and he went to work in Shed Number Two. I confess he puzzles me."</p>
+
+<p>"What was he like?" asked the head of the Upper Quarry.</p>
+
+<p>"Tall, blue eyes, gray hair, but only thirty-four as the register
+showed&mdash;misfit clothes&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That's the one&mdash;he came up in the train with me. I noticed him in the
+car. I don't believe he moved a muscle all the way up. I couldn't make
+him out, could you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, no, I couldn't. By the way, Colonel, I noticed the name he
+entered was a familiar one in this part of Maine&mdash;Googe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Googe!" The Colonel looked at the speaker in amazement; "did he give
+his first name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Louis&mdash;Louis C. Googe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My God!"</p>
+
+<p>Whether the ejaculation proceeded from one mouth or five, the manager
+and foreman could not distinguish; but the effect on the Flamsted men
+was varied and remarkable. The Colonel's cigar dropped from his shaking
+hand; his face was ashen. Emlie and Wiggins stared at each other as if
+they had taken leave of their senses. Joel Quimber leaned forward, his
+hands folded on the head of his cane, and spoke to Octavius who sat
+rigid on his chair:</p>
+
+<p>"What'd he say, Tave?&mdash;Champ to home?"</p>
+
+<p>But Octavius Buzzby was beyond the power of speech. Augustus spoke for
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"He said a man applied for work in the sheds this afternoon, Uncle Jo,
+who wrote his name Louis C. Googe."</p>
+
+<p>"Thet's him&mdash;thet's Champ&mdash;Champ's to home. You help me inter my coat,
+Tave, I 'm goin' to see ef's true&mdash;" He rose with difficulty. Then
+Octavius spoke; his voice shook:</p>
+
+<p>"No, Uncle Jo, you sit still a while; if it's Champney, we can't none of
+us see him to-night." He pushed him gently into his chair.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel was rousing himself. He stepped to the telephone and called
+up Father Honor&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"This is Colonel Caukins. Can you tell me if there is any truth in the
+report that Champney Googe has returned to-day?</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God."</p>
+
+<p>He put up the receiver, but still remained standing.</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen," he said to the manager and the Upper Quarry guest, his
+voice was thick with emotion and the tears of thankfulness were coursing
+down his cheeks, "perhaps no greater gift could be bestowed on my
+sixty-fifth birthday than Champney Googe's return to his home&mdash;his
+mother&mdash;his friends&mdash;we are all his friends. Perhaps the years are
+beginning to tell on me, but I feel that I must excuse myself to you and
+go home&mdash;I want to tell my wife. I will explain all to you, as strangers
+among us, some other time; for the present I must beg your
+indulgence&mdash;joy never kills, but I am experiencing the fact that it can
+weaken."</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right, Colonel," said the manager; "we understand it
+perfectly and it's late now."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go, too, Colonel," said Octavius; "I'm going to take Uncle Jo home
+in the trap."</p>
+
+<p>Luigi Poggi helped the Colonel into his great coat. When he left the
+room with his prospective father-in-law, his handsome face had not
+regained the color it lost upon the first mention of Champney's name.</p>
+
+<p>Emlie and Wiggins remained a few minutes to explain as best they could
+the situation to the stranger guests, and the cause of the excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember now hearing about this affair; I read it in the
+newspapers&mdash;it must have been seven or eight years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Six years and four months." Mr. Wiggins corrected him.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess it'll be just as well not to spread the matter much among the
+men&mdash;they might kick; besides he isn't, of course, a union man."</p>
+
+<p>"There's one thing in his favor," it was Emlie who spoke, "the
+management and the men have changed since it occurred, and there are
+very few except our home folks that would be apt to mention it&mdash;and they
+can be trusted where Champney Googe is concerned."</p>
+
+<p>The four went out together.</p>
+
+<p>The grill room of The Greenbush was empty save for Augustus Buzzby who
+sat smoking before the dying fire. Old visions were before his eyes&mdash;one
+of the office on a June night many years ago; the five friends
+discussing Champney Googe's prospects; the arrival of Father Honor&eacute; and
+little Aileen Armagh&mdash;so Luigi had at last given up hope in that
+direction for good and all.</p>
+
+<p>The town clock struck twelve. He sighed heavily; it was for the old
+times, the old days, the old life.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>VIII</h4>
+
+
+<p>It was several months before Aileen saw him. Her close attendance on
+Mrs. Champney and her avoidance of the precincts of The Gore&mdash;Maggie
+complained loudly to Mrs. Googe that Aileen no longer ran in as she used
+to do, and Mrs. Caukins confided to her that she thought Aileen might
+feel sensitive about Luigi's engagement, for she had been there but
+twice in five months&mdash;precluded the possibility of her meeting him. She
+excused herself to Mrs. Googe and the Sisters on the ground of her
+numerous duties at Champ-au-Haut; Ann and Hannah were both well on in
+years and Mrs. Champney was failing daily.</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps five months after his return that she was sitting one
+afternoon in Mrs. Champney's room, in attendance on her while the
+regular nurse was out for two hours. There had been no conversation
+between them for nearly the full time, when Mrs. Champney spoke abruptly
+from the bed:</p>
+
+<p>"I heard last month that Champney Googe is back again&mdash;has been back for
+five months; why didn't you tell me before?"</p>
+
+<p>The voice was very weak, but querulous and sharp. Aileen was sewing at
+the window. She did not look up.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I didn't suppose you liked him well enough to care about his
+coming home; besides, it was Octavius' place to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't care about his coming, or his going either, for that
+matter, but I do care about knowing things that happen under my very
+nose within a reasonable time of their happening. I'm not in my dotage
+yet, I'll have you to understand."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, say something, can't you?" she snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want me to say, Mrs. Champney?" She spoke wearily, but not
+impatiently. The daily, almost hourly demands of this sick old woman
+had, in a way, exhausted her.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what he's doing."</p>
+
+<p>"He's at work."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the sheds&mdash;Shed Number Two."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" Paralysis prevented any movement of her hands, but her head
+jerked on the pillow to one side, towards Aileen.</p>
+
+<p>"I said he was at work in the sheds."</p>
+
+<p>"What's Champney Googe doing in the sheds?"</p>
+
+<p>"Earning his living, I suppose, like other men."</p>
+
+<p>Almeda Champney was silent for a while. Aileen could but wonder what the
+thoughts might be that were filling the shrivelled box of the
+brain&mdash;what were the feelings in the ossifying heart of the woman who
+had denied help to one of her own blood in time of need. Had she any
+feeling indeed, except that for self?</p>
+
+<p>"Have you seen him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think he would want to hide his head for shame."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why." She spoke defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Because I don't see how after such a career a man can hold up his
+head among his own."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen bit her under lip to keep back the sharp retort. She chose
+another and safer way.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said brightly, looking over to Mrs. Champney with a frank
+smile, "but he has really just begun his career, you know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean he has just begun honest work among honest men, and that's the
+best career for him or any other man to my thinking."</p>
+
+<p>"Umph!&mdash;little you know about it."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen laughed outright. "Oh, I know more than you think I do, Mrs.
+Champney. I haven't lived twenty-six years for nothing, and what I've
+seen, I've seen&mdash;and I've no near-sighted eyes to trouble me either; and
+what I've heard, I've heard, for my ears are good&mdash;regular long-distance
+telephones sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>She was not prepared for the next move on Mrs. Champney's part.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe you would marry him now&mdash;after all, if he asked you." She
+spoke with a sneer.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really believe it?" She folded her work and prepared to leave
+the room, for she heard the nurse's step in the hall below. "Well, if
+you do, I'll tell you something, Mrs. Champney, but I'd like it to be
+between us." She crossed the room and paused beside the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>She bent slightly towards her. "I would rather marry a man who earns his
+three dollars a day at honest work of quarrying or cutting stones,&mdash;or
+breaking them, for that matter,"&mdash;she added under her breath, "but I'm
+not saying he would be any relation of yours&mdash;than a man who doesn't
+know what a day's toil is except to cudgel his brains tired, with
+contriving the quickest means of making his millions double themselves
+at other people's expense in twenty-four hours."</p>
+
+<p>The nurse opened the door. Mrs. Champney spoke bitterly:</p>
+
+<p>"You little fool&mdash;you think you know, but&mdash;" aware of the nurse, she
+ended fretfully, "you wear me out, talking so much. Tell Hannah to make
+me some fresh tamarind water&mdash;and bring it up quick."</p>
+
+<p>By the time Aileen had brought up the refreshment, she had half repented
+of her words. Mrs. Champney had been failing perceptibly the last few
+weeks, and all excitement was forbidden her. For this reason she had
+been kept so long in ignorance of Champney's return. As Aileen held the
+drinking tube to her lips, she noticed that the faded sunken eyes, fixed
+upon her intently, were not inimical&mdash;and she was thankful. She desired
+to live in peace, if possible, with this pitiable old age so long as it
+should last&mdash;a few weeks at the longest. The lesson of the piece of
+granite was not lost upon her. She kept the specimen on a little shelf
+over her bed.</p>
+
+<p>She went down stairs into the library to answer a telephone call; it was
+from Maggie McCann who begged her to come up that afternoon to see her;
+the matter was important and could not wait. Aileen knew by the pleading
+tone of the voice, which sounded unnatural, that she was needed for
+something. She replied she would go up at once. She put on her hat, and
+while waiting for the tram at The Bow, bought a small bag of gumdrops
+for Billy.</p>
+
+<p>Maggie received her with open arms and a gush of tears; thereupon Billy,
+now tottering on his unsteady feet, flopped suddenly on the floor and
+howled with true Irish good will.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Maggie, what <i>is</i> the matter!" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"Och, Aileen, darlin', me heart's in smithereens, and I'm that deep in
+trouble that me head's like to rend&mdash;an' Jim's all broke up&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it; do tell me, Maggie&mdash;can I help?" she urged, catching up
+Billy and endeavoring to smother his howls with kisses.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. McCann wiped her reddened eyes, took off her apron and sat down in
+a low chair by Aileen who was filling Billy's small mouth, conveniently
+open for another howl upon perceiving his mother wipe her eyes, with a
+sizable gumdrop.</p>
+
+<p>"The little gells be over to the kindergarten with the Sisters, an' I
+thought I'd clane go out of me mind if I couldn't have a word wid you
+before Jim gets home&mdash;Och, Aileen, dearie, me home I'm so proud of&mdash;"
+She choked, and Billy immediately repudiated his gumdrop upon Aileen's
+clean linen skirt; his eyes were reading the signs of the times in his
+mother's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Maggie, dear, tell me all about it. Begin at the beginning, and
+then I'll know where you're at."</p>
+
+<p>Maggie smiled faintly. "Sure, I wouldn't blame you for not knowin' where
+I'm at." Mrs. McCann sniffed several times prefatorily.</p>
+
+<p>"You know I told you Jim had a temper, Aileen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Aileen nodded in assent; she was busy coaxing the rejected ball into
+Billy's puckered mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;And that there's times whin he querrels wid the men&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know Mr. Googe bein' in the same shed an' section wid Jim, I
+says innercent-like to Jim:&mdash;'I'm glad he's in your section, Jim, belike
+you can make it a bit aisier for him.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Aisy is it?' says Jim.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, aisy,' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' wot wud I be after makin' a job aisier for the likes of him?' he
+says, grouchy-like.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' why not?' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'For a jail-bird?' says he.</p>
+
+<p>"'Deed,' says I, 'if yer own b'y had been breakin' stones wid a gang of
+toughs for sivin long years gone, wouldn't ye be after likin' a man to
+spake wan daycint word wid him?' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"Wid that Jim turned on quick-like an' says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll thank ye, Mrs. McCann, to kape yer advice to yerself. It's not
+Jim McCann's b'y that'll be doin' the dirthy job that yer Mr. Champney
+Googe was after doin' six years gone, nor be after takin' the bread an'
+butter out of an honest man's mout' that has a wife an' three childer to
+feed. He's a convic',' says Jim.</p>
+
+<p>"'What if he is?' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't hold wid no convic's,' says Jim; 'I hold wid honest men; an'
+if it's convic's be comin' to take the best piece-work out of our hands,
+it's time we struck&mdash;to a man,' says Jim.</p>
+
+<p>"Niver, niver but wanct has Jim called me 'Mrs. McCann,'" Maggie said
+brokenly, but stifled a sob for Billy's sake; "an' niver wanct has he
+gone to work widout kissin' me an' the childer, sometimes twice
+round&mdash;but he went out yisterday an' niver turned for wan look at wife
+an' childer; an' me heart was that heavy in my bosom that me b'y refused
+the breast an' cried like to kill himself for wan mortal hour, an' the
+little gells cried too, an' me bread burnin' to a crisp, an' I couldn't
+do wan thing but just sit down wid me hands full of cryin' childer&mdash;an'
+me heart cryin' like a child wid 'em."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen tried to comfort.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Maggie, such things will happen in the happiest married lives, and
+with the best of husbands. Jim will get over it&mdash;I suppose he has by
+this time; you say it isn't like to him to hold anger long&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But he hasn't!" Maggie broke forth afresh, and between mother and son,
+who immediately followed suit, a deluge threatened. "Wan of the
+stone-cutters' wives, Mrs. MacLoughanchan, he works in the same section
+as Jim, told me about it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"About what?" Aileen asked, hoping to get some continuity into Maggie's
+relation of her marital woes.</p>
+
+<p>"The fight at the sheds."</p>
+
+<p>"What fight?" Aileen put the question with a sickening fear at her
+heart.</p>
+
+<p>"The fight betwixt Jim an' Mr. Googe&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean, Maggie?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mane wot I say," Maggie replied with some show of spirit, for
+Aileen's tone of voice was peremptory; "Jim McCann, me husband, an' Mr.
+Googe had words in the shed&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What words?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just lave me time an' I'll tell you, Aileen. You be after catchin' me
+short up betwixt ivery word, an' more be token as if't was your own man,
+instid of mine, ye was worrittin' about. I said they had words, but by
+rights I should say it was Jim as had them. Jim was mad because the boss
+in Shed Number Two give Mr. Googe a piece of work he had been savin' an'
+promisin' him; an' Jim made a fuss about it, an' the boss said he'd give
+Jim another, but Jim wanted <i>that wan piece</i>; an' Jim threatened to get
+up a strike, an' if there's a strike Jim'll lave the place an' I'll lose
+me home&mdash;ochone&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Maggie." Aileen was trying to anticipate Maggie's tale, and in
+anticipation of the worst happening to Champney Googe, she lost her
+patience. She could not bear the suspense.</p>
+
+<p>"But Jim didn't sass the boss&mdash;he sassed Mr. Googe. 'T was this way, so
+Mrs. MacLoughanchan says&mdash;Jim said niver a word about the fight to me,
+but he said he would lave the place if they didn't strike&mdash;Mr. Googe
+says, 'McCann, the foreman says you're to begin on the two keystones at
+wanct&mdash;at wanct,' says he, repating it because Jim said niver a word.
+An' Jim fires up an' says under his breath:</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't take no orders from convic's,' says he.</p>
+
+<p>"'What did you say, McCann?' says Mr. Googe, steppin' up to him wid a
+glint in his eye that Jim didn't mind he was so mad; an' instid of
+repatin' it quiet-like, Jim says, steppin' outside the shed when he see
+the boss an' Mr. Googe followin' him, loud enough for the whole shed to
+hear:</p>
+
+<p>'"I don't take orders from no convic's&mdash;' an' then&mdash;" Maggie laid her
+hand suddenly over her heart as if in pain, '"Take that back, McCann,'
+says Mr. Googe&mdash;'I'll give you the wan chanct.'&mdash;An' then Jim swore an'
+said he'd see him an' himself in hell first, an' then, before Jim knew
+wot happened, Mr. Googe lit out wid his fist&mdash;an' Jim layin' out on the
+grass, for Mrs. MacLoughanchan says her man said Mr. Googe picked a soft
+place to drop him in; an' Mr. Googe helps Jim to his feet, an' holds out
+his hand an' says:</p>
+
+<p>"'Shake hands, McCann, an' we'll start afresh&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"But, oh, Aileen! Jim wouldn't, an' Mr. Googe turned away sad-like, an'
+then Jim comes home, an' widout a word to his wife, says if they don't
+strike, because there's a convic' an' a no union man a-workin'
+'longside of him in his section, he'll lave an' give up his job
+here&mdash;an' it's two hundred he's paid down out of his wages, an' me
+a-savin' from morn till night on me home&mdash;an' 't was to be me very own
+because Jim says no man alive can tell when he'll be dead in the
+quarries an' the sheds."</p>
+
+<p>She wept afresh and Billy was left unconsoled, for Maggie, wiping her
+eyes to look at Aileen and wonder at her silence, saw that she, too, was
+weeping; but the tears rolled silently one after another down her
+flushed cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"Och, Aileen, darlin'! Don't ye cry wid me&mdash;me burden's heavy enough
+widout the weight of wan of your tears&mdash;say something to comfort me
+heart about Jim."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't, Maggie, I think it's wicked for Jim to say such things to Mr.
+Googe&mdash;everybody knows what he has been through. And it would serve Jim
+McCann but right," she added hotly, "if the time should come when his
+Billy should have the same cruel words said to him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't&mdash;don't&mdash;for the love of the Mother of God, don't say such things,
+Aileen!" She caught up the sorely perplexed and troubled Billy, and
+buried her face in his red curls. "Don't for the sake of the mother I
+am, an' only a mother can know how the Mother of God himself felt wid
+her crucified Son an' the bitter words he had to hear&mdash;ye're not a
+mother, Aileen, an' so I won't lay it up too much against ye&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Aileen interrupted her with exceeding bitterness;</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not a mother, Maggie, and I never shall be."</p>
+
+<p>Maggie looked at her in absolute incomprehension. "I thought you was
+cryin' for me, an' Jim, an' all our prisent troubles, but I belave yer
+cryin' for&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. McCann stopped short; she was still staring at Aileen who suddenly
+lifted her brimming eyes to hers.&mdash;What Mrs. McCann read therein she
+never accurately defined, even to Jim; but, whatever it was, it caused a
+revulsion of feeling in Maggie's sorely bruised heart. She set Billy
+down on the floor without any ceremony, much to that little man's
+surprise, and throwing her arms around Aileen drew her close with a
+truly maternal caress.</p>
+
+<p>"Och, darlin'&mdash;darlin'&mdash;" she said in the voice with which she soothed
+Billy to sleep, "darlin' Aileen, an' has your puir heart been bearin'
+this all alone, an' me talkin' an' pratin' about me Jim to ye, an' how
+beautiful it is to be married!&mdash;'Deed an' it is, darlin', an' if Jim
+wasn't a man he'd be an angel sure; but it's not Maggie McCann that's
+wantin' her husband to be an angel yet, an' you must just forgive him,
+Aileen, an' you'll find yerself that no man's parfection, an' a woman
+has to be after takin' thim as they be&mdash;lovin' an' gentle be times, an'
+cross as Cain whin yer expectin' thim to be swateheartin' wid ye; an'
+wake when ye think they're after bein' rale giants; an' strong whin
+ye're least lookin' for it; an ginerous by spells an' spendthrifts wid
+their 'baccy, an' skinflints wid their own, an'&mdash;an'&mdash;just common,
+downright aggravatin', lovable men, darlin'&mdash;There now! Yer smilin'
+again like me old Aileen, an' bad cess to the wan that draws another
+tear from your swate Irish eyes." She kissed her heartily.</p>
+
+<p>In trying to make amends Mrs. McCann forgot her own woes; taking Billy
+in her arms, she went to the stove and set on the kettle.</p>
+
+<p>"It's four past, an' Jim'll be comin' in tired and worritted, so I'll
+put on an extra potater or two an' a good bit of bacon an' some pase.
+Stay wid us, Aileen."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Maggie, I can't; besides you and Jim will want the house to
+yourself till you get straightened out&mdash;and, Maggie, it <i>will</i>
+straighten out, don't you worry."</p>
+
+<p>"'Deed, an' I'll not waste me breath another time tellin' me troubles to
+a heart that's sorer than me own&mdash;good-bye, darlin', an' me best thanks
+for comin' up so prompt to me in me trouble. It's good to have a friend,
+Aileen, an' we've been friendly that long that it seems as if me own
+burden must be yours."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen smiled, leaning to kiss Billy as he clung to his mother's neck.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll come up whenever you want me and I can get away, Maggie, an' next
+time I'll bring you more comfort, I hope. Good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Och, darlin'!&mdash;T'row a kiss, Billy. Look, Aileen, at the kisses me
+b'y's t'rowin' yer!" she exclaimed delightedly; and Billy, in the
+exuberance of his joy that tears were things of the past, continued to
+throw kisses after the lady till she disappeared down the street.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>IX</h4>
+
+<p>Oh, but her heart was hot with indignation as she walked along the road,
+her eyes were stung with scalding tears, her thoughts turbulent and
+rebellious! Why must he suffer such indignities from a man like Jim
+McCann! How dared a man, that was a man, taunt another like that! The
+hand holding her sun umbrella gripped the handle tightly, and through
+set teeth she said to herself: "I hate them all&mdash;hate them!"</p>
+
+<p>The declining July sun was hot upon her; the road-bed, gleaming white
+with granite dust, blinded her. She looked about for some shelter where
+she could wait for the down car; there was none in sight, except the
+pines over by Father Honor&eacute;'s and the sisterhood house an eighth of a
+mile beyond. She continued to stand there in the glare and the
+heat&mdash;miserable, dejected, rebellious, until the tram halted for her.
+The car was an open one; there was no other occupant. As it sped down
+the curving road to the lake shore, the breeze, created by its movement,
+was more than grateful to her. She took off her shade-hat to enjoy the
+full benefit of it.</p>
+
+<p>At the switch, half way down, the tram waited for the up car. She could
+hear it coming from afar; the overhead wires vibrated to the extra power
+needed on the steep grade. It came in sight, crowded with workmen on
+their way home to Quarry End; the rear platform was black with them. It
+passed over the switch slowly, passed within two feet of her seat. She
+turned to look at it, wondering at its capacity for so many&mdash;and
+looked, instead, directly into the face of Champney Googe who stood on
+the lower step, his dinner-pail on his arm, the arm thrust through the
+guard.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of her, so near him that the breath of each might have been
+felt on the cheek of the other, he raised his workman's cap&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She saw the gray head, the sudden pallor on brow and cheek, the deep,
+slightly sunken eyes fixed upon her as if on her next move hung the
+owner's hope of eternal life&mdash;the eyes moved with the slowly moving car
+to focus <i>her</i>....</p>
+
+<p>To Aileen Armagh that face, changed as it was, was a glimpse of heaven
+on earth, and that heaven was reflected in the smile with which she
+greeted it. She did more:&mdash;unheeding the many faces that were turned
+towards her, she leaned from the car, her eyes following him, the
+love-light still radiating from her every feature, till he was carried
+beyond sight around the curving base of the Flamsted Hills.</p>
+
+<p>She heard nothing more externally, saw nothing more, until she found
+herself at The Corners instead of The Bow. The tumult within her
+rendered her deaf to the clanging of the electric gong, blind to the
+people who had entered along Main Street. Love, and love alone, was
+ringing its joy-bells in her soul till external sounds grew muffled,
+indistinct; until she became unaware of her surroundings. Love was
+knocking so loudly at her heart that the bounding blood pulsed rhythmic
+in her ears. Love was claiming her wholly, possessing her soul and
+body&mdash;but no longer that idealizing love of her young girlhood and
+womanhood. Rather it was that love which is akin to the divine rapture
+of maternity&mdash;the love that gives all, that sacrifices all, which
+demands nothing of the loved one save to love, to shield, to
+comfort&mdash;the love that makes of a true woman's breast not only a rest
+whereon a man, as well as his babe, may pillow a weary head, but a round
+tower of strength within which there beats a heart of high courage for
+him who goes forth to the daily battlefield of Life.</p>
+
+<p>She rode back to The Bow. Hannah called to her from the kitchen door
+when she saw her coming up the driveway:</p>
+
+<p>"Come round here a minute, Aileen."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Hannah?" Her voice trembled in spite of her effort to speak
+naturally. She prayed Hannah might not notice.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's a little broth I've made for Uncle Jo Quimber. I heard he wasn't
+very well, and I wish you'd take this down to him before supper. Tell
+him it won't hurt him and it's real strengthenin'."</p>
+
+<p>"I will go now, and&mdash;Hannah, don't mind if I don't come home to supper
+to-night; I'm not hungry; it's too hot to eat. If I want anything, I'll
+get a glass of milk in the pantry afterwards. If Mrs. Champney should
+want me, tell Octavius he'll find me down by the boat house."</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Champney ain't so well, to-night, the nurse says. I guess it's
+this heat is telling on her."</p>
+
+<p>"I should think it would&mdash;even I feel it." She was off again down the
+driveway, glad to be moving, for a strange restlessness was upon her.</p>
+
+<p>She found Joel Quimber sitting in his arm chair on the back porch of the
+little house belonging to his grand-niece. The old man looked feeble,
+exhausted and white; but his eyes brightened on seeing Aileen come round
+the corner of the porch.</p>
+
+<p>"What you got there, Aileen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Something good for you, Uncle Jo. Hannah made it for you on purpose."
+She showed him the broth.</p>
+
+<p>"Hannah's a good soul, I thank her kindly. Set down, Aileen, set down."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid you're too tired to have company to-night, Uncle Jo."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, no&mdash;you ain't comp'ny, Aileen, an' I ain't never too tired to
+have your comp'ny either."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and took her seat on the lower step, at his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Jest thinkin' of you, Aileen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Me, Uncle Jo? What put me into your head?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're in a good part of the time ef you did but know it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Uncle Jo, did they teach you how to flatter like that in the little
+old schoolhouse you showed me years ago at The Corners?"</p>
+
+<p>Old Joel Quimber chuckled weakly.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;not thar. A man, ef he's any kind of a man, don't have to learn his
+a-b-c before he can tell a good-lookin' gal she's in his head, or his
+heart&mdash;jest which you're a min' ter&mdash;most of the time. Yes, I was
+thinkin' of you, Aileen&mdash;you an' Champney."</p>
+
+<p>The color died out entirely from Aileen's cheeks, and then surged into
+them again till she put her hands to her face to cool their throbbing.
+She was wondering if Love had entered into some conspiracy with Fate
+to-day to keep this beloved name ever in her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"What about me and Mr. Googe?" She spoke in a low tone, her face was
+turned away from the old man to the meadows and the sheds in the
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>"I was a-thinkin' of this time fourteen year ago this very month. Champ
+an' me was walkin' up an' down the street, an' he was tellin' me 'bout
+that serenade, an' how you'd give him a rosebud with pepper in it&mdash;Lord,
+Aileen, you was a case, an' no mistake! An' I was thinkin', too, what
+Champ said to me thet very night. He was tellin' 'bout thet great
+hell-gate of New York, an' he said, 'You've got to swim with the rest or
+you'd go under, Uncle Jo,'&mdash;'go under,' them's his very words. An' I
+said, 'Like enough <i>you</i> would, Champ&mdash;I ain't ben thar&mdash;'"</p>
+
+<p>He paused a moment, shuffled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
+Then he spoke again, but in so low a tone that Aileen could barely catch
+the words:</p>
+
+<p>"An' he went under, Champ did&mdash;went under&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Aileen felt, without seeing, for her face was still turned to the
+meadows and the sheds, that the old man was leaning to her. Then she
+heard his voice in her ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Hev you seen him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Once, Uncle Jo."</p>
+
+<p>"You're his friend, ain't you, Aileen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." Her voice trembled.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess we're all his friends in Flamsted&mdash;I heered they fit in the shed,
+Champ an' Jim McCann&mdash;it hadn't ought 'a'-ben, Aileen&mdash;hadn't ought
+'a'-ben; but't warn't Champ's fault, you may bet your life on thet.
+Champ went under, but he didn't stay under&mdash;you remember thet, Aileen.
+An' I can't nowise blame him, now he's got his head above water agin,
+for not stan'in' it to have a man like McCann heave a stone at him jest
+ez he's makin' for shore. 'T ain't right, an' the old Judge use ter say,
+'What ain't right hadn't ought ter be.'"</p>
+
+<p>He waited a while to regain his scant breath; the long speech had
+exhausted it. At last he chuckled weakly to himself, "Champ's a devil
+of a feller&mdash;" he caught up his words as if he were saying too much;
+laid his hand on Aileen's head; turned her face half round to his and,
+leaning, whispered again in her ear:</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you go back on Champ, promise me thet, Aileen."</p>
+
+<p>She sprang to her feet and laid her hand in his.</p>
+
+<p>"I promise, Uncle Jo."</p>
+
+<p>"Thet's a good girl." He laid his other hand over hers. "You stick by
+Champ an' stick up for him too; he's good blood, an' ef he did go under
+for a spell, he ain't no worse 'n the rest, nor half ez bad; for Champ
+went in <i>of his own accord&mdash;of his own accord</i>," he repeated
+significantly, "an' don't you forget thet, Aileen! Thet takes grit;
+mebbe you wouldn't think so, but it does. Champ makes me think of them
+divers, I've read an' heerd about, thet dives for pearls. Some on 'em
+comes up all right, but some of 'em go under for good an' all. Champ
+dove mighty deep&mdash;he was diving for money, which he figured was his
+pearl, Aileen&mdash;an' he most went under for good an' all without gettin'
+what he wanted, an' now he's come to the surface agin, it's all ben wuth
+it&mdash;he's got the pearl, Aileen, but t'ain't the one he expected to
+get&mdash;he told me so t' other night. We set here him an' me, an'
+understan' one 'nother even when we don't talk&mdash;jest set an' smoke an'
+puff&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What pearl is it, Uncle Jo?" She whispered her question, half fearing,
+but wholly longing to hear the old man's answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess he'll tell you himself sometime, Aileen."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned back in his chair; he was tired. Aileen stooped and kissed him
+on the forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Goodnight, Uncle Jo," she said softly, "an' don't forget Hannah's
+broth or there'll be trouble at Champo."</p>
+
+<p>He roused himself again.</p>
+
+<p>"I heered from Tave to-day thet Mis' Champney is pretty low."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she feels this heat in her condition."</p>
+
+<p>"Like enough&mdash;like enough; guess we all do a little." Then he seemed to
+speak to himself:&mdash;"She was rough on Champ," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen left him with that name on his lips.</p>
+
+<p>On her return to Champ-au-Haut, she went down to the boat house to sit a
+while in its shade. The surface of the lake was motionless, but the
+reflection of the surrounding heights and shores was slightly veiled,
+owing to the heat-haze that quivered above it.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen was reliving the experience of the last seven years, the
+consummation of which was the knowledge that Champney Googe loved her.
+She was sure of this now. She had felt it intuitively during the
+twilight horror of that October day in The Gore. But how, when, where
+would he speak the releasing word&mdash;the supreme word of love that alone
+could atone, that alone could set her free? Would he ever speak
+it?&mdash;could he, after that avowal of the unreasoning passion for her
+which had taken possession of him seven years ago? And, moreover, what
+had not that avowal and its expression done to her?</p>
+
+<p>Her cheek paled at the thought:&mdash;he had kissed love into her for all
+time; and during all his years of imprisonment she had been held in
+thrall, as it were, to him and to his memory. All her rebellion at such
+thraldom, all her disgust at her weakness, as she termed it, all her
+hatred, engendered by the unpalatable method he had used to enthrall
+her, all her struggle to forget, to live again her life free of any
+entanglement with Champney Googe, all her endeavors to care for other
+men, had availed her naught. Love she must&mdash;and Champney Googe remained
+the object of that love. Father Honor&eacute;'s words gave her courage to live
+on&mdash;loving.</p>
+
+<p>"Champney&mdash;Champney," she said low to herself. She covered her face with
+her hands. The mere taking of his name on her lips eased the exaltation
+of her mood. She rejoiced that she had been able that afternoon to show
+him how it stood with her after these many years; for the look in his
+eyes, when he recognized her, told her that she alone could hold to his
+lips the cup that should quench his thirst. Oh, she would be to him what
+no other woman could ever have been, ever could be&mdash;no other! She knew
+this. He knew it. When, oh, when would the word be spoken?</p>
+
+<p>She withdrew her hands from her face, and looked up the lake to the
+sheds. The sun was nearing the horizon, and against its clear red light
+the gray buildings loomed large and dark.&mdash;And there was his place!</p>
+
+<p>She sprang to her feet, ready to act upon a sudden thought. If she were
+not needed at the house, she would go up to the sheds; perhaps she could
+walk off the restlessness that kept urging her to action. At any rate,
+she could find comfort in thinking of his presence there during the day;
+she would be for a time, at least, in his environment. She knew Jim
+McCann's section; she and Maggie had been there more than once to watch
+the progress of some great work.</p>
+
+<p>On the way up to the house she met Octavius.</p>
+
+<p>"Where you going, Aileen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Up to the house to see if I'm needed. If they don't want me, I'm going
+up to the sheds for a walk. They say they look like cathedrals this
+week, so many of the arches and pillars are ready to be shipped."</p>
+
+<p>"There's no need of your going up to the house. Mis' Champney ain't so
+well, and the nurse says she give orders for no one to come nigh
+her&mdash;for she's sent for Father Honor&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;! What can she want of him?" she asked in genuine
+surprise. "He hasn't been here for over a year."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, anyway, I've got my orders to fetch Father Honor&eacute;, and I was just
+asking Hannah where you were. I thought you might like to ride up with
+me; I've harnessed up in the surrey."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't drive way up, Tave; but I'd like you to put me down at the
+sheds. Maggie says it's really beautiful now in Shed Number Two. While
+I'm waiting for you, I can nose round all I want to and you can pick me
+up there on your way back. Just wait till I run up to the house to see
+the nurse myself, will you?" Octavius nodded.</p>
+
+<p>She ran up the steps of the terrace, and on her return found Octavius
+with the surrey at the front door.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen was silent during the first part of the drive. This was unusual
+when the two were together, and, after waiting a while, Octavius spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm wondering what she wants to see Father Honor&eacute; for."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to know myself."</p>
+
+<p>"It's got into my head, and somehow I can't get it out, that it's
+something to do with Champney&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Champney!&mdash;" the name slipped unawares through the red barrier of her
+lips; she bit them in vexation at their betrayal of her thought&mdash;"you
+mean Champney Googe?" She tried to speak indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>"Who else should I mean?" Octavius answered shortly. Aileen's ways at
+times, especially during these last few years when Champney Googe's name
+happened to be mentioned in her presence, were irritating in the extreme
+to the faithful factotum at Champ-au-Haut.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish, Aileen, you'd get over your grudge against him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What grudge?"</p>
+
+<p>"You can tell that best yourself&mdash;there's no use your playing off&mdash;I
+don't pretend to know anything about it, but I can put my finger on the
+very year and the very month you turned against Champney Googe who
+never had anything but a pleasant word for you ever since you was so
+high&mdash;" he indicated a few feet on his whipstock&mdash;"and first come to
+Champo. 'T ain't generous, Aileen; 't ain't like a true woman; 't ain't
+like you to go back on a man just because he has sinned. He stands in
+need of us all now, although they say at the sheds he can hold his own
+with the best of 'em&mdash;I heard the manager telling Emlie he'd be foreman
+of Shed Number Two if he kept on, for he's the only one can get on with
+all of the foreigners; guess Jim McCann knows&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by the year and the month?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean what I say. 'T was in August seven years ago&mdash;but p'r'aps you
+don't remember," he said. His sarcasm was intentional.</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply, but smiled to herself&mdash;a smile so exasperating to
+Octavius that he sulked a few minutes in silence. After another eighth
+of a mile, she spoke with apparent interest:</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you think Mrs. Champney wants to see Father Honor&eacute; about her
+nephew?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it looks that way. This afternoon, when you was out, she got me
+to move Mr. Louis' picture from the library to her room, and I had to
+hang it on the wall opposite her bed&mdash;" Octavius paused&mdash;"I believe she
+don't think she'll last long, and she don't look as if she could either.
+Last week she had Emlie up putting a codicil to her will. The nurse told
+me she was one of the witnesses, she and Emlie and the doctor&mdash;catch her
+letting me see any of her papers!" He reined into the road that led to
+the sheds.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope to God she'll do him justice this time," he spoke aloud, but
+evidently to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean, Tave?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean by giving him what's his by rights; that's what I mean." He
+spoke emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't be the man I think he is if he ever took a cent from
+her&mdash;not after what she did!" she exclaimed hotly.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius turned and looked at her in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the first time I ever heard you speak up for Champney Googe, an'
+I've known you since before you knew him. Well, it's better late than
+never." He spoke with a degree of satisfaction in his tone that did not
+escape Aileen. "Which door shall I leave you at?"</p>
+
+<p>"Round at the west&mdash;there are some people coming out now&mdash;here we are.
+You'll find me here when you come back."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be back within a half an hour; I telephoned Father Honor&eacute; I was
+coming up&mdash;you're sure you don't mind waiting here alone? I'll get back
+before dusk."</p>
+
+<p>"What should I be afraid of? I won't let the stones fall on me!"</p>
+
+<p>She sprang to the ground. Octavius turned the horse and drove off.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>On entering the shed she caught her breath in admiration. The level rays
+of the July sun shone into the gray interior illumining the farthest
+corners. Their glowing crimson flushed the granite to a scarcely
+perceptible rose. Portions of the noble arches, parts of the architrave,
+sculptured cornice and keystone, drums, pediments and capitals, stone
+mullions, here and there a huge monolith, caught the ethereal flush and
+transformed Shed Number Two into a temple of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>She sought the section near the doors, where Jim McCann worked, and sat
+down on one of the granite blocks&mdash;perhaps the very one on which <i>he</i>
+was at work. The fancy was a pleasing one. Now and then she laid her
+hand caressingly on the cool stone and smiled to herself. Some men and
+women were looking at the huge Macdonald machine over in the farthermost
+corner; one by one they passed out at the east door&mdash;at last she was
+alone with her loving thoughts in this cool sanctuary of industry.</p>
+
+<p>She noticed a chisel lying behind the stone on which she sat; she turned
+and picked it up. She looked about for a hammer; she wanted to try her
+puny strength on what Champney Googe manipulated with muscles hardened
+by years of breaking stones&mdash;that thought was no longer a nightmare to
+her&mdash;but she saw none. The sun sank below the horizon; the afterglow
+promised to be both long and beautiful. After a time she looked out
+across the meadows&mdash;a man was crossing them; evidently he had just left
+the tram, for she heard the buzzing of the wires in the still air. He
+was coming towards the sheds. His form showed black against the western
+sky. Another moment&mdash;and Aileen knew him to be Champney Googe.</p>
+
+<p>She sat there motionless, the chisel in her hand, her face turned to the
+west and the man rapidly approaching Shed Number Two&mdash;a moment more, he
+was within the doors, and, evidently in haste, sought his section; then
+he saw her for the first time. He stopped short. There was a cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen&mdash;Aileen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She rose to her feet. With one stride he stood before her, leaning to
+look long into her eyes which never wavered while he read in them her
+woman's fealty to her love for him.</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hands, and she placed hers within them. He spoke, and
+the voice was a prayer:</p>
+
+<p>"My wife, Aileen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My husband&mdash;" she answered, and the words were a <i>Te Deum</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>X</h4>
+
+<p>Octavius drew up near the shed and handed the reins to Father Honor&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"If you'll just hold the mare a minute, I'll step inside and look for
+Aileen."</p>
+
+<p>He disappeared in the darkening entrance, but was back again almost
+immediately. Father Honor&eacute; saw at once from his face that something
+unusual had taken place. He feared an accident.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Aileen all right?" he asked anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius nodded. He got into the surrey; the hands that took the reins
+shook visibly. He drove on in silence for a few minutes. He was
+struggling for control of his emotion; for the truth is Octavius wanted
+to cry; and when a man wants to cry and must not, the result is
+inarticulateness and a painful contortion of every feature. Father
+Honor&eacute;, recognizing this fact, waited. Octavius swallowed hard and many
+times before he could speak; even then his speech was broken:</p>
+
+<p>"She's in there&mdash;all right&mdash;but Champney Googe is with her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute;'s voice rang out with no uncertain sound. It was a
+heartening thing to hear, and helped powerfully to restore to Octavius
+his usual poise. He turned to look at his companion and saw every
+feature alive with a great joy. Suddenly the scales fell from this man
+of Maine's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean it!" he exclaimed in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but I <i>do</i>," replied Father Honor&eacute; joyfully and emphatically....</p>
+
+<p>"Father Honor&eacute;," he said after a time in which both men were busy with
+their thoughts, "I ain't much on expressing what I feel, but I want to
+tell you&mdash;for you'll understand&mdash;that when I come out of that shed I'd
+had a vision,"&mdash;he paused,&mdash;"a revelation;" the tears were beginning to
+roll down his cheeks; his lips were trembling; "we don't have to go back
+two thousand years to get one, either&mdash;I saw what this world's got to be
+saved by if it's saved at all&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What was it, Mr. Buzzby?" Father Honor&eacute; spoke in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw a vision of human love that was forgiving, and loving, and saving
+by nothing but love, like the divine love of the Christ you preach
+about&mdash;Father Honor&eacute;, I saw Aileen Armagh sitting on a block of granite
+and Champney Googe kneeling before her, his head in the very dust at her
+feet&mdash;and she raising it with her two arms&mdash;and her face was like an
+angel's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The two men drove on in silence to Champ-au-Haut.</p>
+
+<p>The priest was shown at once to Mrs. Champney's room. He had not seen
+her for over a year and was prepared for a great change; but the actual
+impression of her condition, as she lay motionless on the bed, was a
+shock. His practised eye told him that the Inevitable was already on the
+threshold, demanding entrance. He turned to the nurse with a look of
+inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor will be here in a few minutes; I have telephoned for him,"
+she said low in answer. She bent over the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Champney, Father Honor&eacute; is here; you wished to see him."</p>
+
+<p>The eyes opened; there was still mental clarity in their outlook. Father
+Honor&eacute; stepped to the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Champney?" he asked gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Her articulation was indistinct but intelligible.</p>
+
+<p>"In what way?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him unwaveringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Is&mdash;she going&mdash;to marry&mdash;him?"</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute; read her thought and wondered how best to answer. He was
+of the opinion that she would remember Aileen in her will. The girl had
+been for years so faithful and, in a way, Mrs. Champney cared for her.
+Humanly speaking, he dreaded, by his answer, to endanger the prospect of
+the assurance to Aileen of a sum that would place her beyond want and
+the need to work for any one's support but her own in the future. But as
+he could not know what answer might or might not affect Aileen's future,
+he decided to speak the whole truth&mdash;let come what might.</p>
+
+<p>"I sincerely hope so," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Do&mdash;you know?" with a slight emphasis on the "know."</p>
+
+<p>"I know they love each other&mdash;have loved each other for many years."</p>
+
+<p>"If she does&mdash;she&mdash;won't get anything from me&mdash;you tell her&mdash;so."</p>
+
+<p>"That will make no difference to Aileen, Mrs. Champney. Love outweighs
+all else with her."</p>
+
+<p>She continued to look at him unwaveringly.</p>
+
+<p>"Love&mdash;fools&mdash;" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>But Father Honor&eacute; caught the words, and the priest's manhood asserted
+itself in the face of dissolution and this blasphemy.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;rather it is wisdom for them to love; it is ordained of God that
+human beings should love; I wish them joy. May I not tell them that you,
+too, wish them joy, Mrs. Champney? Aileen has been faithful to you, and
+your nephew never wronged you personally. Will you not be reconciled to
+him?" he pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"But why?" He spoke very gently, almost in appeal.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she repeated tonelessly, her eyes still fixed on his face,
+"because he is&mdash;hers&mdash;Aurora Googe's&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She paused for another effort. Her eyes turned at last to the portrait
+of Louis Champney on the wall at the foot of her bed.</p>
+
+<p>"She took all his love&mdash;all&mdash;all his love&mdash;and he was my husband&mdash;I
+loved my husband&mdash;But you don't know&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What, Mrs. Champney? Let me help you, if I can."</p>
+
+<p>"No help&mdash;I loved my husband&mdash;he used to lie here&mdash;by my side&mdash;on this
+bed&mdash;and cry out&mdash;in his sleep for her&mdash;lie here&mdash;by my side in&mdash;the
+night&mdash;and stretch out his arms&mdash;for her&mdash;not me&mdash;not for me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were still fixed on Louis Champney's face. Suddenly the lids
+drooped; she grew drowsy, but continued to murmur, incoherently at
+first, then inarticulately.</p>
+
+<p>The nurse stepped to his side. Father Honor&eacute;'s eyes dwelt pityingly for
+a moment on this deathbed; then he turned and left the room, marvelling
+at the differentiated expression in this life of that which we name
+Love.</p>
+
+<p>Octavius was waiting for him in the lower hall.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see her?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; but to no purpose; her life has been lived, Mr. Buzzby; nothing
+can affect it now."</p>
+
+<p>"You don't mean she's gone?" Octavius started at the sound of his own
+voice; it seemed to echo through the house.</p>
+
+<p>"No; but it is, I believe, only a question of an hour at most."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd better drive up then for Aileen; she ought to know&mdash;ought to be
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Believe me, it would be useless, Mr. Buzzby. Those two belong to life,
+not to death&mdash;leave them alone together; and leave her there above, to
+her Maker and the infinite mercy of His Son."</p>
+
+<p>"Amen," said Octavius Buzzby solemnly; but his thought was with those
+whom he had seen leave Champ-au-Haut through the same outward-opening
+portal that was now set wide for its mistress: the old Judge, and his
+son, Louis&mdash;the last Champney.</p>
+
+<p>He accompanied Father Honor&eacute; to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"No farther, Mr. Buzzby," he said, when Octavius insisted on driving him
+home. "Your place is here. I shall take the tram as usual at The Bow."</p>
+
+<p>They shook hands without further speech. In the deepening twilight
+Octavius watched him down the driveway. Despite his sixty years he
+walked with the elastic step of young manhood.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>XI</h4>
+
+
+<p>"Unworthy&mdash;unworthy!" was Champney Googe's cry, as he knelt before
+Aileen in an access of shame and contrition in the presence of such a
+revelation of woman's love.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+<a name="illus4" id="illus4"></a>
+<img src="images/illus4.jpg" alt=""/>
+</div>
+
+<h3>"'Unworthy&mdash;unworthy!' was Champney Googe's cry, as he knelt before Aileen"</h3>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Aileen lifted his head, laid her arms around his neck, drew him by her
+young strength and her gentle compelling words to a seat beside her on
+the granite block. She kept her arms about him.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Champney, not unworthy; but worthy, worthy of it all&mdash;all that life
+can give you in compensation for those seven years. We'll put it all
+behind us; we'll live in the present and in hope of a blessed future.
+Take heart, my husband&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The bowed shoulders heaved beneath her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"So little to offer&mdash;so little&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"'So little'!" she exclaimed; "and is it 'little' you call your love for
+me? Is it 'little' that I'm to have a home&mdash;at last&mdash;of my own? Is it
+'little' that the husband I love is going out of it and coming home to
+it in his daily work, and my heart going out to him both ways at once?
+And is it 'little' you call the gift of a mother to her who is
+motherless&mdash;" her voice faltered.</p>
+
+<p>Champney caught her in his arms; his tears fell upon the dark head.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a coward, Aileen, and you are just like our Father Honor&eacute;; but I
+<i>will</i> put all behind me. I <i>will</i> not regret. I <i>will</i> work out my own
+salvation here in my native place, among my own and among strangers. I
+vow here I <i>will</i>, God helping me, if only in thankfulness for the two
+hearts that are mine...."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The afterglow faded from the western heavens. The twilight came on
+apace. The two still sat there in the darkening shed, at times
+unburdening their over-charged hearts; at others each rested heart and
+body and soul in the presence of the other, and both were aware of the
+calming influence of the dim and silent shed.</p>
+
+<p>"How did you happen to come down here just to-night, and after work hours
+too, Champney?" she asked, curious to know the how and the why of this
+meeting.</p>
+
+<p>"I came down for my second chisel. I remembered when I got home that it
+needed sharpening and I could not do without it to-morrow morning. Of
+course the machine shop was closed, so I thought I'd try my hand at it
+on the grindstone up home this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Then is this it?" she exclaimed, picking up the chisel from the block.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, that's mine." He held out his hand for it.</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed, you're not going to have it&mdash;not this one! I'll buy you
+another, but this is mine. Wasn't I holding it in my hand and thinking
+of you when I saw you coming over the meadows?"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep it&mdash;and I'll keep something I have of yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Of mine? Where did you get anything of mine? Surely it isn't the
+peppered rosebud?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no. I've had it nearly seven years."</p>
+
+<p>"Seven years!" She exclaimed in genuine surprise. "And whatever have you
+had of mine I'd like to know that has kept seven years? It's neither
+silver nor gold&mdash;for I've little of either; not that silver or gold can
+make a man happy," she added quickly, fearing he might be sensitive to
+her speech.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I've learned that, Aileen, thank God!"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it then?&mdash;tell me quick."</p>
+
+<p>He thrust his hand into the workman's blouse and drew forth a small
+package, wrapped in oiled silk and sewed to a cord that was round his
+neck. He opened it.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen bent to examine it, her eyes straining in the increasing dusk.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's never&mdash;it's not my handkerchief!&mdash;Champney!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yours, Aileen&mdash;that night in all the horror and despair, I heard
+something in your voice that told me you&mdash;didn't hate me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Champney!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've kept it ever since&mdash;I asked permission to take it in with
+me?&mdash;I mean into my cell. They granted it. It was with me night and
+day&mdash;my head lay on it at night; I got my first sleep so&mdash;and it went
+with me to work during the day. It's been kissed clean thin till it's
+mere gossamer; it helped, that and the work, to save my brain&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She caught handkerchief and hand in both hers and pressed her lips to
+them again and again.</p>
+
+<p>"And now I'm going to keep it, after you're mine in the sight of man, as
+you are now before God; put it away and keep it for&mdash;" He stopped short.</p>
+
+<p>"For whom?" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>He drew her close to him&mdash;closer and more near.</p>
+
+<p>"Aileen, my beloved," his voice was earnestly joyful, "I am hoping for
+the blessing of children&mdash;are you?&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Except for you, my arms will feel empty for them till they come&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my wife&mdash;my true wife!&mdash;now I can tell you all!" he said, and the
+earnest note was lost in purest joy. He whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"You know, dear, I'm but half a man, and must remain such. I am no
+citizen, have no citizen's rights, can never vote&mdash;have no voice in all
+that appeals to manhood&mdash;my country&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know&mdash;I know&mdash;" she murmured pityingly.</p>
+
+<p>"And so I used to think there in my cell at night when I kissed the
+little handkerchief&mdash;Please God, if Aileen still loves me when I get
+out, if she in her loving mercy will forgive to the extent that she will
+be my wife, then it may be that she will bestow on me the blessing of a
+child&mdash;a boy who will one day stand among men as his father never can
+again, who will possess the full rights of citizenship; in him I may
+live again as a man&mdash;but only so."</p>
+
+<p>"Please God it may be so."</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>They walked slowly homewards to The Bow in the clear warm dark of the
+midsummer-night. They had much to say to each other, and often they
+lingered on the way. They lingered again when they came to the gate by
+the paddock in the lane.</p>
+
+<p>Aileen looked towards the house. A light was burning in Mrs. Champney's
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid Mrs. Champney must be much worse. Tave never would have
+forgotten me if he hadn't received some telephone message while he was
+at Father Honor&eacute;'s. But the nurse said there was nothing I could do when
+I left with Tave&mdash;but oh, I'm so glad he didn't stop! I <i>must</i> go in
+now, Champney," she said decidedly. But he still held her two hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Champney, have you ever thought your aunt might remember
+you&mdash;for the wrong she did you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; and if she should, I never would take a cent of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm so glad&mdash;so glad!" She squeezed both his hands right hard.</p>
+
+<p>He read her thought and smiled to himself; he was glad that in this he
+had not disappointed her.</p>
+
+<p>"But there's one thing I wish she would do&mdash;poor&mdash;<i>poor</i> Aunt Meda&mdash;" he
+glanced up at the light in the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, 'poor,' Champney&mdash;I know." She was nodding emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish she would leave enough to Mr. Van Ostend to repay with interest
+what he repaid for me to the Company; it would be only just, for, work
+as I may, I can never hope to do that&mdash;and I long so to do it&mdash;no
+workman could do it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She interrupted gayly: "Oh, but you've a working-woman by your side!"
+She snatched away her small hands&mdash;for she belonged to the small people
+of the earth. "See, Champney, the two hands! I can work, and I'm not
+afraid of it. I can earn a lot to help with&mdash;and I shall. There's my
+cooking, and singing, and embroidery&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled again in the dark at her enthusiasm&mdash;it was so like her!</p>
+
+<p>"And I'll lift the care from our mother too,&mdash;and you're not to fret
+your dear soul about the Van Ostend money&mdash;if one can't do it, surely
+two can with God's blessing. Now I <i>must</i> go in&mdash;and you may give me
+another kiss for I've been on starvation diet these last seven
+years&mdash;only one&mdash;oh, Champney!"...</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>The dim light continued to burn in the upper chamber at Champ-au-Haut
+until the morning; for before Champney and Aileen left the shed, the
+Inevitable had already crossed the threshold of that chamber&mdash;and the
+dim light burned on to keep him company....</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>A month later, when Almeda Champney's will was admitted to probate and
+its contents made public, it was found that there were but six
+bequests&mdash;one of which was contained in the codicil&mdash;namely:</p>
+
+<p>To Octavius Buzzby the oil portrait of Louis Champney.</p>
+
+<p>To Ann and Hannah one thousand dollars each in recognition of faithful
+service for thirty-seven years.</p>
+
+<p>To Aileen Armagh (so read the codicil) a like sum <i>provided she did not
+marry Champney Googe</i>.</p>
+
+<p>One half of the remainder of the estate, real and personal, was
+bequeathed to Henry Van Ostend; the other half, in trust, to his
+daughter, Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend.</p>
+
+<p>The instrument bore the date of Champney Googe's commitment.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="The_Last_Word" id="The_Last_Word"></a>The Last Word</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h4>I</h4>
+
+
+<p>It is the day after Flamsted's first municipal election; after twenty
+years of progress it has attained to proud citizenship. The community,
+now amounting to twelve thousand, has spent all its surplus energy in
+municipal electioneering delirium; there were four candidates in the
+field for mayor and party spirit ran high. On this bright May morning of
+1910, the streets are practically deserted, whereas yesterday they were
+filled with shouting throngs. The banners are still flung across the
+main street; a light breeze lifts them into prominence and with them the
+name of the successful candidate they bear&mdash;Luigi Poggi.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel, as a result of continued oratory in favor of his
+son-in-law's candidacy, is laid up at home with an attack of laryngitis;
+but he has strength left to whisper to Elmer Wiggins who has come up to
+see him:</p>
+
+<p>"Yesterday, after twenty years of solid work, Flamsted entered upon its
+industrial majority through the throes of civic travail," a mixture of
+metaphors that Mr. Wiggins ignores in his joy at the result of the
+election; for Mr. Wiggins has been hedging with his New England
+conscience and fearing, as a consequence, punishment in
+disappointmenting election results. He wavered, in casting his vote,
+between the two principal candidates, young Emlie, Lawyer Emlie's son,
+and Luigi Poggi.</p>
+
+<p>As a Flamstedite in good and regular standing, he knew he ought to vote
+for his own, Emlie, instead of a foreigner. But, he desired above all
+things to see Luigi Poggi, his friend, the most popular merchant and
+keenest man of affairs in the town, the first mayor of the city of
+Flamsted. Torn between his duty and the demands of his heart, he
+compromised by starting a Poggi propaganda, that was carried on over his
+counter and behind the mixing-screen, with every customer whether for
+pills or soda water. Then, on the decisive day, he entered the booth and
+voted a straight Emlie ticket!! So much for the secret ballot.</p>
+
+<p>He shook the Colonel's hand right heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I'd come up to congratulate personally both you and the city,
+and talk things over in a general way, Colonel; sorry to find you so
+used up, but in a good cause."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel beamed.</p>
+
+<p>"A matter of a day or two of rest. You did good work, Mr. Wiggins, good
+work," he whispered; "you'd make a good parliamentary whip&mdash;'Gad, my
+voice is gone!&mdash;but as you say, in a good cause&mdash;a good cause&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No better on earth," Mr. Wiggins responded enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel was magnanimous; he forbore to whisper one word in reminder
+of the old-time pessimism that twenty years ago held the small-headed
+man of Maine in such dubious thrall.</p>
+
+<p>"It was each man's vote that told&mdash;yours, and mine&mdash;" he whispered
+again, nodding understandingly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wiggins at once changed the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you exert yourself, Colonel; let me do the talking&mdash;for a
+change," he added with a twinkle in his eyes. The Colonel caught his
+meaning and threw back his head for a hearty laugh, but failed to make a
+sound.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Van Ostend came up on the train last night, just in time to see the
+fireworks, they say," said Mr. Wiggins. "Yes," he went on in answer to a
+question he read in the Colonel's eyes, "came up to see about the Champo
+property. Emlie told me this morning. Mr. Van Ostend and Tave and Father
+Honor&eacute; are up there now; I saw the automobile standing in the driveway
+as I came up on the car. Guess Tave has run the place about as long as
+he wants to alone. He's getting on in years like the rest of us, and
+don't want so much responsibility."</p>
+
+<p>"Does Emlie know anything?" whispered the Colonel eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing definite; they're going to talk it over to-day; but he had some
+idea about the disposition of the estate, I think, from what he said."</p>
+
+<p>The Colonel motioned with his lips: "Tell me."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wiggins proceeded to give the Colonel the desired information.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>While this one-sided conversation was taking place, Henry Van Ostend was
+standing on the terrace at Champ-au-Haut, discussing with Father Honor&eacute;
+and Octavius Buzzby the best method of investing the increasing revenues
+of the large estate, vacant, except for its faithful factotum and the
+care-takers, Ann and Hannah, during the seven years that have passed
+since Mrs. Champney's death.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Googe had undoubtedly a perfect right to dispute this will, Father
+Honor&eacute;," he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"But he would never have done it; I know such a thing could never have
+occurred to him."</p>
+
+<p>"That does not alter the facts of this rather peculiar case. Mr. Buzzby
+knows that, up to this date, my daughter and I have never availed
+ourselves of any rights in this estate; and he has managed it so wisely
+alone, during these last seven years, that now he no longer wishes to be
+responsible for the investment of its constantly increasing revenues. I
+shall never consider this estate mine&mdash;will or no will." He spoke
+emphatically. "Law is one thing, but a right attitude, where property is
+concerned, towards one's neighbor is quite another."</p>
+
+<p>He looked to right and left of the terrace, and included in his glance
+many acres of the noble estate. Father Honor&eacute;, watching him, suddenly
+recalled that evening in the financier's own house when the Law was
+quoted as "fundamental"&mdash;and he smiled to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Van Ostend faced the two men.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think it would do any good for me to approach him on the subject
+of setting apart that portion of the personal estate, and its increase
+in the last seven years, which Mrs. Champney inherited from her father,
+Mr. Googe's grandfather, for his children&mdash;that is if he won't take it
+himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>The two men spoke as one; the negative was strongly emphatic.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Van Ostend," Octavius Buzzby spoke with suppressed excitement, "if
+I may make bold, who has lived here on this place and known its owners
+for forty years, to give you a piece of advice, I'd like to give it."</p>
+
+<p>"I want all I can get, Mr. Buzzby; it will help me to see my way in this
+matter."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'm going to ask you to let bygones be bygones, and not say one
+word to Mr. Googe about this property. He begun seven years ago in the
+sheds and has worked his way up to foreman this last year, and if you
+was to propose to him what you have to us, it would rake up the past,
+sir&mdash;a past that's now in its grave, thank God! Champney&mdash;I ask your
+pardon&mdash;Mr. Googe wouldn't touch a penny of it more 'n he'd touch
+carrion. I <i>know</i> this; nor he wouldn't have his boy touch it either. I
+ain't saying he don't appreciate the good money does, for he's told me
+so; but for himself&mdash;well, sir, I think you know what I mean: he's
+through with what is just money. He's a man, is Champney Googe, and he's
+living his life in a way that makes the almighty dollar look pretty
+small in comparison with it&mdash;Father Honor&eacute;, you know this as well as I
+do."</p>
+
+<p>The priest nodded gravely in the affirmative.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me something of his life, Father Honor&eacute;," said Mr. Van Ostend;
+"you know the degree of respect I have always had for him ever since he
+took his punishment like a man&mdash;and you and I were both on the wrong
+track," he added with a meaning smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't quite know what to say," replied his friend. "It isn't anything
+I can point to and say he has done this or that, because he gets beneath
+the surface, as you might say, and works there. But I do know that where
+there is an element of strife among the men, there you will find him as
+peacemaker&mdash;he has a wonderful way with them, but it is indefinable. We
+don't know all he does, for he never speaks of it, only every once in a
+while something leaks out. I know that where there is a sickbed and a
+quarryman on it, there you will find Champney Googe as watcher after his
+day's work&mdash;and tender in his ministrations as a woman. I know that when
+sickness continues and the family are dependent on the fund, Champney
+Googe works many a night overtime and gives his extra pay to help out. I
+know, too, that when a strike threatens, he, who is now in the union
+because he is convinced he can help best there, is the balance-wheel,
+and prevents radical unreason and its results. There's trouble brewing
+there now&mdash;about the automatic bush hammer&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I have heard of it."</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;And Jim McCann is proving intractable. Mr. Googe is at work with him,
+and hopes to bring him round to a just point of view. And I know,
+moreover, that when there is a crime committed and a criminal to be
+dealt with, that criminal finds in the new foreman of Shed Number Two a
+friend who, without condoning the crime, stands by him as a human being.
+I know that out of his own deep experience he is able to reach out to
+other men in need, as few can. In all this his wife is his helpmate, his
+mother his inspiration.&mdash;What more can I say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," said Henry Van Ostend gravely. "He has two children I hear&mdash;a
+boy and a girl. I should like to see her who was the little Aileen of
+twenty years ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you may," said Father Honor&eacute; cordially; "yes, he has two lovely
+children, Honor&eacute;, now in his first knickerbockers, is my namesake&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Octavius interrupted him, smiling significantly:</p>
+
+<p>"He's something more than Father Honor&eacute;'s namesake, Mr. Van Ostend, he's
+his shadow when he is with him. The men have a little joke among
+themselves whenever they see the two together, and that's pretty often;
+they say Father Honor&eacute;'s shadow will never grow less till little Honor&eacute;
+reaches his full growth."</p>
+
+<p>The priest smiled. "He and I are very, very close friends," was all he
+permitted himself to say, but the other men read far more than that into
+his words.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Van Ostend looked thoughtful. He considered with himself for a few
+minutes; then he spoke, weighing his words:</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you both; I have solved my difficulty with your help. You have
+spoken frankly to me, and shown me this matter in a different light; I
+may speak as frankly to you, as to Mr. Googe's closest friends. The
+truth is, neither my daughter nor myself can appropriate this money to
+ourselves&mdash;we both feel that it does not belong to us, <i>in the
+circumstances</i>. I should like you both to tell Mr. Googe for me, that
+out of the funds accruing to the estate from his grandfather's money, I
+will take for my share the hundred thousand dollars I repaid to the
+Quarries Company thirteen years ago&mdash;you know what I mean&mdash;and the
+interest on the same for those six years. Mr. Googe will understand that
+this is done in settlement of a mere business account&mdash;and he will
+understand it as between man and man. I think it will satisfy him.</p>
+
+<p>"I have determined since talking with you, although the scheme has been
+long in my mind and I have spoken to Mr. Emlie about it, to apply the
+remainder of the estate for the benefit of the quarrymen, the
+stone-cutters, their families and, incidentally, the city of Flamsted.
+My plans are, of course, indefinite; I cannot give them in detail, not
+having had time to think them out; but I may say that this house will be
+eventually a home for men disabled in the quarries or sheds. The plan
+will develop further in the executing of it. You, Father Honor&eacute;, you and
+Mr. Buzzby, Mr. Googe, and Mr. Emlie will be constituted a Board of
+Overseers&mdash;I know that in your hands the work will be advanced, and, I
+hope, prospered to the benefit of this generation and succeeding ones."</p>
+
+<p>Octavius Buzzby grasped his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Van Ostend, I wish old Judge Champney was living to hear this! He'd
+approve, Mr. Van Ostend, he'd approve of it all&mdash;and Mr. Louis too."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, Mr. Buzzby, for these words; they do me good. And now," he
+said, turning to Father Honor&eacute;, "I want very much to see Mr. Googe&mdash;now
+that this business is settled. I have wanted to see him many times
+during these last six years, but I felt&mdash;I feared he might consider my
+visiting him an intrusion&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all&mdash;not at all; this simply shows me that you don't as yet know
+the real Mr. Googe. He will be glad to see you at any time."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I'd like to see him in the shed."</p>
+
+<p>"No reason in the world why you shouldn't; he is one of the most
+accessible men at all times and seasons."</p>
+
+<p>"Supposing, then, you ride up with me in the automobile?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I will; shall we go up this forenoon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I should like to go now. Mr. Buzzby, I shall be back this
+afternoon for a talk with you. I want to make some definite arrangement
+for Ann and Hannah."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll be here."</p>
+
+<p>The two walked together to the driveway, and shortly the mellow note of
+the great Panhard's horn sounded, as the automobile rounded the curve of
+The Bow and sped away to the north shore highway and the sheds.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Late that afternoon Aileen, with her baby daughter, Aurora, in her arms,
+was standing on the porch watching for her husband's return. The usual
+hour for his home-coming had long passed. She began to fear that the
+threatened trouble in the sheds, on account of the attempted
+introduction of the automatic bush hammer, might have come to a crisis.
+At last, however, she saw him leave the car and cross the bridge over
+the Rothel. His step was quick and firm. She waved her hand to him; a
+swing of his cap answered her. Then little Aurora's tiny fist was
+manipulated by her mother to produce a baby form of welcome.</p>
+
+<p>Champney sprang up the steps two at a time, and for a moment the little
+wife and baby Aurora disappeared in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Champney, I'm so thankful you've come! I knew just by the way you
+came over the bridge that things were going better at the sheds. You are
+so late I began to get worried. Come, supper's waiting."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a minute, Aileen&mdash;Mother&mdash;" he called through the hall, "come here
+a minute, please."</p>
+
+<p>Aurora Googe came quickly at that ever welcome call. Her face was even
+more beautiful than formerly, for great joy and peace irradiated every
+feature.</p>
+
+<p>"Where's Honor&eacute;?" he said abruptly, looking about for his boy who was
+generally the first to run as far as the bridge to greet him. His wife
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>"He and Billy went with Father Honor&eacute; as far as the power-house; he'll
+be back soon with Billy. Sister Ste. Croix went by a few minutes ago,
+and I told her to hurry them home.&mdash;What's the good news, Champney? Tell
+me quick&mdash;I can't wait to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>Champney smiled down at the eager face looking up to him; her chin was
+resting on her baby's head.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Van Ostend has been in the sheds to-day&mdash;and I've had a long talk
+with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Champney!"</p>
+
+<p>Both women exclaimed at the same time, and their faces reflected the joy
+that shone in the eyes of the man they loved with a love bordering on
+worship.</p>
+
+<p>Champney nodded. "Yes, and so satisfactory&mdash;" he drew a long breath; "I
+have so much to tell it will take half the evening. He wishes to 'pay
+his respects,' so he says, to my wife and mother, if convenient for the
+ladies to-morrow&mdash;how is it?" He looked with a smile first into the gray
+eyes and then into the dark ones. In the latter he read silent pleased
+consent; but Aileen's danced for joy as she answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Convenient! So convenient, that he'll get the surprise of his life from
+me, anyhow; he really must be made to realize that I am his debtor for
+the rest of my days&mdash;don't I owe the 'one man on earth for me' to him?
+for would I have ever seen Flamsted but for him? And have I ever
+forgotten the roses he dropped into the skirt of my dress twenty-one
+years ago this very month when I sang the Sunday night song for him at
+the Vaudeville? Twenty-one years! Goodness, but it makes me feel old,
+mother!"</p>
+
+<p>Aurora Googe smiled indulgently on her daughter, for, at times, Aileen,
+not only in ways, but looks, was still like the child of twelve.</p>
+
+<p>Champney grew suddenly grave.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you realize, Aileen, that this meeting to-day in the shed is the
+first in which we three, Father Honor&eacute;, Mr. Van Ostend, and I, have ever
+been together under one roof since that night twenty-one years ago when
+I first saw you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that doesn't seem possible&mdash;but it <i>is</i> so, isn't it? Wasn't that
+strange!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, and no," said Champney, looking at his mother. "I thought of our
+first meeting one another at the Vaudeville, as we three stood there
+together in the shed looking upwards to The Gore; and Father Honor&eacute; told
+me afterward that he was thinking of that same thing. We both wondered
+if Mr. Van Ostend recalled that evening, and the fact of our first
+acquaintance, although unknown to one another."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder&mdash;" said Aileen, musingly.</p>
+
+<p>Champney spoke abruptly again; there was a note of uneasiness in his
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder what keeps Honor&eacute;&mdash;I'll just run up the road and see if he's
+coming. If he isn't, I will go on till I meet the boys. I wish," he
+added wistfully, "that McCann felt as kindly to me as Billy does to my
+son; I am beginning to think that old grudge of his against me will
+never yield, not even to time;&mdash;I'll be back in a few minutes."</p>
+
+<p>Aileen watched him out of sight; then she turned to Aurora Googe.</p>
+
+<p>"We are blest in this turn of affairs, aren't we, mother? This meeting
+is the one thing Champney has been dreading&mdash;and yet longing for. I'm
+glad it's over."</p>
+
+<p>"So am I; and I am inclined to think Father Honor&eacute; brought it about; if
+you remember, he said nothing about Mr. Van Ostend's being here when he
+stopped just now."</p>
+
+<p>"So he didn't!" Aileen spoke in some surprise; then she added with a
+joyous laugh: "Oh, that dear man is sly&mdash;bless him!"&mdash;But the tears
+dimmed her eyes.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h4>II</h4>
+
+
+<p>"Go straight home with Honor&eacute;, Billy, as straight as ever you can," said
+Father Honor&eacute; to eight-year-old Billy McCann who for the past year had
+constituted himself protector of five-year-old Honor&eacute; Googe; "I'll watch
+you around the power-house."</p>
+
+<p>Little Honor&eacute; reached up with both arms for the usual parting from the
+man he adored. The priest caught him up, kissed him heartily, and set
+him down again with the added injunction to "trot home."</p>
+
+<p>The two little boys ran hand in hand down the road. Father Honor&eacute;
+watched them till the power-house shut them from sight; then he waited
+for their reappearance at the other corner where the road curves
+downward to the highroad. He never allowed Honor&eacute; to go alone over the
+piece of road between the point where he was standing and the
+power-house, for the reason that it bordered one of the steepest and
+roughest ledges in The Gore; a careless step would be sure to send so
+small a child rolling down the rough surface. But beyond the
+power-house, the ledges fell away very gradually to the lowest slopes
+where stood, one among many in the quarries, the new monster steel
+derrick which the men had erected last week. They had been testing it
+for several days; even now its powerful arm held suspended a block of
+many tons' weight. This was a part of the test for "graduated
+strain"&mdash;the weight being increased from day to day.</p>
+
+<p>The men, in leaving their work, often took a short cut homeward from the
+lower slope to the road just below the power-house, by crossing this
+gentle declivity of the ledge. Evidently Billy McCann with this in mind
+had twisted the injunction to "go straight home" into a chance to "cut
+across"; for surely this way would be the "straightest." Besides, there
+was the added inducement of close proximity to the wonderful new derrick
+that, since its instalment, had been occupying many of Billy's waking
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Father Honor&eacute;, watching for the children's reappearance at the corner of
+the road just beyond the long low power-house, was suddenly aware, with
+a curious shock, of the two little boys trotting in a lively manner down
+the easy grade of the "cross cut" slope, and nearing the derrick and its
+suspended weight. He frowned at the sight and, calling loudly to them to
+come back, started straight down over the steep ledge at the side of the
+road. He heard some one else calling the boys by name, and, a moment
+later, saw that it was Sister Ste. Croix who was coming up the hill.</p>
+
+<p>The children did not hear, or would not, because of their absorption in
+getting close to the steel giant towering above them. Sister Ste. Croix
+called again; then she, too, started down the slope after them.</p>
+
+<p>She noticed some men running from the farther side of the quarry. She
+saw Father Honor&eacute; suddenly spring by leaps and bounds down over the
+rough ledge. What was it? The children were apparently in no danger. She
+looked up at the derrick&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><i>What was that!</i> A tremor in its giant frame; a swaying of its cabled
+mast; a sickening downward motion of the weighted steel arm&mdash;then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Merciful Christ!" she groaned, and for the space of a few seconds
+covered her eyes....</p>
+
+<p>The priest, catching up the two children one under each arm, ran with
+superhuman strength to evade the falling derrick&mdash;with a last supreme
+effort he rolled the boys beyond its reach; they were saved, but&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Their savior was pinioned by the steel tip fast to the unyielding
+granite.</p>
+
+<p>A woman's shriek rent the air&mdash;a fearful cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Jean&mdash;mon Jean!"</p>
+
+<p>A moment more and Sister Ste. Croix reached the spot&mdash;she took his head
+on her lap.</p>
+
+<p>"Jean&mdash;mon Jean," she cried again.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes, dimmed already, opened; he made a supreme effort to speak&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Margot&mdash;p'tite Truite&mdash;"...</p>
+
+<p>Thus, after six and forty years of silence, Love spoke once; that Love,
+greater than State and Church because it is the foundation of both, and
+without it neither could exist; that Love&mdash;co-eval with all life, the
+Love which defies time, sustains absence, glorifies loss&mdash;remains, thank
+God! a deathless legacy to the toiling Race of the Human, and, because
+deathless, triumphant in death.</p>
+
+<p>It triumphed now....</p>
+
+<p>The ponderous crash of the derrick followed by the screams of the two
+boys, brought the quarrymen, the women and children, rushing in
+terrified haste from their evening meal. But when they reached the spot,
+and before Champney Googe, running over the granite slopes, as once
+years before he ran from pursuing justice, could satisfy himself that
+his boy was uninjured, at what a sacrifice he knew only when he knelt by
+the prostrate form, before Jim McCann, seizing a lever, could shout to
+the men to "lift all together," the life-blood ebbed, carrying with it
+on the hurrying out-going tide the priest's loving undaunted spirit.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>All work at the quarries and the sheds was suspended during the
+following Saturday; the final service was to be held on Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>All Saturday afternoon, while the bier rested before the altar in the
+stone chapel by the lake shore, a silent motley procession filed under
+the granite lintel:&mdash;stalwart Swede, blue-eyed German, sallow-cheeked
+Pole, dark-eyed Italian, burly Irish, low-browed Czechs, French
+Canadians, stolid English and Scotch, Henry Van Ostend and three of the
+directors of the Flamsted Quarries Company, rivermen from the Penobscot,
+lumbermen from farther north, the Colonel and three of his sons, the
+rector from The Bow, a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church from New
+York, the little choir boys&mdash;children of the quarrymen&mdash;and Augustus
+Buzzby, members of the Paulist Order, Elmer Wiggins, Octavius Buzzby
+supporting old Joel Quimber, Nonna Lisa&mdash;in all, over three thousand
+souls one by one passed up the aisle to stand with bared bowed head by
+that bier; to look their last upon the mask of the soul; to render, in
+spirit, homage to the spirit that had wrought among its fellows,
+manfully, unceasingly, to realize among them on this earth a
+long-striven-for ideal.</p>
+
+<p>Many a one knelt in prayer. Many a mother, not of English tongue,
+placing her hand upon the head of her little child forced him to kneel
+beside her; her tears wet the stone slabs of the chancel floor.</p>
+
+<p>Just before sunset, the Daughters of the Mystic Rose passed into the
+church; they bore tapers to set upon the altar, and at the head and
+foot of the bier. Two of them remained throughout the night to pray by
+the chancel rail; one of them was Sister Ste. Croix. Silent, immovable
+she knelt there throughout the short June night. Her secret remained
+with her and the one at whose feet she was kneeling.</p>
+
+<p>The little group of special friends from The Gore came last, just a
+little while before the face they loved was to be covered forever from
+human gaze: Aileen with her four-months' babe in her arms, Aurora Googe
+leading little Honor&eacute; by the hand, Margaret McCann with her boy, Elvira
+Caukins and her two daughters. Silent, their tears raining upon the awed
+and upturned faces of the children, they, too, knelt; but no sound of
+sobbing profaned the great peaceful silence that was broken only by the
+faint <i>chip-chip-chipping</i> monotone from Shed Number Two. In that four
+men were at work. Champney Googe was one of them.</p>
+
+<p>He was expecting them at this appointed time. When he saw them enter the
+chapel, he put aside hammer and chisel and went across the meadow to
+join them. He waited for them to come out; then, taking the babe from
+his wife's arms, he gave her into his mother's keeping. He looked
+significantly at his wife. The others passed on and out; but Aileen
+turned and with her husband retraced her steps to the altar. They knelt,
+hand clasped in hand....</p>
+
+<p>When they rose to look their last upon that loved face, they knew that
+their lives had received through his spirit the benediction of God.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Champney returned to his work, for time pressed. The quarrymen in The
+Gore had asked permission the day before to quarry a single stone in
+which their priest should find his final resting place. Many of them
+were Italians, and Luigi Poggi was spokesman. Permission being given, he
+turned to the men:</p>
+
+<p>"For the love of God and the man who stood to us for Him, let us quarry
+the stone nearest heaven. Look to the ridge yonder; that has not been
+opened up&mdash;who will work with me to open up the highest ridge in The
+Gore, and quarry the stone to-night."</p>
+
+<p>The volunteers were practically all the men in the Upper and Lower
+Quarries; the foreman was obliged to draw lots. The men worked in
+shifts&mdash;worked during that entire night; they bared a space of sod;
+cleared off the surface layer; quarried the rock, using the hand drill
+entirely. Towards morning the thick granite slab, that lay nearest to
+the crimsoning sky among the Flamsted Hills, was hoisted from its
+primeval bed and lowered to its place on the car.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that four men, Champney Googe, Antoine, Jim McCann, and
+Luigi Poggi asserted their right, by reason of what the dead had been to
+them, to cut and chisel the rock into sarcophagus shape. Luigi and
+Antoine asked to cut the cover of the stone coffin.</p>
+
+<p>All Saturday afternoon, the four men in Shed Number Two worked at their
+work of love, of unspeakable gratitude, of passionate devotion to a
+sacrificed manhood. They wrought in silence. All that afternoon, they
+could see, by glancing up from their work and looking out through the
+shed doors across the field, the silent procession entering and leaving
+the chapel. Sometimes Jim McCann would strike wild in his feverish haste
+to ease, by mere physical exertion, his great over-charged heart of its
+load of grief; a muttered curse on his clumsiness followed. Now and
+then Champney caught his eye turned upon him half-appealingly; but they
+spoke no word; <i>chip-chip-chipping</i>, they worked on.</p>
+
+<p>The sun set; electricity illumined the shed. Antoine worked with
+desperation; Luigi wrought steadily, carefully, beautifully&mdash;his heart
+seeking expression in every stroke. When the dawn paled the electric
+lights, he laid aside his tools, took off his canvas apron, and stepped
+back to view the cover as a whole. The others, also, brought their stone
+to completion. As with one accord they went over to look at the
+Italian's finished work, and saw&mdash;no carving of archbishop's mitre, no
+sculpture of cardinal's hat (O mother, where were the day-dreams for
+your boy!), but a rough slab, in the centre of which was a raised heart
+of polished granite, and, beneath it, cut deep into the rock&mdash;which,
+although lying yesterday nearest the skies above The Gore, was in past
+&aelig;ons the foundation stone of our present world&mdash;the words:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>THE HEART OF THE QUARRY.</p></div>
+
+<p>The lights went out. The dawn was reddening the whole east; it touched
+the faces of the men. They looked at one another. Suddenly McCann
+grasped Champney's hand, and reaching over the slab caught in his the
+hands of the other two; he gripped them hard, drew a long shuddering
+breath, and spoke, but unwittingly on account of his habitual profanity,
+the last word:</p>
+
+<p>"By Jesus Christ, men, we're brothers!"</p>
+
+<p>The full day broke. The men still stood there, hand clasping hand.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_L_Burt_Companys_Popular_Copyright_Fiction" id="A_L_Burt_Companys_Popular_Copyright_Fiction"></a>A. L. Burt Company's Popular Copyright Fiction.</h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Abner Daniel. By Will N. Harben.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adventures of A Modest Man. By Robert W. Chambers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adventures of Gerard. By A. Conan Doyle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ailsa Page. By Robert W. Chambers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alternative, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ancient Law, The. By Ellen Glasgow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Angel of Forgiveness, The. By Rosa N. Carey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Angel of Pain, The. By E. F. Benson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Annals of Ann, The. By Kate Trimble Sharber.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Anna the Adventuress. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ann Boyd. By Will N. Harben.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the Sparks Fly Upward. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the Age of Eve. By Kate Trimble Sharber.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the Mercy of Tiberius. By Augusta Evans Wilson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the Moorings. By Rosa N. Carey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Awakening of Helen Richie, The. By Margaret Deland.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Barrier, The. By Rex Beach.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bar 20. By Clarence E. Mulford.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bar-20 Days. By Clarence E. Mulford.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Battle Ground, The. By Ellen Glasgow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beau Brocade. By Baroness Orczy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beechy. By Bettina von Hutten.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bella Donna. By Robert Hichens.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beloved Vagabond, The. By William J. Locke.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ben Blair. By Will Lillibridge.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Best Man, The. By Harold McGrath.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beth Norvell. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Betrayal, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Better Man, The. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beulah. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bill Toppers, The. By Andre Castaigne.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blaze Derringer. By Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bob Hampton of Placer. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bob, Son of Battle. By Alfred Ollivant.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brass Bowl, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bronze Bell, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Butterfly Man, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Right of Purchase. By Harold Bindloss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cab No. 44. By R. F. Foster.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Calling of Dan Matthews, The. By Harold Bell Wright.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Call of the Blood, The. By Robert Hichens.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cape Cod Stories. By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cap'n Erl. By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Captain Warren's Wards. By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Caravaners, The. By the author of "Elizabeth and Her German Garden."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cardigan. By Robert W. Chambers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Carlton Case, The. By Ellery H. Clark.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Car of Destiny, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Carpet From Bagdad, The. By Harold McGrath.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cash Intrigue, The. By George Randolph Chester.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine. Frank S. Stockton.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Castle by the Sea, The. By H. B. Marriot Watson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Challoners, The. By E. F. Benson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chaperon, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">City of Six, The. By C. L. Canfield.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Circle, The. By Katherine Cecil Thurston (author of "The Masquerader," "The Gambler.")<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Colonial Free Lance, A. By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conquest of Canaan, The. By Booth Tarkington.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conspirators, The. By Robert W. Chambers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cynthia of the Minute. By Louis Joseph Vance.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dan Merrithew. By Lawrence Perry.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Day of the Dog, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Depot Master, The. By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Derelicts. By William J. Locke.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Diamond Master, The. By Jacques Futrelle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Diamonds Cut Paste. By Agnes and Egerton Castle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Divine Fire, The. By May Sinclair.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dixie Hart. By Will N. Harben.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dr. David. By Marjorie Benton Cooke.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Early Bird, The. By George Randolph Chester.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eleventh Hour, The. By David Potter.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Elizabeth In Rugen. (By the author of "Elizabeth and Her German Garden.")<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Elusive Isabel. By Jacques Futrelle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Elusive Pimpernel, The. By Baroness Orczy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enchanted Hat, The. By Harold McGrath.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Excuse Me. By Rupert Hughes.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">54-40 or Fight. By Emerson Hough.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fighting Chance, The. By Robert W. Chambers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flamsted Quarries. By Mary E. Waller.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flying Mercury, The. By Eleanor M. Ingram.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For a Maiden Brave. By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Four Million, The. By O. Henry.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Four Pool's Mystery, The. By Jean Webster.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fruitful Vine, The. By Robert Hichens.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ganton &amp; Co. By Arthur J. Eddy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gentleman of France, A. By Stanley Weyman.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gentleman, The. By Alfred Ollivant.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford. By George Randolph Chester.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gilbert Neal. By Will N. Harben.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Girl and the Bill, The. By Bannister Merwin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Girl from His Town, The. By Marie Van Vorst.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Girl Who Won, The. By Beth Ellis.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glory of Clementina, The. By William J. Locke.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glory of the Conquered, The. By Susan Glaspell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">God's Good Man. By Marie Corelli.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Going Some. By Rex Beach.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Golden Web, The. By Anthony Partridge.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Green Patch, The. By Bettina von Hutten.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Happy Island (sequel to "Uncle William"). By Jennette Lee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hearts and the Highway. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Held for Orders. By Frank H. Spearman.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hidden Water. By Dane Coolidge.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Highway of Fate, The. By Rosa N. Carey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Homesteaders, The. By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Honor of the Big Snows, The. By James Oliver Curwood.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hopalong Cassidy. By Clarence E. Mulford.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Household of Peter, The. By Rosa N. Carey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">House of Mystery, The. By Will Irwin.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">House of the Lost Court, The. By C. N. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">House of the Whispering Pines, The. By Anna Katherine Green.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">House on Cherry Street, The. By Amelia E. Barr.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How Leslie Loved. By Anne Warner.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Husbands of Edith, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Idols. By William J. Locke.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Illustrious Prince, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Imprudence of Prue, The. By Sophie Fisher.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Inez. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Infelice. By Augusta Evans Wilson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Initials Only. By Anna Katharine Green.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Defiance of the King. By Chauncey G. Hotchkiss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Indifference of Juliet, The. By Grace S. Richmond.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the Service of the Princess. By Henry C. Rowland.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Iron Woman, The. By Margaret Deland.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ishmael. (Illustrated.) By Mrs. Southworth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Island of Regeneration, The. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jack Spurlock, Prodigal. By Horace Lorimer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jane Cable. By George Barr McCutcheon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jeanne of the Marshes. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Jude the Obscure. By Thomas Hardy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keith of the Border. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Key to the Unknown, The. By Rosa N. Carey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kingdom of Earth, The. By Anthony Partridge.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">King Spruce. By Holman Day.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ladder of Swords, A. By Gilbert Parker.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lady Betty Across the Water. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lady Merton, Colonist. By Mrs. Humphrey Ward.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lady of Big Shanty, The. By Berkeley F. Smith.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Langford of the Three Bars. By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Land of Long Ago, The. By Eliza Calvert Hall.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lane That Had No Turning, The. By Gilbert Parker.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Last Trail, The. By Zane Grey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Last Voyage of the Donna Isabel, The. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leavenworth Case, The. By Anna Katharine Green.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lin McLean. By Owen Wister.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Little Brown Jug at Kildare, The. By Meredith Nicholson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loaded Dice. By Ellery H. Clarke.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord Loveland Discovers America. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lorimer of the Northwest. By Harold Bindloss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lorraine. By Robert W. Chambers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lost Ambassador, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love Under Fire. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Loves of Miss Anne, The. By S. R. Crockett.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Macaria. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mademoiselle Celeste. By Adele Ferguson Knight.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Maid at Arms, The. By Robert W. Chambers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Maid of Old New York, A. By Amelia E. Barr.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Maid of the Whispering Hills, The. By Vingie Roe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Maids of Paradise, The. By Robert W. Chambers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Making of Bobby Burnit, The. By George Randolph Chester.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mam' Linda. By Will N. Harben.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man Outside, The. By Wyndham Martyn.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man in the Brown Derby, The. By Wells Hastings.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marriage a la Mode. By Mrs. Humphrey Ward.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marriage of Theodora, The. By Molly Elliott Seawell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Marriage Under the Terror, A. By Patricia Wentworth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Master Mummer, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Masters of the Wheatlands. By Harold Bindloss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Max. By Katherine Cecil Thurston.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Millionaire Baby, The. By Anna Katharine Green.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Missioner, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Miss Selina Lue. By Maria Thompson Daviess.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mistress of Brae Farm, The. By Rosa N. Carey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Money Moon, The. By Jeffery Farnol.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Motor Maid, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Much Ado About Peter. By Jean Webster.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mr. Pratt. By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Brother's Keeper. By Charles Tenny Jackson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Friend the Chauffeur. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Lady Caprice (author of the "Broad Highway"). Jeffery Farnol.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Lady of Doubt. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Lady of the North. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My Lady of the South. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mystery Tales. By Edgar Allen Poe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nancy Stair. By Elinor Macartney Lane.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ne'er-Do-Well, The. By Rex Beach.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No Friend Like a Sister. By Rosa N. Carey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Officer 666. By Barton W. Currie and Augustin McHugh.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One Braver Thing. By Richard Dehan.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Order No. 11. By Caroline Abbot Stanley.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Orphan, The. By Clarence E. Mulford.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of the Primitive. By Robert Ames Bennett.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pam. By Bettina von Hutten.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pam Decides. By Bettina von Hutten.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pardners. By Rex Beach.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Partners of the Tide. By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Passage Perilous, The. By Rosa N. Carey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Passers By. By Anthony Partridge.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Paternoster Ruby, The. By Charles Edmonds Walk.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Patience of John Moreland, The. By Mary Dillon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Paul Anthony, Christian. By Hiram W. Hays.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Phillip Steele. By James Oliver Curwood.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Phra the Phoenician. By Edwin Lester Arnold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plunderer, The. By Roy Norton.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pole Baker. By Will N. Harben.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Politician, The. By Edith Huntington Mason.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Polly of the Circus. By Margaret Mayo.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pool of Flame, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poppy. By Cynthia Stockley.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Power and the Glory, The. By Grace McGowan Cooke.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Price of the Prairie, The. By Margaret Hill McCarter.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prince of Sinners, A. By E. Phillip Oppenheim.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prince or Chauffeur. By Lawrence Perry.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Princess Dehra, The. By John Reed Scott.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Princess Passes, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Princess Virginia, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prisoners of Chance. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Prodigal Son, The. By Hall Caine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Purple Parasol, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Reconstructed Marriage, A. By Amelia Barr.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Redemption of Kenneth Galt, The. By Will N. Harben.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red House on Rowan Street. By Roman Doubleday.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red Mouse, The. By William Hamilton Osborne.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Red Pepper Burns. By Grace S. Richmond.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Refugees, The. By A. Conan Doyle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, The. By Anne Warner.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Road to Providence, The. By Maria Thompson Daviess.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Romance of a Plain Man, The. By Ellen Glasgow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose in the Ring, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose of Old Harpeth, The. By Maria Thompson Daviess.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rose of the World. By Agnes and Egerton Castle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Round the Corner in Gay Street. By Grace S. Richmond.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Routledge Rides Alone. By Will Livingston Comfort.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Running Fight, The. By Wm. Hamilton Osborne.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Seats of the Mighty, The. By Gilbert Parker.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Septimus. By William J. Locke.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set In Silver. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Self-Raised. (Illustrated.) By Mrs. Southworth.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shepherd of the Hills, The. By Harold Bell Wright.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sheriff of Dyke Hole, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sidney Carteret, Rancher. By Harold Bindloss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Simon the Jester. By William J. Locke.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silver Blade, The. By Charles E. Walk.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Silver Horde, The. By Rex Beach.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sir Nigel. By A. Conan Doyle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sir Richard Calmady. By Lucas Malet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Skyman, The. By Henry Ketchell Webster.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slim Princess, The. By George Ade.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Speckled Bird, A. By Augusta Evans Wilson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spirit in Prison, A. By Robert Hichens.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spirit of the Border, The. By Zane Grey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spirit Trail, The. By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spoilers, The. By Rex Beach.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stanton Wins. By Eleanor M. Ingram.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">St. Elmo. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stolen Singer, The. By Martha Bellinger.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stooping Lady, The. By Maurice Hewlett.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Story of the Outlaw, The. By Emerson Hough.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strawberry Acres. By Grace S. Richmond.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strawberry Handkerchief, The. By Amelia E. Barr.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunnyside of the Hill, The. By Rosa N. Carey.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sunset Trail, The. By Alfred Henry Lewis.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop. By Anne Warner.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sword of the Old Frontier, A. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tales of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tennessee Shad, The. By Owen Johnson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tess of the D'Urbervilles. By Thomas Hardy.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Texican, The. By Dane Coolidge.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Printer of Udell's. By Harold Bell Wright.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three Brothers, The. By Eden Phillpotts.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Throwback, The. By Alfred Henry Lewis.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thurston of Orchard Valley. By Harold Bindloss.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Title Market, The. By Emily Post.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Torn Sails. A Tale of a Welsh Village. By Allan Raine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trail of the Axe, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Treasure of Heaven, The. By Marie Corelli.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Two-Gun Man, The. By Charles Alden Seltzer.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Two Vanrevels, The. By Booth Tarkington.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Uncle William. By Jennette Lee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Up from Slavery. By Booker T. Washington.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vanity Box, The. By C. N. Williamson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vashti. By Augusta Evans Wilson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Varmint, The. By Owen Johnson.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Vigilante Girl, A. By Jerome Hart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Village of Vagabonds, A. By F. Berkeley Smith.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Visioning, The. By Susan Glaspell.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Voice of the People, The. By Ellen Glasgow.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wanted&mdash;A Chaperon. By Paul Leicester Ford.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wanted: A Matchmaker. By Paul Leicester Ford.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Watchers of the Plains, The. Ridgwell Cullum.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wayfarers, The. By Mary Stewart Cutting.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Way of a Man, The. By Emerson Hough.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weavers, The. By Gilbert Parker.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Wilderness Was King. By Randall Parrish.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the Trail Divides. By Will Lillibridge.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">White Sister, The. By Marion Crawford.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Window at the White Cat, The. By Mary Roberts Rhinehart.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Winning of Barbara Worth, The. By Harold Bell Wright.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With Juliet In England. By Grace S. Richmond.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Woman Haters, The. By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Woman In Question, The. By John Reed Scott.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Woman In the Alcove, The. By Anna Katharine Green.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yellow Circle, The. By Charles E. Walk.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yellow Letter, The. By William Johnston.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Younger Set, The. By Robert W. Chambers.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Flamsted quarries, by Mary E. Waller
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Flamsted quarries, by Mary E. Waller
+
+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: Flamsted quarries
+
+Author: Mary E. Waller
+
+Illustrator: G. Patrick Nelson
+
+Release Date: November 30, 2007 [EBook #23664]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FLAMSTED QUARRIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                          Flamsted Quarries
+
+                          BY MARY E. WALLER
+
+Author of "The Wood Carver of Lympus," "The Daughter of the Rich," "The
+Little Citizen," etc.
+
+
+
+
+WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
+BY G. PATRICK NELSON
+
+A. L. BURT COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
+
+_Copyright, 1910_,
+BY MARY E. WALLER
+Published September, 1910
+
+Reprinted, September, 1910; November, 1910; December, 1910
+
+
+
+
+TO THOSE WHO TOIL
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause"]
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+THE BATTERY IN LIEU OF A PREFACE
+
+PART FIRST, A CHILD FROM THE VAUDEVILLE
+
+PART SECOND, HOME SOIL
+
+PART THIRD, IN THE STREAM
+
+PART FOURTH, OBLIVION
+
+PART FIFTH, SHED NUMBER TWO
+
+THE LAST WORD
+
+
+
+
+Illustrations
+
+
+"She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause"
+
+"Those present loved in after years to recall this scene"
+
+"What a picture she made leaning caressingly against the charmed and
+patient Bess"
+
+"'Unworthy--unworthy!' was Champney Googe's cry, as he knelt before
+Aileen"
+
+
+
+
+FLAMSTED QUARRIES
+
+
+
+
+                       "_Abysmal deeps repose
+    Beneath the stout ship's keel whereon we glide;
+    And if a diver plunge far down within
+    Those depths and to the surface safe return,
+    His smile, if so it chance he smile again,
+    Outweighs in worth all gold._"
+
+
+
+
+The Battery in Lieu of a Preface
+
+
+A few years ago, at the very tip of that narrow rocky strip of land that
+has been well named "the Tongue that laps the Commerce of the World,"
+the million-teeming Island of Manhattan, there was daily presented a
+scene in the life-drama of our land that held in itself, as in solution,
+a great national ideal. The old heroic "Epic of the Nations" was still
+visible to the naked eye, and masquerading here among us of the then
+nineteenth century in the guise of the arrival of the immigrant ship.
+
+The scenic setting is in this instance incomparably fine. As we lean on
+the coping of the sea wall at the end of the green-swarded Battery, in
+the flush of a May sunset that, on the right, throws the Highlands of
+the Navesink into dark purple relief and lights the waters of Harbor,
+River, and Sound into a softly swelling roseate flood, we may fix our
+eyes on the approach to The Narrows and watch the incoming shipping of
+the world: the fruit-laden steamer from the Bermudas, the black East
+Indiaman heavy with teakwood and spices, the lumberman's barge awash
+behind the tow, the old three-masted schooner, low in the water, her
+decks loaded with granite from the far-away quarries of Maine. We may
+see, if we linger, the swift approach of a curiously foreshortened
+ocean steamship, her smokestack belching blackness, and the slower
+on-coming of a Norwegian bark, her sails catching the sunset light and
+gleaming opaline against the clear blue of the southern horizon. These
+last are the immigrant ships.
+
+An hour later in old Castle Garden the North and South of Europe clasp
+hands on the very threshold of America. Four thousand feet are planted
+on the soil of the New World. Four thousand hands are knocking at its
+portals. Two thousand hearts are beating high with hope at prospect of
+the New, or palpitating with terror at contact with the Strange.
+
+A thousand tragedies, a thousand comedies are here enacted before our
+very eyes: hopes, fears, tears, laughter, shrieks, groans, wailings,
+exultant cries, welcoming words, silent all-expressing hand-clasp,
+embrace, despairing wide-eyed search, hopeless isolation, the
+befriended, the friendless, the home-welcomed, the homeless--all
+commingled.
+
+But an official routine soon sorts, separates, pairs, locates; speaks in
+Norwegian, speaks in Neapolitan. An hour passes; the dusk falls; the
+doors are opened; the two thousand, ticketed, labelled, are to enter
+upon the new life. The confusing chatter grows less and less. A child
+wails, and is hushed in soft Italian--a Neapolitan lullaby--by its
+mother as she sits on a convenient bench and for the first time gives
+her little one the breast in a strange land. An old Norwegian, perhaps a
+lineal descendant of our Viking visitors some thousand years ago, makes
+his way to the door, bent beneath a sack-load of bedding; his right hand
+holds his old wife's left. They are the last to leave.
+
+The dusk has fallen. To the sea wall again for air after the thousands
+of garlic-reeking breaths in old Castle Garden. The sea is dark. The
+heavens are deep indigo; against them flashes the Liberty beacon; within
+them are set the Eternal Lights. Upon the waters of the harbor the
+illumined cabin windows of a multitude of river craft throw quivering
+rays along the slow glassy swell.
+
+For a moment on River, and Harbor, and Sound, there is silence. But
+behind us we hear the subdued roar and beat of the metropolis, a sound
+comparable to naught else on earth or in heaven: the mighty systole and
+dyastole of a city's heart, and the tramp, tramp of a million homeward
+bound toilers--the marching tune of Civilization's hosts, to which the
+feet of the newly arrived immigrants are already keeping time, for they
+have crossed the threshold of old Castle Garden and entered the New
+World.
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST
+
+A Child from the Vaudeville
+
+
+I
+
+The performance in itself was crude and commonplace, but the
+demonstration in regard to it was unusual. Although this scene had been
+enacted both afternoon and evening for the past six weeks, the audience
+at the Vaudeville was showing its appreciation by an intent silence.
+
+The curtain had risen upon a street scene in the metropolis at night.
+Snow was falling, dimming the gas jets at the corner and half-veiling,
+half-disclosing the imposing entrance-porch of a marble church. The
+doors were closed; the edifice dark. As the eyes of the onlookers became
+accustomed to the half-lights, they were aware of a huddle of clothes
+against the iron railing that outlined the curve of the three broad
+entrance-steps. As vision grew keener the form of a child was
+discernible, a little match girl who was lighting one by one a few
+matches and shielding the flame with both hands from the draught.
+Suddenly she looked up and around. The rose window above the porch was
+softly illumined; the light it emitted transfused the thickly falling
+snow. Low organ tones became audible, although distant and muffled.
+
+The child rose; came down the centre of the stage to the lowered
+footlights and looked about her, first at the orchestra, then around
+and up at the darkened house that was looking intently at her--a small
+ill-clad human, a spiritual entity, the only reality in this artificial
+setting. She grasped her package of matches in both hands; listened a
+moment as if to catch the low organ tones, then began to sing.
+
+She sang as a bird sings, every part of her in motion: throat, eyes,
+head, body. The voice was clear, loud, full, strident, at times, on the
+higher notes from over-exertion, but always childishly appealing. The
+gallery leaned to catch every word of "The Holy City."
+
+She sang straight on, verse after verse without pause. There was no
+modulation, no phrasing, no interpretation; it was merely a steady
+fortissimo outpouring of a remarkable volume of tone for so small an
+instrument. And the full power of it was, to all appearance, sent
+upwards with intent to the gallery. In any case, the gallery took the
+song unto itself, and as the last words, "_Hosanna for evermore_" rang
+upward, there was audible from above a long-drawn universal "Ah!" of
+satisfaction.
+
+It was followed by a half minute of silence that was expressive of
+latent enthusiasm. The child was still waiting at the footlights,
+evidently for the expected applause from the higher latitudes. And the
+gallery responded--how heartily, those who were present have never
+forgotten: roar upon roar, call upon call, round after round of
+applause, cries of approbation couched in choice Bowery slang, a genuine
+stampede that shook the spectators in their seats. It was an
+irresistible, insatiable, unappeasable, overwhelming clamor for more.
+The infection of enthusiasm was communicated to floors, balconies,
+boxes; they answered, as it were, antiphonally. Faces were seen peeking
+from the wings; hands were visible there, clapping frantically. In the
+midst of the tumultuous uproar the little girl smiled brightly and ran
+off the stage.
+
+The lights were turned on. A drop-scene fell; the stage was transformed,
+for, in the middle distance, swelling green hills rose against a soft
+blue sky seen between trees in the foreground. Sunshine lay on the
+landscape, enhancing the haze in the distance and throwing up the hills
+more prominently against it. The cries and uproar continued.
+
+Meanwhile, in the common dressing-room beyond the wings, there was being
+enacted a scene which if slightly less tumultuous in expression was
+considerably more dangerous in quality. A quick word went the round of
+the stars' private rooms; it penetrated to the sanctum of the Japanese
+wrestlers; it came to the ear of the manager himself: "The Little
+Patti's struck!" It sounded ominous, and, thereupon, the Vaudeville
+flocked to the dressing-room door to see--what? Merely a child in a
+tantrum, a heap of rags on the floor, a little girl in white petticoats
+stamping, dancing, pulling away from an old Italian woman who was trying
+to robe her and exhorting, imploring, threatening the child in almost
+one and the same breath.
+
+The manager rushed to the rescue for the house was losing its head. He
+seized the child by the arm. "What's the matter here, Aileen?"
+
+"I ain't goin' ter dance a coon ter-night--not ter-night!" she cried
+defiantly and in intense excitement; "he's in the box again, an' I'm
+goin' to give him the Sunday-night song, like as I did before when he
+give me the flowers, so now!"
+
+Nonna Lisa, the old Italian, slipped the white dress deftly over the
+mutinous head, so muffling the half-shriek. The manager laughed. "Hurry
+up then--on with you!" The child sprang away with a bound. "I've seen
+this too many times before," he added; "it's an attack of 'the last
+night's nerves.'--Hark!"
+
+The tumult was drowning the last notes of the orchestral intermezzo, as
+the little girl, clad now wholly in white, ran in upon the stage and
+coming again down the centre raised her hand as if to command silence.
+With the gallery to see was to obey; the floor and balconies having
+subsided the applause from above died away.
+
+The child, standing in the full glare of the footlights with the sunny
+skyey spaces and overlapping blue hills behind her, half-faced the
+brilliant house as, without accompaniment, she began to sing:
+
+    "There is a green hill far away
+      Without a city wall."
+
+The childish voice sustained the simple melody perfectly, and it was
+evident when the little girl began the second verse that she was singing
+wholly to please herself and some one in a proscenium box. Before the
+close of the first stanza the gallery experienced a turn, the audience
+as a whole a sensation. Night after night the gallery gods had made it a
+point to be present at that hour of the continuous performance when the
+Little Patti--such was the name on the poster--sang either her famous
+Irish song "Oh, the praties they are small", or "The Holy City", and
+followed them by a coon dance the like of which was not to be seen
+elsewhere in New York; for into it the child threw such an abandonment
+of enthusiasm that she carried herself and her audience to the verge of
+extravagance--the one in action, the other in expression.
+
+And now this!
+
+A woman sobbed outright at the close of the second verse. The gallery
+heard--it hated hysterics--and considered whether it should look upon
+itself as cheated and protest, or submit quietly to being coerced into
+approval. The scales had not yet turned, when someone far aloft drew a
+long breath in order to force it out between closed teeth, and this in
+sign of disapproval. That one breath was, in truth, indrawn, but whether
+or no there was ever an outlet for the same remained a question with the
+audience. A woollen cap was deftly and unexpectedly thrust between the
+malevolent lips and several pair of hands held it there until the little
+singer left the stage.
+
+What appeal, if any, that childish voice, dwelling melodiously on the
+simple words, made to the audience as a whole, cannot be stated because
+unknown; but that it appealed powerfully by force of suggestion, by the
+power of imagination, by the law of association, by the startling
+contrast between the sentiment expressed and the environment of that
+expression, to three, at least, among the many present is a certainty.
+
+There is such a thing in our national life--a constant process, although
+often unrecognized--as social anastomosis: the intercommunication by
+branch of every vein and veinlet of the politico-social body, and
+thereby the coming into touch of lives apparently alien. As a result we
+have a revelation of new experiences; we find ourselves in subjection to
+new influences of before unknown personalities; we perceive the
+opening-up of new channels of communication between individual and
+individual as such. We comprehend that through it a great moral law is
+brought into operation both in the individual and the national life. And
+in recognition of this natural, though oft hidden process, the fact that
+to three men in that audience--men whose life-lines, to all appearance,
+were divergent, whose aims and purposes were antipodal--the simple song
+made powerful appeal, and by means of that appeal they came in after
+life to comprehend something of the workings of this great natural law,
+need cause no wonderment, no cavilling at the so-called prerogative of
+fiction. The laws of Art are the laws of Life, read smaller on the
+obverse.
+
+The child was singing the last stanza in so profound a silence that the
+fine snapping of an over-charged electric wire was distinctly heard:
+
+    "Oh, dearly, dearly has he loved
+      And we must love him too,
+    And trust in his redeeming blood,
+      And try his works to do."
+
+The little girl waited at the footlights for--something. She had done
+her best for an encore and the silence troubled her. She looked
+inquiringly towards the box. There was a movement of the curtains at the
+back; a messenger boy came in with flowers; a gentleman leaned over the
+railing and motioned to the child. She ran forward, holding up the skirt
+of her dress to catch the roses that were dropped into it. She smiled
+and said something. The tension in the audience gave a little; there was
+a low murmur of approval which increased to a buzz of conversation; the
+conductor raised his baton and the child with a courtesy ran off the
+stage. But there was no applause.
+
+During the musical intermezzo that followed, the lower proscenium box
+was vacated and in the first balcony one among a crowd of students rose
+and made his way up the aisle.
+
+"Lien's keller, Champ?" said a friend at the exit, putting a hand on his
+shoulder; "I'm with you."
+
+"Not to-night." He shook off the detaining hand and kept on his way. The
+other stared after him, whistled low to himself and went down the aisle
+to the vacant seat.
+
+At the main entrance of the theatre there was an incoming crowd. It was
+not late, only nine. The drawing-card at this hour was a famous Parisian
+singer of an Elysee _cafe chantant_. The young fellow stepped aside,
+beyond the ticket-office railing, to let the first force of the
+inrushing human stream exhaust itself before attempting egress for
+himself. In doing so he jostled rather roughly two men who were
+evidently of like mind with him in their desire to avoid the press. He
+lifted his hat in apology, and recognized one of them as the occupant of
+the proscenium box, the gentleman who had given the roses to the little
+singer. The other, although in citizen's dress, he saw by the tonsure
+was a priest.
+
+The sight of such a one in that garb and that environment, diverted for
+the moment Champney Googe's thoughts from the child and her song. He
+scanned the erect figure of the man who, after immediate and courteous
+recognition of the other's apology, became oblivious, apparently, of his
+presence and intent upon the passing throng.
+
+The crowd thinned gradually; the priest passed out under the arch of
+colored electric lights; the gentleman of the box, observing the look on
+the student's face, smiled worldly-wisely to himself as he, too, went
+down the crimson-carpeted incline. Champney Googe's still beardless lip
+had curled slightly as if his thought were a sneer.
+
+
+II
+
+The priest, after leaving the theatre, walked rapidly down Broadway past
+the marble church, that had been shown on the stage, and still straight
+on for two miles at the same rapid gait, past the quiet churchyards of
+St. Paul's and Trinity into the comparative silence of Battery Park and
+across to the sea wall. There he leaned for half an hour, reliving in
+memory not only the years since his seven-year old feet had crossed this
+threshold of the New World, but recalling something of his still earlier
+childhood in his native France. The child's song had been an excitant to
+the memory in recalling those first years in Auvergne.
+
+    "There is a green hill far away
+      Without a city wall."
+
+How clearly he saw that! and his peasant father and mother as laborers
+on or about it, and himself, a six-year old, tending the goats on that
+same green hill or minding the geese in the meadows at its foot.
+
+All this he saw as he gazed blankly at the dark waters of the bay, saw
+clearly as if visioned in crystal. But of subsequent movings and
+wanderings there was a blurred reflection only, till the vision
+momentarily brightened, the outlines defined themselves again as he saw
+his tired drowsy self put to bed in a tiny room that was filled with the
+fragrance of newly baked bread. He remembered the awakening in that
+small room over a bread-filled shop; it belonged to a distant
+great-uncle baker on the mother's side, a personage in the family
+because in trade. He could remember the time spent in that same shop and
+the brick-walled, brick-floored, brick-ovened room behind it. He
+recalled having stood for hours, it might have been days, he could not
+remember--for then Time was forever and its passing of no moment--before
+the deep ovens with a tiny blue-eyed slip of a girl. _P'tite Truite_,
+Little Trout, they called her, the great-uncle baker's one grandchild.
+
+And the shop--he remembered that, so light and bright and sweet and
+clean, with people coming and going--men and women and children--and the
+crisp yard-long loaves carried away in shallow baskets on many a fine
+Norman head in the old seaport of Dieppe. And always the Little Trout
+was by his side, even when the great-uncle placed him in one of the huge
+flat-bottomed bread baskets and drew the two up and down in front of the
+shop. Then all was dim again; so dim that except for the lap and
+backward sucking of the waters against the sea wall, whereon he leaned,
+he had scarcely recalled a ship at the old pier of Dieppe, and the
+Little Trout standing beside her grandfather on the stringer,
+frantically waving her hand as the ship left her moorings and the prow
+nosed the first heavy channel sea that washed against the bulkhead and
+half-drowned her wailing cry:
+
+"Jean--mon Jean!"
+
+The rest was a blank until he landed here almost on this very spot in
+old Castle Garden and, holding hard by his father's hand, was bidden to
+look up at the flag flying from the pole at the top of the queer round
+building--a brave sight even for his young eyes: all the red and white
+and blue straining in the freshening wind with an energy of motion that
+made the boy dance in sympathetic joy at his father's side--
+
+And what next?
+
+Again a confusion of journeyings, and afterwards quiet settlement in a
+red brick box of a house in a mill town on the Merrimac. He could still
+hear the clang of the mill-gates, the ringing of the bells, the hum and
+whir and roar of a hundred thousand spindles, the clacking crash of the
+ponderous shifting frames. He could still see with the inner eye the
+hundreds of windows blazing in the reflected fires of the western sun,
+or twinkling with numberless lights that cast their long reflections on
+the black waters of the canal. There on the bank, at the entrance to the
+footbridge, the boy was wont to take his stand regularly at six o'clock
+of a winter's day, and wait for the hoisting of the mill-gates and the
+coming of his father and mother with the throng of toilers.
+
+So he saw himself--himself as an identity emerging at last from the
+confusion of time and place and circumstance; for there followed the
+public school, the joys of rivalry, the eager outrush for the boy's Ever
+New, the glory of scrimmage and school-boy sports, the battle royal for
+the little Auvergnat when taunted with the epithet "Johnny Frog" by the
+belligerent youth, American born, and the victorious outcome for the
+"foreigner"; the Auvergne blood was up, and the temperament volcanic
+like his native soil where subterranean heats evidence themselves in
+hot, out-welling waters. And afterwards, at home, there were
+congratulations and comfortings, plus applications of vinegar and brown
+butcher's paper to the severely smitten nose of this champion of his new
+Americanhood. But at school and in the street, henceforth there was due
+respect and a general atmosphere of "let bygones be bygones."
+
+Ah, but the pride of his mother in her boy's progress! the joy over the
+first English-French letter that went to the great-uncle baker; the
+constant toil of both parents that the savings might be sufficient to
+educate their one child--that the son might have what the parents
+lacked. Already the mother had begun to speak of the priesthood: she
+might yet see her son Jean a priest, a bishop, and archbishop. Who could
+tell? America is America, and opportunities infinite--a cardinal,
+perhaps, and the gift of a red hat from the Pope, and robes and laces!
+There was no end to her ambitious dreaming.
+
+But across the day-dreams fell the shadow of hard times: the shutting
+down of the mills, the father's desperate illness in a workless winter,
+his death in the early spring, followed shortly by that of the worn-out
+and ill-nourished mother--and for the twelve-year-old boy the
+abomination of desolation, and world and life seen dimly through tears.
+Dim, too, from the like cause, that strange passage across the ocean to
+Dieppe--his mother's uncle having sent for him to return--a weight as of
+lead in his stomach, a fiery throbbing in his young heart, a sickening
+craving for some expression of human love. The boyish tendrils, although
+touched in truth by spring frosts, were outreaching still for some
+object upon which to fasten; yet he shrank from human touch and sympathy
+on that voyage in the steerage lest in his grief and loneliness he
+scream aloud.
+
+Dieppe again, and the Little Trout with her grandfather awaiting him on
+the pier; the Little Trout's arms about his neck in loving welcome, the
+boy's heart full to bursting and his eyelids reddened in his supreme
+effort to keep back tears. Dependent, an orphan, and destined for the
+priesthood--those were his life lines for the next ten years. And the
+end? Revolt, rebellion, partial crime, acquittal under the law, but
+condemnation before the tribunal of his conscience and his God.
+
+There followed the longing to expiate, to expiate in that America where
+he was not known but where he belonged, where his parents' dust mingled
+with the soil; to flee to the Church as to a sanctuary of refuge, to be
+priest through expiation. And this he had been for years while working
+among the Canadian rivermen, among the lumbermen of Maine, sharing their
+lives, their toil, their joys and sorrows, the common inheritance of the
+Human. For years subsequent to his Canadian mission, and after his
+naturalization as an American citizen, he worked in town and city, among
+high and low, rich and poor, recognizing in his catholicity of outlook
+but one human plane: that which may be tested by the spirit level of
+human needs. Now, at last, he was priest by conviction, by inner
+consecration.
+
+He stood erect; drew a long full breath; squared his shoulders and
+looked around him. He noticed for the first time that a Staten Island
+ferryboat had moved into the slip near him; that several passengers were
+lingering to look at him; that a policeman was pacing behind him, his
+eye alert--and he smiled to himself, for he read their thought. He could
+not blame them for looking. He had fancied himself alone with the sea
+and the night and his thoughts; had lost himself to his present
+surroundings in the memory of those years; he had suffered again the old
+agony of passion, shame, guilt, while the events of that pregnant,
+preparatory period in France, etched deep with acid burnings into his
+inmost consciousness, were passing during that half hour in review
+before his inner vision. Small wonder he was attracting attention!
+
+He bared his head. A new moon was sinking to the Highlands of the
+Navesink. The May night was mild, the sea breeze drawing in with gentle
+vigor. He looked northwards up the Hudson, and southwards to the Liberty
+beacon, and eastwards to the Sound. "God bless our Land" he murmured;
+then, covering his head, bowed courteously to the policeman and took his
+way across the Park to the up-town elevated station.
+
+Yes, at last he dared assert it: he was priest by consecration; soul,
+heart, mind, body dedicate to the service of God through Humanity. That
+service led him always in human ways. A few nights ago he saw the
+poster: "The Little Patti". A child then? Thought bridged the abyss of
+ocean to the Little Trout. Some rescue work for him here, possibly;
+hence his presence in the theatre.
+
+
+III
+
+That the priest's effort to rescue the child from the artificial life of
+the stage had been in a measure successful, was confirmed by the
+presence, six months later, of the little girl in the yard of the Orphan
+Asylum on ----nd Street.
+
+On an exceptionally dreary afternoon in November, had any one cared to
+look over the high board fence that bounds three sides of the Asylum
+yard, he might have seen an amazing sight and heard a still more amazing
+chorus:
+
+    "Little Sally Waters
+    Sitting in the sun,
+    Weeping and crying for a young man;
+    Rise, Sally, rise, Sally,
+    Wipe away your tears, Sally;
+    Turn to the east
+    And turn to the west,
+    And turn to the one that you love best!"
+
+Higher and higher the voices of the three hundred orphans shrilled in
+unison as the owners thereof danced frantically around a small solitary
+figure in the middle of the ring of girls assembled in the yard on
+----nd Street. Her coarse blue denim apron was thrown over her head; her
+face was bowed into her hands that rested on her knees. It was a picture
+of woe.
+
+The last few words "you love best" rose to a shriek of exhortation. In
+the expectant silence that followed, "Sally" rose, pirouetted in a
+fashion worthy of a ballet dancer, then, with head down, fists clenched,
+arms tight at her sides, she made a sudden dash to break through the
+encircling wall of girls. She succeeded in making a breach by knocking
+the legs of three of the tallest out from under them; but two or more
+dozen arms, octopus-like, caught and held her. For a few minutes chaos
+reigned: legs, arms, hands, fingers, aprons, heads, stockings, hair,
+shoes of three hundred orphans were seemingly inextricably entangled. A
+bell clanged. The three hundred disentangled themselves with marvellous
+rapidity and, settling aprons, smoothing hair, pulling up stockings and
+down petticoats, they formed in a long double line. While waiting for
+the bell to ring the second warning, they stamped their feet, blew upon
+their cold fingers, and freely exercised their tongues.
+
+"Yer dassn't try that again!" said the mate in line with the
+obstreperous "Sally" who had so scorned the invitation of the hundreds
+of girls to "turn to the one that she loved best".
+
+"I dass ter!" was the defiant reply accompanied by the protrusion of a
+long thin tongue.
+
+"Yer dassn't either!"
+
+"I dass t'either!"
+
+"Git out!" The first speaker nudged the other's ribs with her sharp
+elbow.
+
+"Slap yer face for two cents!" shrieked the insulted "Sally", the Little
+Patti of the Vaudeville, and proceeded to carry out her threat.
+Whereupon Freckles, as she was known in the Asylum, set up a howl that
+was heard all along the line and turned upon her antagonist tooth and
+nail. At that moment the bell clanged a second time. A hush fell upon
+the multitude, broken only by a suppressed shriek that came from the
+vicinity of Freckles. A snicker ran down the line. The penalty for
+breaking silence after the second bell was "no supper", and not one of
+the three hundred cared to incur that--least of all Flibbertigibbet, the
+"Sally" of the game, who had forfeited her dinner, because she had been
+caught squabbling at morning prayers, and was now carrying about with
+her an empty stomach that was at bottom of her ugly mood.
+
+"One, two--one, two." The monitor counted; the girls fell into step, all
+but Flibbertigibbet--the Asylum nickname for the "Little Patti"--who
+contrived to keep out just enough to tread solidly with hobnailed shoe
+on the toes of the long-suffering Freckles. It was unbearable,
+especially the last time when a heel was set squarely upon Freckles'
+latest bunion.
+
+"Ou, ou--oh, au--wau!" Freckles moaned, limping.
+
+"Number 207 report for disorder," said the monitor.
+
+Flibbertigibbet giggled. Number 207 stepped out of the line and burst
+into uncontrollable sobbing; for she was hungry, oh, so hungry! And the
+matron had chalked on the blackboard "hot corn-cakes and molasses for
+Friday". It was the one great treat of the week. The girl behind
+Flibbertigibbet hissed in her ear:
+
+"Yer jest pizen mean; dirt ain't in it."
+
+A back kick worthy of a pack mule took effect upon the whisperer's shin.
+Flibbertigibbet moved on unmolested, underwent inspection at the
+entrance, and passed with the rest into the long basement room which was
+used for meals.
+
+Freckles stood sniffing disconsolately by the door as the girls filed
+in. She was meditating revenge, and advanced a foot in hope that,
+unseen, she might trip her tormentor as she passed her. What, then, was
+her amazement to see Flibbertigibbet shuffle along deliberately a little
+sideways in order to strike the extended foot! This man[oe]uvre she
+accomplished successfully and fell, not forward, but sideways out of
+line and upon Freckles. Freckles pushed her off with a vengeance, but
+not before she heard a gleeful whisper in her ear:
+
+"Dry up--watch out--I'll save yer some!"
+
+That was all; but to Freckles it was a revelation. The children filed
+between the long rows of wooden benches, that served for seats, and the
+tables. They remained standing until the sister in charge gave the
+signal to be seated. When the three hundred sat down as one, with a thud
+of something more than fifteen tons' weight, there broke loose a Babel
+of tongues--English as it is spoken in the mouths of children of many
+nationalities.
+
+It was then that Freckles began to "watch out."
+
+Flibbertigibbet sat rigid on the bench, her eyes turned neither to right
+nor left but staring straight at the pile of smoking corn-meal cakes
+trickling molasses on her tin plate. She was counting: "One, two, three,
+four, five," and the prospect of more; for on treat nights, which
+occurred once a week, there was no stinting with corn-meal cakes, hulled
+corn, apple sauce with fried bread or whatever else might be provided
+for the three hundred orphans at the Asylum on ----nd Street, in the
+great city of New York.
+
+Freckles grew nervous as she watched. What _was_ Flibbertigibbet doing?
+Her fingers were busy untying the piece of red mohair tape with which
+her heavy braid was fastened in a neat loop. She put it around her
+apron, tying it fast; then, blousing the blue denim in front to a pouch
+like a fashion-plate shirt waist, she said in an undertone to her
+neighbor on the right:
+
+"Gee--look! Ain't I got the style?"
+
+"I ain't a-goin' ter look at yer, yer so pizen mean--dirt ain't in it,"
+said 206 contemptuously, and sat sideways at such an angle that she
+could eat her cakes without seeing the eyesore next her.
+
+"Stop crowdin'!" was the next command from the bloused bit of "style" to
+her neighbor on the left. Her sharp elbow emphasized her words and was
+followed by a solid thigh-to-thigh pressure that was felt for the length
+of at least five girls down the bench. The neighbor on the left found
+she could not withstand the continued pressure. She raised her hand.
+
+"What is the trouble with 205?" The voice from the head of the table was
+one of controlled impatience.
+
+"Please 'um--"; but she spoke no further word, for the pressure was
+removed so suddenly that she lost her balance and careened with such
+force towards her torment of a neighbor that the latter was fain to put
+her both arms about her to hold her up. This she did so effectually that
+205 actually gasped for breath.
+
+"I'll pinch yer black an' blue if yer tell!" whispered Flibbertigibbet,
+relaxing her hold and in turn raising her hand.
+
+"What's wanting now, 208?"
+
+"A second helpin', please 'um."
+
+The tin round was passed up to the nickel-plated receptacle, that
+resembled a small bathtub with a cover, and piled anew. Flibbertigibbet
+viewed its return with satisfaction, and Freckles, who had been watching
+every move of this by-play, suddenly doubled up from her plastered
+position against the wall. She saw Flibbertigibbet drop the cakes quick
+as a flash into the low neck of her apron, and at that very minute they
+were reposing in the paunch of the blouse and held there by the mohair
+girdle. Thereafter a truce was proclaimed in the immediate vicinity of
+208. Her neighbors, right and left, their backs twisted towards the
+tease, ate their portions in fear and trembling. After a while 208's
+hand went up again. This time it waved mechanically back and forth as if
+the owner were pumping bucketfuls of water.
+
+"What is it now, 208?" The voice at the head of the table put the
+question with a note of exasperation in it.
+
+"Please 'um, another helpin'."
+
+The sister's lips set themselves close. "Pass up 208's plate," she said.
+The empty plate, licked clean of molasses on the sly, went up the line
+and returned laden with three "bloomin' beauties" as 208 murmured
+serenely to herself. She ate one with keen relish, then eyed the
+remaining two askance and critically. Freckles grew anxious. What next?
+Contrary to all rules 208's head, after slowly drooping little by
+little, lower and lower, dropped finally with a dull thud on the edge of
+the table and a force that tipped the plate towards her. Freckles
+doubled up again; she had seen through the man[oe]uvre: the three
+remaining cakes slid gently into the open half--low apron neck and were
+safely lodged with the other four.
+
+"Number 208 sit up properly or leave the table."
+
+The sister spoke peremptorily, for this special One Three-hundredth was
+her daily, almost hourly, thorn in the flesh. The table stopped eating
+to listen. There was a low moan for answer, but the head was not
+lifted. Number 206 took this opportunity to give her a dig in the ribs,
+and Number 205 crowded her in turn. To their amazement there was no
+response.
+
+"Number 208 answer at once."
+
+"Oh, please, 'um, I've got an awful pain--oo--au--." The sound was low
+but piercing.
+
+"You may leave the table, 208, and go up to the dormitory."
+
+208 rose with apparent effort. Her hands were clasped over the region
+where hot corn-meal cakes are said to lie heavily at times. Her face was
+screwed into an expression indicative of excruciating inner torment. As
+she made her way, moaning softly, to the farther door that opened into
+the cheerless corridor, there was audible a suppressed but decided
+giggle. It proceeded from Freckles. The monitor warned her, but,
+unheeding, the little girl giggled again.
+
+A ripple of laughter started down the three tables, but was quickly
+suppressed.
+
+"Number 207," said the much-tried and long-suffering sister, "you have
+broken the rule when under discipline. Go up to the dormitory and don't
+come down again to-night." This was precisely what Freckles wanted. She
+continued to sniff, however, as she left the room with seemingly
+reluctant steps. Once the door had closed upon her, she flew up the two
+long flights of stairs after Flibbertigibbet whom she found at the
+lavatory in the upper dormitory, cleansing the inside of her apron from
+molasses.
+
+Oh, but those cakes were good, eaten on the broad window sill where the
+two children curled themselves to play at their favorite game of "making
+believe about the Marchioness"!
+
+"But it's hot they be!" Freckles' utterance was thick owing to a large
+mouthful of cake with which she was occupied.
+
+"I kept 'em so squeezin' 'em against my stommick."
+
+"Where the pain was?"
+
+"M-m," her chum answered abstractedly. Her face was flattened against
+the window in order to see what was going on below, for the electric
+arc-light at the corner made the street visible for the distance of a
+block.
+
+"I've dropped a crumb," said Freckles ruefully.
+
+"Pick it up then, or yer'll catch it--Oh, my!"
+
+"Wot?" said Freckles who was on her hands and knees beneath the window
+searching for the crumb that might betray them if found by one of the
+sisters.
+
+"Git up here quick if yer want to see--it's the Marchioness an' another
+kid. Come on!" she cried excitedly, pulling at Freckles' long arm. The
+two little girls knelt on the broad sill, and with faces pressed close
+to the window-pane gazed and whispered and longed until the electric
+lights were turned on in the dormitory and the noise of approaching feet
+warned them that it was bedtime.
+
+Across the street from the Asylum, but facing the Avenue, was a great
+house of stone, made stately by a large courtyard closed by wrought-iron
+gates. On the side street looking to the Asylum, the windows in the
+second story had carved stone balconies; these were filled with bright
+blossoms in their season and in winter with living green. There was
+plenty of room behind the balcony flower-boxes for a white Angora cat to
+take her constitutional. When Flibbertigibbet entered the Asylum in
+June, the cat and the flowers were the first objects outside its walls
+to attract her attention and that of her chum, Freckles. It was not
+often that Freckles and her mate were given, or could obtain, the chance
+to watch the balcony, for there were so many things to do, something for
+every hour in the day: dishes to wash, beds to make, corridors to sweep,
+towels and stockings to launder, lessons to learn, sewing and catechism.
+But one day Flibbertigibbet--so Sister Angelica called the little girl
+from her first coming to the Asylum, and the name clung to her--was sent
+to the infirmary in the upper story because of a slight illness; while
+there she made the discovery of the "Marchioness." She called her that
+because she deemed it the most appropriate name, and why "appropriate"
+it behooves to tell.
+
+Behind the garbage-house, in the corner of the yard near the railroad
+tracks, there was a fine place to talk over secrets and grievances.
+Moreover, there was a knothole in the high wooden fence that inclosed
+the lower portion of the yard. When Flibbertigibbet put her eye to this
+aperture, it fitted so nicely that she could see up and down the street
+fully two rods each way. Generally that eye could range from butcher's
+boy to postman, or 'old clothes' man; but one day, having found an
+opportunity, she placed her visual organ as usual to the hole--and
+looked into another queer member that was apparently glued to the other
+side! But she was not daunted, oh, no!
+
+"Git out!" she commanded briefly.
+
+"I ain't in." The Eye snickered.
+
+"I'll poke my finger into yer!" she threatened further.
+
+"I'll bite your banana off," growled the Eye.
+
+"Yer a cross-eyed Dago."
+
+"You're another--you Biddy!" The Eye was positively insulting; it winked
+at her.
+
+Flibbertigibbet was getting worsted. She stamped her foot and kicked the
+fence. The Eye laughed at her, then suddenly vanished; and
+Flibbertigibbet saw a handsome-faced Italian lad sauntering up the
+street, hands in his pockets, and singing--oh, how he sang! The little
+girl forgot her rage in listening to the song, the words of which
+reminded her of dear Nonna Lisa and her own joys of a four weeks'
+vagabondage spent in the old Italian's company. All this she confessed
+to Freckles; and the two, under one pretence or another, managed to make
+daily visits to the garbage house knothole.
+
+That hole was every bit as good as a surprise party to them. The Eye was
+seen there but once more, when it informed the other Eye that it
+belonged to Luigi Poggi, Nonna Lisa's one grandson; that it was off in
+Chicago with a vaudeville troupe while the other Eye had been with Nonna
+Lisa. But instead of the Eye there appeared a stick of candy twisted in
+a paper and thrust through; at another time some fresh dates, strung on
+a long string, were found dangling on the inner side of the fence--the
+knothole having provided the point of entrance for each date; once a
+small bunch of wild flowers graced it on the yard side. Again, for three
+months, the hole served for a circulating library. A whole story found
+lodgement there, a chapter at a time, torn from a paper-covered novel.
+Flibbertigibbet carried them around with her pinned inside of her blue
+denim apron, and read them to Freckles whenever she was sure of not
+being caught. Luigi was their one boy on earth.
+
+_The Marchioness of Isola Bella_, that was the name of the story; and if
+Flibbertigibbet and Freckles on their narrow cots in the bare upper
+dormitory of the Orphan Asylum on ----nd Street, did not dream of
+sapphire lakes and snow-crowned mountains, of marble palaces and
+turtledoves, of lovely ladies and lordly men, of serenades and guitars
+and ropes of pearl, it was not the fault either of Luigi Poggi or the
+_Marchioness of Isola Bella_. But at times the story-book marchioness
+seemed very far away, and it was a happy thought of Flibbertigibbet's to
+name the little lady in the great house after her; for, once, watching
+at twilight from the cold window seat in the dormitory, the two orphan
+children saw her ladyship dressed for a party, the maid having forgotten
+to lower the shades.
+
+Freckles and Flibbertigibbet dared scarcely breathe; it was so much
+better than the _Marchioness of Isola Bella_, for this one was real and
+alive--oh, yes, very much alive! She danced about the room, running from
+the maid when she tried to catch her, and when the door opened and a
+tall man came in with arms opened wide, the real Marchioness did just
+what the story-book marchioness did on the last page to her lover: gave
+one leap into the outstretched arms of the father-lover.
+
+While the two children opposite were looking with all their eyes at this
+unexpected _denouement_, the maid drew the shades, and Freckles and
+Flibbertigibbet were left to stare at each other in the dark and cold.
+Flibbertigibbet nodded and whispered:
+
+"That takes the cake. The _Marchioness of Isola Bella_ ain't in it!"
+
+Freckles squeezed her hand. Thereafter, although the girls appreciated
+the various favors of the knothole, their entire and passionate
+allegiance was given to the real Marchioness across the way.
+
+
+IV
+
+One day, it was just after Thanksgiving, the Marchioness discovered her
+opposite neighbors. It was warm and sunny, a summer day that had strayed
+from its place in the Year's procession. The maid was putting the Angora
+cat out on the balcony among the dwarf evergreens. The Marchioness was
+trying to help her when, happening to look across the street, she saw
+the two faces at the opposite window. She stared for a moment, then
+taking the cat from the window sill held her up for the two little girls
+to see. Flibbertigibbet and her mate nodded vigorously and smiled,
+making motions with their hands as if stroking the fur.
+
+The Marchioness dropped the cat and waved her hand to them; the maid
+drew her back from the window; the two girls saw her ladyship twitch
+away from the detaining hand and stamp her foot.
+
+"Gee!" said Flibbertigibbet under her breath, "she's just like us."
+
+"Oh, wot's she up ter now?" Freckles whispered.
+
+Truly, any sane person would have asked that question. The Marchioness,
+having gained her point, was standing on the window seat by the open
+window, which was protected by an iron grating, and making curious
+motions with her fingers and hands.
+
+"Is she a luny?" Freckles asked in an awed voice.
+
+Flibbertigibbet was gazing fixedly at this apparition and made no reply.
+After watching this pantomime a few minutes, she spoke slowly:
+
+"She's one of the dumb uns; I've seen 'em."
+
+The Marchioness was now making frantic gestures towards the top of their
+window. She was laughing too.
+
+"She's a lively one if she is a dumber," said Freckles approvingly.
+Flibbertigibbet jumped to her feet and likewise stood on the window
+sill.
+
+"Gee! She wants us to git the window open at the top. Here--pull!" The
+two children hung their combined weight by the tips of their fingers
+from the upper sash, and the great window opened slowly a few inches;
+then it stuck fast. But they both heard the gleeful voice of their
+opposite neighbor and welcomed the sound.
+
+"I'm talking to you--it's the only way I can--the deaf and dumb--"
+
+The maid lifted her down, struggling, from the window seat, and they
+heard the childish voice scolding in a tongue unknown to them.
+
+Flibbertigibbet set immediately about earning the right to learn the
+deaf-and-dumb alphabet; she hung out all monitor Number Twelve's
+washing--dish towels, stockings, handkerchiefs--every other day for two
+weeks in the bitter December weather. She knew that this special monitor
+had a small brother in the Asylum for Deaf Mutes; this girl taught her
+the strange language in compensation for the child's time and labor. It
+was mostly "give and take" in the Asylum.
+
+"That child has been angelic lately; I don't know what's going to
+happen." Long-suffering Sister Agatha heaved a sigh of relief.
+
+"Oh, there is a storm brewing you may be sure; this calm is unnatural,"
+Sister Angelica replied, smiling at sight of the little figure in the
+yard dancing in the midst of an admiring circle of blue-nosed girls. "I
+believe they would rather stand and watch her than to run about and get
+warm. She is as much fun for them as a circus, and she learns so
+quickly! Have you noticed her voice in chapel lately?"
+
+"Yes, I have"; said Sister Agatha grumpily, "and I confess I can't bear
+to hear her sing like an angel when she is such a little fiend."
+
+Sister Angelica smiled. "Oh, I'm sure she'll come out all right; there's
+nothing vicious about her, and she's a loyal little soul, you can't deny
+that."
+
+"Yes, to those she loves," Sister Agatha answered with some bitterness.
+She knew she was no favorite with the subject under discussion. "See her
+now! I shouldn't think she would have a whole bone left in her body."
+
+They were playing "Snap-the-whip". Flibbertigibbet was the snapper for a
+line of twenty or more girls. As she swung the circle her legs flew so
+fast they fairly twinkled, and her hops and skips were a marvel to
+onlookers. But she landed right side up at last, although breathless,
+her long braid unloosened, hair tossing on the wind, cheeks red as
+American beauty roses, and gray eyes black with excitement of the game.
+Then the bell rang its warning, the children formed in line and marched
+in to lessons.
+
+The two weeks in December in which Flibbertigibbet had given herself to
+the acquisition of the new language, proved long for the Marchioness.
+Every day she watched at the window for the reappearance of the two
+children at the bare upper window opposite; but thus far in vain.
+However, on the second Saturday after their first across-street meeting,
+she saw to her great joy the two little girls curled up on the window
+sill and frantically waving to attract her attention. The Marchioness
+nodded and smiled, clapped her hands, and mounted upon her own broad
+window seat in order to have an unobstructed view over the iron grating.
+
+"She sees us, she sees us!" Freckles cried excitedly, but under her
+breath; "now let's begin."
+
+Flibbertigibbet chose one of the panes that was cleaner than the others
+and putting her two hands close to it began operations. The Marchioness
+fairly hopped up and down with delight when she saw the familiar symbols
+of the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, and immediately set her own small white
+hands to work on her first sentence:
+
+"Go slow."
+
+Flibbertigibbet nodded emphatically; the conversation was begun again
+and continued for half an hour. It was in truth a labor as well as a
+work of love. The spelling in both cases was far from perfect and, at
+times, puzzling to both parties; but little by little they became used
+to each other's erratic symbols together with the queer things for which
+they stood, and no conversation throughout the length and breadth of New
+York--yes, even of our United States--was ever more enjoyed than by
+these three girls. Flibbertigibbet and the Marchioness did the
+finger-talking, and Freckles helped with the interpretation. In the
+following translation of this first important exchange of social
+courtesies, the extremely peculiar spelling, and wild combinations of
+vowels in particular, are omitted: but the questions and answers are
+given exactly as they were constructed by the opposite neighbors.
+
+"Go slow." This as a word of warning from the Marchioness.
+
+"You bet."
+
+"Isn't this fun?"
+
+"Beats the band."
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+Flibbertigibbet and her chum looked at each other; should it be nickname
+or real name? As they were at present in society and much on their
+dignity they decided to give their real names.
+
+"Aileen Armagh." Thereupon Flibbertigibbet beat upon her breast to
+indicate first person singular possessive. The Marchioness stared at her
+for a minute, then spelled rather quickly:
+
+"It's lovely. We call you something else."
+
+"Who's we?"
+
+"Aunt Ruth and I."
+
+"What do you call me?"
+
+"Flibbertigibbet."
+
+"Git off!" cried Flibbertigibbet, recklessly shoving Freckles on to the
+floor. "Gee, how'd she know!" And thereupon she jumped to her feet and,
+having the broad window sill to herself, started upon a rather
+restricted coon dance in order to prove to her opposite neighbor that
+the nickname belonged to her by good right. Oh, but it was fun for the
+Marchioness! She clapped her hands to show her approval and catching up
+the skirt of her dainty white frock, slowly raised one leg at a right
+angle to her body and stood so for a moment, to the intense admiration
+of the other girls.
+
+"That's what they call me here," said Flibbertigibbet when they got down
+to conversation again.
+
+"What is hers?" asked the Marchioness, pointing to Freckles.
+
+"Margaret O'Dowd, but we call her Freckles."
+
+How the Marchioness laughed! So hard, indeed, that she apparently
+tumbled off the seat, for she disappeared entirely for several minutes,
+much to the girls' amazement as well as chagrin.
+
+"It's like she broke somethin'," whimpered Freckles; "a bone yer
+know--her nose fallin' that way when she went over forrard."
+
+"She ain't chany, I tell yer; she's jest Injy rubber," said
+Flibbertigibbet scornfully but with a note of anxiety in her voice. At
+this critical moment the Marchioness reappeared and jumped upon the
+seat. She had a curious affair in her hand; after placing it to her
+eyes, she signalled her answer:
+
+"I can see them."
+
+"See what?"
+
+"The freckles."
+
+"Wot's she givin' us?" Freckles asked in a perplexed voice.
+
+"She's all right," said Flibbertigibbet with the confidence of superior
+knowledge; "it's a tel'scope; yer can see the moon through, an' yer
+freckles look to her as big as pie-plates."
+
+Freckles crossed herself; it sounded like witches and it had a queer
+look.
+
+"Ask her wot's her name," she suggested.
+
+"What's your name?" Flibbertigibbet repeated on her fingers.
+
+"Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend."
+
+"Gee whiz, ain't that a corker!" Flibbertigibbet exclaimed delightedly.
+"How old are you?" She proceeded thus with her personal investigation
+prompted thereto by Freckles.
+
+"Most ten;--you?"
+
+"Most twelve."
+
+"And Freckles?" The Marchioness laughed as she spelled the name.
+
+"Eleven."
+
+"Ask her if she's an orphant," said Freckles.
+
+"Are you an orphan, Freckles says."
+
+"Half," came the answer. "What are you?"
+
+"Whole," was the reply. "Which is your half?"
+
+"I have only papa--I'll introduce him to you sometime when--"
+
+This explanation took fully five minutes to decipher, and while they
+were at work upon it the maid came up behind the Marchioness and,
+without so much as saying "By your leave", took her down struggling from
+the window seat and drew the shades. Whereupon Flibbertigibbet rose in
+her wrath, shook her fist at the insulting personage, and vowed
+vengeance upon her in her own forceful language:
+
+"You're an old cat, and I'll rub your fur the wrong way till the sparks
+fly."
+
+At this awful threat Freckles looked alarmed, and suddenly realized that
+she was shivering, the result of sitting so long against the cold
+window. "Come on down," she pleaded with the enraged Flibbertigibbet;
+and by dint of coaxing and the promise of a green woollen watch-chain,
+which she had patiently woven, and so carefully, with four pins and an
+empty spool till it looked like a green worm, she succeeded in getting
+her away from the dormitory window.
+
+
+V
+
+If the _Marchioness of Isola Bella_ had filled many of Flibbertigibbet's
+dreams during the last six months, the real Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend
+now filled all her waking hours. Her sole thought was to contrive
+opportunities for more of this fascinating conversation, and she and
+Freckles practised daily on the sly in order to say more, and quickly,
+to the real Marchioness across the way.
+
+By good luck they were given a half-hour for themselves just before
+Christmas, in reward for the conscientious manner in which they made
+beds, washed dishes, and recited their lessons for an entire week. When
+Sister Angelica, laying her hand on Flibbertigibbet's shoulder, had
+asked her what favor she wanted for the good work of that week, the
+little girl answered promptly enough that she would like to sit with
+Freckles in the dormitory window and look out on the street, for maybe
+there might be a hurdy-gurdy with a monkey passing through.
+
+"Not this cold day, I'm sure," said Sister Angelica, smiling at the
+request; "for no monkey could be out in this weather unless he had an
+extra fur coat and a hot water bottle for his toes. Yes, you may go but
+don't stay too long in the cold."
+
+But what if the Marchioness were to fail to make her appearance! They
+could not bear to think of this, and amused themselves for a little
+while by blowing upon the cold panes and writing their names and the
+Marchioness' in the vapor. But, at last--oh, at last, there she was! The
+fingers began to talk almost before they knew it. In some respects it
+proved to be a remarkable conversation, for it touched upon many and
+various topics, all of which proved of equal interest to the parties
+concerned. They lost no time in setting about the exchange of their
+views.
+
+"I'm going to a party," the Marchioness announced, smoothing her gown.
+
+"What time?"
+
+"Five o'clock, but I'm all ready. I am going to dance a minuet."
+
+This was a poser; but Flibbertigibbet did not wish to be outdone,
+although there was no party for her in prospect.
+
+"I can dance too," she signalled.
+
+"I know you can--lovely; that's why I told you."
+
+"I wish I could see you dance the minute."
+
+The Marchioness did not answer at once. Finally she spelled "Wait a
+minute," jumped down from the broad sill and disappeared. In a short
+time she was back again.
+
+"I'm going to dance for you. Look downstairs--when it is dark--and
+you'll see the drawing-room lighted--I'll dance near the windows."
+
+The two girls clapped their hands and Flibbertigibbet jumped up and down
+on the window sill to express her delight.
+
+"When do you have to go to bed?" was the next pointed question from
+Alice Maud Mary.
+
+"A quarter to eight."
+
+"Who puts you in?"
+
+This was another poser for even Flibbertigibbet's quick wits.
+
+"Wot does she mane?" Freckles demanded anxiously.
+
+"I dunno; anyhow, I'll tell her the sisters."
+
+"The sisters," was the word that went across the street.
+
+"Oh, how nice! Do you say your prayers to them too?"
+
+Freckles groaned. "Wot yer goin' to tell her now?"
+
+"Shut up now till yer hear me, an' cross yerself, for I mane it." Such
+was the warning from her mate.
+
+"No; I say them to another lady--Our Lady."
+
+"Oh gracious!" Freckles cried out under her breath and began to snicker.
+
+"What lady?" The Marchioness looked astonished but intensely interested.
+
+"The Holy Virgin. I'll bet she don't know nothin' 'bout Her," said
+Flibbertigibbet in a triumphant aside to Freckles. The Marchioness' eyes
+opened wider upon the two children across the way.
+
+"That is the mother of Our Lord, isn't it?" she said in her dumb way.
+The two children nodded; no words seemed to come readily just then, for
+Alice Maud Mary had given them a surprise. They crossed themselves.
+
+"I never thought of saying my prayers to His mother before, but I shall
+now. He always had a mother, hadn't he?"
+
+Flibbertigibbet could think of nothing to say in answer, but she did the
+next best thing: she drew her rosary from under her dress waist and held
+it up to the Marchioness who nodded understandingly and began to fumble
+at her neck. In a moment she brought forth a tiny gold chain with a
+little gold cross hanging from it. She held it up and dangled it before
+the four astonished eyes opposite.
+
+"Gee! Yer can't git ahead of _her_, an' I ain't goin' to try. She's just
+a darlint." Flibbertigibbet's heart was very full and tender at that
+moment; but she giggled at the next question.
+
+"Do you know any boys?"
+
+One finger was visible at the dormitory window. The Marchioness laughed
+and after telling them she knew ever so many began to count on her
+fingers for the benefit of her opposite neighbors.
+
+"One, two, three, four, five," she began on her right hand--
+
+"I don't believe her," said Freckles with a suspicious sniff.
+
+Flibbertigibbet turned fiercely upon her. "I'd believe her if she said
+she knew a thousand, so now, Margaret O'Dowd, an' yer hold yer tongue!"
+she cried; but in reprimanding Freckles for her want of faith she lost
+count of the boys.
+
+"I must go now," said the Marchioness; "but when the drawing-room
+downstairs is lighted, you look in--there'll be one boy there to dance
+with me. Be sure you look." Suddenly the Marchioness made a sign that
+both girls understood, although it was an extra one and the very
+prettiest of all in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet of the affections: she
+put her fingers to her lips and blew them a kiss.
+
+"Ain't she a darlint!" murmured Flibbertigibbet, tossing the same sign
+across the street. When the Marchioness had left the window, the two
+girls spent the remaining minutes of their reward in planning how best
+to see the dance upon which they had set their hearts. They thought of
+all the places available, but were sure they would not be permitted to
+occupy them. At last Flibbertigibbet decided boldly, on the strength of
+a good conscience throughout one whole week, to ask at headquarters.
+
+"I'm goin' straight to Sister Angelica an' ask her to let us go into the
+chapel; it's the only place. Yer can see from the little windy in the
+cubby-hole where the priest gits into his other clothes."
+
+Freckles looked awestruck. "She'll never let yer go in there."
+
+Her mate snapped her fingers in reply, and catching Freckles' hand raced
+her down the long dormitory, down the two long flights of stairs to the
+schoolroom where Sister Angelica was giving a lesson to the younger
+girls.
+
+"Well, Flibbertigibbet, what is it now?" said the sister smiling into
+the eager face at her elbow. When Sister Angelica called her by her
+nickname instead of by the Asylum number, Flibbertigibbet knew she was
+in high favor. She nudged Freckles and replied:
+
+"I want to whisper to you."
+
+Sister Angelica bent down; before she knew it the little girl's arms
+were about her neck and the child was telling her about the dance at the
+stone house across the way. The sister smiled as she listened to the
+rush of eager words, but she was so glad to find this madcap telling her
+openly her heart's one desire, that she did what she had never done
+before in all her life of beautiful child-consecrated work: she said
+"Yes, and I will go with you. Wait for me outside the chapel door at
+half-past four."
+
+Flibbertigibbet squeezed her around the neck with such grateful vigor
+that the blood rushed to poor Sister Angelica's head. She was willing,
+however, to be a martyr in such a good cause. The little girl walked
+quietly to the door, but when it had closed upon her she executed a
+series of somersaults worthy of the Madison Square Garden acrobats.
+"What'd I tell yer, what'd I tell yer!" she exclaimed, pirouetting and
+somersaulting till the slower-moving Freckles was a trifle dizzy.
+
+Within a quarter of an hour the three were snugly ensconced in the
+window niche of the "cubby-hole," so Flibbertigibbet termed the
+robing-room closet, and looking with all their eyes across the street.
+They were directly opposite what Sister Angelica said must be the
+drawing-room and on a level with it. As they looked, one moment the
+windows were dark, in the next they were filled with soft yet brilliant
+lights. The lace draperies were parted and the children could see down
+the length of the room.
+
+There she was! Hopping and skipping by the side of her father-lover and
+drawing him to the central window. Behind them came the lovely young
+lady and the Boy! The two were holding hands and swinging them freely as
+they laughed and chatted together.
+
+"That's the Boy!" cried Flibbertigibbet, wild with excitement.
+
+"And that must be the Aunt Ruth she told about--oh, ain't she just
+lovely!" cried Freckles.
+
+"Watch out now, an' yer'll see the minute!" said Flibbertigibbet,
+squeezing Sister Angelica's hand; Sister Angelica squeezed back, but
+kept silence. She was learning many things before unknown to her. The
+four came to the middle window and looked out, up, and all around. But
+although the two children waved their hands wildly to attract their
+attention, the good people opposite failed to see them because the
+little window suffered eclipse in the shadow of the large electric
+arc-light's green cap.
+
+"She's goin' to begin!" cried Flibbertigibbet, clapping her hands.
+
+The young lady sat down at the piano and began to play. Whether
+Flibbertigibbet expected a variation of a "coon dance" or an Irish jig
+cannot be stated with certainty, but that she was surprised is a fact;
+so surprised, indeed, that for full two minutes she forgot to talk. To
+the slow music, for such it was--Flibbertigibbet beat time with her
+fingers on the pane to the step--the Marchioness and the Boy, pointing
+their daintily slippered feet, moved up and down, back and forth,
+swinging, turning, courtesying, bowing over the parquet floor with such
+childishly stately yet charming grace that their rhythmic motions were
+as a song without words.
+
+The father-lover stood with his back to the mantel and applauded after
+an especially well executed flourish or courtesy; Aunt Ruth looked over
+her shoulder, smiling, her hands wandering slowly over the keys. At
+last, the final flourish, the final courtesy. The Marchioness' dress
+fairly swept the floor, and the Boy bowed so low that--well,
+Flibbertigibbet never could tell how it happened, but she had a warm
+place in her heart for that boy ever after--he quietly and methodically
+stood head downwards on his two hands, his white silk stockings and
+patent leathers kicking in the air.
+
+The Marchioness was laughing so hard that she sat down in a regular
+"cheese" on the floor; the father-lover was clapping his hands like mad;
+the lady swung round on the piano stool and shook her forefinger at the
+Boy who suddenly came right side up at last, hand on his heart, and
+bowed with great dignity to the little girl on the floor. Then he, too,
+laughed and cut another caper just as a solemn-faced butler came in with
+wraps and furs. But by no means did he remain solemn long! How could he
+with the Boy prancing about him, and the Marchioness playing at
+"Catch-me-if-you-can" with her father-lover, and the lady slipping and
+sliding over the floor to catch the Boy who was always on the other side
+of the would-be solemn butler? Why, he actually swung round in a circle
+by holding on to that butler's dignified coat-tails!
+
+Nor were they the only ones who laughed. Across the way in one of the
+Orphan Asylum windows, Sister Angelica and the children laughed too, in
+spirit joining in the fun, and when the butler came to the window to
+draw the shades there were three long "Ah's," both of intense
+disappointment and supreme satisfaction.
+
+"Watch out, now," said Flibbertigibbet excitedly on the way down into
+the basement for supper and dishwashing, for it was their turn this
+week, "an' yer'll see me dance yer a minute in the yard ter-morrow."
+
+"Yer can't dance it alone," replied doubting Freckles; "yer've got to
+have a boy."
+
+"I don't want one; I'll take you, Freckles, for a boy." Clumsy Freckles
+blushed with delight beneath her many beauty-spots at such promise of
+unwonted graciousness on the part of her chum, and wondered what had
+come over Flibbertigibbet lately.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few hours afterwards when they went up to bed, they whispered together
+again concerning the dance, and begged Sister Angelica to let them have
+just one peep from the dormitory window at their house of delight--a
+request she was glad to grant. They opened one of the inside blinds a
+little way, and exclaimed at the sight. It was snowing. The children
+oh'ed and ah'ed under their breath, for a snowstorm at Christmas time in
+the great city is the child's true joy. At their opposite neighbor's a
+faint light was visible in the balcony room; the wet soft flakes had
+already ridged the balustrade, powdered the dwarf evergreens, topped the
+cap of the electric arc-light and laid upon the concrete a coverlet of
+purest white.
+
+The long bare dormitory filled with the children--the fatherless and
+motherless children we have always with us. Soon each narrow cot held
+its asylum number; the many heads, golden, brown, or black, busied all
+of them with childhood's queer unanchored thoughts, were pillowed in
+safety for another night.
+
+And without the snow continued to fall upon the great city. It graced
+with equal delicacy the cathedral's marble spires and the forest of
+pointed firs which made the numberless Christmas booths that surrounded
+old Washington Market. It covered impartially, and with as pure a white,
+the myriad city roofs that sheltered saint and sinner, whether among the
+rich or the poor, among the cherished or castaways. It fell as thickly
+upon the gravestones in Trinity's ancient churchyard as upon the freshly
+turned earth in a corner of the paupers' burying ground; and it set upon
+black corruption wherever it was in evidence the seal of a transient
+stainlessness.
+
+
+VI
+
+"Really, I am discouraged about that child," said Sister Agatha just
+after Easter. She was standing at one of the schoolroom windows that
+overlooked the yard; she spoke as if thoroughly vexed.
+
+"What is it now--208 again?" Sister Angelica looked up from the copybook
+she was correcting.
+
+"Oh, yes, of course; it's always 208."
+
+"Oh, she doesn't mean anything; it's only her high spirits; they must
+have some vent."
+
+"It's been her ruin being on the stage even for those few weeks, and
+ever since the Van Ostends began to make of her and have her over for
+that Christmas luncheon and the Sunday nights, the child is neither to
+have nor to hold. What with her 'make believing' and her 'acting' she
+upsets the girls generally. She ought to be set to good steady work; the
+first chance I get I'll put her to it. I only wish some one would adopt
+her--"
+
+"I heard Father Honore--"
+
+"Look at her now!" exclaimed Sister Agatha interrupting her.
+
+Sister Angelica joined her at the window. They could not only see but
+hear all that was going on below. With the garbage house as a
+stage-setting and background to the performance, Flibbertigibbet was
+courtesying low to her audience; the skirt of her scant gingham dress
+was held in her two hands up and out to its full extent. The orphans
+crouched on the pavement in a triple semi-circle in front of her.
+
+"All this rigmarole comes of the theatre," said Sister Agatha grimly.
+
+"Well, where's the harm? She is only living it all over again and giving
+the others a little pleasure at the same time. Dear knows, they have
+little enough, poor things."
+
+Sister Agatha made no reply; she was listening intently to 208's orders.
+The little girl had risen from her low courtesy and was haranguing the
+assembled hundreds:
+
+"Now watch out, all of yer, an' when I do the minute yer can clap yer
+hands if yer like it; an' if yer want some more, yer must clap enough to
+split yer gloves if yer had any on, an' then I'll give yer the coon
+dance; an' then if yer like _that_, yer can play yer gloves are busted
+with clappin' an' stomp yer feet--"
+
+"But we can't," Freckles entered her prosaic protest, "'cause we're
+squattin'."
+
+"Well, get up then, yer'll have to; an' then if you stomp awful, an'
+holler 'On-ko--on-ko!'--that's what they say at the thayertre--I'll give
+yer somethin' else--"
+
+"Wot?" demanded 206 suspiciously.
+
+"Don't yer wish I'd tell!" said 208, and began the minuet.
+
+It was marvellous how she imitated every graceful movement, every turn
+and twist and bow, every courtesy to the imaginary partner--Freckles had
+failed her entirely in this role--whose imaginary hand she held clasped
+high above her head; her clumsy shoes slid over the flagging as if it
+had been a waxed floor under dainty slippers. There was an outburst of
+applause; such an outburst that had the audience really worn gloves,
+every seam, even if French and handsewed, must have cracked under the
+healthy pressure.
+
+208 beamed and, throwing back her head, suddenly flung herself into the
+coon dance which, in its way, was as wild and erratic as the minuet had
+been stately and methodical. Wilder and wilder grew her gyrations--head,
+feet, legs, shoulders, hair, hands, arms, were in seemingly perpetual
+motion. The audience grew wildly excited. They jumped up, shouting
+"On-ko--on-ko!" and accompanied their shouts with the stamping of feet.
+A dexterous somersault on the dancer's part ended the performance; her
+cheeks were flushed with exercise and excitement, her black mane was
+loosened and tossed about her shoulders. The audience lost their heads
+and even 206 joined in the prolonged roar:
+
+"On-ko, 208--on-ko-o-o-oor! On-ko, Flibbertigibbet--some more--some
+more!"
+
+"It's perfectly disgraceful," muttered Sister Agatha, and made a
+movement to leave the window; but Sister Angelica laid a gently
+detaining hand on her arm.
+
+"No, Agatha, not that," she said earnestly; "you'll see that they will
+work all the better for this fun--Hark!"
+
+There was a sudden and deep silence. 208 was evidently ready with her
+encore, a surprise to all but the performer. She shook back the hair
+from her face, raised her eyes, crossed her two hands upon her chest,
+waited a few seconds until a swift passenger train on the track behind
+the fence had smothered its roar in the tunnel depths, then began to
+sing "The Holy City." Even Sister Agatha felt the tears spring as she
+listened. A switch engine letting off steam drowned the last words, and
+there was no applause. Flibbertigibbet looked about her inquiringly; but
+the girls were silent. Such singing appeared to them out of the
+ordinary--and so unlike 208! It took them a moment to recover from their
+surprise; they gathered in groups to whisper together concerning the
+performance.
+
+Meanwhile Flibbertigibbet was waiting expectantly. Where was the well
+earned applause? And she had reserved the best for the last! Ungrateful
+ones! Her friends in the stone house always praised her when she did her
+best,--but these girls--
+
+She stamped her foot, then dashed through the broken ranks, making faces
+as she ran, and crying out in disgust and anger:
+
+"Catch me givin' yer any more on-kos, yer stingy things!" and with that
+she ran into the basement followed by Freckles who was intent upon
+appeasing her.
+
+The two sisters, pacing the dim corridor together after chapel that
+evening, spoke again of their little wilding.
+
+"I didn't finish what I was going to tell you about 208," said Sister
+Angelica. "I heard the Sister Superior tell Father Honore when he was
+here the other day that Mr. Van Ostend had been to see her in regard to
+the child. It seems he has found a place for her in the country with
+some of his relations, as I understand it. He said his interest in her
+had been roused when he heard her for the first time on the stage, and
+that when he found Flibbertigibbet was the little acquaintance his
+daughter had made, he determined to further the child's interests so far
+as a home is concerned."
+
+"Then there is a prospect of her going," Sister Agatha drew a breath of
+relief. "Did you hear what Father Honore said?"
+
+"Very little; but I noticed he looked pleased, and I heard him say,
+'This is working out all right; I'll step across and see Mr. Van Ostend
+myself.'--I shall miss her so!"
+
+Sister Agatha made no reply. Together the two sisters continued to pace
+the dim corridor, silent each with her thoughts; and, pacing thus, up
+and down, up and down, the slender, black-robed figures were soon lost
+in the increasing darkness and became mere neutral outlines as they
+passed the high bare windows and entered their respective rooms.
+
+Even so, a few weeks later when Number 208 left the Orphan Asylum on
+----nd Street, they passed quietly out of the child's actual life and
+entered the fitfully lighted chambers of her childish memory wherein, at
+times, they paced with noiseless footsteps as once in the barren halls
+of her orphanage home.
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND
+
+Home Soil
+
+
+I
+
+A land of entrancing inner waters, our own marvellous Lake Country of
+the East, lies just behind those mountains of Maine that sink their
+bases in the Atlantic and are fitly termed in Indian nomenclature
+_Waves-of-the-Sea_. Bight and bay indent this mountainous coast, in
+beauty comparable, if less sublime yet more enticing, to the Norwegian
+fjords; within them are set the islands large and small whereon the
+sheep, sheltered by cedar coverts, crop the short thick turf that is
+nourished by mists from the Atlantic. Above bight and bay and island
+tower the mountains. Their broad green flanks catch the earliest eastern
+and the latest western lights. Their bare summits are lifted boldly into
+the infinite blue that is reflected in the waters which lap their
+foundations.
+
+Flamsted lies at the outlet of Lake Mesantic, on the gentle northward
+slope of these _Waves-of-the-Sea_, some eighteen miles inland from
+Penobscot Bay. Until the last decade of the nineteenth century it was
+unconnected with the coast by any railroad; but at that time a branch
+line from Hallsport on the Bay, encouraged by the opening of a small
+granite quarry in the Flamsted Hills, made its terminus at The
+Corners--a sawmill settlement at the falls of the Rothel, a river that
+runs rapidly to the sea after issuing from Lake Mesantic. A mile beyond
+the station the village proper begins at its two-storied tavern, The
+Greenbush.
+
+From the lower veranda of this hostelry, one may look down the shaded
+length of the main street, dignified by many an old-fashioned house, to
+The Bow, an irregular peninsula extending far into the lake and
+containing some two hundred acres. This estate is the ancestral home of
+the Champneys, known as Champ-au-Haut, in the vernacular "Champo." At
+The Bow the highway turns suddenly, crosses a bridge over the Rothel and
+curves with the curving pine-fringed shores of the lake along the base
+of the mountain until it climbs the steep ascent that leads to Googe's
+Gore, the third division of the town of Flamsted.
+
+As in all New England towns, that are the possessors of "old families,"
+so in Flamsted;--its inhabitants are partisans. The result is, that it
+has been for years as a house divided against itself, and heated
+discussion of the affairs of the Googes at the Gore and the Champneys at
+The Bow has been from generation to generation an inherited interest.
+And from generation to generation, as the two families have ramified and
+intermarriages occurred more and more frequently, party spirit has run
+higher and higher and bitter feelings been engendered. But never have
+the factional differences been more pronounced and the lines of
+separation drawn with a sharper ploughshare in this mountain-ramparted
+New England town, than during the five years subsequent to the opening
+of the Flamsted Quarries which brought in its train the railroad and the
+immigrants. This event was looked upon by the inhabitants as the
+Invasion of the New.
+
+The interest of the first faction was centred in Champ-au-Haut and its
+present possessor, the widow of Louis Champney, old Judge Champney's
+only son. That of the second in the Googes, Aurora and her son Champney,
+the owners of Googe's Gore and its granite outcrop.
+
+The office room of The Greenbush has been for two generations the
+acknowledged gathering place of the representatives of the hostile
+camps. On a cool evening in June, a few days after the departure of
+several New York promoters, who had formed a syndicate to exploit the
+granite treasure in The Gore and for that purpose been fully a week in
+Flamsted, a few of the natives dropped into the office to talk it over.
+
+When Octavius Buzzby, the factotum at Champ-au-Haut and twin of Augustus
+Buzzby, landlord of The Greenbush, entered the former bar-room of the
+old hostelry, he found the usual Saturday night frequenters. Among them
+was Colonel Milton Caukins, tax collector and assistant deputy sheriff
+who, never quite at ease in the presence of his long-tongued wife,
+expanded discursively so soon as he found himself in the office of The
+Greenbush. He was in full flow when Octavius entered.
+
+"Hello, Tave," he cried, extending his hand in easy condescension,
+"you're well come, for you're just in time to hear the latest; the
+deal's on--an A. 1 sure thing this time. Aurora showed me the papers
+to-day. We're in for it now--government contracts, state houses, battle
+monuments, graveyards; we've got 'em all, and things'll begin to hum in
+this backwater hole, you bet!"
+
+Octavius looked inquiringly at his brother. Augustus answered by raising
+his left eyebrow and placidly closing his right eye as a cautionary
+signal to lie low and await developments.
+
+It was the Colonel's way to boom everything, and simply because he could
+not help it. It was not a matter of principle with him, it was an affair
+of temperament. He had boomed Flamsted for the last ten years--its
+climate, its situation, its scenery, its water power, its lake-shore
+lands as prospective sites for mansion summer cottages, and the
+treasures of its unopened quarries. So incorrigible an optimist was
+Milton Caukins that any slight degree of success, which might attend the
+promotion of any one of his numerous schemes, caused an elation that
+amounted to hilarity. On the other hand, the deadly blight of
+non-fulfilment, that annually attacked his most cherished hopes for the
+future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress
+him, or check the prodigal casting of his optimistic daily bread on the
+placid social waters where, as the years multiplied, his enthusiasms
+scarce made a ripple.
+
+"I see Mis' Googe yisterd'y, an' she said folks hed been down on her so
+long for sellin' thet pass'l of paster for the first quarry, thet she
+might ez well go the hull figger an' git 'em down on her for the rest of
+her days by sellin' the rest. By Andrew Jackson! she's got the grit for
+a woman--and the good looks too! She can hold her own for a figger with
+any gal in this town. I see the syndicaters a-castin' sheeps' eyes her
+ways the day she took 'em over The Gore prospectin'; but, by A. J.! they
+hauled in their lookin's when she turned them great eyes of her'n their
+ways.--What's the figger for the hull piece? Does anybody know?"
+
+It was Joel Quimber, the ancient pound-master, who spoke, and the
+silence that followed proved that each man present was resenting the
+fact that he was not in a position to give the information desired.
+
+"I shall know as soon as they get it recorded, that is, if they don't
+trade for a dollar and if they ever do get it recorded." The speaker was
+Elmer Wiggins, druggist and town clerk for the last quarter of a
+century. He was pessimistically inclined, the tendency being fostered by
+his dual vocation of selling drugs and registering the deaths they
+occasionally caused.
+
+Milton Caukins, or the Colonel, as he preferred to be called on account
+of his youthful service in the state militia and his present connection
+with the historical society of The Rangers, took his cigar from his lips
+and blew the smoke forcibly towards the ceiling before he spoke.
+
+"She's got enough now to put Champ through college. The first forty
+acres she sold ten years ago will do that."
+
+"I ain't so sure of thet." Joel Quimber's tone implied obstinate
+conviction that his modestly expressed doubt was a foregone conclusion.
+"Champ's a devil of a feller when it comes to puttin' through anything.
+He's a chip off the old block. He'll put through more 'n his mother can
+git out if he gits in any thicker with them big guns--race hosses, steam
+yachts an' fancy fixin's. He could sink the hull Gore to the foundations
+of Old Time in a few of them suppers I've heerd he gin arter the show. I
+heerd he gin ten dollars a plate for the last one--some kind of
+primy-donny, I heerd. But Champ's game though. I heerd Mr. Van Ostend
+talkin' 'bout him to one of the syndicaters--mebbe they're goin' to work
+him in with them somehow; anyway, I guess Aurory don't begrutch him a
+little spendin' money seein' how easy it come out of the old sheep
+pasters. Who'd 'a' thought a streak of granite could hev made sech a
+stir!"
+
+"It's a stir that'll sink this town in the mud." Mr. Wiggins' voice was
+what might be called thorough-bass, and was apt to carry more weight
+with his townspeople than his opinions, which latter were not always
+acceptable to Colonel Caukins. "Look at it now! This town has never been
+bonded; we're free from debt and a good balance on hand for
+improvements. Now along comes three or four hundred immigrants to begin
+with--trade following the flag, I suppose _you_ call it, Colonel," (he
+interpolated this with cutting sarcasm)--"a hodge-podge of Canucks, and
+Dagos, and Polacks, and the Lord knows what--a darned set of foreigners,
+foreign to our laws, our ways, our religion; and behind 'em a lot of men
+that would be called windbags if it wasn't for their money-bags. And
+between 'em our noses are going to be held right down on the grindstone.
+I tell you we'll have to bond this town to support the schooling for
+these foreign brats, and there's a baker's dozen of 'em every time; and
+there'll be tooting and dancing and singing and playing on Sunday with
+their foreign gimcranks,--mandolin-banjos and what-all--"
+
+"Good heavens, my dear fellow!" the Colonel broke in with an air of
+impatience, "can't you see that it's this very 'stir,' as you term it,
+that is going to put this town into the front rank of the competing
+industrial thousands of America?"
+
+The Colonel, when annoyed at the quantity of cold water thrown upon his
+redhot enthusiasm, was apt to increase the warmth of his patronizing
+address by an endearing term.
+
+"I see farther than the front ranks of your 'competing industrial
+thousands of America,' Milton Caukins; I see clear over 'em to the very
+brink, and I see a struggling wrestling mass of human beings slipping,
+sliding to the bottomless pit of national destitution, helped downwards
+by just such darned boomers of what you call 'industrial efficiency' as
+you are, Milton Caukins." He paused for breath.
+
+Augustus Buzzby, who was ever a man of peace, tried to divert this
+raging torrent of speech into other and personal channels.
+
+"I ain't nothin' 'gainst Mis' Googe as a woman, but she played me a mean
+trick when she sold that first quarry. It killed my trade as dead as a
+door nail. You can't hire them highflyers to put themselves into a town
+their money's bankin' on to ruin in what you might call a summer-social
+way. I found _that_ out 'fore they left this house last week."
+
+"Yes, and she's played a meaner one now." Mr. Wiggins made the assertion
+with asperity and looked at the same time directly at Octavius Buzzby.
+"I know all about their free dispensaries that'll draw trade away from
+my very counter and take the bread and butter out of my mouth; and as
+for the fees--there won't be a chance for recording a homestead site;
+there isn't any counting on such things, for they're a homeless lot,
+always moving from pillar to post with free pickings wherever they
+locate over night, just like the gypsies that came through here last
+September."
+
+"It's kinder queer now, whichever way you've a mind to look at it," Joel
+Quimber remarked meditatively. His eyes were cast up to the ceiling; his
+fore-fingers and thumbs formed an acute triangle over the bridge of his
+nose; the arms of his chair supported his elbows. "Queer thet it's allus
+them upper tens an' emigrants thet keep a-movin' on, fust one place then
+t'other. Kinder looks ez if, arter all, there warn't no great real
+difference when it comes to bein' restless. Take us home folks now,
+we're rooted in deep, an' I guess if we was to be uprooted kinder
+suddin', p'raps we'd hev more charity for the furriners. There's no
+tellin'; I ain't no jedge of sech things, an' I'm an out-an-out
+American. But mebbe my great-great-great-granther's father could hev'
+told ye somethin' wuth tellin'; he an' the Champneys was hounded out of
+France, an' was glad 'nough to emigrate, though they called it
+refugeein' an' pioneerin' in them days."
+
+Augustus Buzzby laid his hand affectionately on the old man's shoulder.
+"You're a son of the soil, Joel; I stand corrected. I guess the less any
+of us true blue Americans say 'bout flinging stones at furriners the
+safer 'twill be for all on us."
+
+But Mr. Wiggins continued his diatribe: "There ain't no denying it, the
+first people in town are down on the whole thing. Didn't the rector tell
+me this very day that 'twas like ploughing up the face of nature for the
+sake of sowing the seeds of political and social destruction--his very
+words--in this place of peace and happy homes? He don't blame Mrs.
+Champney for feeling as she does 'bout Aurora Googe. He said it was a
+shame that just as soon as Mrs. Champney had begun to sell off her lake
+shore lands so as her city relatives could build near her, Mrs. Googe
+must start up and balk all her plans by selling two hundred acres of old
+sheep pasture for the big quarry."
+
+"Humph!" It was the first sound that Octavius Buzzby had uttered since
+his entrance and general greeting. Hearing it his brother looked
+warningly in his direction, for he feared that the factional difference,
+which had come to the surface to breathe in his own and Elmer Wiggins'
+remarks, might find over-heated expression in the mouth of his twin if
+once Tave's ire should be aroused. But his brother gave no heed and,
+much to Augustus' relief, went off at a tangent.
+
+"I heard old Judge Champney talk on these things a good many times in
+his lifetime, an' he was wise, wiser'n any man here." He allowed himself
+this one thrust at Mr. Wiggins and the Colonel. "He used to say: 'Tavy,
+it's all in the natural course of things, and it's got to strike us here
+sometime; not in my time, but in my boy's. No man of us can say he owns
+God's earth, an' set up barriers an' fences, an' sometimes breastworks,
+an' holler "hands off" to every man that peeks over the wall, "this here
+is mine or that is ours!" because 't isn't in the natural order of
+things, and what isn't in the natural order isn't going to be, Tavy.'
+That's what the old Judge said to me more'n once."
+
+"He was right, Tavy, he was right," said Quimber eagerly and earnestly.
+"I can't argify, an' I can't convince; but I know he was right. I've
+lived most a generation longer'n any man here, an' I've seen a thing or
+two an' marked the way of nater jest like the Jedge. I've stood there
+where the Rothel comes down from The Gore in its spring freshet, rarin',
+tearin' down, bearin' stones an' rocks along with its current till it
+strikes the lowlands; then a racin' along, catchin' up turf an' mud an'
+sand, an' foamin' yaller an' brown acrost the medders, leavin' mud a
+quarter of an inch thick on the lowlands; and then a-rushin' into the
+lake ez if 't would turn the bottom upside down--an' jest look what
+happens! Stid of kickin' up a row all along the banks it jest ain't
+nowhere when you look for it! Only the lake riled for a few furlongs off
+shore an' kinder humpin' up in the middle. An' arter a day or two ye
+come back an' look agin, an' where's the rile? All settled to the
+bottom, an' the lake as clear as a looking-glass. An' then ye look at
+the medders an' ye see thet, barrin' a big boulder or two an' some stuns
+thet an ox-team can cart off, an' some gullyin' out long the highroad,
+they ain't been hurt a mite. An' then come 'long 'bout the fust of July,
+an' ye go out an' stan' there and look for the silt--an' what d' ye see?
+Why, jest thet ye're knee deep in clover an' timothy thet hez growed
+thet high an' lush jest on account of thet very silt!
+
+"Thet's the way 't is with nateral things; an' thet's what the old Jedge
+meant. This furrin flood's a-comin'; an' we've got to stan' some scares
+an' think mebbe The Gore dam'll bust, an' the boulders lay round too
+thick for the land, an' the mud'll spile our medders, an' the lake show
+rily so's the cattle won't drink--an' we'll find out thet in this great
+free home of our'n, thet's lent us for a while, thet there's room 'nough
+for all, an', in the end--not in my time, but in your'n--our Land, like
+the medders, is goin' to be the better for it."
+
+"Well put, well put, Quimber," said the Colonel who had been showing
+signs of restlessness under the unusual and protracted eloquence of the
+old pound-master. "We're making the experiment that every other nation
+has had to make some time or other. Take old Rome, now--what was it
+started the decay, eh?"
+
+As no one present dared to cope with the decline of so large a subject,
+the Colonel had the floor. He looked at each man in turn; then waved the
+hand that held his cigar airily towards the ceiling. "Just inbreeding,
+sir, inbreeding. That's what did it. We Americans, are profiting by the
+experience of the centuries and are going to take in fresh blood just as
+fast as it can attain to an arterial circulation in the body politic,
+sir; an arterial circulation, I say--" the Colonel was apt to roll a
+fine phrase more than once under his tongue when the sound thereof
+pleased him,--"and in the course of nature--I agree perfectly with the
+late Judge Champney and our friend, Quimber--there may be, during the
+process, a surcharge of blood to the head or stomach of the body politic
+that will cause a slight attack of governmental vertigo or national
+indigestion. But it will pass, gentlemen, it will pass; and I assure you
+the health of the Republic will be kept at the normal, with nothing more
+than passing attacks of racial hysteria which, however undignified they
+may appear in the eyes of all right-minded citizens, must ever remain
+the transient phenomena of a great nation in the making."
+
+The Colonel, having finished his peroration with another wave of his
+cigar towards the ceiling, lowered his feet from their elevated position
+on the counter, glanced anxiously at the clock, which indicated a
+quarter of nine, and remarked casually that, as Mrs. Caukins was
+indisposed, he felt under obligations to be at home by half-past nine.
+
+Joel Quimber, whom such outbursts of eloquence on the Colonel's part in
+the usual town-meeting left in a generally dazed condition of mind and
+politics, remarked that he heard the whistle of the evening train about
+fifteen minutes ago, and asked if Augustus were expecting any one up on
+it.
+
+"No, but the team's gone down to meet it just the same. Maybe there'll
+be a runner or two; they pay 'bout as well as the big guns after all;
+and then there's a chance of one of the syndicaters coming in on me at
+any time now.--There's the team."
+
+He went out on the veranda. The men within the office listened with
+intensified interest, strengthened by that curiosity which is shown by
+those in whose lives events do not crowd upon one another with such
+overwhelming force, that the susceptibility to fresh impressions is
+dulled. They heard the land-lord's cordial greeting, a confusion of
+sounds incident upon new arrivals; then Augustus Buzzby came in,
+carrying bags and travelling shawl, and, following him, a tall man in
+the garb of a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Close at his side was
+a little girl. She was far from appearing shy or awkward in the presence
+of strangers, nodding brightly to Octavius, who sat nearest the door,
+and smiling captivatingly upon Joel Quimber, whereupon he felt
+immediately in his pockets for a peppermint which, to his
+disappointment, was not there.
+
+The Colonel sprang to his feet when the guests entered, and quickly
+doffed his felt hat which was balancing in a seemingly untenable
+position on the side of his head. The priest, who removed his on the
+threshold, acknowledged the courtesy with a bow and a keen glance which
+included all in the room; then he stepped to the desk on the counter to
+enter his name in the ponderous leather-backed registry which Augustus
+opened for him. The little girl stood beside him, watching his every
+movement.
+
+The Flamstedites saw before them a man in the prime of life, possibly
+forty-five. He was fully six feet in height, noticeably erect, with an
+erectness that gave something of the martial to his carriage, spare but
+muscular, shoulders high and square set, and above them a face deeply
+pock-marked, the features large but regular, the forehead broad and
+bulging rather prominently above the eyes. The eyes they could not see;
+but the voice made itself heard, and felt, while he was writing. The men
+present unconsciously welcomed it as a personality.
+
+"Can you tell me if Mrs. Louis Champney lives near here?" he said,
+addressing his host.
+
+"Yes, sir; just about a mile down the street at The Bow."
+
+"Oh, please, yer Riverence, write mine too," said the child who, by
+standing on tiptoe at the high counter, had managed to follow every
+stroke of the pen.
+
+The priest looked at the landlord with a frankly interrogatory smile.
+
+"To be sure, to be sure. Ain't you my guest as long as you're in my
+home?" Augustus replied with such whole-souled heartiness that the child
+beamed upon him and boldly held out her hand for the pen.
+
+"Let me write it," she said decidedly, as if used to having her way.
+Colonel Caukins sprang to place a high three-legged stool for the little
+registree, and was about to lift her on, but the child, laughing aloud,
+managed to seat herself without his assistance, and forthwith gave her
+undivided attention to the entering of her name.
+
+Those present loved in after years to recall this scene: the old bar,
+the three-legged stool, the little girl perched on top, one foot twisted
+over the round--so busily intent upon making a fine signature that a tip
+of her tongue was visible held tightly against her left cheek--the
+coarse straw hat, the clean but cheap blue dress, the heavy shoes that
+emphasized the delicacy of her ankles and figure; and above her the
+leaning priest, smiling gravely with fatherly indulgence upon this
+firstling of his flock in Flamsted.
+
+[Illustration: "Those present loved in after years to recall this
+scene"]
+
+The child looked up for approval when she had finished and shaken, with
+an air of intense satisfaction, a considerable quantity of sand over the
+fresh ink. Evidently the look in the priest's eyes was reward enough,
+for, although he spoke no word, the little girl laughed merrily and in
+the next moment hopped down rather unexpectedly from her high place and
+busied herself with taking a survey of the office and its occupants.
+
+The priest took an envelope from his pocket and handed it to Augustus,
+saying as he did so:
+
+"This is Mr. Buzzby, I know; and here is a letter from Mr. Van Ostend in
+regard to this little girl. Her arrival is premature; but the matron of
+the institution, where she has been, wished to take advantage of my
+coming to Flamsted to place her in my care. Mr. Van Ostend would like to
+have her remain here with you for a few days if Mrs. Champney is not
+prepared to receive her just now."
+
+There was a general movement of surprise among the men in the office,
+and all eyes, with a question-mark visible in them, were turned towards
+Octavius Buzzby. Upon him, the simple announcement had the effect of a
+shock; he felt the need of air, and slipped out to the veranda, but not
+before he received another bright smile from the little girl. He waited
+outside until he saw Augustus show the newcomers upstairs; then he
+re-entered the office and went to the register which was the speculative
+focus of interest for all the others. Octavius read:
+
+     June 18, 1889--FR. JOHN FRANCIS HONORE, NEW YORK. AILEEN ARMAGH,
+     ORPHAN ASYLUM, NEW YORK CITY.
+
+The Colonel was in a state of effervescing hilarity. He rubbed his hands
+energetically, slapped Octavius on the back, and exclaimed in high
+feather:
+
+"How's this for the first drops of the deluge, eh, Tave?"
+
+Octavius made no reply. He waited, as usual, for the evening's mail. The
+carrier handed him a telegram from New York for Mrs. Champney. It had
+just come up on the train from Hallsport. He wondered what connection
+its coming might have with the unexpected arrival of this orphan child?
+
+
+II
+
+On his way home Octavius Buzzby found himself wondering, as he had
+wondered many times before on occasion, how he could checkmate this
+latest and most unexpected move on the part of the mistress of
+Champ-au-Haut. His mind was perturbed and he realized, while making an
+effort to concentrate his attention on ways and means, that he had been
+giving much of his mental strength during the last twenty years to the
+search for ulterior motives on the part of Mrs. Louis Champney, a woman
+of sixty now, a Googe by birth (the Googes, through some genealogical
+necromancy, traced their descent from Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The name
+alone, not the blood, had, according to family tradition, suffered
+corruption with time), and the widow of Louis Champney, the late Judge
+Champney's only son.
+
+The Champneys had a double strain of French blood in their veins, Breton
+and Flemish; the latter furnished the collateral branch of the Van
+Ostends. This intermixture, flowing in the veins of men and women who
+were Americans by the birthright of more than two centuries' enjoyment
+of our country's institutions, had produced for several generations as
+fine a strain of brains and breeding as America can show.
+
+Louis Champney, the last of the line in direct descent, was looked upon
+from his boyhood up as the culmination of these centuries' flowering.
+When, at forty, he died without having fulfilled in any wise the great
+expectations of his townspeople and relations, the interest of the
+community, as well as of the family, centred in the prospects of Louis
+Champney Googe, his namesake, and nephew on his wife's side. Here,
+again, numerous family interests as well as communal speculations were
+disappointed. The Champney estate was left entire to the widow, Almeda
+Googe Champney, to dispose of as she might deem fit. Her powers of
+administratrix were untrammelled save in one respect: Octavius Buzzby
+was to remain in his position as factotum on the Champney estate and
+adviser for its interests.
+
+It was at this juncture, when Louis Champney died without remembering
+his nephew-in-law by so much as a book from his library and the boy was
+ten years old, that a crisis was discovered to be imminent in the
+fortunes of the Googe-Champney families, the many ramifications of which
+were intricately interwoven in the communal life of Flamsted. This
+crisis had not been averted; for Aurora Googe, the sister-in-law of Mrs.
+Champney and mother of young Champney, sold a part of her land in The
+Gore for the first granite quarry, and in so doing changed for all time
+the character and fortunes of the town of Flamsted.
+
+For many years Octavius Buzzby had championed openly and in secret the
+cause of Aurora Googe and her only son. To-night, while walking slowly
+homewards, he was pondering what attitude of mind he must assume, before
+he could deal adequately with the momentous event which had been
+foreshadowed from the moment he learned from the priest's lips that Mr.
+Van Ostend was implicated in the coming of this orphan child. He
+recalled that little Alice Van Ostend prattled much about this same
+child during the week she had spent recently with her father at
+Champ-au-Haut.
+
+Was the mistress of Champ-au-Haut going to adopt her?
+
+Almeda Champney had never wanted the blessing of a child, and, contrary
+to her young husband's wishes--he was her junior by twelve years--she
+had had her way. Her nature was so absorbingly tenacious of whatever
+held her narrow interests, that a child at Champ-au-Haut would have
+broken, in a measure, her domination of her weaker-willed husband,
+because it would have centred in itself his love and ambition to "keep
+up the name." That now, eleven years after Louis Champney's death, she
+should contemplate the introduction into her perfectly ordered household
+of a child, an alien, was a revelation of appalling moment to Octavius.
+He scouted the idea that she would enter the house as an assistant. None
+was needed; and, moreover, those small hands could accomplish little in
+the next ten years. She meant to adopt her then! An alien was to inherit
+the Champney property! Octavius actually shivered at the thought.
+
+Was it, could it be an act of spite against Aurora Googe? Was it a final
+answer to any expectations of her nephew, Champney Googe, her husband's
+namesake and favorite? Was this little alien waif to be made a catspaw
+for her revenge? She was capable of such a thing, was Almeda Champney.
+_He_ knew her; none better! Had not her will, thus far in her life, bent
+everything with which it had come in contact; crushed whatever had
+opposed it; broken irrevocably whosoever for a while had successfully
+resisted it?
+
+His thin lips drew to a straight line. All his manhood's strength of
+desire for fair play, a desire he had been fated to see unfulfilled
+during the last twenty years, rose in rebellion to champion the cause of
+the little newcomer who smiled on him so brightly in the office of The
+Greenbush. Nor did he falter in his resolution when he presented himself
+at the library door with the telegram in his hand.
+
+"Come in, Octavius; was there any mail?"
+
+"Only a telegram from New York." He handed it to her.
+
+She opened and read it; then laid it on the table. She removed her
+eyeglasses, for she had grown far-sighted with advancing years, in order
+to look at the back of the small man who was leaving the room. If he had
+seen the smile that accompanied the action, he might well have faltered
+in his resolution to champion any righteous cause on earth.
+
+"Wait a moment, Octavius."
+
+"Now it's coming!" he thought and faced her again; he was bracing
+himself mentally to meet the announcement.
+
+"Did you see the junk man at The Corners to-day about those shingle
+nails?"
+
+In the second of hesitation before replying, he had time inwardly to
+curse her. She was always letting him down in this way. It was a trick
+of hers when, to use his own expression, she had "something up her
+sleeve."
+
+"Yes; but he won't take them off our hands."
+
+"Why not?" She spoke sharply as was her way when she suspected any
+thwarting of her will or desire.
+
+"He says he won't give you your price for they ain't worth it. They
+ain't particular good for old iron anyway; most on 'em's rusty and
+crooked. You know they've been on the old coach house for good thirty
+years, and the Judge used to say--"
+
+"What will he give?"
+
+"A quarter of a cent a pound."
+
+"How many pounds are there?"
+
+"Fifty-two."
+
+"Fifty-two--hm-m; he sha'n't have them. They're worth a half a cent a
+pound if they're worth anything. You can store them in the workshop till
+somebody comes along that does want them, and will pay." He turned again
+to leave her.
+
+"Just a moment, Octavius." Once more he came back over the threshold.
+
+"Were there any arrivals at The Greenbush to-night?"
+
+"I judged so from the register."
+
+"Did you happen to see a girl there?"
+
+"I saw a child, a little girl, smallish and thin; a priest was with
+her."
+
+"A priest?" Mrs. Champney looked nonplussed for a moment and put on her
+glasses to cover her surprise. "Did you learn her name, the girl's?"
+
+"It was in the register, Aileen Armagh, from an orphan asylum in New
+York."
+
+"Then she's the one," she said in a musing tone but without the least
+expression of interest. She removed her glasses. Octavius took a step
+backwards. "A moment more, Octavius. I may as well speak of it now; I am
+only anticipating by a week or two, at the most, what, in any case, I
+should have told you. While Mr. Van Ostend was here, he enlisted my
+sympathy in this girl to such an extent that I decided to keep her for a
+few months on trial before making any permanent arrangement in regard to
+her. I want to judge of her capability to assist Ann and Hannah in the
+housework; Hannah is getting on in years. What do you think of her? How
+did she impress you? Now that I have decided to give her a trial, you
+may speak freely. You know I am guided many times by your judgment in
+such matters."
+
+Octavius Buzzby could have ground his teeth in impotent rage at this
+speech which, to his accustomed ears, rang false from beginning to end,
+yet was cloaked in terms intended to convey a compliment to himself.
+But, instead, he smiled the equivocal smile with which many a speech of
+like tenor had been greeted, and replied with marked earnestness:
+
+"I wouldn't advise you, Mrs. Champney, to count on much assistance from
+a slip of a thing like that. She's small, and don't look more 'n nine,
+and--"
+
+"She's over twelve," Mrs. Champney spoke decidedly; "and a girl of
+twelve ought to be able to help Ann and Hannah in some of their work."
+
+"Well, I ain't no judge of children as there's never been any of late
+years at Champo." He knew his speech was barbed. Mrs. Champney carefully
+adjusted her glasses to the thin bridge of her straight white nose. "And
+if there had been, I shouldn't want to say what they could do or what
+they couldn't at that age. Take Romanzo, now, he's old enough to work if
+you watch him; and now he's here I don't deny but what you had the
+rights of it 'bout my needing an assistant. He takes hold handy if you
+show him how, and is willing and steady. But two on 'em--I don't know;"
+he shook his head dubiously; "a growing boy and girl to feed and train
+and clothe--seems as if--" Octavius paused in the middle of his
+sentence. He knew his ground, or thought he knew it.
+
+"You said yourself she was small and thin, and I can give her work
+enough to offset her board. Of course, she will have to go to school,
+but the tuition is free; and if I pay school taxes, that are increasing
+every year, I might as well have the benefit of them, if I can, in my
+own household."
+
+There seemed no refutation needed to meet such an argument, and Octavius
+retreated another step towards the door.
+
+"A moment more, Octavius," she said blandly, for she knew he was longing
+to rid her of his presence; "Mr. Emlie has been here this evening and
+drawn up the deeds conveying my north shore property to the New York
+syndicate. Mr. Van Ostend has conducted all the negotiations at that
+end, and I have agreed to the erection of the granite sheds on those
+particular sites and to the extension of a railroad for the quarries
+around the head of the lake to The Corners. The syndicate are to control
+all the quarry interests, and Mr. Van Ostend says in a few years they
+will assume vast proportions, entailing an outlay of at least three
+millions. They say there is to be a large electric plant at The Corners,
+for the mill company have sold them the entire water power at the
+falls.--I hope Aurora is satisfied with what she has accomplished in so
+short a time. Champney, I suppose, comes home next month?"
+
+Octavius merely nodded, and withdrew in haste lest his indignation get
+the upper hand of his discretion. It behooved him to be discreet at this
+juncture; he must not injure Aurora Googe's cause, which he deemed as
+righteous a one as ever the sun shone upon, by any injudicious word that
+might avow his partisanship.
+
+Mrs. Champney smiled again when she saw his precipitous retreat. She had
+freighted every word with ill will, and knew how to raise his silent
+resentment to the boiling point. She rose and stepped quickly into the
+hall.
+
+"Tavy," she called after him as he was closing the door into the back
+passage. He turned to look at her; she stood in the full light of the
+hall-lamp. "Just a moment before you go. Did you happen to hear who the
+priest is who came with the girl?"
+
+"His name was in the ledger. The Colonel said he was a father--Father
+Honore, I can't pronounce it, from New York."
+
+"Is he stopping at The Greenbush?"
+
+"He's put up there for to-night anyway."
+
+"I think I must see this priest; perhaps he can give me more detailed
+information about the girl. That's all."
+
+She went back into the library, closing the door after her. Octavius
+shut his; then, standing there in the dimly lighted passageway, he
+relieved himself by doubling both fists and shaking them vigorously at
+the panels of that same door, the while he simulated, first with one
+foot then with the other, a lively kick against the baseboard, muttering
+between his set teeth:
+
+"The devil if it's all, you devilly, divelly, screwy old--"
+
+The door opened suddenly. Simultaneously with its opening Octavius had
+sufficient presence of mind to blow out the light. He drew his breath
+short and fumbled in his pocket for matches.
+
+"Why, Tavy, you here!" (How well she knew that the familiar name "Tavy"
+was the last turn of the thumbscrew for this factotum of the Champneys!
+She never applied it unless she knew he was thoroughly worsted in the
+game between them.) "I was coming to find you; I forgot to say that you
+may go down to-morrow at nine and bring her up. I want to look her
+over."
+
+She closed the door. Octavius, without stopping to relight the lamp,
+hurried up to his room in the ell, fearful lest he be recalled a fifth
+time--a test of his powers of mental endurance to which he dared not
+submit in his present perturbed state.
+
+Mrs. Champney walked swiftly down the broad main hall, that ran through
+the house, to the door opening on the north terrace whence there was an
+unobstructed view up the three miles' length of Lake Mesantic to the
+Flamsted Hills; and just there, through a deep depression in their
+midst, the Rothel, a rushing brook, makes its way to the calm waters at
+their gates. At this point, where the hills separate like the opening
+sepals of a gigantic calyx, the rugged might of Katahdin heaves head and
+shoulder into the blue.
+
+The irregular margin of the lake is fringed with pines of magnificent
+growth. Here and there the shores rise into cliffs, seamed at the top
+and inset on the face with slim white lady birches, or jut far into the
+waters as rocky promontories sparsely wooded with fir and balsam spruce.
+
+Mrs. Champney stepped out upon the terrace. Her accustomed eyes looked
+upon this incomparable, native scene that was set in the full beauty of
+mid-summer's moonlight. She advanced to the broad stone steps, that
+descend to the level of the lake, and, folding her arms, her hands
+resting lightly upon them, stood immovable, looking northwards to the
+Flamsted Hills--looking, but not seeing; for her thoughts were leaping
+upwards to The Gore and its undeveloped resources; to Aurora Googe and
+the part she was playing in this transitional period of Flamsted's life;
+to the future years of industrial development and, in consequence, her
+own increasing revenues from the quarries. She had stipulated that
+evening that a clause, which would secure to her the rights of a first
+stockholder, should be inserted in the articles of conveyance.
+
+The income of eight thousand from the estate, as willed to her, had
+increased under her management, aided by her ability to drive a sharp
+bargain and the penuriousness which, according to Octavius, was capable
+of "making a cent squeal", to twelve thousand. The sale of her north
+shore lands would increase it another five thousand. Within a few years,
+according to Mr. Van Ostend--and she trusted him--her dividends from her
+stock would net her several thousands more. She was calculating, as she
+stood there gazing northwards, unseeing, into the serene night and the
+hill-peace that lay within it, how she could invest this increment for
+the coming years, and casting about in her mathematically inclined mind
+for means to make the most of it in interest per cent. She felt sure the
+future would show satisfactory results.--And after?
+
+That did not appeal to her.
+
+She unfolded her arms, and gathering her skirt in both hands went down
+the steps and took her stand on the lowest. She was still looking
+northwards. Her skirt slipped from her left hand which she raised half
+mechanically to let a single magnificent jewel, that guarded the plain
+circlet of gold on her fourth finger, flash in the moonlight. She held
+it raised so for a moment, watching the play of light from the facets.
+Suddenly she clinched her delicate fist spasmodically; shook it forcibly
+upwards towards the supreme strength of those silent hills, which, in
+comparison with the human three score and ten, may well be termed
+"everlasting", and, muttering fiercely under her breath, "_You_ shall
+never have a penny of it!", turned, went swiftly up the steps, and
+entered the house.
+
+
+III
+
+Had the mistress of Champ-au-Haut stood on the terrace a few minutes
+longer, she might have seen with those far-sighted eyes of hers a dark
+form passing quickly along the strip of highroad that showed white
+between the last houses at The Bow. It was Father Honore. He walked
+rapidly along the highway that, skirting the base of the mountain,
+follows the large curve of the lake shore. Rapid as was the pace, the
+quickened eyes were seeing all about, around, above. In passing beneath
+a stretch of towering pines, he caught between their still indefinite
+foliage the gleam of the lake waters. He stopped short for a full minute
+to pommel his resonant chest; to breathe deep, deep breaths of the night
+balm. Then he proceeded on his way.
+
+That way led northwards along the lake shore; it skirted the talus that
+had fallen from the cliff which rose three hundred feet above him. He
+heard the sound of a rolling stone gathering in velocity among the
+rubble. He halted in order to listen; to trace, if possible, its course.
+The dull monotone of its rumbling rattle started a train of thought:
+perhaps his foot, treading the highway lightly, had caused the sensitive
+earth to tremble just sufficiently to jar the delicately poised stone
+and send it from its resting place! He went on. Thoughts not to be
+uttered crowded to the forefront of consciousness as he neared the cleft
+in the Flamsted Hills, whence the Rothel makes known to every wayfarer
+that it has come direct from the heart of The Gore, and brought with it
+the secrets of its granite veins.
+
+The road grew steeper; the man's pace did not slacken, but the straight
+back was bent at an angle which showed the priest had been accustomed to
+mountain climbing. In the leafy half-light, which is neither dawn nor
+twilight, but that reverential effulgence which is made by moonlight
+sifting finely through midsummer foliage, the Rothel murmured over its
+rocky bed; once, when in a deep pool its babble wholly ceased, an owl
+broke the silence with his "witti-hoo-hoo-hoo".
+
+Still upwards he kept his way and his pace until he emerged into the
+full moonlight of the heights. There he halted and looked about him. He
+was near the apex of The Gore. To the north, above the foreground of the
+sea of hilltops, loomed Katahdin. At his right, a pond, some five acres
+in extent, lay at the base of cliff-like rocks topped with a few
+primeval pines. Everywhere there were barren sheep pastures alternating
+with acres of stunted fir and hemlock, and in sheltered nooks, adjacent
+to these coverts, he could discern something which he judged to be stone
+sheepfolds. Just below him, on the opposite side of the road and the
+Rothel, which was crossed by a broad bridging of log and plank, stood a
+long low stone house, to the north of which a double row of firs had
+been planted for a windbreak. Behind him, on a rise of ground a few rods
+from the highway, was a large double house of brick with deep granite
+foundations and white granite window caps. Two shafts of the same stone
+supported the ample white-painted entrance porch. Ancestral elms
+over-leafed the roof on the southern side. One light shone from an upper
+window. Beyond the elms, a rough road led still upwards to the heights
+behind the house.
+
+The priest retraced his steps; turned into this road, for which the
+landlord of The Greenbush had given him minute instructions, and
+followed its rough way for an eighth of a mile; then a sudden turn
+around a shoulder of the hill--and the beginning of the famous Flamsted
+granite quarries lay before him, gleaming, sparkling in the moonlight--a
+snow-white, glistening patch on the barren hilltop. Near it were a few
+huts of turf and stone for the accommodation of the quarrymen. This was
+all. But it was the scene, self-chosen, of this priest's future labors;
+and while he looked upon it, thoughts unutterable crowded fast, too fast
+for the brain already stimulated by the time and environment. He turned
+about; retraced his steps at the same rapid pace; passed again up the
+highroad to the head of The Gore, then around it, across a barren
+pasture, and climbed the cliff-like rock that was crowned by the ancient
+pines. He stood there erect, his head thrown back, his forehead to the
+radiant heavens, his eyes fixed on the pale twinklings of the seven
+stars in the northernmost constellation of the Bear--rapt, caught away
+in spirit by the intensity of feeling engendered by the hour, the place.
+Then he knelt, bowing his head on a lichened rock, and unto his Maker,
+and the Maker of that humanity he had elected to serve, he consecrated
+himself anew.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards, he was coming down The Gore on his way back to
+The Greenbush. He heard the agitated ringing of a bell-wether; then the
+soft huddling rush of a flock of sheep somewhere in the distance. A
+sheep dog barked sharply; a hound bayed in answer till the hills north
+of The Gore gave back a multiple echo; but the Rothel kept its secrets,
+and with inarticulate murmuring made haste to deposit them in the quiet
+lake waters.
+
+
+IV
+
+"But, mother--"
+
+There was an intonation in the protest that hinted at some irritation.
+Champney Googe emptied his pipe on the grass and knocked it clean
+against the porch rail before he continued.
+
+"Won't it make a lot of talk? Of course, I can see your side of it; it's
+hospitable and neighborly and all that, to give the priest his meals for
+a while, but,--" he hesitated, and his mother answered his thought.
+
+"A little talk more or less after all there has been about the quarry
+won't do any harm, and I'm used to it." She spoke with some bitterness.
+
+"It _has_ stirred up a hornet's nest about your ears, that's a fact. How
+does Aunt Meda take this latest move? Meat-axey as usual? I didn't see
+her when I went there yesterday; she's in Hallsport for two days on
+business, so Tave says."
+
+His mother smiled. "I haven't seen her since the sale was concluded, but
+I hear she has strengthened the opposition in consequence. I get my
+information from Mrs. Caukins."
+
+At the mention of that name Champney laughed out. "Good authority,
+mother. I must run over and see her to-night. Well, we don't care, do
+we? I mean about the feeling. Mother, I just wish you were a man for one
+minute."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I'd like to go up to you, man fashion, grip your hand, slap you
+on the back, and shout 'By Jove, old man, you've made a deal that would
+turn the sunny side of Wall Street green with envy!' How did you do it,
+mother? And without a lawyer! I'll bet Emlie is mad because he didn't
+get a chance to put his finger in your pie."
+
+"I was thinking of you, of your future, and how you have been used by
+Almeda Champney; and that gave me the confidence, almost the push of a
+man--and I dealt with them as a man with men; but I felt unsexed in
+doing it. I've wondered what they think of me."
+
+"Think of you! I can tell you what one man thinks of you, and that's Mr.
+Van Ostend. I had a note from him at the time of the sale asking me to
+come to his office, an affidavit was necessary, and I found he had had
+eyes in his head for the most beautiful woman in the world--"
+
+"Champney!"
+
+"Fact; and, what's more, I got an invitation to his house on the
+strength of his recognition of that fact. I dined with him there; his
+sister is a stunning girl."
+
+"I'm glad such homes are open to you; it is your right and--it
+compensates."
+
+"For what, mother?"
+
+"Oh, a good many things. How do they live?"
+
+"The Van Ostends?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Champney Googe hugged his knees and rocked back and forth on the step
+before he answered. His merry face seemed to lengthen in feature, to
+harden in line. His mother left her chair and sewing to sit down on the
+step beside him. She looked up inquiringly.
+
+"Just as _I_ mean to live sometime, mother,"--his fresh young voice rang
+determined and almost hard; his mother's eyes kindled;--"in a way that
+expresses Life--as you and I understand it, and don't live it, mother;
+as you and I have conceived of it while up here among these sheep
+pastures." He glanced inimically for a moment at the barren slopes above
+them. "I have you to thank for making me comprehend the difference." He
+continued the rocking movement for a while, his hands still clasping his
+knees. Then he went on:
+
+"As for his home on the Avenue, there isn't its like in the city, and as
+a storehouse of the best in art it hasn't its equal in the country; it's
+just perfect from picture gallery to billiard room. As for adjuncts,
+there's a shooting box and a _bona fide_ castle in the Scottish
+Highlands, a cottage at Bar Harbor with the accessory of a steam yacht,
+and a racing stud on a Long Island farm. As a financier he's great!"
+
+He sat up straight, and freely used his fists, first on one knee then on
+the other, to emphasize his words; "His right hand is on one great lever
+of interstate traffic, his left on the other of foreign trade, and two
+continents obey his manipulations. His eye exacts trained efficiency
+from thousands; his word is a world event; Wall Street is his automaton.
+Oh, the power of it all! I can't wait to get out into the stream,
+mother! I'm only hugging the shore at present; that's what has made me
+kick against this last year in college; it has been lost time, for I
+want to get rich quick."
+
+His mother laid her hand on his knee. "No, Champney, it's not lost time;
+it's one of your assets as a gentleman."
+
+He looked up at her, his blue eyes smiling into her dark ones.
+
+"I can be a gentleman all right without that asset; you said father
+didn't go."
+
+"No, but the man for whom you are named went, and he told me once a
+college education was a 'gentleman's asset.' That expression was his."
+
+"Well, I don't see that the asset did him much good. It didn't seem to
+discount his liabilities in other ways. Queer, how Uncle Louis went to
+seed--I mean, didn't amount to anything along any business or
+professional line. Only last spring I met the father of a second-year
+man who remembers Uncle Louis well, said he was a classmate of his. He
+told me he was banner man every time and no end popular; the others
+didn't have a show with him."
+
+His mother was silent. Champney, apparently unheeding her
+unresponsiveness, rose quickly, shook himself together, and suddenly
+burst into a mighty laughter that is best comparable to the
+inextinguishable species of the blessed gods. He laughed in arpeggios,
+peal on peal, crescendo and diminuendo, until, finally, he flung himself
+down on the short turf and in his merriment rolled over and over. He
+brought himself right side up at last, tears in his eyes and a sigh of
+satisfying exhaustion on his lips. To his mother's laughing query:
+
+"What is it now, Champney?" He shook his head as if words failed him;
+then he said huskily:
+
+"It's Aunt Meda's _protegee_. Oh, Great Scott! She'll be the death by
+shock of some of the Champo people if she stays another three months. I
+hear Aunt Meda has had her Waterloo. Tavy buttonholed me out in the
+carriage house yesterday, and told me the whole thing--oh, but it's
+rich!" He chuckled again. "He got me to feel his vest; says he can lap
+it three inches already and she has only been here two weeks; and as
+for Romanzo, he's neither to have nor to hold when the girl's in
+sight--wits topsy-turvy, actually, oh, Lord!"--he rolled over again on
+the grass--"what do you think, mother! She got Roman to scour down
+Jim--you know, the white cart-horse, the Percheron--with Hannah's
+cleaning powder, and the girl helped him, and together they got one side
+done and then waited for it to dry to see how it worked. Result: Tave
+dead ashamed to drive him in the cart for fear some one will see the
+yellow-white calico-circus horse, that the two rapscallions have left on
+his hands, and doesn't want Aunt Meda to know it for fear she'll turn
+down Roman. He says he's going to put Jim out to grass in the Colonel's
+back sheep pasture, and when Aunt Meda comes home lie about sudden
+spavin or something. And the joke of it is Roman takes it all as a part
+of the play, and has owned up to Tave that, by mistake, he blacked Aunt
+Meda's walking boots, before she went to Hallsport, with axle grease,
+while the girl was 'telling novels' to him! Tave said Roman told him she
+knew a lot of the nobility, marchionesses and 'sich'; and now Roman
+struts around cocksure, high and mighty as if he'd just been made
+K.C.B., and there's no getting any steady work out of him. You should
+have seen Tave's face when he was telling me!"
+
+His mother laughed. "I can imagine it; he's worried over this new move
+of Almeda's. I confess it puzzles me."
+
+"Well, I'm off to see some of the fun--and the girl. Tave said he didn't
+expect Aunt Meda before to-morrow night, and it's a good time for me to
+rubber round the old place a little on my own hook;--and, mother,"--he
+stooped to her; Aurora Googe raised her still beautiful eyes to the
+frank if somewhat hard blue ones that looked down into hers; a fine
+color mounted into her cheeks,--"take the priest for his meals, for all
+me. It's an invasion, but, of course, I recognize that we're responsible
+for it on account of the quarry business. I suppose we shall have to
+make some concessions to all classes till we get away from here for good
+and all--then we'll have our fling, won't we, mother?"
+
+He was off without waiting for a reply. Aurora Googe watched him out of
+sight, then turned to her work, the flush still upon her cheeks.
+
+
+V
+
+Champney leaned on the gate of the paddock at Champ-au-Haut and looked
+about him. The estate at The Bow had been familiar to him throughout his
+childhood and boyhood. He had been over every foot of it, and at all
+seasons, with his Uncle Louis. He was realizing that it had never seemed
+more beautiful to him than now, seen in the warm light of a July sunset.
+In the garden pleasance, that sloped to the lake, the roses and lilies
+planted there a generation ago still bloomed and flourished, and in the
+elm-shaded paddock, on the gate of which he was leaning, filly and foal
+could trace their pedigree to the sixth and seventh generation of
+deep-chested, clean-flanked ancestors.
+
+The young man comprehended in part only, the reason of his mother's
+extreme bitterness towards Almeda Champney. His uncle had loved him; had
+kept him with him much of the time, encouraging him in his boyish aims
+and ambitions which his mother fostered--and Louis Champney was
+childless, the last in direct descent of a long line of fine
+ancestors--.
+
+Here his thought was checked; those ancestors were his, only in a
+generation far removed; the Champney blood was in his mother's veins.
+But his father was Almeda Champney's only brother--why then, should not
+his mother count on the estate being his in the end? He knew this to
+have been her hope, although she had never expressed it. He had gained
+an indefinite knowledge of it through old Joel Quimber and Elmer Wiggins
+and Mrs. Milton Caukins, a distant relative of his father's. To be sure,
+Louis Champney might have left him his hunting-piece, which as a boy he
+had coveted, just for the sake of his name--
+
+He stopped short in his speculations for he heard voices in the lane.
+The cows were entering it and coming up to the milking shed. The lane
+led up from the low-lying lake meadows, knee deep with timothy and
+clover, and was fenced on both sides from the apple orchards which
+arched and overshadowed its entire length. The sturdy over-reaching
+boughs hung heavy with myriads of green balls. Now and then one dropped
+noiselessly on the thick turf in the lane, and a noble Holstein mother,
+ebony banded with ivory white, her swollen cream-colored bag and
+dark-blotched teats flushed through and through by the delicate rose of
+a perfectly healthy skin, lowered her meek head and, snuffing largely,
+caught sideways as she passed at the enticing green round.
+
+At the end of this lane there swung into view a tall loose-jointed
+figure which the low strong July sunshine threw into bold relief. It was
+Romanzo Caukins, one of the Colonel's numerous family, a boy of sixteen
+who had been bound out recently to the mistress of Champ-au-Haut upon
+agreement of bed, board, clothes, three terms of "schooling" yearly, and
+the addition of thirty dollars to be paid annually to the Colonel.
+
+The payment of this amount, by express stipulation, was to be made at
+the end of each year until Romanzo should come into his majority. By
+this arrangement, Mrs. Champney assured to herself the interest on the
+aforesaid thirty dollars, and congratulated herself on the fact that
+such increment might be credited to Milton Caukins as a minus quantity.
+
+Champney leaped the bars and went down the lane to meet him.
+
+"Hello, Roman, how are you?"
+
+The boy's honest blue eyes, that seemed always to be looking forward in
+a chronic state of expectancy for the unexpected, beamed with goodness
+and goodwill. He wiped his hands on his overalls and clasped Champney's.
+
+"Hullo, Champ, when'd you come?"
+
+"Only yesterday. I didn't see you about when I was here in the
+afternoon. How do you like your job?"
+
+The youth made an uncouth but expressive sign towards the milk shed.
+"Sh--Tave'll hear you. He and I ain't been just on good terms lately;
+but 'tain't my fault," he added doggedly.
+
+At that moment a clear childish voice called from somewhere below the
+lane:
+
+"Romanzo--Romanzo!"
+
+The boy started guiltily. "I've got to go, Champ; she wants me."
+
+Champney seized him with a strong hand by the suspenders. "Here, hold
+on! Who, you gump?"
+
+"The girl--le' me go." But Champney gripped him fast.
+
+"No, you don't, Roman; let her yell."
+
+"Ro--man--zo-o-o-o!" The range of this peremptory call was two octaves
+at least.
+
+"By gum--she's up to something, and Tave won't stand any more
+fooling--le' me go!" He writhed in the strong grasp.
+
+"I won't either. I haven't been half-back on our team for nothing; so
+stand still." And Romanzo stood still, perforce.
+
+Another minute and Aileen came running up the lane. She was wearing the
+same heavy shoes, the same dark blue cotton dress, half covered now with
+a gingham apron--Mrs. Champney had not deemed it expedient to furnish a
+wardrobe until the probation period should have decided her for or
+against keeping the child. She was bareheaded, her face flushed with the
+heat and her violent exercise. She stopped short at a little distance
+from them so soon as she saw that Romanzo was not alone. She tossed back
+her braid and stamped her foot to emphasize her words:
+
+"Why didn't yer come, Romanzo Caukins, when I cried ter yer!"
+
+"'Coz I couldn't; he wouldn't let me." He spoke anxiously, making signs
+towards the shed. But Aileen ignored them; ignored, also, the fact that
+any one was present besides her slave.
+
+Champney answered for himself. He promptly bared his head and advanced
+to shake hands; but Aileen jerked hers behind her.
+
+"I'm Mr. Champney Googe, at your service. Who are you?"
+
+The little girl was sizing him up before she accepted the advance;
+Champney could tell by the "East-side" look with which she favored him.
+
+"I'm Miss Aileen Armagh, and don't yer forget it!--at your service." She
+mimicked him so perfectly that Champney chuckled and Romanzo doubled up
+in silent glee.
+
+"I sha'n't be apt to, thank you. Come, let's shake hands, Miss Aileen
+Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, for we've got to be friends if you're to
+stay here with my aunt." He held out both hands. But the little girl
+kept her own obstinately behind her and backed away from him.
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"'Coz they're all stuck up with spruce gum and Octavius said nothing
+would take it off but grease, and--" she turned suddenly upon Romanzo,
+blazing out upon him in her wrath--"I hollered ter yer so's yer could
+get some for me from Hannah, and you was just dirt mean not to answer
+me."
+
+"Champ wouldn't let me go," said Romanzo sulkily; "besides, I dassn't
+ask Hannah, not since I used the harness cloth she gave to clean down
+Jim."
+
+"Yer 'dassn't!' Fore I'd be a boy and say 'I dassn't!'" There was
+inexpressible scorn in her voice. She turned to Champney, her eyes
+brimming with mischief and flashing a challenge:
+
+"And yer dassn't shake hands with me 'coz mine are all stuck up, so
+now!"
+
+Champney had not anticipated this _pronunciamento_, but he accepted the
+challenge on the instant. "Dare not! You can't say that to me! Here,
+give me your hands." Again he held out his shapely well-kept members,
+and Aileen with a merry laugh brought her grimy sticky little paws into
+view and, without a word, laid them in Champney's palms. He held them
+close, purposely, that they might adhere and provide him with some fun;
+then, breaking into his gay laugh he said:
+
+"Clear out, Roman; Tave 'll be looking for the milk pails. As for you,
+Miss Aileen Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, you can't pull away from me
+now. So, come on, and we'll get Hannah to give us some lard and then
+we'll go down to the boat house where it is cool and cleanup. Come on!"
+
+Holding her by both hands he raced her down the long lane, through the
+vegetable garden, all chassez, down the middle, swing your
+partner--Aileen wild with the fun--up the slate-laid kitchen walk to the
+kitchen door. His own laughter and the child's, happy, merry, care-free,
+rang out peal on peal till Ann and Hannah and Octavius paused in their
+work to listen, and wished that such music might have been heard often
+during their long years of faithful service in childless Champ-au-Haut.
+
+"I hear you are acquainted with some of the nobility, marchionesses and
+so forth," said Champney; the two were sitting in the shadow of the boat
+house cleaning their fingers with the lard Hannah had provided. "Where
+did you make their acquaintance?"
+
+Aileen paused in the act of sliding her greasy hands rapidly over and
+over in each other, an occupation which afforded her unmixed delight, to
+look up at him in amazement. "How did yer know anything 'bout her?"
+
+"Oh, I heard."
+
+"Did Romanzo Caukins tell yer?" she demanded, as usual on the defensive.
+
+"No, oh no; it was only hearsay. Do tell me about her. We don't have any
+round here."
+
+Aileen giggled and resumed the rapid rotary motion of her still unwashed
+hands. "If I tell yer 'bout her, yer'll tell her I told yer. P'raps
+sometime, if yer ever go to New York, yer might see her; and she
+wouldn't like it."
+
+"How do you know but what I have seen her? I've just come from there."
+
+Aileen looked her surprise again. "That's queer, for I've just landed
+from New York meself."
+
+"So I understood; does the marchioness live there too?"
+
+She shook her head. "I ain't going to tell yer; but I'll tell yer 'bout
+some others I know."
+
+"That live in New York?"
+
+"Wot yer giving me?" She laughed merrily; "they live where the Dagos
+live, in Italy, yer know, and--"
+
+"Italy? What are they doing over there?"
+
+"--And--just yer wait till I'll tell yer--they live on an island in a
+be-ee-u-tiful lake, like this;" she looked approvingly at the liquid
+mirror that reflected in its rippleless depths the mountain shadow and
+sunset gold; "and they live in great marble houses, palaces, yer know,
+and flower gardens, and wear nothing but silks and velvet and pearls,
+ropes,--yer mind?--ropes of 'em; and the lords and ladies have concerts,
+yer know, better 'n in the thayertre--"
+
+"What do you know about the theatre?" Champney was genuinely surprised;
+"I thought you came from an orphan asylum."
+
+"Yer did, did yer!" There was scorn in her voice. "Wot do I know 'bout
+the thayertre?--Oh, but yer green!" She broke into another merry laugh
+which, together with the patronage of her words and certain unsavory
+memories of his own, nettled Champney more than he would have cared to
+acknowledge.
+
+"Better 'n the thayertre," she repeated emphatically; "and the lords
+serenade the ladies--Do yer know wot a serenade is?" She interrupted
+herself to ask the question with a strong doubt in the interrogation.
+
+"I've heard of 'em," said Champney meekly; "but I don't think I've ever
+seen one."
+
+"I'll tell yer 'bout 'em. The lords have guitars and go out in the
+moonlight and stand under the ladies' windys and play, and the ladies
+make believe they haven't heard; then they look up all round at the moon
+and sigh _awful_,--" she sighed in sympathy,--"and then the lords begin
+to sing and tell 'em they love 'em and can't live without a--a token.
+I'll bet yer don't know wot that is?"
+
+"No, of course I don't; I'm not a lord, and I don't live in Italy."
+
+"Well, I'll tell yer." Her tone was one of relenting indulgence for his
+ignorance. "Sometimes it's a bow that they make out of the ribbon their
+dresses is trimmed with, and sometimes it's a flower, a rose, yer know;
+and the lord sings again--can yer sing?"
+
+Her companion repressed a smile. "I can manage a tune or two at a
+pinch."
+
+"And the lady comes out on the balcony and leans over--like this, yer
+know;" she jumped up and leaned over the rail of the float, keeping her
+hands well in front of her to save her apron; "and she listens and keeps
+looking, and when he sings he's going to die because he loves her so,
+she throws the token down to him to let him know he mustn't die 'coz she
+loves him too; and he catches it, the rose, yer know, and smells it and
+then he kisses it and squeezes it against his heart--" she forgot her
+greasy hands in the rapture of this imaginative flight, and pressed them
+theatrically over her gingham apron beneath which her own little organ
+was pulsing quick with the excitement of this telling moment; "--and
+then the moon shines just as bright as silver and--and she marries him."
+
+She drew a deep breath. During the recital she had lost herself in the
+personating of the favorite characters from her one novel. While she
+stood there looking out on the lake and the Flamsted Hills with eyes
+that were still seeing the gardens and marble terraces of Isola Bella,
+Champney Googe had time to fix that picture on his mental retina and,
+recalling it in after years, knew that the impression was "more lasting
+than bronze."
+
+She came rather suddenly to herself when she grew aware of her larded
+hands pressed against her clean apron.
+
+"Oh, gracious, but I'll catch it!" she exclaimed ruefully. "Wot'll I do
+now? She said I'd got to keep it clean till she got back, and she'll
+fire me and--and I want to stay awful; it's just like the story, yer
+know." She raised her gray eyes appealingly to his, and he saw at once
+that her childish fear was real. He comforted her.
+
+"I'll tell you what: we'll go back to Hannah and she'll fix it for you;
+and if it's spoiled I'll go down and get some like it in the village and
+my mother will make you a new one. So, cheer up, Miss Aileen Armagh
+and-don't-yer-forget-it! And to-morrow evening, if the moon is out,
+we'll have a serenade all by ourselves; what do you say to that?"
+
+"D' yer mane it?" she demanded, half breathless in her earnestness.
+
+He nodded.
+
+Aileen clapped her hands and began to dance; then she stopped suddenly
+to say: "I ain't going to dance for yer now; but I will sometime," she
+added graciously. "I've got to go now and help Ann. What time are yer
+coming for the serenade?"
+
+"I'll be here about eight; the moon will be out by then and we must have
+a moon."
+
+She started away on the run, beckoning to him with her unwashed hands:
+"Come on, then, till I show yer my windy. It's the little one over the
+dining-room. There ain't a balcony, but--see there! there's the top of
+the bay windy and I can lean out--why didn't yer tell me yer could play
+the guitar?"
+
+"Because I can't."
+
+"A harp, belike?"
+
+"No; guess again."
+
+"Yer no good;--but yer'll come?"
+
+"Shurre; an' more be token it's at eight 'o the clock Oi'll be under yer
+windy." He gave the accent with such Celtic gusto that the little girl
+was captivated.
+
+"Ain't you a corker!" she said admiringly and, waving her hand again to
+him, ran to the house. Champney followed more slowly to lay the case
+before Ann and Hannah.
+
+On his way homeward he found himself wondering if he had ever seen the
+child before. As she leaned on the rail and looked out over the lake, a
+certain grace of attitude, which the coarse clothing failed to conceal,
+the rapt expression in the eyes, the _timbre_ of her voice, all awakened
+a dim certainty that he had seen her before at some time and place
+distinctly unusual; but where? He turned the search-light of
+concentrated thought upon his comings and goings and doings during the
+last year and more. Where had he seen just such a child?
+
+He looked up from the roadway, on which his eyes had been fixed while
+his absent thought was making back tracks over the last twelve months,
+and saw before him the high pastures of The Gore. In the long afterglow
+of the July sunset they enamelled the barren heights with a rich,
+yellowish green. In a flash it came to him: "The green hill far away
+without a city wall"; the child singing on the vaudeville stage; the
+hush in the audience. He smiled to himself. He was experiencing that
+satisfaction which is common to all who have run down the quarry of a
+long-hunted recollection.
+
+"She's the very one," he said to himself; "I wonder if Aunt Meda
+knows."
+
+
+VI
+
+That which proves momentous in our lives is rarely anticipated, seldom
+calculated. Its factors are for the most part unknown quantities; if not
+prime in themselves they are, at least, prime to each other. It cannot
+be measured in terms of time, for often it lies between two infinities.
+But the momentous decision, event, action, which reacts upon the life of
+a man or woman and influences that life so long as it is lived here on
+earth, is on the surface sufficiently finite for us to say: It was on
+such a day I made my decision; to such and such an event I can look back
+as the cause of all that has followed. The How thereof remains traceable
+to our purblind eyes for a month, a term of years, one generation,
+possibly two; the Where and When can generally be defined; but the _Why_
+we ask blindly, and are rarely answered satisfactorily.
+
+Had young Googe been told, while he was walking homewards up The Gore,
+that his life line, like the antenna of the wireless, was even then the
+recipient and transmitter of multiple influences that had been, as it
+were, latent in the storage batteries of a generation; that what he was
+to be in the future was at this very hour in germ for development, he
+would have scouted the idea. His young self-sufficiency would have
+laughed the teller to scorn. He would have maintained as a man his
+mastership of his fate and fortunes, and whistled as carelessly as he
+whistled now for the puppy, an Irish terrier which he had brought home
+with him, for training, to come and meet him.
+
+And the puppy, whose name was Ragamuffin and called Rag for short, came
+duly, unknowing, like his young master, to meet his fate. He wriggled
+broad-side down the walk as a puppy will in his first joy till,
+overpowered by his emotions, he rolled over on his back at Champney's
+feet, the fringes of his four legs waving madly in air.
+
+"Champney, I'm waiting for you." It was his mother calling from the
+door. He ran in through the kitchen, and hurried to make himself
+presentable for the table and their guest whom he saw on the front
+porch.
+
+As he entered the dining-room, his mother introduced him: "Father
+Honore, my son, Champney."
+
+The two men shook hands, and Mrs. Googe took her seat. The priest bowed
+his head momentarily to make the sign of the cross. Champney Googe shot
+one keen, amazed look in his direction. When that head was lifted
+Champney "opened fire," so he termed it to himself.
+
+"I think I've seen you before, sir." It was hard for him to give the
+title "Father." "I got in your way, didn't I, at the theatre one evening
+over a year ago?"
+
+His mother looked at him in amazement and something of anxiety. Was her
+son in his prejudice forgetting himself?
+
+"Indeed, I think it was the other way round, I was in your way, for I
+remember thinking when you ran up against me 'that young fellow has been
+half-back on a football team.'"
+
+Champney laughed. There was no withstanding this man's voice and the
+veiled humor of his introductory remarks.
+
+"Did I hit hard? I didn't think for a moment that you would recognize
+me; but I knew you as soon as mother introduced us. I see by your face,
+mother, that you need enlightening. It was only that I met Father
+Honore"--he brought that out with no hesitation--"at the entrance to one
+of the New York theatres over a year ago, and in the crowd nearly ran
+him down. No wonder, sir, you sized me up by the pressure as a football
+fiend. That's rich!" His merry laugh reassured his mother; she turned to
+Father Honore.
+
+"I don't know whether all my son's acquaintances are made at the theatre
+or not, but it is a coincidence that the other day he happened to
+mention the fact that the first time he saw Mr. Van Ostend he saw him
+there."
+
+"It's my strong impression, Mrs. Googe, that Mr. Googe saw us both at
+the same place, at the same time. Mr. Van Ostend spoke to me of your son
+just a few days before I left New York."
+
+"Did he?" Champney's eager blue eyes sought the priest's. "Do you know
+him well?"
+
+"As we all know him through his place in the world of affairs.
+Personally I have met him only a few times. You may know, perhaps, that
+he was instrumental in placing little Aileen Armagh, the orphan
+child,--you know whom I mean?--at Mrs. Champney's, your aunt, Mrs. Googe
+tells me."
+
+"I was just going to ask you if you would be willing to tell us
+something about her," said Mrs. Googe. "I've not seen her, but from all
+I hear she is a most unusual child, most interesting--"
+
+"Interesting, mother!" Champney interrupted her rather explosively;
+"she's unique, the only and ever Aileen Armagh." He turned again to
+Father Honore. "Do tell us about her; I've been so blockheaded I
+couldn't put two and two together, but I'm beginning to see daylight at
+last. I made her acquaintance this afternoon. That's why I was a little
+late, mother."
+
+How we tell, even the best of us, with reserves! Father Honore told of
+his interest being roused, as well as his suspicions, by the wording of
+the poster, and of his determination to see for himself to what extent
+the child was being exploited. But of the thought-lever, the "Little
+Trout", that raised that interest, he made no mention; nor, indeed, was
+it necessary.
+
+"You see there is a class of foreigners on the East side that receive
+commissions for exploiting precocious children on the stage; they are
+very clever in evading the law. The children themselves are helpless. I
+had looked up a good many cases before this because it was in my line of
+work, and in this particular one I found that the child had been
+orphaned in Ireland almost from her birth; that an aunt, without
+relatives, had emigrated with her only a few months before I saw her on
+the stage, and the two had lived in an east side tenement with an old
+Italian. The child's aunt, a young woman about twenty-eight, developed
+quick consumption during the winter and died in the care of the Italian,
+Nonna Lisa they call her. This woman cared for the little girl, and
+began to take her out with her early in March on the avenues and streets
+of the upper west side. The old woman is an itinerant musician and plays
+the guitar with real feeling--I've heard her--and, by the way, makes a
+decent little living of her own. She found that Aileen had a good voice
+and could sing several Irish songs. She learned the accompaniments, and
+the two led, so far as I can discover, a delightful life of vagabondage
+for several weeks. It seems the old Italian has a grandson, Luigi, who
+sings in vaudeville with a travelling troop. He was in the west and
+south during the entire time that Aileen was with his grandmother; and
+through her letters he learned of the little girl's voice. He spoke of
+this to his manager, and he communicated with the manager of a Broadway
+vaudeville--they are both in the vaudeville trust--and asked him to
+engage her, and retain her for the troop when they should start on their
+annual autumn tour. But Nonna Lisa was shrewd.--It's wonderful, Mrs.
+Googe, how quickly they develop the sixth sense of cautious speculation
+after landing! She made a contract for six weeks only, hoping to raise
+her price in the autumn. So I found that the child was not being
+exploited, except legitimately, by the old Italian who was caring for
+her and guarding her from all contamination. But, of course, that could
+not go on, and I had the little girl placed in the orphan asylum on
+----nd Street--" He interrupted himself to say half apologetically:
+
+"I am prolix, I fear, but I am hoping you will be personally interested
+in this child whose future life will, I trust, be spent here far away
+from the metropolitan snares. I am sure she is worth your interest."
+
+"I know she is," said Champney emphatically; "and the more we know of
+her the better. You'll laugh at my experience when you have heard it;
+but first let us have the whole of yours."
+
+"You know, of course, where Mr. Van Ostend lives?" Champney nodded. "Did
+you happen to notice the orphan asylum just opposite on ----nd Street?"
+
+"No; I don't recall any building of that sort."
+
+He smiled. "Probably not; that is not in your line and we men are apt to
+see only what is in the line of our working vision. It seems that Mr.
+Van Ostend has a little girl--"
+
+"I know, that's the Alice I told you of, mother; did you see her when
+she was here last month?"
+
+"No; I only met Mr. Van Ostend on business. You were saying--?" She
+addressed Father Honore.
+
+"His little daughter told him so much about two orphan children, with
+whom she had managed to have a kind of across-street-and-window
+acquaintance, that he proposed to her to have the children over for
+Christmas luncheon. The moment he saw Aileen, he recognized in her the
+child on the vaudeville stage to whom he had given the flowers--You
+remember that incident?"
+
+"Don't I though!"
+
+"--Because she had sung his wife's favorite hymn. He was thoroughly
+interested in the child after seeing her, so to say, at close range, and
+took the first opportunity to speak with the Sister Superior in regard
+to finding for her a suitable and permanent home. The Sister Superior
+referred him to me. As you know, he came to Flamsted recently with this
+same little daughter; and the child talked so much and told so many
+amusing things about Aileen to Mrs. Champney, that Mr. Van Ostend saw at
+once this was an opportunity to further his plans, although he confided
+to me his surprise that his cousin, Mrs. Champney, should be willing to
+have so immature a child, in her house. Directly on getting home, he
+telephoned to me that he had found a home for her with a relation of his
+in Flamsted. You may judge of my surprise and pleasure, for I had
+received the appointment to this place and the work among the quarrymen
+only a month before. This is how the little girl happened to come up
+with me. I hear she is making friends."
+
+"She can't help making them, and a good deal more besides; for Romanzo
+Caukins, our neighbor's son, and Octavius Buzzby, my aunt's _charge
+d'affaires_, are at the present time her abject slaves," said Champney,
+rising from the table at a signal from his mother. "Let's go out on the
+porch, and I'll tell you of the fun I've had with her--poor Roman!" He
+shook his head and chuckled.
+
+He stepped into the living-room as he passed through the hall and
+reached for his pipe in a rack above the mantel. "Do you smoke," he
+asked half-hesitatingly, but with an excess of courtesy in his voice as
+if he were apologizing for asking such a question.
+
+"Sometimes; a pipe, if you please." He held out his hand; Champney
+handed him a sweetbrier and a tobacco pouch. "You permit, Madam?" He
+spoke with old world courtesy. Aurora Googe smiled permission. She saw
+with satisfaction her son's puzzled look of inquiry as he noted the
+connoisseurship with which Father Honore handled his after-supper tools.
+
+Mrs. Milton Caukins, their neighbor in the stone house across the bridge
+over the Rothel, stood for several minutes at her back door listening to
+Champney's continued arpeggios and wondered whose was the deep hearty
+laugh that answered them. In telling his afternoon's experience
+Champney, also, had his reserves: of the coming serenade he said never a
+word to the priest.
+
+"He's O.K. and a man, mother," was his comment on their guest, as he
+bade her good night. Aurora Googe answered him with a smile that
+betokened content, but she was wise enough not to commit herself in
+words. Afterwards she sat long in her room, planning for her son's
+future. The twenty thousand she had just received for the undeveloped
+quarry lands should serve to start him well in life.
+
+
+VII
+
+On the following day, mother and son constituted themselves a committee
+of ways and means as to the best investment of the money in furtherance
+of Champney's interests. Her ambition was gratified in that she saw him
+anxious to take his place in the world of affairs, to "get on" and, as
+he said, make his mark early in the world of finance.
+
+The fact that, during his college course, he had spent the five thousand
+received from the sale of the first quarry, plus the interest on the
+same without accounting for a penny of it, seemed to his mother
+perfectly legitimate; for she had sold the land and laid by the amount
+paid for it in order to put her son through college. Since he was twelve
+years old she had brought him up in the knowledge that it was to be his
+for that purpose. From the time he came, through her generosity, into
+possession of the property, she always replied to those who had the
+courage to criticise her course in placing so large a sum at the
+disposal of a youth:
+
+"My son is a man. I realize I can suggest, but not dictate; moreover I
+have no desire to."
+
+She drew the line there, and rarely had any one dared to expostulate
+further with her. When they ventured it, Aurora Googe turned upon them
+those dark eyes, in which at such times there burned a seemingly
+unquenchable light of self-feeding defiance, and gave them to
+understand, with a repelling dignity of manner that bordered hard on
+haughtiness, that what she and her son might or might not do was no
+one's concern but their own. This self-evident truth, when it struck
+home to her well-wishers, made her no friends. Nor did she regret this.
+She had dwelt, as it were, apart, since her marriage and early
+widowhood--her husband had died seven months before Champney was
+born--on the old Googe estate at The Gore. But she was a good neighbor,
+as Mrs. Caukins could testify; paid her taxes promptly, and minded her
+flocks, the source of her limited income, until wool-raising in New
+England became unprofitable. An opportunity was presented when her boy
+was ten years old to sell a portion of the barren sheep pastures for the
+first quarry. She counted herself fortunate in being able thus to
+provide for Champney's four college years.
+
+In all the village, there were only three men, whom Aurora Googe named
+friend. These men, with the intimacy born of New England's community of
+interest, called her to her face by her Christian name; they were
+Octavius Buzzby, old Joel Quimber, and Colonel Caukins. There had been
+one other, Louis Champney, who during his lifetime promised to do much
+for her boy when he should have come of age; but as the promises were
+never committed to black and white, they were, after his death, as
+though they had never been.
+
+"If only Aunt Meda would fork over some of hers!" Champney exclaimed
+with irritation. They were sitting on the porch after tea. "All I want
+is a seat in the Stock Exchange--and the chance to start in. I believe
+if I had the money Mr. Van Ostend would help me to that."
+
+"You didn't say anything to him about your plans, did you?"
+
+"Well, no; not exactly. But it isn't every fellow gets a chance to dine
+at such a man's table, and I thought the opportunity was too good to be
+wasted entirely. I let him know in a quiet way that I, like every other
+fellow, was looking for a job." Champney laughed aloud at the shocked
+look on his mother's face. He knew her independence of thought and
+action; it brooked no catering for favors.
+
+"You see, mother, men _have_ to do it, or go under. It's about one
+chance in ten thousand that a man gets what he wants, and it's downright
+criminal to throw away a good opportunity to get your foot on a round.
+Run the scaling ladder up or down, it doesn't much matter--there are
+hundreds of applicants for every round; and only one man can stand on
+each--and climb, as I mean to. You don't get this point of view up here,
+mother, but you will when you see the development of these great
+interests. Then it will be each for himself and the devil gets the
+hindermost. Shouldn't I take every legitimate means to forge ahead? You
+heard what the priest said about Mr. Van Ostend's mentioning me to him?
+Let me tell you such men don't waste one breath in mentioning anything
+that does not mean a big interest per cent, _not one breath_. They
+can't, literally, afford to; and I'm hoping, only hoping, you know--",
+he looked up at her from his favorite seat on the lowest step of the
+front porch with a keen hard expectancy in his eyes that belied his
+words, "--that what he said to Father Honore means something definite.
+Anyhow, we'll wait a while till we see how the syndicate takes hold of
+this quarry business before we decide on anything, won't we, mother?"
+
+"I'm willing to wait as long as you like if you will only promise me one
+thing."
+
+"What's that?" He rose and faced her; she saw that he was slightly on
+the defensive.
+
+"That you will never, _never_, in any circumstances, apply to your Aunt
+Almeda for funds, no matter how much you may want them. I couldn't bear
+that!"
+
+She spoke passionately in earnest, with such depth of feeling that she
+did not realize her son was not giving her the promise when he said
+abruptly, the somewhat hard blue eyes looking straight into hers:
+
+"Mother, why are you so hard on Aunt Meda? She's a stingy old screw, I
+know, and led Uncle Louis round by the nose, so everybody says; but why
+are you so down on her?"
+
+He was insistent, and his insistence was the one trait in his character
+which his mother had found hardest to deal with from his babyhood; from
+it, however, if it should develop happily into perseverance, she hoped
+the most. This trait he inherited from his father, Warren Googe, but in
+the latter it had deteriorated into obstinacy. She always feared for her
+self-control when she met it in her son, and just now she was under the
+influence of a powerful emotion that helped her to lose it.
+
+"Because," she made answer, again passionately but the earnestness had
+given place to anger, "I am a woman and have borne from her what no
+woman bears and forgets, or forgives! Are you any the wiser now?" she
+demanded. "It is all that I shall tell you; so don't insist."
+
+The two continued to look into each other's eyes, and something, it
+could hardly be called inimical, rather an aloofness from the tie of
+blood, was visible to each in the other's steadfast gaze. Aurora Googe
+shivered. Her eyes fell before the younger ones.
+
+"Don't Champney! Don't let's get upon this subject again; I can't bear
+it."
+
+"But, mother," he protested, "you mentioned it first."
+
+"It was what you said about Almeda's furnishing you with money that
+started it. Don't say anything more about it; only promise me, won't
+you?"
+
+She raised her eyes again to his, but this time in appeal. At forty-one
+Aurora Googe was still a very beautiful woman, and her appeal, made
+gently as if in apology for her former vehemence, rendered that beauty
+potent with her son's manhood.
+
+"Let me think it over, mother, before I promise." He answered her as
+gently. "It's a hard thing to exact of a man, and I don't hold much with
+promises. What did Uncle Louis' amount to?"
+
+The blood surged into his mother's face, and tears, rare ones, for she
+was not a weak woman neither was she a sentimental one, filled her eyes.
+Her son came up the steps and kissed her. They were seldom demonstrative
+to this extent save in his home-comings and leave-takings. He changed
+the subject abruptly.
+
+"I'm going down to the village now. You know I have the serenade on my
+program, at eight. Afterwards I'll run down to The Greenbush for the
+mail and to see my old cronies. I haven't had a chance yet." He began to
+whistle for the puppy, but cut himself short, laughing. "I was going to
+take Rag, but he won't fit in with the serenade. Keep him tied up while
+I'm gone, please. Anything you want from the village, mother?"
+
+"No, not to-night."
+
+"Don't sit up for me; I may be late. Joel is long-winded and the Colonel
+is booming The Gore for all it is worth and more too; I want to hear the
+fun. Good night."
+
+
+VIII
+
+The afterglow of sunset was long. The dilated moon, rising from the
+waters of the Bay, shone pale at first; but as it climbed the shoulder
+of the mountain _Wave-of-the-Sea_ and its light fell upon the farther
+margin of the lake, its clear disk was pure argent.
+
+Champney looked his approval. It was the kind of night he had been
+hoping for. He walked leisurely down the road from The Gore for the
+night was warm. It was already past eight, but he lingered, purposely, a
+few minutes longer on the lake shore until the moonlight should widen on
+the waters. Then he went on to the grounds.
+
+He entered by the lane and crossed the lawn to an arching rose-laden
+trellis near the bay window; beneath it was a wooden bench. He looked up
+at the window. The blinds were closed. So far as he could see there was
+no light in all the great house. Behind the rose trellis was a group of
+stately Norway spruce; he could see the sheen of their foliage in the
+moonlight. He took his banjo out of its case and sat down on the bench,
+smiling to himself, for he was thoroughly enjoying, with that enjoyment
+of youth, health, and vitality which belongs to twenty-one, this rustic
+adventure. He touched the strings lightly with preliminary thrumming. It
+was a toss-up between "Annie Rooney" and "Oft in the stilly night." He
+decided for the latter. Raising his eyes to the closed blinds, behind
+which he knew the witch was hiding, he began the accompaniment. The soft
+_thrum-thrum_, vibrating through the melody, found an echo in the
+whirring wings of all that ephemeral insect life which is abroad on such
+a night. The prelude was almost at an end when he saw the blinds begin
+to separate. Champney continued to gaze steadily upwards. A thin bare
+arm was thrust forth; the blinds opened wide; in the dark window space
+he saw Aileen, listening intently and gazing fixedly at the moon as if
+its every beam were dropping liquid music.
+
+He began to sing. His voice was clear, fine, and high, a useful first
+tenor for two winters in the Glee Club. When he finished Aileen deigned
+to look down upon him, but she made no motion of recognition. He rose
+and took his stand directly beneath the window.
+
+"I say, Miss Aileen Armagh-and-don't-yer-forget-it, that isn't playing
+fair! Where's my token?"
+
+There was a giggle for answer; then, leaning as far out as she dared,
+both hands stemmed on the window ledge, the child began to sing. Full,
+free, joyously light-hearted, she sent forth the rollicking Irish melody
+and the merry sentiment that was strung upon it; evidently it had been
+adapted to her, for the words had suffered a slight change:
+
+    "Och! laughin' roses are my lips,
+    Forget-me-nots my ee,
+    It's many a lad they're drivin' mad;
+    Shall they not so wi' ye?
+    Heigho! the morning dew!
+    Heigho! the rose and rue!
+    Follow me, my bonny lad,
+    For I'll not follow you.
+
+    "Wi' heart in mout', in hope and doubt,
+    My lovers come and go:
+    My smiles receive, my smiles deceive;
+    Shall they not serve you so?
+    Heigho! the morning dew!
+    Heigho! the rose and rue!
+    Follow me, my bonny lad,
+    For I'll not follow you."
+
+It was a delight to hear her.
+
+"There now, I'll give yer my token. Hold out yer hands!"
+
+Champney, hugging his banjo under one arm, made a cup of his hands.
+Carefully measuring the distance, she dropped one rosebud into them.
+
+"Put it on yer heart now," was the next command from above. He obeyed
+with exaggerated gesture, to the great delight of the serenadee. "And
+yer goin' to keep it?"
+
+"Forever and a day." Champney made this assertion with a
+hyper-sentimental inflection of voice, and, lifting the flower to his
+nose, drew in his breath--
+
+"Confound you, you little fiend--" he sneezed rather than spoke.
+
+The sneeze was answered by a peal of laughter from above and a
+fifteen-year-old's cracked "Haw-haw-haw" from the region of the Norway
+spruces. Every succeeding sneeze met with a like response--roars of
+laughter on the one hand and peal upon peal on the other. Even the
+kitchen door began to give signs of life, for Hannah and Ann made their
+appearance.
+
+The strong white pepper, which Romanzo managed to procure from Hannah,
+had been cunningly secreted by Aileen between the imbricate petals, and
+then tied, in a manner invisible at night, with a fine thread of pink
+silk begged from Ann. It was now acting and re-acting on the lining of
+the serenader's olfactory organ in a manner to threaten final
+decapitation. Champney was still young enough to resent being made a
+subject of such practical joking by a little girl; but he was also
+sufficiently wise to acknowledge to himself that he had been worsted
+and, in the end, to put a good face on it. It is true he would have
+preferred that Romanzo Caukins had not been witness to his defeat.
+
+The sneezing and laughter gradually subsided. He sat down again on the
+bench and taking up his banjo prepared, with somewhat elaborate effort,
+to put it into its case. He said nothing.
+
+"Say!" came in a sobered voice from above; "are yer mad with me?"
+
+Ignoring both question and questioner, he took out his handkerchief,
+wiped his face and forehead and, returning it to his pocket, heaved a
+sigh of apparent exhaustion.
+
+"I say, Mr. Champney Googe, are yer mad with me?"
+
+To Champney's delight, he heard an added note of anxiety. He bowed his
+head lower over the banjo case and in silence renewed his simulated
+struggle to slip that instrument into it.
+
+"Champney! Are yer _rale_ mad with me?" There was no mistaking the
+earnestness of this appeal. He made no answer, but chuckled inwardly at
+the audacity of the address.
+
+"Champ!" she stamped her foot to emphasize her demand; "if yer don't
+tell me yer ain't mad with me, I'll lave yer for good and all--so now!"
+
+"I don't know that I'm mad with you," he spoke at last in an aggrieved,
+a subdued tone; "I simply didn't think you could play me such a mean
+trick when I was in earnest, dead earnest."
+
+"Did yer mane it?"
+
+"Why, of course I did! You don't suppose a man walks three miles in a
+hot night to serenade a girl just to get an ounce of pepper in his nose
+by way of thanks, do you?"
+
+"I thought yer didn't mane it; Romanzo said yer was laughing at me for
+telling yer 'bout the lords and ladies a-making love with their
+guitars." The voice indicated some dejection of spirits.
+
+"He did, did he! I'll settle with Romanzo later." He heard a soft
+brushing of branches in the region of the Norway spruces and knew that
+the youth was in retreat. "And I'll settle it with you, too, Miss Aileen
+Armagh-and-don't-you-forget-it, in a way that'll make you remember the
+tag end of your name for one while!"
+
+This threat evidently had its effect.
+
+"Wot yer going to do?"
+
+He heard her draw her breath sharply.
+
+"Come down here and I'll tell you."
+
+"I can't. She might catch me. She told me I'd got to stay in my room
+after eight, and she's coming home ter-night. Wot yer going to do?"
+
+Champney laughed outright. "Don't you wish you might know, Aileen
+Armagh!" He took his banjo in one hand, lifted his cap with the other
+and, standing so, bareheaded in the moonlight, sang with all the
+simulated passion and pathos of which he was capable one of the few love
+songs that belong to the world, "Kathleen Mavoureen"; but he took pains
+to substitute "Aileen" for "Kathleen." Even Ann and Hannah, listening
+from the kitchen porch, began to feel sentimentally inclined when the
+clear voice rendered with tender pathos the last lines:
+
+    "Oh! why art thou silent, thou voice of my heart?
+    Oh! why art thou silent, Aileen Mavoureen?"
+
+Without so much as another glance at the little figure in the window, he
+ran across the lawn and up the lane to the highroad.
+
+
+IX
+
+On his way to The Greenbush he overtook Joel Quimber, and without
+warning linked his arm close in the old man's. At the sudden contact
+Joel started.
+
+"Uncle Jo, old chap, how are you? This seems like home to see you
+round."
+
+"Lord bless me, Champ, how you come on a feller! Here, stan' still till
+I get a good look at ye;--growed, growed out of all notion. Why, I
+hain't seen ye for good two year. You warn't to home last summer?"
+
+"Only for a week; I was off on a yachting cruise most of the time.
+Mother said you were up on the Bay then at your grandniece's--pretty
+girl. I remember you had her down here one Christmas."
+
+The old man made no definite answer, but cackled softly to himself:
+"Yachting cruise, eh? And you remember a pretty girl, eh?" He nudged him
+with a sharpened elbow and whispered mysteriously: "Devil of a feller,
+Champ! I've heerd tell, I've heerd tell--chip of the old block, eh?" He
+nudged him knowingly again.
+
+"Oh, we're all devils more or less, we men, Uncle Jo; now, honor bright,
+aren't we?"
+
+"You've hit it, Champ; more or less--more or less. I heerd you was
+a-goin' it strong: primy donny suppers an' ortermobillies--"
+
+"Now, Uncle Jo, you know there's no use believing all you hear, but you
+can't plunge a country raised boy into a whirlpool like New York for
+four years and not expect him to strike out and swim with the rest.
+You've got to, Uncle Jo, or you're nobody. You'd go under."
+
+"Like 'nough you would, Champ; I can't say, fer I hain't ben thar. Guess
+twixt you an' me an' the post, I won't hev ter go thar sence Aurory's
+sold the land fer the quarries. I hear it talked thet it'll bring half
+New York right inter old Flamsted; I dunno, I dunno--you 'member 'bout
+the new wine in the old bottles, Champ?--highflyers, emigrants, Dagos
+and Polacks--Come ter think, Mis' Champney's got one on 'em now. Hev you
+seen her, Champ?"
+
+Champney's hearty laugh rang out with no uncertain sound. "Seen her! I
+should say so. She's worth any 'primy donny', as you call them, that
+ever drew a good silver dollar out of my pockets. Oh, it's too good to
+keep! I must tell you; but you'll keep mum, Uncle Jo?"
+
+"Mum's the word, ef yer say so, Champ." They turned from The Greenbush
+and arm in arm paced slowly up the street again. From time to time, for
+the next ten minutes, Augustus Buzzby and the Colonel in the tavern
+office heard from up street such unwonted sounds of hilarity and so long
+continued, that Augustus looked apprehensively at the Colonel who was
+becoming visibly uneasy lest he fail to place the joke.
+
+When the two appeared at the office door they bore unmistakable signs of
+having enjoyed themselves hugely. Augustus Buzzby gave them his warmest
+welcome and seated Uncle Joel in his deepest office chair, providing him
+at the same time with a pipe and some cut leaf. The Colonel was in his
+glory. With one arm thrown affectionately around young Googe's neck, he
+expatiated on the joy of the community as a whole in again welcoming
+its own.
+
+"Champney, my dear boy,--you still permit me the freedom of old
+friendship?--this town is already looking to you as to its future
+deliverer; I may say, as to a Moses who will lead us into the industrial
+Canaan which is even now, thanks to my friend, your honored mother,
+beckoning to us with its promise of abundant plenty. Never, in my
+wildest dreams, my dear boy, have I thought to see such a consummation
+of my long-cherished hopes."
+
+It was always one of Champney's prime youthful joys to urge the Colonel,
+by judiciously applied excitants, to a greater flowering of eloquence;
+so, now, as an inducement he wrung his neighbor's hand and thanked him
+warmly for his timely recognition of the new Flamsted about to be.
+
+"Now," he said, "the thing is for all of us to fall into line and forge
+ahead, Colonel. If we don't, we'll be left behind; and in these times to
+lag is to take to the backwoods."
+
+"Right you are, my dear fellow; deterioration can only set in when the
+members of a community, like ours, fail to present a solid front to the
+disintegrating forces of a supine civilization which--"
+
+"At it again, Milton Caukins!" It was Mr. Wiggins who, entering the
+office, interrupted the flow,--"dammed the torrent", he was wont to say.
+He extended a hand to young Googe. "Glad to see you, Champney. I hear
+there is a prospect of your remaining with us. Quimber tells us he heard
+something to the effect that a position might be offered you by the
+syndicate."
+
+"It's the first I've heard of it. How did you hear, Uncle Jo?" He
+turned upon the old man with a keen alertness which, taken in connection
+with the Colonel's oratory, was both disconcerting and confusing.
+
+"How'd I hear? Le' me see; Champ, what was we just talking 'bout up the
+street, eh?"
+
+"Oh, never mind that now," he answered impatiently; "let's hear what you
+heard. I'm the interested party just now." But the old man looked only
+the more disturbed and was not to be hurried.
+
+"'Bout that little girl--" he began, but was unceremoniously cut short
+by Champney.
+
+"Oh, damn the girl, just for once, Uncle Jo. What I want to know is, how
+you came to hear anything about me in connection with the quarry
+syndicate."
+
+The old man persisted: "I'm a-tryin' to get a-holt of that man's name
+that got her up here--"
+
+"Van Ostend," Champney suggested; "is that the name you want?"
+
+"That's him, Van Ostend; that's the one. He an' the rest was hevin' a
+meetin' right here in this office 'fore they went to the train, an' I
+was settin' outside the winder an' heerd one on 'em say: 'Thet Mis'
+Googe's a stunner; what's her son like, does any one know?' An' I heerd
+Mr. Van Ostend say: 'She's very unusual; if her son has half her
+executive ability'--them's his very words--'we might work him in with
+us. It would be good business policy to interest, through him, the land
+itself in its own output, so to speak, besides being something of a
+courtesy to Mis' Googe. I've met him twice.' Then they fell to
+discussin' the lay of The Gore and the water power at The Corners."
+
+"Bully for you, Uncle Jo!" Champney slapped the rounded shoulders with
+such appreciative heartiness that the old man's pipe threatened to be
+shaken from between his toothless gums. "You have heard the very thing
+I've been hoping for. Tave never let on that he knew anything about it."
+
+"He didn't, only what I told him." Old Quimber cackled weakly. "I guess
+Tave's got his hands too full at Champo to remember what's told him;
+what with the little girl an' Romanzo--no offence, Colonel." He looked
+apologetically at the Colonel who waved his hand with an airiness that
+disposed at once of the idea of any feeling on his part in regard to
+family revelations. "I heerd tell thet the little girl hed turned his
+head an' Tave couldn't git nothin' in the way of work out of him."
+
+"In that case I must look into the matter." The Colonel spoke with stern
+gravity. "Both Mrs. Caukins and I would deplore any undue influence that
+might be brought to bear upon any son of ours at so critical a period of
+his career."
+
+Mr. Wiggins laughed; but the laugh was only a disguised sneer. "Perhaps
+you'll come to your senses, Colonel, when you've got an immigrant for a
+daughter-in-law. Own up, now, you didn't think your 'competing
+industrial thousands' might be increased by some half-Irish
+grandchildren, now did you?"
+
+Champney listened for the Colonel's answer with a suspended hope that he
+might give Elmer Wiggins "one," as he said to himself. He still owed the
+latter gentleman a grudge because in the past he had been, as it were,
+the fountain head of all in his youthful misery in supplying ample
+portions of the never-to-be-forgotten oil of the castor bean and dried
+senna leaves. He felt at the present time, moreover, that he was
+inimical to his mother and her interests. And Milton Caukins was his
+friend and hers, past, present, and future; of this he was sure.
+
+The Colonel took time to light his cigar before replying; then, waving
+it towards the ceiling, he said pleasantly:
+
+"My young friend here, Champney, to whom we are looking to restore the
+pristine vigor of a fast vanishing line of noble ancestors, is both a
+Googe _and_ a Champney. _His_ ancestors counted themselves honored in
+making alliances with foreigners--immigrants to our all-welcoming
+shores; 'a rose', Mr. Wiggins, 'by any other name'; I need not quote."
+His chest swelled; he interrupted himself to puff vigorously at his
+cigar before continuing: "My son, sir, is on the spindle side of the
+house a _Googe_, and a _Googe_, sir, has the blood of the Champneys and
+the Lord knows of how many noble _immigrants_" (the last word was
+emphasized by a fleeting glance of withering scorn at the small-headed
+Wiggins) "in his veins which, fortunately, cannot be said of you, sir.
+If, at any time in the distant future, my son should see fit to ally
+himself with a scion of the noble and long-suffering Hibernian race, I
+assure you"--his voice was increasing in dimensions--"both Mrs. Caukins
+and myself would feel honored, sir, yes, honored in the breach!"
+
+After this wholly unexpected ending to his peroration, he lowered his
+feet from their accustomed rest on the counter of the former bar and,
+ignoring Mr. Wiggins, remarked to Augustus that it was time for the
+mail. Augustus, glad to welcome any diversion of the Colonel's and Mr.
+Wiggins's asperities, said the train was on time and the mail would be
+there in a few minutes.
+
+"Tave's gone down to meet Mis' Champney," he added turning to Champney.
+"She's been in Hallsport for two days. I presume you ain't seen her."
+
+"Not yet. If you can give me my mail first I can drive up to
+Champ-au-Haut with her to-night. There's the mail-wagon."
+
+"To be sure, to be sure, Champney; and you might take out Mis'
+Champney's; Tave can't leave the hosses."
+
+"All right." He went out on the veranda to see if the Champ-au-Haut
+carriage was in sight. A moment later, when it drove up, he was at the
+door to open it.
+
+"Here I am, Aunt Meda. Will this hold two and all those bundles?"
+
+"Why, Champney, you here? Come in." She made room for him on the ample
+seat; he sprang in, and bent to kiss her before sitting down beside her.
+
+"Now, I call this luck. This is as good as a confessional, small and
+dark, and 'fess I've got to, Aunt Meda, or there'll be trouble for
+somebody at Campo."
+
+Had the space not been so "small and dark" he might have seen the face
+of the woman beside him quiver painfully at the sound of his cheery
+young voice and, when he kissed her, flush to her temples.
+
+"What devilry now, Champney?"
+
+"It's a girl, of course, Aunt Meda--your girl," he added laughing.
+
+"So you've found her out, have you, you young rogue? Well, what do you
+think of her?"
+
+"I think you'll have a whole vaudeville show at Champ-au-Haut for the
+rest of your days--and gratis."
+
+"I've been coming to that conclusion myself," said Mrs. Champney,
+smiling in turn at the recollection of some of her experiences during
+the past three weeks. "She amuses me, and I've concluded to keep her.
+I'm going to have her with me a good part of the time. I've seen enough
+since she has been with me to convince me that my people will amount to
+nothing so long as she is with them." There was an edge to her words the
+sharpness of which was felt by Octavius on the front seat.
+
+"I can't blame them; I couldn't. Why Tave here is threatened already
+with a quick decline--sheer worry of mind, isn't it Tave?" Octavius
+nodded shortly; "And as for Romanzo there's no telling where he will
+end; even Ann and Hannah are infected."
+
+"What do you mean, Champney?" She was laughing now.
+
+"Just wait till I run in and get the mail for us both, and I'll tell
+you; it's my confession."
+
+He sprang out, ran up the steps and disappeared for a moment. He
+reappeared thrusting some letters into his pocket. Evidently he had not
+looked at them. He handed the other letters and papers to Octavius, and
+so soon as the carriage was on the way to The Bow he regaled his aunt
+with his evening's experience under the bay window.
+
+"Serves you right," was her only comment; but her laugh told him she
+enjoyed the episode. He went into the house upon her invitation and sat
+with her till nearly eleven, giving an account of himself--at least all
+the account he cared to give which was intrinsically different from that
+which he gave his mother. Mrs. Champney was what he had once described
+to his mother as "a worldly woman with the rind on," and when he was
+with her, he involuntarily showed that side of his nature which was best
+calculated to make an impression on the "rind." He grew more worldly
+himself, and she rejoiced in what she saw.
+
+
+X
+
+While walking homewards up The Gore, he was wondering why his mother had
+shown such strength of feeling when he expressed the wish that his aunt
+would help him financially to further his plans. He knew the two women
+never had but little intercourse; but with him it was different. He was
+a man, the living representative of two families, and who had a better
+right than he to some of his Aunt Meda's money? A right of blood,
+although on the Champney side distant and collateral. He knew that the
+community as a whole, especially now that his mother had become a factor
+in its new industrial life, was looking to him, as once they had looked
+to his Uncle Louis, to "make good" with his inheritance of race. To this
+end his mother had equipped him with his university training. Why
+shouldn't his aunt be willing to help him? She liked him, that is, she
+liked to talk with him. Sometimes, it is true, it occurred to him that
+his room was better than his company; this was especially noticeable in
+his young days when he was much with his aunt's husband whom he called
+"Uncle Louis." Since his death he had never ceased to visit her at
+Champ-au-Haut--too much was at stake, for he was the rightful heir to
+her property at least, if not Louis Champney's. She, as well as his
+father, had inherited twenty thousand from the estate in The Gore. His
+father, so he was told, had squandered his patrimony some two years
+before his death. His aunt, on the contrary, had already doubled hers;
+and with skilful manipulation forty thousand in these days might be
+quadrupled easily. It was wise, whatever might happen, to keep on the
+right side of Aunt Meda; and as for giving that promise to his mother he
+neither could nor would. His mind was made up on this point when he
+reached The Gore. He told himself he dared not. Who could say what unmet
+necessity might handicap him at some critical time?--this was his
+justification.
+
+In the midst of his wonderings, he suddenly remembered the evening's
+mail. He took it out and struck a match to look at the hand-writing.
+Among several letters from New York, he recognized one as having Mr. Van
+Ostend's address on the reverse of the envelope. He tore it open; struck
+another match and, the letter being type-written, hastily read it
+through with the aid of a third and fourth pocket-lucifer; read it in a
+tumult of expectancy, and finished it with an intense and irritating
+sense of disappointment. He vehemently voiced his vexation: "Oh, damn it
+all!"
+
+He did not take the trouble to return the letter to its cover, but kept
+flirting it in his hand as he strode indignantly up the hill, his arms
+swinging like a young windmill's. When he came in sight of the house, he
+looked up at his mother's bedroom window. Her light was still burning;
+despite his admonition she was waiting for him as usual. He must tell
+her before he slept.
+
+"Champney!" she called, when she heard him in the hall.
+
+"Yes, mother; may I come up?"
+
+"Of course." She opened wide her bedroom door and stood there, waiting
+for him, the lamp in her hand. Her beauty was enhanced by the
+loose-flowing cotton wrapper of pale pink. Her dark heavy hair was
+braided for the night and coiled again and again, crown fashion, on her
+head.
+
+"Aunt Meda never could hold a candle to mother!" was Champney
+Googe's thought on entering. The two sat down for the usual
+before-turning-in-chat.
+
+He was so full of his subject that it overflowed at once in abrupt
+speech.
+
+"Mother, I've had a letter from Mr. Van Ostend--"
+
+"Oh, Champney!" There was the joy of anticipation in her voice.
+
+"Now, mother, don't--don't expect anything," he pleaded, "for you'll be
+no end cut up over the whole thing. Now, listen." He read the letter;
+the tone of his voice indicated both disgust and indignation.
+
+"Now, look at that!" He burst forth eruptively when he had finished.
+"Here we've been banking on an offer for some position in the syndicate,
+at least, something that would help clear the road to Wall Street where
+I should be able to strike out for myself without being dependent on any
+one--I didn't mince matters that day of the dinner when I told him what
+I wanted, either! And here I get an offer to go to Europe for five years
+and study banking systems and the Lord knows what in London, Paris, and
+Berlin, and act as a sort of super in his branch offices. Great Scott!
+Does he think a man is going to waste five years of his life in Europe
+at a time when twenty-four hours here at home might make a man! He's a
+donkey if he thinks that, and I'd have given him credit for more common
+sense--"
+
+"Now, Champney, stop right where you are. Don't boil over so." She
+repressed a smile. "Let's talk business and look at matters as they
+stand."
+
+"I can't;" he said doggedly; "I can't talk business without a business
+basis, and this here,"--he shook the letter much as Rag shook a
+slipper,--"it's just slop! What am I going to do over there, I'd like to
+know?" he demanded fiercely; whereupon his mother took the letter from
+his hand and, without heeding his grumbling, read it carefully twice.
+
+"Now, look here, Champney," she said firmly; "you must use some reason.
+I admit this isn't what you wanted or I expected, but it's something;
+many would think it everything. Didn't you tell me only yesterday that
+in these times a man is fortunate to get his foot on any round of the
+ladder--"
+
+"Well, if I did, I didn't mean the rung of a banking house fire-escape
+over in Europe." He interrupted her, speaking sulkily. Then of a sudden
+he laughed out. "Go on, mother, I'm a chump." His mother smiled and
+continued the broken sentence:
+
+"--And that ten thousand fail where one succeeds in getting even a
+foothold--to climb, as you want to?"
+
+"But how can I climb? That's the point. Why, I shall be twenty-six in
+five years--if I live," he added lugubriously.
+
+His mother laughed outright. The splendid specimen of health, vitality,
+and strength before her was in too marked contrast to his words.
+
+"Well, I don't care," he muttered, but joining heartily in her laugh;
+"I've heard of fellows like me going into a decline just out of pure
+homesickness over there."
+
+"I don't think you will be homesick for Flamsted; I saw no traces of
+that malady while you were in New York. On the contrary, I thought you
+accepted every opportunity to stay away."
+
+"New York is different," he replied, a little shamefaced in the presence
+of the truth he had just heard. "But, mother, you would be alone here."
+
+"I'm used to it, Champney;" she spoke as it were perfunctorily; "and I
+am ambitious to see you succeed as you wish to. I want to see you in a
+position which will fulfil both your hopes and mine; but neither you nor
+I can choose the means, not yet; we haven't the money. For my part, I
+think you should accept this offer; it's one in ten thousand. Work your
+way up during these five years into Mr. Van Ostend's confidence, and I
+am sure, _sure_, that by that time he will have something for you that
+will satisfy even your young ambition. I think, moreover, it is a
+necessity for you to accept this, Champney."
+
+"You do; why?"
+
+"Well, for a good many reasons. I doubt, in the first place, if these
+quarries can get under full running headway for the next seven years,
+and even if you had been offered some position of trust in connection
+with them, you haven't had an opportunity to prove yourself worthy of it
+in a business way. I doubt, too, if the salary would be any larger; it
+is certainly a fair one for the work he offers." She consulted the
+letter. "Twelve hundred for the first year, and for every succeeding
+year an additional five hundred. What more could you expect,
+inexperienced as you are? Many men have to give their services gratis
+for a while to obtain entrance into such offices and have their names,
+even, connected with such a financier. This opportunity is a business
+asset. I feel convinced, moreover, that you need just this discipline."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For some other good reasons. For one, you would be brought into daily
+contact with men, experienced men, of various nationalities--"
+
+"You can be that in New York. There isn't a city in the world where you
+can gain such a cosmopolitan experience." He was still protesting, still
+insisting. His mother made no reply, nor did she notice the
+interruption.
+
+"--Learn their ways, their point of view. All this would be of infinite
+help if, later on, you should come into a position of great
+responsibility in connection with the quarry syndicate.--It does seem so
+strange that hundreds will make their livelihood from our barren
+pastures!" She spoke almost to herself, and for a moment they were
+silent.
+
+"And look at this invitation to cross in his yacht with his family!
+Champney, you know perfectly well nothing could be more courteous or
+thoughtful; it saves your passage money, and it shows plainly his
+interest in you personally."
+
+"I know; that part isn't half bad." He spoke with interest and less
+reluctance. "I saw the yacht last spring lying in North River; she's a
+perfect floating palace they say. Of course, I appreciate the
+invitation; but supposing--only supposing, you know,"--this as a warning
+not to take too much for granted,--"I should accept. How could I live on
+twelve hundred a year? He spends twice that on a cook. How does he think
+a fellow is going to dress and live on that? 'T was a tight squeeze in
+college on thirteen hundred."
+
+His mother knew his way so well, that she recognized in this insistent
+piling of one obstacle upon another the budding impulse to yield. She
+was willing to press the matter further.
+
+"Oh, clothes are cheaper abroad and living is not nearly so dear. You
+could be quite the gentleman on your second year's salary, and, of
+course, I can help out with the interest on the twenty thousand. You
+forget this."
+
+"By George, I did, mother! You're a trump; but I don't want you to think
+I want to cut any figure over there; I don't care enough about 'em. But
+I want enough to have a ripping good time to compensate for staying away
+so long."
+
+"You need not stay five consecutive years away from home. Look here,
+Champney; you have read this letter with your eyes but not with your
+wits. Your boiling condition was not conducive to clear-headedness."
+
+"Oh, I say mother! Don't rap a fellow too hard when he's down."
+
+"You're not down; you're up,"--she held her ground with him right
+sturdily,--"up on the second round already, my son; only you don't know
+it. Here it is in black and white that you can come home for six weeks
+after two years, and the fifth year is shortened by three months if all
+goes well. What more do you want?"
+
+"That's something, anyway."
+
+"Now, I want you to think this over."
+
+"I wish I could run down to New York for a day or two; it would help a
+lot. I could look round and possibly find an opening in the direction I
+want. I want to do this before deciding."
+
+"Champney, I shall lose patience with you soon. You know you, can't run
+down to New York for even a day. Mr. Van Ostend states the fact baldly:
+'Your decision I must have by telegraph, at the latest, by Thursday
+noon.' That's day after to-morrow. 'We sail on Saturday.' Mr. Van Ostend
+is not a man to waste a breath, as you have said."
+
+Champney had no answer ready. He evaded the question. "I'll tell you
+to-morrow, mother. It's late; you mustn't sit up any longer." He looked
+at his watch. "One o'clock. Good night."
+
+"Good night, Champney. Leave your door into the hall wide open; it's so
+close."
+
+She put out her light and sat down by the window. The night was
+breathless; not a leaf of the elm trees quivered. She heard the Rothel
+picking its way down the rocky channel of The Gore. She gave herself up
+to thought, far-reaching both into the past and the future. Soon,
+mingled with the murmur of the brook, she heard her son's quiet measured
+breathing. She rose, walked noiselessly down the hall and stood at his
+bedroom door, to gaze--mother-like, to worship. The moonlight just
+touched the pillow. He lay with his head on his arm; the full white
+chest was partly bared; the spare length of the muscular body was
+outlined beneath the sheet. Her eyes filled with tears. She turned from
+the door, and, noiselessly as she had come, went back to her room and
+her couch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How little the pending decision weighed on his mind was proven by his
+long untroubled sleep; but directly after a late breakfast he told his
+mother he was going out to prospect a little in The Gore; and she,
+understanding, questioned him no further. He whistled to Rag and turned
+into the side road that led to the first quarry. There was no work going
+on there. This small ownership of forty acres was merged in the
+syndicate which had so recently acquired the two hundred acres from the
+Googe estate. He made his way over the hill and around to the head of
+The Gore. He wanted to climb the cliff-like rocks and think it out under
+the pines, landmarks of his early boyhood. He picked his way among the
+boulders and masses of sheep laurel; he was thinking not of the quarries
+but of himself; he did not even inquire of himself how the sale of the
+quarries might be about to affect his future.
+
+Champney Googe was self-centred. The motives for all his actions in a
+short and uneventful life were the spokes to his particular hub of self;
+the tire, that bound them and held them to him, he considered merely the
+necessary periphery of constant contact with people and things by which
+his own little wheel of fortune might be made to roll the more easily.
+He was following some such line of thought while turning Mr. Van
+Ostend's plan over and over in his mind, viewing it from all sides. It
+was not what he wanted, but it might lead to that. His eyes were on the
+rough ground beneath him, his thoughts busy with the pending decision,
+when he was taken out of himself by hearing an unexpected voice in his
+vicinity.
+
+"Good morning, Mr. Googe. Am I poaching on your preserve?"
+
+Champney recognized the voice at once. It was Father Honore's hailing
+him from beneath the pines. He was sitting with his back against one; a
+violin lay on its cover beside him; on his lap was a drawing-board with
+rule and compass pencil. Champney realized on the instant, and with a
+feeling of pleasure, that the priest's presence was no intrusion even at
+this juncture.
+
+"No, indeed, for it is no longer my preserve," he answered cheerily, and
+added, with a touch of earnestness that was something of a surprise to
+himself, "and it wouldn't be if it were still mine."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Googe; I appreciate that. You must find it hard to see a
+stranger like myself preempting your special claim, as I fancy this one
+is."
+
+"It used to be when I was a youngster; but, to tell the truth, I haven't
+cared for it much of late years. The city life spoils a man for this. I
+love that rush and hustle and rubbing-elbows with the world in general,
+getting knocked about--and knocking." He laughed merrily, significantly,
+and Father Honore, catching his meaning at once, laughed too. "But I'm
+not telling you any news; of course, you've had it all."
+
+"Yes, all and a surfeit. I was glad to get away to this hill-quiet."
+
+Champney sat down on the thick rusty-red matting of pine needles and
+turned to him, a question in his eyes. Father Honore smiled. "What is
+it?" he said.
+
+"May I ask if it was your own choice coming up here to us?"
+
+"Yes, my deliberate choice. I had to work for it, though. The superior
+of my order was against my coming. It took moral suasion to get the
+appointment."
+
+"I don't suppose they wanted to lose a valuable man from the city," said
+Champney bluntly.
+
+"The question of value is not, happily, a question of environment. I
+simply felt I could do my best work here in the best way."
+
+"And you didn't consider yourself at all?" Champney put the question,
+which voiced his thought, squarely.
+
+"Oh, I'm human," he answered smiling at the questioner; "don't make any
+mistake on that point; and I don't suppose many of us can eliminate self
+wholly in a matter of choice. I did want to work here because I believe
+I can do the best work, but I also welcomed the opportunity to get away
+from the city--it weighs on me, weighs on me," he added, but it sounded
+as if he were merely thinking aloud.
+
+Champney failed to comprehend him. Father Honore, raising his eyes,
+caught the look on the young man's face and interpreted it. He said
+quietly:
+
+"But then you're twenty-one and I'm forty-five; that accounts for it."
+
+For a moment, but a moment only, Champney was tempted to speak out to
+this man, stranger as he was. Mr. Van Ostend evidently had confidence in
+him; why shouldn't he? Perhaps he might help him to decide, and for the
+best. But even as the thought flashed into consciousness, he was aware
+of its futility. He was sure the man would repeat only what his mother
+had said. He did not care to hear that twice. And what was this man to
+him that he should ask his opinion, appeal to him for advice in
+directing this step in his career? He changed the subject abruptly.
+
+"I think you said you had met Mr. Van Ostend?"
+
+"Yes, twice in connection with the orphan child, as I told you, and once
+I dined with him. He has a charming family: his sister and his little
+daughter. Have you met them?"
+
+"Only once. He has just written me and asked me to join them on his
+yacht for a trip to Europe." Champney felt he was coasting on the edge,
+and enjoyed the sport.
+
+"And of course you're going? I can't imagine a more delightful host."
+Father Honore spoke with enthusiasm.
+
+But Champney failed to respond in like manner. The priest took note of
+it.
+
+"I haven't made up my mind;" he spoke slowly; then, smiling merrily into
+the other's face, "and I came up here to try to make it up."
+
+"And I was here so you couldn't do it, of course!" Father Honore
+exclaimed so ruefully that Champney's hearty laugh rang out. "No, no; I
+didn't mean for you to take it in that way. I'm glad I found you here--I
+liked what you said about the 'value'."
+
+Father Honore looked mystified for a moment; his brow contracted in the
+effort to recall at the moment what he had said about "value", and in
+what connection; but instead of any further question as to Champney's
+rather incoherent meaning, he handed him the drawing-board.
+
+"This is the plan for my shack, Mr. Googe. I have written to Mr. Van
+Ostend to ask if the company would have any objection to my putting it
+here near these pines. I understand the quarries are to be opened up as
+far as the cliff, and sometime, in the future, my house will be neighbor
+to the workers. I suppose then I shall have to 'move on'. I'm going to
+build it myself."
+
+"All yourself?"
+
+"Why not? I'm a fairly good mason; I've learned that trade, and there is
+plenty of material, good material, all about." He looked over upon the
+rock-strewn slopes. "I'm going to use some of the granite waste too." He
+put his violin into its case and held out his hand for the board. "I'm
+going now, Mr. Googe; I shall be interested to know your decision as
+soon as you yourself know about it."
+
+"I'll let you know by to-morrow. I've nearly a day of grace. You play?
+You are a musician?" he asked, as Father Honore rose and tucked the
+violin and drawing-board under his arm.
+
+"My matins," the priest answered, smiling down into the curiously eager
+face that with the fresh unlined beauty of young manhood was upturned to
+his. "Good morning." He lifted his hat and walked rapidly away without
+waiting for any further word from Champney.
+
+"Sure-footed as a mountain goat!" Champney said to himself as he watched
+him cross the rough hilltop. "I'd like to know where he gets it all!"
+
+He stretched out under the pines, his hands clasped under his head, and
+fell to thinking of his own affairs, into the as yet undecided course of
+which the memory of the priest's words, "The question of value is not,
+happily, a question of environment" fell with the force of gravity.
+
+"I might as well go it blind," he spoke aloud to himself: "it's all a
+matter of luck into which ring you shy your hat; I suppose it's the
+'value', after all, that does it in the end. Besides--"
+
+He did not finish that thought aloud; but he suddenly sat bolt upright,
+a fist pressed hard on each knee. His face hardened into determination.
+"By George, what an ass I've been! If I can't do it in one way I can in
+another.--Hoop! Hooray!"
+
+He turned a somersault then and there; came right side up; cuffed the
+dazed puppy goodnaturedly and bade him "Come on", which behest the
+little fellow obeyed to the best of his ability among the rough ways of
+the sheep walks.
+
+He did not stop at the house, but walked straight down to Flamsted, Rag
+lagging at his heels. He sent a telegram to New York. Then he went
+homewards in the broiling sun, carrying the exhausted puppy under his
+arm. His mother met him on the porch.
+
+"I've just telegraphed Mr. Van Ostend, mother, that I'll be in New York
+Friday, ready to sail on Saturday."
+
+"My dear boy!" That was all she said then; but she laid her hand on his
+shoulder when they went in to dinner, and Champney knew she was
+satisfied.
+
+Two days later, Champney Googe, having bade good-bye to his neighbors,
+the Caukinses large and small, to Octavius, Ann and Hannah,--Aileen was
+gone on an errand when he called last at Champ-au-Haut but he left his
+remembrance to her with the latter--to his aunt, to Joel Quimber and
+Augustus, to Father Honore and a host of village well-wishers who, in
+their joyful anticipation of his future and his fortunes, laid aside all
+factional differences, said, at last, farewell to Flamsted, to The
+Corners, The Bow, and his home among the future quarries in The Gore.
+
+
+
+
+PART THIRD
+
+In the Stream
+
+
+I
+
+Mrs. Milton Caukins had her trials, but they were of a kind some people
+would call "blessed torments." The middle-aged mother of eight children,
+six boys, of whom Romanzo was the eldest, and twin girls, Elvira Caukins
+might with justice lay claim to a superabundance of a certain kind of
+trial. Every Sunday morning proved the crux of her experience, and Mrs.
+Caukins' nerves were correspondingly shaken. To use her own words, she
+"was all of a tremble" by the time she was dressed for church.
+
+On such occasions she was apt to speak her mind, preferably to the
+Colonel; but lacking his presence, to her family severally and
+collectively, to 'Lias, the hired man, or aloud to herself when busy
+about her work. She had been known, on occasion, to acquaint even the
+collie with her state of mind, and had assured the head of the family
+afterwards that there was more sense of understanding of a woman's
+trials in one wag of a dog's tail than in most men's head-pieces.
+
+"Mr. Caukins!" she called up the stairway. She never addressed her
+husband in the publicity of domestic life without this prefix; to her
+children she spoke of him as "your pa"; to all others as "the Colonel."
+
+"Yes, Elvira."
+
+The Colonel's voice was leisurely, but muffled owing to the extra heavy
+lather he was laying about his mouth for the Sunday morning shave. His
+wife's voice shrilled again up the staircase:
+
+"It's going on nine o'clock and the boys are nowheres near ready; I
+haven't dressed the twins yet, and the boys are trying to shampoo each
+other--they've got your bottle of bay rum, and not a single shoe have
+they greased. I wish you'd hurry up and come down; for if there's one
+thing you know I hate it's to go into church after the beginning of the
+first lesson with those boys squeaking and scrunching up the aisle
+behind me. It makes me nervous and upsets me so I can't find the place
+in my prayer book half the time."
+
+"I'll be down shortly." The tone was intended to be conciliatory, but it
+irritated Mrs. Caukins beyond measure.
+
+"I know all about your 'shortlies,' Mr. Caukins; they're as long as the
+rector's sermon this very Whit-sunday--the one day in the whole year
+when the children can't keep still any more than cows in fly time. Did
+you get their peppermints last night?"
+
+"'Gad, my dear, I forgot them! But really--", his voice was degenerating
+into a mumble owing to the pressure of circumstances, "--matters of
+such--er--supreme importance--came--er--to my knowledge last evening
+that--that--"
+
+"That what?"
+
+"--That--that--mm--mm--" there followed the peculiar noise attendant
+upon a general clearing up of much lathered cuticle, "--I forgot them."
+
+"What matters were they? You didn't say anything about 'supreme
+importance' last night, Mr. Caukins."
+
+"I'll tell you later, Elvira; just at present I--"
+
+"Was it anything about the quarries?"
+
+"Mm--"
+
+"_What_ was it?"
+
+"I heard young Googe was expected next week."
+
+"Well, I declare! I could have told you that much myself if you'd been
+at home in any decent season. It seems pretty poor planning to have to
+run down three miles to The Greenbush every Saturday evening to find out
+what you could know by just stepping across the bridge to Aurora's. She
+told me yesterday. Was that all?"
+
+"N--no--"
+
+"For mercy's sake, Mr. Caukins, don't keep me waiting here any longer!
+It's almost church time."
+
+"I wasn't aware that I was detaining you, Elvira." The Colonel's protest
+was mild but dignified. There were sounds above of renewed activity.
+
+"Dulcie," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to a little girl who was standing
+beside her, listening with erected ears to her mother's questions and
+father's answers, "go up stairs into mother's room and see if Doosie's
+getting ready, there's a good girl."
+
+"Doosie is with me, Elvira; I would let well enough alone for the
+present, if I were you," said the Colonel admonishingly. His wife wisely
+took the hint. "Come up, Dulcie," he called, "father's ready." Dulcie
+hopped up stairs.
+
+"You haven't said what matters of importance kept you last night." Mrs.
+Caukins returned to her muttons with redoubled energy.
+
+"Champney came home unexpectedly last evening, and the syndicate has
+offered him a position, a big one, in New York--treasurer of the
+Flamsted Quarries Company; and our Romanzo's got a chance too--"
+
+"You don't say! What is it?" Mrs. Caukins started up stairs whence came
+sounds of an obstreperous bootjack.
+
+"Paymaster, here in town; I'll explain in more propitious circumstances.
+Has 'Lias harnessed yet, Elvira?"
+
+Without deigning to answer, Mrs. Caukins freed her mind.
+
+"Well, Mr. Caukins, I must say you grow more and more like that old ram
+of 'Lias's that has learned to butt backwards just for the sake of going
+contrary to nature. I believe you'd rather tell a piece of news
+backwards than forwards any day! Why didn't you begin by telling me
+about Romanzo? If your own child that's your flesh and blood and bone
+isn't of most interest to you, I'd like to know what is!"
+
+The Colonel's reply was partly inaudible owing to a sudden outbreak of
+altercation among the boys in the room below. Mrs. Caukins, who had just
+reached the landing, turned in her tracks and hurried to the rescue.
+
+The Colonel smiled at the rosy, freshly-shaved face reflected in the
+mirror of the old-fashioned dressing-case, and, at the same time, caught
+the reflection of another image--that of his hired man, 'Lias, who was
+crossing the yard. He went to the window and leaned out, stemming his
+hands on the sill.
+
+"There seems to be the usual Sunday morning row going on below, 'Lias. I
+fear the boys are shampooing each other's heads with the backs of their
+brushes from the sounds."
+
+'Lias smiled, and nodded understandingly.
+
+"Just look in and lend a hand in case Mrs. Caukins should be
+outnumbered, will you? I'm engaged at present." And deeply engaged he
+was to the twins' unspeakable delight. Whistling softly an air from "Il
+Trovatore," he rubbed some orange-flower water on his chin and cheeks;
+then taking a fresh handkerchief, dabbed several drops on the two little
+noses that waited upon him weekly in expectation of this fragrant boon.
+He was rewarded by a few satisfactory kisses.
+
+"Now run away and help mother--coach leaves at nine forty-five
+_pre_-cisely. I forgot the peppermints, but--" he slapped his trousers'
+pockets significantly.
+
+The twins shouted with delight and rushed away to impart the news to the
+boys.
+
+"I wish you would tell me the secret of your boys' conduct in church,
+Colonel Caukins; it's exemplary. I don't understand it, for boys will be
+boys," said the rector one Sunday several years before when all the boys
+were young. He had taken note of their want of restlessness throughout
+the sermon.
+
+The Colonel's mouth twitched; he answered promptly, but avoided his
+wife's eyes.
+
+"All in the method, I assure you. We Americans have spent a generation
+in experimenting with the inductive, the subjective method in education,
+and the result is, to all intents and purposes, a dismal failure. The
+future will prove the value of the objective, the deductive--which is
+mine," he added with a sententious emphasis that left the puzzled rector
+no wiser than before.
+
+"Whatever the method, Colonel, you have a fine family; there is no
+mistake about that," he said heartily.
+
+The Colonel beamed and responded at once:
+
+"'Blessed is the man that hath his quiver full'--"
+
+At this point Mrs. Caukins surreptitiously poked the admonitory end of
+her sunshade between the Colonel's shoulder blades, and the Colonel,
+comprehending, desisted from further quotation of scripture. It was not
+his strong point. Once he had been known to quote, not only unblushingly
+but triumphantly, during a touch-and-go discussion of the labor question
+in the town hall:--"The ass, gentlemen, is worthy of his hire"; and in
+so doing had covered Mrs. Caukins with confusion and made a transient
+enemy of every wage-earner in the audience.
+
+But his boys behaved--that was the point. What boys wouldn't when their
+heart's desire was conveyed to them at the beginning of the sermon by a
+secret-service-under-the-pew process wholly delightful to the young
+human male? Who wouldn't be quiet for the sake of the peppermints, a
+keen three-bladed knife, or a few gelatine fishes that squirmed on his
+warm moist palm in as lively a manner as if just landed on the lake
+shore? Their father had been a boy, and at fifty had a boy's heart
+within him--this was the secret of his success.
+
+Mrs. Caukins appeared at last, radiant in the consciousness of a new
+chip hat and silk blouse. Dulcie and Doosie in white lawn did their
+pains-taking mother credit in every respect. The Colonel gallantly
+presented his wife with a small bunch of early roses--an attention which
+called up a fine bit of color into her still pretty face. 'Lias helped
+her into the three-seated wagon, then lifted in the twins; the boys
+piled in afterwards; the Colonel took the reins. Mrs. Caukins waved her
+sunshade vigorously at 'Lias and gave a long sigh of relief and
+satisfaction.
+
+"Well, we're off at last! I declare I miss Maggie every hour in the day.
+I don't know what I should have done all these years without that girl!"
+
+The mention of "Maggie" emphasizes one of the many changes in Flamsted
+during the six years of Champney Googe's absence. Mrs. Caukins, urged by
+her favorite, Aileen, and advised by Mrs. Googe and Father Honore, had
+imported Margaret O'Dowd, the "Freckles" of the asylum, as mother's
+helper six months after Aileen's arrival in Flamsted. For nearly six
+years Maggie loyally seconded Mrs. Caukins in the care of her children
+and her household. Slow, but sure and dependable, strong and willing,
+she made herself invaluable in the stone house among the sheep pastures;
+her stunted affections revived and flourished apace in that household of
+well-cared-for children to whom both parents were devoted. It cost her a
+heartache to leave them; but six months ago burly Jim McCann, one of the
+best workmen in the sheds--although of unruly spirit and a source of
+perennial trouble among the men--began to make such determined love to
+the mother's helper that the Caukinses found themselves facing
+inevitable loss. Maggie had been married three months; and already
+McCann had quarrelled with the foreman, and, in a huff, despite his
+wife's tears and prayers, sought of his own accord work in another and
+far distant quarry.
+
+"Maggie told me she'd never leave off teasing Jim to bring her back,"
+said the fifth eldest Caukins.--"Oh, look!" he cried as they rumbled
+over the bridge; "there's Mrs. Googe and Champney on the porch waving to
+us!"
+
+The Colonel took off his hat with a flourish; the boys swung theirs;
+Mrs. Caukins waved her sunshade to mother and son.
+
+"I declare, I'd like to stop just a minute," she said regretfully, for
+the Colonel continued to drive straight on. "I'm so glad for Aurora's
+sake that he's come home; I only hope our Romanzo will do as well."
+
+"It would be an intrusion at such a time, Elvira. The effusions of even
+the best-intentioned friends are injudicious at the inopportune moment
+of domestic reunion."
+
+Mrs. Caukins subsided on that point. She was always depressed by the
+Colonel's grandiloquence, which he usually reserved for The Greenbush
+and the town-meeting, without being able to account for it.
+
+"He'll see a good many changes here; it's another Flamsted we're living
+in," she remarked later on when they passed the first stone-cutters'
+shed on the opposite shore of the lake; and the family proceeded to
+comment all the way to church on the various changes along the route.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was in truth another Flamsted, the industrial Flamsted which the
+Colonel predicted six years before on that memorable evening in the
+office of The Greenbush.
+
+To watch the transformation of a quiet back-country New England village
+into the life-centre of a great and far-reaching industry, is in itself
+a liberal education, not only in economics, but in inherited
+characteristics of the human race. Those first drops of "the deluge,"
+the French priest and the Irish orphan, were followed by an influx of
+foreigners of many nationalities: Scotch, Irish, Italians, Poles,
+Swedes, Canadian French; and with these were associated a few
+American-born.
+
+Their life-problem, the earning of wages for the sustenance of
+themselves and their families, was one they had in common. Its solution
+was centred for one and all in their work among the granite quarries of
+The Gore and in the stone-cutters' sheds on the north shore of Lake
+Mesantic. These two things the hundreds belonging to a half-dozen
+nationalities possessed in common--these, and their common humanity
+together with the laws to which it is subject. But aside from this,
+their speech, habits, customs, religions, food, and pastimes were
+polyglot; on this account the lines of racial demarkation were apt, at
+times, to be drawn all too sharply. Yet this very fact of
+differentiation provided hundreds of others--farmers, shopkeepers,
+jobbers, machinists, mechanics, blacksmiths, small restaurant-keepers,
+pool and billiard room owners--with ample sources of livelihood.
+
+This internal change in the community of Flamsted corresponded to the
+external. During those six years the very face of nature underwent
+transformation. The hills in the apex of The Gore were shaved clean of
+the thin layer of turf, and acres of granite laid bare to the drill.
+Monster derricks, flat stone-cars, dummy engines, electric motors, were
+everywhere in evidence. Two glittering steel tracks wound downwards
+through old watercourses to the level of the lake, and to the huge
+stone-cutting sheds that stretched their gray length along the northern
+shore. Here the quarried stones, tons in weight, were unloaded by the
+great electric travelling crane which picks up one after the other with
+automatic perfection of silence and accuracy, and deposits them wherever
+needed by the workmen.
+
+A colony of substantial three-room houses, two large boarding-houses, a
+power house and, farther up beyond the pines, a stone house and a long
+low building, partly of wood, partly of granite waste cemented, circled
+the edges of the quarry.
+
+The usual tale of workmen in the fat years was five hundred quarrymen
+and three hundred stone-cutters. This population of working-men, swelled
+to three thousand by the addition of their families, increased or
+diminished according as the years and seasons proved fat or lean. A
+ticker on Wall Street was sufficient to give to the great industry
+abnormal life and activity, and draw to the town a surplus working
+population. A feeling of unrest and depression, long-continued in
+metropolitan financial circles, was responded to with sensitive pulse on
+these far-away hills of Maine and resulted in migratory flights, by tens
+and twenties, of Irish and Poles, of Swedes, Italians, French Canucks,
+and American-born to more favorable conditions. "Here one day and gone
+the next"; even the union did not make for stability of tenure.
+
+In this ceaseless tidal ebb and flow of industrials, the original
+population of Flamsted managed at times to come to the surface to
+breathe; to look about them; to speculate as to "what next?" for the
+changes were rapid and curiosity was fed almost to satiety. A fruitful
+source of speculation was Champney Googe's long absence from home,
+already six years, and his prospects when he should have returned.
+Speculation was also rife when Aurora Googe crossed the ocean to spend a
+summer with her son; at one time rumors were afloat that Champney's
+prospective marriage with a relation of the Van Ostends was near at
+hand, and this was said to be the cause of his mother's rather sudden
+departure. But on her return, Mrs. Googe set all speculation in this
+direction at rest by denying the rumor most emphatically, and adding the
+information for every one's benefit that she had gone over to be with
+Champney because he did not wish to come home at the time his contract
+with Mr. Van Ostend permitted.
+
+Once during the past year, the village wise heads foregathered in the
+office of The Greenbush to discuss the very latest:--the coming to
+Flamsted of seven Sisters, Daughters of the Mystic Rose, who, foreseeing
+the suppression of their home institution in France, had come to prepare
+a refuge for their order on the shores of America and found another home
+and school among the quarrymen in this distant hill-country of the new
+Maine--an echo of the old France of their ancestors. This was looked
+upon as an undreamed-of innovation exceeding all others that had come to
+their knowledge; it remained for old Joel Quimber to enter the lists as
+champion of the newcomers, their cause, and their school which, with
+Father Honore's aid, they at once established among the barren hills of
+The Gore.
+
+"Hounded out er France, poor souls, just like my own
+great-great-great-granther's father!" he said, referring to the subject
+again on that last Saturday evening when the frequenters of The
+Greenbush were to be stirred shortly by the news they considered best of
+all: Champney Googe's unexpected arrival. "I was up thar yisterd'y an'
+it beats all how snug they're fixed! The schoolroom's ez neat as a pin,
+an' pitchers on the walls wuth a day's journey to see. They're havin' a
+room built onto the farther end--a kind of er relief hospital, so
+Father Honore told me--ter help out when the quarrymen git a jammed foot
+er finger, so's they needn't be took home to muss up their little cabins
+an' worrit their wives an' little 'uns. I heerd Aileen hed ben goin' up
+thar purty reg'lar lately for French an' sich; guess Mis' Champney's
+done 'bout the right thing by her, eh, Tave?"
+
+Octavius nodded. "And Aileen's done the right thing by Mrs. Champney. 'T
+isn't every young girl that would stick to it as Aileen's done the last
+six years--not in the circumstances."
+
+"You're right, Tave. I heerd not long ago thet she was a-goin' on the
+stage when she'd worked out her freedom, and by A. J. she's got the
+voice for it! But I'd hate ter see _her_ thar. She's made a lot er
+sunshine in this place, and I guess from all I hear there's them thet
+would stan' out purty stiff agin it; they say Luigi Poggi an' Romanzo
+Caukins purty near fit over her t' other night."
+
+"You needn't believe all you hear, Joel, but you can believe me when I
+tell you there'll be no going on the stage for Aileen--not if I know it,
+or Father Honore either."
+
+He spoke so emphatically that his brother Augustus looked at him in
+surprise.
+
+"What's up, Tave?" he inquired.
+
+"I mean Aileen's got a level head and isn't going to leave just as
+things are beginning to get interesting. She's stood it six year and she
+can stand it six more if she makes up her mind to it, and I'd ought to
+know, seeing as I've lived with her ever since she come to Flamsted."
+
+"To be sure, Tave, to be sure; nobody knows better'n you, 'bout Aileen,
+an' I guess she's come to look on you, from all I hear, as her special
+piece of property." His brother spoke appeasingly.
+
+Octavius smiled. "Well, I don't deny but she lays claim to me most of
+the time; it's 'Octavius' here and 'Octavius' there all day long.
+Sometimes Mrs. Champney ruffs up about it, but Aileen has a way of
+smoothing her down, generally laughs her out of it. Is that the
+Colonel?" He listened to a step on the veranda. "Don't let on 'bout
+anything 'twixt Romanzo and Aileen before the Colonel, Joel."
+
+"You don't hev ter say thet to me," said old Quimber resentfully;
+"anybody can see through a barn door when thar's a hole in it. All on us
+know Mis' Champney's a-breakin'; they do say she's hed a shock,
+leastwise I heerd so, an' Aileen'll look out for A No. 1. I ain't lived
+to be most eighty in Flamsted for nothin', an' I've seen an' heerd
+more'n I've ever told, Tave; more'n even you know 'bout some things. You
+don't remember the time old Square Googe took Aurory inter his home to
+bring up an' Judge Champney said he was sorry he'd got ahead of him for
+he wanted to adopt her for a daughter himself; them's his words; I heerd
+him. An' I can tell more'n--"
+
+"Shut up, Quimber," said Octavius shortly; and Joel Quimber "shut up,"
+but, winking knowingly at Augustus Buzzby, continued to chuckle to
+himself till the Colonel entered who, beginning to expatiate upon the
+subject of Champney Googe's prospects when he should have returned to
+the home-welcome awaiting him, was happily interrupted by the
+announcement of that young man's unexpected arrival on the evening
+train.
+
+
+II
+
+Champney Googe was beginning to realize, as he stood on the porch with
+his mother and waved to his old neighbors, the Caukinses, the changed
+conditions he was about to face. He was also realizing that he must
+change to meet these conditions. On his way up from the train Saturday
+evening, he noted the power house at The Corners and the substantial
+line of comfortable cottages that extended for a mile along the highroad
+to the entrance of the village. He found Main Street brilliant with
+electric lights and lined nearly its entire length with shops, large and
+small, which were thronged with week-end purchasers. An Italian fruit
+store near The Greenbush bore the proprietor's name, Luigi Poggi; as he
+drove past he saw an old Italian woman bargaining with smiles and lively
+gestures over the open counter. Farther on, from an improvised wooden
+booth, the raucous voice of the phonograph was jarring the night air and
+entertaining a motley group gathered in front of it. Across the street a
+flaunting poster announced "Moving Picture Show for a Nickel." Vehicles
+of all descriptions, from a Maine "jigger" to a "top buggy," were
+stationary along the village thoroughfare, their various steeds hitched
+to every available stone post. In front of the rectory some Italian
+children were dancing to the jingle of a tambourine.
+
+On nearing The Bow the confusion ceased; the polyglot sounds were
+distinguishable only as a murmur. In passing Champ-au-Haut, he looked
+up at the house; here and there a light shone behind drawn shades. Six
+years had passed since he was last there; six years--and time had not
+dulled the sensation of that white pepper in his nostrils! He smiled to
+himself. He must see Aileen before he left, for from time to time he had
+heard good reports of her from his mother with whom she had become a
+favorite. He thought she must be mighty plucky to stand Aunt Meda all
+this time! He gathered from various sources that Mrs. Champney was
+growing peculiar as she approached three score and ten. Her rare letters
+to him, however, were kind enough. But he was sure Aileen's anomalous
+place in the household at Champ-au-Haut--neither servant nor child of
+the house, never adopted, but only maintained--could have been no
+sinecure. Anyway, he knew she had kept the devotion of her two admirers,
+Romanzo Caukins and Octavius Buzzby. From a hint in his aunt's last
+letter, he drew the conclusion that Aileen and Romanzo would make a
+match of it before long, when Romanzo should be established. At any
+rate, Aileen had wit enough, he was sure, to know on which side her
+bread was buttered, and from all he heard by the way of letters, Romanzo
+Caukins was not to be sneezed at as a prospective husband--a
+steady-going, solid sort of a chap who, he was told, had a chance now
+like himself in the quarry business. He must credit Aunt Meda with this
+one bit of generosity, at least; Mr. Van Ostend told him she had applied
+to him for some working position for Romanzo in the Flamsted office, and
+not in vain; he was about to be put in as pay-master.
+
+As he drove slowly up the highroad towards The Gore, he saw the
+stone-cutters' sheds stretching dim and gray in the moonlight along the
+farther shore. A standing train of loaded flat-cars gleamed in the
+electric light like a long high-piled drift of new-fallen snow. Here and
+there, on approaching The Gore, an arc-light darkened the hills round
+about and sent its blinding glare into the traveller's eyes. At last,
+his home was in sight--his home!--he wondered that he did not experience
+a greater thrill of home-coming--and behind and above it the many
+electric lights in and around the quarries produced hazy white
+reflections concentrated in luminous spots on the clear sky.
+
+His mother met him on the porch. Her greeting was such that it caused
+him to feel, and for the first time, that where she was, there,
+henceforth, his true home must ever be.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It will be hard work adjusting myself at first, mother," he said,
+turning to her after watching the wagonload of Caukinses out of sight,
+"harder than I had any idea of. A foreign business training may broaden
+a man in some ways, but it leaves his muscles flabby for real home work
+here in America. You make your fight over there with gloves, and here
+only bare knuckles are of any use; but I'm ready for it!" He smiled and
+squared his shoulders as to an imaginary load.
+
+"You don't regret it, do you, Champney?"
+
+"Yes and no, mother. I don't regret it because I have gained a certain
+knowledge of men and things available only to one who has lived over
+there; but I do regret that, because of the time so spent, I am, at
+twenty-seven, still hugging the shore--just as I was when I left
+college. After all these years I'm not 'in it' yet; but I shall be
+soon," he added; the hard determined ring of steadfast purpose was in
+his voice. He sat down on the lower step: his mother brought forward
+her chair.
+
+"Champney," she spoke half hesitatingly; she did not find it easy to
+question the man before her as she used to question the youth of
+twenty-one, "would you mind telling me if there ever was any truth in
+the rumor that somehow got afloat over here three years ago that you
+were going to marry Ruth Van Ostend? Of course, I denied it when I got
+home, for I knew you would have told me if there had been anything to
+it."
+
+Champney clasped his hands about his knee and nursed it, smiling to
+himself, before he answered:
+
+"I suppose I may as well make a clean breast of the whole affair, which
+is little enough, mother, even if I didn't cover myself with glory and
+come out with colors flying. You see I was young and, for all my four
+years in college, pretty green when it came to the real life of those
+people--"
+
+"You mean the Van Ostends?"
+
+"Yes, their kind. It's one thing to accept their favors, and it's quite
+another to make them think you are doing them one. So I sailed in to
+make Ruth Van Ostend interested in me as far as possible, circumstances
+permitting--and you'll admit that a yachting trip is about as favorable
+as they make it. You know she's three years older than I, and I think it
+flattered and amused her to accept my devotion for a while, but then--"
+
+"But, Champney, did you love her?"
+
+"Well, to be honest, mother, I hadn't got that far myself--don't know
+that I ever should have; any way, I wanted to get her to the point
+before I went through any self-catechism on that score."
+
+"But, Champney!" She spoke with whole-hearted protest.
+
+He nodded up at her understandingly. "I know the 'but', mother; but
+that's how it stood with me. You know they were in Paris the next spring
+and, of course, I saw a good deal of them--and of many others who were
+dancing attendance on the heiress to the same tune that I was. But I
+caught on soon, and saw all the innings were with one special man; and,
+well--I didn't make a fool of myself, that's all. As you know, she was
+married the autumn after your return, three years ago."
+
+"You're sure you really didn't mind, Champney?"
+
+He laughed out at that. "Mind! Well, rather! You see it knocked one of
+my little plans higher than a kite--a plan I made the very day I decided
+to accept Mr. Van Ostend's offer. Of course I minded."
+
+"What plan?"
+
+"Wonder if I'd better tell you, mother? I'd like to stand well in your
+good graces--"
+
+"Oh, Champney!"
+
+"Fact, I would. Well, here goes then: I decided--I was lying up under
+the pines, you know that day I didn't want to accept his offer?"--she
+nodded confirmatorily--"that if I couldn't have an opportunity to get
+rich quick in one way, I would in another; and, in accepting the offer,
+I made up my mind to try for the sister and her millions; if successful,
+I intended to take by that means a short cut to matrimony and fortune."
+
+"Oh, Champney!"
+
+"Young and fresh and--hardened, wasn't it, mother?"
+
+"You were so young, so ignorant, so unused to that sort of living; you
+had no realization of the difficulties of life--of love--."
+
+She began speaking as if in apology for his weakness, but ended with the
+murmured words "life--love", in a voice so tense with pain that it
+sounded as if the major dominant of youth and ignorance suddenly
+suffered transcription into a haunting minor.
+
+Her son looked up at her in surprise.
+
+"Why, mother, don't take it so hard; I assure you I didn't. It brought
+me down to bed rock, for I was making a conceited ass of myself that's
+all, in thinking I could have roses for fodder instead of thistles--and
+just for the asking! It did me no end of good. I shall never rush in
+again where even angels fear to tread except softly--I mean the male
+wingless kind--worth a couple of millions; she has seven in her own
+right.--But we're the best of friends."
+
+He spoke without bitterness. His mother felt, however, at the moment,
+that she would have preferred to hear a note of keen disappointment in
+his explanation rather than this tone of lightest persiflage.
+
+"I don't see how--" she began, but checked herself. A slight flush
+mounted in her cheeks.
+
+"See how what, mother? Please don't leave me dangling; I'm willing to
+take all you can give. I deserve it."
+
+"I wasn't going to blame you, Champney. I'm the last one to do
+that--Life teaches each in her own way. I was only thinking I didn't see
+how any girl _could_ resist loving you, dear."
+
+"Oh, ho! Don't you, mother mine! Well, commend me to a doting--"
+
+"I'm _not_ doting, Champney," she protested, laughing; "I know your
+faults better than you know them yourself."
+
+"A doting mother, I say, to brace up a man fallen through his pride. Do
+you mean to say"--, he sprang to his feet, faced her, his hands thrust
+deep in his pockets, his face alive with the fun of the moment,--"do you
+mean to say that if you were a girl I should prove irresistible to you?
+Come now, mother, tell me, honor bright."
+
+She raised her eyes to his. The flush faded suddenly in her cheeks,
+leaving them unnaturally white; her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"I should worship you," she said under her breath, and dropped her head
+into her hands. He sprang up the steps to her side.
+
+"Why, mother, mother, don't speak so. I'm not worthy of it--it shames
+me. Here, look up," he took her bowed head tenderly between his hands
+and raised it, "look into my face; read it well--interpret, and you will
+cease to idealize, mother."
+
+She wiped her eyes, half-smiling through her tears. "I'm not idealizing,
+Champney, and I didn't know I could be so weak; I think--I think the
+telegram and your coming so unexpectedly--"
+
+"I know, mother," he spoke soothingly, "it was too much; you've been too
+long alone. I'm glad I'm at home at last and can run up here almost any
+time." He patted her shoulder softly, and whistled for Rag. "Come, put
+on your shade hat and we'll go up to the quarries. I want to see them;
+do you realize they are the largest in the country? It's wonderful what
+a change they've made here! After all, it takes America to forge ahead,
+for we've got the opportunities and the money to back them--and what
+more is needed to make us great?" He spoke lightly, expecting no
+answer.
+
+She brought her hat and the two went up the side road under the elms to
+the quarry.
+
+Ay, what more is needed to make us great? That is the question. There
+comes a time when a man, whose ears are not wholly deafened by the roar
+of a trafficking commercialism, asks this question of himself in the
+hope that some answer may be vouchsafed to him. If it come at all, it
+comes like the "still small voice" _after the whirlwind_; and the man
+who asks that question in the expectation of a response, must first have
+suffered, repented, struggled, fought, at times succumbed to fateful
+overwhelming circumstance, before his soul can be attuned so finely that
+the "still small voice" becomes audible. Youth and that question are not
+synchronous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I've not been so much alone as you imagine, Champney," said his mother.
+They were picking their way over the granite slopes and around to Father
+Honore's house. "Aileen and Father Honore and all the Caukinses and,
+during this last year, those sweet women of the sisterhood have brought
+so much life into my life up here among these old sheep pastures that
+I've not had the chance to feel the loneliness I otherwise should. And
+then there is that never-to-be-forgotten summer with you over the
+ocean--I feed constantly on the remembrance of all that delight."
+
+"I'm glad you had it, mother."
+
+"Besides, this great industry is so many-sided that it keeps me
+interested in every new development in spite of myself."
+
+"By the way, mother, you wrote me that you had invested most of that
+twenty thousand from the quarry lands in bank stock, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes; Mr. Emlie is president now; he is considered safe. The deposits
+have quadrupled these last two years, and the dividends have been
+satisfactory."
+
+"Yes, I know Emlie's safe enough, but you don't want to tie up your
+money so that you can't convert it at once into cash if advisable. You
+know I shall be on the inside track now and in a position to use a
+little of it at a time judiciously in order to increase it for you. I'd
+like to double it for you as Aunt Meda has doubled her inheritance from
+grandfather--Who's that?"
+
+He stopped short and, shading his eyes with his hat, nodded in the
+direction of the sisterhood house that stood perhaps an eighth of a mile
+beyond the pines. His mother, following his look, saw the figure of a
+girl dodge around the corner of the house. Before she could answer, Rag,
+the Irish terrier, who had been nosing disconsolately about on the
+barren rock, suddenly lost his head. With one short suppressed yelp, he
+laid his heels low to the slippery granite shelves and scuttled,
+scurried, scrambled, tore across the intervening quarry hollow like a
+bundle of brown tow driven before a hurricane.
+
+Mrs. Googe laughed. "No need to ask 'who' when you see Rag go mad like
+that! It's Aileen; Rag has been devoted to her ever since you've been
+gone. I wonder why she isn't at church?"
+
+The girl disappeared in the house. Again and again Champney whistled for
+his dog but Rag failed to put in an appearance.
+
+"He'll need to be re-trained. It isn't well, even for a dog, to be under
+such petticoat government as that; it spoils him. Only I'm afraid I
+sha'n't be at home long enough to make him hear to reason."
+
+"Aileen has him in good training. She knows the dog adores her and makes
+the most of it. Oh, I forgot to tell you I sent word to Father Honore
+this morning to come over to tea to-night. I knew you would like to see
+him, and he has been anticipating your return."
+
+"Has he? What for I wonder. By the way, where did he take his meals
+after he left you?"
+
+"Over in the boarding-house with the men. He stayed with me only three
+months, until his house was built. He has an old French Canadian for
+housekeeper now."
+
+"He's greatly beloved, I hear."
+
+"The Gore wouldn't be The Gore without him," Mrs. Googe spoke earnestly.
+"The Colonel"--she laughed as she always did when about to quote her
+rhetorical neighbor--"speaks of him to everyone as 'the heart of the
+quarry that responds to the throb of the universal human,' and so far as
+I know no one has ever taken exception to it, for it's true."
+
+"I remember--he was an all round fine man. I shall be glad to see him
+again. He must find some pretty tough customers up here to deal with,
+and the Colonel's office is no longer the soft snap it was for fifteen
+years, I'll bet."
+
+"No, that's true; but, on the whole, there is less trouble than you
+would expect among so many nationalities. Isn't it queer?--Father Honore
+says that most of the serious trouble comes from disputes between the
+Hungarians and Poles about religious questions. They are apt to settle
+it with fists or something worse. But he and the Colonel have managed
+well between them; they have settled matters with very few arrests."
+
+"I can't imagine the Colonel in that role." Champney laughed. "What does
+he do with all his rhetorical trumpery at such times? I've never seen
+him under fire--in fact, he never had been when I left."
+
+"I know he doesn't like it. He told me he shouldn't fill the office
+after another year. You know he was obliged to do it to make both ends
+meet; but since the opening of the quarries he has really prospered and
+has a market right here in town for all the mutton he can raise. I'm so
+glad Romanzo's got a chance."
+
+They rambled on, crossing the apex of The Gore and getting a good view
+of the great extent of the opened quarries. Their talk drifted from one
+thing to another, Champney questioning about this one and that, until,
+as they turned homewards, he declared he had picked up the many dropped
+stitches so fast, that he should feel no longer a stranger in his native
+place when he should make his first appearance in the town the next day.
+He wanted to renew acquaintance with all the people at Champ-au-Haut and
+the old habitues of The Greenbush.
+
+
+III
+
+He walked down to Champ-au-Haut the next afternoon. Here and there on
+the mountain side and along the highroad he noticed the massed pink and
+white clusters of the sheep laurel. Every singing bird was in full
+voice; thrush and vireo, robin, meadow lark, song-sparrow and catbird
+were singing as birds sing but once in the whole year; when the mating
+season is at its height and the long migratory flight northwards is
+forgotten in the supreme instinctive joy of the ever-new miracle of
+procreation.
+
+When he came to The Bow he went directly to the paddock gate. He was
+hoping to find Octavius somewhere about. He wanted to interview him
+before seeing any one else, in regard to Rag who had not returned. The
+recalcitrant terrier must be punished in a way he could not forget; but
+Champney was not minded to administer this well-deserved chastisement in
+the presence of the dog's protectress. He feared to make a poor first
+impression.
+
+He stopped a moment at the gate to look down the lane--what a beautiful
+estate it was! He wondered if his aunt intended leaving anything of it
+to the girl she had kept with her all these years. Somehow he had
+received the impression, whether from Mr. Van Ostend or his sister he
+could not recall, that she once said she did not mean to adopt her. His
+mother never mentioned the matter to him; indeed, she shunned all
+mention, when possible, of Champ-au-Haut and its owner.
+
+In his mind's eye he could still see this child as he saw her on the
+stage at the Vaudeville, clad first in rags, then in white; as he saw
+her again dressed in the coarse blue cotton gown of orphan asylum order,
+sitting in the shade of the boat house on that hot afternoon in July,
+and rubbing her greasy hands in glee; as he saw her for the third time
+leaning from the bedroom window and listening to his improvised
+serenade. Well, he had a bone to pick with her about his dog; that would
+make things lively for a while and serve for an introduction. He reached
+over to unlatch the gate. At that moment he heard Octavius' voice in
+violent protest. It came from behind a group of apple trees down the
+lane in the direction of the milking shed.
+
+"Now don't go for to trying any such experiment as that, Aileen; you'll
+fret the cow besides mussing your clean dress."
+
+"I don't care; it'll wash. Now, please, do let me, Tave, just this
+once."
+
+"I tell you the cow won't give down her milk if you take hold of her.
+She'll get all in a fever having a girl fooling round her." There
+followed the rattle of pails and a stool.
+
+"Now, look here, Octavius Buzzby, who knows best about a cow, you or I?"
+
+"Well, seeing as I've made it my business to look after cows ever since
+I was fifteen year old, you can't expect me to give in to you and say
+_you_ do."
+
+Her merry laugh rang out. Champney longed to echo it, but thought best
+to lie low for a while and enjoy the fun so unexpectedly provided.
+
+"Tavy, dear, that only goes to prove you are a mere man; a dear one to
+be sure--but then! Don't you flatter yourself for one moment that you,
+or any other man, really know any creature of the feminine gender from a
+woman to a cow. You simply can't, Tavy, because you aren't feminine.
+_Can_ you comprehend that? Can you say on your honor as a man that you
+have ever been able to tell for certain what Mrs. Champney, or Hannah,
+or I, for instance, or this cow, or the cat, or Bellona, when she hasn't
+been ridden enough, or the old white hen you've been trying to force to
+sit the last two weeks, is going to do next? Now, honor bright, have
+you?"
+
+Octavius was grumbling some reply inaudible to Champney.
+
+"No, of course you haven't; and what's more you never will. Not that
+it's your fault, Tavy, dear, it's only your misfortune." Exasperating
+patronage was audible in her voice. Champney noted that a trace of the
+rich Irish brogue was left. "Here, give me that pail."
+
+"I tell you, Aileen, you can't do it; you've never learned to milk."
+
+"Oh, haven't I? Look here, Tave, now no more nonsense; Romanzo taught me
+how two years ago--but we both took care you shouldn't know anything
+about it. Give me that pail." This demand was peremptory.
+
+Evidently Octavius was weakening, for Champney heard again the rattle of
+the pails and the stool; then a swish of starched petticoat and a cooing
+"There, there, Bess."
+
+He opened the gate noiselessly and closing it behind him walked down the
+lane. The golden light of the June sunset was barred, where it lay upon
+the brilliant green of the young grass, with the long shadows of the
+apple-tree trunks. He looked between the thick foliage of the
+low-hanging branches to the milking shed. The two were there. Octavius
+was looking on dubiously; Aileen was coaxing the giant Holstein mother
+to stand aside at a more convenient angle for milking.
+
+"Hold her tail, Tave," was the next command.
+
+She seated herself on the stool and laid her cheek against the warm,
+shining black flank; her hands manipulated the rosy teats; then she
+began to sing:
+
+    "O what are you seeking my pretty colleen,
+    So sadly, tell me now!"--
+      "O'er mountain and plain
+      I'm searching in vain
+    Kind sir, for my Kerry cow."
+
+The milk, now drumming steadily into the pail, served for a running
+accompaniment to the next verses.
+
+    "Is she black as the night with a star of white
+    Above her bonny brow?
+      And as clever to clear
+      The dykes as a deer?"--
+    "That's just my own Kerry cow."
+
+    "Then cast your eye into that field of wheat
+    She's there as large as life."--
+      "My bitter disgrace!
+      Howe'er shall I face
+    The farmer and his wife?"
+
+What a voice! And what a picture she made leaning caressingly against
+the charmed and patient Bess! She was so slight, yet round and
+supple--strong, too, with the strength of perfect health! The thick
+fluffed black hair was rolled away from her face and gathered into a low
+knot in the nape of her neck. Her dress cut low at the throat enhanced
+the white purity of her face and the slim round grace of her neck which
+showed to advantage against the ebony flank of the mother of many milky
+ways. Her lips were red and full; the nose was a saucy stub; the eyes he
+could not see; they were downcast, intent upon her filling pail and the
+rising creamy foam; but he knew them to be an Irish blue-gray.
+
+[Illustration: "What a picture she made leaning caressingly against the
+charmed and patient Bess"]
+
+    "Since the farmer's unwed you've no cause to dread
+    From his wife, you must allow.
+      And for kisses three--
+      'Tis myself is he--
+    The farmer will free your cow."
+
+The song ceased; the singer was giving her undivided attention to her
+self-imposed task. Octavius took a stool and began work with another
+cow. Champney, nothing loath to prolong the pleasure of looking at the
+improvised milkmaid, waited before making his presence known until she
+should have finished.
+
+And watching her, he could but wonder at the ways of Chance that had
+cast this little piece of foreign flotsam upon the shores of America,
+only to sweep it inland to this village in Maine. He could not help
+comparing her with Alice Van Ostend--what a contrast! What an abyss
+between the circumstances of the two lives! Yet this one was decidedly
+charming, more so than the other; for he was at once aware that Aileen
+was already in possession of her womanhood's dower of command over all
+poor mortals of the opposite sex--her manner with Octavius showed him
+that; and Alice when he saw her last, now nearly six months ago, would
+have given any one the impression of something still unfledged--a tall,
+slim, overgrown girl of sixteen, and somewhat spoiled. This was indeed
+only natural, for her immediate world of father, aunt, and relations had
+circled ever since her birth in the orbit of her charming wilfulness.
+Champney acknowledged to himself that he had done her bidding a little
+too frequently ever since the first yachting trip, when as a little girl
+she attached herself to him, or rather him to her as a part of her
+special goods and chattels. At that time their common ground for
+conversation was Aileen; the child was never tired of his rehearsing for
+her delight the serenade scene. But in another year she lost this
+interest, for many others took its place; nor was it ever renewed.
+
+The Van Ostends, together with Ruth and her husband, had been living the
+last three winters in Paris, Mr. Van Ostend crossing and recrossing as
+his business interests demanded or permitted. Champney was much with
+them, for their home was always open to him who proved an ever welcome
+guest. He acknowledged to himself, while participating in the intimacy
+of their home life, that if the child's partiality to his companionship,
+so undisguisedly expressed on every occasion, should, in the transition
+periods of girlhood and young womanhood, deepen into a real attachment,
+he would cultivate it with a view to asking her in marriage of her
+father when the time should show itself ripe. In his first youthful
+arrogance of self-assertion he had miscalculated with Ruth Van Ostend.
+He would make provision that this "undeveloped affair"--so he termed
+it--with her niece should not miscarry for want of caution. He intended
+while waiting for Alice to grow up--a feat which her aunt was always
+deploring as an impossibility except in a physical sense--to make
+himself necessary in this young life. Thus far he had been successful;
+her weekly girlish letters conclusively proved it.
+
+While waiting for the milk to cease its vigorous flow, he was conscious
+of reviewing his attitude towards the "undeveloped affair" in some such
+train of thought, and finding in it nothing to condemn, rather to
+commend, in fact; for not for the fractional part of a second did he
+allow a thought of it to divert his mind from the constant end in view:
+the making for himself a recognized place of power in the financial
+world of affairs. He knew that Mr. Van Ostend was aware of this
+steadfast pursuit of a purpose. He knew, moreover, that the fact that
+the great financier was taking him into his New York office as treasurer
+of the Flamsted Quarries, was a tacit recognition not only of his six
+years' apprenticeship in some of the largest banking houses in Europe,
+but of his ability to acquire that special power which was his goal. In
+the near future he would handle and practically control millions both in
+receipt and disbursement. Many of the contracts, already signed, were to
+be filled within the next three years--the sound of the milking suddenly
+ceased.
+
+"My, how my wrists ache! See, Tave, the pail is almost full; there must
+be twelve or fourteen quarts in all."
+
+She began to rub her wrists vigorously. Octavius muttered: "I told you
+so. You might have known you couldn't milk steady like that without
+getting all tuckered out."
+
+Champney stepped forward quickly. "Right you are, Tave, every time. How
+are you, dear old chap?" He held out his hand.
+
+"Champ--Champney--why--" he stammered rather than spoke.
+
+"It's I, Tave; the same old sixpence. Have I changed so much?"
+
+"Changed? I should say so! I thought--I thought--" he was wringing
+Champney's hand; some strange emotion worked in his features--"I thought
+for a second it was Mr. Louis come to life." He turned to Aileen who had
+sprung from her stool. "Aileen, this is Mr. Champney Googe; you've
+forgotten him, I dare say, in all these years."
+
+The rich red mantled her cheeks; the gray eyes smiled up frankly into
+his; she held out her hand. "Oh, no, I've not forgotten Mr. Champney
+Googe; how could I?"
+
+"Indeed, I think it is the other way round; if I remember rightly you
+gave me the opportunity of never forgetting you." He held her hand just
+a trifle longer than was necessary. The girl smiled and withdrew it.
+
+"Milky hands are not so sticky as spruce gum ones, Mr. Googe, but they
+are apt to be quite as unpleasant."
+
+Champney was annoyed without in the least knowing why. He was wondering
+if he should address her as "Aileen" or "Miss Armagh," when Octavius
+spoke:
+
+"Aileen, just go on ahead up to the house and tell Mrs. Champney Mr.
+Googe is here." Aileen went at once, and Octavius explained.
+
+"You see, Champney--Mr. Googe--"
+
+"Have I changed so much, Tave, that you can't use the old name?"
+
+"You've changed a sight; it don't come easy to call you Champ, any more
+than it did to call Mr. Louis by his Christian name. You look a Champney
+every inch of you, and you act like one." He spoke emphatically; his
+small keen eyes dwelt admiringly on the face and figure of the tall man
+before him. "I thought 't was better to send Aileen on ahead, for Mrs.
+Champney's broken a good deal since you saw her; she can't stand much
+excitement--and you're the living image." He called for the boy who had
+taken Romanzo's place. "I'll go up as far as the house with you. How
+long are you going to stay?"
+
+"It depends upon how long it takes me to investigate these quarries,
+learn the ropes. A week or two possibly. I am to be treasurer of the
+Company with my office in New York."
+
+"So I heard, so I heard. I'm glad it's come at last--no thanks to
+_her_," he added, nodding in the direction of the house.
+
+"Do you still hold a grudge, Tave?"
+
+"Yes, and always shall. Right's right and wrong's wrong, and there ain't
+a carpenter in this world that can dovetail the two. You and your mother
+have been cheated out of your rights in what should be yours, and it's
+ten to one if you ever get a penny of it."
+
+Champney smiled at the little man's indignation. "All the more reason to
+congratulate me on my job, Tave."
+
+"Well, I do; only it don't set well, this other business. She ain't
+helped you any to it?" He asked half hesitatingly.
+
+"Not a red cent, Tave. I don't owe her anything. Possibly she will leave
+some of it to this same Miss Aileen Armagh. Stranger things have
+happened." Octavius shook his head.
+
+"Don't you believe it, Champney. She likes Aileen and well she may, but
+she don't like her well enough to give her a slice off of this estate;
+and what's more she don't like any living soul well enough to part with
+a dollar of it on their account."
+
+"Is there any one Aunt Meda ever did love, Tave? From all I remember to
+have heard, when I was a boy, she was always bound up pretty thoroughly
+in herself."
+
+"Did she ever love any one? Well she did; that was her husband, Louis
+Champney, who loved you as his own son. And it's my belief that's the
+reason you don't get your rights. She was jealous as the devil of every
+word he spoke to you."
+
+"You're telling me news--and late in the day."
+
+"Late is better than never, and I'd always meant to tell you when you
+come to man's estate--but you've been away so long, I've thought
+sometimes you was never coming home; but I hoped you would for your
+mother's sake, and for all our sakes."
+
+"I'm going to do what I can, but you mustn't depend too much on me,
+Tave. I'm glad I'm at home for mother's sake although I always felt she
+had a good right hand in you, Tave; you've always been a good friend to
+her, she tells me."
+
+Octavius Buzzby swallowed hard once, twice; but he gave him no reply.
+Champney wondered to see his face work again with some emotion he failed
+to explain satisfactorily to himself.
+
+"There's Mrs. Champney on the terrace; I won't go any farther. Come in
+when you can, won't you?"
+
+"I shall be pretty apt to run in for a chat almost anytime on my way to
+the village." He waved his hand in greeting to his aunt and sprang up
+the steps leading to the terrace.
+
+He bent to kiss her and was shocked by the change in her that was only
+too apparent: the delicate features were sharpened; the temples sunken;
+her abundant light brown hair was streaked heavily with white; the
+hands had grown old, shrunken, the veins prominent.
+
+"Kiss me again, Champney," she said in a low voice, closing her eyes
+when he bent again to fulfil her request. When she opened them he
+noticed that the lids were trembling and the corners of her mouth
+twitched. But she rallied in a moment and said sharply:
+
+"Now, don't say you're sorry--I know all about how I look; but I'm
+better and expect to outlive a good many well ones yet."
+
+She told Aileen to bring another chair. Champney hastened to forestall
+her; his aunt shook her finger at him.
+
+"Don't begin by spoiling her," she said. Then she bade her make ready
+the little round tea-table on the terrace and serve tea.
+
+"What do you think of her?" she asked him after Aileen had entered the
+house. She spoke with a directness of speech that warned Champney the
+question was a cloak to some other thought on her part.
+
+"That she does you credit, Aunt Meda. I don't know that I can pay you or
+her a greater compliment."
+
+"Very well said. You've learned all that over there--and a good deal
+more besides. There have been no folderols in her education. I've made
+her practical. Come, draw up your chair nearer and tell me something of
+the Van Ostends and that little Alice who was the means of Aileen's
+coming to me. I hear she is growing to be a beauty."
+
+"Beauty--well, I shouldn't say she was that, not yet; but 'little.' She
+is fully five feet six inches with the prospect of an additional inch."
+
+"I didn't realize it. When are they coming home?"
+
+"Early in the autumn. Alice says she is going to come out next winter,
+not leak out as the other girls in her set have done; and what Alice
+wants she generally manages to have."
+
+"Let me see--she must be sixteen; why that's too young!"
+
+"Seventeen next month. She's very good fun though."
+
+"Like her?" She looked towards the house where Aileen was visible with a
+tea-tray.
+
+"Well, no; at least, not along her lines I should say. She seems to have
+Tave pretty well under her thumb."
+
+Mrs. Champney smiled. "Octavius thought he couldn't get used to it at
+first, but he's reconciled now; he had to be.--Call her Aileen,
+Champney; you mustn't let her get the upper hand of you by making her
+think she's a woman grown," she added in a low tone, for the girl was
+approaching them, slowly on account of the loaded tray she was carrying.
+
+Champney left his seat and taking the tea-things from her placed them on
+the table. Aileen busied herself with setting all in order and twirling
+the tea-ball in each cup of boiling water, as if she had been used to
+this ultra method of making tea all her life.
+
+"By the way, Aileen--"
+
+He checked himself, for such a look of amazement was in the quickly
+lifted gray eyes, such a surprised arch was visible in the dark brows,
+that he realized his mistake in hearing to his aunt's request. He felt
+he must make himself whole, and if possible without further delay.
+
+"Oh, I see that it must still be Miss Aileen
+Armagh-and-don't-you-forget-it!" he exclaimed, laughing to cover his
+confusion.
+
+She laughed in turn; she could not help it at the memories this title
+called to mind. "Well, it's best to be particular with strangers, isn't
+it?" Down went the eyes to search in the bottom of a teacup.
+
+"I fancied we were not wholly that; I told Aunt Meda about our escapade
+six years ago; surely, that affair ought to establish a common ground
+for our continued acquaintance. But, if that's not sufficient, I can
+find another nearer at hand--where's my dog?"
+
+This brought her to terms.
+
+"Oh, I can't do anything with Rag, Mr. Googe; I'm so sorry. He's over in
+the coach house this very minute, and Tave was going to take him home
+to-night. Just think! That seven-year-old dog has to be carried home,
+old as he is!"
+
+"If it's come to that, I'll take him home under my arm to-night--that
+is, if he won't follow; I'll try that first."
+
+"But you're not going to punish him!--and simply because he likes me.
+That wouldn't be fair!"
+
+She made her protest indignantly. Champney looked at his aunt with an
+amused smile. She nodded understandingly.
+
+"Oh, no; not simply because he likes you, but because he is untrue to
+me, his master."
+
+"But that isn't fair!" she exclaimed again, her cheeks flushing rose
+red; "you've been away so long that the dog has forgotten."
+
+"Oh, no, he hasn't; or if he has I must jog his memory. He's Irish, and
+the supreme characteristic of that breed is fidelity."
+
+"Well, so am I Irish," she retorted pouting; she began to make him a
+second cup of tea by twirling the silver tea-ball in the shallow cup
+until the hot water flew over the edge; "but I shouldn't consider it
+necessary to be faithful to any one who had forgotten and left me for
+six years."
+
+"You wouldn't?" Champney's eyes challenged hers, but either she did not
+understand their message or she was too much in earnest to heed it.
+
+"No I wouldn't; what for? I like Rag and he likes me, and we have been
+faithful to each other; it would be downright hypocrisy on his part to
+like you after all these years."
+
+"How about you?" Champney grew bold because he knew his aunt was
+enjoying the girl's entanglement as much as he was. She was amused at
+his daring and Aileen's earnestness. "Didn't you tell me in Tave's
+presence only just now that you couldn't forget me? How is that for
+fidelity? And why excuse Rag on account of a six years' absence?"
+
+"Well, of course, he's your dog," she said loftily, so evading the
+question and ignoring the laugh at her expense.
+
+"Yes, he's my dog if he is a backslider, and that settles it." He turned
+to his aunt. "I'll run in again to-morrow, Aunt Meda, I mustn't wear my
+welcome out in the first two days of my return."
+
+"Yes, do come in when you can. I suppose you will be here a month or
+two?"
+
+"No; only a week or two at most; but I shall run up often; the business
+will require it." He looked at Aileen. "Will you be so kind as to come
+over with me to the coach house, Miss Armagh, and hand my property over
+to me? Good-bye, Aunt Meda."
+
+Aileen rose. "I'll be back in a few minutes, Mrs. Champney, or will you
+go in now?"
+
+"There's no dew, and the air is so fresh I'll sit here till you come."
+
+The two went down the terrace steps side by side. Mrs. Champney watched
+them out of sight; there was a kindling light in her faded eyes.
+
+"Now, we'll see," said Champney, as they neared the coach house and saw
+in the window the bundle of brown tow with black nose flattened on the
+pane and eyes filled with longing under the tangled topknot. The stub of
+a tail was marking time to the canine heartbeats. Champney opened the
+door; the dog scurried out and sprang yelping for joy upon Aileen.
+
+"Rag, come here!" The dog's day of judgment was in that masculine
+command. The little terrier nosed Aileen's hand, hesitated, then pressed
+more closely to her side. The girl laughed out in merry triumph.
+Champney noted that she showed both sets of her strong white teeth when
+she laughed.
+
+"Rag, dear old boy!" She parted with caressing fingers the skein of tow
+on the frowsled head.
+
+"Come on, Rag." Champney whistled and started up the driveway. The
+terrier fawned on Aileen, slavered, snorted, sniffed, then crept almost
+on his belly, tail stiff, along the ground after Champney who turned and
+laid his hand on him. The dog crouched in the road. He gently pulled the
+stumps of ears--"Now come!"
+
+He went whistling up the road, and the terrier, recognizing his master,
+trotted in a lively manner after him.
+
+Champney turned at the gate and lifted his hat. "How about fidelity now,
+Miss Armagh?" He wanted to tease in payment for that amazed look she
+gave him for taking a liberty with her Christian name.
+
+"Well, of course, he's your dog," she called merrily after him, "but _I_
+wouldn't have done it if I'd been Rag!"
+
+Champney found himself wondering on the homeward way if she really meant
+what she said.
+
+
+IV
+
+It was a careless question, carelessly put, and yet--Aileen Armagh,
+before she returned to the house, was also asking herself if she meant
+what she said, asking it with an unwonted timidity of feeling she could
+not explain. On coming in sight of the terrace, she saw that Mrs.
+Champney was still there. She hesitated a moment, then crossed the lawn
+to the boat house. She wanted to sit there a while in the shade, to
+think things out with herself if possible. What did this mean--this
+strange feeling of timidity?
+
+The course of her life was not wholly smooth. It was inevitable that two
+natures like hers and Mrs. Champney's should clash at times, and the
+impact was apt to be none of the softest. Twice, Aileen, making a
+confidant of Octavius, threatened to run away, for the check rein was
+held too tightly, and the young life became restive under it. When the
+child first came to Champ-au-Haut, its mistress recognized at once that
+in her mischief, her wilfulness, her emphatic assertion of her right of
+way, there was nothing vicious, and to Octavius Buzzby's amazement, she
+dealt with her, on the whole, leniently.
+
+"She amuses me," she would say when closing an eye to some of Aileen's
+escapades that gave a genuine shock to Octavius in the region of his
+local prejudices.
+
+There had been, indeed, no "folderols" in her education. Sewing,
+cooking, housework she was taught root and branch in the time not spent
+at school, both grammar and high. During the last year Mrs. Champney
+permitted her to learn French and embroidery in a systematic manner at
+the school established by the gentle Frenchwomen in The Gore; but she
+steadily refused to permit the girl to cultivate her voice through the
+medium of proper instruction. This denial of the girl's strongest desire
+was always a common subject of dissension and irritation; however, after
+Aileen was seventeen a battle royal of words between the two was a rare
+occurrence.
+
+At the same time she never objected to Aileen's exercising her talent in
+her own way. Father Honore encouraged her to sing to the accompaniment
+of his violin, knowing well that the instrument would do its share in
+correcting faults. She sang, too, with Luigi Poggi, her "knothole boy"
+of the asylum days; and, as seven years before, Nonna Lisa often
+accompanied with her guitar. The old Italian, who had managed to keep in
+touch with her one-time _protegee_, and her grandson Luigi, made their
+appearance in the village one summer after Aileen had been two years in
+Flamsted. Luigi, now that his vaudeville days were over, was in search
+of work at the quarries; his grandmother was to keep house for him till
+he should be able to establish himself in trade--the goal of so many of
+his thrifty countrymen.
+
+These two Italians were typical of thousands of their nationality who
+come to our shores; whom our national life, through naturalization and
+community of interests, is able in a marvellously short time to
+assimilate--and for the public good. Intelligent, business-like, keen at
+a bargain, but honest and graciously gentle and friendly in manner,
+Luigi Poggi soon established himself in the affections of Flamsted--in
+no one's more solidly than in Elmer Wiggins', strange to say, who
+capitulated to the "foreigner's" progressive business methods--and after
+three years of hard and satisfactory work at the quarries and in the
+sheds, by living frugally and saving thriftily he was able to open the
+first Italian fruit stall in the quarry town. The business was
+flourishing and already threatened to overrun its quarters. Luigi was in
+a fair way to become fruit capitalist; his first presidential vote had
+been cast, and he felt prepared to enjoy to the full his new
+Americanhood.
+
+But with his young manhood and the fulfilment of its young aspirations,
+came other desires, other incentives for making his business a success
+and himself a respected and honored citizen of these United States.
+Luigi Poggi was ready to give into Aileen's keeping--whenever she might
+choose to indicate by a word or look that she was willing to accept the
+gift--his warm Italian heart that knew no subterfuge in love, but gave
+generously, joyfully, in the knowledge that there would be ever more and
+more to bestow. He had not as yet spoken, save with his dark eyes, his
+loving earnestness of voice, and the readiness with which, ever since
+his appearance in Flamsted he ran and fetched and carried for her.
+
+Aileen enjoyed this devotion. The legitimate pleasure of knowing she is
+loved--even when no response can be given--is a girl's normal emotional
+nourishment. Through it the narrows in her nature widen and the shallows
+deepen to the dimensions that enable the woman's heart to give, at last,
+even as she has received,--ay, even more than she can ever hope to
+receive. This novitiate was now Aileen's.
+
+As a foil, against which Luigi's silent devotion showed to the best
+advantage, Romanzo Caukins' dogged persistence in telling her on an
+average of once in two months that he loved her and was waiting for a
+satisfactory answer, served its end. For six years, while Romanzo
+remained at Champ-au-Haut, the girl teased, cajoled, tormented, amused,
+and worried the Colonel's eldest. Of late, since his twenty-first
+birthday, he had turned the tables on her, and was teasing and worrying
+her with his love-blind persistence. That she had given him a decided
+answer more than once made no impression on his determined spirit. In
+her despair Aileen went to Octavius; but he gave her cold comfort.
+
+"What'd I tell you two years ago, Aileen? Didn't I say you couldn't play
+with even a slow-match like Roman, if you didn't want a fire later on?
+And you wouldn't hear a word to me."
+
+"But I didn't know, Tave! How could I think that just because a boy tags
+round after you from morning till night for the sake of being amused,
+that when he gets to be twenty-one he is going to keep on tagging round
+after you for the rest of his days? I never saw such a leech! He simply
+won't accept the fact once for all that I won't have him; but he's got
+to--so now!"
+
+Octavius smiled at the sudden little flurry; he was used to them.
+
+"I take it Roman doesn't think you know your own mind."
+
+"He doesn't! Well, he'll find out I do, then. Oh, dear, why couldn't he
+just go on being Romanzo Caukins with no nonsense about him, and not
+make such a goose of himself! Anyway, I'm thankful he's gone; it got so
+I couldn't so much as tell him to harness up for Mrs. Champney, that he
+didn't consider it a sign of 'yielding' on my part!" She laughed out.
+"Oh, Tavy dear, what should I do without you!--Now if I could make an
+impression on you, it might be worth while," she added mischievously.
+
+Octavius would have failed to be the man he was had he not felt
+flattered; he smiled on her indulgently. "Well, I shouldn't tag round
+after you much if I was thirty year younger; 't ain't my way. But
+there's one thing, Aileen, I want to say to you, and if you've got any
+common sense you'll heed me this time: I want you to be mighty careful
+how you manage with Luigi. You've got no slow-match to play with this
+time, let me tell you; you've got a regular sleeping volcano like some
+of them he was born near; and it won't do, I warn you. He ain't Romanzo
+Caukins--Roman's home made; but t'other is a foreigner; they're
+different."
+
+"Oh, don't preach, Octavius." She always called him by his unabbreviated
+name when she was irritated. "I like well enough to sing with Luigi, and
+go rowing with him, and play tennis, and have the good times, but it's
+nonsense for you to think he means anything serious. Why, he never spoke
+a word of love to me in his life!"
+
+"Humph!--that silent kind's the worst; you don't give him a chance."
+
+"And I don't mean to--does that satisfy you?" she demanded. "If it
+doesn't, I'll tell you something--but it's a secret; you won't tell?"
+
+"Not if you don't want me to; I ain't that kind."
+
+"I know you're not, Tave; that's why I'm going to tell you. Here, let me
+whisper--"; she bent to his ear; he was seated on a stool in the coach
+house mending a strap; "--I've waited all this time for that prince to
+come, and do you suppose for one moment I'd look at any one else?"
+
+"Now that ain't fair to fool me like that, Aileen!"
+
+Octavius was really vexed, but he spoke the last words to empty air, for
+the girl caught up her skirt and ran like a deer up the lane. He could
+hear her laughing at his discomfiture; the sound grew fainter and
+fainter; when it ceased he resumed his work, from time to time shaking
+his head ominously and talking to himself as a vent for his outraged
+feelings.
+
+But Aileen spoke the truth. Her vivid imagination, a factor in the true
+Celtic temperament, provided her with another life, apart from the busy
+practical one which Mrs. Champney laid out for her. All her childish
+delights of day-dreaming and joyous romancing, fostered by that first
+novel which Luigi Poggi thrust through the knothole in the orphan asylum
+fence, was at once transferred to Alice Van Ostend and her surroundings
+so soon as the two children established their across-street
+acquaintance. Upon her arrival in Flamsted, the child's adaptability to
+changed circumstances and new environment was furthered by the play of
+this imagination that fed itself on what others, who lack it, might call
+the commonplace of life: the house at Champ-au-Haut became her lordly
+palace; the estate a park; she herself a princess guarded only too well
+by an aged duenna; Octavius Buzzby and Romanzo Caukins she looked upon
+as life-servitors.
+
+Now and then the evidence of this unreal life, which she was leading,
+was made apparent to Octavius and Romanzo by some stilted mode of
+speech. At such times they humored her; it provided amusement of the
+richest sort. She also continued to invent "novels" for Romanzo's
+benefit, and many a half-hour the two spent in the carriage
+house--Aileen aglow with the enthusiasm of narration, and Romanzo intent
+upon listening, charmed both with the tale and the narrator. In these
+invented novels, there was always a faithful prince returning after long
+years of wandering to the faithful princess. This was her one theme with
+variations.
+
+Sometimes she danced a minuet on the floor of the stable, with this
+prince as imaginary partner, and Romanzo grew jealous of the bewitching
+smiles and coquetries she bestowed upon the vacant air. At others she
+would induce the youth to enter a box stall, telling him to make believe
+he was at the theatre, and then, forgetting her role of princess, she
+was again the Aileen Armagh of old--the child on the vaudeville stage,
+dancing the coon dance with such vigor and abandonment that once, when
+Aileen was nearly sixteen, Octavius, being witness to this flaunting
+performance, took her severely to task for such untoward actions now
+that she was grown up. He told her frankly that if Romanzo Caukins was
+led astray in the future it would be through her carryings-on; at which
+Aileen looked so dumbfoundered that Octavius at once perceived his
+mistake, and retreated weakly from his position by telling her if she
+wanted to dance like that, she'd better dance before him who understood
+her and her intentions.
+
+At this second speech Aileen stared harder than ever; then going up to
+him and throwing an arm around his neck, she whispered:
+
+"Tave, dear, are you mad with me? What have I done?--Is it really
+anything so awful?"
+
+Her distress was so unfeigned that Octavius, not being a woman,
+comforted her by telling her he was a great botcher. Inwardly he cursed
+himself for an A No. 1 fool. Aileen never danced the "coon" again, but
+thereafter gave herself such grown-up and stand-off airs in Romanzo's
+presence, that the youth proceeded in all earnest to lose both head and
+heart to the girl's gracious blossoming womanhood. Octavius, observing
+this, groaned in spirit, and henceforth held his tongue when he heard
+the girl carolling her Irish love songs in the presence of the ingenuous
+Caukins.
+
+After this, the girl's exuberance of spirits and the sustaining inner
+life of the imagination helped her wonderfully during the three
+following years of patient waiting on a confirmed invalid. Of late, Mrs.
+Champney had come to depend more and more on the girl's strong youth; to
+demand more and more from her abundant vitality and lively spirits; and
+Aileen, although recognizing the anomalous position she held in the
+Champ-au-Haut household--neither servant nor child, neither companion
+nor friend--gave of herself; gave as her Irish inheritance prompted her
+to give: ungrudgingly, faithfully, without reward save the knowledge of
+a duty performed towards the woman who, in taking her into her household
+and maintaining her there, had placed her in a position to make
+friends--such friends!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When the soil is turned over carefully, enriched and prepared perfectly
+for the seed; when rain is abundant, sunshine plenteous and
+mother-earth's spring quickening is instinctive, is it to be wondered at
+that the rootlet delves, the plantlet lifts itself, the bud forms
+quickly, and unexpectedly spreads its petal-star to the sunlight which
+enhances its beauty and fructifies its work of reproduction? The natural
+laws, in this case, work to their prescribed end along lines of
+favoring circumstance--and Love is but the working out of the greatest
+of all Nature's laws. When conditions are adverse, there is only too
+often struggle, strife, wretchedness. The result is a dwarfing of the
+product, a lowering of the vital power, a recession from the type. But,
+on the contrary, when all conditions combine to further the working of
+this law, we have the rapid and perfect flowering, followed by the
+beneficent maturity of fruit and seed. Thus Life, the ever-new, becomes
+immortal.
+
+Small wonder that Aileen Armagh, trying to explain that queer feeling of
+timidity, should suddenly press her hand hard over her heart! It was
+throbbing almost to the point of suffocating her, so possessed was it by
+the joy of a sudden and wonderful presence of love.
+
+The knowledge brought with it a sense of bewildering unreality. She knew
+now that her day dreams had a substantial basis. She knew now that she
+had _not_ meant what she said.
+
+For years, ever since the night of the serenade, her vivid imagination
+had been dwelling on Champney Googe's home-coming; for years he was the
+central figure in her day dreams, and every dream was made half a
+reality to her by means of the praises in his behalf which she heard
+sounded by each man, woman, and child in the ever-increasing circle of
+her friends. It was always with old Joel Quimber: "When Champ gits back,
+we'll hev what ye might call the head of a fam'ly agin." Octavius Buzzby
+spent hours in telling her of the boy's comings and goings and doings at
+Champ-au-Haut, and the love Louis Champney bore him. Romanzo Caukins set
+him on the pedestal of his boyish enthusiasm. The Colonel himself was
+not less enthusiastic than his first born; he never failed to assure
+Aileen when she was a guest in his house--an event that became a weekly
+matter as she grew older--that her lot had fallen in pleasant places;
+that to his friend, Mrs. Googe, and her son, Champney, she was indebted
+for the new industrial life which brought with it such advantages to one
+and all in Flamsted.
+
+To Aurora Googe, the mother of her imaginative ideal, Aileen, attracted
+from the first by her beauty and motherly kindness towards an orphan
+waif, gave a child's demonstrative love, afterwards a girl's adoration.
+In all this devotion she was abetted by Elvira Caukins to whom Aurora
+Googe had always been an ideal of womanhood. Moreover, Aileen came to
+know during these years of Champney Googe's absence that his mother
+worshipped in reality where she herself worshipped in imagination.
+
+Thus the ground was made ready for the seed. Small wonder that the
+flowering of love in this warm Irish heart was immediate, when Champney
+Googe, on the second day after his home-coming, questioned her with that
+careless challenge in his eyes:
+
+"You wouldn't?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sun set before she left the boat house. She ran up the steps to the
+terrace and, not finding Mrs. Champney there, sought her in the house.
+She found her in the library, seated in her easy chair which she had
+turned to face the portrait of her husband, over the fireplace.
+
+"Why didn't you call me to help you in, Mrs. Champney? I blame myself
+for not coming sooner."
+
+"I really feel stronger and thought I might as well try it; there is
+always a first time--and you were with Champney, weren't you?"
+
+"I? Why no--what made you think that?" Mrs. Champney noticed the slight
+hesitation before the question was put so indifferently, and the quick
+red that mounted in the girl's cheeks. "Mr. Googe went off half an hour
+ago with Rag tagging on behind."
+
+"Then he conquered as usual."
+
+"I don't know whether I should call it 'conquering' or not; Rag didn't
+want to go, that was plain enough to see."
+
+"What made him go then?"
+
+Aileen laughed out. "That's just what I'd like to know myself."
+
+"What do you think of him?"
+
+"Who?--Rag or Mr. Googe?"
+
+She was always herself with Mrs. Champney, and her daring spirit of
+mischief rarely gave offence to the mistress of Champ-au-Haut. But by
+the tone of voice in which she answered, Aileen knew that, without
+intention, she had irritated her.
+
+"You know perfectly well whom I mean--my nephew, Mr. Googe."
+
+Aileen was silent for a moment. Her young secret was her own to guard
+from all eyes, and especially from all unfriendly ones. She was standing
+on the hearth, in front of Mrs. Champney. Turning her head slightly she
+looked up at the portrait of the man above her--looked upon almost the
+very lineaments of him whom at that very moment her young heart was
+adoring: the fine features, the blue eyes, the level brows, the firm
+curving lips, the abundant brown hair. It was as if Champney Googe
+himself were smiling down upon her. As she continued to look, the lovely
+light in the girl's face--a light reflected from no sunset fires over
+the Flamsted Hills, but from the sunrise of girlhood's first
+love--betrayed her to the faded watchful eyes beside her.
+
+"He looks just like your husband;" she spoke slowly; her voice seemed to
+linger on the last word; "when Tave saw him he said he thought it was
+Mr. Champney come to life, and I think--"
+
+Mrs. Champney interrupted her. "Octavius Buzzby is a fool." Sudden anger
+hardened her voice; a slight flush came into her wasted cheeks. "Tell
+Hannah I want my supper now, let Ann bring it in here to me. I don't
+need you; I'm tired."
+
+Aileen turned without another word--she knew too well that tone of voice
+and what it portended; she was thankful to hear it rarely now--and left
+the room to do as she was bidden.
+
+"Little fool!" Almeda Champney muttered between set teeth when the door
+closed upon the girl. She placed both hands on the arms of her chair to
+raise herself; walked feebly to the hearth where a moment before Aileen
+had stood, and raising her eyes to the smiling ones looking down into
+hers, confessed her woman's weakness in bitter words that mingled with a
+half-sob:
+
+"And I, too, was a fool--all women are with such as you."
+
+
+V
+
+Although Mrs. Champney remained the only one who read Aileen Armagh's
+secret, yet even she asked herself as the summer sped if she read
+aright.
+
+During the three weeks in which her nephew was making himself familiar
+with all the inner and outer workings of the business at The Gore and in
+the sheds, she came to anticipate his daily coming to Champ-au-Haut, for
+he brought with him the ozone of success. His laugh was so unaffectedly
+hearty; his interest in the future of Flamsted and of himself as a
+factor in its prosperity so unfeigned; his enjoyment of his own
+importance so infectious, his account of the people and things he had
+seen during his absence from home so entertaining that, in his presence,
+his aunt breathed a new atmosphere, the life-giving qualities of which
+were felt as beneficial to every member of the household at The Bow.
+
+Mrs. Champney took note that he never asked for Aileen. If the girl were
+there when he ran in for afternoon tea on the terrace or an hour's chat
+in the evening,--sometimes it happened that the day saw him three times
+at Champ-au-Haut--her presence to all appearance afforded him only an
+opportunity to tease her goodnaturedly; he delighted in her repartee.
+Mrs. Champney, keenly observant, failed to detect in the girl's frank
+joyousness the least self-consciousness; she was just her own merry self
+with him, and the "give and take" between them afforded Mrs. Champney a
+fund of amusement.
+
+On the evening of his departure for New York, she was witness to their
+merry leave-taking. Afterwards she summoned Octavius to the library.
+
+"You may bring all the mail for the house hereafter to me, Octavius; now
+that I am feeling so much stronger, I shall gradually resume my
+customary duties in the household. You need not give any of the mail to
+Aileen to distribute--I'll do it after to-night."
+
+"What the devil is she up to now!" Octavius said to himself as he left
+the room.
+
+But no letter from New York came for Aileen. Mrs. Champney tried another
+tack: the next time her nephew came to Flamsted, later on in the autumn,
+she asked him to write her in detail concerning his intimacy with her
+cousins, the Van Ostends, and of their courtesies to him. Champney,
+nothing loath--always keeping in mind the fact that it was well to keep
+on the right side of Aunt Meda--wrote her all she desired to know. What
+he wrote was retailed faithfully to Aileen; but the frequent dinners at
+the Van Ostends', and the prospective coming-out reception and ball to
+be given for Alice and scheduled for the late winter, called forth from
+the eagerly listening girl only ejaculations of delight and pleasant
+reminiscence of the first time she had seen the little girl dressed for
+a party. If, inwardly she asked herself the question why Alice Van
+Ostend had dropped all her childish interest in her whom she had been
+the means of sending to Flamsted, why she no longer inquired for her,
+her common sense was apt to answer the question satisfactorily. Aileen
+Armagh was keen-eyed and quick-witted, possessing, without actual
+experience in the so-called other world of society, a wonderful
+intuition as to the relative value of people and circumstances in this
+ordinary world which already, during her short life, had presented
+various interesting phases for her inspection; consequently she
+recognized the abyss of circumstance between her and the heiress of
+Henry Van Ostend. But, with an intensity proportioned to her open-minded
+recognition of the first material differences, her innate womanliness
+and pride refused to acknowledge any abyss as to their respective
+personalities. Hence she kept silence in regard to certain things;
+laughed and made merry over the letters filled with the Van Ostends'
+doings--and held on her own way, sure of her own status with herself.
+
+Aileen kept her secret, and all the more closely because she was
+realizing that Champney Googe was far from indifferent to her. At first,
+the knowledge of the miracle of love, that was wrought so suddenly as
+she thought, sufficed to fill her heart with continual joy. But,
+shortly, that was modified by the awakening longing that Champney should
+return her love. She felt she charmed him; she knew that he timed his
+coming and going that he might encounter her in the house or about the
+grounds, whenever and wherever he could--sometimes alone in her boat on
+the long arm of the lake, that makes up to the west and is known as
+"lily-pad reach"; and afterwards, during the autumn, in the quarry woods
+above The Gore where with her satellites, Dulcie and Doosie Caukins, she
+went to pick checkerberries.
+
+Mrs. Champney was baffled; she determined to await developments, taking
+refuge from her defeat in the old saying "Love and a cough can't be
+hidden." Still, she could but wonder when four months of the late
+spring and early summer passed, and Champney made no further appearance
+in Flamsted. This hiatus was noticeable, and she would have found it
+inexplicable, had not Mr. Van Ostend written her a letter which
+satisfied her in regard to many things of which she had previously been
+in doubt; it decided her once for all to speak to Aileen and warn her
+against any passing infatuation for her nephew. For this she determined
+to bide her time, especially as Champney's unusual length of absence
+from Flamsted seemed to have no effect on the girl's joyous spirits. In
+July, however, she had again an opportunity to see the two together at
+Champ-au-Haut. Champney was in Flamsted on business for two days only,
+and so far as she knew there was no opportunity for Aileen to see her
+nephew more than once and in her presence. She managed matters in such a
+way that Aileen's services were in continual demand during Champney's
+two days' stay in his native town.
+
+But after that visit in July, the singing voice was heard ringing
+joyfully at all times of the day in the house and about the grounds of
+The Bow. Sometimes the breeze brought it to Octavius from across the
+lake waters--Luigi's was no longer with it--and he pitied the girl
+sincerely because the desire of her heart, the cultivation of such a
+voice, was denied her. Mrs. Champney, also, heard the clear voice,
+which, in this the girl's twentieth year, was increasing in volume and
+sweetness, carolling the many songs in Irish, English, French and
+Italian. She marvelled at the light-heartedness and, at the same time,
+wondered if, now that Romanzo Caukins could no longer hope, Aileen would
+show enough common sense to accept Luigi Poggi in due time, and through
+him make for herself an established place in Flamsted. Not that she was
+yet ready to part with her--far from it. She was too useful a member of
+the Champ-au-Haut household. Still, if it were to be Poggi in the end,
+she felt she could control matters to the benefit of all concerned,
+herself primarily. She was pleasing herself with the idea of such
+prospective control of Aileen's matrimonial interests one afternoon,
+just after Champney's flying visit in July, when she rose from her chair
+beneath the awning and, to try her strength, made her way slowly along
+the terrace to the library windows; they were French casements and one
+of them had swung outwards noiselessly in the breeze. She was about to
+step through, when she saw Aileen standing on the hearth before the
+portrait of Louis Champney. She was gazing up at it, her face illumined
+by the same lovely light that, a year before, had betrayed her secret to
+the faded but observant eyes of Louis Champney's widow.
+
+This was enough; the mistress of Champ-au-Haut was again on her
+guard--and well she might be, for Aileen Armagh was in possession of the
+knowledge that Champney Googe loved her. In joyful anticipation she was
+waiting for the word which, spoken by him when he should be again in
+Flamsted, was to make her future both fair and blest.
+
+
+VI
+
+In entering on his business life in New York, Champney Googe, like many
+another man, failed to take into account the "minus quantities" in his
+personal equation. These he possessed in common with other men because
+he, too, was human: passions in common, ambitions in common, weaknesses
+in common, and last, but not least, the pursuance of a common end--the
+accumulation of riches.
+
+The sum of these minus quantities added to the total of temperamental
+characteristics and inherited traits left, unfortunately, in balancing
+the personal equation a minus quantity. Not that he had any realization
+of such a result--what man has? On the contrary, he firmly believed that
+his inherited obstinate perseverance, his buoyant temperament, his
+fortunate business connection with the great financier, his position as
+the meeting-point of the hitherto divided family interests in Flamsted,
+his intimacy with the Van Ostends--the distant tie of blood confirming
+this at all points--plus his college education and cosmopolitan business
+training in the financial capitals of Europe, were potent factors in
+finding the value of _x_--this representing to him an, as yet, unknown
+quantity of accumulated wealth.
+
+He had not yet asked himself how large a sum he wished to amass, but he
+said to himself almost daily, "I have shown my power along certain lines
+to-day," these lines converging in his consciousness always to monetary
+increment.
+
+He worked with a will. His energy was tireless. He learned constantly
+and much from other men powerful in the world of affairs--of their
+methods of speculation, some legitimate, others quite the contrary; of
+their manipulation of stocks, weak and strong; of their strengthening
+the market when the strengthening was necessary to fill a threatened
+deficit in their treasury and of their weakening a line of investment to
+prevent over-loading and consequent depletion of the same. He was
+thoroughly interested in all he heard and saw of the development of
+mines and industries for the benefit of certain banking cliques and land
+syndicates. If now and then a mine proved to have no bottom and the
+small investor's insignificant sums dropped out of sight in this
+bottomless pit, that did not concern him--it was all in the game, and
+the game was an enticing one to be played to the end. The two facts that
+nothing is certain at all times, and that everything is uncertain at
+some time, added the excitement of chance to his business interest.
+
+At times, for instance when walking up the Avenue on a bracing October
+day, he felt as if he owned all in sight--a condition of mind which
+those who know from experience the powerful electro-magnetic current
+generated by the rushing life of the New York metropolis can well
+understand. He struck out into the stream with the rest, and with
+overweening confidence in himself--in himself as master of circumstances
+which he intended to control in his own interests, in himself as the
+pivotal point of Flamsted affairs. The rapidity of the current acted as
+a continual stimulus to exertion. Like all bold swimmers, he knew in a
+general way that the channel might prove tortuous, the current threaten
+at times to overpower him; but, carried rapidly out into mid-stream with
+that gigantic propulsive force that is the resultant of the diverse
+onward-pressure of the metropolitan millions, he suddenly found himself
+one day in that mid-stream without its ever having occurred to him that
+he might not be able to breast it. Even had he thought enough about the
+matter to admit that certain untoward conditions might have to be met,
+he would have failed to realize that the shore towards which he was
+struggling might prove in the end a quicksand.
+
+Another thing: he failed to take into account the influence of any cross
+current, until he was made to realize the necessity of stemming his
+strength against it. This influence was Aileen Armagh.
+
+Whenever in walking up lower Broadway from the office he found himself
+passing Grace Church, he realized that, despite every effort of will, he
+was obliged to relive in thought the experience of that night seven
+years ago at the Vaudeville. Then for the first time he saw the little
+match girl crouching on the steps of the stage reproduction of this same
+marble church. The child's singing of her last song had induced in him
+then--wholly unawares, wholly unaccountably--a sudden mental nausea and
+a physical disgust at the course of his young life, the result being
+that the woman "who lay in wait for him at the corner" by appointment,
+watched that night in vain for his coming.
+
+In reliving this experience, there was always present in his thought the
+Aileen Armagh as he knew her now--pure, loyal, high-spirited, helpful,
+womanly in all her household ways, entertaining in her originality,
+endowed with the gift of song. She was charming; this was patent to all
+who knew her. It was a pleasure to dwell on this thought of her, and,
+dwelling upon it too often at off-times in his business life, the desire
+grew irresistible to be with her again; to chat with her; to see the
+blue-gray eyes lifted to his; to find in them something he found in no
+others. At such times a telegram sped over the wires, to Aurora Googe,
+and her heart was rejoiced by a two days' visit from her son.
+
+Champney Googe knew perfectly well that this cross current of influence
+was diametrically opposed to his own course of life as he had marked it
+out for himself; knew that this was a species of self-gratification in
+which he had no business to indulge; he knew, moreover, that from the
+moment he should make an earnest effort to win Alice Van Ostend and her
+accompanying millions, this self-gratification must cease. He told
+himself this over and over again; meanwhile he made excuse--a talk with
+the manager of the quarries, a new order of weekly payments to introduce
+and regulate with Romanzo Caukins, the satisfactory pay-master in the
+Flamsted office, a week-end with his mother, the consideration of
+contracts and the erection of a new shed on the lake shore--to visit
+Flamsted several times during the autumn, winter, and early spring.
+
+At last, however, he called a halt.
+
+Alice Van Ostend, young, immature, amusing in her girlish abandon to the
+delight of at last "coming out", was, nevertheless, rapidly growing up,
+a condition of affairs that Champney was forced rather unwillingly to
+admit just before her first large ball. As usual he made himself useful
+to Alice, who looked upon him as a part of her goods and chattels. It
+was in the selection of the favors for the german to be given in the
+stone house on the occasion of the coming-out reception for its heiress,
+that his eyes were suddenly opened to the value of time, so to say; for
+Alice was beginning to patronize him. By this sign he recognized that
+she was putting the ten years' difference in their ages at something
+like a generation. It was not pleasing to contemplate, because the
+winning of Alice Van Ostend was, to use his own expression, in a line
+coincident with his own life lines. Till now he believed he was the
+favored one; but certain signs of the times began to be provocative of
+distrust in this direction.
+
+He asked boldly for the first dance, for the cotillon, and the privilege
+of giving her the flowers she was to wear that night. He assumed these
+favors to be within his rights; she was by no means of his way of
+thinking. It developed during their scrapping--Champney had often to
+scrap with Alice to keep on a level with her immaturity--that there was
+another rival for the cotillon, another, a younger man, who desired to
+give her the special flowers for this special affair. The final division
+of the young lady's favors was not wholly reassuring to Mr. Googe. As a
+result of this awakening, he decided to remain in New York without
+farther visits to Flamsted until the Van Ostends should have left the
+city for the summer.
+
+But in the course of the spring and summer he found it one thing to call
+a halt and quite another to make one. The cross current of influence,
+which had its source in Flamsted, was proving, against his will and
+judgment, too strong for him. He knew this and deplored it, for it
+threatened to carry him away from the shore towards which he was
+pushing, unawares that this apparently firm ground of attainment might
+prove treacherous in the end.
+
+"Every man has his weakness, and she's mine," he told himself more than
+once; yet in making this statement he was half aware that the word
+"weakness" was in no sense applicable to Aileen. It remained for the
+development of his growing passion for her to show him that he was
+wholly in the wrong--she was his strength, but he failed to realize
+this.
+
+Champney Googe was not a man to mince matters with himself. He told
+himself that he was not infatuated; infatuation was a thing to which he
+had yielded but few times in his selfish life. He was ready to
+acknowledge that his interest in Aileen Armagh was something deeper,
+more lasting; something that, had he been willing to look the whole
+matter squarely in the face instead of glancing askance at its profile,
+he would have seen to be perilously like real love--that love which
+first binds through passionate attachment, then holds through congenial
+companionship to bless a man's life to its close.
+
+"She suits me--suits me to a T;" such was his admission in what he
+called his weak moments. Then he called himself a fool; he cursed
+himself for yielding to the influence of her charming personality in so
+far as to encourage what he perceived to be on her part a deep and
+absorbing love for him. In yielding to his weakness, he knew he was
+deviating from the life lines he had laid with such forethought for his
+following. A rich marriage was the natural corollary of his
+determination to advance his own interests in his chosen career. This
+marriage he still intended to make, if possible with Alice Van Ostend;
+and the fact that young Ben Falkenburg, an old playmate of Alice's, just
+graduated from college, the "other man" of the cotillon favors, was the
+first invited guest for the prospective cruise on Mr. Van Ostend's
+yacht, did not dovetail with his intentions. It angered him to think of
+being thwarted at this point.
+
+"Why must such a girl cross my path just as I was getting on my feet
+with Alice?" he asked himself, manlike illogically impatient with Aileen
+when he should have lost patience with himself. But in the next moment
+he found himself dwelling in thought on the lovely light in the eyes
+raised so frankly to his, on the promises of loyalty those same eyes
+would hold for him if only he were to speak the one word which she was
+waiting to hear--which she had a right to hear after his last visit in
+July to Flamsted.
+
+If he had not kissed her that once! With a girl like Aileen there could
+be no trifling--what then?
+
+He cursed himself for his heedless folly, yet--he knew well enough that
+he would not have denied himself that moment of bliss when the girl in
+response to his whispered words of love gave him her first kiss, and
+with it the unspoken pledge of her loving heart.
+
+"I'm making another ass of myself!" he spoke aloud and continued to chew
+the end of a cold cigar.
+
+The New York office was deserted in these last days of August except for
+two clerks who had just left to take an early train to the beach for a
+breath of air. The treasurer of the Flamsted Quarries Company was
+sitting idle at his desk. It was an off-time in business and he had
+leisure to assure himself that he was without doubt the quadruped
+alluded to above--"An ass that this time is in danger of choosing
+thistles for fodder when he can get something better."
+
+Only the day before he had concluded on his own account a deal, that
+cost him much thought and required an extra amount of a certain kind of
+courage, with a Wall Street firm. Now that this was off his hands and
+there was nothing to do between Friday and Monday, when he was to start
+for Bar Harbor to join the Van Ostends and a large party of invited
+guests for a three weeks' cruise on the Labrador coast, he had plenty of
+time to convince himself that he possessed certain asinine qualities
+which did not redound to his credit as a man of sense. In his idle
+moments the thought of Aileen had a curious way of coming to the surface
+of consciousness. It came now. He whirled suddenly to face his desk
+squarely; tossed aside the cold cigar in disgust; touched the electric
+button to summon the office boy.
+
+"I'll put an end to it--it's got to be done sometime or other--just as
+well now." He wrote a note to the head clerk to say that he was leaving
+two days earlier for his vacation than he intended; left his address for
+the next four days in case anything should turn up that might demand his
+presence before starting on the cruise; sent the office boy off with a
+telegram to his mother that she might expect him Saturday morning for
+two days in Flamsted; went to his apartment, packed grip and steamer
+trunk for the yacht, and left on the night express for the Maine coast.
+
+
+VII
+
+"I just saw Mr. Googe driving down from The Gore, Aileen, so he's in
+town again."
+
+Octavius was passing the open library window where Aileen was sitting at
+her work, and stopped to tell her the news.
+
+"Is he?"
+
+The tone was indifferent, but had she not risen quickly to shake some
+threads of embroidery linen into the scrap-basket beneath the library
+table, Octavius might have seen the quick blood mount into her cheeks,
+the red lips quiver. It was welcome news for which she had been waiting
+already six weeks.
+
+Octavius spoke again but in a low voice:
+
+"You might mention it to Mrs. Champney when she comes down; it don't set
+well, you know, if she ain't told everything that's going on." He passed
+on without waiting for an answer.
+
+The girl took her seat again by the window. Her work lay in her lap; her
+hands were folded above it; her face was turned to the Flamsted Hills.
+"Would he come soon? When and where could she see him again, and alone?"
+Her thoughts were busy with conjecture.
+
+Octavius recrossing the terrace called out to her:
+
+"You going up to Mrs. Caukins' later on this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes; Mrs. Champney said she didn't need me."
+
+"I'll take you up."
+
+"Thank you, Tave, not to-day. I'm going to row up as far as the upper
+shed. I promised the twins to meet them there; they want to see the new
+travelling crane at work. We'll go up afterwards to The Gore together."
+
+"It's pretty hot, but I guess you're all three seasoned by this time."
+
+"Through and through, Tave; and I'm not coming home till after
+supper--it's lovely then--there's Mrs. Champney coming!"
+
+She heard her step in the upper hall and ran upstairs to assist her in
+coming down.
+
+"Will you go out on the terrace now?" she asked her on entering the
+library.
+
+"I'll wait a while; it's too warm at this hour."
+
+Aileen drew Mrs. Champney's arm chair to the other casement window. She
+resumed her seat and work.
+
+"How are you getting on with the napkins?" the mistress of Champ-au-Haut
+inquired after a quarter of an hour's silence in which she was busied
+with some letters.
+
+"Fine--see?" She held up a corner for her inspection. "This is the
+tenth; I shall soon be ready for the big table cloth."
+
+"Bring them to me."
+
+Aileen obeyed, and showed her the monogram, A C, wrought by her own deft
+fingers in the finest linen.
+
+"There's no one like a Frenchwoman to teach embroidery; you've done them
+credit." Aileen dropped a mock courtesy. "Which one taught you?"
+
+"Sister Ste. Croix."
+
+"Is she the little wrinkled one?"
+
+"Yes, but I've fallen in love with every wrinkle, she's a perfect
+dear--"
+
+"I didn't imply she wasn't." Mrs. Champney was apt to snap out at Aileen
+when, according to her idea, she was "gushing" too much. The girl had
+ceased to mind this; she was used to it, especially during her three
+years of attendance on this invalid. "Who designed this monogram?"
+
+"She did; she can draw beautifully."
+
+Mrs. Champney put on her glasses to examine in detail the exquisite
+lettering, A C.
+
+Aileen leaned above her, smiling to herself. How many loving thoughts
+were wrought into those same initials! How many times, while her fingers
+were busy fashioning them, she had planned to make just such for her
+very own! How often, as she wrought, she had laid her lips to the A C,
+murmuring to herself over and over again, "Aileen--Champney,
+Champney--Aileen," so filling and satisfying with the sound of this
+pleasing combination her every loving anticipation!
+
+She was only waiting for the "word", schooling herself in these last six
+weeks to wait patiently for it--the "word" which should make these
+special letters her legitimate own!
+
+The singing thoughts that ring in the consciousness of a girl who gives
+for the first time her whole heart to her lover; the chanted prayers to
+her Maker, that rise with every muted throb of the young wife's heart
+which is beating for two in anticipation of her first motherhood--who
+shall dare enumerate them?
+
+The varied loving thoughts in this girl's quick brain, which was fed by
+her young pulsing heart--a heart single in its loyalty to one during all
+the years since her orphan childhood, were intensified and illumined by
+the inherent quickening power of a vivid imagination, and inwrought with
+these two letters that stood, at present, for their owner, Almeda
+Champney. Aileen's smile grew wonderfully tender, almost tremulous as
+she continued to lean above her work. Mrs. Champney looking up suddenly
+caught it and, in part, interpreted it. It angered her both unreasonably
+and unaccountably. This girl must be taught her place. She aspiring to
+Champney Googe! She handed her back the work.
+
+"Ann said just now she heard Octavius telling you that my nephew,
+Champney Googe, is in town--when did he come?"
+
+"I don't know--Tave didn't say."
+
+"I wonder Alice Van Ostend didn't mention that he was coming here before
+going on the yachting cruise they've planned. I had a letter from her
+yesterday--I know you'd like to hear it."
+
+"Of course I should! It's the first one she has written you, isn't
+it?--Where is it?" She spoke with her usual animated interest.
+
+"I have it here."
+
+She took up one of several letters in her lap, opened it, turned it
+over, adjusted her glasses and began to read a paragraph here and there.
+Aileen listened eagerly.
+
+"I suppose I may as well read it all--Alice wouldn't mind you," said
+Mrs. Champney, and proceeded to give the full contents. It was filled
+with anticipations of the yachting cruise, of a later visit to Flamsted,
+of Champney and her friends. Champney's name occurred many
+times,--Alice's attitude towards the possessor of it seemed to be that
+of private ownership,--but everything was written with the frankness of
+an accepted publicity of the fact that Mr. Googe was one of her social
+appendages. Aileen was amused at the whole tone of the rather lengthy
+epistle; it gave her no uneasiness.
+
+Mrs. Champney laid aside her glasses; she wanted to note the effect of
+the reading on the girl.
+
+"You can see for yourself from this how matters stand between these two;
+it needn't be spoken of in Flamsted outside the family, but it's just as
+well for you to know of it--don't you think so?"
+
+Aileen parried; she enjoyed a little bout with Champney Googe's aunt.
+
+"Of course, it's plain enough to see that they're the best of friends--"
+
+"Friends!" Mrs. Champney interrupted her; there was a scornful note in
+her voice which insensibly sharpened; "you haven't your usual common
+sense, Aileen, if you can't read between these lines well enough to see
+that Miss Van Ostend and my nephew are as good as engaged."
+
+Aileen smiled, but made no reply.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" The tone was peremptory and denoted extreme
+irritation. Aileen put down her work and looked across to her
+interrogator.
+
+"I was only smiling at my thoughts."
+
+"Will you be so good as to state what they are? They may prove decidedly
+interesting to me--at this juncture," she added emphatically.
+
+Aileen's look of amusement changed swiftly to one of surprise.
+
+"To be honest, I was thinking that what she writes about Mr. Googe
+doesn't sound much like love, that was all--"
+
+"That was all!" Mrs. Champney echoed sarcastically; "well, what more do
+you need to convince you of facts I should like to know?"
+
+Aileen laughed outright at this. "Oh, Mrs. Champney, what's the use of
+being a girl, if you can't know what other girls mean?"
+
+"Please explain yourself."
+
+"Won't you please read that part again where she mentions the people
+invited for the cruise."
+
+Mrs. Champney found the paragraph and re-read it aloud.
+
+"Falkenburg--that's the name--Ben Falkenburg."
+
+"How did you ever hear of this Ben Falkenburg?"
+
+"Oh, I heard of him years ago!" The mischief was in her voice and Mrs.
+Champney recognized it.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"When I was in New York--in the asylum; he's the one that danced the
+minuet with the Marchioness; I told you about it years ago."
+
+"How do you know he was the boy?"
+
+"Because Alice told me his name then, and showed me the valentine and
+May-basket he sent her--just read the postscript again; if you want to
+crack a letter for its kernel, you'll generally find it in a postscript,
+that is with girls of Alice's age."
+
+She spoke as if there were years of seniority on her part. Mrs. Champney
+turned to the postscript again.
+
+"I see nothing in this--you're romancing again, Aileen; you'd better put
+it aside; it will get you into trouble sometime."
+
+"Oh, never fear for me, Mrs. Champney; I'll take care of all the
+romancing as well as the romances--but can't you see by those few words
+that it's Mr. Ben Falkenburg who is going to make the yachting trip for
+Miss Van Ostend, and not your nephew?"
+
+"No, I can't," Mrs. Champney answered shortly, "and neither could you if
+your eyes weren't blinded by your infatuation for him."
+
+Aileen rolled up her work deliberately. If the time had come for open
+war to be declared between the two on Champney Googe's account, it was
+best to fight the decisive battle now, before seeing him again. She rose
+and stood by the window.
+
+"What do you mean, Mrs. Champney?" Her temper was rising quickly as it
+always did when Mrs. Champney went too far. She had spoken but once of
+her nephew in a personal way to Aileen since she asked that question a
+year ago, "What do you think of him?"
+
+"I mean what I say." Her voice took on an added shrillness. "Your
+infatuation for my nephew has been patent for a year now--and it's time
+you should be brought to your senses; I can't suppose you're fool enough
+to think he'll marry you."
+
+Aileen set her lips close. After all, it was not best to answer this
+woman as she deserved to be answered. She controlled the increasing
+anger so far as to be able to smile frankly and answer lightly:
+
+"You've no need to worry, Mrs. Champney; your nephew has never asked me
+to be his wife."
+
+"His wife!" she echoed scornfully; "I should say not; and let me tell
+you for your own benefit--sometime you'll thank me for it--and mark my
+words, Aileen Armagh, he never will ask you to be his wife, and the
+sooner you accept this unvarnished truth the better it will be for you.
+I suppose you think because you've led Romanzo Caukins and young Poggi a
+chase, you can do the same with Champney Googe--but you'll find out your
+mistake; such men aren't led--they lead. He is going to marry Alice Van
+Ostend."
+
+"Do you _know_ this for a fact, Mrs. Champney?" She turned upon her
+sharply. She was, at last, at bay; her eyes were dark with anger; her
+lips and cheeks white.
+
+"It's like you to fly off at a tangent, Aileen, and doubt a person's
+word simply because it happens to contain an unpleasant truth for
+you--here is the proof," she held up a letter; "it's from my cousin,
+Henry Van Ostend; he has written it out in black and white that my
+nephew has already asked for his daughter's hand. Now disabuse your mind
+of any notion you may have in regard to Champney Googe--I hope you won't
+disgrace yourself by crying for the moon after this."
+
+The girl's eyes fairly blazed upon her.
+
+"Mrs. Champney, after this I'll thank you to keep your advice and your
+family affairs to yourself--_I_ didn't ask for either. And you've no
+need to tell me I'm only Aileen Armagh--for I know it perfectly well.
+I'm only an orphan you took into your home seven years ago and have
+kept, so far, for her service. But if I am only this, I am old enough to
+do and act as I please--and now you may mark _my_ words: it's not I who
+will disgrace you and yours--not I, remember that!" Her anger threatened
+to choke her; but her voice although husky remained low, never rising
+above its level inflection. "And let me tell you another thing: I'm as
+good any day as Alice Van Ostend, and I should despise myself if I
+thought myself less; and if it's the millions that make the difference
+in the number of your friends--may God keep me poor till I die!" She
+spoke with passionate earnestness.
+
+Mrs. Champney smiled to herself; she felt her purpose was accomplished.
+
+"Are you going up to Mrs. Caukins'?" she asked in a matter-of-fact voice
+that struck like cold iron on the girl's burning intensity of feeling.
+
+"Yes, I'm going."
+
+"Well, be back by seven."
+
+The girl made no reply. She left the library at once, closing the door
+behind her with a force that made the hall ring. Mrs. Champney smiled
+again, and proceeded to re-read Alice Van Ostend's letter.
+
+Aileen went out through the kitchen and across the vegetable garden to
+the boat house. She cast loose one of the boats in the float, took her
+seat and rowed out into the lake--rowed with a strength and swiftness
+that accurately gauged her condition of mind. She rounded the peninsula
+of The Bow and headed her boat, not to the sheds on the north shore, but
+towards the west, to "lily-pad reach". To get away from that woman's
+presence, to be alone with herself--that was all she craved at the
+moment. The oars caught among the lily-pads; this gave her an excuse for
+pulling and wrenching at them. Her anger was still at white heat--not a
+particle of color as yet tinged her cheeks--and the physical exertion
+necessary to overcome such an obstacle as the long tough stems she felt
+to be a relief.
+
+"It isn't true--it isn't true," she said over and over again to herself.
+She kept tugging and pulling till by sheer strength she forced the boat
+into the shallow water among the tall arrowhead along the margin of the
+shore.
+
+She stepped out on the landing stones, drew up the boat, then made her
+way across the meadow to the shade of the tall spreading willows. Here
+she threw herself down, pressing her face into the cool lush grass, and
+relived in thought that early morning hour she had spent alone with him,
+only a few weeks ago, on the misty lake among the opening water lilies.
+
+She had been awakened that morning in mid-July by hearing him singing
+softly beneath her open window that same song which seven years ago made
+such an unaccountable impression on her child's heart. He had often in
+jest threatened to repeat the episode of the serenade, but she never
+realized that beneath the jest there was any deeper meaning. Now she was
+aware of that meaning in her every fibre, physical and spiritual.
+
+    "Aileen Mavoureen, the gray dawn is breaking--"
+
+And hearing that, realizing that the voice was calling for her alone in
+all the world, she rose; dressed herself quickly; beckoned joyously to
+him from the window; noiselessly made her way down the back stairs;
+softly unbolted the kitchen porch door--
+
+He was there with hands outstretched for hers; she placed them in his,
+and again, in remembrance of their fun and frolic seven years before, he
+raced with her down the slate-laid garden walk, across the lawn to the
+boat house where his own boat lay moored.
+
+It was four o'clock on that warm midsummer morning. The mists lay light
+but impenetrable on the surface of the lake. The lilies were still
+closed.
+
+They spoke but little.
+
+"I knew no one could hear me--they all sleep on the other side, don't
+they?"
+
+"Yes, all except the boy, and he sleeps like a log--Tave has to wake him
+every morning; alarm clocks are no good."
+
+"Have you ever seen the lilies open, Aileen?"
+
+"No, never; I've never been out early in the morning, but I've often
+seen them go to sleep under the starlight."
+
+"We will row round then till they open--it's worth seeing."
+
+The sun rose in the low-lying mists; it transfused them with crimson. It
+mounted above them; shot them through and through with gold and
+violet--then dispersed them without warning, and showed to the girl's
+charmed eyes and senses the gleaming blue of the lake waters blotched
+with the dull green of the lily-pads, and among them the lilies
+expanding the fragrant white of their corollas to its beneficent light
+and warmth....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When she left the boat his kiss was on her lips, his words of love
+ringing in her ears. One more of her day dreams was realized: she had
+given to the man she loved with all her heart her first kiss--and with
+it, on her part, the unspoken pledge of herself.
+
+A movement somewhere about the house, the lowing of the cattle, the
+morning breeze stirring in the trees--something startled them. They drew
+apart, smiling into each other's eyes. She placed her finger on her
+lips.
+
+"Hush!" she whispered. She was off on a run across the lawn, turning
+once to wave her hand to him.--And now _this_!
+
+How could this then that she had just been told be true?
+
+Her whole being revolted at the thought that he was tampering with what
+to her was the holiest in her young life--her love for him. In the past
+six weeks it never once occurred to her that he could prove unworthy of
+such trust as hers; no man would dare to be untrue to her--to her,
+Aileen Armagh, who never in all her wilfulness and love of romance had
+given man or boy occasion to use either her name or her lightly! How
+dared he do this thing? Did he not know with whom he had to deal?
+Because she was only Aileen Armagh, and at service with his relation,
+did he think her less the true woman?
+
+Suspicion was foreign to her open nature; doubt, distrust had no place
+in her young life; but like a serpent in the girl's Eden the words of
+the mistress of Champ-au-Haut, "He never will ask you to be his wife,"
+dropped poison in her ears.
+
+She sat up on the grass, thrust back her hair from her forehead--
+
+"Let him dare to hint even that what he said was love for me was not
+what--what--"
+
+She buried her face in her hands.
+
+"Aileen--Aileen--where are you?"
+
+That voice, breaking in upon her wretched thought of him, brought her to
+her feet.
+
+
+VIII
+
+"Mother, don't you think Aunt Meda might open her purse and do something
+for Aileen Armagh now that the girl has been faithful to her interests
+so long?"
+
+He had remained at home since his arrival in the morning, and was now
+about to drive down into the town.
+
+His mother looked up from her sewing in surprise.
+
+"What put that into your mind? I was thinking the same thing myself not
+a week ago; she has such a wonderful voice."
+
+"It seems unjust to keep her from utilizing it for herself so far as an
+income is concerned and to deprive others of the pleasure of hearing her
+voice after it is trained. But, of course, she can't do it herself."
+
+"I only wish I could do it for her." His mother spoke with great
+earnestness. "But even if I could help, there would be no use offering
+so long as she remains with Almeda."
+
+"Perhaps not; anyway, I'm going down there now, and I shall do what I
+can to sound Aunt Meda on this point."
+
+"Good luck!" she called after him. He turned, lifted his hat, and smiled
+back at her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He found Mrs. Champney alone on the terrace; she was sitting under the
+ample awning that protected her from the sun but was open on all sides
+for air.
+
+"All alone, Aunt Meda?" he inquired cheerfully, taking a seat beside
+her.
+
+"Yes; when did you come?"
+
+"This morning."
+
+"Isn't it rather unexpected?" She glanced sideways rather sharply at
+him.
+
+"My coming here is; I'm really on my way to Bar Harbor. The Van Ostends
+are off on Tuesday with a large party and I promised to go with them."
+
+"So Alice wrote me the other day. It's the first letter I have had from
+her. She says she is coming here on her way home in October, that she's
+'just crazy' to see Flamsted Quarries--but I can read between the lines
+even if my eyes are old." She smiled significantly.
+
+Champney felt that an answering smile was the safe thing in the
+circumstances. He wondered how much Aunt Meda knew from the Van Ostends.
+That she was astute in business matters was no guaranty that she would
+prove far-sighted in matrimonial affairs.
+
+"I've known Alice so long that she's gotten into the habit of taking me
+for granted--not that I object," he added with a glance in the direction
+of the boat house. Mrs. Champney, whom nothing escaped, noticed it.
+
+"I should hope not," she said emphatically. "I may as well tell you,
+Champney, that Mr. Van Ostend has not hesitated to write me of your
+continued attentions to Alice and your frankness with him in regard to
+the outcome of this. So far as I see, his only objection could be on
+account of her extreme youth--I congratulate you." She spoke with great
+apparent sincerity.
+
+"Thank you, Aunt Meda," he said quietly; "your congratulations are
+premature, and the subject so far as Alice and I are concerned is taboo
+for three years--at Mr. Van Ostend's special request."
+
+"Quite right--a girl doesn't know her own mind before she is
+twenty-five."
+
+"Faith, I know one who knows her own mind on all subjects at
+twenty!"--he laughed heartily as if at some amusing remembrance--"and
+that's Aileen; by the way, where is she, Aunt Meda?"
+
+"She was going up to Mrs. Caukins'. I suppose she is there now--why?"
+
+"Because I want to talk about her, and I don't want her to come in on us
+suddenly."
+
+"What about Aileen?" She spoke indifferently.
+
+"About her voice; you've never been willing, I understand, to have it
+cultivated?"
+
+"What if I haven't?"
+
+"That's just the 'what', Aunt Meda," he said pleasantly but earnestly;
+"I've heard her singing a good many times, and I've never heard her that
+I didn't wish some one would be generous enough to such talent to pay
+for cultivating it."
+
+"Do you know why I haven't been willing?"
+
+"No, I don't--and I'd like to know."
+
+"Because, if I had, she would have been on the stage before now--and
+where could I get another? I don't intend to impoverish myself for her
+sake--not after what I've done for her." She spoke emphatically. "What
+was your idea in asking me about her?"
+
+"I thought it was a pity that such a talent should be left to go to
+seed. I wish you could look at it from my standpoint and give her the
+wherewithal to go to Europe for three or four years in order to
+cultivate it--she can take care of herself well enough."
+
+"And you really advise this?" She asked almost incredulously.
+
+"Why not? You must have seen my interest in the girl. I can't think of a
+better way of showing it than to induce you to put her in the way of
+earning her livelihood by her talent."
+
+Mrs. Champney made no direct reply. After a moment's silence she asked
+abruptly:
+
+"Have you ever said anything to her about this?"
+
+"Never a word."
+
+"Don't then; I don't want her to get any more new-fangled notions into
+her head."
+
+"Just as you say; but I wish you would think about it--it seems almost a
+matter of justice." He rose to go.
+
+"Where are you going now?"
+
+"Over to the shed office; I want to see the foreman about the last
+contract. I'll borrow the boat, if you don't mind, and row up--I have
+plenty of time." He looked at his watch. "Can I do anything for you
+before I go?" he asked gently, adjusting an awning curtain to shut the
+rays of the sun from her face.
+
+"Yes; I wish you would telephone up to Mrs. Caukins and tell her to tell
+Aileen to be at home before six; I need her to-night."
+
+"Certainly."
+
+He went into the house and telephoned. He did not think it necessary to
+return and report Mrs. Caukins' reply that Aileen "hadn't come up yet."
+He went directly to the boat house, wondering in the mean time where she
+was.
+
+One of the two boats was already gone; doubtless she had taken it--where
+could she be?
+
+He stepped into the boat, and pulled slowly out into the lake, keeping
+in the lee of the rocky peninsula of The Bow. He was fairly well
+satisfied with his effort in Aileen's behalf and with himself because he
+had taken a first step in the right direction. Neither his mother nor
+Aunt Meda could say now that he was not disinterested; if Father Honore
+came over, as was his custom, to chat with him on the porch for an hour
+or two in the evening, he would broach the subject again to him who was
+the girl's best friend. If she could go to Europe there would be less
+danger--
+
+Danger?--Yes; he was willing to admit it, less danger for them both;
+three years of absence would help materially in this matter in which he
+felt himself too deeply involved. Then, in the very face of this
+acknowledgment, he could not help a thought that whitened his cheek as
+it formulated itself instantaneously in his consciousness: if she were
+three years in Europe, there would be opportunity for him to see her
+sometime.
+
+He knew the thought could not be uttered in the girl's pure presence;
+yet, with many others, he held that a woman, if she loves a man
+absorbingly, passionately, is capable of any sacrifice--would she?
+Hardly; she was so high-spirited, so pure in thought--yet she loved him,
+and after all love was the great Subduer. But no--it could never be;
+this was his decision. He rowed out into the lake.
+
+Why must a man's action prove so often the slave of his thought!
+
+He was passing the arm of Mesantic that leads to "lily-pad reach". He
+turned to look up the glinting curve. Was she there?--should he seek
+her?
+
+He backed water on the instant. The boat responded like a live thing,
+quivered, came to a partial rest--stopped, undulating on the surface
+roughened by the powerful leverage of the oars. Champney sat motionless,
+the dripping blades suspended over the water. He knew that in all
+probability the girl was there in "lily-pad reach". Should he seek her?
+Should he go?--Should he?
+
+The hands that held the steady oars quivered suddenly, then gripped them
+as in a vise; the man's face flushed; he bent to the right oar, the
+craft whirled half way on her keel; the other oar fell--swiftly and
+powerfully the boat shot ahead up "lily-pad reach".
+
+Reason, discretion, judgment razed in an instant from the table of
+consciousness; desire rampant, the desire of possession to which
+intellect, training, environment, even that goodward-turning which men
+under various aspects term religion, succumb in a moment like the
+present one in which Champney Googe was bending all his strength to the
+oars that he might be the sooner with the girl he loved.
+
+He did not ask himself what next? He gave no thought to aught but
+reaching the willows as soon as he could. His eye was on the glinting
+curve before him; he rounded it swiftly--her boat was there tied to the
+stake among the arrowhead; his own dragged through the lily-pads beside
+it; he sprang out, ran up the bank--
+
+"Aileen--Aileen--where are you?" he called eagerly, impatiently, and
+sought about him to find her.
+
+Aileen Armagh heard that call, and doubt, suspicion, anger dropped away
+from her. Instead, trust, devotion, anticipation clothed her thought of
+him; he was coming to speak the "word" that was to make her future fair
+and plain--the one "word" that should set him forever in her heart,
+enthrone him in her life. That word was not "love", but the sacrament
+of love; the word of four letters which a woman writes large with
+legitimate loving pride in the face of the world. She sprang to her feet
+and waited for him; the willows drooped on either side of her--so he saw
+her again.
+
+He took her in his arms. "Aileen--Aileen," he said over and over again
+between the kisses that fell upon her hair, forehead, lips.
+
+She yielded herself to his embrace, passionately given and returned with
+all a girl's loving ardor and joy in the loved man's presence. Between
+the kisses she waited for the "word."
+
+It was not forthcoming.
+
+She drew away from him slightly and looked straight into his eyes that
+were devouring her face and form. The unerring instinct of a pure nature
+warned her against that look. He caught her to him--but she stemmed both
+hands against his breast to repulse him.
+
+"Let me go, Champney," she said faintly.
+
+"Why should I let you go? Aileen, my Aileen, why should I ever let you
+go?" A kiss closed the lips that were about to reply--a kiss so long and
+passionate that the girl felt her strength leaving her in the close
+embrace.
+
+"He will speak the 'word' now surely," she told herself. Between their
+heart-throbs she listened for it.
+
+The "word" was not spoken.
+
+Again she stemmed her hands against him, pressing them hard against his
+shoulders. "Let me go, Champney." She spoke with spirit.
+
+The act of repulsion, the ring in her voice half angered him; at the
+same time it added fuel to desire.
+
+"I will not let you go--you love me--tell me so--"
+
+He waited for no reply but caught her close; the girl struggled in his
+arms. It was dawning on her undaunted spirit that this, which she was
+experiencing with Champney Googe, the man she loved with all her heart,
+was not love. Of a sudden, all that brave spirit rose in arms to ward
+off from herself any spoken humiliation to her womanhood, ay more, to
+prevent the man she loved from deepening his humiliation of himself in
+her presence.
+
+"Let me go" she said, but despite her effort for control her voice
+trembled.
+
+"You know I love you--why do you repel me so?"
+
+"Let me go," she said again; this time her voice was firm, the tone
+peremptory; but she made no further struggle to free herself from his
+arms.--"Oh, what are you doing!"
+
+"I am making the attempt to find out if you love me as I love you--"
+
+"You have no right to kiss me so--"
+
+"I have the right because I love you--"
+
+"But I don't love you."
+
+"Yes you do, Aileen Armagh--don't say that again."
+
+"I do not love you--let me go, I say."
+
+He let her go at last. She stood before him, pale, but still undaunted.
+
+"Do you know what you are saying?" he demanded almost fiercely under his
+breath. He took her head between his hands and bent it back to close her
+lips with another kiss.
+
+"Yes, I know. I do not love you--don't touch me!" She held out her
+hands to him, palm outwards, as if warding off some present danger.
+
+He paid no heed to her warning, but caught her to him again. "Tell me
+now you don't love me, Aileen," he whispered, laying his cheek to hers.
+
+"I tell you I do not love you," she said aloud; her voice was clear and
+firm.
+
+He drew back then to look at her in amazement; turned away for a moment
+as if half dazed; then, holding her to his side with his left arm he
+laid his ear hard over her heart. What was it that paled the man's
+flushed cheeks?
+
+The girl's heart was beating slowly, calmly, even faintly. He caught her
+wrist, pressing his fingers on her pulse--there was not the suspicion of
+a flutter. He let her go then. She stood before him; her eyes were
+raised fearlessly to his.
+
+"I'm going to row back now--no, don't speak--not a word--"
+
+She turned and walked slowly down to the boat; cast it off; poled it
+with one oar out of the tall arrowhead and the thick fringe of
+lily-pads; took her seat; fitted the oars to the rowlocks, dipped them,
+and proceeded to row steadily down the reach towards The Bow.
+
+Champney Googe stood where she had left him till he watched her out of
+sight around the curve; then he went over to the willows and sat down.
+It took time for him to recover from his debauch of feeling. He made
+himself few thoughts at first; but as time passed and the shadows
+lengthened on the reach, he came slowly to himself. The night fell; the
+man still sat there, but the thoughts were now crowding fast,
+uncomfortably fast. He dropped his head into his hands, so covering his
+face in the dark for very shame that he had so outraged his manhood. He
+knew now that she knew he had not intended to speak that "word" between
+them; but no finer feeling told him that she had saved him from himself.
+
+In that hour he saw himself as he was--unworthy of a good woman's love.
+
+He saw other things as well; these he hoped to make good in the near
+future, but this--but this!
+
+He rowed back under cover of the dark to Champ-au-Haut. Octavius, who
+was wondering at his non-appearance with the boat, met him with a
+lantern at the float.
+
+"Here's a telegram just come up; the operator gave it to me for you. I
+told him you was out in the boat and would be here 'fore you went up
+home."
+
+"All right, Tave." He opened it; read it by the light of the lantern.
+
+"I've got to go back to New York--it's a matter of business. It's all up
+with my vacation and the yachting cruise now,"--he looked at his
+watch,--"seven; I can get the eight-thirty accommodation to Hallsport,
+and that will give me time to catch the Eastern express."
+
+"Hold on a minute and I'll get your trap from the stable--it's all ready
+for you."
+
+"No, I'll get it myself--good-bye, Tave, I'm off."
+
+"Good-bye, Champney."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Champ's worried about something," he said to himself; he was making
+fast the boat. "I never see him look like that--I hope he hasn't got
+hooked in with any of those Wall Street sharks."
+
+In a few minutes he heard the carriage wheels on the gravel in the
+driveway. He stopped on his way to the stable to listen.
+
+"He's driving like Jehu," he muttered. He was still listening; he heard
+the frequent snorting of the horse, the rapid click of hoofs on the
+highroad--but he did not hear what was filling the driver's ears at that
+moment: the roar of an unseen cataract.
+
+Champney Googe was realizing for the first time that he was in
+mid-stream; that he might not be able to breast the current; that the
+eddying water about him was in fact the whirlpool; that the rush of what
+he had deemed mere harmless rapids was the prelude to the thunderous
+fall of a cataract ahead.
+
+
+IX
+
+For several weeks after her nephew's visit, Mrs. Champney occupied many
+of her enforced leisure half-hours in trying to put two and two together
+in their logical combination of four; but thus far she had failed. She
+learned through Octavius that Champney had returned to New York on
+Saturday evening; that in consequence he was obliged to give up the
+cruise with the Van Ostends; from Champney himself she had no word. Her
+conclusion was that there had been no chance for him to see Aileen
+during the twelve hours he was in town, for the girl came home as
+requested shortly before six, but with a headache, and the excuse for it
+that she had rowed too far in the sun on the way up to the sheds.
+
+"My nephew told me he was going to row up to the sheds, too--did you
+happen to meet him there?" she inquired. She was studying the profile of
+the girl's flushed and sunburned face. Aileen had just said good night
+and was about to leave Mrs. Champney's room. She turned quickly to face
+her. She spoke with sharp emphasis:
+
+"I did _not_ meet your nephew at the sheds, Mrs. Champney, nor did I see
+him there--and I'll thank you, after what you said to me this morning,
+to draw no more conclusions in regard to your nephew's seeing or meeting
+me at the sheds or anywhere else--it's not worth your while; for I've no
+desire either to see or meet him again. Perhaps this will satisfy you."
+She left the room at once without giving Mrs. Champney time to reply.
+
+A self-satisfied smile drew apart Mrs. Champney's thin lips; evidently
+the girl's lesson was a final and salutary one. She would know her place
+after this. She determined not to touch on this subject again with
+Aileen; she might run the risk of going too far, and she desired to keep
+her with her as long as possible. But she noticed that the singing voice
+was heard less and less frequently about the house and grounds. Octavius
+also noticed it, and missed it.
+
+"Aileen, you don't sing as much as you did a while ago--what's the
+matter?" he asked her one day in October when she joined him to go up
+street after supper on an errand.
+
+"Matter?--I've sung out for one while; I'm taking a rest-cure with my
+voice, Tave."
+
+"It ain't the kind of rest-cure that'll agree with you, nor I guess any
+of us at Champo. There ain't no trouble with her that's bothering you?"
+He pointed with a backward jerk of his thumb to the house.
+
+"No."
+
+"She's acted mad ever since I told her Champney had to go back that
+night and tend to business; guess she'd set her heart on his making a
+match on that yachting cruise--well, 't would be all in the family,
+seeing there's Champney blood in the Van Ostends, good blood
+too,--there's no better," he added emphatically.
+
+"Oh, Tave, you're always blowing the Champneys' horn--"
+
+"And why shouldn't I?"--he was decidedly nettled. "The Champneys are my
+folks, my townspeople, the founders of this town, and their interests
+have always been mine--why shouldn't I speak up for 'em, I'd like to
+know? You won't find no better blood in the United States than the
+Champneys'."
+
+Aileen made no reply; she was looking up the street to Poggi's fruit
+stall, where beneath a street light she saw a crowd of men from the
+quarries.
+
+"Romanzo said there was some trouble in the sheds--do you know what it
+is?" she asked.
+
+"No, I can't get at the rights of it; they didn't get paid off last
+week, so Romanzo told me last night, but he said Champney telegraphed
+he'd fix it all right in another week. He says dollars are scarce just
+at this time--crops moving, you know, and market dull."
+
+She laughed a little scornfully. "You seem to think Mr. Googe can fix
+everything all right, Tave."
+
+"Champney's no fool; he's 'bout as interested in this home work as
+anybody, and if he says it'll be all right, you may bet your life it
+will be--There's Jo Quimber coming; p'raps he's heard something and can
+tell us."
+
+"What's that crowd up to, Uncle Jo?" said Aileen, linking her arm in the
+old man's and making him right about face to walk on with them.
+
+"Talkin' a strike. I heerd 'em usin' Champ's name mighty free, Tave,
+just now--guess he'd better come home an' calm 'em down some, or
+there'll be music in the air thet this town never danced to yet. By A.
+J., it riles me clear through to hear 'em!"
+
+"You can't blame them for wanting their pay, Uncle Jo." There was a
+challenge in the girl's voice which Uncle Jo immediately accepted.
+
+"So ye've j'ined the majority in this town, hev ye, Aileen? I don't say
+ez I'm blamin' anybody fer wantin' his pay; I'm jest sayin' it don't set
+well on me the way they go at it to get it. How's the quickest way to
+git up a war, eh? Jest keep talkin' it up--talkin' it up, an' it's sure
+to come. They don't give a man like Champ a chance--talkin' behind his
+back and usin' a good old Flamsted name ez ef 't wuz a mop rag!" Joel's
+indignation got the better of his discretion; his voice was so loud that
+it began to attract the attention of some men who were leaving Poggi's;
+the crowd was rapidly dispersing.
+
+"Sh--Joel! they'll hear you. You've been standing up for everything
+foreign that's come into this town for the last seven years--what's come
+over you that you're going back on all your preaching?"
+
+"I ain't goin' back on nothin'," the old man replied testily; "but a
+man's a man, I don't keer whether he's a Polack or a 'Merican--I don't
+keer nothin' 'bout thet; but ef he's a man he knows he'd oughter stop
+backbitin' and hittin' out behind another man's back--he'd oughter come
+out inter the open an' say, 'You ain't done the right thing by me, now
+let's both hev it out', instead of growlin' and grumblin' an' spittin'
+out such all-fired nonsense 'bout the syndicaters and Champ--what's
+Champ got to do with it, anyway? He can't make money for 'em."
+
+The crowds were surging past them; the men were talking together; their
+confused speech precluded the possibility of understanding what was
+said.
+
+"He's no better than other men, Uncle Jo," the girl remarked after the
+men had passed. She laughed as she spoke, but the laugh was not a
+pleasant one; it roused Octavius.
+
+"Now, look here, Aileen, you stop right where you are--"
+
+She interrupted him, and her voice was again both merry and pleasant,
+for they were directly opposite Luigi's shop: "I'm going to, Tave; I'm
+going to stop right here; Mrs. Champney sent me down on purpose to get
+some of those late peaches Luigi keeps; she said she craved them, and
+I'm going in this very minute to get them--"
+
+She waved her hand to both and entered the shop.
+
+Old Quimber caught Octavius by the arm to detain him a moment before he
+himself retraced his steps up street.
+
+"What d'ye think, Tave?--they goin' to make a match on't, she an' Poggi?
+I see 'm together a sight."
+
+"You can't tell 'bout Aileen any more'n a weather-cock. She might go
+farther and fare worse."
+
+"Thet's so, Tave; Poggi's a man, an' a credit to our town. I guess from
+all I hear Romanzo's 'bout give it up, ain't he?"
+
+"Romanzo never had a show with Aileen," Octavius said decidedly; "he
+ain't her kind."
+
+"Guess you're right, Tave--By A. J. there they go now!" He nudged
+Octavius with his elbow. Octavius, who had passed the shop and was
+standing on the sidewalk with old Quimber, saw the two leave it and walk
+slowly in the direction of The Bow. He listened for the sound of
+Aileen's merry laugh and chat, but he heard nothing. His grave face at
+once impressed Joel.
+
+"Something's up 'twixt those two, eh, Tave?" he whispered.
+
+Octavius nodded in reply; he was comprehending all that old man's words
+implied. He bade Quimber good night and walked on to The Greenbush. The
+Colonel found him more taciturn than usual that evening....
+
+"I can't, Luigi,--I can't marry you," she answered almost irritably. The
+two were nearing the entrance to Champo; the Italian was pleading his
+cause. "I can't--so don't say anything more about it."
+
+"But, Aileen, I will wait--I can wait; I've waited so long already. I
+believe I began to love you through that knothole, you remember?"
+
+"I haven't forgotten;" she half smiled at the remembrance; "but that
+seems so long ago, and things have changed so--I've changed, Luigi."
+
+The tone of her voice was hard. Luigi looked at her in surprise.
+
+"What has changed you, Aileen? Tell me--can't you trust me?"
+
+"Luigi!"--she faced him suddenly, looking straight up into his handsome
+face that turned white as he became aware that what she was about to say
+was final--"I'd give anything if I could say to you what you want me
+to--you deserve all my love, if I could only give it to you, for you are
+faithful and true, and mean what you say--it would be the best thing for
+me, I know; but I can't, Luigi; I've nothing to give, and it would be
+living a lie to you from morning till night to give you less than you
+deserve. I only blame myself that I'm not enough like other girls to
+know a good man when I see him, and take his love with a thankful heart
+that it's mine--but it's no use--don't blame me for being myself--" Her
+lips trembled; she bit the lower one white in her effort to steady it.
+
+For a moment Luigi made no reply. Suddenly he leaned towards her--she
+drew away from him quickly--and said between his teeth, all the
+long-smouldering fire of southern passion, passion that is founded on
+jealousy, glowing in his eyes:
+
+"Tell me, Aileen Armagh, is there another man you love?--tell me--"
+
+Rag who had been with her all the afternoon moved with a quick
+threatening motion to her side and a warning _gurr--rrrr_ for the one
+who should dare to touch her.
+
+"No." She spoke defiantly. Luigi straightened himself. Rag sprang upon
+her fawning and caressing; she shoved him aside roughly, for the dog was
+at that moment but the scapegoat for his master; Rag cowered at her
+feet.
+
+"Ah--" It was a long-drawn breath of relief. Luigi Poggi's eyes
+softened; the fire in them ceased to leap and blaze; something like hope
+brightened them.
+
+"I could bear anything but that--I was afraid--" He hesitated.
+
+"Afraid of what?" She caught up his words sharply, and began to walk
+rapidly up the driveway.
+
+He answered slowly: "I was afraid you were in love with Mr. Googe--I saw
+you once out rowing with him--early one morning--"
+
+"I in love with Mr. Googe!" she echoed scornfully, "you needn't ever be
+afraid of that; I--I hate him!"
+
+Luigi stared at her in amazement. He scarce could keep pace with her
+rapid walk that was almost a run. Her cheeks were aflame; her eyes
+filled with tears. All her pent up wretchedness of the last two months,
+all her outraged love, her womanhood's humiliation, a sense of life's
+bitter injustice and of her impotence to avenge the wrong put upon her
+affections, found vent in these three words. And Luigi, seeing Aileen
+Armagh changed into something that an hour before he would not have
+believed possible, was gripped by a sudden fear,--he must know the truth
+for his own peace of mind,--and, under its influence, he laid his hand
+on her arm and brought her to a standstill.
+
+Rag snarled another warning; Aileen thrust him aside with her foot.
+
+"What has he done to you to make you hate him so?"
+
+Because he spoke slowly, Aileen thought he was speaking calmly. Had she
+not been carried away by her own strength of feeling, she would have
+known that she might not risk the answer she gave him.
+
+"Done to me?--nothing; what could he do?--but I hate him--I never want
+to see his face again!"
+
+She was beside herself with anger and shame. It was the tone of Luigi's
+voice that brought her to her senses; in a flash she recalled Octavius
+Buzzby's warning about playing with "volcanic fires." It was too late,
+however, to recall her words.
+
+"Luigi, I've said too much; you don't understand--now let's drop it."
+She drew away her arm from beneath his hand, and resumed her rapid walk
+up the driveway, Rag trotting after her.
+
+"And you mean what you say--you never want to see him again?" He spoke
+again slowly.
+
+"Never," she said firmly.
+
+Luigi made no reply. They were nearing the house. She turned to him when
+they reached the steps.
+
+"Luigi,"--she put out her hand and he took it in both his,--"forget what
+I've said about another and forgive me for what I've had to say to
+yourself--we've always been such good friends, that now--"
+
+She was ready with the smile that captivated him, but it was a tremulous
+one for she smiled through tears; she was thinking of the contrast.
+
+"And always will be, Aileen, when we both know for good and all that we
+can be nothing more to each other," he answered gently.
+
+She was grateful to him; but she turned away and went up the steps
+without saying good-bye.
+
+
+X
+
+"'Gad, I wish I was well out of it!"
+
+For the first time within the memory of Elmer Wiggins and Lawyer Emlie,
+who heard the Colonel's ejaculation, his words and tone proclaimed the
+fact that he was not in his seemingly unfailing good spirits. He was
+standing with the two at the door of the drug shop and watching the
+crowds of men gathered in groups along the main street.
+
+It was Saturday afternoon and the men were idle, a weekly occurrence the
+Colonel had learned to dread since his incumbency as deputy sheriff and,
+in consequence of his office, felt responsible for the peace of the
+community at large until Monday morning.
+
+Something unusual was in the air, and the three men were at once aware
+of it. The uneasiness, that had prevailed in the sheds and at The Gore
+during the past month, was evidently coming to a crisis now that the
+men's pay was two weeks overdue.
+
+Emlie looked grave on replying, after a pause in which the three were
+busy taking note of the constantly increasing crowd in front of the town
+hall:
+
+"I don't blame you, Colonel; there'll be the deuce to pay if the men
+don't get paid off by Monday noon. They've been uneasy now so long about
+the piece work settlement, that this last delay is going to be the match
+that fires the train--and no slow match either from the looks; I don't
+understand this delay. When did Romanzo send his last message?"
+
+"About an hour ago, but he hasn't had any answer yet," replied the
+Colonel, shading his eyes with his hat to look up street at the town
+hall crowd. "He has been telephoning and telegraphing off and on for the
+last two weeks; but he can't get any satisfaction--corporations, you
+know, don't materialize just for the rappings."
+
+"What does Champney say?" inquired Mr. Wiggins.
+
+"State of the market," said the Colonel laconically.
+
+The men did not look at one another, for each was feeling a certain
+degree of indignation, of humiliation and disappointment that one of
+their own, Champney Googe, should go back on Flamsted to the extent of
+allowing the "market" to place the great quarry interests, through
+non-payment of the workers, in jeopardy.
+
+"Has Romanzo heard direct from him to-day?" asked Emlie.
+
+"No; the office replied he was out of the city for Saturday and Sunday;
+didn't give his address but asked if we could keep the men quiet till
+the middle of next week when the funds would be forwarded."
+
+"I wired our New York exchange yesterday," said Emlie, "but they can't
+give us any information--answered things had gone to pot pretty
+generally with certain securities, but Flamsted was all right,--not tied
+up in any of them. Of course, they know the standing of the syndicate.
+There'll have to be some new arrangement for a large reserve fund right
+here on home soil, or we'll be kept in hot water half the time. I don't
+believe in having the hands that work in one place, and the purse that
+holds their pay in another; it gets too ticklish at such times when the
+market drops and a plank or two at the bottom falls out."
+
+"Neither do I;" Mr. Wiggins spoke emphatically. "The Quarries Company's
+liabilities run up into the millions on account of the contracts they
+have signed and the work they have undertaken, and there ought to be a
+million of available assets to discount panics like this one that looks
+pretty threatening to us away off here in Maine. Our bank ought to have
+the benefit of some of the money."
+
+"Well, so far, we've had our trouble for nothing, you might say. You, as
+a director, know that Champney sends up a hundred thousand say on
+Thursday, and Romanzo draws it for the pay roll and other disbursements
+on Saturday morning; they hold it at the other end to get the use of it
+till the last gun is fired." He spoke with irritation.
+
+"It looks to me as if some sort of a gun had been fired already," said
+Mr. Wiggins, pointing to the increasing crowd before the hall.
+
+"Something's up," said Emlie, startled at the sight of the gathering
+hundreds.
+
+"Then there's my place," said the Colonel--the other two thought they
+heard him sigh--and started up the street.
+
+Emlie turned to Mr. Wiggins.
+
+"It's rough on the Colonel; he's a man of peace if ever there was one,
+and likes to stand well with one and all. This rough and tumble business
+of sheriff goes against the grain; his time is up next month; he'll be
+glad enough to be out of it. I'll step over to the office for the paper,
+I see they've just come--the men have got them already from the stand--"
+
+Elmer Wiggins caught his arm.
+
+"Look!" he cried under his breath, pointing to the crowd and a man who
+was mounting the tail of an express wagon that had halted on the
+outskirts of the throng. "That's one of the quarrymen--he's ring-leader
+every time--he's going to read 'em something--hark!"
+
+They could hear the man haranguing the ever-increasing crowd; he was
+waving a newspaper. They could not hear what he was saying, but in the
+pauses of his speechifying the hoarse murmur of approval grew louder and
+louder. The cart-tail orator pointed to the headlines; there was a
+sudden deep silence, so deep that the soft scurrying of a mass of fallen
+elm leaves in the gutter seemed for a moment to fill all the air. Then
+the man began to read. They saw the Colonel on the outside of the crowd;
+saw him suddenly turn and make with all haste for the post-office; saw
+him reappear reading the paper.
+
+The two hurried across the street to him.
+
+"What's the matter?" Emlie demanded.
+
+The Colonel spoke no word. He held the sheet out to them and with
+shaking forefinger pointed to the headlines:
+
+     BIG EMBEZZLEMENT BY FLAMSTED QUARRIES CO. OFFICIAL
+
+     GUILTY MAN A FUGITIVE FROM JUSTICE
+
+     SEARCH WARRANTS OUT
+
+     DETECTIVES ON TRAIL
+
+     "New York--Special Despatch: L. Champney Googe, the treasurer of
+     the Flamsted Quarries Co.--" etc., etc.
+
+The men looked at one another. There was a moment of sickening silence;
+not so much as a leaf whirled in the gutter; it was broken by a great
+cheer from the assembled hundreds of workmen farther up the street,
+followed by a conglomerate of hootings, cat-calls, yells and falsetto
+hoorays from the fringe of small boys. The faces of the three men in
+front of the post-office grew white at their unspoken thought. Each
+waited for the other.
+
+"His mother--" said Emlie at last.
+
+Elmer Wiggins' lips trembled. "You must tell her, Colonel--she mustn't
+hear it this way--"
+
+"My God, how can I!" The Colonel's voice broke, but only for a second,
+then he braced himself to his martyrdom. "You're right; she mustn't hear
+it from any one but me--telephone up at once, will you, Elmer, that I'm
+coming up to see her on an important matter?--Emlie, you'll drive me up
+in your trap--we can get there before the men have a chance to get
+home--keep a watch on the doings here in the town, Elmer, and telephone
+me if there's any trouble--there's Romanzo coming now, I suppose he's
+got word from the office--if you happen to see Father Honore, tell him
+where I am, he will help--"
+
+He stepped into the trap that had been hitched in front of the drug
+store, and Emlie took the reins. Elmer Wiggins reached up his hand to
+the Colonel, who gripped it hard.
+
+"Yes, Elmer," he said in answer to the other's mute question, "this is
+one of the days when a man, who is a man, may wish he'd never been
+born--"
+
+They were off, past the surging crowds who were now thronging the entire
+street, past The Bow, and over the bridge on their way to The Gore.
+
+
+XI
+
+"Run on ahead, girlies," said Aileen to the twins who were with her for
+their annual checkerberry picnic, "I'll be down in a few minutes."
+
+They were on the edge of the quarry woods which sheltered the Colonel's
+outlying sheep pastures and protected from the north wind the two
+sheepfolds that were used for the autumn and early spring. Dulcie and
+Doosie, obedient to Aileen's request, raced hand in hand across the
+short-turfed pastures, balancing their baskets of red berries.
+
+The late afternoon sunshine of the last of October shone clear and warm
+upon the fading close-cropped herbage that covered the long slopes. The
+sheep were gathering by flocks at the folds. The collie, busy and
+important, was at work with 'Lias rounding up the stragglers. Aileen's
+eyes were blinded to the transient quiet beauty of this scene, for she
+was alive to but one point in the landscape--the red brick house with
+granite trimmings far away across the Rothel, and the man leaving the
+carriage which had just stopped at the front porch. She could not
+distinguish who it was, and this fact fostered conjecture--Could it be
+Champney Googe who had come home to help settle the trouble in the
+sheds?
+
+How she hated him!--yet her heart gave a sudden sick throb of
+expectation. How she hated herself for her weakness!
+
+"You look tired to death, Aileen," was Mrs. Caukins' greeting a few
+minutes afterwards, "come in and rest yourself before supper. Luigi was
+here just now and I've sent Dulcie over with him to Aurora's to get the
+Colonel; I saw him go in there fifteen minutes ago, and he's no notion
+of time, not even meal-time, when he's talking business with her. I know
+it's business, because Mr. Emlie drove up with him; he's waiting for him
+to come out. Romanzo has just telephoned that he can't get home for
+supper, but he'll be up in time to see you home."
+
+Mrs. Caukins was diplomatic; she looked upon herself as a committee of
+one on ways and means to further her son's interest so far as Aileen
+Armagh was concerned; but that young lady was always ready with a check
+to her mate.
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Caukins, but I'll not trouble him; Tave is coming up to
+drive me home about eight; he knows checkerberry picking isn't easy
+work."
+
+Mrs. Caukins was looking out of the window and did not reply.
+
+"I declare," she exclaimed, "if there isn't Octavius this very minute
+driving up in a rush to Aurora's too--and Father Honore's with
+him!--Why, what--"
+
+Without waiting to finish her thought, she hurried to the door to call
+out to Dulcie, who was coming back over the bridge towards the house,
+running as fast as she could:
+
+"What's the matter, Dulcie?"
+
+"Oh, mother--mother--" the child panted, running up the road, "father
+wants you to come over to Mrs. Googe's right off, as quick as you
+can--he says not to stop for anything--"
+
+The words were scarcely out of her mouth before Mrs. Caukins, without
+heeding Aileen, was hurrying down the road. The little girl, wholly out
+of breath, threw herself down exhausted on the grass before the door.
+Aileen and Doosie ran out to her.
+
+"What is it, Dulcie--can't you tell me?" said Aileen.
+
+Between quickened breaths the child told what she knew.
+
+"Luigi stopped to speak to Mr. Emlie--and Mr. Emlie said something
+dreadful for Flamsted--had happened--and Luigi looked all of a sudden so
+queer and pale,"--she sat up, and in the excitement and importance of
+imparting such news forgot her over-exertion,--"and Mr. Emlie said
+father was telling Mrs. Googe--and he was afraid it would kill her--and
+then father came to the door looking just like Luigi, all queer and
+pale, and Mr. Emlie says, 'How is she?' and father shook his head and
+said, 'It's her death blow,' then I squeezed Luigi's hand to make him
+look at me, and I asked him what it was Mrs. Googe's was sick of, for I
+must go and tell mother--and he looked at Mr. Emlie and he nodded and
+said, 'It's town talk already--it's in the papers.' And then Luigi told
+me that Mr. Champney Googe had been stealing, Aileen!--and if he got
+caught he'd have to go to prison--then father sent me over home for
+mother and told me to run, and I've run so--Oh, Aileen!"
+
+It was a frightened cry, and her twin echoed it. While Aileen Armagh was
+listening with shortened breaths to the little girl, she felt as if she
+were experiencing the concentrated emotions of a lifetime; as a result,
+the revulsion of feeling was so powerful that it affected her
+physically; her young healthy nerves, capable at other times of almost
+any tension, suddenly played her false. The effect upon her of what she
+heard was a severe nervous shock. She had never fainted in her life, nor
+had she known the meaning of an hysterical mood; she neither fainted nor
+screamed now, but began to struggle horribly for breath, for the shocked
+heart began beating as it would, sending the blood in irregular spurts
+through the already over-charged arteries. From time to time she groaned
+heavily as her struggle continued.
+
+The two children were terrified. Doosie raced distractedly across the
+pastures to get 'Lias, and Dulcie ran into the house for water. Her
+little hand was trembling as she held the glass to Aileen's white
+quivering lips that refused it.
+
+By the time, however, that 'Lias got to the house, the crisis was past;
+she could smile at the frightened children, and assure 'Lias that she
+had had simply a short and acute attack of indigestion from eating too
+many checkerberries over in the woods.
+
+"It serves me right," she said smiling into the woe-begone little faces
+so near to hers; "I've always heard they are the most indigestible
+things going--now don't you eat any more, girlies, or you'll have a
+spasm like mine. I'm all right, 'Lias; go back to your work, I'll just
+help myself to a cup of hot water from the tea-kettle and then I'll go
+home with Tave--I see him coming for me--I didn't expect him now."
+
+"But, Aileen, won't you stay to supper?" said the twins at one and the
+same time; "we always have you to celebrate our checkerberry picnic."
+
+"Dear knows, I've celebrated the checkerberries enough already," she
+said laughing,--but 'Lias noticed that her lips were still
+colorless,--"and I think, dearies, that it's no time for us to be
+celebrating any more to-day when poor Mrs. Googe is in such trouble."
+
+"What's up?" said 'Lias.
+
+The twins' eagerness to impart their knowledge of recent events to 'Lias
+was such that the sorrow of parting was greatly mitigated; moreover,
+Aileen left them with a promise to come up again soon.
+
+"I'm ready, Tave," she said as he drew up at the door. 'Lias helped her
+in.
+
+"Come again soon, Aileen--you've promised," the twins shouted after her.
+
+She turned and waved her hand to them. "I'll come," she called back in
+answer.
+
+They drove in silence over the Rothel, past the brick house where
+Emlie's trap was still standing, but now hitched. Octavius Buzzby's face
+was gray; his features were drawn.
+
+"Did you hear, Aileen?" he said, after they had driven on a while and
+begun to meet the quarrymen returning from Flamsted, many of whom were
+talking excitedly and gesticulating freely.
+
+"Yes--Dulcie told me something. I don't know how true it is," she
+answered quietly.
+
+"It's true," he said grimly, "and it'll kill his mother."
+
+"I don't know about that;" she spoke almost indifferently; "you can
+stand a good deal when it comes to the point."
+
+Octavius turned almost fiercely upon her.
+
+"What do you know about it?" he demanded. "You're neither wife nor
+mother, but you might show a little more feeling, being a woman. Do you
+realize what this thing means to us--to Flamsted--to the family?"
+
+"Tave," she turned her gray eyes full upon him, the pupils were
+unnaturally enlarged, "I don't suppose I do know what it means to all of
+you--but it makes me sick to talk about it--please don't--I can't bear
+it--take me home as quick as you can."
+
+She grew whiter still.
+
+"Ain't you well, Aileen?" he asked in real anxiety, repenting of his
+hard word to her.
+
+"Not very, Tave; the truth is I ate too many checkerberries and had an
+attack of indigestion--I shall be all right soon--and they sent over for
+Mrs. Caukins just at that time, and when Dulcie came back she told
+me--it's awful--but it's different with you; he belongs to you all here
+and you've always loved him."
+
+"Loved him!"--Octavius Buzzby's voice shook with suppressed emotion--"I
+should say loved him; he's been dear to me as my own--I thank God Louis
+Champney isn't living to go through this disgrace!"
+
+He drew up in the road to let a gang of workmen separate--he had been
+driving the mare at full speed. Both he and Aileen caught fragments of
+what they were saying.
+
+"It's damned hard on his mother--"
+
+"They say there's a woman in the case--"
+
+"Generally is with them highflyers--"
+
+"I'll bet he'll make for the old country, if he can get clear he'll--"
+
+"Europe's full of 'em--reg'lar cesspool they say--"
+
+"Any reward offered?"
+
+"The Company'll have to fork over or there'll be the biggest strike in
+Flamsted that the stone-cutting business has seen yet--"
+
+"The papers don't say what the shortage is--"
+
+"What's Van Ostend's daughter's name, anybody know?--they say he was
+sweet on her--"
+
+"She's a good haul," a man laughed hoarsely, insultingly, "but she
+didn't bite, an' lucky for her she didn't."
+
+"You're 'bout right--them high rollers don't want to raise nothing but
+game cocks--no prison birds, eh?"
+
+The men passed on, twenty or more. Octavius Buzzby, and the one who in
+the last hour had left her girlhood behind her, drove homewards in
+silence. Her eyes were lowered; her white cheeks burned again, but with
+shame at what she was obliged to hear.
+
+
+XII
+
+The strike was averted; the men were paid in full on the Wednesday
+following that Saturday the events of which brought for a time Flamsted,
+its families, and its great industry into the garish light of
+undesirable publicity. In the sheds and the quarries the routine work
+went on as usual, but speculation was rife as to the outcome of the
+search for the missing treasurer. A considerable amount of money was put
+up by the sporting element among the workmen, that the capture would
+take place within three weeks. Meanwhile, the daily papers furnished
+pabulum for the general curiosity and kept the interest as to the
+outcome on the increase. Some reports had it that Champney Googe was
+already in Europe; others that he had been seen in one of the Central
+American capitals. Among those who knew him best, it was feared he was
+already in hiding in his native State; but beyond their immediate circle
+no suspicion of this got abroad.
+
+Among the native Flamstedites, who had known and loved Champney from a
+child, there was at first a feeling of consternation mingled with shame
+of the disgrace to his native town. They felt that Champney had played
+false to his two names, and through the honored names of Googe and
+Champney he had brought disgrace upon all connections, whether by ties
+of blood or marriage. To him they had looked to be a leader in the new
+Flamsted that was taking its place in the world's work. For a few days
+it seemed as if the keystone of the arch of their ambition and pride
+had fallen and general ruin threatened. Then, after the first week
+passed without news as to his whereabouts, there was bewilderment,
+followed on the second Monday by despair deepened by a suspense that was
+becoming almost unbearable.
+
+It was a matter of surprise to many to find the work in sheds and
+quarries proceeding with its accustomed regularity; to find that to the
+new comers in Flamsted the affair was an impersonal one, that Champney
+Googe held no place among the workmen; that his absconding meant to them
+simply another one of the "high rollers" fleeing from his deserts.
+Little by little, during that first week, the truth found its way home
+to each man and woman personally interested in this erring son of
+Flamsted's old families, that a man is but one working unit among
+millions, and that unit counts in a community only when its work is
+constructive in the communal good.
+
+At a meeting of the bank directors the telling fact was disclosed that
+all of Mrs. Googe's funds--the purchase money of the quarry lands--had
+been withdrawn nine months previous; but this, they ascertained later,
+had been done with her full consent and knowledge.
+
+Romanzo was summoned with the Company's books to the New York office.
+The Colonel seemed to his friends to have aged ten years in seven days.
+He wore the look of a man haunted by the premonition of some impending
+catastrophe. But he confided his trouble to no one, not even to his
+wife. Aurora Googe's friends suffered with her and for her; they began,
+at last, to fear for her reason if some definite word should not soon be
+forthcoming.
+
+The tension in the Champ-au-Haut household became almost intolerable as
+the days passed without any satisfaction as to the fugitive's
+whereabouts. After the first shock, and some unpleasant recrimination on
+the part of Mrs. Champney, this tension showed itself by silently
+ignoring the recent family event. Mrs. Champney found plausible excuse
+in the state of her health to see no one. Octavius Buzzby attended to
+his daily duties with the face of a man who has come through a severe
+sickness; Hannah complained that "he didn't eat enough to keep a cat
+alive." His lack of appetite was an accompaniment to sleepless,
+thought-racked nights.
+
+Aileen Armagh said nothing--what could she say?--but sickened at her own
+thoughts. She made excuse to be on the street, at the station, in The
+Gore at the Caukinses', with Joel Quimber and Elmer Wiggins, as well as
+among the quarrymen's families, whose children she taught in an
+afternoon singing class, in the hope of hearing some enlightening word;
+of learning something definite in regard to the probabilities of escape;
+of getting some inkling of the whole truth. She gathered a little here,
+a little there; she put two and two together, and from what she heard as
+a matter of speculation, and from what she knew to be true through Mrs.
+Caukins via Romanzo in New York, she found that Champney Googe had
+sacrificed his honor, his mother, his friends, and the good name of his
+native town for the unlawful love of gain. She was obliged to accept
+this fact, and its acceptance completed the work of destruction that the
+revelation of Champney Googe's unfaith, through the declaration of a
+passion that led to no legitimate consummation in marriage, had wrought
+in her young buoyant spirit. She was broken beneath the sudden
+cumulative and overwhelming knowledge of evil; her youth found no
+abiding-place either for heart or soul. To Father Honore she could not
+go--not yet!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the afternoon of Monday week, a telegram came for the Colonel. He
+opened it in the post office. Octavius coming in at the same time for
+his first mail noticed at once the change in his face--he looked
+stricken.
+
+"What is it, Colonel?" he asked anxiously, joining him.
+
+For answer Milton Caukins held out the telegram. It was from the State
+authorities; its purport that the Colonel was to form a posse and be
+prepared to aid, to the extent of his powers, the New York detectives
+who were coming on the early evening train. The fugitive from justice
+had left New York and been traced to Hallsport.
+
+"I've had a premonition of this--it's the last stroke, Tave--here, in
+his home--among us--and his mother!--and, in duty bound, I, of all
+others, must be the man to finish the ugly job--"
+
+Octavius Buzzby's face worked strangely. "It's tough for you, Colonel,
+but I guess a Maine man knows his whole duty--only, for God's sake,
+don't ask me!" It was a groan rather than an ejaculation. The two
+continued to talk in a low tone.
+
+"I shall call for volunteers and then get them sworn in--it means stiff
+work for to-night. We'll keep this from Aurora, Tave; she mustn't know
+_this_."
+
+"Yes, if we can. Are you going to ask any of our own folks to volunteer,
+Milton?" In times of great stress and sorrow his townspeople called the
+Colonel by his Christian name.
+
+"No; I'm going to ask some of the men who don't know him well--some of
+the foreigners; Poggi's one. He'll know some others up in The Gore. And
+I don't believe, Tave, there's one of our own would volunteer, do you?"
+
+"No, I don't. We can't go that far; it would be like cutting our own
+throats."
+
+"You're right, Tave--that's the way I feel; but"--he squared his
+shoulders--"it's got to be done and the sooner it's over the better for
+us all--but, Tave, I hope to God he'll keep out of our way!"
+
+"Amen," said Octavius Buzzby.
+
+The two stood together in the office a moment longer in gloomy silence,
+then they went out into the street.
+
+"Well, I must get to work," said the Colonel finally, "the time's scant.
+I'll telephone my wife first. We can't keep this to ourselves long;
+everybody, from the quarrymen to the station master, will be keen on the
+scent."
+
+"I'm glad no reward was offered," said Octavius.
+
+"So am I." The Colonel spoke emphatically. "The roughscuff won't
+volunteer without that, and I shall be reasonably certain of some good
+men--God! and I'm saying this of Champney Googe--it makes me sick; who'd
+have thought it--who'd have thought it--"
+
+He shook his head, and stepped into the telephone booth. Octavius waited
+for him.
+
+"I've warned Mrs. Caukins," he said when he came out, "and told her how
+things stand; that I'd try to get Poggi, and that I sha'n't be at home
+to-night. She says tell Aileen to tell Mrs. Champney she will esteem it
+a great favor if she will let her come up to-night; she has one of her
+nervous headaches and doesn't want to be alone with the children and
+'Lias. You could take her up, couldn't you?"
+
+"I guess she can come, and I'll take her up 'fore supper; I don't want
+to be gone after dark," he added with meaning emphasis.
+
+"I understand, Tave; I'm going over to Poggi's now."
+
+The two parted with a hand-clasp that spoke more than any words.
+
+
+XIII
+
+About four, Octavius drove Aileen up to the Colonel's. He said nothing
+to her of the coming crucial night, but Aileen had her thoughts. The
+Colonel's absence from home, but not from town, coupled with yesterday's
+New York despatch which said that there was no trace of the guilty man
+in New York, and affirmed on good authority that the statement that he
+had not left the country was true, convinced her that something
+unforeseen was expected in the immediate vicinity of Flamsted. But he
+would never attempt to come here!--She shivered at the thought.
+Octavius, noticing this movement, remarked that he thought there was
+going to be a black frost. Aileen maintained that the rising wind and
+the want of a moon would keep it off.
+
+Although Octavius was inclined to take exception to the feminine
+statement that the moon, or the want of it, had an effect on frost,
+nevertheless this apparently innocent remark on Aileen's part recalled
+to him the fact that the night was moonless--he wondered if the Colonel
+had thought of this--and he hoped with all his soul that it would prove
+to be starless as well. "Champney knows the Maine woods--knows 'em from
+the Bay to the head of Moosehead as well as an Oldtown Indian, yes and
+beyond." So he comforted himself in thought.
+
+Mrs. Caukins met them with effusion.
+
+"I declare, Aileen, I don't know what I should have done if you couldn't
+have come up; I'm all of a-tremble now and I've got such a nervous
+headache from all I've been through, and all I've got to, that I can't
+see straight out of my eyes.--Won't you stop to supper, Tave?"
+
+"I can't to-night, Elvira, I--"
+
+"I'd no business to ask you, I know," she said, interrupting him; "I
+might have known you'd want to be on hand for any new developments. I
+don't know how we're going to live through it up here; you don't feel it
+so much down in the town--I don't believe I could go through it without
+Aileen up here with me, for the twins aren't old enough to depend on or
+to be told everything; they're no company at such times, and of course I
+sha'n't tell them, they wouldn't sleep a wink; I miss my boys
+dreadfully--"
+
+"Tell them what? What do you mean by 'to-night'?" Aileen demanded, a
+sudden sharpness in her voice.
+
+"Why, don't you know?"--She turned to Octavius, "Haven't you told her?"
+
+Her appeal fell on departing and intentionally deaf ears; for Octavius,
+upon hearing Aileen's sudden and amazed question, abruptly bade them
+good-night, spoke to the mare and was off at a rapid pace before Mrs.
+Caukins comprehended that the telling of the latest development was left
+to her.
+
+She set about it quickly enough, and what with her nervousness, her
+sympathy for that mother across the Rothel, her anxiety for the Colonel,
+her fear of the trial to which his powers of endurance were about to be
+put, and the description of his silent suffering during the last week,
+she failed to notice that Aileen said nothing. The girl busied herself
+with setting the table and preparing tea, Mrs. Caukins, meanwhile,
+rocking comfortably in her chair and easing her heart of its heavy
+burden by continual drippings of talk after the main flow of her tale
+was exhausted.
+
+Presently, just after sunset, the twins came rushing in. Evidently they
+were full of secrets--they were always a close corporation of two--and
+their inane giggles and breathless suppression of what they were
+obviously longing to impart to their mother and Aileen, told on Mrs.
+Caukins' already much worn nerves.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't stay out so long after sundown, children, you worry
+me to death. I don't say but the quarries are safe enough, but I do say
+you never can tell who's round after dusk, and growing girls like you
+belong at home."
+
+She spoke fretfully. The twins exchanged meaning glances that were lost
+on their mother, who was used to their ways, but not on Aileen.
+
+"Where have you been all this time, Dulcie?" she asked rather
+indifferently. Her short teaching experience had shown her that the only
+way to gain children's confidence is not to display too great a
+curiosity in regard to their comings and goings, their doings and
+undoings. "Tave and I didn't see you anywhere when we drove up."
+
+The twins looked at each other and screwed their lips into a violently
+repressive contortion.
+
+"We've been over to the sheepfolds with 'Lias."
+
+"Why, 'Lias has been out in the barn for the last half hour--what were
+you doing over there, I'd like to know?" Their mother spoke sharply, for
+untruth she would not tolerate.
+
+"We did stay with 'Lias till he got through, then we played ranchmen and
+made believe round up the cattle the way the boys wrote us they do." Two
+of their brothers were in the West trying their fortune on a ranch and
+incidentally "dovetailing into the home business," as the Colonel
+defined their united efforts along the line of mutton raising.
+
+"Well, I never!" their mother ejaculated; "I suppose now you'll be
+making believe you're everything the other boys are going to be."
+
+The little girls giggled and nodded emphatically.
+
+"Well, Aileen," she said as she took her seat at the table, "times have
+changed since I was a girl, and that isn't so very long ago. Then we
+used to content ourselves with sewing, and housework, and reading all
+the books in the Sunday school library, and making our own clothes, and
+enjoying ourselves as much as anybody nowadays for all I see, what with
+our picnics and excursions down the Bay and the clam bakes and winter
+lecture course and the young folks 'Circle' and two or three dances to
+help out--and now here are my girls that can't be satisfied to sit down
+and hem good crash towels for their mother, but must turn themselves
+into boys, and play ranchmen and baseball and hockey on the ice, and
+Wild West shows with the dogs and the pony--and even riding him
+a-straddle--and want to go to college just because their two brothers
+are going, and, for all I know, join a fraternity and have secrets from
+their own mother and a football team!" She paused long enough to help
+the twins bountifully.
+
+"Sometimes I think it's their being brought up with so many boys, and
+then again I'm convinced it's the times, for all girls seem to have
+caught the male fever. What with divided skirts, and no petticoats, and
+racing and running and tumbling in basket ball, and rowing races, and
+entering for prize championships in golf and the dear knows what, it'll
+be lucky if a mother of the next generation can tell whether she's
+borned girls or boys by the time her children are ten years old. The
+land knows it's hard enough for a married woman to try to keep up with
+one man in a few things, but when it comes to a lot of old maids and
+unmarried girls trying to catch up all the time with the men in
+_everything_, and catch on too, I must say _I_, for one, draw the line."
+
+Aileen could not help smiling at this diatribe on "the times." The twins
+laughed outright; they were used to their mother by this time, and
+patronized her in a loving way.
+
+"We weren't there _all_ the time," Doosie said meaningly, and Dulcie
+added her little word, which she intended should tantalize her mother
+and Aileen to the extent that many pertinent questions should be
+forthcoming, and the news they were burning to impart would, to all
+appearance, be dragged out of them--a process in which the twins
+revelled.
+
+"We met Luigi on the road near the bridge."
+
+"What do you suppose Luigi's doing up here at this time, I'd like to
+know," said Mrs. Caukins, turning to Aileen and ignoring the children.
+
+"He come up on an errand to see some of the quarrymen," piped up both
+the girls at the same time.
+
+"Oh, is that all?" said their mother indifferently; then, much to the
+twins' chagrin, she suddenly changed the subject. "I want you to take
+the glass of wine jell on the second shelf in the pantry over to Mrs.
+Googe's after you finish your supper--you can leave it with the girl and
+tell her not to say anything to Mrs. Googe about it, but just put some
+in a saucer and give it to her with her supper. Maybe it'll tempt her to
+taste it, poor soul!"
+
+The twins sat up very straight on their chairs. A look of consternation
+came into their faces.
+
+"We don't want to go," murmured Dulcie.
+
+"Don't want to go!" their mother exclaimed; decided irritation was
+audible in her voice. "For pity's sake, what is the matter now, that you
+can't run on an errand for me just over the bridge, and here you've been
+prowling about in the dusk for the last hour around those lonesome
+sheepfolds and 'Lias nowheres near--I declare, I could understand my six
+boys even if they were terrors when they were little. You could always
+count on their being somewheres anyway, even if 't was on the top of
+freight cars at The Corners or at the bottom of the pond diving for
+pebbles that they brought up between their lips and run the risk of
+choking besides drowning; and they did think the same thoughts for at
+least twenty-four hours on a stretch, when they were set on having
+things--but when it come to my having two girls, and I forty at the
+time, I give it up! They don't know their own minds from one six minutes
+to the next.--Why don't you want to go?" she demanded, coming at last to
+the point. Aileen was listening in amused silence.
+
+"'Coz we got scared--awful scared," said Dulcie under her breath.
+
+"Scared most to death," Doosie added solemnly.
+
+Both Mrs. Caukins and Aileen saw at once that the children were in
+earnest.
+
+"You look scared!" said Mrs. Caukins with withering scorn; "you've eaten
+a good supper if you were 'scared' as you say.--What scared you?"
+
+The twins looked down into their plates, the generally cleared-up
+appearance of which seemed fully to warrant their mother's sarcasm.
+
+"Luigi told us not to tell," said Dulcie in a low voice.
+
+"Luigi told you not to tell!" echoed their mother. "I'd like to know
+what right Luigi Poggi has to tell my children not to tell their mother
+anything and everything!" She spoke with waxing excitement; every
+motherly pin-feather was erect.
+
+"He was 'fraid it would scare you," ventured Doosie.
+
+"Scare me! He must have a pretty poor opinion of a woman that can raise
+six boys of her own and then be 'scared' at what two snips of girls can
+tell her. You'll tell me now, this very minute, what scared you--this
+all comes of your being away from the house so far and so late--and I
+won't have it."
+
+"We saw a bear--"
+
+"A big one--"
+
+"He was crawling on all fours--"
+
+"Back of the sheepfold wall--"
+
+"He scrooched down as if he was nosing for something--"
+
+"Just where the trees are so thick you can't see into the woods--"
+
+"And we jumped over the wall and right down into the sheep, and they
+made an awful fuss they were so scared too, huddling and rushing round
+to get out--"
+
+"Then we found the gate--"
+
+"But I _heard_ him--" Dulcie's eyes were very big and bright with
+remembered terror.
+
+"And then we climbed over the gate--'Lias had locked it--and run home
+lickety-split and most run into Luigi at the bridge--"
+
+"'Coz we come down the road after we got through the last pasture--"
+
+"Oh, he was so big!" Doosie shuddered as her imagination began to work
+more vigorously with the recital--"bigger'n a man--"
+
+"What nonsense."
+
+The twins had been telling all this at the same time, and their mother's
+common sense and downright exclamation brought them to a full stop. They
+looked crestfallen.
+
+"You needn't tell me there's a bear between here and Moosehead--I know
+better. Did you tell Luigi all this?" she questioned sharply.
+
+The two nodded affirmatively.
+
+"And he told you not to tell me?"
+
+Another nod.
+
+"Did he say anything more?"
+
+"He said he'd go up and see."
+
+"Hm--m--"
+
+Mrs. Caukins turned a rather white face to Aileen; the two, looking into
+each other's eyes, read there a common fear.
+
+"Perhaps you'll take the jelly over for me, Aileen; I'll just step to
+the back door and holler to 'Lias to bring in the collie and the
+hound--'t isn't always safe to let the dogs out after dark if there
+_should_ happen to be anything stirring in the quarry woods."
+
+"I'll go," said Aileen. She went into the pantry to get the glass of
+jelly.
+
+"We'll go with you, we won't mind a bit with you or Luigi," chorussed
+the twins.
+
+"You don't go one step," said their mother, entering at that moment from
+the kitchen, and followed by the two dogs; "you'll stay right where you
+are, and what's more, you'll both go to bed early to make you remember
+that I mean what I say about your being out so long another time after
+sundown--no good comes of it," she muttered.
+
+The twins knew by the tone of her voice that there was no further appeal
+to be made.
+
+"You can wash up the dishes while Aileen's gone; my head is so
+bad.--Don't be gone too long, Aileen," she said, going to the door with
+her.
+
+"I sha'n't stay unless I can do something--but I'll stop a little while
+with Ellen, poor girl; she must be tired of all this excitement, sitting
+there alone so much as she has this last week."
+
+"Of course, but Aurora won't see you; it's as much as ever I can do to
+get a look at her, and as to speaking a word of comfort, it's out of the
+question.--Why!" she exclaimed, looking out into the dusk that was
+settling into night, "they never light the quarries so early, not with
+all the arc-lights, I wonder--Oh, Aileen!" she cried, as the meaning of
+the great illumination in The Gore dawned upon her.
+
+The girl did not answer. She ran down the road to the bridge with every
+nerve in her strained to its utmost.
+
+
+XIV
+
+She hurried over to the brick house across the Rothel; rapped at the
+kitchen door and, upon the girl's opening it, gave the jelly to her with
+Mrs. Caukins' message. She assured Ellen, who begged her to come in,
+that she would run over if possible a little later in the evening. A low
+whine and prolonged snuffing made themselves audible while the two
+talked together in low tones at the door. They seemed to proceed from
+the vicinity of the dining-room door.
+
+"Where's Rag?" said Aileen, listening intently to the muffled sounds.
+
+"I shut him up in the dining-room closet when I see you come up the
+walk; he goes just wild to get with you any chance he can, and Mrs.
+Googe told me she wanted to keep him round the house nights."
+
+"Then be careful he doesn't get out to-night--supposing you chain him up
+just for once."
+
+"Oh, I couldn't do that; Mrs. Googe wouldn't let me; but I'll see he
+doesn't follow you. I do wish you would come in--it's so lonesome," she
+said again wistfully.
+
+"I can't now, Ellen; but if I can get away after eight, I may run over
+and sit with you a while. I'm staying with Mrs. Caukins because the
+Colonel is away to-night."
+
+"So I heard; 'Lias told me just now on his way down to the village. He
+said he wouldn't be gone long, for the Colonel wasn't to home.--I
+wonder what they've turned on all the lights for?" she said, craning her
+neck to look farther up the road.
+
+Aileen made no reply. She cautioned her again to keep Rag at home. A
+series of muffled but agonized yelps followed her down the walk.
+
+She stood still in the road and looked about her. Everywhere the great
+quarry arc-lights were sending their searching rays out upon the
+quarries and their approaches.
+
+"What shall I do--oh, what _shall_ I do!" was her hopeless unuttered
+cry.
+
+It seemed to Aileen Armagh, standing there in the road at the entrance
+to the bridge, as if a powerful X-ray were being directed at that moment
+upon her whole life so far as she remembered it; and not only upon that,
+but upon her heart and soul--her thoughts, desires, her secret agony; as
+if the ray, in penetrating her body and soul, were laying bare her
+secret to the night:--she still loved him.
+
+"Oh, what shall I do--what _shall_ I do!" was the continual inner cry.
+
+Life was showing itself to her in this experience, as seen through the
+lens of a quickened imagination, in all its hideousness. Never had she
+experienced such a sense of loneliness. Never had she realized so
+forcibly that she was without father and mother, without kin in a
+foreign country, without a true home and abiding-place. Never had it
+been brought home to her with such keen pain that she was, in truth, a
+waif in this great world; that the one solid support for her in this
+world, her affections, had been ruthlessly cut away from under her by
+the hand of the man she had loved with all the freshness and joy of her
+young loving heart. He had been all the more to her because she was
+alone; the day dreams all the brighter because she believed he was the
+one to realize them for her--and now!
+
+She walked on slowly.
+
+"What shall I do--what shall I do!" was her inward cry, repeated at
+intervals. She crossed the bridge. All was chaotic in her thoughts. She
+had supposed, during the last two months, that all her love was turned
+to hate,--she hoped it was, for it would help her to bear,--that all her
+feeling for him, whom she knew she ought to despise, was dead. Why,
+then, if it were dead, she asked herself now, had she spoken so
+vehemently to Luigi? And Luigi--where was he--what was he doing?
+
+What was it produced that nervous shock when she learned the last truth
+from Dulcie Caukins? Was it her shame at his dishonor? No--she knew by
+the light of the X-ray piercing her soul that the thought of his
+imprisonment meant absence from her; after all that had occurred, she
+was obliged to confess that she was still longing for his presence. She
+hated herself for this confession.--Where was he now?
+
+She looked up the road towards the quarry woods--Thank God, those, at
+least, were dark! Oh, if she but dared to go! dared to penetrate them;
+to call to him that the hours of his freedom were numbered; to
+help--someway, somehow! A sudden thought, over-powering in its intimation
+of possibilities, stopped her short in the road just a little way beyond
+the Colonel's; but before she could formulate it sufficiently to follow
+it up with action, before she had time to realize the sensation of
+returning courage, she was aware of the sound of running feet on the
+road above her. On a slight rise of ground the figure of a man showed
+for a moment against the clear early dark of the October night; he was
+running at full speed.
+
+Could it be--?
+
+She braced herself to the shock--he was rapidly nearing her--a powerful
+ray from an arc-light shot across his path--fell full upon his hatless
+head--
+
+"_You!_--Luigi!" she cried and darted forward to meet him.
+
+He thrust out his arm to brush her aside, never slackening his pace; but
+she caught at it, and, clasping it with both hands, hung upon it her
+full weight, letting him drag her on with him a few feet.
+
+"Stop, Luigi Poggi!--Stop, I tell you, or I'll scream for help--stop, I
+say!"
+
+He was obliged to slacken his speed in order not to hurt her. He tried
+to shake her off, untwist her hands; she clung to him like a leech. Then
+he stopped short, panting. She could see the sweat dropping from his
+forehead; his teeth began to chatter. She still held his arm tightly
+with both hands.
+
+"Let me go--" he said, catching his breath spasmodically.
+
+"Not till you tell me where you've been--what you've been doing--tell
+me."
+
+"Doing--" He brought out the word with difficulty.
+
+"Yes, doing, don't you hear?" She shook his arm violently in her anxious
+terror.
+
+"I don't know--" the words were a long groan.
+
+"Where have you been then?--quick, tell me--"
+
+He began to shake with a hard nervous chill.
+
+"With him--over in the quarry woods--I tried to take him--he fought
+me--" The chill shook him till he could scarcely stand.
+
+She dropped his arm; drew away from him as if touching were
+contamination; then her eyes, dilating with a still greater horror,
+fixed themselves on the bosom of his shirt--there was a stain--
+
+"Have you killed him--" she whispered hoarsely.
+
+The answer came through the clattering teeth:
+
+"I--I don't know--you said--you said you--never wanted to see him
+again--"
+
+Luigi found himself speaking the last words to the empty air; he was
+alone, in the middle of the road, in the full glare of an electric
+light. He was conscious of a desire to escape from it, to escape
+detection--to rid himself of his over-powering misery in the quietest way
+possible. He gathered himself together; his limbs steadied; the
+shivering grew less; he went on down the road at a quick walk. Already
+the quarrymen were coming out in force to see what might be up. He must
+avoid them at all hazards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One thought was the motive power which sent Aileen running up the road
+towards the pastures, by crossing which she could reach in a few minutes
+the quarry woods: "I must know if he is dead; if he is not dead, I must
+try to save him from a living death."
+
+This thought alone sent her speeding over the darkened slopes. She was
+light of foot, but sometimes she stumbled; she was up and on again--the
+sheepfold her goal. The quarry woods stood out dark against the clear
+sky; there seemed to be more light on these uplands than below in The
+Gore; she saw the sheepfold like a square blot on the pasture slope. She
+reached it--should she call aloud--call his name? How find him?
+
+She listened intently; the wind had died down; the sheep were huddling
+and moving restlessly within the fold; this movement seemed unusual.
+She climbed the rough stone wall; the sheep were massed in one corner,
+heads to the wall, tails to the bare centre of the fold; they kept
+crowding closer and more close.
+
+In that bared space of hoof-trampled earth she saw him lying.
+
+She leaped down, the frightened sheep riding one another in their
+frantic efforts to get away from the invaders of their peace. She knelt
+by him; lifted his head on her knee; her hands touched his sleeve, she
+drew back from something warm and wet.
+
+"Champney--O Champney, what has he done to you!" she moaned in hopeless
+terror; "what shall I do--"
+
+"Is it you--Aileen?--help me up--"
+
+With her aid he raised himself to a sitting posture.
+
+"It must have been the loss of blood--I felt faint suddenly." He spoke
+clearly. "Can you help me?"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes--only tell me how."
+
+"If you could bind this up--have you anything--"
+
+"Yes, oh, yes--"
+
+He used his left hand entirely; it was the right arm that had received
+the full blow of some sharp instrument. "Just tear away the
+shirt--that's right--"
+
+She did as he bade her. She took her handkerchief and bound the arm
+tightly above the wound, twisting it with one of her shell hairpins. She
+slipped off her white petticoat, stripped it, and under his directions
+bandaged the arm firmly.
+
+He spoke to her then as if she were a personality and not an instrument.
+
+"Aileen, it's all up with me if I am found here--if I don't get out of
+this--tell my mother I was trying to see her--to get some funds, I have
+nothing. I depended on my knowledge of this country to escape--put them
+off the track--they're after me now--aren't they?"
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"I thought so; I should have got across to the house if the quarry
+lights hadn't been turned on so suddenly--I knew they'd got word when I
+saw that--still, I might have made the run, but that man throttled me--I
+must go--"
+
+He got on his feet. At that moment they both started violently at the
+sound of something worrying at the gate; there was a rattle at the bars,
+a scramble, a frightened bleating among the sheep, a joyous bark--and
+Rag flung himself first upon Aileen then on Champney.
+
+He caught the dog by the throat, choking him into silence, and handed
+him to Aileen.
+
+"For God's sake, keep the dog away--don't let him come--keep him quiet,
+or I'm lost--" he dropped over the wall and disappeared in the woods.
+
+Here and there across the pastures a lantern shot its unsteady rays. The
+posse had begun their night's work.
+
+The dog struggled frantically to free himself from Aileen's arms; again
+and again she choked him that he might not bark and betray his master.
+The terrified sheep bleated loud and long, trampling one another in vain
+efforts to get through or over the wall.
+
+"Oh, Rag, Rag,--stop, or I must kill you, dear, dear little Rag--oh, I
+can't choke you--I can't--I can't! Rag, be still, I say--oh--"
+
+Between his desire to free his limbs, to breathe freely, and the
+instinctive longing to follow his master, the dog's powerful muscles
+were doing double work.
+
+"Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do--" she groaned in her
+helplessness. The dog's frantic struggles were proving too much for her
+strength, for she had to hold him with one hand; the other was on his
+windpipe. She knew 'Lias would soon be coming home; he could hear the
+sheep from the road, as she already heard the subdued bay of the hound
+and the muffled bark of the collie, shut--thanks to Mrs. Caukins'
+premonition of what might happen--within four walls. She looked about
+her--a strip of her white skirt lay on the ground--_Could she--?_
+
+"No, Rag darling--no, I can't, I can't--" she began to cry. Through her
+tears she saw something sticking up from the hoof-trampled earth near
+the strip of cotton--a knife--
+
+She was obliged to take her hand from the dog's throat in order to pick
+it up--there was one joyous bark....
+
+"O Rag, forgive me--forgive!" she cried under her breath, sobbing as if
+her heart would break.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She picked up the piece of skirt, and fled with the knife in her
+hand--over the wall, over the pastures, that seemed lighter beneath the
+rising stars, down the highroad into the glare of an arc-light. She
+looked at the instrument of death as she ran; it was a banana knife such
+as Luigi used continually in his shop. She crossed the bridge, dropped
+the knife over the guard into the rushing Rothel; re-crossed the bridge
+and, throwing back the wings of the Scotch plaid cape she wore, examined
+in the full light of the powerful terminal lamp her hands, dress, waist,
+cuffs.--There was evidence.
+
+She took off her cape, wrapped it over head and shoulders, folded it
+close over both arms, and went back to the house. She heard carriages
+coming up the road to The Gore.
+
+Mrs. Caukins, in a quivering state of excitement, called to her from the
+back porch:
+
+"Come out here, Aileen; 'Lias hasn't got back yet--the sheep are making
+the most awful noise; something's the matter over there, you may
+depend--and I can see lights, can you?"
+
+"Yes," she answered unsteadily. "I saw them a few minutes ago. I didn't
+stay with Ellen, but went up the road a piece, for my head was aching
+too, and I thought a little air would do me good--and I believe I got
+frightened seeing the lights--I heard the sheep too--it's dreadful to
+think what it means."
+
+Mrs. Caukins turned and looked at her sharply; the light from the
+kitchen shone out on the porch.
+
+"Well, I must say you look as if you'd seen a ghost; you're all of a
+shiver; you'd better go in and warm you and take a hot water bag up to
+bed with you; it's going to be a frosty night. I'm going to stay here
+till 'Lias comes back. I'm thankful the twins are abed and asleep, or I
+should have three of you on my hands. Just as soon as 'Lias gets back,
+I'm going into my room to lie down--I can't sleep, but if I stay up on
+my feet another hour I shall collapse with my nerves and my head; you
+can do what you've a mind to."
+
+Aileen went into the kitchen. When Mrs. Caukins came in, fifteen minutes
+later, with the information that she could see by the motion of 'Lias'
+lantern that he was near the house, she found the girl huddled by the
+stove; she was still wrapped in her cape. A few minutes afterwards she
+went up to her room for the night.
+
+Late in the evening there was a rumor about town that Champney Googe had
+been murdered in the Colonel's sheepfold. Before midnight this was
+contradicted, and the fact established that 'Lias had found his dog
+stabbed to death in the fold, and that he said he had seen traces of a
+terrific struggle. The last news, that came in over the telephone from
+the quarries, was to the effect that no trace of the fugitive was found
+in the quarry woods and the posse were now on the county line scouring
+the hills to the north. The New York detectives, arriving on the evening
+train, were carried up to join the Flamsted force.
+
+The next day the officers of the law returned, and confirmed the report,
+already current in the town, that Champney Googe had outwitted them and
+made his escape. Every one believed he would attempt to cross the Canada
+border, and the central detective agency laid its lines accordingly.
+
+
+XV
+
+Since Champney Googe's escape on that October night, two weeks had been
+added to the sum of the hours that his friends were counting until they
+should obtain some definite word of his fate. During that time the love
+of the sensational, which is at the root of much so-called communal
+interest, was fed by the excitement of the nominal proceedings against
+Luigi Poggi. On the night of Champney's flight he went to Father Honore
+and Elmer Wiggins, and confessed his complicity in the affair at the
+sheepfold. Within ten days, however, the Italian had been exonerated for
+his attack on the escaped criminal; nor was the slightest blame attached
+to such action on his part. He had been duly sworn in by the Colonel,
+and was justified in laying hands on the fugitive, although the wisdom
+of tackling a man, who was in such desperate straits, of his own accord
+and alone was questioned. Not once during the sharp cross examination,
+to which he was subjected by Emlie and the side-judge, was Aileen's name
+mentioned--nor did he mention it to Father Honore. Her secret was to be
+kept.
+
+During those two weeks of misery and suspense for all who loved Champney
+Googe, Octavius Buzzby was making up his mind on a certain subject. Now
+that it was fully made up, his knock on the library door sounded more
+like a challenge than a plea for admittance.
+
+"Come in, Octavius."
+
+Mrs. Champney was writing. She pushed aside the pad and, moving her
+chair, faced him. Octavius noted the uncompromising tone of voice when
+she bade him enter, and the hard-set lines of her face as she turned
+inquiringly towards him. For a moment his courage flagged; then the
+righteousness of his cause triumphed. He closed the door behind him.
+This was not his custom, and Mrs. Champney looked her surprise.
+
+"Anything unusual, Octavius?"
+
+"I want a talk with you, Mrs. Champney."
+
+"Sit down then." She motioned to a chair; but Octavius shook his head.
+
+"I can say all I've got to say standing; it ain't much, but it's to the
+point."
+
+Mrs. Champney removed her glasses and swung them leisurely back and
+forth on their gold chain. "Well, to the point, then."
+
+He felt the challenge implied in her words and accepted it.
+
+"I've served this estate pretty faithful for hard on to thirty-seven
+years. I've served the Judge, and I've served his son, and now I'm going
+to work to save the man that's named for that son--"
+
+Mrs. Champney interrupted him sharply, decisively.
+
+"That will do, Octavius. There is no occasion for you to tell me this; I
+knew from the first you would champion his cause--no matter how bad a
+one. We'll drop the subject; you must be aware it is not a particularly
+pleasant one to me."
+
+Octavius winced. Mrs. Champney smiled at the effect of her words; but he
+ignored her remark.
+
+"I like to see fair play, Mrs. Champney, and I've seen some things here
+in Champo since the old Judge died that's gone against me. Right's right
+and wrong's wrong, and I've stood by and kept still when I'd ought to
+have spoken; perhaps 't would have been better for us all if I had--and
+I'm including Champney Googe. When his father died--" Mrs. Champney
+started, leaned forward in her chair, her hands tightly grasping the
+arms.
+
+"His father--" she caught up her words, pressed her thin lips more
+closely together, and leaned back again in her chair. Octavius looked at
+her in amazement.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, "his father, Warren Googe; who else should I mean?"
+
+Mrs. Champney made no reply, and Octavius went on, wetting his lips to
+facilitate articulation, for his throat was going dry:
+
+"His father made me promise to look out for the child that was a-coming;
+and another man, Louis Champney, your husband,"--Mrs. Champney sat up
+rigid, her eyes fixed in a stare upon the speaker's lips,--"told me when
+the boy come that he'd father him as was fatherless--"
+
+She interrupted him again, a sneering smile on her lips:
+
+"You know as well as I, Octavius Buzzby, what Mr. Champney's will
+was--too feeble a thing to place dependence on for any length of time;
+if he said that, he didn't mean it--not as you think he did," she added
+in a tone that sent a shiver along Octavius' spine. But he did not
+intend to be "downed," as he said to himself, "not this time by Almeda
+Champney." He continued undaunted:
+
+"I do know what he meant better'n anybody living, and I know what he was
+going to do for the boy; and _I_ know, too, Mrs. Champney, who hindered
+him from having his will to do for the boy; and right's right, and
+now's your time to make good to his memory and intentions--to make good
+your husband's will for Champney Googe and save your husband's name from
+disgrace and more besides. _You_ know--but you never knew I did till
+now--what Louis Champney promised to do for the boy--and he told me more
+than once, Mrs. Champney, for he trusted _me_. He told me he was going
+to educate the boy and start him well in life, and that he wasn't going
+to end there; he told me he was going to leave him forty thousand
+dollars, Mrs. Champney--and he told me this not six weeks before he
+died; and the interest on forty thousand has equalled the principal by
+this time,--and you know best _why_ he hasn't had his own--I ain't blind
+and nobody else here in Flamsted. And now I've come to ask you, if
+you've got a woman's heart instead of a stone in your bosom, to make
+over that principal and interest to the Quarry Company and save the boy
+Louis Champney loved; he told me once what I knew, that his blood flowed
+in that child's veins--"
+
+"That's a lie--take that back!" she almost shrieked under her breath.
+She started to her feet, trembling in every limb, her face twitching
+painfully.
+
+Octavius was appalled at the effect of his words; but he dared not
+falter now--too much was at stake--although fearful of the effect of any
+further excitement upon the woman before him. He spoke appeasingly:
+
+"I can't take that back, for it's true, Mrs. Champney. You know as well
+as I do that far back his mother was a Champney."
+
+"Oh--I forgot." She dropped into her chair and drew a long breath as of
+exhaustion. "What were you saying?" She passed her hand slowly over her
+eyes, then put on her glasses. Octavius saw by that one movement that
+she had regained her usual control. He, too, felt relieved, and spoke
+more freely:
+
+"I said I want you to make good that eighty thousand dollars--"
+
+"Don't be a fool, Octavius Buzzby,"--she broke in upon him coldly, a
+world of scornful pity in her voice,--"you mean well, but you're a fool
+to think that at my time of life I'm going to impoverish myself and my
+estate for Champney Googe. You've had your pains for nothing. Let him
+take his punishment like any other man--he's no better, no worse; it's
+the fault of his bringing up; Aurora has only herself to thank."
+
+Octavius took a step forward. By a powerful effort he restrained himself
+from shaking his fist in her face. He spoke under his breath:
+
+"You leave Aurora's name out of this, Mrs. Champney, or I'll say things
+that you'll be sorry to hear." His anger was roused to white heat and he
+dared not trust himself to say more.
+
+She laughed out loud--the forced, mocking laugh of a miserable old age.
+"I knew from the first Aurora Googe was at the bottom of this--"
+
+"She doesn't know anything about this, I came of--"
+
+"You keep still till I finish," she commanded him, her faded eyes
+sending forth something from behind her glasses that resembled blue
+lightning; "I say she's at the bottom of this as she's been at the
+bottom of everything else in Flamsted. She'll never have a penny of my
+money, that was Louis Champney's, to clear either herself or her
+state's-prison brat! Tell her that for me with my compliments on her
+son's career.--And as for you, Octavius Buzzby, I'll repeat what you
+said: I'm not blind and nobody else is in Flamsted, and I know, and
+everybody here knows, that you've been in love with Aurora Googe ever
+since my father took her into his home to bring up."
+
+She knew that blow would tell. Octavius started as if he had been struck
+in the face by the flat of an enemy's hand. He stepped forward quickly
+and looked her straight in the eyes.
+
+"You she-devil," he said in a low clear voice, turned on his heel and
+left the room. He closed the door behind him, and felt of the knob to
+see that he had shut it tight. This revelation of a woman's nature was
+sickening him; he wanted to make sure that the library door was shut
+close upon the malodorous charnel house of the passions. He shivered
+with a nervous chill as he hurried down the hall and went upstairs to
+his room in the ell.
+
+He sat down on the bed and leaned his head on his hands, pressing his
+fingers against his throbbing temples. Half an hour passed; still he sat
+there trying to recover his mental poise; the terrible anger he had
+felt, combined with her last thrust, had shocked him out of it.
+
+At last he rose; went to his desk; opened a drawer, took out a tin box,
+unlocked it, and laid the papers and books it contained one by one on
+the table to inspect them. He selected a few, snapped a rubber about the
+package and thrust it into the inner breast pocket of his coat. Then he
+reached for his hat, went downstairs, left word with Ann that he was
+going to drive down for the mail but that he should not be back before
+ten, proceeded to the stable, harnessed the mare into a light driving
+trap and drove away. He took the road to The Gore.
+
+On approaching the house he saw a light in Aurora's bedroom. He drove
+around to the kitchen door and tied the mare to the hitching-post. His
+rap was answered by Ellen, a quarryman's daughter whom Mrs. Googe
+employed for general help; but she spoke behind the closed door:
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"It's me, Octavius Buzzby."
+
+She drew the bolt and flung open the door. "Oh, it's you, is it, Mr.
+Buzzby? I've got so nervous these last three weeks, I keep the door
+bolted most of the time. Have you heard anything?" she asked eagerly,
+speaking under her breath.
+
+"No," said Octavius shortly; "I want to see Mrs. Googe. Tell her I must
+see her; it's important."
+
+The girl hesitated. "I don't believe she will--and I hate to ask
+her--she looks awful, Mr. Buzzby. It scares me just to see her goin'
+round without saying a word from morning to night, and then walking half
+the night up in her room. I don't believe she's slept two hours a night
+since--you know when."
+
+"I guess she'll see me, Ellen; you go and ask her, anyway. I'll stay in
+the lower hall."
+
+He heard her rap at the bedroom door and deliver the message. There
+followed the sharp click of a lock, the opening of the door and the
+sound of Aurora's voice:
+
+"Tell him to come up."
+
+Octavius started upstairs. He had seen her but once in the past three
+weeks; that was when he went to her on the receipt of the news of
+Champney's flight; he vowed then he would not go again unless sent for;
+the sight of the mother's despair, that showed itself in speechless
+apathy, was too much for him. He could only grasp her hand at that time,
+press it in both his, and say: "Aurora, if you need me, call me; you
+know me. We'll help all we can--both of you--"
+
+But there was no response. He tiptoed out of the room as if leaving the
+presence of the dead.
+
+Now, as he mounted the stairs, he had time to wonder what her attitude
+would be after these three weeks of suspense. A moment more and he stood
+in her presence, mute, shocked, heartsick at the change that this month
+of agony had wrought in her. Her face was ghastly in its pallor; deep
+yellowish-purple half-circles lay beneath her sunken eyes; every
+feature, every line of the face was sharpened, and on each cheek bone
+burned a fever spot of vivid scarlet; her dry eyes also burned with
+unnatural and fevered brightness, the heavy eyelids keeping up a
+continuous quivering, painful to see. The hand she held out to him
+throbbed quick and hard in his grasp.
+
+"Any news, Tave?" Her voice was dull from despair.
+
+He shook his head; the slow tears coursed down his cheeks; he could not
+help it.
+
+"Sit down, Tave; you said it was important."
+
+He controlled his emotion as best he could. "Aurora, I've been thinking
+what can be done when he's found--"
+
+"If he ever is! Oh, Tave, Tave--if I could only know something--where he
+is--if living; I can't sleep thinking--" She wrung her clasped hands and
+began to walk nervously back and forth in the room.
+
+"Aurora, I feel sure he's living, but when he's found--then's the time
+to help."
+
+"How?" She turned upon him almost savagely; it looked as if her
+primitive mother-passion were at bay for her young. "Where's help to
+come from? I've nothing left."
+
+"But I have." He spoke with confidence and took out the package from
+his breast pocket. He held it out to her. "See here, Aurora, here's the
+value of twenty thousand dollars--take it--use it as your own."
+
+She drew away from it.--"Money!" She spoke almost with horror.
+
+"Yes, Aurora, honest money. Take it and see how far 't will go towards
+saving prosecution for him."
+
+"You mean--," she hesitated; her dry eyes bored into his that dropped
+before her unwavering gaze, "--you mean you're giving your hard-earned
+wages to me to help save my boy?"
+
+"Yes, and glad to give them--if you knew how glad, Aurora--"
+
+She covered her face with her hands. Octavius took her by the arm and
+drew her to a chair.
+
+"Sit down," he said gently; "you're all worn out."
+
+She obeyed him passively, still keeping her hands before her face. But
+no sooner was she seated than she began to rock uneasily back and forth,
+moaning to herself, till suddenly the long-dried fount was opened up;
+the merciful blessing of tears found vent. She shook with uncontrollable
+sobbing; she wept for the first time since Champney's flight, and the
+tears eased her brain for the time of its living nightmare.
+
+Octavius waited for her weeping to spend itself. His heart was wrung
+with pity, but he was thankful for every tear she shed; his
+gratefulness, however, found a curious inner expression.
+
+"Damn her--damn her--damn her--" he kept saying over and over to
+himself, and the mere repetition seemed to ease him of his over-powering
+surcharge of pity. But it was Almeda Champney he had in mind, and, after
+all, his unuttered inner curses were only a prayer for help, read
+backwards.
+
+At last, Aurora Googe lifted her face from her hands and looked at
+Octavius Buzzby. He reddened and rose to go.
+
+"Tave, wait a little while; don't go yet."
+
+He sat down.
+
+"I thought--I felt all was lost--no one cared--I was alone--there was no
+help. You have shown me that I have been wrong--all wrong--such
+friends--such a friend as you--" Her lips quivered; the tears welled
+from the red and swollen lids. "I can't take the money, Tave, I
+can't--don't look so--only on one condition. I've been coming to a
+decision the last two days. I'm going straight to Almeda, Tave, and ask
+her, beg her, if I have to, on my bended knees to save my boy--she has
+more than enough--you know, Tave, what Champney should have had--"
+
+Octavius nodded emphatically and found his voice.
+
+"Don't I know? You may bet your life I know more'n I've ever told,
+Aurora. Don't I know how Louis Champney said to me: 'Tave, I shall see
+the boy through; forty thousand of mine is to be his'; and that was six
+weeks before he died; and don't I know, too, how I didn't get a glimpse
+of Louis Champney again till two weeks before his death, and then he was
+unconscious and didn't know me or any one else?"
+
+Octavius paused for breath. Aurora Googe rose and went to the closet.
+
+"I must go now, Tave; take me with you." She took out a cloak and
+burnous.
+
+"I hate to say it, Aurora, but I'm afraid it won't do no good; she's a
+tough cuss when it comes to money--"
+
+"But she must; he's her own flesh and blood and she's cheated him out of
+what is rightfully his. It's been my awful pride that kept me from going
+sooner--and--oh, Tave, Tave,--I tried to make my boy promise never to
+ask her for money! I've been hoping all along she would offer--"
+
+"Offer! Almeda Champney offer to help any one with her money that was
+Louis Champney's!"
+
+"But she has enough of her own, Tave; the money that was my boy's
+grandfather's."
+
+"You don't know her, Aurora, not yet, after all you've suffered from
+her. If you'd seen her and lived with her as I have, year out and year
+in, you'd know her love of money has eat into her soul and gangrened it.
+'T ain't no use to go, I tell you, Aurora." He put out his hand to
+detain her, for she had thrown on her cloak and was winding the burnous
+about her head.
+
+"Tave, I'm going; don't say another word against it; and you must take
+me down. She isn't the only one who has loved money till it blinded them
+to duty--I can't throw stones--and after all she's a woman; I am going
+to ask her to help with the money that is rightfully my boy's--and if
+she gives it, I will take your twenty thousand to make up the amount."
+She pressed the package into his hand.
+
+"But what if she doesn't?"
+
+"Then I'll ask Father Honore to do what he proposed to do last week: go
+to Mr. Van Ostend and ask him for the money--there's nothing left but
+that." She drew her breath hard and led the way from the room,
+hurriedly, as if there were not a moment to lose. Octavius followed her,
+protesting:
+
+"Try Mr. Van Ostend first, Aurora; don't go to Mrs. Champney now."
+
+"Now is the only time. If I hadn't asked my own relation, Mr. Van Ostend
+would have every reason to say, 'Why didn't you try in your own family
+first?'"
+
+"But, Aurora, I'm afraid to have you."
+
+"Afraid! I, of Almeda Champney?"
+
+She stopped short on the stairs to look back at him. There was a trace
+of the old-time haughtiness in her bearing. Octavius welcomed it, for he
+was realizing that he could not move her from her decision, and as for
+the message from Almeda Champney, he knew he never could deliver it--he
+had no courage.
+
+"You needn't sit up for me, Ellen," she said to the surprised girl as
+they went out; "it may be late before I get home; bolt the back door,
+I'll take the key to the front."
+
+He helped her into the trap, and in silence they drove down to The Bow.
+
+
+XVI
+
+Aurora Googe spoke for the first time when Octavius left her at the door
+of Champ-au-Haut.
+
+"Tave, don't leave me; I want you to be near, somewhere in the hall, if
+she is in the library. I want a witness to what I must say and--I trust
+you. But don't come into the room no matter what is said."
+
+"I won't, Aurora, and I'll be there in a few minutes. I'm just going to
+drive to the stable and send the boy down for the mail, and I'll be
+right back. There's Aileen."
+
+The girl answered the knock, and on recognizing who it was caught her
+breath sharply. She had not seen Mrs. Googe during the past month of
+misery and shame and excitement, and previous to that she had avoided
+Champney Googe's mother on account of the humiliation her love for the
+son had suffered at that son's hands--a humiliation which struck at the
+roots of all that was truest and purest in that womanhood, which was
+drying up the clear-welling spring of her buoyant temperament, her young
+enjoyment in life and living and all that life offers of best to
+youth--offers once only.
+
+She started back at the sight of those dark eyes glowing with an
+unnatural fire, at the haggard face, its pallor accentuated by the white
+burnous. One thought had time to flash into consciousness before the
+woman standing on the threshold could speak: here was suffering to
+which her own was as a candle light to furnace flame.
+
+"I've come to see Mrs. Champney, Aileen; is she in the library?"
+
+"Yes,"--the girl's lips trembled,--"shall I tell her you are here?"
+
+"No." She threw aside her cloak as if in great haste; Aileen took it and
+laid it on a chair. Mrs. Googe went swiftly to the library door and
+rapped. Aileen heard the "Come in," and the exclamation that followed:
+"So you've come at last, have you!"
+
+She knew that tone of voice and what it portended. She put her fingers
+in her ears to shut out further sound of it, and ran down the hall to
+the back passageway, closed the door behind her and stood there
+trembling from nervousness.--Had Mrs. Googe obtained some inkling that
+she had a message to deliver from that son?--a message she neither could
+nor would deliver? Did Champney Googe's mother know that she had seen
+that son in the quarry woods? Mrs. Googe's friends had told her the
+truth of the affair at the sheepfold, when it was found that her
+unanswered suspicions were liable to unsettle her reason.--Could she
+know of that message? Could any one?
+
+The mere presence in the house of this suffering woman set Aileen's
+every nerve tingling with sickening despair. She determined to wait
+there in the dimly lighted back hall until Octavius should make his
+appearance, be it soon or late; he always came through here on his way
+to the ell.
+
+Aurora Googe looked neither to right nor left on entering the room. She
+went straight to the library table, on the opposite side of which Mrs.
+Champney was still sitting where Octavius had left her nearly two hours
+before. She stemmed both hands on it as if finding the support
+necessary. Fixing her eyes, already beginning to glaze with the
+increasing fever, upon her sister-in-law, she spoke, but with apparent
+effort:
+
+"Yes, I've come, at last, Almeda--I've come to ask help for my boy--"
+
+Mrs. Champney interrupted her; she was trembling visibly, even Aurora
+Googe saw that.
+
+"I suppose this is Octavius Buzzby's doings. When I gave him that
+message it was final--_final_, do you hear?"
+
+She raised her voice almost an octave in the intense excitement she was
+evidently trying to combat. The sound penetrated to Aileen, shut in the
+back hall, and again she thrust her fingers into her ears. At that
+moment Octavius entered from the outer door.
+
+"What are you doing here, Aileen?" For the first time in his life he
+spoke roughly to her.
+
+She turned upon him her white scared face. "What is _she_ doing?" she
+managed to say through chattering teeth.
+
+Octavius repented him, that under the strain of the situation he had
+spoken to her as he had. "Go to bed, Aileen," he said firmly, but
+gently; "this ain't no place for you now."
+
+She needed but that word; she was half way up the stairs before he had
+finished. He heard her shut herself into the room. He hung up his coat,
+noiselessly opened the door into the main hall, closed it softly behind
+him and took his stand half way to the library door. He saw nothing, but
+he heard all.
+
+For a moment there was silence in the room; then Aurora spoke in a dull
+strained voice:
+
+"I don't know what you mean--I haven't had any message, and--and"--she
+swallowed hard--"nothing is final--nothing--not yet--that's why I've
+come. You must help me, Almeda--help me to save Champney; there is no
+one else in our family I can call upon or who can do it--and there is a
+chance--"
+
+"What chance?"
+
+"The chance to save him from--from imprisonment--from a living death--"
+
+"Has he been taken?"
+
+"Taken!"--she swayed back from the table, clutching convulsively the
+edge to preserve her balance--"don't--don't, Almeda; it will kill me. I
+am afraid for him--afraid--don't you understand?--Help me--let me have
+the money, the amount that will save my son--free him--"
+
+She swayed back towards the table and leaned heavily upon it, as fearing
+to lose her hold lest she should sink to her knees. Mrs. Champney was
+recovering in a measure from the first excitement consequent upon the
+shock of seeing the woman she hated standing so suddenly in her
+presence. She spoke with cutting sarcasm:
+
+"What amount, may I inquire, do you deem necessary for the present to
+insure prospective freedom for your son?"
+
+"You know well enough, Almeda; I must have eighty thousand at least."
+
+Mrs. Champney laughed aloud--the same mocking laugh of a miserable old
+age that had raised Octavius Buzzby's anger to a white heat of rage.
+Hearing it again, the man of Maine, without fully realizing what he was
+doing, turned back his cuffs. He could scarce restrain himself
+sufficiently to keep his promise to Aurora.
+
+"Eighty thousand?--hm--m; between you and Octavius Buzzby there would be
+precious little left either at Champ-au-Haut or of it." She turned in
+her chair in order to look squarely up into the face of the woman on the
+opposite side of the table. "And you expect me to impoverish myself for
+the sake of Champney Googe?"
+
+"It wouldn't impoverish you--you have your father's property and more
+too; he is of your own blood--why not?"
+
+"Why not?" she repeated and laughed out again in her scorn; "why should
+I, answer me that?"
+
+"He is your brother, Warren Googe's son--don't make me say any more,
+Almeda Champney; you know that nothing but this, nothing on earth--could
+have brought me here to ask anything of _you_!"
+
+There was a ring of the old-time haughty independence in her voice;
+Octavius rejoiced to hear it. "She's getting a grip on herself," he said
+to himself; "I hope she'll give her one 'fore she gets through with
+her."
+
+"Why didn't my brother save his money for him then--if he's his son?"
+she demanded sharply, but breathing short as she spoke the last words in
+a tone that conveyed the venom of intense hatred.
+
+"Almeda, don't; you know well enough 'why'; don't keep me in such
+suspense--I can't bear it; only tell me if you will help."
+
+She seemed to gather herself together; she swept round the table; came
+close to the woman in the armchair; bent to her; the dark burning eyes
+fixed the faded blue ones. "Tell me quick, I say,--I can bear no more."
+
+"Aurora Googe, I sent word to you by Octavius Buzzby that I would not
+help your state's-prison bird--fledged from your nest, not mine,--"
+
+She did not finish, for the woman she was torturing suddenly laid a hot
+hand hard and close, for the space of a few seconds, over those
+malevolent lips. Mrs. Champney drew back, turned in her chair and
+reached for the bell.
+
+Aurora removed her hand.
+
+"Stop there, you've said enough, Almeda Champney!" she commanded her.
+She pointed to the portrait over the fireplace. "By the love he bore my
+son--by the love we two women bore him--help--"
+
+Mrs. Champney rose suddenly by great effort from her chair. The two
+women stood facing each other.
+
+"Go--go!" she cried out shrilly, hoarsely; her face was distorted with
+passion, her hands were clenched and trembling violently, "leave my
+sight--leave my house--you--_you_ ask _me_, by the love we bore Louis
+Champney, to save from his just deserts Louis Champney's bastard!"
+
+Her voice rose to a shriek; she shook her fist in Aurora's face, then
+sank into her chair and, seizing the bell, rang it furiously.
+
+Octavius darted forward, but stopped short when he heard Aurora's
+voice--low, dull, as if a sickening horror had quenched forever its
+life:
+
+"You have thought _that_ all these years?--O God!--Louis--Louis, what
+more--"
+
+She fell before Octavius could reach her. Aileen and Ann, hearing the
+bell, came running through the hall into the room.
+
+"Help me up stairs, Aileen,"--the old woman was in command as
+usual,--"give me my cane, Ann; don't stand there staring like two
+fools."
+
+Aileen made a sign to Octavius to call Hannah; the two women helped the
+mistress of Champ-au-Haut up to her room.
+
+Mrs. Googe seemed not to have lost consciousness, for as Hannah bent
+over her she noticed that her eyelids quivered.
+
+"She's all wore out, poor dear, that's what's the matter," said Hannah,
+raising her to a sitting position; she passed her hand tenderly over the
+dark hair.
+
+Aileen came running down stairs bringing salts and cologne. Hannah
+bathed her forehead and chafed her wrists.
+
+In a few minutes the white lips quivered, the eyes opened; she made an
+effort to rise. Octavius helped her to her feet; but for Aileen's arm
+around her she would have fallen again.
+
+"Take me home, Tave." She spoke in a weak voice.
+
+"I will, Aurora," he answered promptly, soothingly, although his hands
+trembled as he led her to a sofa; "I'll just hitch up the pair in the
+carryall and Hannah'll ride up with us, won't you, Hannah?"
+
+"To be sure, to be sure. Don't you grieve yourself to death, Mis'
+Googe," she said tenderly.
+
+"Don't wait to harness into the carryall, Tave--take me now--in the
+trap--take me away from here. I don't need you, Hannah. I didn't know I
+was so weak--the air will make me feel better; give me my cloak,
+Aileen."
+
+The girl wrapped her in it, adjusted the burnous, that had fallen from
+her head, and went with her to the door. Aurora turned and looked at
+her. The girl's heart was nigh to bursting. Impulsively she threw her
+arms around the woman's neck and whispered: "If you need me, do send for
+me--I'll come."
+
+But Aurora Googe went forth from Champ-au-Haut without a word either to
+the girl, to Hannah, or to Octavius Buzzby.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the first two miles they drove in silence. The night was clear but
+cold, the ground frozen hard; a northwest wind roared in the pines along
+the highroad and bent the bare treetops on the mountain side. From time
+to time Octavius heard the woman beside him sigh heavily as from
+physical exhaustion. When, at last, he felt that she was shivering, he
+spoke:
+
+"Are you cold, Aurora? I've got something extra under the seat."
+
+"No, I'm not cold; I feel burning up."
+
+He turned to look at her face in the glare of an electric light they
+were passing. It was true; the rigor was that of increasing fever; her
+cheeks were scarlet.
+
+"I wish you'd have let me telephone for the doctor; I don't feel right
+not to leave you in his hands to-night, and Ellen hasn't got any head on
+her."
+
+"No--no; I don't need him; he couldn't do me any good--nobody
+can.--Tave, did you hear her, what she said?" She leaned towards him to
+whisper her question as if she feared the dark might have ears.
+
+"Yes, I heard her--damn her! I can't help it, Aurora."
+
+"And you don't believe it--you _know_ it isn't true?"
+
+Octavius drew rein for a moment; lifted his cap and passed the back of
+his hand across his forehead to wipe off the sweat that stood in beads
+on it. He turned to the woman beside him; her dark eyes were devouring
+his face in the effort, or so it seemed, to anticipate his answer.
+
+"Aurora, I've known you" (how he longed to say "loved you," but those
+were not words for him to speak to Aurora Googe after thirty years of
+silence) "ever since you was sixteen and old Mr. Googe took you, an
+orphan girl, into his home; and I knew Louis Champney from the time he
+was the same age till he died. What I've seen, I've seen; and what I
+know, I know. Louis Champney loved you better'n he loved his life, and I
+know you loved him; but if the Almighty himself should swear it's true
+what Almeda Googe said, I wouldn't believe him--I wouldn't!"
+
+The terrible nervous strain from which the woman was suffering lessened
+under the influence of his speech. She leaned nearer.
+
+"It was not true," she whispered again; "I know you'll believe me."
+
+Her voice sounded weaker than before, and Octavius grew alarmed lest she
+have another of what Hannah termed a "sinking spell" then and there. He
+drew rein suddenly, and so tightly that the mare bounded forward and
+pulled at a forced pace up the hill to The Gore.
+
+"And she thought _that_ all these years--and I never knew. That's why
+she hates my boy and won't help--oh, how could she!"
+
+She shivered again. Octavius urged the mare to greater exertion. If only
+he could get the stricken woman home before she had another turn.
+
+"How could she?" he repeated with scathing emphasis; "just as any
+she-devil can set brooding on an evil thought for years till she's
+hatched out a devil's dozen of filthy lies." He drew the reins a little
+too tightly in his righteous wrath, and the mare reared suddenly. "What
+the dev--whoa, there Kitty, what you about?"
+
+He calmed the resentful beast, and they neared the house in The Gore at
+a quick trot.
+
+"You don't think she has ever spoken to any one before--not so, do you,
+Tave? not to Louis ever?--"
+
+"No, I don't, Aurora. Louis Champney wouldn't have stood that--I know
+him well enough for that; but she might have hinted at a something, and
+it's my belief she did. But don't you fret, Aurora; she'll never speak
+again--I'd take my oath on that--and if I dared, I'd say I wish Almighty
+God would strike her dumb for saying what she has."
+
+They had reached the house. She lifted her face to the light burning in
+her bedroom.
+
+"Oh, my boy--my boy--" she moaned beneath her breath. Octavius helped
+her out, and holding the reins in one hand, with the other supported her
+to the steps; her knees gave beneath her.--"Oh, where is he
+to-night--what shall I do!--Think for me, Tave, act for me, or I shall
+go mad--"
+
+Octavius leaned to the carriage and threw the reins around the
+whipstock.
+
+"Aurora," he grasped her firmly by the arm, "give me the key."
+
+She handed it to him; he opened the door; led her in; called loudly for
+Ellen; and when the frightened girl came hurrying down from her room, he
+bade her see to Mrs. Googe while he went for the doctor.
+
+
+XVII
+
+"The trouble is she has borne up too long."
+
+The doctor was talking to Father Honore while untying the horse from the
+hitching-post at the kitchen porch.
+
+"She has stood it longer than I thought she could; but without the
+necessary sleep even her strong constitution and splendid physique can't
+supply sufficient nerve force to withstand such a strain--it's fearful.
+Something had to give somewhere. Practically she hasn't slept for over
+three weeks, and, what's more, she won't sleep till--she knows one way
+or the other. I can't give her opiates, for the strain has weakened her
+heart--I mean functionally." He stepped into the carriage. "You haven't
+heard anything since yesterday morning, have you?"
+
+"No; but I'm inclined to think that now he has put them off the track
+and got them over the border, he will make for New York again. It's my
+belief he will try to get out of the country by that door instead of by
+way of Canada."
+
+"I never thought of that." He gathered up the reins, and, leaning
+forward from the hood, looked earnestly into the priest's eyes. "Make
+her talk if you can--it's her only salvation. She hasn't opened her lips
+to me, and till she speaks out--you understand--I can do nothing. The
+fever is only the result of the nerve-strain."
+
+"I wish it were in my power to help her. I may as well tell you
+now--but I'd like it to remain between ourselves, of course I've told
+the Colonel--that I determined last night to go down to New York and see
+if I can accomplish anything. I shall have two private detectives there
+to work with me. You know the city agency has its men out there
+already?"
+
+"No, I didn't. I thought all the force was centred here in this State
+and on the Canada line. It strikes me that if she could know you were
+going--and for what--she might speak. You might try that, and let me
+know the result."
+
+"I will."
+
+The doctor drove off. Father Honore stood for a few minutes on the back
+porch; he was thinking concentratedly:--How best could he approach the
+stricken mother and acquaint her with his decision to search for her
+son?
+
+He was roused by the sound of a gentle voice speaking in French:
+
+"Good-morning, Father Honore; how is Mrs. Googe? I have just heard of
+her illness."
+
+It was Sister Ste. Croix from the sisterhood home in The Gore.
+
+The crisp morning air tinged with a slight color her wrinkled and
+furrowed cheeks; her eyelids, also, were horribly wrinkled, as could be
+plainly seen when they drooped heavily over the dark blue eyes. Yet
+Sister Ste. Croix was still in middle life.
+
+"There is every cause for great anxiety, I grieve to say. The doctor has
+just gone."
+
+"Who is with her, do you know?"
+
+"Mrs. Caukins, so Ellen says."
+
+"Do you think she would object to having me nurse her for a while? She
+has been so lovely to me ever since I came here, and in one way and
+another we have been much together. I have tried again and again to see
+her during these dreadful weeks, but she has steadily refused to see me
+or any of us--just shut herself out from her friends."
+
+"I wish she would have you about her; it would do her good; and surely
+Mrs. Caukins can't leave her household cares to stay with her long, nor
+can she be running back and forth to attend to her. I am going to make
+the attempt to see her, and if I succeed I will tell her that you are
+ready to come at any minute--and only waiting to come to her."
+
+"Do; and won't you tell Ellen I will come down and see her this
+afternoon? Poor girl, she has been so terrified with the events of these
+last weeks that I have feared she would not stay. If I'm here, I feel
+sure she would remain."
+
+"If Mrs. Googe will not heed your request, I do hope you will make it
+your mission work to induce Ellen to stay."
+
+"Indeed, I will; I thought she might stay the more willingly if I were
+with her."
+
+"I'm sure of it," Father Honore said heartily.
+
+"Are you going in now?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, please tell Ellen that if Mrs. Googe wants me, she is to come up
+at once to tell me. Good morning."
+
+She walked rapidly down the road beside the house. Father Honore turned
+to look after her. How many, many lives there were like
+that!--unselfish, sacrificing, loving, helpful, yet unknown, unthought
+of. He watched the slight figure, the shoulders bowed already a little,
+but the step still firm and light, till it passed from sight. Then he
+entered the kitchen and encountered Mrs. Caukins.
+
+"I never was so glad to see any living soul as I am you, Father Honore,"
+was her greeting; she looked up from the lemon she was squeezing; "I
+don't dare to leave her till she gets a regular nurse. It's enough to
+break your heart to see her lying there staring straight before her and
+not saying a word--not even to the doctor. I told the Colonel when he
+was here a little while ago that I couldn't stand it much longer; it's
+getting on my nerves--if she'd only say _something_, I don't care what!"
+
+She paused in concocting the lemonade to wipe her eyes on a corner of
+her apron.
+
+"Mrs. Caukins, I wish you would say to Mrs. Googe that I am here and
+would like to speak with her before I leave town this afternoon. You
+might say I expect to be away for a few days and it is necessary that I
+should see her now."
+
+"You don't mean to say you're going to leave us right in the lurch,
+'fore we know anything about Champney!--Why, what will the Colonel do
+without you? You've been his right hand man. He's all broken up; that
+one night's work nearly killed him, and he hasn't seemed himself
+since--"
+
+Father Honore interrupted this flow of ejaculatory torrent.
+
+"I've spoken to the Colonel about my going, Mrs. Caukins. He agrees with
+me that no harm can come of my leaving here for a few days just at this
+time."
+
+"I'll tell her, Father Honore; I'm going up this minute with the
+lemonade; but it's ten to one she won't see you; she wouldn't see the
+rector last week--oh, dear me!" She groaned and left the room.
+
+She was back again in a few minutes, her eyes wide with excitement.
+
+"She says you can come up, Father Honore, and you'd better go up quick
+before she gets a chance to change her mind."
+
+He went without a word. When Mrs. Caukins heard him on the stair and
+caught the sound of his rap on the door, she turned to Ellen and spoke
+emphatically, but with trembling lips:
+
+"I don't believe the archangel Gabriel himself could look at you more
+comforting than Father Honore does; if _he_ can't help her, the Lord
+himself can't, and I don't mean that for blasphemy either. Poor
+soul--poor soul"--she wiped the tears that were rolling down her
+cheeks,--"here I am the mother of eight children and never had to lose a
+night's sleep on account of their not doing right, and here's Aurora
+with her one and can't sleep nor eat for the shame and trouble he's
+brought on her and all of us--for I'm a Googe. Life seems sometimes to
+get topsy-turvy, and I for one can't make head nor tail of it. The
+Colonel's always talking about Nature's 'levelling up,' but I don't see
+any 'levelling'; seems to me as if she was turning everything up on edge
+pretty generally.--Give me that rice I saw in the pantry, Ellen; I'm
+going to make her a little broth; I've got a nice foreshoulder piece at
+home, and it will be just the thing."
+
+Ellen, rejoicing in such talkative companionship, after the three weeks
+of dreadful silence in the house, did her bidding, at the same time
+taking occasion to ask some questions on her own part, among them one
+which set Mrs. Caukins speculating for a week: "Who do you suppose
+killed Rag?"
+
+Aurora was in bed, but propped to a sitting position by pillows. When
+Father Honore entered she started forward.
+
+"Have you heard anything?" Her voice was weak from physical exhaustion.
+
+"No, Mrs. Googe--"
+
+She sank back on the pillows; he drew a chair to the bedside.
+
+"--But I have decided to go down to New York and search for myself. I
+have a feeling he is there, not in Maine or Canada; and I know that city
+from Washington Heights to the Battery."
+
+"You think he'll be found?" She could scarcely articulate the words;
+some terror had her by the throat; her eyes showed deadly fear.
+
+"Yes, I think he will."
+
+"But she won't do anything--I--I went to her--"
+
+"Don't exert yourself too much, Mrs. Googe, but if you can tell me whom
+you mean, to whom you have applied, it might help me to act
+understandingly."
+
+"To his aunt--I went last night."
+
+"Mrs. Champney?"
+
+She closed her eyes and made a motion of assent.
+
+"And she will do nothing?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I fail to understand this. Surely she might give of her abundance to
+save one who is of her own blood. Would it do any good, do you think,
+for me to see her? I'll gladly go."
+
+She shook her head. "You don't understand."
+
+He waited in silence for some further word; for her to open her eyes at
+least. But none was forthcoming; the eyes remained closed. After a while
+he said gently:
+
+"Perhaps I might understand, if you felt willing to tell me, if the
+effort is not too great."
+
+She opened her eyes and fixed them apathetically on the strong helpful
+face.
+
+"I wonder if you could understand--I don't know--you're not a woman--"
+
+"No, but I am human, Mrs. Googe; and human sympathy is a great
+enlightener."
+
+"The weight here--and here!" She raised one hand to her head, the other
+she laid over her heart. "If I could get rid of that for one hour--I
+should be strong again--to live--to endure."
+
+Father Honore was silent. He knew the long pent stream of grief and
+misery must flow in its own channel when once it should burst its
+bounds.
+
+"My son must never know--you will give me your word?"
+
+"I give you my word, Mrs. Googe."
+
+She leaned forward from her pillows, looked anxiously at the door, which
+was open into the hall, then whispered:
+
+"She said--my son was Louis Champney's--bastard;--_you_ don't believe
+it, do you?"
+
+For the space of a second Father Honore shrank within himself. He could
+not tell at that moment whether he had here to do with an overwrought
+brain, with a mind obsessed, or with an awful fact. But he answered
+without hesitation and out of his inmost conviction:
+
+"No, I do not believe it, Mrs. Googe."
+
+"I thought you wouldn't--Octavius didn't." She sighed profoundly as if
+relieved from pain. "That's why she hates me--why she will not help."
+
+"In that case I will go to Mr. Van Ostend. I asked to see you that I
+might tell you this."
+
+"Will you--oh, will you?" She sighed again--a sigh of great physical
+relief, for she placed her hand again over her heart, pressing it hard.
+
+"That helps here," she said, passing her other hand over her forehead;
+"perhaps I can tell you now, before you go--perhaps it will help more."
+
+Her voice grew stronger with every full breath she was now able to draw.
+Gradually a look of comprehension replaced the apathetic stare. She
+looked squarely at the priest for the first time since his entrance.
+Father Honore could but wonder if the thought behind that look would
+find adequate expression.
+
+"You haven't said 'God' to me once since that--that night. Don't speak
+to me about Him now, will you? He's too far away--it doesn't mean
+anything to me."
+
+"Mrs. Googe, there comes a time in most lives when God seems so far away
+that we can find Him only through the Human;--perhaps such a time has
+come in your life."
+
+"I don't know; I never thought much about that. But--my god was human,
+oh, for so many years!--I loved Louis Champney."
+
+Again there was a long inhalation and exhalation. It seemed as if each
+admission, which she forced herself to make, loosened more and more the
+tension of the long-racked nerves; as a result the muscles of the throat
+relaxed, the articulation grew distinct, the voice stronger.
+
+"--And he loved me--better than life itself. I was so young when it
+began--only sixteen. My husband's father took me into his home then to
+bring up; I was an orphan. And Louis Champney loved me then and
+always--but Almeda Googe, my husband's sister, loved him too--in her
+way. Her own father could do nothing with her awful will--it crushed
+everybody that came in contact with it--that opposed it; it crushed
+me--and in the end, Louis."
+
+She took a little of the lemonade to moisten her lips and went on:
+
+"She was twelve years older than he. She took him when he was in
+college; worked on him, lied to him about me; told him I loved her
+brother; worked backwards, forwards, underhanded--any way to influence
+him against me and get her hold upon him. He went to Europe; she
+followed; wrote lying letters to her brother--said she was engaged to be
+married to Louis before her return; told Louis I was going to marry her
+brother, Warren Googe--in the end she had her way, and always has had
+it, and will have it. I married Warren Googe; she was forty when she
+married Louis at twenty-eight."
+
+She paused, straightened herself. Something like animation came into her
+face.
+
+"It does me good to speak--at last. I've never spoken in all these
+years--and I can tell you. My child was born seven months after my
+husband's death. Louis Champney came to see me then--up here, in this
+room; it was the first time we had dared to see each other alone--but
+the baby lay beside me; _that kept us_. He said but little; but he took
+up the child and looked at him; then he turned to me. 'This should have
+been our son, Aurora,' he said, and I--oh, what will you think of me!"
+She dropped her head into her hands.
+
+"I knew in my heart that during all those months I was carrying Warren
+Googe's child, I had only one thought: 'Oh, if it were only Louis' and
+mine!' And because I was a widow, I felt free to dwell upon that one
+thought night and day. Louis' face was always before me. I came in
+thought to look upon him as the true father of my boy--not that other
+for whom I had had no love. And I took great comfort in that
+thought--and--and--my boy is the living image of Louis Champney."
+
+She withdrew her hands, clasping them nervously and rubbing them in each
+other.
+
+"Oh, I sinned, I sinned in thought, and I've been punished, but there
+was never anything more--and last night I had to hear that from her!"
+
+For a moment the look of deadly fear returned to the eyes, but only for
+a moment; her hands continued to work nervously.
+
+"Never anything more; only that day when he took my boy in his arms and
+said what he did, we both knew we could not see much of each other for
+the rest of our lives--that's why I've kept so much to myself. He kissed
+the baby then, laid him in my arms and, stooping, kissed me once--only
+once--I've lived on that--and said: 'I will do all I can for this boy.'
+And--and"--her lips trembled for the first time--"that little baby, as
+it lay on my breast, saved us both. It was renunciation--but it made me
+hard; it killed Louis.
+
+"I saw Louis seldom and always in the presence of my boy. But Almeda
+Champney was not satisfied with what she had done; she transferred her
+jealousy to my son. She was jealous of every word Louis spoke to him;
+jealous of every hour he was with him. When Louis died, still young--my
+son was left unprovided for. That was Almeda Champney's work--she
+wouldn't have it.
+
+"Then I sold the first quarry for means to send Champney to college; and
+I sold the rest in order to start him well in business, in the world.
+But I know that at the bottom of my ambition for him, was the desire
+that he might succeed in spite of the fact that his aunt had kept from
+him the property which Louis Champney intended to be his. My ambition
+has been overweening for Champney's material success--I have urged him
+on, when I should have restrained. I have aided him to the extent of my
+ability to attain his end. I longed to see him in a position that,
+financially, would far out-shine hers. I felt it would compensate in
+part. I loved my son--and I loved in him Louis Champney. I alone am to
+blame for what has come of it--I--his mother."
+
+Her lips trembled excessively. She waited to control them before she
+could continue.
+
+"Last night, when I begged her to help me, she answered me with what I
+told you. I could bear no more--"
+
+She leaned back on the pillows, exhausted for a while with her great
+effort, but the light of renewed life shone from every feature.
+
+"I am better now," she said, turning to Father Honore the dark hollow
+eyes so full of gratitude that the priest looked away from her.
+
+While this page in human history was being laid open before him, Father
+Honore said nothing. The confession it contained was so awful in its
+still depths of pure passion, so far-reaching in its effects on a human
+soul, that he felt suddenly the utter insignificance of his own
+existence, the futility of all words, the meagreness of all sympathetic
+expression. And he was honest enough to withhold all attempt at such.
+
+"I fear you are very tired," he said, and rose to go.
+
+"No, no; I am better already. The telling has done me such good. I shall
+soon be up and about. When do you go?"
+
+"This afternoon; and you may expect telegrams from me at almost any
+time; so don't be alarmed simply because I send them. I thought you
+would prefer to know from day to day."
+
+"You are good--but I can say nothing." The tears welled at last and
+overflowed on her cheeks.
+
+"Don't say that--I beg of you." He spoke almost sharply, as if hurt
+physically. "Nothing is needed--and I hope you will let Sister Ste.
+Croix come in for a few days and care for you. She wants to come."
+
+"Tell her to come. I think I am willing to see any one now--something
+has given way here;" she pressed her hand to her head; "it's a great
+relief."
+
+"Good-bye." He held out his hand and she placed hers in it; the tears
+kept rolling down her cheeks.
+
+"Tell my darling boy, when you see him, that it was my fault--and I love
+him so--oh, how I love him--" Her voice broke in a sob.
+
+Father Honore left the room to cover his emotion. He spoke to Ellen from
+the hall, and went out at the front door in order to avoid Mrs. Caukins.
+He had need to be alone.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That afternoon at the station, Octavius Buzzby met him on the platform.
+
+"Mr. Buzzby, is there any truth in the rumor I heard, as I came to the
+train, that Mrs. Champney has had a stroke?"
+
+The face of Champ-au-Haut's factotum worked strangely before he made
+answer.
+
+"Yes, she's had a slight shock. The doctor told me this morning that he
+knew she'd had the first one over three years ago; this is the second.
+I've come down for a nurse he telegraphed for; I expect her on the next
+train up--and, Father Honore--" he hesitated; his hands were working
+nervously in each other.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Buzzby?"
+
+"I come down to see you, too, on purpose--"
+
+"To see me?" Father Honore looked his surprise; his thoughts leaped to a
+possible demand on Mrs. Champney's part for his presence at
+Champ-au-Haut--she might have repented her words, changed her mind;
+might be ready to help her nephew. In that case, he would wait for the
+midnight train.
+
+The man of Maine's face was working painfully again; he was struggling
+for control; his feelings were deep, tender, loyal; he was capable of
+any sacrifice for a friend.
+
+"Father Honore--I don't want to butt in anywhere--into what ain't my
+business, but I do want to know if you're going to New York?"
+
+"Yes, I am."
+
+"Are you going to try to see _him_?"
+
+"I'm going to try to find him--for his mother's sake and his own."
+
+Octavius Buzzby grasped his hand and wrung it. "God bless you!" He
+fumbled with his left hand in his breast pocket and drew forth a
+package. "Here, you take this--it's honest money, all mine--you use it
+for Champney--to help out, you know, in any way you see fit."
+
+Father Honore was so moved he could not speak at once.
+
+"If Mr. Googe could know what a friend he has in you, Mr. Buzzby," he
+said at last, "I don't think he could wholly despair, whatever might
+come,"--he pressed the package back into Octavius' hand,--"keep it with
+you, it's safer; and I promise you if I need it I will call on you."
+Suddenly his indignation got the better of him--"But this is
+outrageous!"--he spoke in a low voice but vehemently,--"Mrs. Champney is
+abundantly able to do this for her nephew, whereas you--"
+
+"You're right, sir, it's a damned outrage--I beg your pardon, Father
+Honore, I hadn't ought to said that, but I've seen so much, and I'm all
+broke up, I guess, with what I've been through since yesterday. I went
+to her myself then and made bold to ask her to help with her riches
+that's bringing her in eight per cent, and told her some plain truths--"
+
+"You went--!" Father Honore exclaimed; he had almost said "too," but
+caught himself in time.
+
+"Yes, I went, and all I got was an insult for my pains. She's a
+she-dev--I beg your pardon, sir; it would serve me right if the Almighty
+struck me dumb with a stroke like hers, only hers don't affect her
+speech any, Aileen says--I guess her tongue's insured against shock for
+life, but it hadn't ought to be, sir, not after the blasphemy it's
+uttered. But I ain't the one to throw stones, not after what I've just
+said in your presence, sir, and I do beg your pardon, I know what's due
+to the clo--"
+
+The train, rounding the curve, whistled deafeningly.
+
+Father Honore grasped both Octavius' hands; held them close in a firm
+cordial grip; looked straight into the small brown eyes that were filled
+with tears, the result of pure nervousness.
+
+"We men understand each other, Mr. Buzzby; no apology is necessary--let
+me have your prayers while I am away, I shall need them--good-bye--" He
+entered the car.
+
+Octavius Buzzby lifted his hat and stood bareheaded on the platform till
+the train drew out.
+
+
+
+
+PART FOURTH
+
+Oblivion
+
+
+I
+
+"I have called to see Mr. Van Ostend, by appointment," said Father
+Honore to the footman in attendance at the door of the mansion on the
+Avenue.
+
+He was shown into the library. Mr. Van Ostend rose from the armchair to
+greet him.
+
+"I am glad to see you, Father Honore." He shook hands cordially and drew
+up a chair opposite to his own before the blazing hearth. "Be seated; I
+have given orders that we are not to be interrupted. I cannot pretend
+ignorance as to the cause of your coming--a sad, bad matter for us all.
+Have you any news?"
+
+"Only that he is here in New York."
+
+Mr. Van Ostend looked startled. "Here? Since when? My latest advice was
+this afternoon from the Maine detectives."
+
+"I heard yesterday from headquarters that he had been traced here, but
+he must be in hiding somewhere; thus far they've found no trace of him.
+I felt sure, from the very first, he would return; that is why I came
+down. He couldn't avoid detection any longer in the country, nor could
+he hold out another week in the Maine wilderness--no man could stand it
+in this weather."
+
+"How long have you been here, Father Honore?"
+
+"Three days. I promised Mrs. Googe to do what I could to find him; the
+mother suffers most."
+
+"I know--I know; it's awful for her; but, for God's sake, what did he do
+it for!"
+
+"Why do we all sin at times?"
+
+"Yes, yes--I know; that's your point of view, but that does not answer
+me in this case. He had every opportunity to work along legitimate lines
+towards the end he professed to wish to attain--and he had the ability
+to attain it; I know this from my experience with him. What could have
+possessed him to put himself in the place of a sneak thief--he, born a
+gentleman, with Champney blood in his veins?"
+
+Father Honore did not answer his question which was more an indignant
+ejaculation.
+
+"You spoke of my 'point of view,' Mr. Van Ostend. I think I know what
+that implies; you mean from the point of view of the priesthood?"
+
+The man on the opposite side of the fire-lighted hearth looked at him in
+surprise. "Yes, just that; but I intended no reflection on your opinion;
+perhaps I ought to say frankly, that it implied a doubt of your powers
+of judgment in a business matter like the one in question. Naturally, it
+does not lie in your line."
+
+Father Honore smiled a little sadly. "Perhaps you may recall that old
+saying of the Jew, Nathan the Wise: 'A man is a man before he is either
+Christian or Jew.' And we are men, Mr. Van Ostend; men primarily before
+we are either financier or priest. Let us speak as man to man; put aside
+all points of view entailed by difference of training, and meet on the
+common ground of our manhood, I am sure the perspective and
+retrospective ought to be in the same line of vision from that
+standpoint."
+
+Mr. Van Ostend was silent. He was thinking deeply. The priest saw this,
+and waited for the answer which he felt sure would be well thought out
+before it found expression. He spoke at last, slowly, weighing his
+words:
+
+"I am questioning whether, with the best intentions as men to meet in
+the common plane of our manhood, to see from thence alike in a certain
+direction, you and I, at our age, can escape from the moulded lines of
+our training into that common plane."
+
+"I think we can if we keep to the fundamentals of life."
+
+"We can but try; but there must be then an absolutely unclouded
+expression of individual opinion on the part of each." His assertion
+implied both a challenge and a doubt. "What is your idea of the reason
+for his succumbing to such a temptation?"
+
+"I believe it was the love of money and the power its acquisition
+carries with it. I know, too, that Mrs. Googe blames herself for having
+fostered this ambition in him. She would only too gladly place anything
+that is hers to make good, but there is nothing left; it all went." He
+straightened himself. "What I have come to you for, Mr. Van Ostend, is
+to ask you one direct question: Are you willing to make good the amount
+of the embezzlement to the syndicate and save prosecution in this
+special case--save the man, Champney Googe, and so give him another
+chance in life? You know, but not so well, perhaps, as I, what years in
+a penitentiary mean for a man when he leaves it."
+
+"Are you aware that you are asking me to put a premium on crime?" Mr.
+Van Ostend asked coldly. He looked at the priest as if he thought he had
+taken leave of his senses.
+
+"That is one way of putting it, I admit; but there is another. Let me
+put it to you: if you had had a son; if he were fatherless; if he had
+fallen through emulation of other men, wouldn't you like to know that
+some man might lend a hand for the sake of the mother?"
+
+"I don't know. Stealing is stealing, whether my son were the thief or
+another man's. Why shouldn't a man take his punishment? You know the
+everyday argument: the man who steals a loaf of bread gets nine months,
+and the man who steals a hundred thousand gets clear. If the law is for
+the one and not for the other, the result is, logically, anarchy.
+Besides, the man, not he of the street who steals because he is hungry,
+but the one who has every advantage of education and environment to make
+his way right in life, goes wrong knowingly. Are we in this case to
+coddle, to sympathize, to let ourselves be led into philanthropic drivel
+over 'judge not that ye be not judged'? I cannot see it so."
+
+"You are right in your reasoning, but you are reasoning according to the
+common law, man-made; and I said we could agree only if we keep to the
+fundamentals of life."
+
+"Well, if the law isn't a fundamental, what is?"
+
+"I heard Bishop Brooks once say: 'The Bible _was_ before ever it was
+written.' And perhaps I can best answer your question by saying the law
+of the human existed before the law of which you are thinking was ever
+written. Love, mercy, long-suffering _were_ before the law formulated
+'an eye for an eye,' or this world could not have existed to the
+present time for you and me. It is in recognition of that, in dealing
+with the human, that I make my appeal to you--for the mother, first and
+foremost, who suffers through the son, her first-born and only child, as
+your daughter is your only--" Mr. Van Ostend interrupted him.
+
+"I must beg you, Father Honore, not to bring my daughter's name into
+this affair. I have suffered enough--enough."
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend, pardon me the seeming discourtesy in your own house,
+but I am compelled to mention it. After you have given your final
+decision to my importuning, there can be no further appeal. The man, if
+living, must go to prison. Mrs. Champney positively refuses to help her
+nephew in any way. She has been approached twice on the subject of
+advancing four-fifths of the hundred thousand; she can do it, but she
+won't. She is not a mother; neither has she any real love for her
+nephew, for she refuses to aid him in his extremity. I mentioned your
+daughter, because you must know that her name has been in the past
+connected with the man for whom I am asking the boon of another chance
+in life. I have felt convinced that for her sake, if for no other, you
+would make this sacrifice."
+
+"My daughter, I am glad to inform you, never cared for the man. She is
+too young, too undeveloped. It is the one thing that makes it possible
+for me to contemplate what he has done with any degree of sanity. Had he
+won her affections, had she loved him--" He paused: it was impossible
+for him to proceed.
+
+"Thank God that she was spared that!" Father Honore ejaculated under his
+breath. Mr. Van Ostend looking at him keenly, perceived that he was
+under the influence of some powerful emotion. He turned to him, a mute
+question on his lips. Father Honore answered that mute query with
+intense earnestness, by repeating what, apparently, he had said to
+himself:
+
+"I thank my God that she never cared for him in that way, for otherwise
+her life would have been wrecked; nor could you, who would lay down your
+life for her happiness, have spared or saved her,--her young affections,
+her young faith and joy in life, all shattered, and Life the iconoclast!
+That is the saddest part of it. It is women who suffer most and always.
+In making this appeal to you, I have had continually in mind his mother,
+and you, the father of a woman. I know how your pride must have suffered
+in the knowledge that his name, even, has been connected with hers--but
+your suffering is as naught compared with that mother's who, at this
+very moment, is waiting for some telegram from me that shall tell her
+her son is found, is saved. But I will not over urge, Mr. Van Ostend. If
+you feel you cannot do this, that it is a matter of principle with you
+to refuse, there is no need to prolong this interview which is painful
+to us both. I thank you for the time you have given me." He rose to go.
+Mr. Van Ostend did likewise.
+
+At that moment a girl's joyous voice sounded in the hall just outside
+the door.
+
+"Oh, never mind that, Beales; papa never considers me an interruption.
+I'm going in, anyway, to say good night; I don't care if all Wall Street
+is there. Has the carriage come?"
+
+There was audible the sound of a subdued protest; then came a series of
+quick taps on the door and the sound of the gay voice again:
+
+"Papa--just a minute to say good night; if I can't come in, do you come
+out and give me a kiss--do you hear?"
+
+The two men looked at each other. Mr. Van Ostend stepped quickly to the
+door and, opening it, stood on the threshold. Something very like a
+diaphanous white cloud enwrapped him; two thin arms, visible through it,
+went suddenly round his neck; then his arms enfolded her.
+
+"Oh, Papsy dear, don't hug me so hard! You'll crush all my flowers. Ben
+sent them; wasn't he a dear? I've promised him the cotillon to-night for
+them. Good night." She pecked at his cheek again as he released her; the
+cloud of white liberty silk tulle drifted away from the doorway and left
+it a blank.
+
+Mr. Van Ostend closed the door; came back to the hearth; stood there,
+his arms folded tightly over his chest, his head bowed. For a few
+minutes neither man spoke. When the clock on the mantel chimed a quarter
+to nine, Father Honore made a movement to go. Mr. Van Ostend turned
+quickly to him and put out a detaining hand.
+
+"May I ask if you are going to continue the search this evening; it's a
+bad night."
+
+"Yes; I've had the feeling that, after he has been so long in hiding,
+he'll have to come out--he must be at the end of his strength. I am
+going out with two detectives now; they have been on the case with me.
+This is quite apart from the general detective agency's work."
+
+"Father Honore," Mr. Van Ostend spoke with apparent effort, "I know I am
+right in my reasoning--and you are right in your fundamentals. We both
+may be wrong in the end, you in appealing to me for this aid to restrain
+prosecution, and I in giving it. Time alone will show us. But if we are,
+we must take the consequences of our act. If, by yielding, I make it
+easier for another man to do as Champney Googe has done, may God forgive
+me; I could never forgive myself. If you, in asking this, have erred in
+freeing from his punishment a man who deserves every bit he can get, you
+will have to reckon with your own conscience.--Don't misunderstand me.
+No spirit of philanthropy influences me in my act. Don't credit me with
+any 'love-to-man' attitude. I am going to advance the sum necessary to
+avoid prosecution if you find him; but I do it solely on that mother's
+account, and"--he hesitated--"because I don't want her, whom you have
+just seen, connected, even remotely, by the thought of what a
+penitentiary term implies. I don't want to entertain the thought that
+even the hem of _my_ child's garment has been so much as touched by a
+hand that will work at hard labor for seven, perhaps fifteen, years. And
+I want you to understand that, in yielding, my principle remains
+unchanged. I owe it to you to say this much, for you have dealt with me
+as man to man."
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend, we may both be in the wrong, as you say; if it prove
+so, I shall be the first to acknowledge my error to you. My one thought
+has been to save that mother further agony and to give a man, still
+young, another chance."
+
+"I've understood it so."
+
+He went to his writing table, sat down at it, and, for a moment, busied
+himself with making out his personal check for one hundred thousand
+dollars payable to the Flamsted Granite Quarries Company. He handed it
+to Father Honore to look at. The priest read it.
+
+"Whatever bail is needed, if an arrest should follow now," said Mr. Van
+Ostend further and significantly, "I will be responsible for."
+
+The two men clasped hands and looked understandingly into each other's
+eyes. What each read therein, what each felt in the other's palm beats,
+they realized there was no need to express in words.
+
+"Let me hear, Father Honore, so soon as you learn anything definite;
+I'll keep you posted so far as I hear."
+
+"I will. Good night, Mr. Van Ostend."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On reaching the iron gates to the courtyard, the priest stepped aside to
+give unimpeded passage to a carriage just leaving the house. As it
+passed him, the electric light flashed athwart the bowed glass front,
+already dripping with sleet, and behind it he caught a glimpse of a
+girl's delicate face that rose from out the folds of a chinchilla wrap,
+like a flower from its sheath. She was chatting gaily with her maid.
+
+
+II
+
+The night was wild. New York can show such in late November. A gale from
+the northeast was driving before it a heavy sleet that froze as it
+fell, coating the overhead wires and glazing the asphalt and sidewalks.
+
+It lacked an hour of midnight. From Fleischmann's bakery, the goal of
+each man among the shivering hundreds lined up on Tenth Street, the
+light streamed out upon a remnant of Life's jetsam--that which is
+submerged, which never comes to the surface unless drawn there by some
+searching and rescuing hand; that which the home-sheltered never see by
+daylight, never know, save from hearsay. In the neighboring rectory of
+Grace Church one dim light was burning in an upper room. The marble
+church itself looked a part of the winter scene; its walls and
+pinnacles, already encrusted with ice crystals, glittered fantastically
+in the rays of the arc-light; beneath them, the dark, shuffling,
+huddling line of humanity moved uneasily in the discomfort of the keen
+wind.
+
+At twelve o 'clock, each unknown, unidentified human unit in that line,
+as he reaches the window, puts forth his hand for the loaf, and
+thrusting it beneath his coat, if he be so fortunate as to have one, or
+under his arm, vanishes....
+
+Whither? As well ask: Whence came he?
+
+Well up towards the bakery, because the hour was early, stood Champney
+Googe, unknown, unidentified as yet by three men, Father Honore and two
+detectives, who from the dark archway of a sunken area farther down the
+street were scanning this bread-line. The man for whom they were
+searching held his head low. An old broad-brimmed felt hat was jammed
+over his forehead, almost covering his eyes. The face beneath its shadow
+was sunken, drawn; the upper lip, chin, and cheeks covered with a three
+weeks' growth of hair that had been blackened with soot. The long period
+of wandering in the Maine wilderness had reduced his clothes to a
+minimum. His shoes were worn, the leather split, showing bare flesh.
+Like hundreds of others in like case, he found himself forced into this
+line, even at the risk of detection, through the despairing desperation
+of hunger. There was nothing left for him but this--that is, if he were
+not to starve. And after this, there remained for him but one thing, one
+choice out of three final ones--he knew this well: flight and
+expatriation, the act of grace by which a man frees himself from this
+life, or the penitentiary. Which should it be?
+
+"Never that last, never!" he said over and over again to himself during
+this last month. "Never, never _that_!"
+
+It was the horror of that which spurred him to unimaginable exertion in
+the wilderness in order to escape the detectives on his track; to put
+them off the scent; to lead them to the Canada border and so induce them
+to cross it in their search. He had succeeded; and thereafter his one
+thought was to get to New York, to that metropolis where the human unit
+is reduced to the zero power, and can dive under, even vanish, to
+reappear only momently on the surface to breathe. But having reached the
+city, by stolen rides on the top of freight cars, and plunging again
+into its maelstrom, he found himself still in the clutch of this
+unnamable horror. Docks, piers, bridges, stations were become mere
+detective terminals to him--things to be shunned at all cost. The long
+perspective of the avenues, the raking view from river to river in the
+cross streets, afforded him no shelter from watching eyes--in every
+passing glance he read his doom; these, too, were things to be avoided
+at all hazard.
+
+For four nights, since he sought refuge in New York, he had crawled into
+an empty packing-box in a black alley behind a Water Street wholesale
+house. Twice, during this time, he had made the attempt to board as
+stowaway an outward-bound steamship and sailing vessel for a South
+American port; but he had failed, for the Eyes were upon him--always the
+Eyes wherever he went, whenever he looked, Eyes that were spotting him.
+In the weakness consequent upon prolonged fasting and the protracted
+exposure during his journey from Maine, this horror was becoming an
+obsession bordering on delirium. It was even now beginning to dull the
+two senses of sight and hearing--at least, he imagined it--as he stood
+in line waiting for the loaf that should keep him another day, keep him
+for one of two alternatives: flight, if possible to South America,
+or ...
+
+As he stood there, the fear that his sight might grow suddenly dim, that
+he might in consequence fail in recognition of those Eyes so constantly
+on the lookout for him, suddenly increased. He grew afraid, at last, to
+look up--What if the Eyes should be there! He bore the ever-increasing
+horror as long as he could, then--better starve and have done with it
+than die like a dog from sheer fright!--he stepped cautiously, softly,
+starting at the crackle of the ice under his tread, off the curbstone
+into the street. So far he was safe. He kept his head low, and walked
+carelessly towards Third Avenue. When nearing the corner he determined
+he would look up. He took the middle of the street. It cost him a
+supreme effort to raise his eyes, to look stealthily about him, behind,
+before, to right, to left--
+
+_What was that in the dark area archway!_ His sight blurred for the
+moment, so increasing the blackness of impending horror; then, under the
+influence of this last applied stimulus, his sight grew preternaturally
+keen. He discerned one moving form--two--three; to his over-strained
+nerves there seemed a whole posse behind them. Oh, the Eyes, the Eyes
+that were so constantly on him! Could he never rid himself of them! He
+bent his head to the sleeting blast and darted down the middle of the
+street to Second Avenue.
+
+_He knew now the alternative._
+
+After a possible five seconds of hesitation the three men gave chase. It
+was the make of the man, his motion as he started to run, the running
+itself as Champney took the middle of the street, by which Father Honore
+marked him. It was just such a start, just such running, as the priest
+had seen many a time on the football field when the goal, which should
+decide for victory, was to be made. He recognized it at once.
+
+"That's he!" He spoke under his breath to the two men; the three started
+in pursuit.
+
+But Champney Googe was running to goal, and the old training stood him
+in good stead. He was across Second Avenue before the men were half way
+down Tenth Street; down Eighth Street towards East River he fled, but at
+First he doubled on his tracks and eluded them. They lost him as he
+turned into Second Avenue again; not a footstep showed on the
+ice-coated pavement. They stopped at a telephone station to notify the
+police at the Brooklyn Bridge terminals, then paused to draw a long
+breath.
+
+"You're sure 't was him?" One of the detectives appealed to Father
+Honore.
+
+"Yes, I'm sure."
+
+"He give us the slip this time; he knew we was after him," the other
+panted rather than spoke, for the long run had winded him. "I never see
+such running--and look at the glare of ice! He'd have done me up in
+another block."
+
+"Well, the hunt's up for to-night, anyway. There's no use tobogganning
+round after such a hare at this time of night," said the other, wiping
+the wet snow from the inside of his coat collar.
+
+"We've spotted him sure enough," said the first, "and I think, sir, with
+due notifications at headquarters for all the precincts to-night, we can
+run him down and in to-morrow. If you've no more use for me, I'll just
+step round to headquarters and get the lines on him before
+daylight--that is, if they'll work." He looked dubiously at the sagging
+ice-laden wires.
+
+"You won't need me any longer?" The second man spoke inquiringly, as if
+he would like to know Father Honore's next move.
+
+"I don't need you both, but I'd like one of you to volunteer to keep me
+company, for a while, at least. I can't give up this way, although I
+know no more of his whereabouts than you do. I've a curious unreasoning
+feeling that he'll try the ferries next."
+
+"He can't get at the bridge--we've headed him off there, and it's a bad
+night. It's been my experience that this sort don't take to water, not
+naturally, on such nights as this. We might try one of the Bowery
+lodging houses that I know this sort finds out sometimes. I'll go with
+you, if you like."
+
+"Thank you, I want to try the ferries first; we'll begin at the Battery
+and work up. How long does the Staten Island boat run?"
+
+"Not after one; but they'll be behind time to-night; it's getting to be
+a smothering snow. I don't believe the elevated can run on time either,
+and we've got three blocks to walk to the next station."
+
+"We'd better be going, then." Father Honore bade the other man good
+night, and the two walked rapidly to the nearest elevated station on
+Second Avenue. It was an up-town train that rolled in covered with sleet
+and snow, and they were obliged to wait fully a quarter of an hour
+before a south bound one took them to the Battery.
+
+The wind was lessening, but a heavy snowfall had set in. They made their
+way across the park to the "tongue that laps the commerce of the world."
+
+Where was that commerce now? Wholly vanished with the multiple daytime
+activities that centre near this spot. The great fleet of incoming and
+out-going ocean liners, of vessels, barges, tows, ferries, tugs--where
+were they in the drifting snow that was blotting out the night in opaque
+white? The clank and rush of the elevated, the strident grinding of the
+trolleys, the polyglot whistling and tooting of the numerous small river
+craft, the cries of 'longshoremen, the roaring basal note of
+metropolitan mechanism--all were silenced. Nothing was to be heard, at
+the moment of their arrival, but the heavy wash of the harbor waters
+against the sea wall and its yeasting churn in the ferry slip.
+
+Near the dock-house they saw some half-obliterated tracks in the snow.
+Father Honore bent to examine them; it availed him nothing. He looked at
+his watch; at the same moment he heard the distant hoarse half-smothered
+whistle repeated again and again and the deadened beat of the paddle
+wheels. Gradually the boat felt her way into the slip. The snow was
+falling heavily.
+
+"We will wait here until the boat leaves," said Father Honore, stepping
+inside to a dark wind-sheltered angle of the house.
+
+"It's a wild goose chase we're on," muttered his companion after a
+while. The next moment he laid a heavy hand on the priest's arm,
+gripping it hard, every muscle tense.
+
+A heavy brewery team, drawn by noble Percherons, rumbled past them down
+the slip. On it, behind the driver's seat, was the figure of a man,
+crouched low. Had it not been for the bandaged arm and the unnatural
+contour it gave to the body's profile, they might have failed to
+recognize him. The two stood motionless in the blackness of the inner
+angle, pressing close to the iron pillars as their man passed them at a
+distance of something less than twelve feet. The warning bell rang; they
+hurried on board.
+
+After the boat was well out into the harbor, the detective entered the
+cabin to investigate. He returned to report to Father Honore that the
+man was not inside.
+
+"Outside then," said the priest, drawing a sharp short breath.
+
+The two made their way forward, keeping well behind the team. Father
+Honore saw Champney standing by the outside guard chain. He was whitened
+by the clinging snow. The driver of the team sang out to him: "I say,
+pardner, you'd better come inside!"
+
+He neither turned nor spoke, but, bracing himself, suddenly crouched to
+the position for a standing leap, fist clenched....
+
+A great cry rang out into the storm-filled night:
+
+"Champney!"
+
+The two men flung themselves upon him as he leaped, and in the ensuing
+struggle the three rolled together on the deck. He fought them like a
+madman, using his bandaged arm, his feet, his head. He was powerful with
+the fictitious strength of desperation and thwarted intent. But the two
+men got the upper hand, and, astride the prostrate form, the detective
+forced on the handcuffs. At the sound of the clinking irons, the
+prisoner suffered collapse then and there.
+
+"Thank God!" said Father Honore as he lifted the limp head and
+shoulders. With the other's aid he carried him into the cabin and laid
+him on the floor. The priest took off his own wet cloak, then his coat;
+with the latter he covered the poor clay that lay apparently
+lifeless--no one should look upon that face either in curiosity,
+contempt, or pity.
+
+The detective went out to interview the driver of the team.
+
+"Where'd you pick him up?"
+
+"'Long on West Street, just below Park Place. I see by the way he spoke
+he'd broke his wind--asked if I was goin' to a ferry an' if I'd give him
+a lift. I said 'Come along,' and asked no questions. He ain't the first
+I've helped out o' trouble, but I guess I've got him in sure enough this
+time."
+
+"You're going to put up on the Island?"
+
+"Yes; but what business is it o' a decent-looking cove like youse, I'd
+like to know."
+
+"Well, it's this way: we've got to get this man back to New York
+to-night; it's the boat's last trip and there ain't a chance of getting
+a cab or hack in this blizzard, and at this time of night, to get him up
+from the ferry. If you'll take the job, I'll give you fifteen dollars
+for it."
+
+"That ain't so easy earned in a reg'lar snow-in; besides, I don't want
+to be a party to gettin' him furder into your grip by takin' him over."
+
+"Oh, that's all right. He's got a friend with him who'll see to him for
+the rest of the night."
+
+"Well, I don't mind then. It's goin' on one now, an' I might as well
+make a night o' it on t' other side. It's damned hard on the hosses,
+though, an' it's ten to one I don't get lifted myself by one o' them
+cussed cruelty to animil fellers that sometimes poke their noses into
+the wrong end o' their business.--Make it twenty an' it is done."
+
+The detective smiled. "Twenty it is." He patted the noble Percherons and
+felt their warmth under the blankets. "You're not the kind they're
+after. What have you got in your team?"
+
+"Nothing but the hosses' feed-bags."
+
+"That'll do. We'll put him in now in case any one comes on at Staten
+Island for the return trip. You don't know nothing about _this_, you
+know." He looked at him knowingly.
+
+"All right, Cap'n; I'd be willin' to say I was a bloomin' idjot for two
+saw-horses. Come, rake out."
+
+The detective laughed. "Here's ten to bind the bargain--the rest when
+you've landed him."
+
+
+III
+
+The brewery team made its way slowly up from the ferry owing to the
+drifting snow and icy pavements. From time to time a plough ran on the
+elevated, or on the trolley tracks, and sent the snow in fan-like spurts
+from the fender. The driver drew rein in a west-side street off lower
+Seventh Avenue. It was a brotherhood house where the priest had taken a
+room for an emergency like the present one. He knew that within these
+walls no questions would be asked, yet every aid given, if required, in
+just these circumstances. The man beneath the horse-blankets was still
+unconscious when they lifted him out, and carried him up to a large room
+in the topmost story. The detective, after removing the handcuffs, asked
+if he could be of any further use that night. He stepped to the side of
+the cot and looked searchingly into the passive face on the pillow.
+
+"No; he's safe here," Father Honore replied. "You will notify the police
+and the other detectives. I will go bail for him if any should be
+needed; but I may as well tell you now that the case will probably never
+come to trial; the amount has been guaranteed." He wrote a telegram and
+handed it to the man. "Would you do me the favor to get this off as
+early as you can?"
+
+"Humph! Poor devil, he's got off easy; but from his looks and the tussle
+we had with him, I don't think he'll be over grateful to you for
+bringing him through this. I've seen so much of this kind, that I've
+come to think it's better when they drop out quietly, no fuss, like as
+he wanted to."
+
+"I can't agree with you. Thank you for your help."
+
+"Not worth mentioning; it's all in the night's work, you know. Good
+night. I'll send the telegram just as soon as the wires are working. You
+know my number if you want me." He handed him a card.
+
+"Thank you; good night."
+
+When the door closed upon him, Father Honore drew a long breath that was
+half a suppressed groan; then he turned to the passive form on the cot.
+There was much to be done.
+
+He administered a little stimulant; heated some water over a small gas
+stove; laid out clean sheets, a shirt, some bandages and a few surgical
+instruments from a "handy closet," that was kept filled with simple
+hospital emergency requirements, and set to work. He cut the shoes from
+the stockingless feet; cut away the stiffened clothing, what there was
+of it; laid bare the bandaged arm; it was badly swollen, stiff and
+inflamed. He soaked from a clotted knife-wound above the elbow the piece
+of cloth with which it had first been bound. He looked at the discolored
+rag as it lay in his hand, startled at what he saw: a handkerchief--a
+small one, a woman's! With sickening dread he searched in the corners;
+he found them: A. A., wreathed around with forget-me-nots, all in
+delicate French embroidery.
+
+"My God, my God!" he groaned. He recalled having seen Aileen
+embroidering these very handkerchiefs last summer up under the pines.
+One of the sisterhood, Sister Ste. Croix, was with her giving
+instruction, while she herself wrought on a convent-made garment.
+
+What did it mean? With multiplied thoughts that grasped helplessly
+hither and thither for some point of attachment, he went on with his
+work. Two hours later, he had the satisfaction of knowing the man before
+him was physically cared for as well as it was possible for him to be
+until he should regain consciousness. His practised eye recognized this
+to be a case of collapse from exhaustion, physical and mental. Now
+Nature must work to replenish the depleted vitality. He could trust her
+up to a certain point.
+
+He sat by the cot, his elbows on his knees, his head dropped into his
+hands, pondering the mystery of this life before him--of all life, of
+death, of the Beyond; marvelling at the strange warp and woof of
+circumstance, his heart wrung for the anguish of that mother far away in
+the quarries of The Gore, his soul filled with thankfulness that she was
+spared the sight of _this_.
+
+The gray November dawn began to dim the electric light in the room. He
+went to a window, opened the inner blinds and looked out. The storm was
+not over, but the wind had lessened and the flakes fell sparsely. He
+looked across over the neighboring roofs weighted with snow; the wires
+were down. A muffled sound of street traffic heralded the beginning day.
+As he turned back to the cot he saw that Champney's eyes were open; but
+the look in them was dazed. They closed directly. When they opened
+again, the full light of day was in the room; semi-consciousness had
+returned. He spoke feebly:
+
+"Where am I?"
+
+"Here, safe with me, Champney." He leaned over him, but saw that he was
+not recognized.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Your friend, Father Honore."
+
+"Father Honore--" he murmured, "I don't know you." He gave a convulsive
+start--"Where are the Eyes gone?" he whispered, a look of horror
+creeping into his own.
+
+"There are none here, none but mine, Champney. Listen; you are safe with
+me, safe, do you understand?"
+
+He gave no answer, but the dazed look returned. He moistened his parched
+lips with his tongue and swallowed hard. Father Honore held a glass of
+water to his mouth, slipping an arm and hand beneath his head to raise
+him. He drank with avidity; tried to sit up, but fell back exhausted.
+The priest busied himself with preparing some hot beef extract on the
+little stove. When it was ready he sat down by the cot and fed it to him
+spoonful by spoonful.
+
+"Thank you," Champney said quietly when the priest had finished his
+ministration. He turned a little on his side and fell asleep.
+
+The sleep was that which follows exhaustion; it was profound and
+beneficial. Evidently no distress of mind or body marred it, and for
+every sixty minutes of the blessed oblivion, there was renewed activity
+in nature's ever busy laboratory to replenish the strength that had been
+sacrificed in this man's protracted struggle to escape his doom, and, by
+means of it, to restore the mental balance, fortunately not too long
+lost....
+
+When he awoke, it was to full consciousness. The sun was setting. Behind
+the Highlands of the Navesink it sank in royal state: purple, scarlet,
+and gold. Upon the crisping blue waters of Harbor, Sound, and River, the
+reflection of its transient glory lay in quivering windrows of gorgeous
+color. It crimsoned faintly the snow that lay thick on the multitude of
+city roofs; it blazoned scarlet the myriad windows in the towers and
+skyscrapers; it filled the keen air with wonderful fleeting lights that
+bewildered and charmed the unaccustomed eyes of the metropolitan
+millions.
+
+Champney waited for it to fade; then he turned to the man beside him.
+
+"Father Honore--" he half rose from the cot. The priest bent over him.
+Champney laid one arm around his neck, drew him down to him and, for a
+moment only, the two men remained cheek to cheek.
+
+"Champney--my son," was all he could say.
+
+"Yes; now tell me all--the worst; I can bear it."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I can't see my way, yet." These were the first words he spoke after
+Father Honore had finished telling him of his prospective relief from
+sentence and the means taken to obtain it. He had listened intently,
+without interruption, sitting up on the cot, his look fixed unwaveringly
+on the narrator. He put his hand to his face as he spoke, covering his
+eyes for a moment; then he passed it over the three weeks' stubble on
+his cheeks and chin.
+
+"Is it possible for me to shave here? I must get up--out of this. I
+can't think straight unless I get on my feet."
+
+"Do you feel strong enough, Champney?"
+
+"I shall get strength quicker when I'm up. Thank you," he said, as
+Father Honore helped him to his feet. He swayed as if dizzy on crossing
+the room to a small mirror above a stand. Father Honore placed the hot
+water and shaving utensils before him. He declined his further
+assistance.
+
+"Are there--are there any clothes I could put on?" He asked
+hesitatingly, as he proceeded to shave himself awkwardly with his one
+free hand.
+
+"Such as they are, a plenty." Father Honore produced a common tweed suit
+and fresh underwear from the "handy closet." These together with some
+other necessaries from a drawer in the stand supplied a full equipment.
+
+"Can I tub anywhere?" was his next question after he had finished
+shaving.
+
+"Yes; this bath closet here is at your disposal." He opened a door into
+a small adjoining hall-room. Champney took the clothes and went in. While
+he was bathing, Father Honore used the room telephone to order in a
+substantial evening meal. After the noise of the splashing ceased, he
+heard a half-suppressed groan. He listened intently, but there was no
+further sound, not even of the details of dressing.
+
+A half-hour passed. He had taken in the tray, and was becoming anxious,
+when the door opened and Champney came in, clean, clothed, but with a
+look in his eyes that gave the priest all the greater cause for anxiety
+because, up to that time, the man had volunteered no information
+concerning himself; he had received what the priest said passively,
+without demonstration of any kind. There had been as yet no spiritual
+vent for the over-strained mind, the over-charged soul. The priest knew
+this danger and what it portended.
+
+He ate the food that was placed before him listlessly. Suddenly he
+pushed the plate away from him across the table at which he was sitting.
+"I can't eat; it nauseates me," he said; then, leaning his folded arms
+on the edge, he dropped his head upon them groaning heavily in an agony
+of despair, shame, remorse: "God! What's the use--what's the use!
+There's nothing left--nothing left."
+
+Father Honore knew that the crucial hour was striking, and his prayer
+for help was the wordless outreaching of every atom of his consciousness
+for that One more powerful than weak humanity, to guide, to aid him.
+
+"Your manhood is left." He spoke sternly, with authority. This was no
+time for pleading, for sympathy, for persuasion.
+
+"My manhood!" The bitterest self-contempt was voiced in those two words.
+He raised his head, and the look he gave to the man opposite bordered on
+the inimical.
+
+"Yes, your manhood. Do you, in your supreme egotism, suppose that you,
+Champney Googe, are the only man in this world who has sinned, suffered,
+gone under for a time? Are you going to lie down in the ditch like a
+craven, simply because you have failed to withstand the first assaults
+of the devil that is in you? Do you think, because you have sinned,
+there is no longer a place for you and your work in this world where all
+men are sinners at some time in their lives? I tell you, Champney
+Googe,--and mark well what I say,--your sin, as sin, is not so
+despicable as your attitude towards your own life. Why, man, you're
+alive--"
+
+"Yes, alive--thanks to you; but knocked out after the first round," he
+muttered. The priest noted, however, that he still held his head erect.
+He took fresh courage.
+
+"And what would you say of a man who, because he has been knocked out in
+the first round, does not dare to enter the ring again? So far as I've
+seen anything of life, it is a man's duty to get on his feet as quickly
+as he can--square away and at it again."
+
+"There's nothing left to fight--it's all gone--my honor--"
+
+"True, your honor's gone; you can't get that back; but you can put
+yourself in the running to obtain a standard for your future honor.
+Champney, listen;" he drew his chair nearer to him that the table might
+not separate them; "hear me, a man like yourself, erring, because human,
+who has sinned, suffered--let me speak out of my own experience. Put
+aside regret; it clogs. Regret nothing; what's done is done past recall.
+Live out your life, no matter what the struggle. Count this life as
+yours to make the best of. Live, I say; live, work, make good; it is in
+any man's power who has received a reprieve like yours. I know whereof I
+am speaking. I'll go further: it would be in your power even if you had
+been judged and committed."
+
+The man, to whom he was appealing, shuddered as he heard the word
+"committed."
+
+"_That_ would be death," he said under his breath; "last night was
+nothing, nothing to that--but you can't understand--"
+
+"Better, perhaps, than you think. But what I want you to see is that
+there is something left to live for; Champney--your mother." He had
+hesitated to speak of her, not knowing what the effect might be.
+
+Champney started to his feet, his hand clenched on the table edge. He
+breathed short, hard. "O God, O God! Why didn't you let me go? How can I
+face her and live!" He began to pace the room with rapid jerky steps.
+Father Honore rose.
+
+"Champney Googe,"--he spoke calmly, but with a concentrated energy of
+tone that made its impression on the man addressed,--"when you lay there
+last night," he motioned towards the cot, "I thanked my God that she
+was not here to see you. I have telegraphed her that you are alive. In
+the hope that you yourself might send some word, either directly or
+through me, I have withheld all detail of your condition, all further
+news; but, for her sake, I dare not keep her longer in suspense. Give me
+some word for her--some assurance from yourself that you will live for
+her sake, if not for your own. Reparation must begin here and _now_, and
+no time be lost; it's already late." He looked at his watch.
+
+Champney turned upon him fiercely. "Don't force me to anything. I can't
+see my way, I tell you. You have said I was a man. Let me take my stand
+on that assurance, and act as one who must first settle a long-standing
+account with himself before he can yield to any impulse of emotion. Go
+to bed--do; you're worn out with watching with me. I'll sit here by the
+window; _I promise you_. There's no sleep in me or for me--I want to be
+alone--alone."
+
+It was an appeal, and the priest recognized in it the cry of the
+individual soul when the full meaning of its isolation from humankind is
+first revealed to it. He let him alone. Without another word he drew off
+his boots, turned out the electric light, opened the inner blinds, and
+laid himself down on the cot, worn, weary, but undaunted in spirit. At
+times he lost himself for a few minutes; for the rest he feigned the
+sleep he so sorely needed. The excitation of his nerves, however, kept
+him for the greater part of the night conscious of all that went on in
+the room.
+
+Champney sat by the window. During that night he never left his seat.
+Father Honore could see his form silhouetted against the blank of the
+panes; his head was bowed into his hands. From time to time he drew
+deep, deep, shuddering breaths. The struggle going on in that human
+breast beside the window, the priest knew to be a terrible one--a
+spiritual and a mental hand-to-hand combat, against almost over-powering
+odds, in the arena of the soul.
+
+The sun was reddening the east when Champney turned from the window,
+rose quietly, and stepped to the side of the cot. He stood there a few
+minutes looking down on the strong, marked face that, in the morning
+light, showed yellow from watching and fatigue. Father Honore knew he
+was there; but he waited those few minutes before opening his eyes. He
+looked up then, not knowing what he was to expect, and met Champney's
+blue ones looking down into his. That one look was sufficient to assure
+him that the man who stood there so quietly beside him was the Champney
+Googe of a new birth. The "old man" had been put away; he was ready for
+the race, "_forgetting those things that are behind_."
+
+"I've won out," he said with a smile.
+
+The two men clasped hands and were silent for a few minutes. Then
+Champney drew a chair to the cot.
+
+"I'd like to talk with you, if you don't mind," he said.
+
+
+IV
+
+In the priest's soul there was rejoicing. He was anticipating the
+victorious outcome of the struggle to which, in part, he had been
+witness. But he acknowledged afterwards that he had had not the faintest
+conception, not the remotest intimation of the actual truth. It remained
+for Champney Googe to enlighten him.
+
+"I've been digging for the root of the whole matter," he began simply.
+His hand was clenched and pressed hard on his knee, otherwise he showed
+no sign of the effort that speech cost him. "I've been clearing away all
+obstructions, trying to look at myself outside of myself; and I find
+that, ever since I can remember, I've had the ambition to be rich--and
+rich for the power it apparently gives over other men, for the amplitude
+of one kind of living it affords, for the extension of the lines of
+personal indulgence and pleasure seemingly indefinitely, for the
+position it guarantees. There has been but one goal always: the making
+of money.
+
+"I rebelled at first at the prospect of the five years' apprenticeship
+in Europe. I can see now that those six years, as they proved to be,
+fostered my ambition by placing me in direct and almost daily contact
+with those to whom great wealth is a natural, not an acquired thing."
+(Father Honore noted that throughout his confession he avoided the
+mention of any name, and he respected him for it.) "On my return, as
+you know, I was placed in a position of great responsibility, as well
+as one affording every opportunity to further my object in life. I began
+to make use of these opportunities at once; the twenty thousand received
+from the quarry lands I invested, and in a short time doubled the sum. I
+was in a position to gain the inside knowledge needed to manipulate
+money with almost a certainty of increment; this knowledge, I was given
+to understand, I might use for any personal investment of funds; I took
+advantage of the privilege.
+
+"I soon found that to operate successfully and largely, as I needed to
+in order to gain my end and gain it quickly, I must have a larger amount
+of cash. For this reason, I re-invested the forty thousand on the
+strength of my knowledge of a rise that was to be brought about in
+certain stocks within two months. This rise was guaranteed, you
+understand; guaranteed by three influential financiers. It would double
+my investment. They let it be known in a quiet way and in certain
+quarters, that this rise would occur at about such a date, and then
+forced the market up till they themselves had a good surplus. All this I
+know for a fact, because I was on the inside. Just at this time the
+syndicate intrusted to me three hundred thousand as a workable margin
+for certain future investments. My orders were to invest in this
+prepared stock only _after_ October fifteenth. Meanwhile the
+manipulation of this amount was in my hands for eight weeks.
+
+"I knew the forty thousand I had purposely invested in these stocks
+would double itself by the fifteenth of October; this was the date set.
+I knew this because I had the guaranty of the three men behind me; and,
+knowing this, I took a hundred thousand of the sum intrusted to me, in
+order to make a deal with a Wall Street firm which would net me twenty
+thousand within two weeks.
+
+"I knew perfectly well what I was doing--but there was never any
+intention on my part of robbery or embezzlement. I knew the sum eighty
+thousand, from my personal investment of forty thousand, was due on
+October fifteenth; this, plus the twenty thousand due from the Wall
+Street deal, would insure the syndicate from any loss. In fact, they
+would never know that the money had been used by me to antedate the
+investment of the three hundred thousand--a part of the net yearly
+working profits from the quarries--intrusted to me."
+
+He paused for a moment to pass his hand over his forehead; his eyebrows
+contracted suddenly as if he were in pain.
+
+"The temptation to take this money, although knowing well enough it was
+not mine to take, was too great for me. It was the resultant of every
+force of, I might say, my special business propulsion. This temptation
+lay along the lines on which I had built up my life: the pursuance of a
+line of action by which I might get rich quick.--Then came the crash.
+That special guaranteed stock broke--never to rally in time to save
+me--sixty-five points. The syndicate sent out warning signals to me that
+I was just in time to save any part of the three hundred thousand from
+investment in those stocks. Of course, I got no return from the forty
+thousand of my personal investment, and the hundred thousand I had used
+for the deal went down too. So much for the guaranty of the
+multi-millionaires.--Just then, when everything was chaotic and a big
+panic threatened, came a call from the manager of the quarries for
+immediate funds; the men were getting uneasy because pay was two weeks
+overdue. The syndicate told me to apply the working margin of three
+hundred thousand at once for this purpose. Of course there was a
+shortage; it was bound to be discovered. I tried to procrastinate--tried
+to put off the payment of the men; then came the threatened strike on
+account of non-payment of wages. I knew it was all up with me. When I
+saw I must be found out, I fled--
+
+"I never meant to rob them--to rob any one, never--never--" His voice
+broke slightly on those words.
+
+"I believe you." Father Honore spoke for the first time. "Not one man in
+ten thousand begins by meaning to steal."
+
+"I know it; that's what makes the bitterer cud-chewing."
+
+"I know--I know." The priest spoke under his breath. He was sitting on
+the side of the cot, and leaned forward suddenly, his elbows on his
+knees, his chin resting in his palms, his eyes gazing beyond Champney to
+something intangible, some inner vision that was at that moment
+projecting itself from the sensitive plate of consciousness upon the
+blank of reality.
+
+Champney looked at him keenly. He was aware that, for the moment, Father
+Honore was present with him only in the body. He waited, before
+speaking, until the priest's eyes turned slowly to his; his position
+remained the same. Champney went on:
+
+"All that you have done to obtain this reprieve, has been done for
+me--for mine--"; his voice trembled. "A man comes to know the measure of
+such sacrifice after an experience like mine--I have no words--"
+
+"Don't, Champney--don't--"
+
+"No, I won't, because I can't--because nothing is adequate. I thought it
+all out last night. There is but one way to show you, to prove anything
+to you; I am going to do as you said: make good my manhood--"
+
+Father Honore's hand closed upon Champney's.
+
+"--And there is but one way in which I can make it good. I can take only
+a step at a time now, but it's this first step that will start me
+right."
+
+He paused a moment as if to gather strength to voice his decision.
+
+"I should disown my manhood if I shirked now. The horror of prospective
+years of imprisonment has been more to me than death--I welcomed _that_
+as the alternative. But now, the manhood that is left in me demands that
+if I am willing to live as a man, I must take my punishment like a man.
+I am going to let things take their usual course; accept no relief from
+the money guaranteed to reimburse the syndicate; plead guilty, and let
+the sentence be what it may: seven, fifteen, or twenty years--it's all
+one."
+
+He drew a long breath as of deliverance. The mere formulating of his
+decision in the presence of another man gave him strength, almost
+assurance to act for himself in furthering his own commitment. But the
+priest bowed his head into his hands and a groan burst from his lips, so
+laden with wretchedness, with mental and spiritual suffering, that even
+Champney Googe was startled from his hard-won calm.
+
+"Father Honore, what is it? Don't take it so hard." He laid his hand on
+his shoulder. "I can't ask you if I've done right, because no man can
+decide that for me; but wouldn't you do the same if you were in my
+place?"
+
+"Oh, would to God I had!--would to God I had!" he groaned rather than
+spoke.
+
+Champney was startled. He realized, for the first time, perhaps, in his
+self-centred life, that he was but a unit among suffering millions. He
+was realizing, moreover, that, with the utterance of his decision, he
+had, as it were, retired from the stage for many years to come; the
+curtain had fallen on his particular act in the life-drama; that others
+now occupied his place, and among them was this man before him who,
+active for good, foremost in noble works, strong in the faith, helpful
+wherever help might be needed, a refuge for the oppressed of soul, a
+friend to all humanity because human, _his_ friend--his mother's, was
+suffering at this moment as he himself had suffered, but without the
+relief that is afforded by renunciation. Out of a great love and pity he
+spoke:
+
+"What is it? Can't you tell me? Won't it help, just as man to man--as it
+has helped me?"
+
+Father Honore regained his control before Champney ceased questioning.
+
+"I don't know that it will help; but I owe it to you to tell you, after
+what you have said--told me. I can preach--oh yes! But the practice--the
+practice--" He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
+
+"What you have just told me justifies me in telling you what I thought
+never to speak of again in this world. You have done the only thing to
+do in the circumstances--it has taken the whole courage of a man; but I
+never for a moment credited you with sufficient manhood to dare it. It
+only goes to show how shortsighted we humans are, how incomprehensive of
+the workings of the human heart and soul; we think we know--and find
+ourselves utterly confounded, as I am now." He was silent for a few
+minutes, apparently deep in meditation.
+
+"Had I done, when I was twenty years old, as you are going to do, I
+should have had no cause to regret; all my life fails to make good in
+that respect.--When I was a boy, an orphan, my heartstrings wound
+themselves about a little girl in France who was kind to me. I may as
+well tell you now that the thought of that child was one of the motives
+that induced me to investigate Aileen's case, when we saw her that night
+at the vaudeville."
+
+He looked at Champney, who, at the mention of Aileen's name, had started
+involuntarily. "You remember that night?" Champney nodded. How well he
+remembered it! But he gave no further sign.
+
+"I was destined for the priesthood later on, but that did not stifle the
+love in my heart for the young girl. It was in my novitiate years. I
+never dared ask myself what the outcome of it all would be; I wanted to
+finish my novitiate first. I knew she loved me with a charming, open,
+young girl's love that in the freedom of our household life--her
+grandfather was my great-uncle on my mother's side--found expression in
+a sisterly way; and in the circumstances I could not tell her of my
+love. It was the last year of my novitiate when I discovered the fact
+that a young man, in the employ of her grandfather, was paying her
+attention with the intention of asking her of him in marriage. The mere
+thought of the loss of her drove me half mad. I took the first
+opportunity, when at home for the holidays, to tell her my love, and I
+threatened, that, if she gave herself to another, I would end
+all--either for myself or for him. The girl was frightened, indignant,
+horrified almost, at the force of the passion that was consuming me;
+she repelled me--that ended it; I took it for granted that she loved
+that other. I lay in wait for him one night as he was going to the
+house; taunted him; heaped upon him such abuse as makes a man another's
+murderer; I goaded him into doing what I had intended. He struck me in
+the face; closed with me, and I fought him; but he was wrestling with a
+madman. We were on the cliff at Dieppe; the night was dark;
+intentionally I forced him towards the edge. He struggled manfully,
+trying to land a blow on my head that would save him; he wrestled with
+me and he was a man of great strength; but I--I knew I could tire him
+out. It was dark--I knew when he went over the edge, but I could see
+nothing, I heard nothing....
+
+"I fled; hid myself; but I was caught; held for a time awaiting the
+outcome of the man's hurt. Had he died it would have been manslaughter.
+As it was I knew it was murder, for there had been murder in my heart.
+He lived, but maimed for life. The lawyer, paid for by my great-uncle,
+set up the plea of self-defence. I was cleared in the law, and fled to
+America to expiate. I know now that there was but one expiation for
+me--to do what you are to do; plead guilty and take my punishment like a
+man. I failed to do it--and _I_ preach of manhood to you!"
+
+There was silence in the room. Champney broke it and his voice was
+almost unrecognizable; it was hoarse, constrained:
+
+"But your love was noble--you loved her with all the manhood that was in
+you."
+
+"God knows I did; but that does not alter the fact of my consequent
+crime."
+
+He looked again at Champney as he spoke out his conviction, and his own
+emotion suffered a check in his amazement at the change in the
+countenance before him. He had seen nothing like this in the thirty-two
+hours he had been in his presence; his jaw was set; his nostrils white
+and sharpened; the pupils of his eyes contracted to pin points; and into
+the sallow cheeks, up to the forehead knotted as with intense pain, into
+the sunken temples, the blood rushed with a force that threatened
+physical disaster, only to recede as quickly, leaving the face ghastly
+white, the eyelids twitching, the muscles about the mouth quivering.
+
+Noting all this Father Honore read deeper still; he knew that Champney
+Googe had not told him the whole, possibly not the half--_and never
+would tell_. His next question convinced him of that.
+
+"May I ask what became of the young girl you loved?--Don't answer, if I
+am asking too much."
+
+"I don't know. I have never heard from her. I can only surmise. But I
+did receive a letter from her when I was in prison, before my trial--she
+was summoned as witness; and oh, the infinite mercy of a loving woman's
+heart!" He was silent a moment.
+
+"She took so much blame upon herself, telling me that she had not known
+her own heart; that she tried to think she loved me as a brother; that
+she had been willing to let it go on so, and because she had not been
+brave enough to be honest with herself, all this trouble had come upon
+me whom she acknowledged she loved--upon her and her household. She
+begged me, if acquitted, never to see her, never to communicate with her
+again. There was but one duty for us both she said, guilty as we both
+were of what had occurred to wreck a human being for life; to go each
+_the way apart_ forever--I mine, she hers--to expiate in good works, in
+loving kindness to those who might need our help....
+
+"I have never known anything further--heard no word--made no inquiry. At
+that time, after my acquittal, my great-uncle, a well-to-do baker,
+settled a sum of money on the man who had been in his employ; the
+interest of it would support him in his incapacity to do a man's work
+and earn a decent livelihood. My uncle said then I was never again to
+darken his doors. He desired me to leave no address; to keep secret to
+myself my destination, and forever after my whereabouts. I obeyed to the
+letter--now enough of myself. I have told you this because, as a man, I
+had not the face to sit here in your presence and hear your decision,
+without showing you my respect for your courage--and I have taken this
+way to show it."
+
+He held out his hand and Champney wrung it. "You don't know all, or you
+would have no respect," he said brokenly.
+
+The two men looked understandingly into each other's eyes, but they both
+felt intuitively that any prolongation of this unwonted emotional strain
+would be injurious to both, and the work in hand. They, at once, in
+tacit understanding of each other's condition, put aside "the things
+that were behind" and "reached forth to those that were before": they
+laid plans for the speedy execution of all that Champney's decision
+involved.
+
+"There is one thing I cannot do," he spoke with decision; "that is to
+see my mother before my commitment--or after. It is the only thing that
+will break me down. I need all the strength of control I possess to go
+through this thing."
+
+The priest knew better than to protest.
+
+"Telegraph her to-day what you think best to ease her suspense. I will
+write her, and ask you to deliver my letter to her after you have seen
+me through. I want _you_ to go up with me--to the very doors; and I want
+yours to be the last known face I see on entering. Another request: I
+don't want you, my mother, or any one else known to me, to communicate
+with me by letter, message, or even gift of any kind during my term,
+whether seven years or twenty. This is oblivion. I cease to exist, as an
+identity, outside the walls. I will make one exception: if my mother
+should fall ill, write me at once.--How she will live, I don't know! I
+dare not think--it would unsettle my reason; but she has friends; she
+has you, the Colonel, Tave, Elvira, Caukins; they will not see her want,
+and there's the house; it's in her name."
+
+He rose, shook himself together, drew a long breath. "Now let us go to
+work; the sooner it's over the better for all concerned.--I suppose the
+clothes I had on are worth nothing, but I'd like to look them over."
+
+He spoke indifferently and went into the adjoining bath closet where
+Father Honore, not liking to dispose of them until Champney should have
+spoken of them at least, had left the clothes in a bundle. He had put
+the little handkerchief, discolored almost beyond recognition, in with
+them. Champney came out in a few minutes.
+
+"They're no good," he said. "I'll have to wear these, if I may. I
+believe it's one of the regulations that what a man takes in of his own,
+is saved for him to take out, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes." An hour later when Father Honore disposed of the bundle to the
+janitor, he knew that Aileen's handkerchief had been abstracted--and he
+read still deeper into the ways of the human heart....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Within ten days sentence was passed: seven years with hard labor.
+
+There was no appeal for mercy, and speedy commitment followed. A
+paragraph in the daily papers conveyed a knowledge of the fact to the
+world in general; and within ten days, the world in general, as usual,
+forgot the circumstance; it was only one of many.
+
+
+
+
+PART FIFTH
+
+Shed Number Two
+
+
+I
+
+"It's a wonder ye're not married yet, Aileen, an' you twenty-six."
+
+It was Margaret McCann, the "Freckles" of orphan asylum days, who spoke.
+Her utterance was thick, owing to the quantity of pins she was
+endeavoring to hold between tightly pressed lips. She was standing on a
+chair putting up muslin curtains in her new home at The Gore, or Quarry
+End Park, as it was now named, and Aileen had come to help her.
+
+"It's like ye're too purticular," she added, her first remark not having
+met with any response. She turned on the chair and looked down upon her
+old chum.
+
+She was sitting on the floor surrounded by a pile of fresh-cut muslin;
+the latest McCann baby was tugging with might and main at her apron in
+vain endeavor to hoist himself upon his pudgy uncertain legs. Aileen was
+laughing at his efforts. Catching him suddenly in her arms, she covered
+the little soft head, already sprouting a suspicion of curly red hair,
+with hearty kisses; and Billy, entering into the fun, crowed and
+gurgled, clutching wildly at the dark head bent above him and managing
+now and then, when he did not grasp too wide of the mark, to bury his
+chubby creased hands deep in its heavy waves.
+
+"Oh, Maggie, you're like all the rest! Because you've a good husband of
+your own, you think every other girl must go and do likewise."
+
+"Now ye're foolin', Aileen, like as you used to at the asylum. But I
+mind the time when Luigi was the wan b'y for you--I wonder, now, you
+couldn't like him, Aileen? He's so handsome and stiddy-like, an' doin'
+so well. Jim says he'll be one of the rich men of the town if he kapes
+on as he's begun. They do say as how Dulcie Caukins'll be cuttin' you
+out."
+
+"I didn't love him, Maggie; that's reason enough." She spoke shortly.
+Maggie turned again from her work to look down on her in amazement.
+
+"You was always that way, Aileen!" she exclaimed impatiently, "thinkin'
+nobody but a lord was good enough for you, an' droppin' Luigi as soon as
+ever you got in with the Van Ostend folks; and as for 'love'--let me
+give you as good a piece of advice as you'll get between the risin' of a
+May sun and its settin':--if you see a good man as loves you an' is
+willin' to marry you, take him, an' don't you leave him the chanct to
+get cool over it. Ye'll love him fast enough if he's good to you--like
+my Jim," she added proudly.
+
+"Oh, your Jim! You're always quoting him; he isn't quite perfection even
+if he is 'your Jim.'"
+
+"An' is it parfection ye're after?" Maggie was apt in any state of
+excitement to revert in her speech to the vernacular. "'Deed an' ye'll
+look till the end of yer days an' risk dyin' a downright old maid, if
+it's parfection ye're after marryin' in a man! An' I don't need a gell
+as has niver been married to tell me my Jim ain't parfection nayther!"
+
+Maggie resumed her work in a huff; Aileen smiled to herself.
+
+"I didn't mean to say anything against your husband, Maggie; I was only
+speaking in a general way."
+
+"An' how could ye mane anything against me husband in a gineral or a
+purticular way? Sure I know he's got a temper; an' what man of anny
+sinse hasn't, I'd like to know? An' he's not settled-like to work in
+anny wan place, as I'd like to have him be. But Jim's young; an' a man,
+he says, can't settle to anny regular work before he's thirty. He says
+all the purfessional men can't get onto their feet in a business way
+till they be thirty; an' stone-cuttin', Jim says, is his purfession like
+as if 't was a lawyer's or a doctor's or a priest's; an' Jim says he
+loves it. An' there ain't a better worker nor Jim in the sheds, so the
+boss says; an' if he will querrel between whiles--an' I'm not denyin' he
+don't--it's sure the other man's fault for doin' something mane; Jim
+can't stand no maneness. He's a good worker, is Jim, an' a good husband,
+an' a lovin' father, an' a good provider, an' he don't drink, an' he
+ain't the slithery kind--if he'd 'a' been that I wouldn't married him."
+
+There was a note of extreme authority in what Maggie in her excitement
+was giving expression to. Now that Jim McCann was back and at work in
+the sheds after a seven years absence, it was noted by many, who knew
+his wife of old, that, in the household, it was now Mrs. McCann who had
+the right of way. She was evidently full of her subject at the present
+moment and, carried away by the earnestness of her expressed
+convictions, she paid no heed to Aileen's non-responsiveness.
+
+"An' I'm that proud that I'm Mrs. James Patrick McCann, wid a good house
+over me head, an' a good husband to pay rint that'll buy it on the
+insthalment plan, an' two little gells an' a darlin' baby to fill it,
+that I be thankin' God whiniver Jim falls to swearin'--an' that's ivery
+hour in the day; but it's only a habit he can't be broke of, for Father
+Honore was after talkin' wid him, an' poor Jim was that put out wid
+himself, that he forgot an' swore his hardest to the priest that he'd
+lave off swearin' if only he knew whin he was doin' it! But he had to
+give up tryin', for he found himself swearin' at the baby he loved him
+so. An' whin he told Father Honore the trouble he had wid himself an'
+the b'y, that darlin' man just smiled an' says:--'McCann, there's other
+ways of thankin' God for a good home, an' a lovin' wife, and a foine b'y
+like yours, than tellin' yer beads an' sayin' your prayers.'--He said
+that, he did; an' I say, I'm thankin' God ivery hour in the day that
+I've got a good husband to swear, an' a cellar to fill wid fuel an'
+potaters, an' a baby to put to me breast, an'--an'--it's the same I'm
+wishin' for you, me dear."
+
+There was a suspicious tremble in Maggie's voice as she turned again to
+her work.
+
+Aileen spoke slowly: "Indeed, I wish I had them all, Maggie; but those
+things are not for me."
+
+"Not for you!" Maggie dashed a tear from her eyes. "An' why not for you,
+I'd like to know? Isn't ivery wan sayin' ye've got the voice fit for the
+oppayra? An' isn't all the children an' the quarrymen just mad over yer
+teachin' an' singin'? An' look at what yer know an' can do! Didn't wan
+of the Sisters tell me the other day: 'Mrs. McCann,' says she, 'Aileen
+Armagh is an expurrt in embroidery, an' could earn her livin' by it.'
+An' wasn't Mrs. Caukins after praisin' yer cookin' an' sayin' you beat
+the whole Gore on yer doughnuts? An' didn't the Sisters come askin' me
+the other day if I had your receipt for the milk-rice? Jim says there's
+a man for ivery woman if she did but know it.--There now, I'm glad to
+see yer smilin' an' lookin' like yer old self! Just tell me if the
+curtains be up straight? Jim can't abide annything that ain't on the
+square. Straight, be they?"
+
+"Yes, straight as a string," said Aileen, laughing outright at Freckles'
+eloquence--the eloquence of one who was wont to be slow of speech before
+matrimony loosened her tongue and home love taught her the right word in
+the right place.
+
+"Straight, is it? Then I'll mount down an' we'll sit out in the kitchen
+an' hem the rest. It's Doosie Caukins has begged the loan of the two
+little gells for the afternoon. The twins seem to me most like my
+own--rale downright swate gells, an' it's hopin' I am they'll do well
+when it' comes to their marryin'."
+
+Aileen laughed merrily at the matrimonial persistence of her old chum's
+thoughts.
+
+"Oh, Maggie, you are an incorrigible matchmaker!"
+
+She picked up the baby and the yards of muslin she had been measuring
+for window lengths; leaving Maggie to follow, she went out into the
+kitchen and deposited Billy in the basket-crib beside her chair. Maggie
+joined her in a few minutes.
+
+"It seems like old times for you an' me to be chattin' together again so
+friendly-like--put a finger's length into the hem of the long ones; do
+you remember when Sister Angelica an' you an' me was cuddled together to
+watch thim dance the minute over at the Van Ostends'?--Och, you
+darlin'!"
+
+She rose from her chair and caught up the baby who was holding out both
+arms to her and trying in his semi-articulate way to indicate his
+preference of her lap to the basket.
+
+"What fun we had!" Aileen spoke half-heartedly; the mention of that name
+intensified the pain of an ever present thought.
+
+"An' did ye read her marriage in the papers, I guess 't was a year
+gone?"
+
+Aileen nodded.
+
+"Jim read it out to me wan night after supper, an' I got so homesick of
+a suddin' for the Caukinses, an' you, an' the quarries, an' Mrs.
+Googe--it was before me b'y come--that I fell to cryin' an' nearly cried
+me eyes out; an' Jim promised me then and there he'd come back to
+Flamsted for good and all. But he couldn't help sayin': 'What the divil
+are ye cryin' about, Maggie gell? I was readin' of the weddin' to ye,
+and thinkin' to hearten ye up a bit, an' here ye be cryin' fit to break
+yer heart, an' takin' on as if ye'd niver had a weddin' all by yerself!'
+An' that made me laugh; but, afterwards, I fell to cryin' the harder,
+an' told him I couldn't help it, for I'd got such a good lovin' husband,
+an' me an orphan as had nobody--
+
+"An' then I stopped, for Jim took me in his arms--he was in the
+rockin'-chair--and rocked back an' forth wid me like a mother does wid a
+six-months' child, an' kept croonin' an' croonin' till I fell asleep wid
+my head on his shoulder--" Mrs. McCann drew a long breath--"Och, Aileen,
+it's beautiful to be married!"
+
+For a while the two worked in silence, broken only by little Billy
+McCann, who was blissfully gurgling emphatic endorsement of everything
+his mother said. The bright sunshine of February filled the barren Gore
+full to the brim with sparkling light. From time to time the sharp
+crescendo _sz-szz-szzz_ of the trolleys, that now ran from The Corners
+to Quarry End Park at the head of The Gore, teased the still cold air.
+Maggie was in a reminiscent mood, being wrought upon unwittingly by the
+sunny quiet and homey kitchen warmth. She looked over the head of her
+baby to Aileen.
+
+"Do you remember the B'y who danced with the Marchioness, and when they
+was through stood head downwards with his slippers kicking in the air?"
+
+"Yes, and the butler, and how he hung on to his coat-tails!"
+
+Maggie laughed. "I wonder now could it be _the_ B'y--I mane the man she
+married?"
+
+Aileen looked up from her work. "Yes, he's the one."
+
+"An' how did you know that?" Maggie asked in some surprise.
+
+"Mrs. Champney told me--and then I knew she liked him."
+
+"Who, the Marchioness?"
+
+"Yes; I knew by the way she wrote about him that she liked him."
+
+"Well, now, who'd 'a' thought that! The very same B'y!" she exclaimed,
+at the same time looking puzzled as if not quite grasping the situation.
+"Why, I thought--I guess 't was Romanzo wrote me just about that
+time--that she was in love with Mr. Champney Googe." Her voice sank to a
+whisper on the last words. "Wouldn't it have been just awful if she
+had!"
+
+"She might have done a worse thing than to love him." Aileen's voice was
+hard in spite of her effort to speak naturally.
+
+Maggie broke forth in protest.
+
+"Now, how can you say that, Aileen! What would the poor gell's life have
+been worth married to a man that's in for seven years! Jim says when he
+comes out he can't niver vote again for prisident, an' it's ten chanct
+to wan that he'll get a job."
+
+In her earnestness she failed to notice that Aileen's face had borrowed
+its whiteness from the muslin over which she was bending.
+
+"Aileen--"
+
+"Yes, Maggie."
+
+"I'm goin' to tell you something. Jim told me the other day; he wouldn't
+mind my tellin' you, but he says he don't want anny wan of the fam'ly to
+get wind of it."
+
+"What is it?" Aileen looked up half fearfully.
+
+"Gracious, you look as if you'd seen a ghost! 'T isn't annything so rale
+dreadful, but it gives you a kind of onaisy feelin' round your heart."
+
+"What is it? Tell me quick." She spoke again peremptorily in order to
+cover her fear. Maggie looked at her wonderingly, and thought to herself
+that Aileen had changed beyond her knowledge.
+
+"There was a man Jim knew in the other quarries we was at, who got put
+into that same prison for two years--for breakin' an' enterin'--an' Jim
+see him not long ago; an' when Jim told him where he was workin' the man
+said just before he was comin' out, Mr. Googe come in, an' he see him
+_breakin' stones wid a prison gang_--rale toughs; think of that, an' he
+a gentleman born! Jim said that was tough; he says it's back-breakin'
+work; that quarryin' an' cuttin' ain't nothin' to that--ten hours a day,
+too. My heart's like to break for Mrs. Googe. I think of it ivery time I
+see her now; an' just look how she's workin' her fingers to the bone to
+support herself widout help! Mrs. Caukins says she's got seventeen
+mealers among the quarrymen now, an' there'll be more next spring. What
+do you s'pose her son would say to that?"
+
+She pressed her own boy a little more closely to her breast; the young
+mother's heart was stirred within her. "Mrs. Caukins says Mrs. Champney
+could help her an' save her lots, but she won't; she's no mind to."
+
+"I don't believe Mrs. Googe would accept any help from Mrs.
+Champney--and I don't blame her, either. I'd rather starve than be
+beholden to her!" The blood rushed into the face bent over the muslin.
+
+"Why don't you lave her, Aileen? I would--the stingy old screw!"
+
+Aileen folded her work and laid it aside before she answered.
+
+"I _am_ going soon, Maggie; I've stood it about as many years as I
+can--"
+
+"Oh, but I'm glad! It'll be like gettin' out of the jail yerself, for
+all you've made believe you've lived in a palace--but ye're niver goin'
+so early?" she protested earnestly.
+
+"Yes, I must, Maggie. You are not to tell anyone what I've said about
+leaving Mrs. Champney--not even Jim."
+
+Maggie's face fell. "Dear knows, I can promise you not to tell Jim; but
+it's like I'll be tellin' him in me slape. It's a trick I have, he says,
+whin I'm tryin' to kape something from him."
+
+She laughed happily, and bade Billy "shake a day-day" to the pretty
+lady; which behest Billy, half turning his rosy little face from the
+maternal fount, obeyed perfunctorily and then, smiling, closed his
+sleepy eyes upon his mother's breast.
+
+
+II
+
+Aileen took that picture of intimate love and warmth with her out into
+the keen frosty air of late February. But its effect was not to soften,
+to warm; it hardened rather. The thought of Maggie with her baby boy at
+her breast, of her cosy home, her loyalty to her husband and her love
+for him, of her thankfulness for the daily mercy of the wherewithal to
+feed the home mouths, reacted sharply, harshly, upon the mood she was
+in; for with the thought of that family life and family ties--the symbol
+of all that is sane and fruitful of the highest good in our
+humanity--was associated by extreme contrast another thought:--
+
+"And _he_ is breaking stones with a 'gang of toughs'--breaking stones!
+Not for the sake of the pittance that will procure for him his daily
+bread, but because he is forced to the toil like any galley slave. The
+prison walls are frowning behind him; the prison cell is his only home;
+the tin pan of coarse food, which is handed to him as he lines up with
+hundreds of others after the day's work, is the only substitute for the
+warm home-hearth, the lighted supper table, the merry give-and-take of
+family life that eases a man after his day's toil."
+
+Her very soul was in rebellion.
+
+She stopped short and looked about her. She was on the road to Father
+Honore's house. It was just four o'clock, for the long whistle was
+sounding from the stone sheds down in the valley. She saw the quarrymen
+start homewards. Dark irregular files of them began crawling up over the
+granite ledges, many of which were lightly covered with snow. Although
+it was February, the winter was mild for this latitude, and the twelve
+hundred men in The Gore had lost but a few days during the last three
+months on account of the weather. Work had been plenty, and the spring
+promised, so the manager said, a rush of business. She watched them for
+a while.
+
+"And they are going to their homes--and he is still breaking stones!"
+Her thoughts revolved about that one fact.
+
+A sudden rush of tears blinded her; she drew her breath hard. What if
+she were to go to Father Honore and tell him something of her trouble?
+Would it help? Would it ease the intolerable pain at her heart, lessen
+the load on her mind?
+
+She dared not answer, dared not think about it. Involuntarily she
+started forward at a quick pace towards the stone house over by the
+pines--a distance of a quarter of a mile.
+
+The sun was nearing the rim of the Flamsted Hills. Far beyond them, the
+mighty shoulder of Katahdin, mantled with white, caught the red gleam
+and lent to the deep blue of the northern heavens a faint rose
+reflection of the setting sun. The children, just from school, were
+shouting at their rough play--snow-balling, sledding, skating and
+tobogganning on that portion of the pond which had been cleared of snow.
+The great derricks on the ledges creaked and groaned as the remaining
+men made all fast for the night; like a gigantic cobweb their supporting
+wires stretched thick, enmeshed, and finely dark over the white expanse
+of the quarries. From the power-house a column of steam rose straight
+and steady into the windless air.
+
+Hurrying on, Aileen looked upon it with set lips and a hardening heart.
+She had come to hate, almost, the sight of this life of free toil for
+the sake of love and home.
+
+It was a woman who was thinking these thoughts in her rapid walk to the
+priest's house--a woman of twenty-six who for more than seven years had
+suffered in silence; suffered over and over again the humiliation that
+had been put upon her womanhood; who, despite that humiliation, could
+not divest herself of the idea that she still clung to her girlhood's
+love for the man who had humiliated her. She told herself again and
+again that she was idealizing that first feeling for him, instead of
+accepting the fact that, as a woman, she would be incapable, if the
+circumstances were to repeat themselves now, of experiencing it.
+
+Since that fateful night in The Gore, Champney Googe's name had never
+voluntarily passed her lips. So far as she knew, no one so much as
+suspected that she was a factor in his escape--for Luigi had kept her
+secret. Sometimes when she felt, rather than saw, Father Honore's eyes
+fixed upon her in troubled questioning, the blood would rush to her
+cheeks and she could but wonder in dumb misery if Champney had told him
+anything concerning her during those ten days in New York.
+
+For six years there had been a veil, as it were, drawn between the
+lovely relations that had previously existed between Father Honore and
+this firstling of his flock in Flamsted. For a year after his experience
+with Champney Googe in New York, he waited for some sign from Aileen
+that she was ready to open her heart to him; to clear up the mystery of
+the handkerchief; to free herself from what was evidently troubling her,
+wearing upon her, changing her in disposition--but not for the better.
+Aileen gave no sign. Another year passed, but Aileen gave no sign, and
+Father Honore was still waiting.
+
+The priest did not believe in forcing open the portals to the secret
+chambers of the human heart. He respected the individual soul and its
+workings as a part of the divinely organized human. He believed that, in
+time, Aileen would come to him of her own accord and seek the help she
+so sorely needed. Meanwhile, he determined to await patiently the
+fulness of that time. He had waited already six years.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He was looking over and arranging some large photographs of
+cathedrals--Cologne, Amiens, Westminster, Mayence, St. Mark's, Chester,
+and York--and the detail of nave, chancel, and choir. One showed the
+exquisite sculpture on a flying buttress; another the carving of a
+choir-stall canopy; a third the figure-crowded facade of a western
+porch. Here was the famous rose window in the Antwerp transept; the
+statue of one of the apostles in Naumburg; the nave of Cologne; the
+conglomerate of chapels about the apse of Mayence; the Angel's Pillar at
+Strasburg--they were a joy in line and proportion to the eye, in effect
+and spirit of purpose to the understanding mind, the receptive soul.
+
+Father Honore was revelling in the thought of the men's appreciative
+delight when he should show them these lovely stones--across-the-sea kin
+to their own quarry granite. His semi-monthly talks with the quarrymen
+and stone-cutters were assuming, after many years, the proportions of
+lectures on art and scientific themes. Already many a professor from
+some far-away university had accepted his invitation to give of his best
+to the granite men of Maine. Rarely had they found a more fitting or
+appreciative audience.
+
+"How divine!" he murmured to himself, his eyes dwelling lovingly--at the
+same time his pencil was making notes--on the 'Prentice Pillar in Roslyn
+Chapel. Then he smiled at the thought of the contrast it offered to his
+own chapel in the meadows by the lake shore. In that, every stone, as in
+the making of the Tabernacle of old, had been a free-will offering from
+the men--each laid in its place by a willing worker; and, because
+willing, the rough walls were as eloquent of earnest endeavor as the
+famed 'Prentice Pillar itself.
+
+"I'd like to see such a one as this in our chapel!" He was talking to
+himself as was his way when alone. "I believe Luigi Poggi, if he had
+kept on in the sheds, would in time have given this a close second."
+
+He took up the magnifying glass to examine the curled edges of the stone
+kale leaves.
+
+There was a knock at the door.
+
+He hastily placed the photographs in a long box beside the table, and,
+instead of saying "Come in," stepped to the door and opened it.
+
+Aileen stood there. The look in her eyes as she raised them to his, and
+said in a subdued voice, "Father Honore, can you spare me a little time,
+all to myself?" gave him hope that the fulness of time was come.
+
+"I always have time for you, Aileen; come in. I'll start up the fire a
+bit; it's growing much colder."
+
+He laid the wood on the hearth, and with the bellows blew it to a
+leaping flame. While he was thus occupied, Aileen looked around her. She
+knew this room and loved it.
+
+The stone fireplace was deep and ample, built by Father Honore,--indeed,
+the entire one storey house was his handiwork. Above it hung a large
+wooden crucifix. On the shelf beneath were ranged some superb specimens
+of quartz and granite. The plain deal table, also of ample proportions,
+was piled at one end high with books and pamphlets. Two large windows
+overlooked the pond, the sloping depression of The Gore, the course of
+the Rothel, and the headwaters of Lake Mesantic. Some plain wooden
+armchairs were set against the walls that had been rough plastered and
+washed with burnt sienna brown. On them was hung an exquisite
+engraving--the Sistine Madonna and Child. There were also a few
+etchings, among them a copy of Whistler's _The Thames by London Bridge_,
+and a view of Niagara by moonlight. A mineral cabinet, filled to
+overflowing with fine specimens, extended the entire length of one wall.
+The pine floor was oiled and stained; large hooked rugs, genuine
+products of Maine, lay here and there upon it.
+
+Many a man coming in from the quarries or the sheds with a grievance, a
+burden, or a joy, felt the influence of this simple room. Many a woman
+brought here her heavy over-charged heart and was eased in its
+fire-lighted atmosphere of welcome. Many a child brought hither its
+spring offering of the first mitchella, or its autumn gift of
+checkerberries. Many a girl, many a boy had met here to rehearse a
+Christmas glee or an Easter anthem. Many a night these walls echoed to
+the strains of the priest's violin, when he sat alone by the fireside
+with only the Past for a guest. And these combined influences lingered
+in the room, mellowed it, hallowed it, and made themselves felt to one
+and all as beneficent--even as now to Aileen.
+
+Father Honore placed two of the wooden chairs before the blazing fire.
+Aileen took one.
+
+"Draw up a little nearer, Aileen; you look chilled." He noticed her
+extreme pallor and the slight trembling of her shoulders.
+
+She glanced out of the window at some quarrymen who were passing.
+
+"You don't think we shall be interrupted, do you?" she asked rather
+nervously.
+
+"Oh, no. I'll just step to the kitchen and give a word to Therese. She
+is a good watchdog when I am not to be disturbed." He opened a door at
+the back of the room.
+
+"Therese."
+
+"On y va."
+
+An old French Canadian appeared in answer to his call. He addressed her
+in French.
+
+"If any one should knock, Therese, just step to the kitchen porch door
+and say that I am engaged for an hour, at least."
+
+"Oui, oui, Pere Honore."
+
+He closed the door.
+
+"There, now you can have your chat 'all to yourself' as you requested,"
+he said smiling. He sat down in the other chair he had drawn to the
+fire.
+
+"I've been over to Maggie's this afternoon--"
+
+She hesitated; it was not easy to find an opening for her long pent
+trouble.
+
+Father Honore spread his hands to the blaze.
+
+"She has a fine boy. I'm glad McCann is back again, and I hope anchored
+here for life. He's trying to buy his home he tells me."
+
+"So Maggie said--Father Honore;" she clasped and unclasped her hands
+nervously; "I think it's that that has made me come to you to-day."
+
+"That?--I think I don't quite understand, Aileen."
+
+"The home--I think I never felt so alone--so homeless as when I was
+there with her--and the baby--"
+
+She looked down, struggling to keep back the tears. Despite her efforts
+the bright drops plashed one after the other on her clasped hands. She
+raised her eyes, looking almost defiantly through the falling tears at
+the priest; the blood surged into her white cheeks; the rush of words
+followed:--
+
+"I have no home--I've never had one--never shall have one--it's not for
+me, that paradise; it's for men and women like Jim McCann and
+Maggie.--Oh, why did I come here!" she cried out wildly; "why did you
+put me there in that house?--Why didn't Mr. Van Ostend let me alone
+where I was--happy with the rest! Why," she demanded almost fiercely,
+"why can't a child's life be her own to do with what she chooses? Why
+has any human being a right to say to another, whether young or old,
+'You shall live here and not there'? Oh, it is tyrannical--it is tyranny
+of the worst kind, and what haven't I had to suffer from it all! It is
+like Hell on earth!"
+
+Her breath caught in great sobs that shook her; her eyes flashed through
+blinding tears; her cheeks were crimson; she continued to clasp and
+unclasp her hands.
+
+The peculiar ivory tint of the strong pock-marked face opposite her took
+on, during this outburst, a slightly livid hue. Every word she uttered
+was a blow; for in it was voiced misery of mind, suffering and hardness
+of heart, despair, ingratitude, undeserved reproach, anger, defiance and
+the ignoring of all facts save those in the recollection of which she
+had lost all poise, all control--And she was still so young! What was
+behind these facts that occasioned such a tirade?
+
+This was the priest's problem.
+
+He waited a moment to regain his own control. The ingratitude, the
+bitter injustice had shocked him out of it. Her mood seemed one of
+defiance only. The woman before him was one he had never known in the
+Aileen Armagh of the last fourteen years. He knew, moreover, that he
+must not speak--dare not, as a sacred obligation to his office, until he
+no longer felt the touch of anger he experienced upon hearing her
+unrestrained outburst. It was but a moment before that touch was
+removed; his heart softened towards her; filled suddenly with a pitying
+love, for with his mind's eye he saw the small blood-stained
+handkerchief in his hand, the initials A. A., the man on the cot from
+whose arm he had taken it more than six years before. Six years! How she
+must have suffered--and in silence!
+
+"Aileen," he said at last and very gently, "whatever was done for you at
+that time was done with the best intentions for your good. Believe me,
+could Mr. Van Ostend and I have foreseen such resulting wretchedness as
+this for our efforts, we should never have insisted on carrying out our
+plan for you. But, like yourself, we are human--we could not foresee
+this any more than you could. There is, however, one course always open
+to you--"
+
+"What?" she demanded; her voice was harsh from continued struggle with
+her complex emotions. She was past all realization of what she owed to
+the dignity of his office.
+
+"You have long been of age; you are at liberty to leave Mrs. Champney
+whenever you will."
+
+"I am going to." The response came prompt and hard.
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"I don't know--yet--;" her speech faltered; "but I want to try the
+stage. Every one says I have the voice for it, and I suppose I could
+make a hit in light operetta or vaudeville as well now as when I was a
+child. A few years more and I shall be too old."
+
+"And you think you can enter into such publicity without protection?"
+
+"Oh, I'm able to protect myself--I've done that already." She spoke with
+bitterness.
+
+"True, you are a woman now--but still a young woman--"
+
+Father Honore stopped there. He was making no headway with her. He knew
+only too well that, as yet, he had not begun to get beneath the surface.
+When he spoke it was as if he were merely thinking aloud.
+
+"Somehow, I hadn't thought that you would be so ready to leave us
+all--so many friends. Are we nothing to you, Aileen? Will you make
+better, truer ones among strangers? I can hardly think so."
+
+She covered her face with her hands and began to sob again, but
+brokenly.
+
+"Aileen, my daughter, what is it? Is there any new trouble preparing for
+you at The Bow?"
+
+She shook her head. The tears trickled through her fingers.
+
+"Does Mrs. Champney know that you are going to leave her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Has it become unbearable?"
+
+Another shake of the head. She searched blindly for her handkerchief,
+drew it forth and wiped her eyes and face.
+
+"No; she's kinder than she's been for a long time--ever since that last
+stroke. She wants me with her most of the time."
+
+"Has she ever spoken to you about remaining with her?"
+
+"Yes, a good many times. She tried to make me promise I would stay
+till--till she doesn't need me. But, I couldn't, you know."
+
+"Then why--but of course I know you are worn out by her long invalidism
+and tired of the fourteen years in that one house. Still, she has been
+lenient since you were twenty-one. She has permitted you--although of
+course you had the undisputed right--to earn for yourself in teaching
+the singing classes in the afternoon and evening school, and she pays
+you something beside--fairly well, doesn't she? I think you told me you
+were satisfied."
+
+"Oh yes, in a way--so far as it goes. She doesn't begin to pay me as she
+would have to pay another girl in my position--if I have any there. I
+haven't said anything about it to her, because I wanted to work off my
+indebtedness to her on account of what she spent on me in bringing me
+up--she never let me forget that in those first seven years! I want to
+give more than I've had," she said proudly, "and sometime I shall tell
+her of it."
+
+"But you have never given her any love?"
+
+"No, I couldn't give her that.--Do you blame me?"
+
+"No; you have done your whole duty by her. May I suggest that when you
+leave her you still make your home with us here in Flamsted? You have no
+other home, my child."
+
+"No, I have no other home," she repeated mechanically.
+
+"I know, at least, two that are open to you at any time you choose to
+avail yourself of their hospitality. Mrs. Caukins would be so glad to
+have you both for her daughters' sake and her own. The Colonel desires
+this as much as she does and--" he hesitated a moment, "now that Romanzo
+has his position in the New York office, and has married and settled
+there, there could be no objection so far as I can see."
+
+There was no response.
+
+"But if you do not care to consider that, there is another. About seven
+months ago, Mrs. Googe--"
+
+"Mrs. Googe?"
+
+She turned to him a face from which every particle of color had faded.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Googe. She would have spoken to you herself long before this,
+but, you know, Aileen, how she would feel in the circumstances--she
+would not think of suggesting your coming to her from Mrs. Champney. I
+feel sure she is waiting for you to take the initiative."
+
+"Mrs. Googe?" she repeated, continuing to stare at him--blankly, as if
+she had heard but those two words of all that he was saying.
+
+"Why, yes, Mrs. Googe. Is there anything so strange in that? She has
+always loved you, and she said to me, only the other day, 'I would love
+to have her young companionship in my house'--she will never call it
+home, you know, until her son returns--'to be as a daughter to me'--"
+
+"Daughter!--I--want air--"
+
+She swayed forward in speaking. Father Honore sprang and caught her or
+she would have fallen. He placed her firmly against the chair back and
+opened the window. The keen night air charged with frost quickly revived
+her.
+
+"You were sitting too near the fire; I should have remembered that you
+had come in from the cold," he said, delicately regarding her feelings;
+"let me get you a glass of water, Aileen."
+
+She put out her hand with a gesture of dissent. She began to breathe
+freely. The room chilled rapidly. Father Honore closed the window and
+took his stand on the hearth. Aileen raised her eyes to him. It seemed
+as if she lifted the swollen reddened lids with difficulty.
+
+"Father Honore," she said in a low voice, tense with suppressed feeling,
+"dear Father Honore, the only father I have ever known, don't you know
+_why_ I cannot go to Mrs. Googe's?--why I must not stay too long in
+Flamsted?"
+
+And looking into those eyes, that were incapable of insincerity, that,
+in the present instance, attempted to veil nothing, the priest read all
+that of which, six years ago on that never to be forgotten November
+night in New York, he had had premonition.
+
+"My daughter--is it because of Champney's prospective return within a
+year that you feel you cannot remain longer with us?"
+
+Her quivering lips gave an almost inaudible assent.
+
+"Why?" He dared not spare her; he felt, moreover, that she did not wish
+to be spared. His eyes held hers.
+
+Bravely she answered, bracing soul and mind and body to steadfastness.
+There was not a wavering of an eyelid, not a suggestion of faltering
+speech as she spoke the words that alone could lift from her
+overburdened heart the weight of a seven years' silence:
+
+"Because I love him."
+
+The answer seemed to Father Honore supreme in its sacrificial
+simplicity. He laid his hand on her head. She bowed beneath his touch.
+
+"I have tried so hard," she murmured, "so hard--and I cannot help it. I
+have despised myself for it--if only he hadn't been put _there_, I think
+it would have helped--but he is there, and my thoughts are with him
+there--I see him nights--in that cell--I see him daytimes _breaking
+stones_--I can't sleep, or eat, without comparing--you know. Oh, if he
+hadn't been put _there_, I could have conquered this weakness--"
+
+"Aileen, _no_! It is no weakness, it is strength."
+
+Father Honore withdrew his hand, that had been to the broken woman a
+silent benediction, and walked up and down the long room. "You would
+never have conquered; there was--there is no need to conquer. Such love
+is of God--trust it, my child; don't try any longer to thrust it forth
+from your heart, your life; for if you do, your life will be but a poor
+maimed thing, beneficial neither to yourself nor to others. I say,
+cherish this supreme love for the man who is expiating in a prison; hold
+it close to your soul as a shield and buckler to the spirit against the
+world; truly, you will need no other if you go forth from us into a
+world of strangers--but why, why need you go?"
+
+He spoke gently, but insistently. He saw that the girl was hanging upon
+his every word as if he bespoke her eternal salvation. And, in truth,
+the priest was illumining the dark and hidden places of her life and
+giving her courage to love on which, to her, meant courage to live
+on.--Such were the demands of a nature, loyal, impulsive, warmly
+affectionate, sincere, capable of an all-sacrificing love that could
+give without return if need be, but a nature which, without love
+developing in her of itself just for the sake of love, would shrivel,
+become embittered, and like withered fruit on a tree drop useless to the
+ground to be trodden under the careless foot of man.
+
+In the darkening room the firelight leaped and showed to Father Honore
+the woman's face transfigured under the powerful influence of his words.
+She smiled up at him--a smile so brave in its pathos, so winning in its
+true womanliness, that Father Honore felt the tears bite his eyeballs.
+
+"Perhaps I don't need to go then."
+
+"This rejoices me, Aileen--it will rejoice us all," he answered heartily
+to cover his emotion.
+
+"But it won't be easy to stay where I am."
+
+"I know--I know; you speak as one who has suffered; but has not Champney
+suffered too? Think of his home-coming!"
+
+"Yes, he has suffered--in a way--but not my way."
+
+Father Honore had a vision at that moment of Champney Googe's face when
+he said, "But you loved her with your whole manhood." He made no reply,
+but waited for Aileen to say more if she should so choose.
+
+"I believed he loved me--and so I told him my love--I shall never, never
+get over that!" she exclaimed passionately. "But I know now--I knew
+before he went away the last time, that I was mistaken; no man could
+say what he did and know even the first letter of love."
+
+Her indignation was rising, and Father Honore welcomed it; it was a
+natural trait with her, and its suppression gave him more cause for
+anxiety than its expression.
+
+"He didn't love me--not really--"
+
+"Are you sure of this, Aileen?"
+
+"Yes, I am sure."
+
+"You have good reason to know that you are telling a fact in asserting
+this?"
+
+"Yes, altogether too good a reason." There was a return of bitterness in
+her answer.
+
+Father Honore was baffled. Aileen spoke without further questioning.
+Evidently she was desirous of making her position as well as Champney's
+plain to him and to herself. Her voice grew more gentle as she
+continued:--
+
+"Father Honore, I've loved him so long--and so truly, without hope, you
+know--never any hope, and hating myself for loving where I was not
+loved--that I think I do know what love is--"
+
+Father Honore smiled to himself in the half-dark; this voice was still
+young, and its love-wisdom was young-wise, also. There was hope, he told
+himself, that all would come right in the end--work together for good.
+
+"But Mr. Googe never loved me as I loved him--and I couldn't accept
+less."
+
+The priest caught but the lesser part of her meaning. Even his wisdom
+and years failed to throw light on the devious path of Aileen's thoughts
+at this moment. Of the truth contained in her expression, he had no
+inkling.
+
+"Aileen, I don't know that I can make it plain to you, but--a man's
+love is so different from a woman's that, sometimes, I think such a
+statement as you have just made is so full of flaws that it amounts to
+sophistry; but there is no need to discuss that.--Let me ask you if you
+can endure to stay on with Mrs. Champney for a few months longer? I have
+a very special reason for asking this. Sometime I will tell you."
+
+"Oh, yes;" she spoke wearily, indifferently; "I may as well stay there
+as anywhere now." Then with more interest and animation, "May I tell you
+something I have kept to myself all these years? I want to get rid of
+it."
+
+"Surely--the more the better when the heart is burdened."
+
+He took his seat again, and with pitying love and ever increasing
+interest and amazement listened to her recital of the part she played on
+that October night in the quarry woods--of her hate that turned to love
+again when she found the man she had both loved and hated in the extreme
+of need, of the 'murder'--so she termed it in her contrition--of Rag, of
+her swearing Luigi to silence. She told of herself--but of Champney
+Googe's unmanly temptation of her honor, of his mad passion for her, she
+said never a word; her two pronounced traits of chastity and loyalty
+forbade it, as well as the desire of a loving woman to shield him she
+loved in spite of herself.
+
+Of the little handkerchief that played its part in that night's
+threatened tragedy she said nothing--neither did Father Honore;
+evidently, she had forgotten it.
+
+Suddenly she clasped her hands hard over her heart.
+
+"That dear loving little dog's death has lain here like a stone all
+these years," she said, and rose to go.
+
+"You are absolved, Aileen," he said smiling. "It was, like many others,
+a little devoted life sacrificed to a great love."
+
+He reached to press the button that turned on the electric lights. Their
+soft brilliance caught in sparkling gleams on the points of a small
+piece of almost pure white granite among the specimens on the shelf
+above them. Father Honore rose and took it from its place.
+
+"This is for you, Aileen," he said handing it to her.
+
+"For me?" She looked at him in wonder, not understanding what he meant
+by this insignificant gift at such a time.
+
+He smiled at her look of amazement.
+
+"No wonder you look puzzled. You must be thinking you have 'asked me for
+bread and I am giving you a stone.' But this is for remembrance."
+
+He hesitated a moment.
+
+"You said once this afternoon, that for years it had been a hell on
+earth for you--a strong expression to fall from a young woman's lips;
+and I said nothing. Sometime, perhaps, you will see things differently.
+But if I said nothing, it was only because I thought the more; for just
+as you spoke those words, my eye caught the glitter of this piece of
+granite in the firelight, and I said to myself--'that is like what
+Aileen's life will be, and through her life what her character will
+prove to be.' This stone has been crushed, subjected to unimaginable
+heat, upheaved, submerged, ground again to powder, remelted,
+overwhelmed, made adamant, rent, upheaved again,--and now, after aeons,
+it lies here so near the blue above our Flamsted Hills, worthy to be
+used and put to all noble uses; fittest in all the world for foundation
+stone--for it is the foundation rock of our earth crust--for all
+lasting memorials of great deed and noble thought; for all temples and
+holies of holies. Take it, Aileen, and--remember!"
+
+"I will, oh, I will; and I'll try to fit myself, too; I'll try, dear,
+dear Father Honore," she said humbly, gratefully.
+
+He held out his hand and she placed hers in it. He opened the door.
+
+"Good night, Aileen, and God bless you."
+
+"Good night, Father Honore."
+
+She went out into the clear winter starlight. The piece of granite, she
+held tightly clasped in her hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The priest, after closing the door, went to the pine table and opening a
+drawer took out a letter. It bore a recent date. It was from the
+chaplain of the prison and informed him there was a strong prospect of
+release for Champney Googe at least three months before the end of his
+term. Father Honore smiled to himself. He refolded it and laid it in the
+drawer.
+
+
+III
+
+Early in the following March, on the arrival of the 3 P.M. train from
+Hallsport, there was the usual crowd at The Corners' station to meet it.
+They watched the passengers as they left the train and commented freely
+on one and another known to them.
+
+"I'll bet that's the new boss at the upper quarries," said one, pointing
+to a short thickset man making his way up the platform.
+
+"Yes, that's him; and they're taking on a gang of new men with him;
+they're in the last car--there they come! There's going to be a regular
+spring freshet of 'em coming along now--the business is booming."
+
+They scanned the men closely as they passed, between twenty and thirty
+of them of various nationalities. They were gesticulating wildly,
+vociferating loudly, shouldering bundle, knapsack or tool-kit. Behind
+them came a few stone-cutters, mostly Scotch and Irish. The last to
+leave the train was evidently an American.
+
+The crowd on the platform surged away to the electric car to watch
+further proceedings of the newly arrived "gang." The arrival of the
+immigrant workmen always afforded fun for the natives. The men shivered
+and hunched their shoulders; the raw March wind was searching. The
+gesticulating and vociferating increased. To any one unacquainted with
+foreign ways, a complete rupture of international peace and relations
+seemed imminent. They tumbled over one another into the cars and filled
+them to overflowing, even to the platform where they clung to the
+guards.
+
+The man who had been the last to leave the train stood on the emptied
+platform and looked about him. He carried a small bundle. He noted the
+sign on the electric cars, "To Quarry End Park". A puzzled look came
+into his face. He turned to the baggage-master who was wrestling with
+the immigrants' baggage:--iron-bound chests, tin boxes and trunks, sacks
+of heavy coarse linen filled with bedding.
+
+"Does this car go to the sheds?"
+
+The station master looked up. "It goes past there, but this is the
+regular half-hour express for the quarries and the Park. You a stranger
+in these parts?"
+
+"This is all strange to me," the man answered.
+
+"Any baggage?"
+
+"No."
+
+At that moment there was a rapid clanging of the gong; the motorman let
+fly the whirling rod; the over full cars started with a jerk--there was
+a howl, a shout, followed by a struggle to keep the equilibrium; an
+undersized Canuck was seen to be running madly alongside with one hand
+on the guard and endeavoring to get a foothold; he was hauled up
+unceremoniously by a dozen hands. The crowd watching them, cheered and
+jeered:
+
+"Goin' it some, Antoine! Don't get left!"
+
+"Keep on your pins, you Dagos!"
+
+"Steady, Polacks--there's the strap!"
+
+"Gee up, Johnny!" This to the motorman.
+
+"Gosh, it's like a soda bottle fizzin' to hear them Rooshians talkin'."
+
+"Hooray for you!"
+
+The cars were off swiftly now; the men on the platforms waved their
+hats, their white teeth flashing, their gold earrings twinkling, and
+echoed the American cheer:--
+
+"Horray!"
+
+The station master turned away laughing.
+
+"They look like a tough crowd, but they're O. K. in the end," he said to
+the man beside him who was looking after the vanishing car and its
+trailer. "There's yours coming down the switch. That'll take you up to
+Flamsted and the sheds." He pushed the loaded truck up the platform.
+
+The stranger entered the car and took a seat at the rear; there were no
+other passengers. He told the conductor to leave him as near as possible
+to the sheds.
+
+"Guess you don't know these parts?" The conductor put the question.
+
+"This here is new to me," the man answered; he seemed nothing loath to
+enter into conversation. "When was this road built?"
+
+"'Bout five years ago. You'll see what a roadway they've made clear
+along the north shore of the lake; it's bein' built up with houses just
+as fast as it's taken up."
+
+He rang the starting bell. The car gathered headway and sped noisily
+along the frozen road-bed. In a few minutes it stopped at the Flamsted
+station; then it followed the shore of the lake for two miles until it
+reached the sheds. It stopped here and the man got out.
+
+"Can you tell me where the manager's office is?" he asked a workman who
+was passing.
+
+"Over there." He pointed with his thumb backwards across some railroad
+tracks and through a stone-yard to a small two-storey office building at
+the end of three huge sheds.
+
+The man made his way across to them. Once he stopped to look at the
+leaden waters of the lake, rimmed with ice; and up at the leaden sky
+that seemed to be shutting down close upon them like a lid; and around
+at the gray waste of frozen ground, the meadows covered lightly with
+snow and pools of surface ice that here and there showed the long
+bleached grass pricking through in grayish-yellow tufts. Beyond the
+meadows he saw a rude stone chapel, and near by the foundations, capped
+with wood, of a large church. He shivered once; he had no overcoat. Then
+he went on to the manager's office. He rang and opened the door.
+
+"Can I see the manager?"
+
+"He's out now; gone over to the engine-house to see about the new smoke
+stack; he'll be back in a few minutes. Guess you'll find a stool in the
+other room."
+
+The man entered the room, but remained standing, listening with
+increasing interest to the technical talk of the other two men who were
+half lying on the table as they bent over some large plans--an
+architect's blue prints. Finally the man drew near.
+
+"May I look too?" he asked.
+
+"Sure. These are the working plans for the new Episcopal cathedral at
+A.;" he named a well known city; "you've heard of it, I s'pose?"
+
+The man shook his head.
+
+"Here for a job?"
+
+"Yes. Is all this work to be done by the company?"
+
+"Every stone. We got the contract eleven months ago. We're at work on
+these courses now." He turned the plates that the man might see.
+
+He bent over to examine them, noting the wonderful detail of arch and
+architrave, of keystone, cornice and foundation course. Each stone,
+varying in size and shape, was drawn with utmost accuracy, dimensions
+given, numbered with its own number for the place of its setting into
+the perfect whole. The stability of the whole giant structure was
+dependent upon the perfection and right placing of each individual stone
+from lowest foundation to the keystones of the vaulting arches of the
+nave; the harmony of design dependent on rightly maintained proportions
+of each granite block, large or small--and all this marvellous structure
+was the product of the rude granite veins in The Gore! That adamantine
+mixture of gneiss and quartz, prepared in nature's laboratory throughout
+millions of years, was now furnishing the rock which, beneath human
+manipulation, was flowering into the great cathedral! And that perfect
+whole was _ideaed_ first in the brain of man, and a sketch of it
+transferred by the sun itself to the blue paper which lay on the table!
+
+What a combination and transmutation of those forceful powers that
+originate in the Unnamable!
+
+The manager entered, passed into the next room and, sitting down at his
+desk, began to make notes on a pad. At a sign from the two men, the
+stranger followed him, cap in hand.
+
+The manager spoke without looking at him:--"Well?"
+
+"I'd like a job in the sheds."
+
+At the sound of that voice, the manager glanced up quickly, keenly. He
+saw before him a man evidently prematurely gray. The broad shoulders
+bowed slightly as if from long-continued work involving much stooping.
+He looked at the hands; they were rough, calloused with toil, the
+knuckles spread, the nails broken and worn. Then he looked again into
+the face; that puzzled him. It was smooth-shaven, square in outline and
+rather thin, but the color was good; the eyes--what eyes!
+
+The manager found himself wondering if there were a pair to match them
+in the wide world. They were slightly sunken, large, blue, of a depth
+and beauty and clarity rarely seen in that color. Within them, as if at
+home, dwelt an expression of inner quiet, and sadness combined with
+strength and firmness. It was not easy to look long into them without
+wanting to grasp the possessor's hand in fellowship. They smiled, too,
+as the manager continued to stare. That broke the spell; they were
+undeniably human. The manager smiled in response.
+
+"Learned your trade?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long have you been working at it?"
+
+"Between six and seven years."
+
+"Any tools with you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Union man?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Hm-m."
+
+The manager chewed the handle of his pen, and thought something out with
+himself; his eyes were on the pad before him.
+
+"We've got to take on a lot of new men for the next two years--as many
+as we can of skilled workmen. The break will have to be made sometime.
+Anyhow, if you'll risk it they've got a job for you in Shed Number
+Two--cutting and squaring for a while--forty cents an hour--eight hour
+day. I'll telephone to the boss if you want it."
+
+"I do."
+
+He took up the desk-telephone and gave his message.
+
+"It's all right." He drew out a ledger from beneath the desk. "What's
+your letter?"
+
+"Letter?" The man looked startled for a moment.
+
+"Yes, initial of your last name."
+
+"G."
+
+The manager found the letter, thrust in his finger, opened the page
+indicated and shoved the book over the desk towards the applicant. He
+handed him his pen.
+
+"Write your name, your age, and what you're native of." He indicated the
+columns.
+
+The man took the pen. He seemed at first slightly awkward in handling
+it. The entry he made was as follows:
+
+"Louis C. Googe--thirty-four--United States."
+
+The manager glanced at it. "That's a common enough name in Maine and
+these parts," he said. Then he pointed through the window. "That's the
+shed over there--the middle one. The boss'll give you some tools till
+you get yours."
+
+"Thank you." The man put on his cap and went out.
+
+"Well, I'll be hanged!" was all the manager said as he looked after the
+applicant. Then he rose, went to the office door and watched the man
+making his way through the stone-yards towards the sheds. "Well, boys,"
+he said further, turning to the two men bending over the plans, "that
+suit ain't exactly a misfit, but it hasn't seen the light of day for a
+good many years--and it's the same with the man. What in thunder is he
+doing in the sheds! Did he say anything specially to you before I came
+in?"
+
+"No; only he seemed mighty interested in the plans, examined the detail
+of some of them--as if he knew."
+
+"We'll keep our eyes on him." The manager went back to his desk.
+
+
+IV
+
+Perhaps the dreariest environment imaginable is a stone-cutters' shed on
+a bleak day in the first week in March. The large ones stretching along
+the north shore of Lake Mesantic are no exception to this statement. A
+high wind from the northeast was driving before it particles of ice, and
+now and then a snow flurry. It penetrated every crack and crevice of the
+huge buildings, the second and largest of which covered a ground space
+of more than an acre. Every gust made itself both felt and heard among
+the rafters. Near the great doors the granite dust whirled in eddies.
+
+At this hour in the afternoon Shed Number Two was a study in black and
+gray and white. Gray dust several inches thick spread underfoot; all
+about were gray walls, gray and white granite piles, gray columns,
+arches, uncut blocks, heaps of granite waste, gray workmen in gray
+blouses and canvas aprons covered with gray dust. In one corner towered
+the huge gray-black McDonald machine in mighty strength, its multiple
+revolving arms furnished with gigantic iron fists which manipulate the
+unyielding granite with Herculean automatonism--an invention of the
+film-like brain of man to conquer in a few minutes the work of nature's
+aeons! Gray-black overhead stretched the running rails for the monster
+electric travelling crane; some men crawling out on them looked like
+monkeys. Here and there might be seen the small insignificant "Lewis
+Key"--a thing that may be held on a woman's palm--sustaining a granite
+weight of many tons.
+
+There were three hundred men at work in this shed, and the ringing
+_chip-chip-chipping_ monotone from the hundreds of hammers and chisels,
+filled the great space with industry's wordless song that has its
+perfect harmony for him who listens with open ears and expansive mind.
+
+Jim McCann was at work near the shed doors which had been opened several
+times since one o'clock to admit the flat cars with the granite. He was
+alternately blowing on his benumbed fingers and cursing the doors and
+the draught that was chilling him to the marrow. The granite dust was
+swirling about his legs and rising into his nostrils. It lacked a
+half-hour to four.
+
+Two cars rolled in silently.
+
+"Shut thim damned doors, man!" he shouted across to the door-tender;
+"God kape us but we' it's our last death we'll be ketchin' before we can
+clane out our lungs o' the dust we've swallowed the day. It's after
+bein' wan damned slitherin' whorl of grit in the nose of me since eight
+the morn."
+
+He struck hard on his chisel and a spark flew. A workman, an Italian,
+laughed.
+
+"That's arll-rright, Jim--fire up!"
+
+"You kape shet," growled McCann. He was unfriendly as a rule to the
+Dagos. "It's in me blood," was his only excuse.
+
+"An' if it's a firin' ye be after," he continued, "ye'll get it shurre
+if ye lave off workin' to warm up yer tongue wid such sass.--Shut thim
+doors!" he shouted again; but a gust of wind failed to carry his voice
+in the desired direction.
+
+In the swirling roar and the small dust-spout that followed in its
+wake, Jim and the workmen in his cold section were aware of a man who
+had been half-blown in with the whirling dust. He took shelter for a
+moment by the inner wall. The foreman saw him and recognized him for the
+man who, the manager had just telephoned, was coming over from the
+office. He came forward to meet him.
+
+"You're the man who has just taken on a job in Shed Number Two?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The foreman signed to one of the men and told him to bring an extra set
+of tools.
+
+"Here's your section," he said indicating McCann's; "you can begin on
+this block--just squaring it for to-night."
+
+The man took his tools with a "Thank you," and went to work. The others
+watched him furtively, as Jim told Maggie afterwards "from the tail of
+me eye."
+
+He knew his work. They soon saw that. Every stroke told. The doors were
+shut at last and the electric lights turned on. Up to the stroke of four
+the men worked like automatons--_chip-chip-chipping_. Now and then there
+was some chaffing, good-natured if rough.
+
+The little Canuck, who by dint of running had caught the car, was
+working nearby. McCann called out to him:
+
+"I say, Antwine, where you'd be after gettin' that cap with the monkey
+ears?"
+
+"Bah gosh, Ah have get dis a Mo'real--at good marche--sheep." He stroked
+the small skin earlaps caressingly with one hand, then spat upon his
+palm and fell to work again.
+
+"Montreal is it? When did you go?"
+
+"Ah was went tree day--le Pere Honore tol' mah Ah better was go to mon
+maitre; he was dead las' week."
+
+"Wot yer givin' us, Antwine? Three days to see yer dead mater an' lavin'
+yer stiddy job for the likes of him, an' good luck yer come back this
+afternoon or the new man 'ud 'a' had it."
+
+"Ah, non--ah, non! De boss haf tol' mah, Ah was keep mah shob. Ah,
+non--ah, non. Ah was went pour l'amour de Pere Honore."
+
+"Damn yer lingo--shpake English, I tell you."
+
+Antoine grinned and shook his head.
+
+"Wot yer givin' us about his Riverince, eh?"
+
+"Le Pere Honore, hein? Ah-h-h-rr, le bon Pere Honore! Attendez--he tol'
+mah Ah was best non raconter--mais, Ah raconte you, Shim--"
+
+"Go ahead, Johnny Frog; let's hear."
+
+"Ah was been lee'l garcon--lee'l bebe, no pere; ma mere was been--how
+you say?--gypsee a cheval, hein?" he appealed to McCann.
+
+"You mane a gypsy that rides round the counthry?"
+
+Antoine nodded emphatically. "Yah--oui, gypsee a cheval, an' bars--"
+
+"Bears?"
+
+"Mais oui, bruins--bars; pour les faire dancer--"
+
+"You mane your mother was a gypsy that went round the counthry showin'
+off dancin' bears?"
+
+"Yah-oui. Ah mane so. She haf been seek--malade--how you say, petite
+verole--so like de Pere Honore?" He made with his forefinger dents in
+his face and forehead.
+
+"An' is it the shmall pox yer mane?"
+
+"Yah-oui, shmall pookes. She was haf it, an' tout le monde--how you
+say?--efferybodyee was haf fear. She was haf nottin' to eat--nottin' to
+drrink; le Pere Honore was fin' her in de bois--foret, an' was been tak'
+ma pauvre mere in hees ahrms, an' he place her in de sugair-house, an'
+il l'a soignee--how you say?" He appealed to the Italian whose interest
+was on the increase.
+
+"Nurrsed?"
+
+"Yah--oui, nurrsed her, an' moi aussi--lee'l bebe'--"
+
+"D' yer mane his Riverince nursed you and yer mother through the shmall
+pox?" demanded McCann. Several of the workmen stopped short with hammers
+uplifted to hear Antoine's answer.
+
+"Mais oui, il l'a soignee jusqu'a ce qu'elle was been dead; he l'a
+enterree--place in de terre--airth, an' moi he haf place chez un farmyer
+a Mo'real. An' le Pere Honore was tak' la petite verole--shmall pookes
+in de sugair-house, an' de farmyer was gif him to eat an' to drrink par
+la porte--de door; de farmyer haf non passe par de door. Le Pere Honore
+m'a sauve--haf safe, hein? An' Ah was been work ten, twenty, dirty year,
+Ah tink. Ah gagne--gain, hein?--two hundert pieces. Ah been come to de
+quairries, pour l'amour de bon Pere Honore qui m'a safe, hein? Ah be
+tres content; Ah gagne, gain two, tree pieces--dollaires--par jour."
+
+He nodded at one and all, his gold half-moon earrings twinkling in his
+evident satisfaction with himself and "le bon Pere Honore."
+
+The men were silent. Jim McCann's eyes were blurred with tears. The
+thought of his own six-months boy presented itself in contrast to the
+small waif in the Canada woods and the dying gypsy mother, nursed by the
+priest who had christened his own little Billy.
+
+"It's a bad night for the lecture," said a Scotchman, and broke
+therewith the emotional spell that was holding the men who had made out
+the principal points of Antoine's story.
+
+"Yes, but Father Honore says it's all about the cathedrals, an' not many
+will want to miss it," said another. "They say there's a crowd coming
+down from the quarries to-night to hear it."
+
+"Faith, an' it's Mr. Van Ostend will be after havin' to put on an a
+trailer to his new hall," said McCann; "the b'ys know a good thing whin
+they see it, an' we was like to smother, the whole kit of us, whin they
+had the last pitchers of them mountins in Alasky on the sheet. It's the
+stairioptican that takes best wid the b'ys."
+
+The four o'clock whistle began to sound. Three hundred chisels and
+hammers were dropped on the instant. The men hurried to the doors that
+were opened their full width to give egress to the hastening throngs.
+They streamed out; there was laughing and chaffing; now and then, among
+the younger ones, some good-natured fisticuffs were exchanged. Many
+sought the electrics to The Gore; others took the car to The Corners.
+From the three sheds, the power-house, the engine-house, the office, the
+dark files streamed forth from their toil. Within fifteen minutes the
+lights were turned out, the watchman was making his first round. Instead
+of the sounds of a vast industry, nothing was heard but the
+_sz-szz-szzz_ of the vanishing trams, the sputter of an arc-light, the
+barking of a dog. The gray twilight of a bleak March day shut down
+rapidly over frozen field and ice-rimmed lake.
+
+
+V
+
+Champney Googe left the shed with the rest; no one spoke to him,
+although many a curious look was turned his way when he had passed, and
+he spoke to no one. He waited for a car to Flamsted. There he got out.
+He found a restaurant near The Greenbush and ordered something to eat.
+Afterwards he went about the town, changed almost beyond recognition. He
+saw no face he knew. There were foreigners everywhere--men who were to
+be the fathers of the future American race. A fairly large opera house
+attracted his attention; it was evidently new. He looked for the
+year--1901. A little farther on he found the hall, built, so he had
+gathered from the few words among the men in the sheds, by Mr. Van
+Ostend. The name was on the lintel: "Flamsted Quarries Hall." Every few
+minutes an electric tram went whizzing through Main Street towards The
+Bow. Crowds of young people were on the street.
+
+He looked upon all he saw almost indifferently, feeling little, caring
+little. It was as if a mental and spiritual numbness had possession of
+every faculty except the manual; he felt at home only while he was
+working for that short half-hour in the shed. He was not at ease here
+among this merry careless crowd. He stopped to look in at the windows of
+a large fine shop for fruits and groceries; he glanced up at the
+sign:--"Poggi and Company."
+
+"Poggi--Poggi" he said to himself; he was thinking it out. "Luigi
+Poggi--Luigi--Ah!" It was a long-drawn breath. He had found his clew.
+
+He heard again that cry: "Champney,--O Champney! what has he done to
+you!" The night came back to him in all its detail. It sickened him.
+
+He was about to turn from the window and seek the quiet of The Bow until
+the hall should be open--at "sharp seven" he heard the men say--when a
+woman passed him and entered the shop. She took a seat at the counter
+just inside the show-window. He stood gazing at her, unable to move his
+eyes from the form, the face. It was she--Aileen!
+
+The sickening feeling increased for a moment, then it gave place to
+strange electric currents that passed and repassed through every nerve.
+It was a sensation as if his whole body--flesh, muscles, nerves,
+arteries, veins, every lobe of his brain, every cell within each lobe,
+had been, as the saying is of an arm or leg, "asleep" and was now
+"coming to." The tingling sensation increased almost to torture; but he
+could not move. That face held him.
+
+He must get away before she came out! That was his one thought. The
+first torment of awakening sensation to a new life was passing. He
+advanced a foot, then the other; he moved slowly, but he moved at last.
+He walked on down the street, not up towards The Bow as he had intended;
+walked on past The Greenbush towards The Corners; walked on and on till
+the nightmare of this awakening from a nearly seven-years abnormal sleep
+of feeling was over. Then he turned back to the town. The town clock was
+striking seven. The men were entering the hall by tens and twenties.
+
+He took his seat in a corner beneath the shadow of a large gallery at
+the back, over the entrance.
+
+There were only men admitted. He looked upon the hundreds assembled, and
+realized for the first time in more than six years that he was again a
+free man among free men. He drew a long breath of relief, of
+realization.
+
+At a quarter past seven Father Honore made his appearance on the
+platform. The men settled at once into silence, and the priest began
+without preface:
+
+"My friends, we will take up to-night what we may call the Brotherhood
+of Stone."
+
+The men looked at one another and smiled. Here was something new.
+
+"That is the right thought for all of you to take with you into the
+quarries and the sheds. Don't forget it!"
+
+He made certain distinct pauses after a few sentences. This was done
+with intention; for the men before him were of various nationalities,
+although he called this his "English night." But many were learning and
+understood imperfectly; it was for them he paused frequently. He wanted
+to give them time to take in what he was saying. Sometimes he repeated
+his words in Italian, in French, that the foreigners might better
+comprehend his meaning.
+
+"Perhaps some of you have worked in the limestone quarries on the Bay?
+All who have hold up hands."
+
+A hundred hands, perhaps more, were raised.
+
+"Any worked in the marble quarries of Vermont?"
+
+A dozen or more Canucks waved their hands vigorously.
+
+"Here are three pieces--limestone, marble, and granite." He held up
+specimens of the three. "All of them are well known to most of you. Now
+mark what I say of these three:--first, the limestone gets burned
+principally; second, the marble gets sculptured principally; third, the
+granite gets hammered and chiselled principally. Fire, chisel, and
+hammer at work on these three rocks; but, they are all _quarried_ first.
+This fact of their being quarried puts them in the Brotherhood--of
+Labor."
+
+The men nudged one another, and nodded emphatically.
+
+"They are all three taken from the crust of the earth; this Earth is to
+them the earth-mother. Now mark again what I say:--this fact of their
+common earth-mother puts them in the Brotherhood--of Kin."
+
+He took up three specimens of quartz crystals.
+
+"This quartz crystal"--he turned it in the light, and the hexagonal
+prisms caught and reflected dazzling rays--"I found in the limestone
+quarry on the Bay. This," he took up another smaller one, "I found after
+a long search in the marble quarries of Vermont. This here," he held up
+a third, a smaller, less brilliant, less perfect one--"I took out of our
+upper quarry after a three weeks' search for it.
+
+"This fact, that these rocks, although of different market value and put
+to different uses, may yield the same perfect crystal, puts the
+limestone, the marble, the granite in the Brotherhood--of Equality.
+
+"In our other talks, we have named the elements of each rock, and given
+some study to each. We have found that some of their elements are the
+basic elements of our own mortal frames--our bodies have a common
+earth-mother with these stones.
+
+"This last fact puts them in the Brotherhood--of Man."
+
+The seven hundred men showed their appreciation of the point made by
+prolonged applause.
+
+"Now I want to make clear to you that, although these rocks have
+different market values, are put to different uses, the real value for
+us this evening consists in the fact that each, in its own place, can
+yield a crystal equal in purity to the others.--Remember this the next
+time you go to work in the quarries and the sheds."
+
+He laid aside the specimens.
+
+"We had a talk last month about the guilds of four hundred years ago. I
+asked you then to look upon yourselves as members of a great twentieth
+century working guild. Have you done it? Has every man, who was present
+then, said since, when hewing a foundation stone, a block for a bridge
+abutment, a corner-stone for a cathedral or a railroad station, a
+cap-stone for a monument, a milestone, a lintel for a door, a
+hearthstone or a step for an altar, 'I belong to the great guild of the
+makers of this country; I quarry and hew the rock that lays the enduring
+bed for the iron or electric horses which rush from sea to sea and carry
+the burden of humanity'?--Think of it, men! Yours are the hands that
+make this great track of commerce possible. Yours are the hands that
+curve the stones, afterwards reared into noble arches beneath which the
+people assemble to do God reverence. Yours are the hands that square the
+deep foundations of the great bridges which, like the Brooklyn, cross
+high in mid-air from shore to shore! Have you said this? Have you done
+it?"
+
+"Ay, ay.--Sure.--We done it." The murmuring assent was polyglot.
+
+"Very well--see that you keep on doing it, and show that you do it by
+the good work you furnish."
+
+He motioned to the manipulators in the gallery to make ready for the
+stereopticon views. The blank blinding round played erratically on the
+curtain. The entire audience sat expectant.
+
+There was flashed upon the screen the interior of a Canadian "cabin."
+The family were at supper; the whole interior, simple and homely, was
+indicative of warmth and cheerful family life.
+
+The Canucks in the audience lost their heads. The clapping was frantic.
+Father Honore smiled. He tapped the portrayed wall with the end of his
+pointer.
+
+"This is comfort--no cold can penetrate these walls; they are double
+plastered. Credit limestone with that!"
+
+The audience showed its appreciation in no uncertain way.
+
+"The crystal--can any one see that--find that in this interior?"
+
+The men were silent. Father Honore was pointing to the mother and her
+child; the father was holding out his arms to the little one who, with
+loving impatience, was reaching away from his mother over the table to
+his father. They comprehended the priest's thought in the lesson of the
+limestone:--the love and trust of the human. No words were needed. An
+emotional silence made itself felt.
+
+The picture shifted. There was thrown upon the screen the marble
+Cathedral of Milan. A murmur of delight ran through the house.
+
+"Here we have the limestone in the form of marble. Its beauty is the
+price of unremitting toil. This, too, belongs in the brotherhoods of
+labor, kin, and equality.--Do you find the crystal?"
+
+His pointer swept the hierarchy of statues on the roof, upwards to the
+cross on the pinnacle, where it rested.
+
+"This crystal is the symbol of what inspires and glorifies humanity. The
+crystal is yours, men, if with believing hearts you are willing to say
+'Our Father' in the face of His works."
+
+He paused a moment. It was an understood thing in the semi-monthly
+talks, that the men were free to ask questions and to express an
+opinion, even, at times, to argue a point. The men's eyes were fixed
+with keen appreciation on the marble beauty before them, when a voice
+broke the silence.
+
+"That sounds all right enough, your Reverence, what you've said about
+'Our Father' and the brotherhoods, but there's many a man says it that
+won't own me for a brother. There's a weak joint somewhere--and no
+offence meant."
+
+Some of the men applauded.
+
+Father Honore turned from the screen and faced the men; his eyes
+flashed. The audience loved to see him in this mood, for they knew by
+experience that he was generally able to meet his adversary, and no odds
+given or taken.
+
+"That's you, is it, Szchenetzy?"
+
+"Yes, it's me."
+
+"Do you remember in last month's talk that I showed you the
+Dolomites--the curious mountains of the Tyrol?--and in connection with
+those the Brenner Pass?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, something like seven hundred years ago a poor man, a poet and
+travelling musician, was riding over that pass and down into that very
+region of the Dolomites. He made his living by stopping at the
+stronghold-castles of those times and entertaining the powerful of the
+earth by singing his poems set to music of his own making. Sometimes he
+got a suit of cast-off clothes in payment; sometimes only bed and board
+for a time. But he kept on singing his little poems and making more of
+them as he grew rich in experience of men and things; for he never grew
+rich in gold--money was the last thing they ever gave him. So he
+continued long his wandering life, singing his songs in courtyard and
+castle hall until they sang their way into the hearts of the men of his
+generation. And while he wandered, he gained a wonderful knowledge of
+life and its ways among rich and poor, high and low; and, pondering the
+things he had seen and the many ways of this world, he said to himself,
+that day when he was riding over the Brenner Pass, the same thing that
+you have just said--in almost the same words:--'Many a man calls God
+"Father" who won't acknowledge me for a brother.'
+
+"I don't know how he reconciled facts--for your fact seems plain
+enough--nor do I know how you can reconcile them; but what I do know is
+this:--that man, poor in this world's goods, but rich in experience and
+in a natural endowment of poetic thought and musical ability, _kept on
+making poems, kept on singing them_, despite that fact to which he had
+given expression as he fared over the Brenner; despite the fact that a
+suit of cast-off clothes was all he got for his entertainment of those
+who would not call him 'brother.' Discouraged at times--for he was very
+human--he kept on giving the best that was in him, doing the work
+appointed for him in this world--and doing it with a whole heart
+Godwards and Christwards, despite his poverty, despite the broken
+promises of the great to reward him pecuniarily, despite the world,
+despite _facts_, Szchenetzy! He sang when he was young of earthly love
+and in middle age of heavenly love, and his songs are cherished, for
+their beauty of wisdom and love, in the hearts of men to this day."
+
+He smiled genially across the sea of faces to Szchenetzy.
+
+"Come up some night with your violin, Szchenetzy, and we will try over
+some of those very songs that the Germans have set to music of their
+own, those words of Walter of the Bird-Meadow--so they called him then,
+and men keep on calling him that even to this day."
+
+He turned again to the screen.
+
+"What is to be thrown on the screen now--in rapid succession for our
+hour is brief--I call our Marble Quarry. Just think of it! quarried by
+the same hard work which you all know, by which you earn your daily
+bread; sculptured into forms of exceeding beauty by the same hard toil
+of other hands. And behind all the toil there is the _soul of art_, ever
+seeking expression through the human instrument of the practised hand
+that quarries, then sculptures, then places, and builds! I shall give a
+word or two of explanation in regard to time and locality; next month we
+will take the subjects one by one."
+
+There flashed upon the screen and in quick succession, although the men
+protested and begged for an extension of exposures, the noble Pisan
+group and Niccola Pisano's pulpit in the baptistery--the horses from the
+Parthenon frieze--the Zeus group from the great altar at
+Pergamos--Theseus and the Centaur--the Wrestlers--the Discus Thrower
+and, last, the exquisite little church of Saint Mary of the Thorn,--the
+Arno's jewel, the seafarers' own,--that looks out over the Pisan waters
+to the Mediterranean.
+
+It was a magnificent showing. No words from Father Honore were needed to
+bring home to his audience the lesson of the Marble Quarry.
+
+"I call the next series, which will be shown without explanation and
+merely named, other members of the Brotherhood of Stone. We study them
+separately later on in the summer."
+
+The cathedrals of York, Amiens, Westminster, Cologne, Mayence, St.
+Mark's--a noble array of man's handiwork, were thrown upon the screen.
+The men showed their appreciation by thunderous applause.
+
+The screen was again a blank; then it filled suddenly with the great
+Upper Quarry in The Gore. The granite ledges sloped upward to meet the
+blue of the sky. The great steel derricks and their crisscrossing cables
+cast curiously foreshortened shadows on the gleaming white expanse. Here
+and there a group of men showed dark against a ledge. In the centre, one
+of the monster derricks held suspended in its chains a forty-ton block
+of granite just lifted from its eternal bed. Beside it a workman showed
+like a pigmy.
+
+Some one proposed a three times three for the home quarries. The men
+rose to their feet and the cheers were given with a will. The ringing
+echo of the last had not died away when the quarry vanished, and in its
+place stood the finished cathedral of A.--the work which the hands of
+those present were to create. It was a reproduction of the architect's
+water-color sketch.
+
+The men still remained standing; they gave no outward expression to
+their admiration; that, indeed, although evident in their faces, was
+overshadowed by something like awe. _Their_ hands were to be the
+instruments by which this great creation of the mind of man should
+become a fact. Without those hands the architect's idea could not be
+materialized; without the "idea" their daily work would fail.
+
+The truth went home to each man present--even to that unknown one
+beneath the gallery who, when the men had risen to cheer, shrank farther
+into his dark corner and drew short sharp breaths. The Past would not
+down at his bidding; he was beginning to feel his weakness when he had
+most need of strength.
+
+He did not hear Father Honore's parting words:--"Here you find the third
+crystal--strength, solidity, the bedrock of endeavor. Take these three
+home with you:--the pure crystal of human love and trust, the heart
+believing in its Maker, the strength of good character. There you have
+the three that make for equality in this world--and nothing else does.
+Good night, my friends."
+
+
+VI
+
+Father Honore got home from the lecture a little before nine. He renewed
+the fire, drew up a chair to the hearth, took his violin from its case
+and, seating himself before the springing blaze, made ready to play for
+a while in the firelight. This was always his refreshment after a
+successful evening with the men. He drew his thumb along the bow--
+
+There was a knock at the door. He rose and flung it wide with a human
+enough gesture of impatience; his well-earned rest was disturbed too
+soon. He failed to recognize the man who was standing bareheaded on the
+step.
+
+"Father Honore, I've come home--don't you know me, Champney?"
+
+There was no word in response, but his hands were grasped hard--he was
+drawn into the room--the door was shut on the chill wind of that March
+night. Then the two men stood silent, gazing into each other's eyes,
+while the firelight leaped and showed to each the other's face--the
+priest's working with a powerful emotion he was struggling to control;
+Champney Googe's apparently calm, but in reality tense with anxiety. He
+spoke first:
+
+"I want to know about my mother--is she well?"
+
+Father Honore found his voice, an uncertain one but emphatic; it left no
+room for further anxiety in the questioner's mind.
+
+"Yes, well, thank God, and looking forward to this--but it's so soon! I
+don't understand--when did you come?"
+
+He kept one hand on Champney's as if fearing to lose him, with the other
+he pulled forward a chair from the wall and placed it near his own; he
+sat down and drew Champney into the other beside him.
+
+"I came up on the afternoon train; I got out yesterday."
+
+"It's so unexpected. The chaplain wrote me last month that there was a
+prospect of this within the next six months, but I had no idea it would
+be so soon--neither, I am sure, had he."
+
+"Nor I--I don't know that I feel sure of it yet. Has my mother any idea
+of this?"
+
+"I wasn't at liberty to tell her--the communication was confidential.
+Still she knows that it is customary to shorten the--" he caught up his
+words.
+
+"--Term for exemplary conduct?" Champney finished for him.
+
+"Yes. I can't realize this, Champney; it's six years and four months--"
+
+"Years--months! You might say six eternities. Do you know, I can't get
+used to it--the freedom, I mean. At times during these last twenty-four
+hours, I have actually felt lost without the work, the routine--the
+solitude." He sighed heavily and spoke further, but as if to himself:
+
+"Last Thanksgiving Day we were all together--eight hundred of us in the
+assembly room for the exercises. Two men get pardoned out on that day,
+and the two who were set free were in for manslaughter--one for twenty
+years, the other for life. They had been in eighteen years. I watched
+their faces when their numbers were called; they stepped forward to the
+platform and were told of their pardon. There wasn't a sign of
+comprehension, not a movement of a muscle, the twitch of an
+eyelid--simply a dead stolid stare. The truth is, they were benumbed as
+to feeling, incapable of comprehending anything, of initiating anything,
+as I was till--till this afternoon; then I began to live, to feel
+again."
+
+"That's only natural. I've heard other men say the same thing. You'll
+recover tone here among your own--your friends and other men."
+
+"Have I any?--I mean outside of you and my mother?" he asked in a low
+voice, but subdued eagerness was audible in it.
+
+"Have you any? Why, man, a friend is a friend for life--and beyond. Who
+was it put it thus: 'Said one: I would go up to the gates of hell with a
+friend.--Said the other: I would go in.' That last is the kind you have
+here in Flamsted, Champney."
+
+The other turned away his face that the firelight might not betray him.
+
+"It's too much--it's too much; I don't deserve it."
+
+"Champney, when you decided of your own accord to expiate in the manner
+you have through these six years, do you think your friends--and
+others--didn't recognize your manhood? And didn't you resolve at that
+time to 'put aside' those things that were behind you once and
+forever?--clear your life of the clogging part?"
+
+"Yes,--but others won't--"
+
+"Never mind others--you are working out your own salvation."
+
+"But it's going to be harder than I thought--I find I am beginning to
+dread to meet people--everything is so changed. It's going to be harder
+than I realized to carry out that resolution. The Past won't
+down--everything is so changed--everything--"
+
+Father Honore rose to turn on the electric lights. He did not take his
+seat again, but stood on the hearth, back to the fire, his hands clasped
+behind him. The clear light from the shaded bulbs shone full upon the
+face of the man before him, and the priest, searching that face to read
+its record, saw set upon it, and his heart contracted at the sight, the
+indelible seal of six years of penal servitude. The close-cut hair was
+gray; the brow was marked by two horizontal furrows; the cheeks were
+deeply lined; and the broad shoulders--they were bent. Formerly he stood
+before the priest with level eyes, now he was shorter by an inch of the
+six feet that were once his. He noticed the hands--the hands of the
+day-laborer.
+
+He managed to reply to Champney's last remark without betraying the
+emotion that threatened to master him.
+
+"Outwardly, yes; things have changed and will continue to change. The
+town is making vast strides towards citizenship. But you will find those
+you know the same--only grown in grace, I hope, with the years; even Mr.
+Wiggins is convinced by this time that the foreigners are not
+barbarians."
+
+Champney smiled. "It was rough on Elmer Wiggins at first."
+
+"Yes, but things are smoothing out gradually, and as a son of Maine he
+has too much common sense at bottom to swim against the current. And
+there's old Joel Quimber--I never see him that he doesn't tell me he is
+marking off the days in his 'almanack,' he calls it, in anticipation of
+your return."
+
+"Dear old Jo!--No!--Is that true? Old Jo doing that?"
+
+"To be sure, why not? And there's Octavius Buzzby--I don't think he
+would mind my telling you now--indeed, I don't believe he'd have the
+courage to tell you himself--" Father Honore smiled happily, for he saw
+in Champney's face the light of awakening interest in the common life of
+humanity, and he felt a prolongation of this chat would clear the
+atmosphere of over-powering emotion,--"there have never three months
+passed by these last six years that he hasn't deposited half of his
+quarterly salary with Emlie in the bank in your name--"
+
+"Oh, don't--don't! I can't bear it--dear old Tave--" he groaned rather
+than spoke; the blood mounted to his temples, but his friend proved
+merciless.
+
+"And there's Luigi Poggi! I don't know but he will make you a
+proposition, when he knows you are at home, to enter into partnership
+with him and young Caukins--the Colonel's fourth eldest. Champney, he
+wants to atone--he has told me so--"
+
+"Is--is he married?"
+
+Father Honore noticed that his lips suddenly went dry and he swallowed
+hard after his question.
+
+"No," the priest hastened to say, then he hesitated; he was wondering
+how far it was safe to probe; "but it is my strong impression that he is
+thinking seriously of it--a lovely girl, too, she is--" he saw the man's
+face before him go white, the jaw set like a vise--"little Dulcie
+Caukins, you remember her?"
+
+Champney nodded and wet his lips.
+
+"He has been thrown a good deal with the Caukinses since he took their
+son into partnership; the Colonel's boys are all doing well. Romanzo is
+in New York."
+
+"Still with the Company?"
+
+"Yes, in the main office. He married in that city two years ago--rather
+well, I hear, but Mrs. Caukins is not reconciled yet. Now, there's a
+friend! You don't know the depth of her feeling for you--but she has
+shown it by worshipping your mother."
+
+Champney Googe's eyes filled to overflowing, but he squeezed the
+springing drops between his eyelids, and asked with lively interest:
+
+"Why isn't Mrs. Caukins reconciled?"
+
+"Well, because--I suppose it's no secret now, at least Mrs. Caukins has
+never made one of it, in fact, has aired the subject pretty thoroughly,
+you know her way--"
+
+Champney looked up and smiled. "I'm glad she hasn't changed."
+
+"But of course you don't know it. The fact is she had set heart on
+having for a daughter-in-law Aileen Armagh--you remember little Aileen?"
+
+Champney Googe's hands closed spasmodically on the arms of his chair. To
+cover this involuntary movement, he leaned forward suddenly and kicked a
+burning brand, that had fallen on the hearth, back into the fireplace. A
+shower of sparks flew up chimney.
+
+Father Honore went on without waiting for the answer he knew would not
+be forthcoming: "Aileen gave me a fright the other day. I met her on the
+street, and she took that occasion, in the midst of a good deal of noise
+and confusion, to inform me with her usual vivacity of manner that she
+was to be housekeeper to a man--'a job for life,' she added with the old
+mischief dancing in her eyes and the merry laugh that is a tonic for the
+blues. Upon my asking her gravely who was the fortunate man--for I had
+no one in mind and feared some impulsive decision--she pursed her lips,
+hesitated a moment, and, manufacturing a charming blush, said:--'I don't
+mind telling you; it's Mr. Octavius Buzzby. I'm to be his housekeeper
+for life and take care of him in his old age after his work and mine is
+finished at Champo.' I confess, I was relieved."
+
+"My aunt is still living, then?" Champney asked with more eagerness and
+energy than the occasion demanded. His eyes shone with suppressed
+excitement, and ever-awakening life animated every feature. Father
+Honore, noting the sudden change, read again, as once six years before,
+deep into this man's heart.
+
+"Yes, but it is death in life. Aileen is still with her--faithful as the
+sun, but rebelling at times as is only natural. The girl gave promise of
+rich womanhood, but even you would wonder at such fine development in
+such an environment of continual invalidism. Mrs. Champney has had two
+strokes of paralysis; it is only a question of time."
+
+"There is _one_ who never was my friend--I've often wondered why."
+
+Into the priest's inner vision flashed that evening before his departure
+for New York--the bedroom--the mother--that confession--
+
+"It looks that way, I admit, but I've thought sometimes she has cared
+for you far more than any one will ever know."
+
+Champney started suddenly to his feet.
+
+"What time is it? I must be going."
+
+"Going?--You mean home--to-night?"
+
+"Yes, I must go home. I came to ask you to go to my mother to prepare
+her for this--I dared not shock her by going unannounced. You'll go
+with me--you'll tell her?"
+
+"At once."
+
+He reached for his coat and turned off the lights. The two went out arm
+and arm into the March night. The wind was still rising.
+
+"It's only half-past nine, and Mrs. Googe will be up; she is a busy
+woman."
+
+"Tell me--" he drew his breath short--"what has my mother done all these
+years--how has she lived?"
+
+"As every true woman lives--doing her full duty day by day, living in
+hope of this joy."
+
+"But I mean _what_ has she done to live--to provide for herself; she has
+kept the house?"
+
+"To be sure, and by her own exertions. She has never been willing to
+accept pecuniary aid from any friend, not even from Mr. Buzzby, or the
+Colonel. I am in a position to know that Mr. Van Ostend did his best to
+persuade her to accept something just as a loan."
+
+"But what has she been doing?"
+
+"She has been taking the quarrymen for meals the last six years,
+Champney--at times she has had their families to board with her, as many
+as the house could accommodate."
+
+The arm which his own held was withdrawn with a jerk. Champney Googe
+faced him: they were on the new iron bridge over the Rothel.
+
+"You mean to say my mother--_my_ mother, Aurora Googe, has been keeping
+a quarrymen's boarding-house all these years?"
+
+"Yes; it is legitimate work."
+
+"My mother--_my_ mother--" he kept repeating as he stood motionless on
+the bridge. He seemed unable to grasp the fact for a moment; then he
+laid his hand heavily on Father Honore's shoulder as if for support; he
+spoke low to himself, but the priest caught a few words:
+
+"I thank Thee--thank--for life--work--"
+
+He seemed to come gradually to himself, to recognize his whereabouts. He
+began to walk on, but very slowly.
+
+"Father Honore," he said, and his tone was deeply earnest but at the
+same time almost joyful, "I'm not going home to my mother empty-handed,
+I never intended to--I have work. I can work for her, free her from
+care, lift from her shoulders the burden of toil for my sake."
+
+"What do you mean, Champney?"
+
+"I made application to the manager of the Company this afternoon; I saw
+they were all strangers to me, and they took me on in the sheds--Shed
+Number Two. I went to work this afternoon. You see I know my trade; I
+learned it during the last six years. I can support her now--Oh--"
+
+He stopped short just as they were leaving the bridge; raised his head
+to the black skies above him, reached upwards with both hands palm
+outwards--
+
+"--I thank my Maker for these hands; I thank Him that I can labor with
+these hands; I thank Him for the strength of manhood that will enable me
+to toil with these hands; I thank Him for my knowledge of good and evil;
+I thank Him that I have 'won sight out of blindness--'" his eyes
+strained to the skies above The Gore.
+
+The moon, struggling with the heavy drifting cloud-masses, broke through
+a confined ragged circle and, for a moment, its splendor shone upon the
+heights of The Gore; its effulgence paled the arc-lights in the
+quarries; a silver shaft glanced on the Rothel in its downward course,
+and afar touched the ruffled waters of Lake Mesantic....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"I'll stay here on the lawn," he said five minutes afterwards upon
+reaching the house. A light was burning in his mother's bedroom; another
+shone from her sitting-room on the first floor.
+
+The priest entered without knocking; this house was open the year round
+to the frequent comers and goers among the workmen. He rapped at the
+sitting-room door. Mrs. Googe opened it.
+
+"Why, Father Honore, I didn't expect you to-night--didn't you have
+the--What is it?--oh, what is it!" she cried, for the priest's face
+betrayed him.
+
+"Joyful news, Mrs. Googe,"--he let her read his face--"your son is a
+free man to-night."
+
+There was no outcry on the mother's part; but her hands clasped each
+other till the nails showed white.
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"Here, in Flamsted--"
+
+"Let me go--let me go to him--"
+
+"He has come to you--he is just outside--"
+
+She was past him with a rush--at the door--on the porch--
+
+"Champney!--My son!--where are you?" she cried out into the night.
+
+Her answer came on swift feet. He sprang up the steps two at a time,
+they were in each other's arms--then he had to be strong for both.
+
+He led her in, half carrying her; placed her in a chair; knelt before
+her, chafing her hands....
+
+Father Honore made his escape; they were unconscious of his presence or
+his departure. He closed the front door softly behind him, and on feet
+shod with light-heartedness covered the road to his own house in a few
+minutes. He flung aside his coat, took his violin, and played and played
+till late into the night.
+
+Two of the sisters of The Mystic Rose, who had been over to Quarry End
+Park nursing a sick quarryman's wife throughout the day, paused to
+listen as they passed the house. One of them was Sister Ste. Croix.
+
+The violin exulted, rejoiced, sang of love heavenly, of love earthly, of
+all loves of life and nature; it sang of repentance, of expiation, of
+salvation--
+
+"I can bear no more," whispered Sister Ste. Croix to her companion, and
+the hand she laid on the one that was raised to hush her, was not only
+cold, it was damp with the sweat of the agony of remembrance.
+
+The strains of the violin's song accompanied them to their own door.
+
+
+VII
+
+The Saturday-night frequenters of The Greenbush have changed with the
+passing years like all else in Flamsted. The Greenbush itself is no
+longer a hostelry, but a cosy club-house purveyed for, to the
+satisfaction of every member, by its old landlord, Augustus Buzzby. The
+Club's membership, of both young and old men, is large and increasing
+with the growth of the town; but the old frequenters of The Greenbush
+bar-room head the list--Colonel Caukins and Octavius Buzzby paying the
+annual dues of their first charter member, old Joel Quimber, now in his
+eighty-seventh year.
+
+The former office is a grill room, and made one with the back parlor,
+now the club restaurant. On this Saturday night in March, the
+white-capped chef--Augustus prided himself in keeping abreast the
+times--was busy in the grill room, and Augustus himself was
+superintending the laying of a round table for ten. The Colonel was to
+celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday by giving a little supper.
+
+"Nothing elaborate, Buzzby," he said a week before the event, "a fine
+saddle of mutton--Southdown--some salmon trout, a stiff bouillon for
+Quimber, you know his masticatory apparatus is no longer equal to this
+whole occasion, and a chive salad. _The_ cake Mrs. Caukins elects to
+provide herself, and I need not assure you, who know her culinary
+powers, that it will be a _ne plus ultra_ of a cake, both in material
+and execution; fruits, coffee and cheese--Roquefort. Your accomplished
+chef can fill in the interstices. Here are the cards--Quimber at my
+right, if you please."
+
+Augustus looked at the cards and smiled.
+
+"All the old ones included, I see, Colonel," he ran over the names,
+"Quimber, Tave, Elmer Wiggins, Emlie, Poggi and Caukins"--he laughed
+outright; "that's a good firm, Colonel," he said slyly, and the Colonel
+smiled his appreciation of the gentle insinuation--"the manager at the
+sheds, and the new boss of the Upper Quarry?" He looked inquiringly at
+the Colonel on reading the last name.
+
+"That's all right, Buzzby; he's due here next Saturday, the festal day;
+and I want to give some substantial expression to him, as a stranger and
+neighbor, of Flamsted's hospitality."
+
+Augustus nodded approval, and continued: "And me! Thank you kindly,
+Colonel, but you'll have to excuse me this time. I want everything to go
+right on this special occasion. I'll join you with a pipe afterwards."
+
+"As you please, Buzzby, only make it a cigar; and consider yourself
+included in the spirit if not in the flesh. Nine sharp."
+
+At a quarter of nine, just as Augustus finished putting the last touch
+to an already perfect table, the Colonel made his appearance at The
+Greenbush, a pasteboard box containing a dozen boutonnieres under his
+arm. He laid one on the table cloth by each plate, and stood back to
+enjoy the effect. He rubbed his hands softly in appreciation of the
+"color scheme" as he termed it--a phrase that puzzled Augustus. He saw
+no "scheme" and very little "color" in the dark-wainscoted room, except
+the cheerful fire on the hearth and some heavy red half-curtains at the
+windows to shut out the cold and dark of this March night. The walls
+were white; the grill of dark wood, and the floor painted dark brown.
+But the red carnations on the snow-white damask did somehow "touch the
+whole thing up," as he confided later to his brother.
+
+The Colonel's welcome to his companions was none the less cordial
+because he repressed his usual flow of eloquence till "the cloth should
+be removed." He purposed then to spring a surprise, oratorical and
+otherwise, on those assembled.
+
+After the various toasts,--all given and drunk in sweet cider made for
+the occasion from Northern Spies, the Colonel being prohibitive for
+example's sake,--the good wishes for many prospective birthdays and
+prosperous years, the Colonel filled his glass to the brim and, holding
+it in his left hand, literally rose to the occasion.
+
+"Gentlemen," he began in full chest tones, "some fourteen years ago,
+five of us now present were wont to discuss in the old office of this
+hospitable hostelry, now the famous grill room of the Club, the Invasion
+of the New--the opening of the great Flamsted Quarries--the migrations
+of the nations hitherwards and the consequent prospective industrial
+development of our native village."
+
+He paused and looked about him impressively; finally his eye settled
+sternly on Elmer Wiggins who, satisfied inwardly with the choice and
+bounteous supper provided by the Colonel, had made up his mind to "stand
+fire", as he said afterwards to Augustus.
+
+The Colonel resumed his speech, his voice acquiring as he proceeded a
+volume and depth that carried it far beyond the grill room's walls to
+the ears of edified passers on the street:
+
+"There were those among us who maintained--in the face of extreme
+opposition, I am sorry to say--that this town of Flamsted would soon
+make itself a factor in the vast industrial life of our marvellous
+country. In retrospect, I reflect that those who had this faith, this
+trust in the resources of their native town, were looked upon with
+scorn; were subjected to personal derision; were termed, to put it
+mildly, 'mere dreamers'--if I am not mistaken, the original expression
+was 'darned boomers.' Mr. Wiggins, here, our esteemed wholesale and
+retail pharmacist, will correct me if I am wrong on this point--"
+
+He paused again as if expecting an answer; nothing was forthcoming but a
+decidedly embarrassed "Hem," from the afore-named pharmacist. The
+Colonel was satisfied.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, in refutation of that term--I will not repeat
+myself--and what it implied, after fourteen years, comparable to those
+seven fat kine of Pharaoh's dream, our town can point throughout the
+length and breadth of our land to its monumental works of art and
+utility that may well put to blush the renowned record of the Greeks and
+Romans."
+
+Prolonged applause and a ringing cheer.
+
+"All over our fair land the granite monoliths of _Flamsted_, beacon or
+battle, point heavenwards. The transcontinental roads, that track and
+nerve our country, cross and re-cross the raging torrents of western
+rivers on granite abutments from the _Flamsted_ quarries! The laws,
+alike for the just and unjust,"--the Colonel did not perceive his slip,
+but Elmer Wiggins smiled to himself,--"are promulgated within the
+stately granite halls of the capitals of our statehood--_Flamsted_
+again! The gospel of praise and prayer will shortly resound beneath the
+arches of the choir and nave of the great granite cathedral--the product
+of the quarries in The Gore!"
+
+Deafening applause, clinking of glasses, and cries of "Good!
+True--Hear--Hear!"
+
+The Colonel beamed and gathered himself together with a visible effort
+for his peroration. He laid his hand on his heart.
+
+"A man of feeling, gentlemen, has a heart. He is not oblivious either of
+the needs of his neighbor, his community, or the world in general.
+Although he is vulnerable to wounds in the house of his friends,"--a
+severe look falls upon Wiggins,--"he is not impervious to appeal for
+sympathy from without. I trust I have defined a man of feeling,
+gentlemen, a man of heart, as regards the world in general. And now, to
+make an abrupt descent from the abstract to the concrete, from the
+general to the particular, I will permit myself to say that those
+aspersions cast upon me fourteen years ago as a mere promoter,
+irrespective of my manhood, hurt me as a man of feeling--a man of heart.
+
+"Sir--" he turned again to Elmer Wiggins who was apparently the
+lightning conductor for the Colonel's fourteen years of pent-up
+injury--"a father has his feelings. You are _not_ a father--I draw no
+conclusions; but _if_ you had been a father fourteen years ago in this
+very room, I would have trusted to your magnanimity not to give
+expression to your decided views on the subject of the native Americans'
+intermarriage with those of a race foreign to us. I assure you, sir,
+such a view not only narrows the mind, but constricts humanity, and
+ossifies the heart--that special organ by which the world, despite
+present-day detractors, lives and moves and has its being." (Murmuring
+assent.)
+
+"But, sir, I believe you have come to see otherwise, else as my guest on
+this happy occasion, I should not permit myself to apply to you so
+personal a remark. And, gentlemen," the Colonel swelled visibly, but
+those nearest him caught the shimmer of a suspicious moisture in his
+eyes, "I am in a position to-night--this night whereon you have added to
+my happiness by your presence at this board--to repeat now what I said
+fourteen years ago in this very room: I consider myself honored in that
+a member of my immediate family, one very, very dear to me," his voice
+shook in spite of his effort to strengthen it, "is contemplating
+entering into the solemn estate of matrimony at no distant date with--a
+foreigner, gentlemen, but a naturalized citizen of our great and
+glorious United States. Gentlemen," he filled his glass again and held
+it high above his head,--"I give you with all my heart Mr. Luigi Poggi,
+an honored and prosperous citizen of Flamsted--my future son-in-law--the
+prospective husband of my youngest daughter, Dulcibella Caukins."
+
+The company rose to a man, young Caukins assisting Quimber to his feet.
+
+With loud and hearty acclaim they welcomed the new member of the Caukins
+family; they crowded about the Colonel, and no hand that grasped his and
+Luigi's in congratulation was firmer and more cordial than Elmer
+Wiggins'. The Colonel's smile expanded; he was satisfied--the old score
+was wiped out.
+
+Afterwards with cigars and pipes they discussed for an hour the affairs
+of Flamsted. The influx of foreigners with their families was causing a
+shortage of houses and housing. Emlie proposed the establishment of a
+Loan and Mortgage Company to help out the newcomers. Poggi laid before
+them his plan for an Italian House to receive the unmarried men on their
+arrival.
+
+"By the way," he said, turning to the new head of the Upper Quarry, "you
+brought up a crowd with you this afternoon, didn't you?--mostly my
+countrymen?"
+
+"No, a mixed lot--about thirty. A few Scotch and English came up on the
+same train. Have they applied to you?" He addressed the manager of the
+Company's sheds.
+
+"No. I think they'll be along Monday. I've noticed that those two
+nationalities generally have relations who house and look out for them
+when they come. But I had an application from an American just after the
+train came in; I don't often have that now."
+
+"Did you take him on?" the Colonel asked between two puffs of his
+Havana.
+
+"Yes; and he went to work in Shed Number Two. I confess he puzzles me."
+
+"What was he like?" asked the head of the Upper Quarry.
+
+"Tall, blue eyes, gray hair, but only thirty-four as the register
+showed--misfit clothes--"
+
+"That's the one--he came up in the train with me. I noticed him in the
+car. I don't believe he moved a muscle all the way up. I couldn't make
+him out, could you?"
+
+"Well, no, I couldn't. By the way, Colonel, I noticed the name he
+entered was a familiar one in this part of Maine--Googe--"
+
+"Googe!" The Colonel looked at the speaker in amazement; "did he give
+his first name?"
+
+"Yes, Louis--Louis C. Googe--"
+
+"My God!"
+
+Whether the ejaculation proceeded from one mouth or five, the manager
+and foreman could not distinguish; but the effect on the Flamsted men
+was varied and remarkable. The Colonel's cigar dropped from his shaking
+hand; his face was ashen. Emlie and Wiggins stared at each other as if
+they had taken leave of their senses. Joel Quimber leaned forward, his
+hands folded on the head of his cane, and spoke to Octavius who sat
+rigid on his chair:
+
+"What'd he say, Tave?--Champ to home?"
+
+But Octavius Buzzby was beyond the power of speech. Augustus spoke for
+him:
+
+"He said a man applied for work in the sheds this afternoon, Uncle Jo,
+who wrote his name Louis C. Googe."
+
+"Thet's him--thet's Champ--Champ's to home. You help me inter my coat,
+Tave, I 'm goin' to see ef's true--" He rose with difficulty. Then
+Octavius spoke; his voice shook:
+
+"No, Uncle Jo, you sit still a while; if it's Champney, we can't none of
+us see him to-night." He pushed him gently into his chair.
+
+The Colonel was rousing himself. He stepped to the telephone and called
+up Father Honore.
+
+"Father Honore--
+
+"This is Colonel Caukins. Can you tell me if there is any truth in the
+report that Champney Googe has returned to-day?
+
+"Thank God."
+
+He put up the receiver, but still remained standing.
+
+"Gentlemen," he said to the manager and the Upper Quarry guest, his
+voice was thick with emotion and the tears of thankfulness were coursing
+down his cheeks, "perhaps no greater gift could be bestowed on my
+sixty-fifth birthday than Champney Googe's return to his home--his
+mother--his friends--we are all his friends. Perhaps the years are
+beginning to tell on me, but I feel that I must excuse myself to you and
+go home--I want to tell my wife. I will explain all to you, as strangers
+among us, some other time; for the present I must beg your
+indulgence--joy never kills, but I am experiencing the fact that it can
+weaken."
+
+"That's all right, Colonel," said the manager; "we understand it
+perfectly and it's late now."
+
+"I'll go, too, Colonel," said Octavius; "I'm going to take Uncle Jo home
+in the trap."
+
+Luigi Poggi helped the Colonel into his great coat. When he left the
+room with his prospective father-in-law, his handsome face had not
+regained the color it lost upon the first mention of Champney's name.
+
+Emlie and Wiggins remained a few minutes to explain as best they could
+the situation to the stranger guests, and the cause of the excitement.
+
+"I remember now hearing about this affair; I read it in the
+newspapers--it must have been seven or eight years ago."
+
+"Six years and four months." Mr. Wiggins corrected him.
+
+"I guess it'll be just as well not to spread the matter much among the
+men--they might kick; besides he isn't, of course, a union man."
+
+"There's one thing in his favor," it was Emlie who spoke, "the
+management and the men have changed since it occurred, and there are
+very few except our home folks that would be apt to mention it--and they
+can be trusted where Champney Googe is concerned."
+
+The four went out together.
+
+The grill room of The Greenbush was empty save for Augustus Buzzby who
+sat smoking before the dying fire. Old visions were before his eyes--one
+of the office on a June night many years ago; the five friends
+discussing Champney Googe's prospects; the arrival of Father Honore and
+little Aileen Armagh--so Luigi had at last given up hope in that
+direction for good and all.
+
+The town clock struck twelve. He sighed heavily; it was for the old
+times, the old days, the old life.
+
+
+VIII
+
+It was several months before Aileen saw him. Her close attendance on
+Mrs. Champney and her avoidance of the precincts of The Gore--Maggie
+complained loudly to Mrs. Googe that Aileen no longer ran in as she used
+to do, and Mrs. Caukins confided to her that she thought Aileen might
+feel sensitive about Luigi's engagement, for she had been there but
+twice in five months--precluded the possibility of her meeting him. She
+excused herself to Mrs. Googe and the Sisters on the ground of her
+numerous duties at Champ-au-Haut; Ann and Hannah were both well on in
+years and Mrs. Champney was failing daily.
+
+It was perhaps five months after his return that she was sitting one
+afternoon in Mrs. Champney's room, in attendance on her while the
+regular nurse was out for two hours. There had been no conversation
+between them for nearly the full time, when Mrs. Champney spoke abruptly
+from the bed:
+
+"I heard last month that Champney Googe is back again--has been back for
+five months; why didn't you tell me before?"
+
+The voice was very weak, but querulous and sharp. Aileen was sewing at
+the window. She did not look up.
+
+"Because I didn't suppose you liked him well enough to care about his
+coming home; besides, it was Octavius' place to tell you."
+
+"Well, I don't care about his coming, or his going either, for that
+matter, but I do care about knowing things that happen under my very
+nose within a reasonable time of their happening. I'm not in my dotage
+yet, I'll have you to understand."
+
+Aileen was silent.
+
+"Come, say something, can't you?" she snapped.
+
+"What do you want me to say, Mrs. Champney?" She spoke wearily, but not
+impatiently. The daily, almost hourly demands of this sick old woman
+had, in a way, exhausted her.
+
+"Tell me what he's doing."
+
+"He's at work."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In the sheds--Shed Number Two."
+
+"What!" Paralysis prevented any movement of her hands, but her head
+jerked on the pillow to one side, towards Aileen.
+
+"I said he was at work in the sheds."
+
+"What's Champney Googe doing in the sheds?"
+
+"Earning his living, I suppose, like other men."
+
+Almeda Champney was silent for a while. Aileen could but wonder what the
+thoughts might be that were filling the shrivelled box of the
+brain--what were the feelings in the ossifying heart of the woman who
+had denied help to one of her own blood in time of need. Had she any
+feeling indeed, except that for self?
+
+"Have you seen him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I should think he would want to hide his head for shame."
+
+"I don't see why." She spoke defiantly.
+
+"Why? Because I don't see how after such a career a man can hold up his
+head among his own."
+
+Aileen bit her under lip to keep back the sharp retort. She chose
+another and safer way.
+
+"Oh," she said brightly, looking over to Mrs. Champney with a frank
+smile, "but he has really just begun his career, you know--"
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"I mean he has just begun honest work among honest men, and that's the
+best career for him or any other man to my thinking."
+
+"Umph!--little you know about it."
+
+Aileen laughed outright. "Oh, I know more than you think I do, Mrs.
+Champney. I haven't lived twenty-six years for nothing, and what I've
+seen, I've seen--and I've no near-sighted eyes to trouble me either; and
+what I've heard, I've heard, for my ears are good--regular long-distance
+telephones sometimes."
+
+She was not prepared for the next move on Mrs. Champney's part.
+
+"I believe you would marry him now--after all, if he asked you." She
+spoke with a sneer.
+
+"Do you really believe it?" She folded her work and prepared to leave
+the room, for she heard the nurse's step in the hall below. "Well, if
+you do, I'll tell you something, Mrs. Champney, but I'd like it to be
+between us." She crossed the room and paused beside the bed.
+
+"What?"
+
+She bent slightly towards her. "I would rather marry a man who earns his
+three dollars a day at honest work of quarrying or cutting stones,--or
+breaking them, for that matter,"--she added under her breath, "but I'm
+not saying he would be any relation of yours--than a man who doesn't
+know what a day's toil is except to cudgel his brains tired, with
+contriving the quickest means of making his millions double themselves
+at other people's expense in twenty-four hours."
+
+The nurse opened the door. Mrs. Champney spoke bitterly:
+
+"You little fool--you think you know, but--" aware of the nurse, she
+ended fretfully, "you wear me out, talking so much. Tell Hannah to make
+me some fresh tamarind water--and bring it up quick."
+
+By the time Aileen had brought up the refreshment, she had half repented
+of her words. Mrs. Champney had been failing perceptibly the last few
+weeks, and all excitement was forbidden her. For this reason she had
+been kept so long in ignorance of Champney's return. As Aileen held the
+drinking tube to her lips, she noticed that the faded sunken eyes, fixed
+upon her intently, were not inimical--and she was thankful. She desired
+to live in peace, if possible, with this pitiable old age so long as it
+should last--a few weeks at the longest. The lesson of the piece of
+granite was not lost upon her. She kept the specimen on a little shelf
+over her bed.
+
+She went down stairs into the library to answer a telephone call; it was
+from Maggie McCann who begged her to come up that afternoon to see her;
+the matter was important and could not wait. Aileen knew by the pleading
+tone of the voice, which sounded unnatural, that she was needed for
+something. She replied she would go up at once. She put on her hat, and
+while waiting for the tram at The Bow, bought a small bag of gumdrops
+for Billy.
+
+Maggie received her with open arms and a gush of tears; thereupon Billy,
+now tottering on his unsteady feet, flopped suddenly on the floor and
+howled with true Irish good will.
+
+"Why, Maggie, what _is_ the matter!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Och, Aileen, darlin', me heart's in smithereens, and I'm that deep in
+trouble that me head's like to rend--an' Jim's all broke up--"
+
+"What is it; do tell me, Maggie--can I help?" she urged, catching up
+Billy and endeavoring to smother his howls with kisses.
+
+Mrs. McCann wiped her reddened eyes, took off her apron and sat down in
+a low chair by Aileen who was filling Billy's small mouth, conveniently
+open for another howl upon perceiving his mother wipe her eyes, with a
+sizable gumdrop.
+
+"The little gells be over to the kindergarten with the Sisters, an' I
+thought I'd clane go out of me mind if I couldn't have a word wid you
+before Jim gets home--Och, Aileen, dearie, me home I'm so proud of--"
+She choked, and Billy immediately repudiated his gumdrop upon Aileen's
+clean linen skirt; his eyes were reading the signs of the times in his
+mother's face.
+
+"Now, Maggie, dear, tell me all about it. Begin at the beginning, and
+then I'll know where you're at."
+
+Maggie smiled faintly. "Sure, I wouldn't blame you for not knowin' where
+I'm at." Mrs. McCann sniffed several times prefatorily.
+
+"You know I told you Jim had a temper, Aileen--"
+
+Aileen nodded in assent; she was busy coaxing the rejected ball into
+Billy's puckered mouth.
+
+"--And that there's times whin he querrels wid the men--"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, you know Mr. Googe bein' in the same shed an' section wid Jim, I
+says innercent-like to Jim:--'I'm glad he's in your section, Jim, belike
+you can make it a bit aisier for him.'
+
+"'Aisy is it?' says Jim.
+
+"'Yes, aisy,' says I.
+
+"'An' wot wud I be after makin' a job aisier for the likes of him?' he
+says, grouchy-like.
+
+"'An' why not?' says I.
+
+"'For a jail-bird?' says he.
+
+"'Deed,' says I, 'if yer own b'y had been breakin' stones wid a gang of
+toughs for sivin long years gone, wouldn't ye be after likin' a man to
+spake wan daycint word wid him?' says I.
+
+"Wid that Jim turned on quick-like an' says:--
+
+"'I'll thank ye, Mrs. McCann, to kape yer advice to yerself. It's not
+Jim McCann's b'y that'll be doin' the dirthy job that yer Mr. Champney
+Googe was after doin' six years gone, nor be after takin' the bread an'
+butter out of an honest man's mout' that has a wife an' three childer to
+feed. He's a convic',' says Jim.
+
+"'What if he is?' says I.
+
+"'I don't hold wid no convic's,' says Jim; 'I hold wid honest men; an'
+if it's convic's be comin' to take the best piece-work out of our hands,
+it's time we struck--to a man,' says Jim.
+
+"Niver, niver but wanct has Jim called me 'Mrs. McCann,'" Maggie said
+brokenly, but stifled a sob for Billy's sake; "an' niver wanct has he
+gone to work widout kissin' me an' the childer, sometimes twice
+round--but he went out yisterday an' niver turned for wan look at wife
+an' childer; an' me heart was that heavy in my bosom that me b'y refused
+the breast an' cried like to kill himself for wan mortal hour, an' the
+little gells cried too, an' me bread burnin' to a crisp, an' I couldn't
+do wan thing but just sit down wid me hands full of cryin' childer--an'
+me heart cryin' like a child wid 'em."
+
+Aileen tried to comfort.
+
+"But, Maggie, such things will happen in the happiest married lives, and
+with the best of husbands. Jim will get over it--I suppose he has by
+this time; you say it isn't like to him to hold anger long--"
+
+"But he hasn't!" Maggie broke forth afresh, and between mother and son,
+who immediately followed suit, a deluge threatened. "Wan of the
+stone-cutters' wives, Mrs. MacLoughanchan, he works in the same section
+as Jim, told me about it--"
+
+"About what?" Aileen asked, hoping to get some continuity into Maggie's
+relation of her marital woes.
+
+"The fight at the sheds."
+
+"What fight?" Aileen put the question with a sickening fear at her
+heart.
+
+"The fight betwixt Jim an' Mr. Googe--"
+
+"What do you mean, Maggie?"
+
+"I mane wot I say," Maggie replied with some show of spirit, for
+Aileen's tone of voice was peremptory; "Jim McCann, me husband, an' Mr.
+Googe had words in the shed--"
+
+"What words?"
+
+"Just lave me time an' I'll tell you, Aileen. You be after catchin' me
+short up betwixt ivery word, an' more be token as if't was your own man,
+instid of mine, ye was worrittin' about. I said they had words, but by
+rights I should say it was Jim as had them. Jim was mad because the boss
+in Shed Number Two give Mr. Googe a piece of work he had been savin' an'
+promisin' him; an' Jim made a fuss about it, an' the boss said he'd give
+Jim another, but Jim wanted _that wan piece_; an' Jim threatened to get
+up a strike, an' if there's a strike Jim'll lave the place an' I'll lose
+me home--ochone--"
+
+"Go on, Maggie." Aileen was trying to anticipate Maggie's tale, and in
+anticipation of the worst happening to Champney Googe, she lost her
+patience. She could not bear the suspense.
+
+"But Jim didn't sass the boss--he sassed Mr. Googe. 'T was this way, so
+Mrs. MacLoughanchan says--Jim said niver a word about the fight to me,
+but he said he would lave the place if they didn't strike--Mr. Googe
+says, 'McCann, the foreman says you're to begin on the two keystones at
+wanct--at wanct,' says he, repating it because Jim said niver a word.
+An' Jim fires up an' says under his breath:
+
+"'I don't take no orders from convic's,' says he.
+
+"'What did you say, McCann?' says Mr. Googe, steppin' up to him wid a
+glint in his eye that Jim didn't mind he was so mad; an' instid of
+repatin' it quiet-like, Jim says, steppin' outside the shed when he see
+the boss an' Mr. Googe followin' him, loud enough for the whole shed to
+hear:
+
+'"I don't take orders from no convic's--' an' then--" Maggie laid her
+hand suddenly over her heart as if in pain, '"Take that back, McCann,'
+says Mr. Googe--'I'll give you the wan chanct.'--An' then Jim swore an'
+said he'd see him an' himself in hell first, an' then, before Jim knew
+wot happened, Mr. Googe lit out wid his fist--an' Jim layin' out on the
+grass, for Mrs. MacLoughanchan says her man said Mr. Googe picked a soft
+place to drop him in; an' Mr. Googe helps Jim to his feet, an' holds out
+his hand an' says:
+
+"'Shake hands, McCann, an' we'll start afresh--'
+
+"But, oh, Aileen! Jim wouldn't, an' Mr. Googe turned away sad-like, an'
+then Jim comes home, an' widout a word to his wife, says if they don't
+strike, because there's a convic' an' a no union man a-workin'
+'longside of him in his section, he'll lave an' give up his job
+here--an' it's two hundred he's paid down out of his wages, an' me
+a-savin' from morn till night on me home--an' 't was to be me very own
+because Jim says no man alive can tell when he'll be dead in the
+quarries an' the sheds."
+
+She wept afresh and Billy was left unconsoled, for Maggie, wiping her
+eyes to look at Aileen and wonder at her silence, saw that she, too, was
+weeping; but the tears rolled silently one after another down her
+flushed cheeks.
+
+"Och, Aileen, darlin'! Don't ye cry wid me--me burden's heavy enough
+widout the weight of wan of your tears--say something to comfort me
+heart about Jim."
+
+"I can't, Maggie, I think it's wicked for Jim to say such things to Mr.
+Googe--everybody knows what he has been through. And it would serve Jim
+McCann but right," she added hotly, "if the time should come when his
+Billy should have the same cruel words said to him--"
+
+"Don't--don't--for the love of the Mother of God, don't say such things,
+Aileen!" She caught up the sorely perplexed and troubled Billy, and
+buried her face in his red curls. "Don't for the sake of the mother I
+am, an' only a mother can know how the Mother of God himself felt wid
+her crucified Son an' the bitter words he had to hear--ye're not a
+mother, Aileen, an' so I won't lay it up too much against ye--"
+
+Aileen interrupted her with exceeding bitterness;
+
+"No, I'm not a mother, Maggie, and I never shall be."
+
+Maggie looked at her in absolute incomprehension. "I thought you was
+cryin' for me, an' Jim, an' all our prisent troubles, but I belave yer
+cryin' for--"
+
+Mrs. McCann stopped short; she was still staring at Aileen who suddenly
+lifted her brimming eyes to hers.--What Mrs. McCann read therein she
+never accurately defined, even to Jim; but, whatever it was, it caused a
+revulsion of feeling in Maggie's sorely bruised heart. She set Billy
+down on the floor without any ceremony, much to that little man's
+surprise, and throwing her arms around Aileen drew her close with a
+truly maternal caress.
+
+"Och, darlin'--darlin'--" she said in the voice with which she soothed
+Billy to sleep, "darlin' Aileen, an' has your puir heart been bearin'
+this all alone, an' me talkin' an' pratin' about me Jim to ye, an' how
+beautiful it is to be married!--'Deed an' it is, darlin', an' if Jim
+wasn't a man he'd be an angel sure; but it's not Maggie McCann that's
+wantin' her husband to be an angel yet, an' you must just forgive him,
+Aileen, an' you'll find yerself that no man's parfection, an' a woman
+has to be after takin' thim as they be--lovin' an' gentle be times, an'
+cross as Cain whin yer expectin' thim to be swateheartin' wid ye; an'
+wake when ye think they're after bein' rale giants; an' strong whin
+ye're least lookin' for it; an ginerous by spells an' spendthrifts wid
+their 'baccy, an' skinflints wid their own, an'--an'--just common,
+downright aggravatin', lovable men, darlin'--There now! Yer smilin'
+again like me old Aileen, an' bad cess to the wan that draws another
+tear from your swate Irish eyes." She kissed her heartily.
+
+In trying to make amends Mrs. McCann forgot her own woes; taking Billy
+in her arms, she went to the stove and set on the kettle.
+
+"It's four past, an' Jim'll be comin' in tired and worritted, so I'll
+put on an extra potater or two an' a good bit of bacon an' some pase.
+Stay wid us, Aileen."
+
+"No, Maggie, I can't; besides you and Jim will want the house to
+yourself till you get straightened out--and, Maggie, it _will_
+straighten out, don't you worry."
+
+"'Deed, an' I'll not waste me breath another time tellin' me troubles to
+a heart that's sorer than me own--good-bye, darlin', an' me best thanks
+for comin' up so prompt to me in me trouble. It's good to have a friend,
+Aileen, an' we've been friendly that long that it seems as if me own
+burden must be yours."
+
+Aileen smiled, leaning to kiss Billy as he clung to his mother's neck.
+
+"I'll come up whenever you want me and I can get away, Maggie, an' next
+time I'll bring you more comfort, I hope. Good-bye."
+
+"Och, darlin'!--T'row a kiss, Billy. Look, Aileen, at the kisses me
+b'y's t'rowin' yer!" she exclaimed delightedly; and Billy, in the
+exuberance of his joy that tears were things of the past, continued to
+throw kisses after the lady till she disappeared down the street.
+
+
+IX
+
+Oh, but her heart was hot with indignation as she walked along the road,
+her eyes were stung with scalding tears, her thoughts turbulent and
+rebellious! Why must he suffer such indignities from a man like Jim
+McCann! How dared a man, that was a man, taunt another like that! The
+hand holding her sun umbrella gripped the handle tightly, and through
+set teeth she said to herself: "I hate them all--hate them!"
+
+The declining July sun was hot upon her; the road-bed, gleaming white
+with granite dust, blinded her. She looked about for some shelter where
+she could wait for the down car; there was none in sight, except the
+pines over by Father Honore's and the sisterhood house an eighth of a
+mile beyond. She continued to stand there in the glare and the
+heat--miserable, dejected, rebellious, until the tram halted for her.
+The car was an open one; there was no other occupant. As it sped down
+the curving road to the lake shore, the breeze, created by its movement,
+was more than grateful to her. She took off her shade-hat to enjoy the
+full benefit of it.
+
+At the switch, half way down, the tram waited for the up car. She could
+hear it coming from afar; the overhead wires vibrated to the extra power
+needed on the steep grade. It came in sight, crowded with workmen on
+their way home to Quarry End; the rear platform was black with them. It
+passed over the switch slowly, passed within two feet of her seat. She
+turned to look at it, wondering at its capacity for so many--and
+looked, instead, directly into the face of Champney Googe who stood on
+the lower step, his dinner-pail on his arm, the arm thrust through the
+guard.
+
+At sight of her, so near him that the breath of each might have been
+felt on the cheek of the other, he raised his workman's cap--
+
+She saw the gray head, the sudden pallor on brow and cheek, the deep,
+slightly sunken eyes fixed upon her as if on her next move hung the
+owner's hope of eternal life--the eyes moved with the slowly moving car
+to focus _her_....
+
+To Aileen Armagh that face, changed as it was, was a glimpse of heaven
+on earth, and that heaven was reflected in the smile with which she
+greeted it. She did more:--unheeding the many faces that were turned
+towards her, she leaned from the car, her eyes following him, the
+love-light still radiating from her every feature, till he was carried
+beyond sight around the curving base of the Flamsted Hills.
+
+She heard nothing more externally, saw nothing more, until she found
+herself at The Corners instead of The Bow. The tumult within her
+rendered her deaf to the clanging of the electric gong, blind to the
+people who had entered along Main Street. Love, and love alone, was
+ringing its joy-bells in her soul till external sounds grew muffled,
+indistinct; until she became unaware of her surroundings. Love was
+knocking so loudly at her heart that the bounding blood pulsed rhythmic
+in her ears. Love was claiming her wholly, possessing her soul and
+body--but no longer that idealizing love of her young girlhood and
+womanhood. Rather it was that love which is akin to the divine rapture
+of maternity--the love that gives all, that sacrifices all, which
+demands nothing of the loved one save to love, to shield, to
+comfort--the love that makes of a true woman's breast not only a rest
+whereon a man, as well as his babe, may pillow a weary head, but a round
+tower of strength within which there beats a heart of high courage for
+him who goes forth to the daily battlefield of Life.
+
+She rode back to The Bow. Hannah called to her from the kitchen door
+when she saw her coming up the driveway:
+
+"Come round here a minute, Aileen."
+
+"What is it, Hannah?" Her voice trembled in spite of her effort to speak
+naturally. She prayed Hannah might not notice.
+
+"Here's a little broth I've made for Uncle Jo Quimber. I heard he wasn't
+very well, and I wish you'd take this down to him before supper. Tell
+him it won't hurt him and it's real strengthenin'."
+
+"I will go now, and--Hannah, don't mind if I don't come home to supper
+to-night; I'm not hungry; it's too hot to eat. If I want anything, I'll
+get a glass of milk in the pantry afterwards. If Mrs. Champney should
+want me, tell Octavius he'll find me down by the boat house."
+
+"Mis' Champney ain't so well, to-night, the nurse says. I guess it's
+this heat is telling on her."
+
+"I should think it would--even I feel it." She was off again down the
+driveway, glad to be moving, for a strange restlessness was upon her.
+
+She found Joel Quimber sitting in his arm chair on the back porch of the
+little house belonging to his grand-niece. The old man looked feeble,
+exhausted and white; but his eyes brightened on seeing Aileen come round
+the corner of the porch.
+
+"What you got there, Aileen?"
+
+"Something good for you, Uncle Jo. Hannah made it for you on purpose."
+She showed him the broth.
+
+"Hannah's a good soul, I thank her kindly. Set down, Aileen, set down."
+
+"I'm afraid you're too tired to have company to-night, Uncle Jo."
+
+"Lord, no--you ain't comp'ny, Aileen, an' I ain't never too tired to
+have your comp'ny either."
+
+She smiled and took her seat on the lower step, at his feet.
+
+"Jest thinkin' of you, Aileen--"
+
+"Me, Uncle Jo? What put me into your head?"
+
+"You're in a good part of the time ef you did but know it."
+
+"Oh, Uncle Jo, did they teach you how to flatter like that in the little
+old schoolhouse you showed me years ago at The Corners?"
+
+Old Joel Quimber chuckled weakly.
+
+"No--not thar. A man, ef he's any kind of a man, don't have to learn his
+a-b-c before he can tell a good-lookin' gal she's in his head, or his
+heart--jest which you're a min' ter--most of the time. Yes, I was
+thinkin' of you, Aileen--you an' Champney."
+
+The color died out entirely from Aileen's cheeks, and then surged into
+them again till she put her hands to her face to cool their throbbing.
+She was wondering if Love had entered into some conspiracy with Fate
+to-day to keep this beloved name ever in her ears.
+
+"What about me and Mr. Googe?" She spoke in a low tone, her face was
+turned away from the old man to the meadows and the sheds in the
+distance.
+
+"I was a-thinkin' of this time fourteen year ago this very month. Champ
+an' me was walkin' up an' down the street, an' he was tellin' me 'bout
+that serenade, an' how you'd give him a rosebud with pepper in it--Lord,
+Aileen, you was a case, an' no mistake! An' I was thinkin', too, what
+Champ said to me thet very night. He was tellin' 'bout thet great
+hell-gate of New York, an' he said, 'You've got to swim with the rest or
+you'd go under, Uncle Jo,'--'go under,' them's his very words. An' I
+said, 'Like enough _you_ would, Champ--I ain't ben thar--'"
+
+He paused a moment, shuffled out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
+Then he spoke again, but in so low a tone that Aileen could barely catch
+the words:
+
+"An' he went under, Champ did--went under--"
+
+Aileen felt, without seeing, for her face was still turned to the
+meadows and the sheds, that the old man was leaning to her. Then she
+heard his voice in her ear:
+
+"Hev you seen him?"
+
+"Once, Uncle Jo."
+
+"You're his friend, ain't you, Aileen?"
+
+"Yes." Her voice trembled.
+
+"Guess we're all his friends in Flamsted--I heered they fit in the shed,
+Champ an' Jim McCann--it hadn't ought 'a'-ben, Aileen--hadn't ought
+'a'-ben; but't warn't Champ's fault, you may bet your life on thet.
+Champ went under, but he didn't stay under--you remember thet, Aileen.
+An' I can't nowise blame him, now he's got his head above water agin,
+for not stan'in' it to have a man like McCann heave a stone at him jest
+ez he's makin' for shore. 'T ain't right, an' the old Judge use ter say,
+'What ain't right hadn't ought ter be.'"
+
+He waited a while to regain his scant breath; the long speech had
+exhausted it. At last he chuckled weakly to himself, "Champ's a devil
+of a feller--" he caught up his words as if he were saying too much;
+laid his hand on Aileen's head; turned her face half round to his and,
+leaning, whispered again in her ear:
+
+"Don't you go back on Champ, promise me thet, Aileen."
+
+She sprang to her feet and laid her hand in his.
+
+"I promise, Uncle Jo."
+
+"Thet's a good girl." He laid his other hand over hers. "You stick by
+Champ an' stick up for him too; he's good blood, an' ef he did go under
+for a spell, he ain't no worse 'n the rest, nor half ez bad; for Champ
+went in _of his own accord--of his own accord_," he repeated
+significantly, "an' don't you forget thet, Aileen! Thet takes grit;
+mebbe you wouldn't think so, but it does. Champ makes me think of them
+divers, I've read an' heerd about, thet dives for pearls. Some on 'em
+comes up all right, but some of 'em go under for good an' all. Champ
+dove mighty deep--he was diving for money, which he figured was his
+pearl, Aileen--an' he most went under for good an' all without gettin'
+what he wanted, an' now he's come to the surface agin, it's all ben wuth
+it--he's got the pearl, Aileen, but t'ain't the one he expected to
+get--he told me so t' other night. We set here him an' me, an'
+understan' one 'nother even when we don't talk--jest set an' smoke an'
+puff--"
+
+"What pearl is it, Uncle Jo?" She whispered her question, half fearing,
+but wholly longing to hear the old man's answer.
+
+"Guess he'll tell you himself sometime, Aileen."
+
+He leaned back in his chair; he was tired. Aileen stooped and kissed him
+on the forehead.
+
+"Goodnight, Uncle Jo," she said softly, "an' don't forget Hannah's
+broth or there'll be trouble at Champo."
+
+He roused himself again.
+
+"I heered from Tave to-day thet Mis' Champney is pretty low."
+
+"Yes, she feels this heat in her condition."
+
+"Like enough--like enough; guess we all do a little." Then he seemed to
+speak to himself:--"She was rough on Champ," he murmured.
+
+Aileen left him with that name on his lips.
+
+On her return to Champ-au-Haut, she went down to the boat house to sit a
+while in its shade. The surface of the lake was motionless, but the
+reflection of the surrounding heights and shores was slightly veiled,
+owing to the heat-haze that quivered above it.
+
+Aileen was reliving the experience of the last seven years, the
+consummation of which was the knowledge that Champney Googe loved her.
+She was sure of this now. She had felt it intuitively during the
+twilight horror of that October day in The Gore. But how, when, where
+would he speak the releasing word--the supreme word of love that alone
+could atone, that alone could set her free? Would he ever speak
+it?--could he, after that avowal of the unreasoning passion for her
+which had taken possession of him seven years ago? And, moreover, what
+had not that avowal and its expression done to her?
+
+Her cheek paled at the thought:--he had kissed love into her for all
+time; and during all his years of imprisonment she had been held in
+thrall, as it were, to him and to his memory. All her rebellion at such
+thraldom, all her disgust at her weakness, as she termed it, all her
+hatred, engendered by the unpalatable method he had used to enthrall
+her, all her struggle to forget, to live again her life free of any
+entanglement with Champney Googe, all her endeavors to care for other
+men, had availed her naught. Love she must--and Champney Googe remained
+the object of that love. Father Honore's words gave her courage to live
+on--loving.
+
+"Champney--Champney," she said low to herself. She covered her face with
+her hands. The mere taking of his name on her lips eased the exaltation
+of her mood. She rejoiced that she had been able that afternoon to show
+him how it stood with her after these many years; for the look in his
+eyes, when he recognized her, told her that she alone could hold to his
+lips the cup that should quench his thirst. Oh, she would be to him what
+no other woman could ever have been, ever could be--no other! She knew
+this. He knew it. When, oh, when would the word be spoken?
+
+She withdrew her hands from her face, and looked up the lake to the
+sheds. The sun was nearing the horizon, and against its clear red light
+the gray buildings loomed large and dark.--And there was his place!
+
+She sprang to her feet, ready to act upon a sudden thought. If she were
+not needed at the house, she would go up to the sheds; perhaps she could
+walk off the restlessness that kept urging her to action. At any rate,
+she could find comfort in thinking of his presence there during the day;
+she would be for a time, at least, in his environment. She knew Jim
+McCann's section; she and Maggie had been there more than once to watch
+the progress of some great work.
+
+On the way up to the house she met Octavius.
+
+"Where you going, Aileen?"
+
+"Up to the house to see if I'm needed. If they don't want me, I'm going
+up to the sheds for a walk. They say they look like cathedrals this
+week, so many of the arches and pillars are ready to be shipped."
+
+"There's no need of your going up to the house. Mis' Champney ain't so
+well, and the nurse says she give orders for no one to come nigh
+her--for she's sent for Father Honore."
+
+"Father Honore! What can she want of him?" she asked in genuine
+surprise. "He hasn't been here for over a year."
+
+"Well, anyway, I've got my orders to fetch Father Honore, and I was just
+asking Hannah where you were. I thought you might like to ride up with
+me; I've harnessed up in the surrey."
+
+"I won't drive way up, Tave; but I'd like you to put me down at the
+sheds. Maggie says it's really beautiful now in Shed Number Two. While
+I'm waiting for you, I can nose round all I want to and you can pick me
+up there on your way back. Just wait till I run up to the house to see
+the nurse myself, will you?" Octavius nodded.
+
+She ran up the steps of the terrace, and on her return found Octavius
+with the surrey at the front door.
+
+Aileen was silent during the first part of the drive. This was unusual
+when the two were together, and, after waiting a while, Octavius spoke:
+
+"I'm wondering what she wants to see Father Honore for."
+
+"I'd like to know myself."
+
+"It's got into my head, and somehow I can't get it out, that it's
+something to do with Champney--"
+
+"Champney!--" the name slipped unawares through the red barrier of her
+lips; she bit them in vexation at their betrayal of her thought--"you
+mean Champney Googe?" She tried to speak indifferently.
+
+"Who else should I mean?" Octavius answered shortly. Aileen's ways at
+times, especially during these last few years when Champney Googe's name
+happened to be mentioned in her presence, were irritating in the extreme
+to the faithful factotum at Champ-au-Haut.
+
+"I wish, Aileen, you'd get over your grudge against him--"
+
+"What grudge?"
+
+"You can tell that best yourself--there's no use your playing off--I
+don't pretend to know anything about it, but I can put my finger on the
+very year and the very month you turned against Champney Googe who
+never had anything but a pleasant word for you ever since you was so
+high--" he indicated a few feet on his whipstock--"and first come to
+Champo. 'T ain't generous, Aileen; 't ain't like a true woman; 't ain't
+like you to go back on a man just because he has sinned. He stands in
+need of us all now, although they say at the sheds he can hold his own
+with the best of 'em--I heard the manager telling Emlie he'd be foreman
+of Shed Number Two if he kept on, for he's the only one can get on with
+all of the foreigners; guess Jim McCann knows--"
+
+"What do you mean by the year and the month?"
+
+"I mean what I say. 'T was in August seven years ago--but p'r'aps you
+don't remember," he said. His sarcasm was intentional.
+
+She made no reply, but smiled to herself--a smile so exasperating to
+Octavius that he sulked a few minutes in silence. After another eighth
+of a mile, she spoke with apparent interest:
+
+"What makes you think Mrs. Champney wants to see Father Honore about her
+nephew?"
+
+"Because it looks that way. This afternoon, when you was out, she got me
+to move Mr. Louis' picture from the library to her room, and I had to
+hang it on the wall opposite her bed--" Octavius paused--"I believe she
+don't think she'll last long, and she don't look as if she could either.
+Last week she had Emlie up putting a codicil to her will. The nurse told
+me she was one of the witnesses, she and Emlie and the doctor--catch her
+letting me see any of her papers!" He reined into the road that led to
+the sheds.
+
+"I hope to God she'll do him justice this time," he spoke aloud, but
+evidently to himself.
+
+"How do you mean, Tave?"
+
+"I mean by giving him what's his by rights; that's what I mean." He
+spoke emphatically.
+
+"He wouldn't be the man I think he is if he ever took a cent from
+her--not after what she did!" she exclaimed hotly.
+
+Octavius turned and looked at her in amazement.
+
+"That's the first time I ever heard you speak up for Champney Googe, an'
+I've known you since before you knew him. Well, it's better late than
+never." He spoke with a degree of satisfaction in his tone that did not
+escape Aileen. "Which door shall I leave you at?"
+
+"Round at the west--there are some people coming out now--here we are.
+You'll find me here when you come back."
+
+"I shall be back within a half an hour; I telephoned Father Honore I was
+coming up--you're sure you don't mind waiting here alone? I'll get back
+before dusk."
+
+"What should I be afraid of? I won't let the stones fall on me!"
+
+She sprang to the ground. Octavius turned the horse and drove off.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On entering the shed she caught her breath in admiration. The level rays
+of the July sun shone into the gray interior illumining the farthest
+corners. Their glowing crimson flushed the granite to a scarcely
+perceptible rose. Portions of the noble arches, parts of the architrave,
+sculptured cornice and keystone, drums, pediments and capitals, stone
+mullions, here and there a huge monolith, caught the ethereal flush and
+transformed Shed Number Two into a temple of beauty.
+
+She sought the section near the doors, where Jim McCann worked, and sat
+down on one of the granite blocks--perhaps the very one on which _he_
+was at work. The fancy was a pleasing one. Now and then she laid her
+hand caressingly on the cool stone and smiled to herself. Some men and
+women were looking at the huge Macdonald machine over in the farthermost
+corner; one by one they passed out at the east door--at last she was
+alone with her loving thoughts in this cool sanctuary of industry.
+
+She noticed a chisel lying behind the stone on which she sat; she turned
+and picked it up. She looked about for a hammer; she wanted to try her
+puny strength on what Champney Googe manipulated with muscles hardened
+by years of breaking stones--that thought was no longer a nightmare to
+her--but she saw none. The sun sank below the horizon; the afterglow
+promised to be both long and beautiful. After a time she looked out
+across the meadows--a man was crossing them; evidently he had just left
+the tram, for she heard the buzzing of the wires in the still air. He
+was coming towards the sheds. His form showed black against the western
+sky. Another moment--and Aileen knew him to be Champney Googe.
+
+She sat there motionless, the chisel in her hand, her face turned to the
+west and the man rapidly approaching Shed Number Two--a moment more, he
+was within the doors, and, evidently in haste, sought his section; then
+he saw her for the first time. He stopped short. There was a cry:
+
+"Aileen--Aileen--"
+
+She rose to her feet. With one stride he stood before her, leaning to
+look long into her eyes which never wavered while he read in them her
+woman's fealty to her love for him.
+
+He held out his hands, and she placed hers within them. He spoke, and
+the voice was a prayer:
+
+"My wife, Aileen--"
+
+"My husband--" she answered, and the words were a _Te Deum_.
+
+
+X
+
+Octavius drew up near the shed and handed the reins to Father Honore.
+
+"If you'll just hold the mare a minute, I'll step inside and look for
+Aileen."
+
+He disappeared in the darkening entrance, but was back again almost
+immediately. Father Honore saw at once from his face that something
+unusual had taken place. He feared an accident.
+
+"Is Aileen all right?" he asked anxiously.
+
+Octavius nodded. He got into the surrey; the hands that took the reins
+shook visibly. He drove on in silence for a few minutes. He was
+struggling for control of his emotion; for the truth is Octavius wanted
+to cry; and when a man wants to cry and must not, the result is
+inarticulateness and a painful contortion of every feature. Father
+Honore, recognizing this fact, waited. Octavius swallowed hard and many
+times before he could speak; even then his speech was broken:
+
+"She's in there--all right--but Champney Googe is with her--"
+
+"Thank God!"
+
+Father Honore's voice rang out with no uncertain sound. It was a
+heartening thing to hear, and helped powerfully to restore to Octavius
+his usual poise. He turned to look at his companion and saw every
+feature alive with a great joy. Suddenly the scales fell from this man
+of Maine's eyes.
+
+"You don't mean it!" he exclaimed in amazement.
+
+"Oh, but I _do_," replied Father Honore joyfully and emphatically....
+
+"Father Honore," he said after a time in which both men were busy with
+their thoughts, "I ain't much on expressing what I feel, but I want to
+tell you--for you'll understand--that when I come out of that shed I'd
+had a vision,"--he paused,--"a revelation;" the tears were beginning to
+roll down his cheeks; his lips were trembling; "we don't have to go back
+two thousand years to get one, either--I saw what this world's got to be
+saved by if it's saved at all--"
+
+"What was it, Mr. Buzzby?" Father Honore spoke in a low voice.
+
+"I saw a vision of human love that was forgiving, and loving, and saving
+by nothing but love, like the divine love of the Christ you preach
+about--Father Honore, I saw Aileen Armagh sitting on a block of granite
+and Champney Googe kneeling before her, his head in the very dust at her
+feet--and she raising it with her two arms--and her face was like an
+angel's--"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The two men drove on in silence to Champ-au-Haut.
+
+The priest was shown at once to Mrs. Champney's room. He had not seen
+her for over a year and was prepared for a great change; but the actual
+impression of her condition, as she lay motionless on the bed, was a
+shock. His practised eye told him that the Inevitable was already on the
+threshold, demanding entrance. He turned to the nurse with a look of
+inquiry.
+
+"The doctor will be here in a few minutes; I have telephoned for him,"
+she said low in answer. She bent over the bed.
+
+"Mrs. Champney, Father Honore is here; you wished to see him."
+
+The eyes opened; there was still mental clarity in their outlook. Father
+Honore stepped to the bed.
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Champney?" he asked gently.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Her articulation was indistinct but intelligible.
+
+"In what way?"
+
+She looked at him unwaveringly.
+
+"Is--she going--to marry--him?"
+
+Father Honore read her thought and wondered how best to answer. He was
+of the opinion that she would remember Aileen in her will. The girl had
+been for years so faithful and, in a way, Mrs. Champney cared for her.
+Humanly speaking, he dreaded, by his answer, to endanger the prospect of
+the assurance to Aileen of a sum that would place her beyond want and
+the need to work for any one's support but her own in the future. But as
+he could not know what answer might or might not affect Aileen's future,
+he decided to speak the whole truth--let come what might.
+
+"I sincerely hope so," he replied.
+
+"Do--you know?" with a slight emphasis on the "know."
+
+"I know they love each other--have loved each other for many years."
+
+"If she does--she--won't get anything from me--you tell her--so."
+
+"That will make no difference to Aileen, Mrs. Champney. Love outweighs
+all else with her."
+
+She continued to look at him unwaveringly.
+
+"Love--fools--" she murmured.
+
+But Father Honore caught the words, and the priest's manhood asserted
+itself in the face of dissolution and this blasphemy.
+
+"No--rather it is wisdom for them to love; it is ordained of God that
+human beings should love; I wish them joy. May I not tell them that you,
+too, wish them joy, Mrs. Champney? Aileen has been faithful to you, and
+your nephew never wronged you personally. Will you not be reconciled to
+him?" he pleaded.
+
+"No."
+
+"But why?" He spoke very gently, almost in appeal.
+
+"Why?" she repeated tonelessly, her eyes still fixed on his face,
+"because he is--hers--Aurora Googe's--"
+
+She paused for another effort. Her eyes turned at last to the portrait
+of Louis Champney on the wall at the foot of her bed.
+
+"She took all his love--all--all his love--and he was my husband--I
+loved my husband--But you don't know--"
+
+"What, Mrs. Champney? Let me help you, if I can."
+
+"No help--I loved my husband--he used to lie here--by my side--on this
+bed--and cry out--in his sleep for her--lie here--by my side in--the
+night--and stretch out his arms--for her--not me--not for me--"
+
+Her eyes were still fixed on Louis Champney's face. Suddenly the lids
+drooped; she grew drowsy, but continued to murmur, incoherently at
+first, then inarticulately.
+
+The nurse stepped to his side. Father Honore's eyes dwelt pityingly for
+a moment on this deathbed; then he turned and left the room, marvelling
+at the differentiated expression in this life of that which we name
+Love.
+
+Octavius was waiting for him in the lower hall.
+
+"Did you see her?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"Yes; but to no purpose; her life has been lived, Mr. Buzzby; nothing
+can affect it now."
+
+"You don't mean she's gone?" Octavius started at the sound of his own
+voice; it seemed to echo through the house.
+
+"No; but it is, I believe, only a question of an hour at most."
+
+"I'd better drive up then for Aileen; she ought to know--ought to be
+here."
+
+"Believe me, it would be useless, Mr. Buzzby. Those two belong to life,
+not to death--leave them alone together; and leave her there above, to
+her Maker and the infinite mercy of His Son."
+
+"Amen," said Octavius Buzzby solemnly; but his thought was with those
+whom he had seen leave Champ-au-Haut through the same outward-opening
+portal that was now set wide for its mistress: the old Judge, and his
+son, Louis--the last Champney.
+
+He accompanied Father Honore to the door.
+
+"No farther, Mr. Buzzby," he said, when Octavius insisted on driving him
+home. "Your place is here. I shall take the tram as usual at The Bow."
+
+They shook hands without further speech. In the deepening twilight
+Octavius watched him down the driveway. Despite his sixty years he
+walked with the elastic step of young manhood.
+
+
+XI
+
+"Unworthy--unworthy!" was Champney Googe's cry, as he knelt before
+Aileen in an access of shame and contrition in the presence of such a
+revelation of woman's love.
+
+[Illustration: "'Unworthy--unworthy!' was Champney Googe's cry, as he
+knelt before Aileen"]
+
+Aileen lifted his head, laid her arms around his neck, drew him by her
+young strength and her gentle compelling words to a seat beside her on
+the granite block. She kept her arms about him.
+
+"No, Champney, not unworthy; but worthy, worthy of it all--all that life
+can give you in compensation for those seven years. We'll put it all
+behind us; we'll live in the present and in hope of a blessed future.
+Take heart, my husband--"
+
+The bowed shoulders heaved beneath her arms.
+
+"So little to offer--so little--"
+
+"'So little'!" she exclaimed; "and is it 'little' you call your love for
+me? Is it 'little' that I'm to have a home--at last--of my own? Is it
+'little' that the husband I love is going out of it and coming home to
+it in his daily work, and my heart going out to him both ways at once?
+And is it 'little' you call the gift of a mother to her who is
+motherless--" her voice faltered.
+
+Champney caught her in his arms; his tears fell upon the dark head.
+
+"I'm a coward, Aileen, and you are just like our Father Honore; but I
+_will_ put all behind me. I _will_ not regret. I _will_ work out my own
+salvation here in my native place, among my own and among strangers. I
+vow here I _will_, God helping me, if only in thankfulness for the two
+hearts that are mine...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The afterglow faded from the western heavens. The twilight came on
+apace. The two still sat there in the darkening shed, at times
+unburdening their over-charged hearts; at others each rested heart and
+body and soul in the presence of the other, and both were aware of the
+calming influence of the dim and silent shed.
+
+"How did you happen to come down here just to-night, and after work hours
+too, Champney?" she asked, curious to know the how and the why of this
+meeting.
+
+"I came down for my second chisel. I remembered when I got home that it
+needed sharpening and I could not do without it to-morrow morning. Of
+course the machine shop was closed, so I thought I'd try my hand at it
+on the grindstone up home this evening."
+
+"Then is this it?" she exclaimed, picking up the chisel from the block.
+
+"Yes, that's mine." He held out his hand for it.
+
+"Indeed, you're not going to have it--not this one! I'll buy you
+another, but this is mine. Wasn't I holding it in my hand and thinking
+of you when I saw you coming over the meadows?"
+
+"Keep it--and I'll keep something I have of yours."
+
+"Of mine? Where did you get anything of mine? Surely it isn't the
+peppered rosebud?"
+
+"Oh, no. I've had it nearly seven years."
+
+"Seven years!" She exclaimed in genuine surprise. "And whatever have you
+had of mine I'd like to know that has kept seven years? It's neither
+silver nor gold--for I've little of either; not that silver or gold can
+make a man happy," she added quickly, fearing he might be sensitive to
+her speech.
+
+"No; I've learned that, Aileen, thank God!"
+
+"What is it then?--tell me quick."
+
+He thrust his hand into the workman's blouse and drew forth a small
+package, wrapped in oiled silk and sewed to a cord that was round his
+neck. He opened it.
+
+Aileen bent to examine it, her eyes straining in the increasing dusk.
+
+"Why, it's never--it's not my handkerchief!--Champney!"
+
+"Yes, yours, Aileen--that night in all the horror and despair, I heard
+something in your voice that told me you--didn't hate me--"
+
+"Oh, Champney!"
+
+"Yes. I've kept it ever since--I asked permission to take it in with
+me?--I mean into my cell. They granted it. It was with me night and
+day--my head lay on it at night; I got my first sleep so--and it went
+with me to work during the day. It's been kissed clean thin till it's
+mere gossamer; it helped, that and the work, to save my brain--"
+
+She caught handkerchief and hand in both hers and pressed her lips to
+them again and again.
+
+"And now I'm going to keep it, after you're mine in the sight of man, as
+you are now before God; put it away and keep it for--" He stopped short.
+
+"For whom?" she whispered.
+
+He drew her close to him--closer and more near.
+
+"Aileen, my beloved," his voice was earnestly joyful, "I am hoping for
+the blessing of children--are you?--"
+
+"Except for you, my arms will feel empty for them till they come--"
+
+"Oh, my wife--my true wife!--now I can tell you all!" he said, and the
+earnest note was lost in purest joy. He whispered:
+
+"You know, dear, I'm but half a man, and must remain such. I am no
+citizen, have no citizen's rights, can never vote--have no voice in all
+that appeals to manhood--my country--"
+
+"I know--I know--" she murmured pityingly.
+
+"And so I used to think there in my cell at night when I kissed the
+little handkerchief--Please God, if Aileen still loves me when I get
+out, if she in her loving mercy will forgive to the extent that she will
+be my wife, then it may be that she will bestow on me the blessing of a
+child--a boy who will one day stand among men as his father never can
+again, who will possess the full rights of citizenship; in him I may
+live again as a man--but only so."
+
+"Please God it may be so."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They walked slowly homewards to The Bow in the clear warm dark of the
+midsummer-night. They had much to say to each other, and often they
+lingered on the way. They lingered again when they came to the gate by
+the paddock in the lane.
+
+Aileen looked towards the house. A light was burning in Mrs. Champney's
+room.
+
+"I'm afraid Mrs. Champney must be much worse. Tave never would have
+forgotten me if he hadn't received some telephone message while he was
+at Father Honore's. But the nurse said there was nothing I could do when
+I left with Tave--but oh, I'm so glad he didn't stop! I _must_ go in
+now, Champney," she said decidedly. But he still held her two hands.
+
+"Tell me, Champney, have you ever thought your aunt might remember
+you--for the wrong she did you?"
+
+"No; and if she should, I never would take a cent of it."
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad--so glad!" She squeezed both his hands right hard.
+
+He read her thought and smiled to himself; he was glad that in this he
+had not disappointed her.
+
+"But there's one thing I wish she would do--poor--_poor_ Aunt Meda--" he
+glanced up at the light in the window.
+
+"Yes, 'poor,' Champney--I know." She was nodding emphatically.
+
+"I wish she would leave enough to Mr. Van Ostend to repay with interest
+what he repaid for me to the Company; it would be only just, for, work
+as I may, I can never hope to do that--and I long so to do it--no
+workman could do it--"
+
+She interrupted gayly: "Oh, but you've a working-woman by your side!"
+She snatched away her small hands--for she belonged to the small people
+of the earth. "See, Champney, the two hands! I can work, and I'm not
+afraid of it. I can earn a lot to help with--and I shall. There's my
+cooking, and singing, and embroidery--"
+
+He smiled again in the dark at her enthusiasm--it was so like her!
+
+"And I'll lift the care from our mother too,--and you're not to fret
+your dear soul about the Van Ostend money--if one can't do it, surely
+two can with God's blessing. Now I _must_ go in--and you may give me
+another kiss for I've been on starvation diet these last seven
+years--only one--oh, Champney!"...
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The dim light continued to burn in the upper chamber at Champ-au-Haut
+until the morning; for before Champney and Aileen left the shed, the
+Inevitable had already crossed the threshold of that chamber--and the
+dim light burned on to keep him company....
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A month later, when Almeda Champney's will was admitted to probate and
+its contents made public, it was found that there were but six
+bequests--one of which was contained in the codicil--namely:
+
+To Octavius Buzzby the oil portrait of Louis Champney.
+
+To Ann and Hannah one thousand dollars each in recognition of faithful
+service for thirty-seven years.
+
+To Aileen Armagh (so read the codicil) a like sum _provided she did not
+marry Champney Googe_.
+
+One half of the remainder of the estate, real and personal, was
+bequeathed to Henry Van Ostend; the other half, in trust, to his
+daughter, Alice Maud Mary Van Ostend.
+
+The instrument bore the date of Champney Googe's commitment.
+
+
+
+
+The Last Word
+
+
+I
+
+It is the day after Flamsted's first municipal election; after twenty
+years of progress it has attained to proud citizenship. The community,
+now amounting to twelve thousand, has spent all its surplus energy in
+municipal electioneering delirium; there were four candidates in the
+field for mayor and party spirit ran high. On this bright May morning of
+1910, the streets are practically deserted, whereas yesterday they were
+filled with shouting throngs. The banners are still flung across the
+main street; a light breeze lifts them into prominence and with them the
+name of the successful candidate they bear--Luigi Poggi.
+
+The Colonel, as a result of continued oratory in favor of his
+son-in-law's candidacy, is laid up at home with an attack of laryngitis;
+but he has strength left to whisper to Elmer Wiggins who has come up to
+see him:
+
+"Yesterday, after twenty years of solid work, Flamsted entered upon its
+industrial majority through the throes of civic travail," a mixture of
+metaphors that Mr. Wiggins ignores in his joy at the result of the
+election; for Mr. Wiggins has been hedging with his New England
+conscience and fearing, as a consequence, punishment in
+disappointmenting election results. He wavered, in casting his vote,
+between the two principal candidates, young Emlie, Lawyer Emlie's son,
+and Luigi Poggi.
+
+As a Flamstedite in good and regular standing, he knew he ought to vote
+for his own, Emlie, instead of a foreigner. But, he desired above all
+things to see Luigi Poggi, his friend, the most popular merchant and
+keenest man of affairs in the town, the first mayor of the city of
+Flamsted. Torn between his duty and the demands of his heart, he
+compromised by starting a Poggi propaganda, that was carried on over his
+counter and behind the mixing-screen, with every customer whether for
+pills or soda water. Then, on the decisive day, he entered the booth and
+voted a straight Emlie ticket!! So much for the secret ballot.
+
+He shook the Colonel's hand right heartily.
+
+"I thought I'd come up to congratulate personally both you and the city,
+and talk things over in a general way, Colonel; sorry to find you so
+used up, but in a good cause."
+
+The Colonel beamed.
+
+"A matter of a day or two of rest. You did good work, Mr. Wiggins, good
+work," he whispered; "you'd make a good parliamentary whip--'Gad, my
+voice is gone!--but as you say, in a good cause--a good cause--"
+
+"No better on earth," Mr. Wiggins responded enthusiastically.
+
+The Colonel was magnanimous; he forbore to whisper one word in reminder
+of the old-time pessimism that twenty years ago held the small-headed
+man of Maine in such dubious thrall.
+
+"It was each man's vote that told--yours, and mine--" he whispered
+again, nodding understandingly.
+
+Mr. Wiggins at once changed the subject.
+
+"Don't you exert yourself, Colonel; let me do the talking--for a
+change," he added with a twinkle in his eyes. The Colonel caught his
+meaning and threw back his head for a hearty laugh, but failed to make a
+sound.
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend came up on the train last night, just in time to see the
+fireworks, they say," said Mr. Wiggins. "Yes," he went on in answer to a
+question he read in the Colonel's eyes, "came up to see about the Champo
+property. Emlie told me this morning. Mr. Van Ostend and Tave and Father
+Honore are up there now; I saw the automobile standing in the driveway
+as I came up on the car. Guess Tave has run the place about as long as
+he wants to alone. He's getting on in years like the rest of us, and
+don't want so much responsibility."
+
+"Does Emlie know anything?" whispered the Colonel eagerly.
+
+"Nothing definite; they're going to talk it over to-day; but he had some
+idea about the disposition of the estate, I think, from what he said."
+
+The Colonel motioned with his lips: "Tell me."
+
+Mr. Wiggins proceeded to give the Colonel the desired information.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While this one-sided conversation was taking place, Henry Van Ostend was
+standing on the terrace at Champ-au-Haut, discussing with Father Honore
+and Octavius Buzzby the best method of investing the increasing revenues
+of the large estate, vacant, except for its faithful factotum and the
+care-takers, Ann and Hannah, during the seven years that have passed
+since Mrs. Champney's death.
+
+"Mr. Googe had undoubtedly a perfect right to dispute this will, Father
+Honore," he was saying.
+
+"But he would never have done it; I know such a thing could never have
+occurred to him."
+
+"That does not alter the facts of this rather peculiar case. Mr. Buzzby
+knows that, up to this date, my daughter and I have never availed
+ourselves of any rights in this estate; and he has managed it so wisely
+alone, during these last seven years, that now he no longer wishes to be
+responsible for the investment of its constantly increasing revenues. I
+shall never consider this estate mine--will or no will." He spoke
+emphatically. "Law is one thing, but a right attitude, where property is
+concerned, towards one's neighbor is quite another."
+
+He looked to right and left of the terrace, and included in his glance
+many acres of the noble estate. Father Honore, watching him, suddenly
+recalled that evening in the financier's own house when the Law was
+quoted as "fundamental"--and he smiled to himself.
+
+Mr. Van Ostend faced the two men.
+
+"Do you think it would do any good for me to approach him on the subject
+of setting apart that portion of the personal estate, and its increase
+in the last seven years, which Mrs. Champney inherited from her father,
+Mr. Googe's grandfather, for his children--that is if he won't take it
+himself?"
+
+"No."
+
+The two men spoke as one; the negative was strongly emphatic.
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend," Octavius Buzzby spoke with suppressed excitement, "if
+I may make bold, who has lived here on this place and known its owners
+for forty years, to give you a piece of advice, I'd like to give it."
+
+"I want all I can get, Mr. Buzzby; it will help me to see my way in this
+matter."
+
+"Then I'm going to ask you to let bygones be bygones, and not say one
+word to Mr. Googe about this property. He begun seven years ago in the
+sheds and has worked his way up to foreman this last year, and if you
+was to propose to him what you have to us, it would rake up the past,
+sir--a past that's now in its grave, thank God! Champney--I ask your
+pardon--Mr. Googe wouldn't touch a penny of it more 'n he'd touch
+carrion. I _know_ this; nor he wouldn't have his boy touch it either. I
+ain't saying he don't appreciate the good money does, for he's told me
+so; but for himself--well, sir, I think you know what I mean: he's
+through with what is just money. He's a man, is Champney Googe, and he's
+living his life in a way that makes the almighty dollar look pretty
+small in comparison with it--Father Honore, you know this as well as I
+do."
+
+The priest nodded gravely in the affirmative.
+
+"Tell me something of his life, Father Honore," said Mr. Van Ostend;
+"you know the degree of respect I have always had for him ever since he
+took his punishment like a man--and you and I were both on the wrong
+track," he added with a meaning smile.
+
+"I don't quite know what to say," replied his friend. "It isn't anything
+I can point to and say he has done this or that, because he gets beneath
+the surface, as you might say, and works there. But I do know that where
+there is an element of strife among the men, there you will find him as
+peacemaker--he has a wonderful way with them, but it is indefinable. We
+don't know all he does, for he never speaks of it, only every once in a
+while something leaks out. I know that where there is a sickbed and a
+quarryman on it, there you will find Champney Googe as watcher after his
+day's work--and tender in his ministrations as a woman. I know that when
+sickness continues and the family are dependent on the fund, Champney
+Googe works many a night overtime and gives his extra pay to help out. I
+know, too, that when a strike threatens, he, who is now in the union
+because he is convinced he can help best there, is the balance-wheel,
+and prevents radical unreason and its results. There's trouble brewing
+there now--about the automatic bush hammer--"
+
+"I have heard of it."
+
+"--And Jim McCann is proving intractable. Mr. Googe is at work with him,
+and hopes to bring him round to a just point of view. And I know,
+moreover, that when there is a crime committed and a criminal to be
+dealt with, that criminal finds in the new foreman of Shed Number Two a
+friend who, without condoning the crime, stands by him as a human being.
+I know that out of his own deep experience he is able to reach out to
+other men in need, as few can. In all this his wife is his helpmate, his
+mother his inspiration.--What more can I say?"
+
+"Nothing," said Henry Van Ostend gravely. "He has two children I hear--a
+boy and a girl. I should like to see her who was the little Aileen of
+twenty years ago."
+
+"I hope you may," said Father Honore cordially; "yes, he has two lovely
+children, Honore, now in his first knickerbockers, is my namesake--"
+
+Octavius interrupted him, smiling significantly:
+
+"He's something more than Father Honore's namesake, Mr. Van Ostend, he's
+his shadow when he is with him. The men have a little joke among
+themselves whenever they see the two together, and that's pretty often;
+they say Father Honore's shadow will never grow less till little Honore
+reaches his full growth."
+
+The priest smiled. "He and I are very, very close friends," was all he
+permitted himself to say, but the other men read far more than that into
+his words.
+
+Henry Van Ostend looked thoughtful. He considered with himself for a few
+minutes; then he spoke, weighing his words:
+
+"I thank you both; I have solved my difficulty with your help. You have
+spoken frankly to me, and shown me this matter in a different light; I
+may speak as frankly to you, as to Mr. Googe's closest friends. The
+truth is, neither my daughter nor myself can appropriate this money to
+ourselves--we both feel that it does not belong to us, _in the
+circumstances_. I should like you both to tell Mr. Googe for me, that
+out of the funds accruing to the estate from his grandfather's money, I
+will take for my share the hundred thousand dollars I repaid to the
+Quarries Company thirteen years ago--you know what I mean--and the
+interest on the same for those six years. Mr. Googe will understand that
+this is done in settlement of a mere business account--and he will
+understand it as between man and man. I think it will satisfy him.
+
+"I have determined since talking with you, although the scheme has been
+long in my mind and I have spoken to Mr. Emlie about it, to apply the
+remainder of the estate for the benefit of the quarrymen, the
+stone-cutters, their families and, incidentally, the city of Flamsted.
+My plans are, of course, indefinite; I cannot give them in detail, not
+having had time to think them out; but I may say that this house will be
+eventually a home for men disabled in the quarries or sheds. The plan
+will develop further in the executing of it. You, Father Honore, you and
+Mr. Buzzby, Mr. Googe, and Mr. Emlie will be constituted a Board of
+Overseers--I know that in your hands the work will be advanced, and, I
+hope, prospered to the benefit of this generation and succeeding ones."
+
+Octavius Buzzby grasped his hand.
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend, I wish old Judge Champney was living to hear this! He'd
+approve, Mr. Van Ostend, he'd approve of it all--and Mr. Louis too."
+
+"Thank you, Mr. Buzzby, for these words; they do me good. And now," he
+said, turning to Father Honore, "I want very much to see Mr. Googe--now
+that this business is settled. I have wanted to see him many times
+during these last six years, but I felt--I feared he might consider my
+visiting him an intrusion--"
+
+"Not at all--not at all; this simply shows me that you don't as yet know
+the real Mr. Googe. He will be glad to see you at any time."
+
+"I think I'd like to see him in the shed."
+
+"No reason in the world why you shouldn't; he is one of the most
+accessible men at all times and seasons."
+
+"Supposing, then, you ride up with me in the automobile?"
+
+"Certainly I will; shall we go up this forenoon?"
+
+"Yes, I should like to go now. Mr. Buzzby, I shall be back this
+afternoon for a talk with you. I want to make some definite arrangement
+for Ann and Hannah."
+
+"I'll be here."
+
+The two walked together to the driveway, and shortly the mellow note of
+the great Panhard's horn sounded, as the automobile rounded the curve of
+The Bow and sped away to the north shore highway and the sheds.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Late that afternoon Aileen, with her baby daughter, Aurora, in her arms,
+was standing on the porch watching for her husband's return. The usual
+hour for his home-coming had long passed. She began to fear that the
+threatened trouble in the sheds, on account of the attempted
+introduction of the automatic bush hammer, might have come to a crisis.
+At last, however, she saw him leave the car and cross the bridge over
+the Rothel. His step was quick and firm. She waved her hand to him; a
+swing of his cap answered her. Then little Aurora's tiny fist was
+manipulated by her mother to produce a baby form of welcome.
+
+Champney sprang up the steps two at a time, and for a moment the little
+wife and baby Aurora disappeared in his arms.
+
+"Oh, Champney, I'm so thankful you've come! I knew just by the way you
+came over the bridge that things were going better at the sheds. You are
+so late I began to get worried. Come, supper's waiting."
+
+"Wait a minute, Aileen--Mother--" he called through the hall, "come here
+a minute, please."
+
+Aurora Googe came quickly at that ever welcome call. Her face was even
+more beautiful than formerly, for great joy and peace irradiated every
+feature.
+
+"Where's Honore?" he said abruptly, looking about for his boy who was
+generally the first to run as far as the bridge to greet him. His wife
+answered.
+
+"He and Billy went with Father Honore as far as the power-house; he'll
+be back soon with Billy. Sister Ste. Croix went by a few minutes ago,
+and I told her to hurry them home.--What's the good news, Champney? Tell
+me quick--I can't wait to hear it."
+
+Champney smiled down at the eager face looking up to him; her chin was
+resting on her baby's head.
+
+"Mr. Van Ostend has been in the sheds to-day--and I've had a long talk
+with him."
+
+"Oh, Champney!"
+
+Both women exclaimed at the same time, and their faces reflected the joy
+that shone in the eyes of the man they loved with a love bordering on
+worship.
+
+Champney nodded. "Yes, and so satisfactory--" he drew a long breath; "I
+have so much to tell it will take half the evening. He wishes to 'pay
+his respects,' so he says, to my wife and mother, if convenient for the
+ladies to-morrow--how is it?" He looked with a smile first into the gray
+eyes and then into the dark ones. In the latter he read silent pleased
+consent; but Aileen's danced for joy as she answered:
+
+"Convenient! So convenient, that he'll get the surprise of his life from
+me, anyhow; he really must be made to realize that I am his debtor for
+the rest of my days--don't I owe the 'one man on earth for me' to him?
+for would I have ever seen Flamsted but for him? And have I ever
+forgotten the roses he dropped into the skirt of my dress twenty-one
+years ago this very month when I sang the Sunday night song for him at
+the Vaudeville? Twenty-one years! Goodness, but it makes me feel old,
+mother!"
+
+Aurora Googe smiled indulgently on her daughter, for, at times, Aileen,
+not only in ways, but looks, was still like the child of twelve.
+
+Champney grew suddenly grave.
+
+"Do you realize, Aileen, that this meeting to-day in the shed is the
+first in which we three, Father Honore, Mr. Van Ostend, and I, have ever
+been together under one roof since that night twenty-one years ago when
+I first saw you?"
+
+"Why, that doesn't seem possible--but it _is_ so, isn't it? Wasn't that
+strange!"
+
+"Yes, and no," said Champney, looking at his mother. "I thought of our
+first meeting one another at the Vaudeville, as we three stood there
+together in the shed looking upwards to The Gore; and Father Honore told
+me afterward that he was thinking of that same thing. We both wondered
+if Mr. Van Ostend recalled that evening, and the fact of our first
+acquaintance, although unknown to one another."
+
+"I wonder--" said Aileen, musingly.
+
+Champney spoke abruptly again; there was a note of uneasiness in his
+voice:
+
+"I wonder what keeps Honore--I'll just run up the road and see if he's
+coming. If he isn't, I will go on till I meet the boys. I wish," he
+added wistfully, "that McCann felt as kindly to me as Billy does to my
+son; I am beginning to think that old grudge of his against me will
+never yield, not even to time;--I'll be back in a few minutes."
+
+Aileen watched him out of sight; then she turned to Aurora Googe.
+
+"We are blest in this turn of affairs, aren't we, mother? This meeting
+is the one thing Champney has been dreading--and yet longing for. I'm
+glad it's over."
+
+"So am I; and I am inclined to think Father Honore brought it about; if
+you remember, he said nothing about Mr. Van Ostend's being here when he
+stopped just now."
+
+"So he didn't!" Aileen spoke in some surprise; then she added with a
+joyous laugh: "Oh, that dear man is sly--bless him!"--But the tears
+dimmed her eyes.
+
+
+II
+
+"Go straight home with Honore, Billy, as straight as ever you can," said
+Father Honore to eight-year-old Billy McCann who for the past year had
+constituted himself protector of five-year-old Honore Googe; "I'll watch
+you around the power-house."
+
+Little Honore reached up with both arms for the usual parting from the
+man he adored. The priest caught him up, kissed him heartily, and set
+him down again with the added injunction to "trot home."
+
+The two little boys ran hand in hand down the road. Father Honore
+watched them till the power-house shut them from sight; then he waited
+for their reappearance at the other corner where the road curves
+downward to the highroad. He never allowed Honore to go alone over the
+piece of road between the point where he was standing and the
+power-house, for the reason that it bordered one of the steepest and
+roughest ledges in The Gore; a careless step would be sure to send so
+small a child rolling down the rough surface. But beyond the
+power-house, the ledges fell away very gradually to the lowest slopes
+where stood, one among many in the quarries, the new monster steel
+derrick which the men had erected last week. They had been testing it
+for several days; even now its powerful arm held suspended a block of
+many tons' weight. This was a part of the test for "graduated
+strain"--the weight being increased from day to day.
+
+The men, in leaving their work, often took a short cut homeward from the
+lower slope to the road just below the power-house, by crossing this
+gentle declivity of the ledge. Evidently Billy McCann with this in mind
+had twisted the injunction to "go straight home" into a chance to "cut
+across"; for surely this way would be the "straightest." Besides, there
+was the added inducement of close proximity to the wonderful new derrick
+that, since its instalment, had been occupying many of Billy's waking
+thoughts.
+
+Father Honore, watching for the children's reappearance at the corner of
+the road just beyond the long low power-house, was suddenly aware, with
+a curious shock, of the two little boys trotting in a lively manner down
+the easy grade of the "cross cut" slope, and nearing the derrick and its
+suspended weight. He frowned at the sight and, calling loudly to them to
+come back, started straight down over the steep ledge at the side of the
+road. He heard some one else calling the boys by name, and, a moment
+later, saw that it was Sister Ste. Croix who was coming up the hill.
+
+The children did not hear, or would not, because of their absorption in
+getting close to the steel giant towering above them. Sister Ste. Croix
+called again; then she, too, started down the slope after them.
+
+She noticed some men running from the farther side of the quarry. She
+saw Father Honore suddenly spring by leaps and bounds down over the
+rough ledge. What was it? The children were apparently in no danger. She
+looked up at the derrick--
+
+_What was that!_ A tremor in its giant frame; a swaying of its cabled
+mast; a sickening downward motion of the weighted steel arm--then--
+
+"Merciful Christ!" she groaned, and for the space of a few seconds
+covered her eyes....
+
+The priest, catching up the two children one under each arm, ran with
+superhuman strength to evade the falling derrick--with a last supreme
+effort he rolled the boys beyond its reach; they were saved, but--
+
+Their savior was pinioned by the steel tip fast to the unyielding
+granite.
+
+A woman's shriek rent the air--a fearful cry:
+
+"Jean--mon Jean!"
+
+A moment more and Sister Ste. Croix reached the spot--she took his head
+on her lap.
+
+"Jean--mon Jean," she cried again.
+
+The eyes, dimmed already, opened; he made a supreme effort to speak--
+
+"Margot--p'tite Truite--"...
+
+Thus, after six and forty years of silence, Love spoke once; that Love,
+greater than State and Church because it is the foundation of both, and
+without it neither could exist; that Love--co-eval with all life, the
+Love which defies time, sustains absence, glorifies loss--remains, thank
+God! a deathless legacy to the toiling Race of the Human, and, because
+deathless, triumphant in death.
+
+It triumphed now....
+
+The ponderous crash of the derrick followed by the screams of the two
+boys, brought the quarrymen, the women and children, rushing in
+terrified haste from their evening meal. But when they reached the spot,
+and before Champney Googe, running over the granite slopes, as once
+years before he ran from pursuing justice, could satisfy himself that
+his boy was uninjured, at what a sacrifice he knew only when he knelt by
+the prostrate form, before Jim McCann, seizing a lever, could shout to
+the men to "lift all together," the life-blood ebbed, carrying with it
+on the hurrying out-going tide the priest's loving undaunted spirit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All work at the quarries and the sheds was suspended during the
+following Saturday; the final service was to be held on Sunday.
+
+All Saturday afternoon, while the bier rested before the altar in the
+stone chapel by the lake shore, a silent motley procession filed under
+the granite lintel:--stalwart Swede, blue-eyed German, sallow-cheeked
+Pole, dark-eyed Italian, burly Irish, low-browed Czechs, French
+Canadians, stolid English and Scotch, Henry Van Ostend and three of the
+directors of the Flamsted Quarries Company, rivermen from the Penobscot,
+lumbermen from farther north, the Colonel and three of his sons, the
+rector from The Bow, a dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church from New
+York, the little choir boys--children of the quarrymen--and Augustus
+Buzzby, members of the Paulist Order, Elmer Wiggins, Octavius Buzzby
+supporting old Joel Quimber, Nonna Lisa--in all, over three thousand
+souls one by one passed up the aisle to stand with bared bowed head by
+that bier; to look their last upon the mask of the soul; to render, in
+spirit, homage to the spirit that had wrought among its fellows,
+manfully, unceasingly, to realize among them on this earth a
+long-striven-for ideal.
+
+Many a one knelt in prayer. Many a mother, not of English tongue,
+placing her hand upon the head of her little child forced him to kneel
+beside her; her tears wet the stone slabs of the chancel floor.
+
+Just before sunset, the Daughters of the Mystic Rose passed into the
+church; they bore tapers to set upon the altar, and at the head and
+foot of the bier. Two of them remained throughout the night to pray by
+the chancel rail; one of them was Sister Ste. Croix. Silent, immovable
+she knelt there throughout the short June night. Her secret remained
+with her and the one at whose feet she was kneeling.
+
+The little group of special friends from The Gore came last, just a
+little while before the face they loved was to be covered forever from
+human gaze: Aileen with her four-months' babe in her arms, Aurora Googe
+leading little Honore by the hand, Margaret McCann with her boy, Elvira
+Caukins and her two daughters. Silent, their tears raining upon the awed
+and upturned faces of the children, they, too, knelt; but no sound of
+sobbing profaned the great peaceful silence that was broken only by the
+faint _chip-chip-chipping_ monotone from Shed Number Two. In that four
+men were at work. Champney Googe was one of them.
+
+He was expecting them at this appointed time. When he saw them enter the
+chapel, he put aside hammer and chisel and went across the meadow to
+join them. He waited for them to come out; then, taking the babe from
+his wife's arms, he gave her into his mother's keeping. He looked
+significantly at his wife. The others passed on and out; but Aileen
+turned and with her husband retraced her steps to the altar. They knelt,
+hand clasped in hand....
+
+When they rose to look their last upon that loved face, they knew that
+their lives had received through his spirit the benediction of God.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Champney returned to his work, for time pressed. The quarrymen in The
+Gore had asked permission the day before to quarry a single stone in
+which their priest should find his final resting place. Many of them
+were Italians, and Luigi Poggi was spokesman. Permission being given, he
+turned to the men:
+
+"For the love of God and the man who stood to us for Him, let us quarry
+the stone nearest heaven. Look to the ridge yonder; that has not been
+opened up--who will work with me to open up the highest ridge in The
+Gore, and quarry the stone to-night."
+
+The volunteers were practically all the men in the Upper and Lower
+Quarries; the foreman was obliged to draw lots. The men worked in
+shifts--worked during that entire night; they bared a space of sod;
+cleared off the surface layer; quarried the rock, using the hand drill
+entirely. Towards morning the thick granite slab, that lay nearest to
+the crimsoning sky among the Flamsted Hills, was hoisted from its
+primeval bed and lowered to its place on the car.
+
+It was then that four men, Champney Googe, Antoine, Jim McCann, and
+Luigi Poggi asserted their right, by reason of what the dead had been to
+them, to cut and chisel the rock into sarcophagus shape. Luigi and
+Antoine asked to cut the cover of the stone coffin.
+
+All Saturday afternoon, the four men in Shed Number Two worked at their
+work of love, of unspeakable gratitude, of passionate devotion to a
+sacrificed manhood. They wrought in silence. All that afternoon, they
+could see, by glancing up from their work and looking out through the
+shed doors across the field, the silent procession entering and leaving
+the chapel. Sometimes Jim McCann would strike wild in his feverish haste
+to ease, by mere physical exertion, his great over-charged heart of its
+load of grief; a muttered curse on his clumsiness followed. Now and
+then Champney caught his eye turned upon him half-appealingly; but they
+spoke no word; _chip-chip-chipping_, they worked on.
+
+The sun set; electricity illumined the shed. Antoine worked with
+desperation; Luigi wrought steadily, carefully, beautifully--his heart
+seeking expression in every stroke. When the dawn paled the electric
+lights, he laid aside his tools, took off his canvas apron, and stepped
+back to view the cover as a whole. The others, also, brought their stone
+to completion. As with one accord they went over to look at the
+Italian's finished work, and saw--no carving of archbishop's mitre, no
+sculpture of cardinal's hat (O mother, where were the day-dreams for
+your boy!), but a rough slab, in the centre of which was a raised heart
+of polished granite, and, beneath it, cut deep into the rock--which,
+although lying yesterday nearest the skies above The Gore, was in past
+aeons the foundation stone of our present world--the words:
+
+     THE HEART OF THE QUARRY.
+
+The lights went out. The dawn was reddening the whole east; it touched
+the faces of the men. They looked at one another. Suddenly McCann
+grasped Champney's hand, and reaching over the slab caught in his the
+hands of the other two; he gripped them hard, drew a long shuddering
+breath, and spoke, but unwittingly on account of his habitual profanity,
+the last word:
+
+"By Jesus Christ, men, we're brothers!"
+
+The full day broke. The men still stood there, hand clasping hand.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+A. L. Burt Company's Popular Copyright Fiction.
+
+    Abner Daniel. By Will N. Harben.
+    Adventures of A Modest Man. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Adventures of Gerard. By A. Conan Doyle.
+    Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.
+    Ailsa Page. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Alternative, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Ancient Law, The. By Ellen Glasgow.
+    Angel of Forgiveness, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Angel of Pain, The. By E. F. Benson.
+    Annals of Ann, The. By Kate Trimble Sharber.
+    Anna the Adventuress. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Ann Boyd. By Will N. Harben.
+    As the Sparks Fly Upward. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
+    At the Age of Eve. By Kate Trimble Sharber.
+    At the Mercy of Tiberius. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
+    At the Moorings. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Awakening of Helen Richie, The. By Margaret Deland.
+    Barrier, The. By Rex Beach.
+    Bar 20. By Clarence E. Mulford.
+    Bar-20 Days. By Clarence E. Mulford.
+    Battle Ground, The. By Ellen Glasgow.
+    Beau Brocade. By Baroness Orczy.
+    Beechy. By Bettina von Hutten.
+    Bella Donna. By Robert Hichens.
+    Beloved Vagabond, The. By William J. Locke.
+    Ben Blair. By Will Lillibridge.
+    Best Man, The. By Harold McGrath.
+    Beth Norvell. By Randall Parrish.
+    Betrayal, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Better Man, The. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
+    Beulah. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
+    Bill Toppers, The. By Andre Castaigne.
+    Blaze Derringer. By Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.
+    Bob Hampton of Placer. By Randall Parrish.
+    Bob, Son of Battle. By Alfred Ollivant.
+    Brass Bowl, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.
+    Bronze Bell, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.
+    Butterfly Man, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    By Right of Purchase. By Harold Bindloss.
+    Cab No. 44. By R. F. Foster.
+    Calling of Dan Matthews, The. By Harold Bell Wright.
+    Call of the Blood, The. By Robert Hichens.
+    Cape Cod Stories. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Cap'n Erl. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Captain Warren's Wards. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Caravaners, The. By the author of "Elizabeth and Her German Garden."
+    Cardigan. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Carlton Case, The. By Ellery H. Clark.
+    Car of Destiny, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Carpet From Bagdad, The. By Harold McGrath.
+    Cash Intrigue, The. By George Randolph Chester.
+    Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine. Frank S. Stockton.
+    Castle by the Sea, The. By H. B. Marriot Watson.
+    Challoners, The. By E. F. Benson.
+    Chaperon, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    City of Six, The. By C. L. Canfield.
+    Circle, The. By Katherine Cecil Thurston (author of "The
+         Masquerader," "The Gambler.")
+    Colonial Free Lance, A. By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.
+    Conquest of Canaan, The. By Booth Tarkington.
+    Conspirators, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Cynthia of the Minute. By Louis Joseph Vance.
+    Dan Merrithew. By Lawrence Perry.
+    Day of the Dog, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Depot Master, The. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Derelicts. By William J. Locke.
+    Diamond Master, The. By Jacques Futrelle.
+    Diamonds Cut Paste. By Agnes and Egerton Castle.
+    Divine Fire, The. By May Sinclair.
+    Dixie Hart. By Will N. Harben.
+    Dr. David. By Marjorie Benton Cooke.
+    Early Bird, The. By George Randolph Chester.
+    Eleventh Hour, The. By David Potter.
+    Elizabeth In Rugen. (By the author of "Elizabeth and Her German
+         Garden.")
+    Elusive Isabel. By Jacques Futrelle.
+    Elusive Pimpernel, The. By Baroness Orczy.
+    Enchanted Hat, The. By Harold McGrath.
+    Excuse Me. By Rupert Hughes.
+    54-40 or Fight. By Emerson Hough.
+    Fighting Chance, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Flamsted Quarries. By Mary E. Waller.
+    Flying Mercury, The. By Eleanor M. Ingram.
+    For a Maiden Brave. By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.
+    Four Million, The. By O. Henry.
+    Four Pool's Mystery, The. By Jean Webster.
+    Fruitful Vine, The. By Robert Hichens.
+    Ganton & Co. By Arthur J. Eddy.
+    Gentleman of France, A. By Stanley Weyman.
+    Gentleman, The. By Alfred Ollivant.
+    Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford. By George Randolph Chester.
+    Gilbert Neal. By Will N. Harben.
+    Girl and the Bill, The. By Bannister Merwin.
+    Girl from His Town, The. By Marie Van Vorst.
+    Girl Who Won, The. By Beth Ellis.
+    Glory of Clementina, The. By William J. Locke.
+    Glory of the Conquered, The. By Susan Glaspell.
+    God's Good Man. By Marie Corelli.
+    Going Some. By Rex Beach.
+    Golden Web, The. By Anthony Partridge.
+    Green Patch, The. By Bettina von Hutten.
+    Happy Island (sequel to "Uncle William"). By Jennette Lee.
+    Hearts and the Highway. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
+    Held for Orders. By Frank H. Spearman.
+    Hidden Water. By Dane Coolidge.
+    Highway of Fate, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Homesteaders, The. By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.
+    Honor of the Big Snows, The. By James Oliver Curwood.
+    Hopalong Cassidy. By Clarence E. Mulford.
+    Household of Peter, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    House of Mystery, The. By Will Irwin.
+    House of the Lost Court, The. By C. N. Williamson.
+    House of the Whispering Pines, The. By Anna Katherine Green.
+    House on Cherry Street, The. By Amelia E. Barr.
+    How Leslie Loved. By Anne Warner.
+    Husbands of Edith, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Idols. By William J. Locke.
+    Illustrious Prince, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Imprudence of Prue, The. By Sophie Fisher.
+    Inez. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
+    Infelice. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
+    Initials Only. By Anna Katharine Green.
+    In Defiance of the King. By Chauncey G. Hotchkiss.
+    Indifference of Juliet, The. By Grace S. Richmond.
+    In the Service of the Princess. By Henry C. Rowland.
+    Iron Woman, The. By Margaret Deland.
+    Ishmael. (Illustrated.) By Mrs. Southworth.
+    Island of Regeneration, The. By Cyrus Townsend Brady.
+    Jack Spurlock, Prodigal. By Horace Lorimer.
+    Jane Cable. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Jeanne of the Marshes. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Jude the Obscure. By Thomas Hardy.
+    Keith of the Border. By Randall Parrish.
+    Key to the Unknown, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Kingdom of Earth, The. By Anthony Partridge.
+    King Spruce. By Holman Day.
+    Ladder of Swords, A. By Gilbert Parker.
+    Lady Betty Across the Water. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Lady Merton, Colonist. By Mrs. Humphrey Ward.
+    Lady of Big Shanty, The. By Berkeley F. Smith.
+    Langford of the Three Bars. By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.
+    Land of Long Ago, The. By Eliza Calvert Hall.
+    Lane That Had No Turning, The. By Gilbert Parker.
+    Last Trail, The. By Zane Grey.
+    Last Voyage of the Donna Isabel, The. By Randall Parrish.
+    Leavenworth Case, The. By Anna Katharine Green.
+    Lin McLean. By Owen Wister.
+    Little Brown Jug at Kildare, The. By Meredith Nicholson.
+    Loaded Dice. By Ellery H. Clarke.
+    Lord Loveland Discovers America. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Lorimer of the Northwest. By Harold Bindloss.
+    Lorraine. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Lost Ambassador, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Love Under Fire. By Randall Parrish.
+    Loves of Miss Anne, The. By S. R. Crockett.
+    Macaria. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
+    Mademoiselle Celeste. By Adele Ferguson Knight.
+    Maid at Arms, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Maid of Old New York, A. By Amelia E. Barr.
+    Maid of the Whispering Hills, The. By Vingie Roe.
+    Maids of Paradise, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
+    Making of Bobby Burnit, The. By George Randolph Chester.
+    Mam' Linda. By Will N. Harben.
+    Man Outside, The. By Wyndham Martyn.
+    Man in the Brown Derby, The. By Wells Hastings.
+    Marriage a la Mode. By Mrs. Humphrey Ward.
+    Marriage of Theodora, The. By Molly Elliott Seawell.
+    Marriage Under the Terror, A. By Patricia Wentworth.
+    Master Mummer, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Masters of the Wheatlands. By Harold Bindloss.
+    Max. By Katherine Cecil Thurston.
+    Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.
+    Millionaire Baby, The. By Anna Katharine Green.
+    Missioner, The. By E. Phillips Oppenheim.
+    Miss Selina Lue. By Maria Thompson Daviess.
+    Mistress of Brae Farm, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Money Moon, The. By Jeffery Farnol.
+    Motor Maid, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Much Ado About Peter. By Jean Webster.
+    Mr. Pratt. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    My Brother's Keeper. By Charles Tenny Jackson.
+    My Friend the Chauffeur. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    My Lady Caprice (author of the "Broad Highway"). Jeffery Farnol.
+    My Lady of Doubt. By Randall Parrish.
+    My Lady of the North. By Randall Parrish.
+    My Lady of the South. By Randall Parrish.
+    Mystery Tales. By Edgar Allen Poe.
+    Nancy Stair. By Elinor Macartney Lane.
+    Ne'er-Do-Well, The. By Rex Beach.
+    No Friend Like a Sister. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Officer 666. By Barton W. Currie and Augustin McHugh.
+    One Braver Thing. By Richard Dehan.
+    Order No. 11. By Caroline Abbot Stanley.
+    Orphan, The. By Clarence E. Mulford.
+    Out of the Primitive. By Robert Ames Bennett.
+    Pam. By Bettina von Hutten.
+    Pam Decides. By Bettina von Hutten.
+    Pardners. By Rex Beach.
+    Partners of the Tide. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Passage Perilous, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Passers By. By Anthony Partridge.
+    Paternoster Ruby, The. By Charles Edmonds Walk.
+    Patience of John Moreland, The. By Mary Dillon.
+    Paul Anthony, Christian. By Hiram W. Hays.
+    Phillip Steele. By James Oliver Curwood.
+    Phra the Phoenician. By Edwin Lester Arnold.
+    Plunderer, The. By Roy Norton.
+    Pole Baker. By Will N. Harben.
+    Politician, The. By Edith Huntington Mason.
+    Polly of the Circus. By Margaret Mayo.
+    Pool of Flame, The. By Louis Joseph Vance.
+    Poppy. By Cynthia Stockley.
+    Power and the Glory, The. By Grace McGowan Cooke.
+    Price of the Prairie, The. By Margaret Hill McCarter.
+    Prince of Sinners, A. By E. Phillip Oppenheim.
+    Prince or Chauffeur. By Lawrence Perry.
+    Princess Dehra, The. By John Reed Scott.
+    Princess Passes, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Princess Virginia, The. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Prisoners of Chance. By Randall Parrish.
+    Prodigal Son, The. By Hall Caine.
+    Purple Parasol, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Reconstructed Marriage, A. By Amelia Barr.
+    Redemption of Kenneth Galt, The. By Will N. Harben.
+    Red House on Rowan Street. By Roman Doubleday.
+    Red Mouse, The. By William Hamilton Osborne.
+    Red Pepper Burns. By Grace S. Richmond.
+    Refugees, The. By A. Conan Doyle.
+    Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary, The. By Anne Warner.
+    Road to Providence, The. By Maria Thompson Daviess.
+    Romance of a Plain Man, The. By Ellen Glasgow.
+    Rose in the Ring, The. By George Barr McCutcheon.
+    Rose of Old Harpeth, The. By Maria Thompson Daviess.
+    Rose of the World. By Agnes and Egerton Castle.
+    Round the Corner in Gay Street. By Grace S. Richmond.
+    Routledge Rides Alone. By Will Livingston Comfort.
+    Running Fight, The. By Wm. Hamilton Osborne.
+    Seats of the Mighty, The. By Gilbert Parker.
+    Septimus. By William J. Locke.
+    Set In Silver. By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.
+    Self-Raised. (Illustrated.) By Mrs. Southworth.
+    Shepherd of the Hills, The. By Harold Bell Wright.
+    Sheriff of Dyke Hole, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
+    Sidney Carteret, Rancher. By Harold Bindloss.
+    Simon the Jester. By William J. Locke.
+    Silver Blade, The. By Charles E. Walk.
+    Silver Horde, The. By Rex Beach.
+    Sir Nigel. By A. Conan Doyle.
+    Sir Richard Calmady. By Lucas Malet.
+    Skyman, The. By Henry Ketchell Webster.
+    Slim Princess, The. By George Ade.
+    Speckled Bird, A. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
+    Spirit in Prison, A. By Robert Hichens.
+    Spirit of the Border, The. By Zane Grey.
+    Spirit Trail, The. By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.
+    Spoilers, The. By Rex Beach.
+    Stanton Wins. By Eleanor M. Ingram.
+    St. Elmo. (Illustrated Edition.) By Augusta J. Evans.
+    Stolen Singer, The. By Martha Bellinger.
+    Stooping Lady, The. By Maurice Hewlett.
+    Story of the Outlaw, The. By Emerson Hough.
+    Strawberry Acres. By Grace S. Richmond.
+    Strawberry Handkerchief, The. By Amelia E. Barr.
+    Sunnyside of the Hill, The. By Rosa N. Carey.
+    Sunset Trail, The. By Alfred Henry Lewis.
+    Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop. By Anne Warner.
+    Sword of the Old Frontier, A. By Randall Parrish.
+    Tales of Sherlock Holmes. By A. Conan Doyle.
+    Tennessee Shad, The. By Owen Johnson.
+    Tess of the D'Urbervilles. By Thomas Hardy.
+    Texican, The. By Dane Coolidge.
+    That Printer of Udell's. By Harold Bell Wright.
+    Three Brothers, The. By Eden Phillpotts.
+    Throwback, The. By Alfred Henry Lewis.
+    Thurston of Orchard Valley. By Harold Bindloss.
+    Title Market, The. By Emily Post.
+    Torn Sails. A Tale of a Welsh Village. By Allan Raine.
+    Trail of the Axe, The. By Ridgwell Cullum.
+    Treasure of Heaven, The. By Marie Corelli.
+    Two-Gun Man, The. By Charles Alden Seltzer.
+    Two Vanrevels, The. By Booth Tarkington.
+    Uncle William. By Jennette Lee.
+    Up from Slavery. By Booker T. Washington.
+    Vanity Box, The. By C. N. Williamson.
+    Vashti. By Augusta Evans Wilson.
+    Varmint, The. By Owen Johnson.
+    Vigilante Girl, A. By Jerome Hart.
+    Village of Vagabonds, A. By F. Berkeley Smith.
+    Visioning, The. By Susan Glaspell.
+    Voice of the People, The. By Ellen Glasgow.
+    Wanted--A Chaperon. By Paul Leicester Ford.
+    Wanted: A Matchmaker. By Paul Leicester Ford.
+    Watchers of the Plains, The. Ridgwell Cullum.
+    Wayfarers, The. By Mary Stewart Cutting.
+    Way of a Man, The. By Emerson Hough.
+    Weavers, The. By Gilbert Parker.
+    When Wilderness Was King. By Randall Parrish.
+    Where the Trail Divides. By Will Lillibridge.
+    White Sister, The. By Marion Crawford.
+    Window at the White Cat, The. By Mary Roberts Rhinehart.
+    Winning of Barbara Worth, The. By Harold Bell Wright.
+    With Juliet In England. By Grace S. Richmond.
+    Woman Haters, The. By Joseph C. Lincoln.
+    Woman In Question, The. By John Reed Scott.
+    Woman In the Alcove, The. By Anna Katharine Green.
+    Yellow Circle, The. By Charles E. Walk.
+    Yellow Letter, The. By William Johnston.
+    Younger Set, The. By Robert W. Chambers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Flamsted quarries, by Mary E. Waller
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