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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, David Dunne, by Belle Kanaris Maniates,
+Illustrated by John Drew
+
+
+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: David Dunne
+       A Romance of the Middle West
+
+
+Author: Belle Kanaris Maniates
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 15, 2009  [eBook #29128]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAVID DUNNE***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 29128-h.htm or 29128-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29128/29128-h/29128-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29128/29128-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+DAVID DUNNE
+
+A Romance of the Middle West
+
+by
+
+BELLE KANARIS MANIATES
+
+With illustrations by John Drew
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "_He stood as if at bay, his face pale, his eyes riveted
+on those floating banners_" Page 218]
+
+
+
+Rand McNally & Company
+Chicago--New York
+
+Copyright, 1912, by
+Rand, McNally & Company
+
+
+
+
+
+To Milly and Gardner
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ "_He stood as if at bay, his face pale, his eyes
+ riveted on those floating banners_"                    _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                           FACING PAGE
+
+ "'_Dave's little gal!_'"                                           11
+
+ "_With proudly protective air, David walked beside
+ the stiffly starched little girl_"                                 42
+
+ "_David's friends were surprised to receive an
+ off-hand invitation from him to 'drop in for a little
+ country spread'_"                                                 148
+
+ "_He kept his word. Jud was cleared_"                             158
+
+ "_It was a relief to find Carey alone_"                           224
+
+ "_'Carey, will you make the dream a reality?'_"                   238
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "'_Dave's little gal!_'"]
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Across lots to the Brumble farm came the dusty apparition of a boy, a
+tousle-headed, freckle-faced, gaunt-eyed little fellow, clad in a sort
+of combination suit fashioned from a pair of overalls and a woman's
+shirtwaist. In search of "Miss M'ri," he looked into the kitchen, the
+henhouse, the dairy, and the flower garden. Not finding her in any of
+these accustomed places, he stood still in perplexity.
+
+"Miss M'ri!" rang out his youthful, vibrant treble.
+
+There was a note of promise in the pleasant voice that came back in
+subterranean response.
+
+"Here, David, in the cellar."
+
+The lad set down the tin pail he was carrying and eagerly sped to the
+cellar. His fondest hopes were realized. M'ri Brumble, thirty odd
+years of age, blue of eye, slightly gray of hair, and sweet of heart,
+was lifting the cover from the ice-cream freezer.
+
+"Well, David Dunne, you came in the nick of time," she said, looking
+up with kindly eyes. "It's just frozen. I'll dish you up some now, if
+you will run up to the pantry and fetch two saucers--biggest you can
+find."
+
+Fleetly David footed the stairs and returned with two soup plates.
+
+"These were the handiest," he explained apologetically as he handed
+them to her.
+
+"Just the thing," promptly reassured M'ri, transferring a heaping
+ladle of yellow cream to one of the plates. "Easy to eat out of,
+too."
+
+"My, but you are giving me a whole lot," he said, watching her
+approvingly and encouragingly. "I hope you ain't robbing yourself."
+
+"Oh, no; I always make plenty," she replied, dishing a smaller portion
+for herself. "Here's enough for our dinner and some for you to carry
+home to your mother."
+
+"I haven't had any since last Fourth of July," he observed in
+plaintive reminiscence as they went upstairs.
+
+"Why, David Dunne, how you talk! You just come over here whenever you
+feel like eating ice cream, and I'll make you some. It's no trouble."
+
+They sat down on the west, vine-clad porch to enjoy their feast in
+leisure and shade. M'ri had never lost her childish appreciation of
+the delicacy, and to David the partaking thereof was little short of
+ecstasy. He lingered longingly over the repast, and when the soup
+plate would admit of no more scraping he came back with a sigh to
+sordid cares.
+
+"Mother couldn't get the washing done no-ways to-day. She ain't
+feeling well, but you can have the clothes to-morrow, sure. She sent
+you some sorghum," pointing to the pail.
+
+M'ri took the donation into the kitchen. When she brought back the
+pail it was filled with eggs. Not to send something in return would
+have been an unpardonable breach of country etiquette.
+
+"Your mother said your hens weren't laying," she said.
+
+The boy's eyes brightened.
+
+"Thank you, Miss M'ri; these will come in good. Our hens won't lay nor
+set. Mother says they have formed a union. But I 'most forgot to tell
+you--when I came past Winterses, Ziny told me to ask you to come over
+as soon as you could."
+
+"I suppose Zine has got one of her low spells," said Barnabas Brumble,
+who had just come up from the barn. "Most likely Bill's bin gittin'
+tight agin. He--"
+
+"Oh, no!" interrupted his sister hastily. "Bill has quit drinking."
+
+"Bill's allers a-quittin'. Trouble with Bill is, he can't stay quit. I
+see him yesterday comin' down the road zig-zaggin' like a rail fence.
+Fust she knows, she'll hev to be takin' washin' to support him.
+Sometimes I think 't would be a good idee to let him git sent over the
+road onct. Mebby 't would learn him a lesson--"
+
+He stopped short, noticing the significant look in M'ri's eyes and the
+two patches of color spreading over David's thin cheeks. He recalled
+that four years ago the boy's father had died in state prison.
+
+"You'd better go right over to Zine's," he added abruptly.
+
+"I'll wait till after dinner. We'll have it early."
+
+"Hev it now," suggested Barnabas.
+
+"Now!" ejaculated David. "It's only half-past ten."
+
+"I could eat it now jest as well as I could at twelve," argued the
+philosophical Barnabas. "Jest as leaves as not."
+
+There were no iron-clad rules in this comfortable household,
+especially when Pennyroyal, the help, was away.
+
+"All right," assented M'ri with alacrity. "If I am going to do
+anything, I like to do it right off quick and get it over with. You
+stay, David, if you can eat dinner so early."
+
+"Yes, I can," he assured her, recalling his scanty breakfast and the
+freezer of cream that was to furnish the dessert. "I'll help you get
+it, Miss M'ri."
+
+He brought a pail of water from the well, filled the teakettle, and
+then pared the potatoes for her.
+
+"When will Jud and Janey get their dinner?" he asked Barnabas.
+
+"They kerried their dinner to-day. The scholars air goin' to hev a
+picnic down to Spicely's grove. How comes it you ain't to school,
+Dave?"
+
+"I have to help my mother with the washing," he replied, a slow flush
+coming to his face. "She ain't strong enough to do it alone."
+
+"What on airth kin you do about a washin', Dave?"
+
+"I can draw the water, turn the wringer, hang up the clothes, empty
+the tubs, fetch and carry the washings, and mop."
+
+Barnabas puffed fiercely at his pipe for a moment.
+
+"You're a good boy, Dave, a mighty good boy. I don't know what your ma
+would do without you. I hed to leave school when I wa'n't as old as
+you, and git out and hustle so the younger children could git
+eddicated. By the time I wuz foot-loose from farm work, I wuz too old
+to git any larnin'. You'd orter manage someway, though, to git
+eddicated."
+
+"Mother's taught me to read and write and spell. When I get old enough
+to work for good wages I can go into town to the night school."
+
+In a short time M'ri had cooked a dinner that would have tempted less
+hearty appetites than those possessed by her brother and David.
+
+"You ain't what might be called a delikit feeder, Dave," remarked
+Barnabas, as he replenished the boy's plate for the third time.
+"You're so lean I don't see where you put it all."
+
+David might have responded that the vacuum was due to the fact that
+his breakfast had consisted of a piece of bread and his last night's
+supper of a dish of soup, but the Dunne pride inclined to reservation
+on family and personal matters. He speared another small potato and
+paused, with fork suspended between mouth and plate.
+
+"Mother says she thinks I am hollow inside like a stovepipe."
+
+"Well, I dunno. Stovepipes git filled sometimes," ruminated his host.
+
+"Leave room for the ice cream, David," cautioned M'ri, as she
+descended to the cellar.
+
+The lad's eyes brightened as he beheld the golden pyramid. Another
+period of lingering bliss, and then with a sigh of mingled content and
+regret, David rose from the table.
+
+"Want me to hook up for you, Mr. Brumble?" he asked, moved to show his
+gratitude for the hospitality extended.
+
+"Why, yes, Dave; wish you would. My back is sorter lame to-day. Land
+o' livin'," he commented after David had gone to the barn, "but that
+boy swallered them potaters like they wuz so many pills!"
+
+"Poor Mrs. Dunne!" sighed M'ri. "I am afraid it's all she can do to
+keep a very small pot boiling. I am glad she sent the sorghum, so I
+could have an excuse for sending the eggs."
+
+"She hain't poor so long as she hez a young sprout like Dave a-growin'
+up. We used to call Peter Dunne 'Old Hickory,' but Dave, he's
+second-growth hickory. He's the kind to bend and not break. Jest you
+wait till he's seasoned onct."
+
+After she had packed a pail of ice cream for David, gathered some
+flowers for Ziny, and made out a memorandum of supplies for Barnabas
+to get in town, M'ri set out on her errand of mercy.
+
+The "hooking up" accomplished, David, laden with a tin pail in each
+hand and carrying in his pocket a drawing of black tea for his mother
+to sample, made his way through sheep-dotted pastures to Beechum's
+woods, and thence along the bank of the River Rood. Presently he spied
+a young man standing knee-deep in the stream in the patient pose
+peculiar to fishermen.
+
+"Catch anything?" called David eagerly.
+
+The man turned and came to shore. He wore rubber hip boots, dark
+trousers, a blue flannel shirt, and a wide-brimmed hat. His eyes, blue
+and straight-gazing, rested reminiscently upon the lad.
+
+"No," he replied calmly. "I didn't intend to catch anything. What is
+your name?"
+
+"David Dunne."
+
+The man meditated.
+
+"You must be about twelve years old."
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"I am a good guesser. What have you got in your pail?"
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Both."
+
+"Thought you were a good guesser."
+
+The youth laughed.
+
+"You'll do, David. Let me think--where did you come from just now?"
+
+"From Brumble's."
+
+"It's ice cream you've got in your pail," he said assuredly.
+
+"That's just what it is!" cried the boy in astonishment, "and there's
+eggs in the other pail."
+
+"Let's have a look at the ice cream."
+
+David lifted the cover.
+
+"It looks like butter," declared the stranger.
+
+"It don't taste like butter," was the indignant rejoinder. "Miss M'ri
+makes the best cream of any one in the country."
+
+"I knew that, my young friend, before you did. It's a long time since
+I had any, though. Will you sell it to me, David? I will give you half
+a dollar for it."
+
+Half a dollar! His mother had to work all day to earn that amount. The
+ice cream was not his--not entirely. Miss M'ri had sent it to his
+mother. Still--
+
+"'T will melt anyway before I get home," he argued aloud and
+persuasively.
+
+"Of course it will," asserted the would-be purchaser.
+
+David surrendered the pail, and after much protestation consented to
+receive the piece of money which the young man pressed upon him.
+
+"You'll have to help me eat it now; there's no pleasure in eating ice
+cream alone."
+
+"We haven't any spoons," commented the boy dubiously.
+
+"We will go to my house and eat it."
+
+"Where do you live?" asked David in surprise.
+
+"Just around the bend of the river here."
+
+David's freckles darkened. He didn't like to be made game of by older
+people, for then there was no redress.
+
+"There isn't any house within two miles of here," he said shortly.
+
+"What'll you bet? Half a dollar?"
+
+"No," replied David resolutely.
+
+"Well, come and see."
+
+David followed his new acquaintance around the wooded bank. The river
+was full of surprises to-day. In midstream he saw what looked to him
+like a big raft supporting a small house.
+
+"That's my shanty boat," explained the young man, as he shoved a
+rowboat from shore. "Jump in, my boy."
+
+"Do you live in it all the time?" asked David, watching with
+admiration the easy but forceful pull on the oars.
+
+"No; I am on a little fishing and hunting expedition."
+
+"Can't kill anything now," said the boy, a derisive smile flickering
+over his features.
+
+"I am not hunting to kill, my lad. I am hunting old scenes and
+memories of other days. I used to live about here. I ran away eight
+years ago when I was just your age."
+
+"What is your name?" asked David interestedly.
+
+"Joe Forbes."
+
+"Oh," was the eager rejoinder. "I know. You are Deacon Forbes' wild
+son that ran away."
+
+"So that's how I am known around here, is it? Well, I've come back, to
+settle up my father's estate."
+
+"What did you run away for?" inquired David.
+
+"Combination of too much stepmother and a roving spirit, I guess. Here
+we are."
+
+He sprang on the platform of the shanty boat and helped David on
+board. The boy inspected this novel house in wonder while his host set
+saucers and spoons on the table.
+
+"Would you mind," asked David in an embarrassed manner as he wistfully
+eyed the coveted luxury, "if I took my dishful home?"
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Forbes, his eyes twinkling. "Eaten too much
+already?"
+
+"No; but you see my mother likes it and she hasn't had any since last
+summer. I'd rather take mine to her."
+
+"There's plenty left for your mother. I'll put this pail in a bigger
+one and pack ice about it. Then it won't melt."
+
+"But you paid me for it," protested David.
+
+"That's all right. Your mother was pretty good to me when I was a
+boy. She dried my mop of hair for me once so my stepmother would not
+know I'd been in swimming. Tell her I sent the cream to her. Say, you
+were right about Miss M'ri making the best cream in the country. It
+used to be a chronic pastime with her. That's how I guessed what you
+had when you said you came from there. Whenever there was a picnic or
+a surprise party in the country she always furnished the ice cream.
+Isn't she married yet?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Doesn't she keep company with some lucky man?"
+
+"No," again denied the boy emphatically.
+
+"What's the matter? She used to be awfully pretty and sweet."
+
+"She is now, but she don't want any man."
+
+"Well, now, David, that isn't quite natural, you know. Why do you
+think she doesn't want one?"
+
+"I heard say she was crossed once."
+
+"Crossed, David? And what might that be?" asked Forbes in a delighted
+feint of perplexity.
+
+"Disappointed in love, you know."
+
+"Yes; it all comes back now--the gossip of my boyhood days. She was
+going with a man when Barnabas' wife died and left two children--one a
+baby--and Miss M'ri gave up her lover to do her duty by her brother's
+family. So Barnabas never married again?"
+
+"No; Miss M'ri keeps house and brings up Jud and Janey."
+
+"I remember Jud--mean little shaver. Janey must be the baby."
+
+"She's eight now."
+
+"I remember you, David. You were a little toddler of four--all eyes.
+Your folks had a place right on the edge of town."
+
+"We left it when I was six years old and came out here," informed
+David.
+
+Forbes' groping memory recalled the gossip that had reached him in the
+Far West. "Dunne went to prison," he mused, "and the farm was
+mortgaged to defray the expenses of the trial." He hastened back to a
+safer channel.
+
+"Miss M'ri was foolish to spoil her life and the man's for fancied
+duty," he observed.
+
+David bridled.
+
+"Barnabas couldn't go to school when he was a boy because he had to
+work so she and the other children could go. She'd ought to have stood
+by him."
+
+"I see you have a sense of duty, too. This county was always strong on
+duty. I suppose they've got it in for me because I ran away?"
+
+"Mr. Brumble says it was a wise thing for you to do. Uncle Larimy says
+you were a brick of a boy. Miss Rhody says she had no worry about her
+woodpile getting low when you were here."
+
+"Poor Miss Rhody! Does she still live alone? And Uncle Larimy--is he
+uncle to the whole community? What fishing days I had with him! I must
+look him up and tell him all my adventures. I have planned a round of
+calls for to-night--Miss M'ri, Miss Rhody, Uncle Larimy--"
+
+"Tell me about your adventures," demanded David breathlessly.
+
+He listened to a wondrous tale of western life, and never did narrator
+get into so close relation with his auditor as did this young ranchman
+with David Dunne.
+
+"I must go home," said the boy reluctantly when Joe had concluded.
+
+"Come down to-morrow, David, and we'll go fishing."
+
+"All right. Thank you, sir."
+
+With heart as light as air, David sped through the woods. He had found
+his Hero.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+David struck out from the shelter of the woodland and made his way to
+his home, a pathetically small, rudely constructed house. The patch of
+land supposed to be a garden, and in proportion to the dimensions of
+the building, showed a few feeble efforts at vegetation. It was not
+positively known that the Widow Dunne had a clear title to her
+homestead, but one would as soon think of foreclosing a mortgage on a
+playhouse, or taking a nest from a bird, as to press any claim on this
+fallow fragment in the midst of prosperous farmlands.
+
+Some discouraged looking fowls picked at the scant grass, a lean cow
+switched a lackadaisical tail, and in a pen a pig grunted his
+discontent.
+
+David went into the little kitchen, where a woman was bending wearily
+over a washtub.
+
+"Mother," cried the boy in dismay, "you said you'd let the washing go
+till to-morrow. That's why I didn't come right back."
+
+She paused in the rubbing of a soaped garment and wrung the suds from
+her tired and swollen hands.
+
+"I felt better, David, and I thought I'd get them ready for you to
+hang out."
+
+David took the garment from her.
+
+"Sit down and eat this ice cream Miss M'ri sent--no, I mean Joe Forbes
+sent you. There was more, but I sold it for half a dollar; and here's
+a pail of eggs and a drawing of tea she wants you to sample. She says
+she is no judge of black tea."
+
+"Joe Forbes!" exclaimed his mother interestedly. "I thought maybe he
+would be coming back to look after the estate. Is he going to stay?"
+
+"I'll tell you all about him, mother, if you will sit down."
+
+He began a vigorous turning of the wringer.
+
+The patient, tired-looking eyes of the woman brightened as she dished
+out a saucer of the cream. The weariness in the sensitive lines of her
+face and the prominence of her knuckles bore evidence of a life of
+sordid struggle, but, above all, the mother love illumined her
+features with a flash of radiance.
+
+"You're a good provider, David; but tell me where you have been for so
+long, and where did you see Joe?"
+
+He gave her a faithful account of his dinner at the Brumble farm and
+his subsequent meeting with Joe, working the wringer steadily as he
+talked.
+
+"There!" he exclaimed with a sigh of satisfaction, "they are ready for
+the line, but before I hang them out I am going to cook your dinner."
+
+"I am rested now, David. I will cook me an egg."
+
+"No, I will," insisted the boy, going to the stove.
+
+A few moments later, with infinite satisfaction, he watched her
+partake of crisp toast, fresh eggs, and savory tea.
+
+"Did you see Jud and Janey?" she asked suddenly.
+
+"No; they were at school."
+
+"David, you shall go regularly to school next fall."
+
+"No," said David stoutly; "next fall I am going to work regularly for
+some of the farmers, and you are not going to wash any more."
+
+Her eyes grew moist.
+
+"David, will you always be good--will you grow up to be as good a man
+as I want you to be?"
+
+"How good do you want me to be?" he asked dubiously.
+
+A radiant and tender smile played about her mouth.
+
+"Not goodygood, David; but will you always be honest, and brave, and
+kind, as you are now?"
+
+"I'll try, mother."
+
+"And never forget those who do you a kindness, David; always show your
+gratitude."
+
+"Yes, mother."
+
+"And, David, watch your temper and, whatever happens, I shall have no
+fears for your future."
+
+His mother seldom talked to him in this wise. He thought about it
+after he lay in his little cot in the sitting room that night; then
+his mind wandered to Joe Forbes and his wonderful tales of the West.
+He fell asleep to dream of cowboys and prairies. When he awoke the sun
+was sending golden beams through the eastward window.
+
+"Mother isn't up," he thought in surprise. He stole quietly out to the
+kitchen, kindled a fire with as little noise as possible, put the
+kettle over, set the table, and then went into the one tiny bedroom
+where his mother lay in her bed, still--very still.
+
+"Mother," he said softly.
+
+There was no response.
+
+"Mother," he repeated. Then piercingly, in excitement and fear,
+"Mother!"
+
+At last he knew.
+
+He ran wildly to the outer door. Bill Winters, fortunately sober, was
+driving slowly by.
+
+"Bill!"
+
+"What's the matter, Dave?" looking into the boy's white face. "Your ma
+ain't sick, is she?"
+
+David's lips quivered, but seemed almost unable to articulate.
+
+"She's dead," he finally whispered.
+
+"I'll send Zine right over," exclaimed Bill, slapping the reins
+briskly across the drooping neck of his horse.
+
+Very soon the little house was filled to overflowing with kind and
+sympathetic neighbors who had come to do all that had to be done.
+David sat on the back doorstep until M'ri came; before the expression
+in his eyes she felt powerless to comfort him.
+
+"The doctor says your mother died in her sleep," she told him. "She
+didn't suffer any."
+
+He made no reply. Oppressed by the dull pain for which there is no
+ease, he wandered from the house to the garden, and from the garden
+back to the house throughout the day. At sunset Barnabas drove over.
+
+"I shall stay here to-night, Barnabas," said M'ri, "but I want you to
+drive back and get some things. I've made out a list. Janey will know
+where to find them."
+
+"Sha'n't I take Dave back to stay to-night?" he suggested.
+
+M'ri hesitated, and looked at David.
+
+"No," he said dully, following Barnabas listlessly down the path to
+the road.
+
+Barnabas, keen, shrewd, and sharp at a bargain, had a heart that ever
+softened to motherless children.
+
+"Dave," he said gently, "your ma won't never hev to wash no more, and
+she'll never be sick nor tired agen."
+
+It was the first leaven to his loss, and he held tight to the horny
+hand of his comforter. After Barnabas had driven away there came
+trudging down the road the little, lithe figure of an old man, who was
+carrying a large box. His mildly blue, inquiring eyes looked out from
+beneath their hedge of shaggy eyebrows. His hair and his beard were
+thick and bushy. Joe Forbes maintained that Uncle Larimy would look no
+different if his head were turned upside down.
+
+"David," he said softly, "I've brung yer ma some posies. She liked my
+yaller roses, you know. I'm sorry my laylocks are gone. They come
+early this year."
+
+"Thank you, Uncle Larimy."
+
+A choking sensation warned David to say no more.
+
+"Things go 'skew sometimes, Dave, but the sun will shine agen,"
+reminded the old man, as he went on into the house.
+
+Later, when sundown shadows had vanished and the first glimmer of the
+stars radiated from a pale sky, Joe came over. David felt no thrill at
+sight of his hero. The halo was gone. He only remembered with a dull
+ache that the half dollar had brought his mother none of the luxuries
+he had planned to buy for her.
+
+"David," said the young ranchman, his deep voice softened, "my mother
+died when I was younger than you are, but you won't have a stepmother
+to make life unbearable for you."
+
+The boy looked at him with inscrutable eyes.
+
+"Don't you want to go back with me to the ranch, David? You can learn
+to ride and shoot."
+
+David shook his head forlornly. His spirit of adventure was
+smothered.
+
+"We'll talk about it again, David," he said, as he went in to consult
+M'ri.
+
+"Don't you think the only thing for the boy to do is to go back with
+me? I am going to buy the ranch on which I've been foreman, and I'll
+try to do for David all that should have been done for me when I, at
+his age, felt homeless and alone. He's the kind that takes things hard
+and quiet; life in the open will pull him up."
+
+"No, Joe," replied M'ri resolutely. "He's not ready for that kind of
+life yet. He needs to be with women and children a while longer.
+Barnabas and I are going to take him. Barnabas suggested it, and I
+told Mrs. Dunne one day, when her burdens were getting heavy, that we
+would do so if anything like this should happen."
+
+Joe looked at her with revering eyes.
+
+"Miss M'ri, you are so good to other people's children, what would you
+be to your own!"
+
+The passing of M'ri's youth had left a faint flush of prettiness like
+the afterglow of a sunset faded into twilight. She was of the kind
+that old age would never wither. In the deep blue eyes was a patient,
+reflective look that told of a past but unforgotten romance. She
+turned from his gaze, but not before he had seen the wistfulness his
+speech had evoked. After he had gone, she sought David.
+
+"I am going to stay here with you, David, for two or three days. Then
+Barnabas and I want you to come to live with us. I had a long talk
+with your mother one day, and I told her if anything happened to her
+you should be our boy. That made her less anxious about the future,
+David. Will you come?"
+
+The boy looked up with his first gleam of interest in mundane things.
+
+"I'd like it, but would--Jud?"
+
+"I am afraid Jud doesn't like anything, David," she replied with a
+sigh. "That's one reason I want you--to be a big brother to Janey, for
+I think that is what she needs, and what Jud can never be."
+
+The boy remembered what his mother had counseled.
+
+"I'll always take care of Janey," he earnestly assured her.
+
+"I know you will, David."
+
+Two dreary days passed in the way that such days do pass, and then
+David rode to his new home with Barnabas and M'ri.
+
+Jud Brumble, a refractory, ungovernable lad of fifteen, didn't look
+altogether unfavorably upon the addition to the household, knowing
+that his amount of work would thereby be lessened, and that he would
+have a new victim for his persecutions and tyrannies.
+
+Janey, a little rosebud of a girl with dimples and flaxen curls, hung
+back shyly and looked at David with awed eyes. She had been frightened
+by what she had heard about his mother, and in a vague, disconnected
+way she associated him with Death. M'ri went to the child's bedside
+that night and explained the situation. "Poor Davey is all alone, now,
+and very unhappy, so we must be kind to him. I told him you were to be
+his little sister."
+
+Then M'ri took David to a gabled room, at each end of which was a
+swinging window--"one for seeing the sun rise, and one for seeing it
+set," she said, as she turned back the covers from the spotless white
+bed. She yearned to console him, but before the mute look of grief in
+his big eyes she was silent.
+
+"I wish he would cry," she said wistfully to Barnabas, "he hasn't shed
+a tear since his mother died."
+
+No sooner had the sound of her footsteps ceased than David threw off
+his armor of self-restraint and burst into a passion of sobs, the
+wilder for their long repression. He didn't hear the patter of little
+feet on the floor, and not until two mothering arms were about his
+neck did he see the white-robed figure of Janey.
+
+"Don't cry, Davey," she implored, her quivering red mouth against his
+cheek. "I'm sorry; but I am your little sister now, so you must love
+me, Davey. Aunt M'ri told me so."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The lilac-scented breeze of early morning blowing softly through the
+vine-latticed window and stirring its white draperies brought David to
+wakefulness. With the first surprise at the strangeness of his
+surroundings came a fluttering of memory. The fragrance of lilacs was
+always hereafter to bring back the awfulness of this waking moment.
+
+He hurriedly dressed, and went down to the kitchen where M'ri was
+preparing breakfast.
+
+"Good morning, David. Janey has gone to find some fresh eggs. You may
+help her hunt them, if you will."
+
+Knowing the haunts of hens, he went toward the currant bushes. It was
+one of those soft days that link late spring and dawning summer. The
+coolness of the sweet-odored air, the twitter of numberless dawn
+birds, the entreating lowing of distant cattle--all breathing life and
+strength--were like a resurrection call to David.
+
+On the east porch, which was his retreat for a smoke or a rest between
+the intervals of choring and meals, Barnabas sat, securely wedged in
+by the washing machine, the refrigerator, the plant stand, the churn,
+the kerosene can, and the lawn mower. He gazed reflectively after
+David.
+
+"What are you going to hev Dave do to help, M'ri?"
+
+M'ri came to the door and considered a moment.
+
+"First of all, Barnabas, I am going to have him eat. He is so thin and
+hungry looking."
+
+Barnabas chuckled. His sister's happiest mission was the feeding of
+hungry children.
+
+After breakfast, when Janey's rebellious curls were again being
+brushed into shape, M'ri told David he could go to school if he liked.
+To her surprise the boy flushed and looked uncomfortable. M'ri's
+intuitions were quick and generally correct.
+
+"It's so near the end of the term, though," she added casually, as an
+afterthought, "that maybe you had better wait until next fall to start
+in."
+
+"Yes, please, Miss M'ri, I'd rather," he said quickly and gratefully.
+
+When Janey, dinner pail in hand and books under arm, was ready to
+start, David asked in surprise where Jud was.
+
+"Oh, he has gone long ago. He thinks he is too big to walk with
+Janey."
+
+David quietly took the pail and books from the little girl.
+
+"I'll take you to school, Janey, and come for you this afternoon."
+
+"We won't need to git no watch dog to foller Janey," said Barnabas, as
+the children started down the path.
+
+"David," called M'ri, "stop at Miss Rhody's on your way back and find
+out whether my waist is finished."
+
+With proudly protective air, David walked beside the stiffly starched
+little girl, who had placed her hand trustfully in his. They had gone
+but a short distance when they were overtaken by Joe Forbes, mounted
+on a shining black horse. He reined up and looked down on them
+good-humoredly.
+
+[Illustration: "_With proudly protective air, David walked beside the
+stiffly starched little girl_"]
+
+"Going to school, children?"
+
+"I am. Davey's just going to carry my things for me," explained
+Janey.
+
+"Well, I can do that and carry you into the bargain. Help her up,
+David."
+
+Janey cried out in delight at the prospect of a ride. David lifted her
+up, and Joe settled her comfortably in the saddle, encircling her with
+his arm. Then he looked down whimsically into David's disappointed
+eyes.
+
+"I know it's a mean trick, Dave, to take your little sweetheart from
+you."
+
+"She's not my sweetheart; she's my sister."
+
+"Has she promised to be that already? Get up, Firefly."
+
+They were off over the smooth country road, Forbes shouting a
+bantering good-by and Janey waving a triumphant dinner pail, while
+David, trudging on his way, experienced the desolate feeling of the
+one who is left behind. Across fields he came to the tiny, thatched
+cottage of Miss Rhody Crabbe, who stood on the crumbling doorstep
+feeding some little turkeys.
+
+"Come in, David. I suppose you're after M'ri's waist. Thar's jest a
+few stitches to take, and I'll hev it done in no time."
+
+He followed her into the little house, which consisted of a sitting
+room "with bedroom off," and a kitchen whose floor was sand scoured;
+the few pieces of tinware could be used as mirrors. Miss Rhody seated
+herself by the open window and began to ply her needle. She did not
+sew swiftly and smoothly, in feminine fashion, but drew her
+long-threaded needle through the fabric in abrupt and forceful jerks.
+A light breeze fluttered in through the window, but it could not
+ruffle the wisp-locked hair that showed traces of a water-dipped comb
+and was strained back so taut that a little mound of flesh encircled
+each root. Her eyes were bead bright and swift moving. Everything
+about her, to the aggressively prominent knuckles, betokened energy
+and industry. She was attired in a blue calico shortened by many
+washings, but scrupulously clean and conscientiously starched. Her
+face shone with soap and serenity.
+
+Miss Rhody's one diversion in a busy but monotonous life was news. She
+was wretched if she did not receive the latest bulletins; but it was
+to her credit that she never repeated anything that might work harm or
+mischief. David was one of her chosen confidants. He was a safe
+repository of secrets, a sympathetic listener, and a wise suggester.
+
+"I'm glad M'ri's hevin' a blue waist. She looks so sweet in blue. I've
+made her clo'es fer years. My, how I hoped fer to make her weddin'
+clo'es onct! It wuz a shame to hev sech a good match spiled. It wuz
+too bad she hed to hev them two chillern on her hands--"
+
+"And now she has a third," was what David thought he read in her eyes,
+and he hastened to assert: "I am going to help all I can, and I'll
+soon be old enough to take care of myself."
+
+"Land sakes, David, you'd be wuth more'n yer keep to any one. I
+wonder," she said ruminatingly, "if Martin Thorne will wait for her
+till Janey's growed up."
+
+"Martin Thorne!" exclaimed David excitedly. "Judge Thorne? Why, was he
+the one--"
+
+"He spent his Sunday evenings with her," she asserted solemnly.
+
+In the country code of courtships this procedure was conclusive proof,
+and David accepted it as such.
+
+"He wuz jest plain Lawyer Thorne when he wuz keepin' company with
+M'ri, but we all knew Mart wuz a comin' man, and M'ri wuz jest proud
+of him. You could see that, and he wuz sot on her."
+
+Her work momentarily neglected, Rhody was making little reminiscent
+stabs at space with her needle as she spoke.
+
+"'T wuz seven years ago. M'ri wuz twenty-eight and Mart ten years
+older. It would hev ben a match as sure as preachin', but Eliza died
+and M'ri, she done her duty as she seen it. Sometimes I think folks is
+near-sighted about their duty. There is others as is queer-sighted.
+Bein' crossed hain't spiled M'ri though. She's kep' sweet through it
+all, but when a man don't git his own way, he's apt to curdle. Mart
+got sort of tart-tongued and cold feelin'. There wa'n't no reason why
+they couldn't a kep' on bein' friends, but Mart must go and make a
+fool vow that he'd never speak to M'ri until she sent him word she'd
+changed her mind, so he hez ben a-spitin' of his face ever sence. It's
+wonderful how some folks do git in their own way, but, my sakes, I
+must git to work so you kin take this waist home."
+
+This was David's first glimpse of a romance outside of story-books,
+but the name of Martin Thorne evoked disturbing memories. Six years
+ago he had acted as attorney to David's father in settling his
+financial difficulties, and later, after Peter Dunne's death, the
+Judge had settled the small estate. It was only through his efforts
+that they were enabled to have the smallest of roofs over their
+defenseless heads.
+
+"Miss Rhody," he asked after a long meditation on life in general,
+"why didn't you ever marry?"
+
+Miss Rhody paused again in her work, and two little spots of red crept
+into her cheeks.
+
+"'Tain't from ch'ice I've lived single, David. I've ben able to take
+keer of myself, but I allers hed a hankerin' same as any woman, as is
+a woman, hez fer a man, but I never got no chanst to meet men folks. I
+wuz raised here, and folks allers hed it all cut out fer me to be an
+old maid. When a woman onct gets that name fixt on her, it's all off
+with her chances. No man ever comes nigh her, and she can't git out of
+her single rut. I never could get to go nowhars, and I wa'n't that
+bold kind that makes up to a man fust, afore he gives a sign."
+
+David pondered over this wistful revelation for a few moments, seeking
+a means for her seemingly hopeless escape from a life of single
+blessedness, for David was a sympathetic young altruist, and felt it
+incumbent upon him to lift the burdens of his neighbors. Then he
+suggested encouragingly:
+
+"Miss Rhody, did you know that there was a paper that gets you
+acquainted with men? That's the way they say Zine Winters got
+married."
+
+"Yes, and look what she drawed!" she scoffed. "Bill! I don't know how
+they'd live if Zine hadn't a-gone in heavy on hens and turkeys. She
+hez to spend her hull time a-traipsin' after them turkeys, and thar
+ain't nuthin' that's given to gaddin' like turkeys that I know on,
+less 't is Chubbses' hired gal. No, David, it's chance enough when
+you git a man you've knowed allers, but a stranger! Well! I want to
+know what I'm gittin'. Thar, the last stitch in M'ri's waist is took,
+and, David, you won't tell no one what I said about Mart Thorne and
+her, nor about my gittin' merried?"
+
+David gave her a reproachful look, and she laughed shamefacedly.
+
+"I know, David, you kin keep a secret. It's like buryin' a thing to
+tell it to you. My, this waist'll look fine on M'ri. I jest love the
+feel of silk. I'd ruther hev a black silk dress than--"
+
+"A husband," prompted David slyly.
+
+"David Dunne, I'll box yer ears if you ever think again of what I
+said. I am allers a-thinkin' of you as if you wuz a stiddy grown man,
+and then fust thing I know you're nuthin' but a teasin' boy. Here's
+the bundle, and don't you want a nutcake, David?"
+
+"No, thank you, Miss Rhody. I ate a big breakfast."
+
+A fellow feeling had prompted David even in his hungriest days to
+refrain from accepting Miss Rhody's proffers of hospitality. He knew
+the emptiness of her larder, for though she had been thrifty and
+hard-working, she had paid off a mortgage and had made good the
+liabilities of an erring nephew.
+
+When David returned he found Miss M'ri in the dairy. It was churning
+day, and she was arranging honey-scented, rose-stamped pats of butter
+on moist leaves of crisp lettuce.
+
+"David," she asked, looking up with a winning smile, "will you tell me
+why you didn't want to go to school?"
+
+The boy's face reddened, but his eyes looked frankly into hers.
+
+"Yes, Miss M'ri."
+
+"Before you tell me, David," she interposed, "I want you to remember
+that, from now on, Barnabas and I are your uncle and aunt."
+
+"Well, then, Aunt M'ri," began David, a ring of tremulous eagerness in
+his voice, "I can read and write and spell, but I don't know much
+about arithmetic and geography. I was ashamed to start in at the baby
+class. I thought I'd try and study out of Jud's books this summer."
+
+"That's a good idea, David. We'll begin now. You'll find an elementary
+geography in the sitting room on the shelf, and you may study the
+first lesson. This afternoon, when my work is done, I'll hear you
+recite it."
+
+David took the book and went out into the old orchard. When M'ri went
+to call him to dinner he was sprawled out in the latticed shadow of an
+apple tree, completely absorbed in the book.
+
+"You have spent two hours on your first lesson, David. You ought to
+have it well learned."
+
+He looked at her in surprise.
+
+"I read the whole book through, Aunt M'ri."
+
+"Oh, David," she expostulated, "that's the way Barnabas takes his
+medicine. Instead of the prescribed dose after each meal he takes
+three doses right after breakfast--so as to get it off his mind and
+into his system, he says. We'll just have one short lesson in
+geography and one in arithmetic each day. You mustn't do things in
+leaps. It's the steady dog trot that lasts, and counts on the long
+journey."
+
+When David was on his way to bring Janey from school that afternoon
+he was again overtaken by Joe Forbes.
+
+"Dave, I am going to Chicago in a few days, and I shall stop there
+long enough to buy a few presents to send back to some of my friends.
+Here's my list. Let me see, Uncle Larimy, a new-fangled fishing
+outfit; Barnabas, a pipe; Miss M'ri--guess, Dave."
+
+"You're the guesser, you know," reminded David.
+
+"It's a new kind of ice-cream freezer, of course."
+
+"She's going to freeze ice to-night," recalled David anticipatingly.
+
+"Freeze ice! What a paradoxical process! But what I want you to
+suggest is something for Miss Rhody--something very nice."
+
+"What she wants most is something you can't get her," thought David,
+looking up with a tantalizing little smile. Then her second wish
+occurred to him.
+
+"I know something she wants dreadfully; something she never expects to
+have."
+
+"That is just what I want to get for her."
+
+"It'll cost a lot."
+
+Joe disposed of that consideration by a munificent wave of the hand.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"A black silk dress," informed the boy delightedly.
+
+"She shall have it. How many yards does it take, I wonder?"
+
+"We can ask Janey's teacher when we get to school," suggested the
+boy.
+
+"So we can. I contrived to find out that Janey's heart is set on a
+string of beads--blue beads. I suppose, to be decent, I shall have to
+include Jud. What will it be?"
+
+"He wants a gun. He's a good shot, too."
+
+They loitered on the way, discussing Joe's gifts, until they met Janey
+and Little Teacher coming toward them hand in hand. David quickly
+secured the pail and books before Joe could appropriate them. He
+wasn't going to be cut out a second time in one day.
+
+"Miss Williams," asked the young ranchman, "will your knowledge of
+mathematics tell me how many yards of black silk I must get to make a
+dress, and what kind of fixings I shall need for it?"
+
+"You don't have to know," she replied. "Just go into any department
+store and tell them you want a dress pattern and the findings. They
+will do the rest."
+
+"Shopping made easy. You shall have your reward now. My shanty boat is
+just about opposite here. Suppose the four of us go down to the river
+and have supper on board?"
+
+Little Teacher, to whom life was a vista of blackboards dotted with
+vacations, thought this would be delightful. A passing child was made
+a messenger to the farm, and they continued their way woodward to the
+river, where the shanty boat was anchored. Little Teacher set the
+table, Joe prepared the meal, while David sat out on deck, beguiling
+Janey with wonderful stories.
+
+"This seems beautifully domestic to a cowboy," sighed Joe, looking
+around the supper table, his gaze lingering on Little Teacher, who was
+dimpling happily. Imaginative David proceeded to weave his third
+romance that day, with a glad little beating of the heart, for he had
+feared that Joe might be planning to wait for Janey, as the Judge was
+doubtless waiting for M'ri.
+
+The children went directly home after supper, Joe accompanying Little
+Teacher. Despite the keenness of David's sorrow the day had been a
+peaceful, contented one, but when the shadows began to lengthen to
+that most lonesome hour of lonesome days, when from home-coming cows
+comes the sound of tinkling bells, a wave of longing swept over him,
+and he stole away to the orchard. Again, a soft, sustaining little
+hand crept into his.
+
+"Don't, Davey," pleaded a caressing voice, "don't make me cry."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Outside of the time allotted for the performance of a wholesome amount
+of farm work and the preparation of his daily lessons, David was free
+for diversions which had hitherto entered sparingly into his life.
+After school hours and on Saturdays the Barnabas farm was the general
+rendezvous for all the children within a three-mile radius. The old
+woods by the river rang with the gay treble of childish laughter and
+the ecstatic barking of dogs dashing in frantic pursuit. There was
+always an open sesame to the cookie jar and the apple barrel.
+
+David suffered the common fate of all in having a dark cloud. Jud was
+the dark cloud, and his silver lining had not yet materialized.
+
+In height and physical strength Jud was the superior, so he delighted
+in taunting and goading the younger boy. There finally came a day when
+instinctive self-respect upheld David in no longer resisting the call
+to arms. Knowing Barnabas' disapproval of fighting, and with his
+mother's parting admonition pricking his conscience, he went into
+battle reluctantly and half-heartedly, so the fight was not prolonged,
+and Jud's victory came easily. Barnabas, hurrying to the scene of
+action, called Jud off and reprimanded him for fighting a smaller boy,
+which hurt David far more than did the pummeling he had received.
+
+"What wuz you fighting fer, anyway?" he demanded of David.
+
+"Nothing," replied David laconically, "just fighting."
+
+"Jud picks on Davey all the time," was the information furnished by
+the indignant Janey, who had followed her father.
+
+"Well, I forbid either one of you to fight again. Now, Jud, see that
+you leave Dave alone after this."
+
+Emboldened by his easily won conquest and David's apparent lack of
+prowess, Jud continued his jeering and nagging, but David set his lips
+in a taut line of finality and endured in silence until there came the
+taunt superlative.
+
+"Your mother was a washerwoman, and your father a convict."
+
+There surged through David a fierce animal hate. With a tight closing
+of his hardy young fist, he rushed to the onslaught so swiftly and so
+impetuously that Jud recoiled in fear and surprise. With his first
+tiger-like leap David had the older boy by the throat and bore him to
+the ground, maintaining and tightening his grip as they went down.
+
+"I'll kill you!"
+
+David's voice was steady and calm, but the boy on the ground
+underneath felt the very hairs of his head rising at the look in the
+dark eyes above his own.
+
+Fortunately for both of them Barnabas was again at hand.
+
+He jerked David to his feet.
+
+"Fightin' again, are you, after I told you not to!"
+
+"It was him, David, that began it. I never struck him," whimpered Jud,
+edging away behind his father.
+
+"Did you, David?" asked Barnabas bluntly, still keeping his hold on
+the boy, who was quivering with passion.
+
+"Yes."
+
+His voice sounded odd and tired, and there was an ache of bafflement
+in his young eyes.
+
+"What fer? What did he do to make you so mad?"
+
+"He said my mother was a washerwoman and my father a convict! Let me
+go! I'll kill him!"
+
+With a returning rush of his passion, David struggled in the man's
+grasp.
+
+"Wait, Dave, I'll tend to him. Go to the barn, Jud!" he commanded his
+son.
+
+Jud quailed before this new, strange note in his father's voice.
+
+"David was fighting. You said neither of us was to fight. 'T ain't
+fair to take it out on me."
+
+Fairness was one of Barnabas' fixed and prominent qualities, but Jud
+was not to gain favor by it this time.
+
+"Well, you don't suppose I'm a-goin' to lick Dave fer defendin' his
+parents, do you? Besides, I'm not a-goin' to lick you fer fightin',
+but fer sayin' what you did. I guess you'd hev found out that Dave
+could wallop you ef he is smaller and younger."
+
+"He can't!" snarled Jud. "I didn't have no show. He came at me by
+surprise."
+
+Barnabas reflected a moment. Then he said gravely:
+
+"When it's in the blood of two fellers to fight, why thar's got to be
+a fight, that's all. Thar won't never be no peace until this ere
+question's settled. Dave, do you still want to fight him?"
+
+A fierce aftermath of passion gleamed in David's eyes.
+
+"Yes!" he cried, his nostrils quivering.
+
+"And you'll fight fair? Jest to punish--with no thought of killin'?"
+
+"I'll fight fair," agreed the boy.
+
+"I'll see that you do. Come here, Jud."
+
+"I don't want to fight," protested Jud sullenly.
+
+"He's afraid," said David gleefully, every muscle quivering and
+straining.
+
+"I ain't!" yelled Jud.
+
+"Come on, then," challenged David, a fierce joy tugging at his
+heart.
+
+Jud came with deliberate precision and a swing of his left. He was
+heavier and harder, but David was more agile, and his whole heart was
+in the fight this time. They clutched and grappled and parried, and
+finally went down; first one was on top, then the other. It was the
+wage of brute force against elasticity; bluster against valor. Jud
+fought in fear; David, in ferocity. At last David bore his oppressor
+backward and downward. Jud, exhausted, ceased to struggle.
+
+"Thar!" exclaimed Barnabas, drawing a relieved breath. "I guess you
+know how you stand now, and we'll all feel better. You've got all
+that's comin' to you, Jud, without no more from me. You can both go to
+the house and wash up."
+
+Uncle Larimy had arrived at the finish of the fight.
+
+"What's the trouble, Barnabas?" he asked interestedly, as the boys
+walked away.
+
+The explanation was given, but they spoke in tones so low that David
+could not overhear any part of the conversation from the men
+following him until, as they neared the house, Uncle Larimy said: "I
+was afeerd Dave hed his pa's temper snoozin' inside him. Mebby he'd
+orter be told fer a warnin'."
+
+"I don't want to say nuthin' about it less I hev to. I'll wait till
+the next time he loses his temper."
+
+David ducked his head in the wash basin on the bench outside the door.
+After supper, when Barnabas came out on the back porch for his hour of
+pipe, he called his young charge to him. Since the fight, David's face
+had worn a subdued but contented expression.
+
+"Looks," thought Barnabas, "kinder eased off, like a dog when he licks
+his chops arter the taste of blood has been drawed."
+
+"Set down, Dave. I want to talk to you. You done right to fight fer
+yer folks, and you're a good fighter, which every boy orter be, but
+when I come up to you and Jud I see that in yer face that I didn't
+know was in you. You've got an orful temper, Dave. It's a good thing
+to hev--a mighty good thing, if you kin take keer of it, but if you
+let it go it's what leads to murder. Your pa hed the same kind of
+let-loose temper that got him into heaps of trouble."
+
+"What did my father do?" he asked abruptly.
+
+Instinctively he had shrunk from asking his mother this question, and
+pride had forbidden his seeking the knowledge elsewhere.
+
+"Some day, when you are older, you will know all about it. But
+remember, when any one says anything like what Jud did, that yer ma
+wouldn't want fer you to hev thoughts of killin'. You see, you fought
+jest as well--probably better--when you hed cooled off a mite and hed
+promised to fight fair. And ef you can't wrastle your temper and down
+it as you did Jud, you're not a fust-class fighter."
+
+"I'll try," said David slowly, unable, however, to feel much remorse
+for his outbreak.
+
+"Jud'll let you alone arter this. You'd better go to bed now. You need
+a little extry sleep."
+
+M'ri came into his room when he was trying to mend a long rent in his
+shirt. He flushed uncomfortably when her eye fell on the garment. She
+took it from him.
+
+"I'll mend it, David. I don't wonder that your patience slipped its
+leash, but--never fight when you have murder in your heart."
+
+When she had left the room, Janey's face, pink and fair as a baby
+rose, looked in at the door.
+
+"It's very wicked to fight and get so mad, Davey."
+
+"I know it," he acknowledged readily. It was useless trying to make a
+girl understand.
+
+There was a silence. Janey still lingered.
+
+"Davey," she asked in an awed whisper, "does it feel nice to be
+wicked?"
+
+David shook his head non-committally.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The rather strained relations between Jud and David were eased the
+next day by the excitement attending the big package Barnabas brought
+from town. It was addressed to David, but the removal of the outer
+wrapping disclosed a number of parcels neatly labeled, also a note
+from Joe, asking him to distribute the presents.
+
+David first selected the parcel marked "Janey" and handed it to her.
+
+"Blue beads!" she cried ecstatically.
+
+"Let me see, Janey," said M'ri. "Why, they're real turquoises and with
+a gold clasp! I'll get you a string of blue beads for now, and you can
+put these away till you're grown up."
+
+"I didn't tell Joe what to get for you, Aunt M'ri; honest, I didn't,"
+disclaimed David, with a laugh, as he handed the freezer to her.
+
+"We'll initiate it this very day, David."
+
+David handed Barnabas his pipe and gave Jud a letter which he opened
+wonderingly, uttering a cry of pleasure when he realized the
+contents.
+
+"It's an order on Harkness to let me pick out any rifle in his store.
+How did he know? Did you tell him, Dave?"
+
+"Yes," was the quiet reply.
+
+"Thank you, Dave. I'll ride right down and get it, and we'll go to the
+woods this afternoon and shoot at a mark."
+
+"All right," agreed David heartily.
+
+The atmosphere was now quite cleared by the proposed expenditure of
+ammunition, and M'ri experienced the sensation as of one beholding a
+rainbow.
+
+David then turned his undivided attention to his own big package,
+which contained twelve books, his name on the fly-leaf of each.
+Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, Andersen's Fairy Tales,
+Arabian Nights, Life of Lincoln, Black Beauty, Oliver Twist, A
+Thousand Leagues under the Sea, The Pathfinder, Gulliver's Travels,
+Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Young Ranchers comprised the selection. His
+eyes gleamed over the enticing titles.
+
+"You shall have some book shelves for your room, David," promised
+M'ri, "and you can start your library. Joe has made a good foundation
+for one."
+
+His eyes longed to read at once, but there were still the two
+packages, marked "Uncle Larimy" and "Miss Rhody," to deliver.
+
+"I can see that Uncle Larimy has a fishing rod, but what do you
+suppose he has sent Rhody?" wondered M'ri.
+
+"A black silk dress. I told him she wanted one."
+
+"Take it right over there, David. She has waited almost a lifetime for
+it."
+
+"Let me take Uncle Larimy's present," suggested Jud, "and then I'll
+ask him to go shooting with us this afternoon."
+
+David amicably agreed, and went across fields to Miss Rhody's.
+
+"Land sakes!" she exclaimed, looking at the parcel. "M'ri ain't
+a-goin' to hev another dress so soon, is she?"
+
+"No, Miss Rhody. Some one else is, though."
+
+"Who is it, David?" she asked curiously.
+
+"You see Joe Forbes sent some presents from Chicago, and this is what
+he sent you."
+
+"A calico," was her divination, as she opened the package.
+
+"David Dunne!" she cried in shrill, piping tones, a spot of red on
+each cheek. "Just look here!" and she stroked lovingly the lustrous
+fold of shining silk.
+
+"And if here ain't linings, and thread, and sewing silk, and hooks and
+eyes! Why, David Dunne, it can't be true! How did he know--David, you
+blessed boy, you must have told him!"
+
+Impulsively she threw her arms about him and hugged him until he
+ruefully admitted to himself that she had Jud "beat on the clutch."
+
+"And say, David, I'm a-goin' to wear this dress. I know folks as lets
+their silks wear out a-hangin' up in closets. Don't get half as many
+cracks when it hangs on yourself. I b'lieve as them Episcopals do in
+lettin' yer light shine, and I never wuz one of them as b'lieved in
+savin' yer best to be laid out in. Oh, Lord, David, I kin jest hear
+myself a-rustlin' round in it!"
+
+"Maybe you'll get a husband now," suggested David gravely.
+
+"Mebby. I'd orter ketch somethin' with this. I never see sech silk.
+It's much handsomer than the one Homer Bisbee's bride hed when she
+come here from the city. It's orful the way she wastes. Would you
+b'lieve it, David, the fust batch of pies she made, she never pricked,
+and they all puffed up and bust. David, look here! What's in this
+envylope? Forever and way back, ef it hain't a five-doller bill and a
+letter. I hain't got my glasses handy. Read it."
+
+"Dear Miss Rhody," read the boy in his musical voice, "silk is none
+too good for you, and I want you to wear this and wear it out. If you
+don't, I'll never send you another. I thought you might want some more
+trimmings, so I send you a five for same. Sincerely yours, Joe."
+
+"I don't need no trimmin's, excep' fifty cents for roochin's."
+
+"I'll tell you what to do, Miss Rhody. When you get your dress made
+we'll go into town and you can get your picture taken in the dress and
+give it to Joe when he comes back."
+
+"That's jest what I'll do. I never hed my likeness took. David, you've
+got an orful quick mind. Is Joe coming home? I thought he callated to
+go West."
+
+"Not until fall. He's going to spend the summer in his shanty boat on
+the river."
+
+"I'll hurry up and get it made up afore he comes. Tell me what he sent
+all your folks."
+
+"Joe's a generous boy, like his ma's folks," she continued, when he
+had enumerated their gifts. "I am glad fer him that his pa and his
+stepmother was so scrimpin'. David, would you b'lieve it, in that
+great big house of the Forbeses thar wa'n't never a tidy on a chair,
+and not a picter on the wall! It was mighty lucky for Joe that his
+stepmother died fust, so he got all the money."
+
+David hastened home and sought his retreat in the orchard with one of
+his books. M'ri, curious to know what his selection had been, scanned
+the titles of the remaining eleven volumes.
+
+"Well, who would have thought of a boy's preferring fairy tales!"
+
+David read until dinner time, but spent the afternoon with Uncle
+Larimy and Jud in the woods, where they received good instruction in
+rifle practice. After supper he settled comfortably down with a book,
+from which he was recalled by a plaintive little wail.
+
+"I haven't had a bit of fun to-day, Davey, and it's Saturday, and you
+haven't played with me at all!"
+
+The book closed instantly.
+
+"Come on out doors, Janey," he invited.
+
+The sound of childish laughter fell pleasantly on M'ri's ears. She
+recalled what Joe Forbes had said about her own children, and an
+unbidden tear lingered on her lashes. This little space between
+twilight and lamplight was M'ri's favorite hour. In every season but
+winter it was spent on the west porch, where she could watch the moon
+and the stars come out. Maybe, too, it was because from here she had
+been wont to sit in days gone by and watch for Martin's coming. The
+time and place were conducive to backward flights of memory, and
+M'ri's pictures of the past were most beguiling, except that last one
+when Martin Thorne, stern-faced, unrelenting, and vowing that he would
+never see her again, had left her alone--to do her duty.
+
+When the children came in she joined them. Janey, flushed and
+breathless from play, was curled up on the couch beside David. He put
+his arm caressingly about her and began to relate one of Andersen's
+fairy tales. M'ri gazed at them tenderly, and was weaving a future
+little romance for her two young charges when Janey said petulantly:
+"I don't like fairy stories, Davey. Tell a real one."
+
+M'ri noted the disappointment in the boy's eyes as he began the
+narrating of a more realistic story.
+
+"David, where did you read that story?" she asked when he had
+finished.
+
+"I made it up," he confessed.
+
+"Why, David, I didn't know you had such a talent. You must be an
+author when you are a man."
+
+Late that night she saw a light shining from beneath the young
+narrator's door.
+
+"I ought to send him to bed," she meditated, "but, poor lad, he has
+had so few pleasures and, after all, childhood is the only time for
+thorough enjoyment, so why should I put a feather in its path?"
+
+David read until after midnight, and went to bed with a book under his
+pillow that he might begin his pastime again at dawn.
+
+After breakfast the next morning M'ri commanded the whole family to
+sit down and write their thanks to Joe. David's willing pen flew in
+pace with his thoughts as he told of Miss Rhody's delight and his own
+revel in book land. Janey made most wretched work of her composition.
+She sighed and struggled with thoughts and pencil, which she gnawed at
+both ends. Finally she confessed that she couldn't think of anything
+more to say. M'ri came to inspect her literary effort, which was
+written in huge characters.
+
+"Dear Joe--"
+
+"Oh," commented M'ri doubtfully, "I don't know as you should address
+him so familiarly."
+
+"I called him 'Joe' when we rode to school. He told me to," defended
+Janey.
+
+"He's just like a boy," suggested David.
+
+So M'ri, silenced, read on: "I thank you for your beyewtifull present
+which I cannot have."
+
+"Oh, Janey," expostulated M'ri, laughing; "that doesn't sound very
+gracious."
+
+"Well, you said I couldn't have them till I was grown up."
+
+"I was wrong," admitted M'ri. "I didn't realize it then. We have to
+see a thing written sometimes to know how it sounds."
+
+"May I wear them?" asked Janey exultingly. "May I put them on now?"
+
+"Yes," consented M'ri.
+
+Janey flew upstairs and came back wearing the adored turquoises, which
+made her eyes most beautifully blue.
+
+"Now I can write," she affirmed, taking up her pencil with the
+impetus of an incentive. Under the inspiration of the beads around her
+neck, she wrote:
+
+  "DEAR JOE:
+
+  "I am wareing the beyewtifull beeds you sent me around my neck.
+  Aunt M'ri says they are terkwoyses. I never had such nice beeds
+  and I thank you. I wish I cood ride with you agen. Good bye.
+  From your frend,
+
+                                                          "JANEY."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The next day being town day, David "hooked up" Old Hundred and drove
+to the house. After the butter crock, egg pails, and kerosene and
+gasoline cans had been piled in, Barnabas squeezed into the space
+beside David. M'ri came out with a memorandum of supplies for them to
+get in town. To David she handed a big bunch of spicy, pink June
+roses.
+
+"What shall I do with them?" he asked wonderingly.
+
+"Give them to some one who looks as if he needed flowers," she
+replied.
+
+"I will," declared the boy interestedly. "I will watch them all and
+see how they look at the roses."
+
+At last M'ri had a kindred spirit in her household. Jud would have
+sneered, and Janey would not have understood. To Barnabas all flowers
+looked alike.
+
+It had come to be a custom for Barnabas to take David to town with him
+at least once a week. The trip was necessarily a slow one, for from
+almost every farmhouse he received a petition to "do a little errand
+in town." As the good nature and accommodating tendency of Barnabas
+were well known, they were accordingly imposed upon. He received
+commissions of every character, from the purchase of a corn sheller to
+the matching of a blue ribbon. He also stopped to pick up a child or
+two en route to school or to give a lift to a weary pedestrian whom he
+overtook.
+
+While Barnabas made his usual rounds of the groceries, meatmarket,
+drug store, mill, feed store, general store, and a hotel where he was
+well known, David was free to go where he liked. Usually he
+accompanied Barnabas, but to-day he walked slowly up the principal
+business street, watching for "one who needed flowers." Many glances
+were bestowed upon the roses, some admiring, some careless, and
+then--his heart almost stopped beating at the significance--Judge
+Thorne came by. He, too, glanced at the roses. His gaze lingered, and
+a look came into his eyes that stimulated David's passion for
+romance.
+
+"He's remembering," he thought joyfully.
+
+He didn't hesitate even an instant. He stopped in front of the Judge
+and extended the flowers.
+
+"Would you like these roses, Judge Thorne?" he asked courteously.
+
+Then for the first time the Judge's attention was diverted from the
+flowers.
+
+"Your face is familiar, my lad, but--"
+
+"My name is David Dunne."
+
+"Yes, to be sure, but it must be four years or more since I last saw
+you. How's your mother getting along?"
+
+The boy's face paled.
+
+"She died three weeks ago," he answered.
+
+"Oh, my lad," he exclaimed in shocked tones, "I didn't know! I only
+returned last night from a long journey. But with whom are you
+living?"
+
+"With Aunt M'ri and Uncle Barnabas."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+The impressive silence following this exclamation was broken by the
+Judge.
+
+"Why do you offer me these flowers, David?"
+
+"Aunt M'ri picked them and told me to give them to some one who looked
+as if they needed flowers."
+
+The Judge eyed him with the keen scrutiny of the trained lawyer, but
+the boy's face was non-committal.
+
+"Come up into my office with me, David," commanded the Judge, turning
+quickly into a near-by stairway. David followed up the stairs and into
+a suite of well-appointed offices.
+
+A clerk looked up in surprise at the sight of the dignified judge
+carrying a bouquet of old-fashioned roses and accompanied by a country
+lad.
+
+"Good morning, Mathews. I am engaged, if any one comes."
+
+He preceded David into a room on whose outer door was the deterrent
+word, "Private."
+
+While the Judge got a pitcher of water to hold the flowers David
+crossed the room. On a table near the window was a rack of books
+which he eagerly inspected. To his delight he saw a volume of
+Andersen's Fairy Tales. Instantly the book was opened, and he was
+devouring a story.
+
+"David," spoke the Judge from the other end of the room, "didn't these
+roses grow on a bush by the west porch?"
+
+There was no answer.
+
+The Judge, remarking the boy's absorption, came to see what he was
+reading.
+
+"Andersen's Fairy Tales! My favorite book. I didn't know that boys
+liked fairy stories."
+
+David looked up quickly.
+
+"I didn't know that lawyers did, either."
+
+"Well, I do, David. They are my most delightful diversion."
+
+"Girls don't like fairy stories," mused David. "Anyway, Janey doesn't.
+I have to tell true stories to please her."
+
+"Oh, you are a yarner, are you?"
+
+"Yes," admitted David modestly. "Aunt M'ri thinks I will be a writer
+when I grow up, but I think I should like to be a lawyer."
+
+"David," asked the Judge abruptly, "did Miss Brumble tell you to give
+me those roses?"
+
+With a wild flashing of eyes the Dunne temper awoke, and the boy's
+under jaw shot forward.
+
+"No!" he answered fiercely. "She didn't know that I know--"
+
+He paused in mid-channel of such deep waters.
+
+"That you know what?" demanded the Judge in his cross-examining tone.
+
+David was doubtful of the consequences of his temerity, but he stood
+his ground.
+
+"I can't tell you what, because I promised not to. Some one was just
+thinking out loud, and I overheard."
+
+There was silence for a moment.
+
+"David, I remember your father telling me, years ago, that he had a
+little son with a big imagination which his mother fed by telling
+stories every night at bedtime."
+
+"Will you tell me," asked David earnestly, "about my father? What was
+it he did? Uncle Barnabas told me something about his trouble last
+Saturday."
+
+"How did he come to mention your father to you?"
+
+David reddened.
+
+"Jud twitted me about my mother taking in washing and about my father
+being a convict, and I knocked him down. I told him I would kill him.
+Uncle Barnabas pulled me off."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then he let us fight it out."
+
+"And you licked?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the boy, with proud modesty.
+
+"You naturally would, with that under jaw, but it's the animal in us
+that makes us want to kill, and the man in us should rise above the
+animal. I think I am the person to tell you about your father. He had
+every reason to make good, but he was unfortunate in his choice of
+associates and he acquired some of their habits. He had a violent
+temper, and one night when he was--"
+
+"Drunk," supplied David gravely.
+
+"He became angry with one of his friends and tried to kill him. Your
+father was given a comparatively short sentence, which he had almost
+served when he died. You must guard against your temper and cultivate
+patience and endurance--qualities your mother possessed."
+
+It suddenly and overwhelmingly flashed across David what need his
+mother must have had for such traits, and he turned away to force back
+his tears. The Judge saw the heaving of the slender, square, young
+shoulders, and the gray eyes that were wont to look so coldly upon the
+world and its people grew soft and surprisingly moist.
+
+"It's past now, David, and can't be helped, but you are going to aim
+to be the kind of man your mother would want you to be. You must learn
+to put up with Jud's tyranny because his father and his aunt are your
+benefactors. I have been away the greater part of the time since your
+father's death, or I should have kept track of you and your mother.
+Every time you come to town I want you to come up here and report to
+me. Will you?"
+
+"Thank you, sir. And I will bring you some more flowers."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+"Whar wuz you, Dave, all the time we wuz in town?" asked Barnabas, as
+they drove homeward.
+
+"In Judge Thorne's office."
+
+"Judge Thorne's office! What fer?"
+
+"He asked me there, Uncle Barnabas. He was my father's lawyer once,
+you know."
+
+"So he wuz. I hed fergot."
+
+"He warned me against my temper, as you did, and he told me--all about
+my father."
+
+"I am glad he did, Dave. He wuz the one to tell you."
+
+"He says that every time I come to Lafferton I must come up and report
+to him."
+
+"Wal, Dave, it does beat all how folks take to you. Thar wuz Joe
+wanted you, and now Mart Thorne's interested. Mebby they could do
+better by you than we could. Joe's rich, and the Jedge is well fixed
+and almighty smart."
+
+"No," replied David stoutly. "I'd rather stay with you, Uncle
+Barnabas. There's something you've got much more of than they have."
+
+"What's that, Dave?" asked Barnabas curiously.
+
+"Horse sense."
+
+Barnabas looked pleased.
+
+"Wal, Dave, I callate to do my best fer you, and thar's one thing I
+want _you_ to git some horse sense about right off."
+
+"All right, Uncle Barnabas. What is it?"
+
+"Feedin' on them fairy stories all day. They hain't hullsome diet fer
+a boy."
+
+"The Judge reads them," protested David. "He has that same book of
+fairy stories that Joe gave me."
+
+"When you've done all the Jedge has, and git to whar you kin afford to
+be idle, you kin read any stuff you want ter."
+
+"Can't I read them at all?" asked David in alarm.
+
+"Of course you kin. I meant, I didn't want you stickin' to 'em like a
+pup to a root. You're goin' down to the fields to begin work with me
+this arternoon, and you won't feel much like readin' to-night. I wuz
+lookin' over them books of your'n last night. Thar's one you'd best
+start in on right away, and give the fairies a rest."
+
+"Which one?"
+
+"Life of Lincoln. That'll show you what work will do."
+
+"I'll read it aloud to you, Uncle Barnabas."
+
+When they reached the bridge that spanned the river Old Hundred
+dropped the little hurrying gait which he assumed in town, and settled
+down to his normal, comfortable, country jog.
+
+"Uncle Barnabas," said David thoughtfully, "what is your religion?"
+
+Barnabas meditated.
+
+"Wal, Dave, I don't know as I hev what you might call religion
+exackly. I b'lieve in payin' a hundred cents on the dollar, and
+a-helpin' the man that's down, and--wal, I s'pose I come as nigh bein'
+a Unitarian as anything."
+
+The distribution of the purchases now began. Sometimes the good
+housewife, herself, came out to receive the parcels and to hear the
+latest news from town. Oftener, the children of the household were
+the messengers, for Barnabas' pockets were always well filled with
+candy on town days. At one place Barnabas stopped at a barn by the
+roadside and surreptitiously deposited a suspicious looking package.
+When he was in front of the next farmhouse a man came out with anxious
+mien.
+
+"All right, Fred!" hailed Barnabas with a knowing wink. "I was afeerd
+you'd not be on the watchout. I left it in the manger."
+
+They did not reach the farm until the dinner hour, and the conversation
+was maintained by M'ri and Barnabas on marketing matters. David spent
+the afternoon in being initiated in field work. At supper, M'ri asked
+him suddenly:
+
+"To whom did you give the flowers, David?"
+
+"I've made a story to it, Aunt M'ri, and I'm going to tell it to
+Janey. Then you can hear."
+
+M'ri smiled, and questioned him no further.
+
+When the day was done and the "still hour" had come, Janey and David,
+hand in hand, came around the house and sat down at her feet. It was
+seldom that any one intruded at this hour, but she knew that David had
+come to tell his story.
+
+"Begin, Davey," urged Janey impatiently.
+
+"One day, when a boy was going to town, his aunt gave him a big
+bouquet of pink roses. She told him to give them to some one who
+looked as if they needed flowers. So when the boy got to town he
+walked up Main Street and looked at every one he met. He hoped to see
+a little sick child or a tired woman who had no flowers of her own;
+but every one seemed to be in a hurry, and very few stopped to look at
+flowers or anything else. Those that did look turned away as if they
+did not see them, and some seemed to be thinking, 'What beautiful
+flowers!' and then forgot them.
+
+"At last he met a tall, stern man dressed in fine clothes. He looked
+very proud, but as if he were tired of everything. When he saw the
+flowers he didn't turn away, but kept his eyes on them as if they made
+him sad and lonesome in thinking of good times that were over. So the
+boy asked him if he would not like the flowers. The man looked
+surprised and asked the boy what his name was. When he heard it, he
+remembered that he had been attorney for the boy's father. He took him
+up into an office marked private, and he gave the boy some good
+advice, and talked to him about his mother, which made the boy feel
+bad. But the man comforted him and told him that every time he came to
+town he was to report to him."
+
+M'ri had sat motionless during the recital of this story. At its close
+she did not speak.
+
+"That wasn't much of a story. Let's go play," suggested Janey,
+relieving the tension.
+
+They were off like a flash. David heard his name faintly called.
+M'ri's voice sounded far off, and as if there were tears in it, but he
+lacked the courage to return.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Two important events calendared the next week. The school year ended
+and Pennyroyal, the "hired help," who had been paying her annual visit
+to her sister, came back to the farm. There are two kinds of
+housekeepers, the "make-cleans" and the "keep-cleans." Pennyroyal was
+a graduate of both classes. Her ruling passions in life were scrubbing
+and "redding" up. On the day of her return, after making onslaught on
+house and porches, she attacked the pump, and planned a sand-scouring
+siege for the morrow on the barn. In appearance she was a true
+exponent of soap and water, and always had the look of being freshly
+laundered.
+
+At first Pennyroyal looked with ill favor on the addition that had
+been made to the household in her absence, but when David submitted to
+the shampooing of his tousled mass of hair, and offered no protest
+when she scrubbed his neck, she became reconciled to his presence.
+
+On a "town day" David, carrying a huge bunch of pinks, paid his second
+visit to the Judge.
+
+"Did she tell you," asked the tall man, gazing very hard at the
+landscape without the open window, "to give these flowers to some one
+who needed them?"
+
+There was a perilous little pause. Then there flashed from the boy to
+the man a gaze of comprehension.
+
+"She picked them for you," was the response, simply spoken.
+
+The Judge carefully selected a blossom for his buttonhole, and then
+proceeded to draw David out. Under the skillful, schooled questioning,
+David grew communicative.
+
+"She's always on the west porch after supper." He added naively:
+"That's the time when Uncle Barnabas smokes on the east porch, Jud
+goes off with the boys, and I play with Janey in the lane."
+
+"Thank you, David," acknowledged the Judge gratefully. "You are quite
+a bureau of information, and," in a consciously casual tone, "will you
+take a note to your aunt? I think I will ride out to the farm
+to-night."
+
+David's young heart fluttered, and he went back to the farm invested
+with a proud feeling of having assisted the fates. The air was filled
+with mystery and an undercurrent of excitement that day. After David
+had delivered the auspicious note, a private conference behind closed
+doors had been held between M'ri and Barnabas in the "company parlor."
+David's shrewd young eyes noted the weakening of the lines of finality
+about M'ri's mouth when she emerged from the interview. Throughout the
+long afternoon she performed the usual tasks in nervous haste, the
+color coming and going in her delicately contoured face.
+
+When she appeared at the supper table she was adorned in white,
+brightened by touches of blue at belt and collar. David's young eyes
+surveyed her appraisingly and approvingly, and later he effected a
+thorough effacing of the family. He obtained from Barnabas permission
+for Jud to go to town with the Gardner boys. His next diplomatic move
+was to persuade Pennyroyal to go with himself and Janey to Uncle
+Larimy's hermit home. When she wavered, he commented on the eclipse of
+Uncle Larimy's windows the last time he saw them. That turned the tide
+of Pennyroyal's resistance. Equipped with soft linen, a cake of strong
+soap, and a bottle of ammonia, she strode down the lane, accompanied
+by the children.
+
+The walk proved a trying ordeal for Pennyroyal. She started out at her
+accustomed brisk gait, but David loitered and sauntered, Janey of
+course setting her pace by his. Pennyroyal, feeling it incumbent upon
+herself to keep watch of her young companions, retraced her steps so
+often that she covered the distance several times.
+
+At Uncle Larimy's she found such a fertile field for her line of work
+that David was quite ready to return when she pronounced her labors
+finished. She was really tired, and quite willing to walk home slowly
+in the moonlight.
+
+It was very quiet. Here and there a bird, startled from its hiding
+place, sought refuge in the higher branches. A pensive quail piped an
+answer to the trilling call from the meadows. A tree toad uttered his
+lonely, guttural exclamation. The air, freshening with a coming covey
+of clouds, swayed the tops of the trees with mournful sound.
+
+David, full of dreams, let his fancy have full play, and he made a
+little story of his own about the meeting of the lovers. He pictured
+the Judge riding down the dust-white road as the sunset shadows grew
+long. He knew the exact spot--the last bit of woodland--from where
+Martin, across level-lying fields, could obtain his first glimpse of
+the old farmhouse and porch. His moving-picture conceit next placed
+M'ri, dressed in white, with touches of blue, on the west porch. He
+had decided that in the Long Ago Days she had been wont to wear blue,
+which he imagined to be the Judge's favorite color. Then he caused the
+unimpressionable Judge to tie his horse to the hitching post at the
+side of the road and walk between the hedges of sweet peas that
+bordered the path. Their pink and white sweetness was the trumpet
+call sounding over the grave of the love of his youth. (David had read
+such a passage in a book at Miss Rhody's and thought it very fine and
+applicable.) His active fancy took Martin Thorne around the house to
+the west porch. The white figure arose, and in the purple-misted
+twilight he saw the touches of blue, and his heart lighted.
+
+"Marie!"
+
+The old name, the name he had given her in his love-making days, came
+to his lips. (David couldn't make M'ri fit in with the settings of his
+story, so he re-christened her.) She came forward with outstretched
+hand and a gentle manner, but at the look in his eyes as he uttered
+the old name, with the caressing accent on the first syllable, she
+understood. A deep sunrise color flooded her face and neck.
+
+"Martin!" she whispered as she came to him.
+
+David threw back his head and shut his eyes in ecstatic bliss. He was
+rudely roused from his romantic weaving by the sound of Barnabas'
+chuckle as they came to the east porch.
+
+"You must a washed every one of Larimy's winders!"
+
+"Yes," replied Janey, "and she mopped his floors, washed and
+clean-papered the shelves, and wanted to scrub the old gray horse."
+
+"Pennyroyal," exclaimed Barnabas gravely, "I wonder you ain't
+waterlogged!"
+
+"Pennyroyal'd rather be clean than be President," averred David.
+
+"Where's M'ri?" demanded Pennyroyal, ignoring these thrusts.
+
+"On the west porch, entertaining company," remarked Barnabas.
+
+"Who?"
+
+Pennyroyal never used a superfluous word. Joe Forbes said she talked
+like telegrams.
+
+Barnabas removed his pipe from his mouth, and paused to give his words
+greater dramatic force.
+
+"Mart Thorne!"
+
+The effect was satisfactory.
+
+Pennyroyal stood as if petrified for a moment. Than she expressed her
+feelings.
+
+"Hallelujah!"
+
+Her tone made the exclamation as impressive as a benediction.
+
+M'ri visited the bedside of each of her charges that night. Jud and
+Janey were in the land of dreams, but David was awake, expecting her
+coming. There was a new tenderness in her good-night kiss.
+
+"Aunt M'ri," asked the boy, looking up with his deep, searching eyes
+and a suspicion of a smile about his lips, "did you and Judge Thorne
+talk over my education? He said that he was going to speak to you
+about it."
+
+Her eyes sparkled.
+
+"David, the Judge is coming to dinner Sunday. We will talk it over
+with you then."
+
+"Aunt M'ri," a little note of wistfulness chasing the bantering look
+from his eyes, "you aren't going to leave us now?"
+
+"Not for a year, David," she said, a soft flush coming to her face.
+
+"He's waited seven," thought David, "so one more won't make so much
+difference. Anyway, we need a year to get used to it."
+
+After all, David was only a boy. His flights of romantic fancy
+vanished in remembrance of the blissful certainty that there would be
+ice cream for dinner on Sunday next and on many Sundays thereafter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The little trickle of uneven days was broken one morning by a message
+which was brought by the "hired man from Randall's."
+
+"We've got visitors from the city tew our house," he announced. "They
+want you to send Janey over tew play with their little gal."
+
+Befitting the honor of the occasion, Janey was attired in her
+blue-sprigged muslin and allowed to wear the turquoises. David drove
+her to Maplewood, the pretentious home of the Randalls, intending to
+call for her later. When they came to the entrance of the grounds at
+the end of a long avenue of maples a very tiny girl, immaculate in
+white, with hair of gold and eyes darkly blue, came out from among the
+trees. She regarded David with deep, grave eyes as he stepped from the
+wagon to open the gate.
+
+"You've come to play with me," she stated in a tone of assurance.
+
+"I've brought Janey to play with you," he rejoined, indicating his
+little companion. "If you'll get in the wagon, I'll drive you up to
+the house."
+
+She held up her slender little arms to him, and David felt as if he
+were lifting a doll.
+
+"My name in Carey Winthrop. What is yours?" she demanded of Janey as
+they all rode up the shaded, graveled road.
+
+"Janey Brumble," replied the visitor, gaining ease from the
+ingenuousness of the little girl and from the knowledge that she was
+older than her hostess.
+
+"And he's your brother?" indicating David.
+
+"He's my adopted brother," said Janey; "he's David Dunne."
+
+"I wish I had a 'dopted brother," sighed the little girl, eying David
+wistfully.
+
+David drove up to the side entrance of the large, white-columned,
+porticoed house, on the spacious veranda of which sat a fair-haired
+young woman with luminous eyes and smiling mouth. The smile deepened
+as she saw the curiously disfigured horse ambling up to the stone
+step.
+
+"Whoa, Old Hundred!" commanded David, whereupon the smile became a
+rippling laugh. David got out, lifted the little girl to the ground
+very carefully, and gave a helping hand to the nimble, independent
+Janey.
+
+"Mother," cried Carey delightedly, "this is Janey and her 'dopted
+brother David."
+
+David touched his cap gravely in acknowledgment of the introduction.
+He had never heard his name pronounced as this little girl spoke it,
+with the soft "a." It sounded very sweet to him.
+
+"I'll drive back for you before sundown, Janey," said David, preparing
+to climb into the wagon.
+
+"No," objected Carey, regarding him with apprehension, "I want you to
+stay and play with me. Tell him to stay, mother."
+
+There was a regal carriage to the little head and an imperious
+note--the note of an only child--in her voice.
+
+"Maybe David has other things to do than to play with little girls,"
+said her mother, "but, David, if you can stay, I wish you would."
+
+"I should like to stay," replied David earnestly, "but they expect me
+back, and Old Hundred is needed in the field."
+
+"Luke can drive your horse back, and we will see that you and Janey
+ride home."
+
+So Carey, with a hand to each of her new playmates, led them across
+the driveway to the rolling stretch of shaded lawn. The lady watched
+David as he submitted to be driven as a horse by the little girls and
+then constituted himself driver to his little team of ponies as he
+called them. Later, when they raced to the meadow, she saw him hold
+Janey back that Carey might win. Presently the lady was joined by her
+husband.
+
+"Where is Carey?" he asked.
+
+"She is having great sport with a pretty little girl and a guardian
+angel of a boy. Here they come!"
+
+They were trooping across the lawn, the little girls adorned with
+blossom wreaths which David had woven for them.
+
+"May we go down to the woods--the big woods?" asked Carey.
+
+"It's too far for you to walk, dear," remonstrated her mother.
+
+"David says he'll draw me in my little cart."
+
+"Who is it that was afraid to go into the big woods, and thought it
+was a forest filled with wild beasts and scary things?" demanded Mr.
+Winthrop.
+
+The earnest eyes fixed on his were not at all abashed.
+
+"With him, with David," she said simply, "I would have no afraidments."
+
+"Afraidments?" he repeated perplexedly. "I am not sure I understand."
+
+"Don't tease, Arthur; it's a very good word," interposed Mrs. Winthrop
+quickly. "It seems to have a different meaning from fear."
+
+"Come up here, David," bade Mr. Winthrop, "and let me see what there
+is in you to inspire one with no 'afraidments'."
+
+The boy came up on the steps, and did not falter under the keen but
+good-humored gaze.
+
+"Do you like to play with little girls, David?"
+
+"I like to play with these little girls," admitted David.
+
+"And what do you like to do besides that?"
+
+"I like to shoot."
+
+"Oh, a hunter?"
+
+"No; I like to shoot at a mark."
+
+"And what else?"
+
+"I like to read, and fish, and swim, and--"
+
+"Eat ice cream!" finished Janey roguishly, showing her dimples.
+
+The man caught her up in his arms.
+
+"You are a darling, and I wish my little girl had such rosy cheeks.
+David, can you show me where there is good fishing?"
+
+"Uncle Larimy can show you the best places. He knows where the bass
+live, and how to coax them to bite."
+
+"And will you take me to this wonderful person to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Carey now came out of the hall with her cart, and David drew her
+across the lawn, Janey dancing by his side. Down through the meadows
+wound a wheel-tracked road leading to a patch of dense woods which, to
+a little girl with a big imagination, could easily become a wild
+forest infested with all sorts of nameless terrors--terrors that make
+one draw the bedclothes snugly over the head at night. She gave a
+little frightened cry as they came into the cool, olive depths.
+
+"I am afraid, David. Take me!"
+
+He lifted her to his shoulder, and her soft cheek nestled against his
+face.
+
+"Now you are not afraid," he said persuasively.
+
+"No; but I would be if you put me down."
+
+They went farther into the oak depths, until they came to a fallen
+tree where they rested. Janey, investigating the forestry, finally
+discovered a bush with slender red twigs.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "now David will show you what beautiful things he can
+make for us."
+
+"I have no pins," demurred David.
+
+"I have," triumphantly producing a paper of the needful from her
+pocket. "I always carry them now."
+
+David broke up the long twigs into short pieces, from which he
+skillfully fashioned little chairs and tables, discoursing the while
+to Carey on the beauty and safety of the woods. Finally Carey
+acquired courage to hunt for wild flowers, though her hand remained
+close in David's clasp.
+
+When they returned to the house Carey gave a glowing account of the
+expedition.
+
+"Sit down on the steps and rest, children," proposed Mrs. Winthrop,
+"while Lucy prepares a little picnic dinner for you."
+
+"What will we do now, David?" appealed Carey, when they were seated on
+the porch.
+
+"You mustn't do anything but sit still," admonished her mother.
+"You've done more now than you are used to doing in one day."
+
+"Davey will tell us a story," suggested Janey.
+
+"Yes, please, David," urged Carey, coming to him and resting her eyes
+on his inquiringly, while her little hand confidently sought his knee.
+Instinctively and naturally his fingers closed upon it.
+
+Embarrassed as he was at having a strange audience, he could not
+resist the child's appeal.
+
+"She'll like the kind that you don't," he said musingly to Janey, "the
+kind about fairies and princes."
+
+"Yes," rejoined Carey.
+
+So he fashioned a tale, partly from recollections of Andersen but
+mostly from his own fancy. As his imagination kindled, he forgot where
+he was. Inspired by the spellbound interest of the dainty little girl
+with the worshiping eyes, he achieved his masterpiece.
+
+"Upon my word," exclaimed Mr. Winthrop, "you are a veritable
+Scheherazade! You didn't make up that story yourself?"
+
+"Only part of it," admitted David modestly.
+
+When he and Janey started for home David politely delivered M'ri's
+message of invitation for Carey to come to the farm on the morrow to
+play.
+
+"It is going to be lovely here," said the little girl happily. "And we
+are going to come every summer."
+
+Janey kissed her impulsively. "Good-by, Carey."
+
+"Good-by, Janey. Good-by, David."
+
+"Good-by," he returned cheerily. Looking back, he saw her lips
+trembling. His gaze turned in perplexity to Mrs. Winthrop, whose eyes
+were dancing. "She expects you to bid her good-by the way Janey did,"
+she explained.
+
+"Oh!" said David, reddening, as two baby lips of scarlet were lifted
+naturally and expectantly to his.
+
+As they drove away, the light feet of the horse making but little
+sound on the smooth road, Mrs. Winthrop's clear treble was wafted
+after them.
+
+"One can scarcely believe that his father was a convict and his mother
+a washerwoman."
+
+A lump came into the boy's throat. Janey was very quiet on the way
+home. When they were alone she said to him, with troubled eyes:
+
+"Davey, is Carey going to be your sweetheart?"
+
+His laugh was reassuring.
+
+"Why, Janey, I am just twice her age."
+
+"She is like a little doll, isn't she, David?"
+
+"No; like a little princess."
+
+The next morning Little Teacher came to show them her present from
+Joe.
+
+"I am sure he chose a camera so I could take your pictures to send to
+him," she declared.
+
+"Miss Rhody wants her picture taken in the black silk Joe gave her. If
+you will take it, she won't have to spend the money he sent her," said
+the thoughtful David.
+
+Little Teacher was very enthusiastic over this proposition, and
+offered to accompany him at once to secure the picture. Miss Rhody was
+greatly excited over the event. Ever since the dress had been finished
+she had been a devotee at the shrine of two hooks in her closet from
+which was suspended the long-coveted garment, waiting for an occasion
+that would warrant its debut. She nervously dressed for the
+"likeness," for which she assumed her primmest pose. A week later
+David sent Joe a picture of Miss Rhody standing stiff and straight on
+her back porch and arrayed, with all the glory of the lilies of the
+field, in her new silk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+When the hot, close-cropped fields took on their first suggestion
+of autumn and a fuller note was heard in the requiem of the
+songbirds, when the twilights were of purple and the morning skies
+delicately mackereled in gray, David entered the little, red, country
+schoolhouse. M'ri's tutelage and his sedulous application to Jud's
+schoolbooks saved him from the ignominy of being classified with the
+younger children.
+
+When he sat down to the ink-stained, pen-scratched desk that was to be
+his own, when he made compact piles of his new books and placed in the
+little groove in front of the inkwell his pen, pencils, and ruler, he
+turned to Little Teacher such a glowing face of ecstasy that she was
+quite inspired, and her sympathies and energies were at once enlisted
+in the cause of David's education.
+
+It was the beginning of a new world for him. He studied with a
+concentration that made him oblivious to all that occurred about him,
+and he had to be reminded of calls to recitations by an individual
+summons. He fairly overwhelmed Little Teacher by his voracity for
+learning and a perseverance that vanquished all obstacles. He soon
+outstripped his class, and finally his young instructress was forced
+to bring forth her own textbooks to satisfy his avidity. He devoured
+them all speedily, and she then applied to the Judge for fuel from his
+library to feed her young furnace.
+
+"He takes to learning as naturally as bees to blossoms," she
+reported.
+
+"He must ease off," warned Barnabas. "Young hickory needs plenty of
+room for full growth."
+
+"No," disagreed the Judge, "young hickory is as strong as wrought
+iron. He's going to have a clear, keen mind to argue law cases."
+
+"I think not," said M'ri. "You forget another quality of young
+hickory. No other wood burns with such brilliancy. David is going to
+be an author."
+
+"I am afraid," wrote Joe, "that Dave won't be a first-class ranchman.
+He must be plum locoed with dreams."
+
+This prognostication reached David's ears.
+
+"Without dreams," he argued to Barnabas, "one would be like the
+pigs."
+
+"Wal, now, Dave, mebby pigs dream. They sartain sleep a hull lot."
+
+David laughed appreciatively.
+
+"Dave," pursued Barnabas, "they're all figgerin' on your futur, and
+they're a-figgerin' wrong. Joe thinks you'll take to ranchin'. You
+may--fer a spell. M'ri thinks you may write books. You may do even
+that--fer a spell. The Jedge counts on yer takin' to the law like a
+duck does to water. You may, but law larnin', cow punchin', and story
+writin' 'll jest be steppin' stuns to what I know you air goin' ter
+be, and what I know is in you ter be."
+
+"What in the world is that, Uncle Barnabas?" asked David in surprise.
+"A farmer?"
+
+"Farmer, nuthin'!" scoffed Barnabas. "Yer hain't much on farmin',
+Dave, though I will say yer furrers is allers straight, like
+everythin' else you do. Yer straight yerself. No! young hickory can
+bend without breakin', and thar's jest one thing I want fer you to
+be."
+
+"What?" persisted the boy.
+
+Barnabas whispered something.
+
+The blood of the young country boy went like wine through his veins;
+his heart leaped with a big and mighty purpose.
+
+"Now, remember, Dave," cautioned Barnabas, "what all work and no play
+done to Jack. You git yer lessons perfect, and recite them, and read a
+leetle of an evenin'; the rest of the time I want yer to get out and
+cerkilate."
+
+November with its call to quiet woods came on, and David was eager to
+"cerkilate." He became animated with the spirit of sport. Red-letter
+Saturdays were spent with Uncle Larimy, and the far-away echo of the
+hunter's bullet and the scudding through the woods of startled game
+became new, sweet music to his ears. Rifle in hand, with dog shuffling
+at his heels or plunging ahead in search of game, the world was his.
+Life was very full and happy, save for the one inevitable sprig of
+bitter--Jud! The big bully of a boy had learned that David was his
+equal physically and his superior mentally, but the fear of David and
+of David's good standing kept him from venturing out in the open; so
+from cover he sought by all the arts known to craftiness to harass the
+younger boy, whose patience this test tried most sorely.
+
+One day when Little Teacher had given him a verbose definition of the
+word "pestiferous," David looked at her comprehendingly. "Like Jud,"
+he murmured.
+
+Many a time his young arms ached to give Jud another thrashing, but
+his mother's parting injunction restrained him.
+
+"If only," he sighed, "Jud belonged to some one else!"
+
+He vainly sought to find the hair line that divided his sense of
+gratitude and his protection of self-respect.
+
+Winter followed, and the farm work droned. It was a comfortable, cozy
+time, with breakfast served in the kitchen on a table spread with a
+gay, red cloth. Pennyroyal baked griddle-sized cakes, delivering them
+one at a time direct from the stove to the consumer. The early hour
+of lamplight made long evenings, which were beguiled by lesson books
+and story-books, by an occasional skating carnival on the river, a
+coasting party at Long Hill, or a "surprise" on some hospitable
+neighbor.
+
+One morning he came into school with face and eyes aglow with
+something more than the mere delight of living. It meant mischief,
+pure and simple, but Little Teacher was not always discerning. She
+gave him a welcoming smile of sheer sympathy with his mood. She didn't
+smile, later, when the schoolroom was distracted by the sound of
+raucous laughter, feminine screams, and a fluttering of skirts as the
+girls scrambled to standing posture in their chairs. Astonished, she
+looked for the cause. The cause came her way, and the pupils had a
+fresh example of the miracles wrought by a mouse, for Little Teacher,
+usually the personification of dignity and repose, screamed lustily
+and scudded chairward with as much rapidity as that displayed by the
+scurrying mouse as it chased for the corner and disappeared through a
+knothole.
+
+As soon as the noiseful glee had subsided, Little Teacher sought to
+recover her prided self-possession. In a voice resonant with
+sternness, she commanded silence, gazing wrathfully by chance at
+little Tim Wiggins.
+
+"'T was David done it," he said in deprecating self-defense, imagining
+himself accused.
+
+"David Dunne," demanded Little Teacher, "did you bring that mouse to
+school?"
+
+"He brung it and let it out on purpose," informed Tim eagerly.
+
+Little Teacher never encouraged talebearing, but she was so
+discomfited by the exposure of the ruling weakness peculiar to her
+sex that she decided to discipline her favorite pupil upon his
+acknowledgment of guilt.
+
+"You may bring your books and sit on the platform," she ordered
+indignantly.
+
+David did not in the least mind his assignment to so prominent a
+position, but he did mind Little Teacher's attitude toward him
+throughout the day. He sought to propitiate her by coming to her
+assistance in many little tasks, but she persistently ignored his
+overtures. He then ventured to seek enlightenment regarding his
+studies, but she coldly informed him he could remain after school to
+ask his questions.
+
+David began to feel troubled, and looked out of the window for
+an inspiration. He found one in the form of big, brawny, Jim
+Block--"Teacher's Jim," as the school children all called him.
+
+"There goes Teacher's Jim," sang David, _soto voce_.
+
+The shot told. For the second time that day Little Teacher showed
+outward and visible signs of an inward disturbance. With a blush she
+turned quickly to the window and watched with expressive eyes the
+stalwart figure striding over the rough-frozen road.
+
+In an instant, however, she had recalled herself to earth, and David's
+dancing eyes renewed her hostility toward him. Toward the end of the
+day she began to feel somewhat appeased by his docility and evident
+repentance. Her manner had perceptibly changed by the time the closing
+exercise began. This was the writing of words on the blackboard for
+the pupils to use in sentences. She pointed to the first word,
+"income."
+
+"Who can make a sentence and use that word correctly?" she asked.
+
+"Do call on Tim," whispered David. "He so loves to be the first to
+tell anything."
+
+She smiled her appreciation of Tim's prominent characteristic, and
+looked at the youngster, who was wringing his hand in an agony of
+eagerness. She gave him the floor, and he jumped to his feet in
+triumph, yelling:
+
+"In come a mouse!"
+
+This was too much for David's composure, and he gave way to an
+infectious fit of laughter, in which the pupils joined.
+
+Little Teacher found the allusion personal and uncomfortable. She at
+once assumed her former distant mien, demanding David's presence after
+school closed.
+
+"You have no gratitude, David," she stated emphatically.
+
+The boy winced, and his eyes darkened with concern, as he remembered
+his mother's parting injunction.
+
+Little Teacher softened slightly.
+
+"You are sorry, aren't you, David?" she asked gently.
+
+He looked at her meditatively.
+
+"No, Teacher," he answered quietly.
+
+She flushed angrily.
+
+"David Dunne, you may go home, and you needn't come back to school
+again until you tell me you are sorry."
+
+David took his books and walked serenely from the room. He went home
+by the way of Jim Block's farm.
+
+"Hullo, Dave!" called Big Jim, who was in the barnyard.
+
+"Hello, Jim! I came to tell you some good news. You said if you were
+only sure there was something Teacher was afraid of, you wouldn't feel
+so scared of her."
+
+"Well," prompted Jim eagerly.
+
+"I thought I'd find out for you, so I took a mouse to school and let
+it loose."
+
+"Gee!"
+
+David then related the occurrences of the morning, not omitting the
+look in Little Teacher's eyes when she beheld Jim from the window.
+
+"I'll hook up this very night and go to see her," confided Jim.
+
+"Be sure you do, Jim. If you find your courage slipping, just remember
+that you owe it to me, because she won't let me come back to school
+unless she knows why I wasn't sorry."
+
+"I give you my word, Dave," said Jim earnestly.
+
+The next morning Little Teacher stopped at the Brumble farm.
+
+"I came this way to walk to school with you and Janey," she said
+sweetly and significantly to David.
+
+When they reached the road, and Janey had gone back to get her sled,
+Little Teacher looked up and caught the amused twinkle in David's eye.
+A wave of conscious red overspread her cheeks.
+
+"Must I say I am sorry now?" he asked.
+
+"David Dunne, there are things you understand which you never learned
+from books."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Late spring brought preparations for M'ri's wedding. Rhody Crabbe's
+needle and fingers flew in rapturous speed, and there was likewise
+engaged a seamstress from Lafferton. Rhody had begged for the making
+of the wedding gown, and when it was finished David went to fetch it
+home.
+
+"It's almost done, David, and you tell M'ri the last stitch was a
+loveknot. It's most a year sence you wuz here afore, a-waitin' fer her
+blue waist tew be finished. Remember, don't you, David?"
+
+He remembered, and as she stitched he sat silently reviewing that
+year, the comforts received, the pleasures pursued, and, best of all,
+the many things he had learned, but the recollection that a year ago
+his mother had been living brought a rush of sad memories and blotted
+out happier thoughts.
+
+"I wish yer ma could hev seen Mart and M'ri merried. She was orful
+disapp'inted when they broke off."
+
+There was no reply. Rhody's sharp little eyes, in upward glance, spied
+the trickling tear; she looked quickly away and stitched in furious
+haste.
+
+"But, my!" she continued, as if there had been no pause, "how glad she
+would be to know 't was you as fetched it around."
+
+David looked up, diverted and inquiring.
+
+"Yes; I learnt it from M'ri. She told me about the flowers you give
+him. I thought it was jest sweet in you, David. You done good work
+thar."
+
+"Miss Rhody," said David earnestly, "maybe some day I can get you a
+sweetheart."
+
+"'T ain't no use, David," she sighed. "No one wants a plain critter
+like me."
+
+"Lots of them don't marry for looks," argued David sagely. "Besides,
+you look fine in your black silk, and your hair crimped. Joe thinks
+your picture is great. He's got it on a shelf over his fireplace at
+the ranch."
+
+"Most likely some cowboy'll see it and lose his heart," laughed Miss
+Rhody, "but thar, the weddin' dress is all done. You go home and quit
+thinkin' about gittin' me a man. I ain't ha'nted by the thought of
+endin' single."
+
+Great preparations for the wedding progressed at the Brumble farm. For
+a week Pennyroyal whipped up eggs and sugar, and David ransacked the
+woods for evergreens and berries with which to decorate the big barn,
+where the dance after the wedding was to take place.
+
+The old farmhouse was filled to overflowing on the night of the
+wedding. After the ceremony, Miss Rhody, resplendent in the black silk
+and waving hair loosed from the crimping pins that had confined it for
+two days and nights, came up to David.
+
+"My, David, I've got the funniest all over feelin' from seein' Mart
+and M'ri merried! I was orful afeerd I'd cry."
+
+"Sit down, Miss Rhody," said David, gallantly bringing her a chair.
+
+"Didn't M'ri look perfeckly beyewtiful?" she continued, after
+accomplishing the pirouette that prevented creases. "And Mart, he
+looked that proud, and solemn too. It made me think of that gal when
+she spoke 'Curfew shall not ring tewnight' at the schoolhouse. Every
+one looks fine. I hain't seen Barnabas so fussed up sence Libby Sukes'
+funyral. It makes him look real spry. And whoever got Larimer Sasser
+to perk up and put on a starched shirt!"
+
+"I think," confided David, "that Penny got after him. She had him in a
+corner when he came, and she tied his necktie so tight I was afraid
+she would choke him."
+
+"Look at old Miss Pankey, David. She, as rich as they make 'em, and
+a-wearin' that old silk! It looks as ef it hed bin hung up fer you and
+Jud to shoot at. Ain't she a-glarin' and a-sniffin' at me, though?
+Say, David, you write Joe that if M'ri did look the purtiest of any
+one that my dress cost more'n any one's here, and showed it, too. I
+hope thar'll be a lot of occasions to wear it to this summer. M'ri is
+a-goin' to give a reception when she gits back from her tower, and
+that'll be one thing to wear it at. Ain't Jud got a mean look? He's as
+crooked as a dog's hind leg. But, say, David, that's a fine suit
+you're a-wearin'. You look handsome. Thar ain't a stingy hair on
+Barnabas' head. He's doin' jest as good by you as he is by Jud. Don't
+little Janey look like an angel in white, and them lovely beads Joe
+give her? I can't think of nothin' else but that little Eva you read
+me about. I shouldn't wonder a bit, David, if I come to yer and
+Janey's weddin' yet!" she said, as Janey came dancing up to them.
+
+A slow flush mounted to his forehead, but Janey laughed merrily.
+
+"I've promised Joe I'd wait for him," she said roguishly.
+
+"She's only foolin' and so wuz he," quickly spoke Miss Rhody, seeing
+the hurt look in David's eyes. "Barnabas," she asked, stopping him as
+he passed, "you air a-goin' to miss M'ri turrible. You could never
+manige if it wa'n't fer Penny. Won't she hev the time of her life
+cleanin' up after this weddin'? She'll enjoy it more'n she did gettin'
+ready fer it."
+
+"I hope Penny won't go to gittin' merried--not till Janey's growed
+up."
+
+"David's a great help to you, too, Barnabas."
+
+"Dave! I don't know how I ever got along afore he came. He's so
+willin' and so honest. He's as good as gold. Only fault he's got is a
+quick temper. He's doin' purty fair with it, though. If only Jud--"
+
+He stopped, with a sigh, and Rhody hastened to change the subject.
+
+"You're a-lookin' spry to-night, Barnabas. I hain't seen you look so
+spruce in a long time."
+
+"You look mighty tasty yerself, Rhody."
+
+This interchange of compliments was interrupted by the announcement of
+supper.
+
+"I never set down to sech a repast," thought Miss Rhody. "I'm glad I
+didn't feed much to-day. I don't know whether to take chickin twice,
+or to try all them meltin', flaky lookin' pies. And jest see them
+layer cakes!"
+
+After supper adjournment was made to the barn, where the fiddles were
+already swinging madly. Every one caught the spirit, and even Miss
+Rhody finally succumbed to Barnabas' insistence. Pennyroyal captured
+Uncle Larimy, and when Janey whirled away in the arms of a
+schoolmate, David, who had never learned to dance, stood isolated. He
+felt lonely and depressed, and recalled the expression in which Joe
+Forbes had explained life after he had acquired a stepmother. "I was
+always on the edge of the fireside," he had said.
+
+"Dave," expostulated Uncle Barnabas, as soon as he could get his
+breath after the last dance, "you'd better eddicate yer heels as well
+as yer head. It's unnateral fer a colt and a boy not to kick up their
+heels. You don't never want to be a looker-on at nuthin' excep' from
+ch'ice. You'd orter be a stand-in on everything that's a-goin' instead
+of a stand-by. The stand-bys never git nowhar."
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+David Dunne at eighteen was graduated from the high school in
+Lafferton after five colorless years in which study and farm work
+alternated. Throughout this period he had continued to incur the
+rancor of Jud, whose youthful scrapes had gradually developed into
+brawls and carousals. The Judge periodically extricated him from
+serious entanglements, and Barnabas continued optimistic in his
+expectations of a time when Jud should "settle." On one occasion Jud
+sneeringly accused David of "working the old man for a share in the
+farm," and taunted him with the fact that he was big enough and strong
+enough to hustle for himself without living on charity. David started
+on a tramp through the woods to face the old issue and decide his
+fate. He had then one more year before he could finish school and
+carry out a long-cherished dream of college.
+
+He was at a loss to know just where to turn at the present time for a
+home where he could work for his board and attend school. The Judge
+and M'ri had gone abroad; Joe was on his ranch; the farmers needed no
+additional help.
+
+He had been walking swiftly in unison with his thoughts, and when he
+came out of the woods into the open he was only a mile downstream from
+town. Upon the river bank stood Uncle Larimy, skillfully swirling his
+line.
+
+"Wanter try yer luck, Dave?"
+
+"I have no luck just now, Uncle Larimy," replied the boy sadly.
+
+Uncle Larimy shot him a quick, sidelong glance.
+
+"Then move on, Dave, and chase arter it. Thar's allers luck somewhar.
+Jest like fishin'. You can't set in one spot and wait for luck tew
+come to you like old Zeke Foss does. You must keep a-castin'."
+
+"I don't know where to cast, Uncle Larimy."
+
+Uncle Larimy pondered. He knew that Jud was home, and he divined
+David's trend of thought.
+
+"You can't stick to a plank allers, Dave, ef you wanter amount tew
+anything. Strike out bold, and swim without any life presarvers. You
+might jest as well be a sleepy old cat in a corner as to go
+smoothsailin' through life."
+
+"I feel that I have got to strike out, and at once, Uncle Larimy, but
+I don't just know where to strike."
+
+"Wal, Dave, it's what we've all got to find out fer ourselves. It's a
+leap in the dark like, and ef you don't land nowhere, take another
+leap, and keep a-goin' somewhar."
+
+David wended his way homeward, pondering over Uncle Larimy's
+philosophy. When he went with Barnabas to do the milking that night he
+broached the subject of leaving the farm.
+
+"I know how Jud feels about my being here, Uncle Barnabas."
+
+"What did he say to you?" asked the old man anxiously.
+
+"Nothing. I overheard a part of your conversation. He is right. And if
+I stay here, he will run away to sea. He told the fellows in Lafferton
+he would."
+
+"You are going to stay, Dave."
+
+"You won't like to think you drove your son away. If he gets into
+trouble, both you and I will feel we are to blame."
+
+"Dave, I see why the Jedge hez got it all cut out fer you to be a
+lawyer. You've got the argyin' habit strong. But you can't argue me
+into what I see is wrong. This is the place fer you to be, and Jud 'll
+hev to come outen his spell."
+
+"Then let me go away until he does. You must give him every chance."
+
+"Where'll you go?" asked Barnabas curiously.
+
+"I don't know, yet," said the boy, "but I'll think out a plan
+to-night."
+
+It was Jud, after all, who cut the Gordian knot, and made one of his
+welcome disappearances, which lasted until David was ready to start in
+college. His savings, that he had accumulated by field work in the
+summers and a very successful poultry business for six years, netted
+him four hundred dollars.
+
+"One hundred dollars for each year," he thought exultantly. "That
+will be ample with the work I shall find to do."
+
+Then he made known to his friends his long-cherished scheme of working
+his way through college. The Judge laughed.
+
+"Your four hundred dollars, David, will barely get you through the
+first year. After that, I shall gladly pay your expenses, for as soon
+as you are admitted to the bar you are to come into my office, of
+course."
+
+David demurred.
+
+"I shall work my way through college," he said firmly.
+
+He next told Barnabas of his intention and the Judge's offer which he
+had declined.
+
+"I'm glad you refused, Dave. You'll only be in his office till you're
+ripe fer what I kin make you. I've larnt that the law is a good
+foundation as a sure steppin' stone tew it, so you kin hev a taste of
+it. But the Jedge ain't a-goin' to pay yer expenses."
+
+"I don't mean that he shall," replied David. "I want to pay my own
+way."
+
+"I'm a-goin' to send you tew college and send you right. No starvin'
+and garret plan fer you. I've let Joe and the Jedge do fer you as much
+as they're a-goin' to, but you're mine from now on. It's what I'd do
+fer my own son if he cared fer books, and you're as near to me ez ef
+you were my son."
+
+"It's too much, Uncle Barnabas."
+
+"And, David," he continued, unheeding the interruption, "I hope you'll
+really be my son some day."
+
+A look of such exquisite happiness came into the young eyes that
+Barnabas put out his hand silently. In the firm hand-clasp they both
+understood.
+
+"I am not going to let you help me through college, though, Uncle
+Barnabas. It has always been my dream to earn my own education. When
+you pay for anything yourself, it seems so much more your own than
+when it's a gift."
+
+"Let him, Barnabas," again counseled Uncle Larimy. "Folks must feed
+diff'rent. Thar's the sweet-fed which must allers hev sugar, but
+salt's the savor for Dave. He's the kind that flourishes best in the
+shade."
+
+Janey wrote to Joe of David's plan, and there promptly came a check
+for one thousand dollars, which David as promptly returned.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+A few days before the time set for his departure David set out on a
+round of farewell visits to the country folk. It was one of those
+cold, cheerless days that intervene between the first haze of autumn
+and the golden glow of October. He had never before realized how
+lonely the shiver of wind through the poplars could sound. Two
+innovations had been made that day in the country. The rural delivery
+carrier, in his little house on wheels, had made his first delivery,
+and a track for the new electric-car line was laid through the sheep
+meadow. This inroad of progress upon the sanctity of their seclusion
+seemed sacrilegious to David, who longed to have lived in the olden
+time of log houses, with their picturesque open fires and candle
+lights. Following some vague inward call, he went out of his way to
+ride past the tiny house he had once called home, and which in all his
+ramblings he had steadfastly avoided. He had heard that the place had
+passed into the hands of a widow with an only son, and that they had
+purchased surrounding land for cultivation. He had been glad to hear
+this, and had liked to fancy the son caring for his mother as he
+himself would have cared for his mother had she lived.
+
+As he neared the little nutshell of a house his heart beat fast at the
+sight of a woman pinning clothes to the line. Her fingers, stiff and
+swollen, moved slowly. The same instinct that had guided him down this
+road made him dismount and tie his horse. The old woman came slowly
+down the little path to meet him.
+
+"I am David Dunne," he said gently, "and I used to live here. I wanted
+to come to see my old home once more."
+
+He thought that the dim eyes gazing into his were the saddest he had
+ever beheld.
+
+"Yes," she replied, with the slow, German accent, "I know of you. Come
+in."
+
+He followed her into the little sitting room, which was as barren of
+furnishings as it had been in the olden days.
+
+"Sit down," she invited.
+
+He took a chair opposite a cheap picture of a youth in uniform. A flag
+of coarse material was pinned above this portrait, and underneath was
+a roughly carved bracket on which was a glass filled with goldenrod.
+
+"You lived here with your mother," she said musingly, "and she was
+taken. I lived here with my son, and--he was taken."
+
+"Oh!" said David. "I did not know--was he--"
+
+His eyes sought the picture on the wall.
+
+"Yes," she replied, answering his unspoken question, as she lifted her
+eyes to her little shrine, "he enlisted and went to the Philippines.
+He died there of fever more than a year ago."
+
+David was silent. His brown, boyish hand shaded his eyes. It had been
+his fault that he had not heard of this old woman and the loss of her
+son. He had shrunk from all knowledge and mention of this little home
+and its inmates. The country folk had recognized and respected his
+reticence, which to people near the soil seems natural. This had been
+the only issue in his life that he had dodged, and he was bitterly
+repenting his negligence. In memory of his mother, he should have
+helped the lonely old woman.
+
+"You were left a poor, helpless boy," she continued, "and I am left a
+poor, helpless old woman. The very young and the very old meet in
+their helplessness, yet there is hope for the one--nothing for the
+other."
+
+"Yes, memories," he suggested softly, "and the pride you feel in his
+having died as he did."
+
+"There is that," she acknowledged with a sigh, "and if only I could
+live on here in this little place where we have been so happy! But I
+must leave it."
+
+"Why?" asked David quickly.
+
+"After my Carl died, things began to happen. When once they do that,
+there is no stopping. The bank at the Corners failed, and I lost my
+savings. The turkeys wandered away, the cow died, and now there's the
+mortgage. It's due to-morrow, and then--the man that holds it will
+wait no longer. So it is the poorhouse, which I have always
+dreaded."
+
+David's head lifted, and his eyes shone radiantly as he looked into
+the tired, hopeless eyes.
+
+"Your mortgage will be paid to-morrow, and--Don't you draw a pension
+for your son?"
+
+She looked at him in a dazed way.
+
+"No, there is no pension--I--"
+
+"Judge Thorne will get you one," he said optimistically, as he rose,
+ready for action, "and how much is the mortgage?"
+
+"Three hundred dollars," she said despairingly.
+
+"Almost as much as the place is worth. Who holds the mortgage?"
+
+"Deacon Prickley."
+
+"You see," said David, trying to speak casually, "I have three hundred
+dollars lying idle for which I have no use. I'll ride to town now and
+have the Judge see that the place is clear to you, and he will get you
+a pension, twelve dollars a month."
+
+The worn, seamed face lifted to his was transfigured by its look of
+beatitude.
+
+"You mustn't," she implored. "I didn't know about the pension. That
+will keep me, and I can find another little place somewhere. But the
+money you offer--no! I have heard how you have been saving to go
+through school."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"Uncle Barnabas and the Judge are anxious to pay my expenses at
+college, and--you _must_ let me. I would like to think, don't you see,
+that you are living here in my old home. It will seem to me as if I
+were doing it for _my_ mother--as I would want some boy to do for her
+if she were left--and it's my country's service he died in. I would
+rather buy this little place for you, and know that you are living
+here, than to buy anything else in the world."
+
+The old face was quite beautiful now.
+
+"Then I will let you," she said tremulously. "You see, I am a
+hard-working woman and quite strong, but folks won't believe that,
+because I am old; so they won't hire me to do their work, and they say
+I should go to the poorhouse. But to old folks there's nothing like
+having your own things and your own ways. They get to be a part of
+you. I was thinking when you rode up that it would kill me not to see
+the frost on the old poplar, and not to cover up my geraniums on the
+chill nights."
+
+Something stirred in David's heart like pain. He stooped and kissed
+her gently. Then he rode away, rejoicing that he had worked to this
+end. Four hours later he rode back to the little home.
+
+"The Judge has paid over the money to Old Skinflint Prickley," he said
+blithely, "and the place is all yours. The deacon had compounded the
+interest, which is against the laws of the state, so here are a few
+dollars to help tide you over until the Judge gets the pension for
+you."
+
+"David," she said solemnly, "an old woman's prayers may help you, and
+some day, when you are a great man, you will do great deeds, but none
+of them will be as great as that which you have done to-day."
+
+David rode home with the echo of this benediction in his ears. He had
+asked the Judge to keep the transaction secret, but of course the
+Judge told Barnabas, who in turn informed Uncle Larimy.
+
+"I told the boy when his ma died," said Uncle Larimy, "that things go
+'skew sometimes, but that the sun would shine. The sun will allers be
+a-shinin' fer him when he does such deeds as this."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The fare to his college town, his books, and his tuition so depleted
+David's capital of one hundred dollars that he hastened to deposit the
+balance for an emergency. Then he set about to earn his "keep," as he
+had done in the country, but there were many students bent on a
+similar quest and he soon found that the demand for labor was exceeded
+by the supply.
+
+Before the end of the first week he was able to write home that he had
+found a nice, quiet lodging in exchange for the care of a furnace in
+winter and the trimming of a lawn in other seasons, and that he had
+secured a position as waiter to pay for his meals; also that there was
+miscellaneous employment to pay for his washing and incidentals.
+
+He didn't go into details and explain that the "nice quiet lodging"
+was a third-floor rear whose gables gave David's six feet of length
+but little leeway. It was quiet because the third floor was not
+heated, and its occupants therefore stayed away as much as possible.
+His services as waiter were required only at dinner time, in exchange
+for which he received that meal. His breakfast and luncheon he
+procured as best he could; sometimes he dispensed with them entirely.
+Crackers, milk, and fruit, as the cheapest articles of diet, appeared
+oftenest on his menu. Sometimes he went fishing and surreptitiously
+smuggled the cream of the catch up to his little abode, for Mrs.
+Tupps' "rules to roomers," as affixed to the walls, were explicit: "No
+cooking or washing allowed in rooms." But Mrs. Tupps, like her fires,
+was nearly always out, for she was a member of the Woman's Relief
+Corps, Ladies' Aid, Ladies' Guild, Woman's League, Suffragette
+Society, Pioneer Society, and Eastern Star. At the meetings of these
+various societies she was constant in attendance, so in her absence
+her roomers "made hay," as David termed it, cooking their provender
+and illicitly performing laundry work in the bathtub. Still, there
+must always be "on guard" duty, for Mrs. Tupps was a stealthy stalker.
+One saw her not, but now and then there was a faint rustle on the
+stair. David's eyes and ears, trained to keenness, were patient and
+vigilant, so he was generally chosen as sentinel, and he acquired new
+caution, adroitness, and a quietness of movement.
+
+There had been three or four close calls. Once, she had knocked at
+his door as he was in the act of boiling eggs over the gas jet. In
+the twinkling of an eye the saucepan was thrust under the bed, and
+David, sweet and serene of expression, opened the door to the
+inquisitive-eyed Tupps.
+
+"I came to borrow a pen," she said shamelessly, her eyes penetrating
+the cracks and crevices of the little room.
+
+David politely regretted that he used an indelible pencil and
+possessed no pens.
+
+In the act of removing all records and remains of feasts, David became
+an adept. Neat, unsuspicious looking parcels were made and conveyed,
+after retiring hours, to a near-by vacant lot, where once had been
+visible an excavation for a cellar, but this had been filled to street
+level with tin cans, paper bags, butter bowls, cracker cases, egg
+shells, and pie plates from the House of Tupps.
+
+His miscellaneous employment, mentioned in his letter, was any sort of
+work he could find to do.
+
+David became popular with professors by reason of his record in
+classes and the application and concentration he brought to his
+studies. His prowess in all sports, his fairness, and the spirit of
+_camaraderie_ he always maintained with his associates, made him a
+general favorite. He wore fairly good clothes, was well groomed, and
+always in good spirits, so of his privations and poverty only one or
+two of those closest to him were even suspicious. He was entirely
+reticent on the subject, though open and free in all other discourse,
+and permitted no encroachment on personal matters. One or two chance
+offenders intuitively perceived a slight but impassable barrier.
+
+"Dunne has grown a little gaunt-eyed since he first came here," said
+one of his chosen friends to a classmate one evening. "He's outdoors
+enough to counteract overstudy. But do you suppose he has enough to
+eat? So many of these fellows live on next to nothing."
+
+"I shouldn't be surprised if he were on rations. You know he always
+makes some excuse when we invite him to a spread. He's too proud to
+accept favors and not reciprocate, I believe."
+
+David overheard these remarks, and a very long walk was required to
+restore his serenity. During this walk he planned to get some extra
+work that would insure him compensation requisite to provide a modest
+spread so that he might allay their suspicions. Upon his return to his
+lodgings he found an enormous box which had come by express from
+Lafferton. It contained Pennyroyal's best culinary efforts; also four
+dozen eggs, a two-pound pat of butter, coffee, and a can of cream.
+
+He propitiated Mrs. Tupps by the proffer of a dozen of the eggs and
+told her of his desire to entertain his friends. It would be
+impossible to do this in his room, for when he lay in bed he could
+touch every piece of furniture with but little effort.
+
+David had become his landlady's confidant and refuge in time of
+trouble, and she was willing to allow him the privilege of the dining
+room.
+
+"I am going away to-night for a couple of days, but I would rather you
+wouldn't mention it to the others. You may have the use of the dining
+room and the dishes."
+
+David's friends were surprised to receive an off-hand invitation from
+him to "drop in for a little country spread." They were still more
+surprised when they beheld the long table with its sumptuous array of
+edibles,--raised biscuits, golden butter, cold chicken, pickles,
+jelly, sugared doughnuts, pork cake, gold and silver cake, crullers,
+mince pie, apple pie, cottage cheese, cider, and coffee.
+
+"It looks like a county fair exhibit, Dunne," said a city-bred chap.
+
+Six healthy young appetites did justice to this repast and insured
+David's acceptance of five invitations to dine. It took Mrs. Tupps and
+David fully a week to consume the remnants of this collation. The eggs
+he bestowed upon an anemic-faced lodger who had been prescribed a milk
+and egg diet, but with eggs at fifty cents a dozen he had not filled
+his prescription.
+
+[Illustration: "_David's friends were surprised to receive an off-hand
+invitation
+from him to 'drop in for a little country spread'_"]
+
+At the end of the college year David went back to the farm, and a snug
+sense of comfort and a home-longing filled him at the sight of the old
+farmhouse, its lawn stretching into gardens, its gardens into
+orchards, orchards into meadows, and meadows into woodlands. Through
+the long, hot summer he tilled the fields, and invested the proceeds
+in clothes and books for the ensuing year.
+
+There followed three similar years of a hand-to-mouth existence, the
+privations of which he endured in silence. There were little
+occasional oases, such as boxes from Pennyroyal, or extra revenue now
+and then from tutoring, but there were many, many days when his
+healthy young appetite clamored in vain for appeasement. On such days
+came the temptation to borrow from Barnabas the money to finish his
+course in comfort, but the young conqueror never yielded to this
+enticement. He grew stronger and sturdier in spirit after each
+conflict, but lost something from his young buoyancy and elasticity
+which he could never regain. His struggles added a touch of grimness
+to his old sense of humor, but when he was admitted to the bar he was
+a man in courage, strength, and endurance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+It seemed to David, when he was at the farm again, that in his absence
+time had stood still, except with Janey. She was a slender slip of a
+girl, gentle voiced and soft hearted. Her eyes were infinitely blue
+and lovely, and there was a glad little ring in her voice when she
+greeted "Davey."
+
+M'ri gave a cry of surprised pleasure when she saw her former charge.
+He was tall, lithe, supple, and hard-muscled. His face was not very
+expressive in repose, but showed a quiet strength when lighted by the
+keenness of his serious, brown eyes and the sweetness of his smile.
+His color was a deep-sea tan.
+
+"It seems so good to be alive, Aunt M'ri. I thought I was weaned away
+from farm life until I bit into one of those snow apples from the old
+tree by the south corner of the orchard. Then I knew I was home."
+
+Pennyroyal shed her first visible tear.
+
+"I am glad you are home again, David," she sniffed. "You were always
+such a clean boy."
+
+"I missed you more'n any one did, David," acknowledged Miss Rhody. "Ef
+I hed been a Catholic I should a felt as ef the confessional hed been
+took from me. I ain't hed no one to talk secret like to excep' when
+Joe comes onct a year. He ain't been fer a couple of years, either,
+but he sent me anuther black dress the other day--silk, like the last
+one. To think of little Joe Forbes a-growin' up and keepin' me in silk
+dresses!"
+
+"I'll buy your next one for you," declared David emphatically.
+
+The next day after his return from college David started his legal
+labors under the watchful eye of the Judge. He made a leap-frog
+progress in acquiring an accurate knowledge of legal lore. He worked
+and waited patiently for the Judge's recognition of his readiness to
+try his first case, and at last the eventful time came.
+
+"No; there isn't the slightest prospect of his winning it," the Judge
+told his wife that night.
+
+"The prosecution has strong evidence, and we have nothing--barely a
+witness of any account."
+
+"Then the poor man will be convicted and David will gain no glory,"
+lamented M'ri. "It means so much to a young lawyer to win his first
+case."
+
+The Judge smiled.
+
+"Neither of them needs any sympathy. Miggs ought to have been sent
+over the road long ago. David's got to have experience before he gains
+glory."
+
+"How did you come to take such a case?" asked M'ri, for the Judge was
+quite exclusive in his acceptance of clients.
+
+"It was David's doings," said the Judge, with a frown that had a smile
+lurking behind it.
+
+"Why did he wish you to take the case?" persisted M'ri.
+
+"As near as I can make out," replied the Judge, with a slight
+softening of his grim features, "it was because Miggs' wife takes in
+washing when Miggs is celebrating."
+
+M'ri walked quickly to the window, murmuring some unintelligible sound
+of endearment.
+
+On the day of the summing-up at the trial the court room was crowded.
+There were the habitual court hangers on, David's country friends _en
+masse_, a large filling in at the back of the representatives of the
+highways and byways, associates of the popular wrongdoer, and the
+legal lore of the town, with the good-humored patronage usually
+bestowed by the profession on the newcomer to their ranks.
+
+As the Judge had said, his client was conceded to be slated for
+conviction. If he had made the argument himself he would have made it
+in his usual cool, well-poised manner. But David, although he knew
+Miggs to be a veteran of the toughs, felt sure of his innocence in
+this case, and he was determined to battle for him, not for the sake
+of justice alone, but for the sake of the tired-looking washerwoman he
+had seen bending over the tubs. This was an occupation she had to
+resort to only in her husband's times of indulgence, for he was a wage
+earner in his days of soberness.
+
+When David arose to speak it seemed to the people assembled that the
+coil of evidence, as reviewed by the prosecutor in his argument, was
+drawn too closely for any power to extricate the victim.
+
+At the first words of the young lawyer, uttered in a voice of winning
+mellowness, the public forgot the facts in the case. Swayed by the
+charm of David's personality, a current of new-born sympathy for the
+prisoner ran through the court room.
+
+David came up close to the jury and, as he addressed them, he seemed
+to be oblivious of the presence of any one else in the room. It was as
+though he were telling them, his friends, something he alone knew, and
+that he was sure of their belief in his statements.
+
+"For all the world," thought M'ri, listening, "as he used to tell
+stories when he was a boy. He'd fairly make you believe they were
+true."
+
+To be sure the jury were all his friends; they had known him when
+he was little "barefoot Dave Dunne." Still, they were captivated by
+this new oratory, warm, vivid, and inspiring, delivered to the
+accompaniment of dulcet and seductive tones that transported them
+into an enchanted world. Their senses were stirred in the same way
+they would be if a flag were unfurled.
+
+"Sounds kind o' like orgin music," whispered Miss Rhody.
+
+Yet underneath the eloquence was a logical simplicity, a keen sifting
+of facts, the exposure of flaws in the circumstantial evidence. There
+was a force back of what he said like the force back of the
+projectile. About the form of the hardened sinner, Miggs, David
+drew a circle of innocence that no one ventured to cross. Simply,
+convincingly, and concisely he summed up, with a forceful appeal to
+their intelligence, their honor, and their justice.
+
+The reply by the assistant to the prosecutor was perfunctory and
+ineffective. The charge of the judge was neutral. The jury left the
+room, and were out eight and one-quarter minutes. As they filed in,
+the foreman sent a triumphant telepathic message to David before he
+quietly drawled out:
+
+"Not guilty, yer Honor."
+
+The first movement was from Mrs. Miggs. And she came straight to
+David, not to the jury.
+
+"David," said the Judge, who had cleared his throat desperately and
+wiped his glasses carefully, at the look in the eyes of the young
+lawyer when they had rested on the defendant's wife, "hereafter our
+office will be the refuge for all the riffraff in the country."
+
+This was his only comment, but the Judge did not hesitate to turn over
+any case to him thereafter.
+
+When David had added a few more victories to his first one, Jud made
+one of his periodical diversions by an offense against the law which
+was far more serious in nature than his previous misdeeds had been.
+M'ri came out to the farm to discuss the matter.
+
+"Barnabas, Martin thinks you had better let the law take its course
+this time. He says it's the only procedure left untried to reform Jud.
+He is sure he can get a light sentence for him--two years."
+
+"M'ri," said Barnabas, in a voice vibrating with reproach, "do you
+want Jud to go to prison?"
+
+M'ri paled.
+
+"I want to do what is best for him, Barnabas. Martin thinks it will be
+a salutary lesson."
+
+"I wonder, M'ri," said Barnabas slowly, "if the Judge had a son of his
+own, he would try to reform him by putting him behind bars."
+
+"Oh, Barnabas!" protested M'ri, with a burst of tears.
+
+"He's still my boy, if he is wild, M'ri."
+
+"But, Barnabas, Martin's patience is exhausted. He has got him out of
+trouble so many times--and, oh, Barnabas, he says he won't under any
+circumstances take the case! He is ashamed to face the court and jury
+with such a palpably guilty client. I have pleaded with him, but I
+can't influence him. You know how set he can be!"
+
+"Wal, there are other lawyers," said Barnabas grimly.
+
+[Illustration: "_He kept his word. Jud was cleared_"]
+
+David had remained silent and constrained during this conversation,
+the lines of his young face setting like steel. Suddenly he left the
+house and paced up and down in the orchard, to wrestle once more with
+the old problem of his boyhood days. It was different now. Then it had
+been a question of how much he must stand from Jud for the sake of the
+benefits bestowed by the offender's father. Now it meant a sacrifice
+of principle. He had made his boyish boast that he would defend only
+those who were wrongfully accused. To take this case would be to bring
+his wagon down from the star. Then suddenly he found himself disposed
+to arraign himself for selfishly clinging to his ideals.
+
+He went back into the house, where M'ri was still tearfully arguing
+and protesting. He came up to Barnabas.
+
+"I will clear Jud, if you will trust the case to me, Uncle Barnabas."
+
+Barnabas grasped his hand.
+
+"Bless you, Dave, my boy," he said. "I wanted you to, but Jud has
+been--wal, I didn't like to ask you."
+
+"David," said M'ri, when they were alone, "Martin said you wouldn't
+take a case where you were convinced of the guilt of the client."
+
+"I shall take this case," was David's quiet reply.
+
+"Really, David, Martin thinks it will be best for Jud--"
+
+"I don't want to do what is best for Jud, Aunt M'ri, I want to do what
+is best for Uncle Barnabas. It's the first chance I ever had to do
+anything for him."
+
+When Judge Thorne found that David was determined to defend Jud, he
+gave him some advice:
+
+"You must get counter evidence, if you can, David. If you have any
+lingering idea that you can appeal to the jury on account of Barnabas
+being Jud's father, root out that idea. There's no chance of rural
+juries tempering justice with mercy. With them it's an eye for an eye,
+every time."
+
+David had an infinitely harder task in clearing Jud than he had had in
+defending Miggs. The evidence was clear, the witnesses sure and wary,
+and the prisoner universally detested save by his evil-minded
+companions, but these obstacles brought out in full force all David's
+indomitable will and alertness. He tipped up and entrapped the
+prosecution's witnesses with lightning dexterity. One of them chanced
+to be a man whom David had befriended, and he aided him by replying
+shrewdly in Jud's favor.
+
+But it was Jud himself who proved to be David's trump card. He was
+keen, crafty, and quick to seize his lawyer's most subtle suggestions.
+His memory was accurate, and with David's steering he avoided all
+traps set for him on cross examination. When David stood before the
+jury for the most stubborn fight he had yet made, his mother's last
+piece of advice--all she had to bequeath to him--permeated every
+effort. He put into his argument all the compelling force within him.
+There were no ornate sentences this time, but he concentrated his
+powers of logic and persuasiveness upon his task. The jury was out two
+hours, during which time Barnabas and Jud sat side by side, pale and
+anxious, but upheld by David's confident assurance of victory.
+
+He kept his word. Jud was cleared.
+
+"You're a smart lawyer, Dave," commented Uncle Larimy.
+
+David looked at him whimsically.
+
+"I had a smart client, Uncle Larimy."
+
+"That's what you did, Dave, but he's gettin' too dernd smart. You'd a
+done some of us a favor if you'd let him git sent up."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+"Dave," said Barnabas on one memorable day, "the Jedge hez hed his
+innings trying to make you a lawyer. Now it's my turn."
+
+"All right, Uncle Barnabas, I am ready."
+
+"Hain't you hed enough of law, Dave? You've given it a good trial, and
+showed what you could do. It'll be a big help to you to know the law,
+and it'll allers be sumthin' to fall back on when things get slack,
+but ain't you pinin' fer somethin' a leetle spryer?"
+
+"Yes, I am," was the frank admission. "I like the excitement attending
+a case, and the fight to win, but it's drudgery between times--like
+soldiering in time of peace."
+
+"Wal, Dave, I've got a job fer you wuth hevin', and one that starts
+toward what you air a-goin' to be."
+
+David's breath came quickly.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Thar's no reason at all why you can't go to legislatur' and make new
+laws instead of settin' in the Jedge's office and larnin' to dodge old
+ones. I'm a-runnin' politics in these parts, and I'm a-goin' to git
+you nominated. After that, you'll go the hull gamut--so 't will be up
+the ladder and over the wall fer you, Dave."
+
+So, David, to the astonishment of the Judge, put his foot on the
+first round of the political ladder as candidate for the legislature.
+At the same time Janey returned from the school in the East, where
+she had been "finished," and David's heart beat an inspiring
+tattoo every time he looked at her, but he was nominated by a
+speech-loving, speech-demanding district, and he had so many
+occasions for oratory that only snatches of her companionship were
+possible throughout the summer.
+
+Joe came on to join in the excitement attending the campaign. It had
+been some time since his last visit, and he scarcely recognized David
+when he met him at the Lafferton station.
+
+"Well, Dave," said the ranchman, "if you are as strong and sure as you
+look, you won't need my help in the campaign."
+
+"I always need you, Joe. But you haven't changed in the least, unless
+you look more serious than ever, perhaps."
+
+"It's the outdoor life does that. Take a field-bred lad, he always
+shies a bit at people."
+
+"Your horse does, too, I notice. He arrived safely a week ago, and I
+put him up at the livery here in Lafferton. I was afraid he would
+demoralize all the horses at the farm."
+
+"Good! I'll ride out this evening. I have a little business to attend
+to here in town, and I want to see the Judge and his wife, of
+course."
+
+When the western sky line gleamed in crimson glory Joe came riding at
+a long lope up the lane. He sat his spirited horse easily, one leg
+thrown over the horn of his saddle. As he neared the house, a
+thrashing machine started up. The desert-bred horse shied, and
+performed maneuvers terrifying to Janey, but Joe in the saddle was
+ever a part of the horse. Quietly and impassively he guided the
+frightened animal until the machine was passed. Then he slid from the
+horse and came up to Janey and David, who were awaiting his coming.
+
+"This can never be little Janey!" he exclaimed, holding her hand
+reverently.
+
+"I haven't changed as much as Davey has," she replied, dimpling.
+
+"Oh, yes, you have! You are a woman. David is still a boy, in spite of
+his six feet."
+
+"You don't know about Davey!" she said breathlessly. "He has won all
+kinds of law cases, and he is going to the legislature."
+
+Joe laughed.
+
+"I repeat, he is still a boy."
+
+On the morrow David started forth on a round of speech making,
+canvassing the entire district. He returned at the wane of October's
+golden glow for the round-up, as Joe termed the finish of the
+campaign. The flaunting crimson of the maples, the more sedate tinge
+of the oaks, the vivid yellow of the birches, the squashes piled up on
+the farmhouse porches, and the fields filled with pyramidal stacks of
+cornstalks brought a vague sense of loneliness as he rode out from
+Lafferton to the farm. He left his horse at the barn and came up to
+the house through the old orchard as the long, slanting rays of
+sunlight were making afternoon shadows of all who crossed their path.
+
+He found Janey sitting beneath their favorite tree. An open book lay
+beside her. She was gazing abstractedly into space, with a new look in
+her star-like eyes.
+
+David's big, untouched heart gave a quick leap. He took up the book
+and with an exultant little laugh discovered that it was a book of
+poems! Janey, who could never abide fairy stories, reading poetry!
+Surprised and embarrassed, after a shy greeting she hurried toward the
+house, her cheeks flaming. Something very beautiful and breath-taking
+came into David's thoughts at that moment.
+
+He was roused from his beatific state by the approach of Barnabas, so
+he was obliged to concentrate his attention on giving a resume of his
+tour. Then the Judge telephoned for him to come to his office, and he
+was unable to finish his business there until dusk. The night was
+clear and frost touched. He left his horse in the lane and walked up
+to the house. As he came on to the porch he looked in through the
+window. The bright fire on the hearth, the soft glow of the shaded
+lamp, and the fair-haired girl seated by a table, needlework in hand,
+gave him a hunger for a hearth of his own.
+
+Suddenly the scene shifted. Joe came in from the next room. Janey rose
+to her feet, a look of love lighting her face as she went to the arms
+outstretched to receive her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+David went back to Lafferton. The little maid informed him that the
+Judge and his wife were out for the evening; but there was always a
+room in readiness for him, so he sat alone by the window, staring into
+the lighted street, trying to comprehend that Janey was not for him.
+
+It was late the next morning when he came downstairs.
+
+"I am glad, David, you decided to stay here last night," said M'ri,
+whose eyes were full of a yearning solicitude.
+
+She sat down at the table with him while he drank his coffee.
+
+"David."
+
+She spoke in a desperate tone, that caused him to glance keenly at
+her.
+
+"If you have anything to tell," he said quietly, "it's a good plan to
+tell it at once."
+
+"Since you have been away Joe and Janey have been together
+constantly. It seems to have been a case of mutual love. David, they
+are engaged."
+
+"So," he said gravely, "I am to lose my little sister. Joe is a man in
+a thousand."
+
+"But, David, I had set my heart on Janey's marrying you, from that
+very first day when you went to school together and you carried her
+books. Do you remember?"
+
+"Yes," he replied whimsically, "but even then Joe met us and took her
+away from me. But I must drive out and congratulate them."
+
+M'ri gazed after him in perplexity as he left the house.
+
+"I wonder," she mused, "if I ever quite understood David!"
+
+Miss Rhody called to David as he was passing her house and bade him
+come in.
+
+"You've hed a hard trip," she said, with a keen glance into his tired,
+boyish eyes.
+
+"Very hard, Miss Rhody."
+
+"You have heard about Janey--and Joe?"
+
+"Aunt M'ri just told me," he said, wincing ever so slightly.
+
+"They was all sot on your being her sweetheart, except me and her--and
+Joe."
+
+"Why not you, Miss Rhody?"
+
+"You ain't never been in love with Janey--not the way you'll love some
+day. When I was sick last fall Almiry Green come over to read to me
+and she brung a book of poems. I never keered much for po'try, and
+Almiry, she didn't nuther, but she hed jest ketched Widower Pankey,
+and so she thought it was proper to be readin' po'try. She read
+somethin' about fust love bein' a primrose, and a-fallin' to make way
+fer the real rose, and I thought to myself: 'That's David. His feelin'
+fer Janey is jest a primrose.'"
+
+David's eyes were inscrutable, but she continued:
+
+"I knowed she hed allers fancied Joe sence she was a little tot and he
+give her them beads. When Joe's name was spoke she was allers
+shy-like. She wuz never shy-like with you."
+
+"No," admitted David wearily, "but I must go on to the farm now, Miss
+Rhody. I will come in again soon."
+
+When he came into the sitting room of the farmhouse, where he found
+Joe and Janey, the rare smile that comes with the sweetness of
+renunciation was on his lips. After he had congratulated them, he
+asked for Barnabas.
+
+"He just started for the woods," said Joe. "I think he is on his way
+to Uncle Larimy's."
+
+David hastened to overtake him, and soon caught sight of the bent
+figure walking slowly over the stubbled field.
+
+"Uncle Barnabas!" he called.
+
+Barnabas turned and waited.
+
+"Did you see Janey and Joe?" he asked, looking keenly into the
+shadowed eyes.
+
+"Yes; Aunt M'ri had told me."
+
+"When?"
+
+"This morning. Joe's a man after your own heart, Uncle Barnabas."
+
+"It's you I wanted fer her," said the old man bluntly. "I never dreamt
+of its bein' enybody else. It's an orful disapp'intment to me, Dave.
+I'd ruther see you her man than to see you what I told you long ago I
+meant fer you to be."
+
+"And I, too, Uncle Barnabas," said David, with slow earnestness,
+"would rather be your son than to be governor of this state!"
+
+"You did care, then, David," said the old man sadly. "It don't seem to
+be much of a surprise to you."
+
+"Uncle Barnabas, I will tell you something which I want no one else to
+know. I came back last evening and drove out here. I looked in the
+window, and saw her as she sat at work. It came into my heart to go in
+then and ask her to marry me, instead of waiting until after election
+as I had planned. Then Joe came in and she--went to him. I returned to
+Lafferton. It was daylight before I had it out with myself."
+
+"Dave! I thought I knew you better than any of them. It's been a purty
+hard test, but you won't let it spile your life?"
+
+"No, I won't, Uncle Barnabas. I owe it to you, if not to myself, to go
+straight ahead as you have mapped it out for me."
+
+"Bless you, Dave! You're the right stuff!"
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+In January David took his seat in the House of Representatives, of
+which he was the youngest member. It was not intended by that august
+body that he should take any role but the one tacitly conceded to him
+of making silver-tongued oratory on the days when the public would
+crowd the galleries to hear an all-important measure, the "Griggs
+Bill," discussed. The committee were to give him the facts and the
+general line of argument, and he was to dress it up in his fantastic
+way. They were entirely willing that he should have the applause from
+the public as well as the credit of the victory; all they cared for
+was the certainty of the passage of the bill.
+
+David's cool, lawyer-like mind saw through all these manipulations and
+machinations even if he were only a political tenderfoot. As other
+minor measures came up he voted for or against them as his better
+judgment dictated, but all his leisure hours were devoted to the
+investigation and study of the one big bill which was to be rushed
+through at the end of the session. He pored over the status of the
+law, found out the policies and opinions of other states on the
+subject, and listened attentively to all arguments, but he never took
+part in the discussions and he was very guarded in giving an
+expression of his views, an attitude which pleased the promoters of
+the bill until it began to occur to them that his caution came from
+penetration into their designs and, perhaps, from intent to thwart
+them.
+
+"He has ketched on," mournfully stated an old-timer from the third
+district. "I'm allers mistrustful of these young critters. They are
+sure to balk on the home stretch."
+
+"Well, one good thing," grinned a city member, "it breaks their
+record, and they don't get another entry."
+
+David had made a few short speeches on some of the bills, and those
+who had read in the papers of the wonderful powers of oratory of the
+young member from the eleventh flocked to hear him. They were
+disappointed. His speeches were brief, forceful, and logical, but
+entirely barren of rhetorical effect. The promoters of the Griggs Bill
+began to wonder, but concluded he was saving all his figures of speech
+to sugarcoat their obnoxious measure. It occurred to them, too, that
+if by chance he should oppose them his bare-handed way of dealing with
+subterfuges and his clear presentation of facts would work harm. They
+counted, however, on being able to convince him that his future status
+in the life political depended upon his cooperation with them in
+pushing this bill through.
+
+Finally he was approached, and then the bomb was thrown. He quietly
+and emphatically told them he should fight the bill, single handed if
+necessary. Recriminations, arguments, threats, and inducements--all
+were of no avail.
+
+"Let him hang himself if he wants to," growled one of the committee.
+"He hasn't influence enough to knock us out. We've got the
+majority."
+
+The measure was one that would radically affect the future interests
+of the state, and was being watched and studied by the people, who had
+not, as yet, however, realized its significance or its far-reaching
+power. The intent of the promoters of the Griggs Bill was to leave the
+people unenlightened until it should have become a law.
+
+"Dunne won't do us any harm," argued the father of the bill on the
+eventful day. "He's been saving all his skyrockets for this
+celebration. He'll get lots of applause from the women folks," looking
+up at the solidly packed gallery, "and his speech will be copied in
+all the papers, and that'll be the reward he's looking for."
+
+When David arose to speak against the Griggs Bill he didn't look the
+youngster he had been pictured. His tall, lithe, compelling figure was
+drawn to its full height. His eyes darkened to intensity with the
+gravity of the task before him; the stern lines of his mouth bespoke
+a master of the situation and compelled confidence in his knowledge
+and ability.
+
+The speech delivered in his masterful voice was not so much in
+opposition to the bill as it was an exposure of it. He bared it
+ruthlessly and thoroughly, but he didn't use his youthful hypnotic
+periods of persuasive eloquence that had been wont to sway juries and
+to creep into campaign speeches. His wits had been sharpened in the
+last few months, and his keen-edged thrusts, hurled rapier-like,
+brought a wince to even the most hardened of veteran members. It was a
+complete enlightenment in plain words to a plain people--a concise and
+convincing protest.
+
+When he finished there was a tempest of arguments from the other side,
+but there was not a point he had not foreseen, and as attack only
+brought out the iniquities of the measure, they let the bill come to
+ballot. The measure was defeated, and for days the papers were
+headlined with David Dunne's name, and accounts of how the veterans
+had been routed by the "tenderfoot from the eleventh."
+
+After his dip into political excitement legal duties became a little
+irksome to David, especially after the wedding of Joe and Janey had
+taken place. In the fall occurred the death of the United States
+senator from the western district of the state. A special session of
+the legislature was to be convened for the purpose of pushing through
+an important measure, and the election of a successor to fill the
+vacancy would take place at the same time. The usual "certain rich
+man," anxious for a career, aspired, and, as he was backed by the
+state machine as well as by the covert influence of two or three of
+the congressmen, his election seemed assured.
+
+There was an opposing candidate, the choice of the people, however,
+who was gathering strength daily.
+
+"We've got to head off this man Dunne some way," said the manager of
+the "certain rich man." "He can't beat us, but with him out of the way
+it would be easy sailing, and all opposition would come over to us on
+the second ballot."
+
+"Isn't there a way to win him over?" asked a congressman who was
+present.
+
+The introducer of the memorable measure of the last session shook his
+head negatively.
+
+"He can't be persuaded, threatened, or bought."
+
+"Then let's get him out of the way."
+
+"Kidnap him?"
+
+"Decoy him gently from your path. The consul of a little seaport in
+South America has resigned, and at a word from me to Senator Hollis,
+who would pass it on to the President, this appointment could be given
+to your young bucker, and he'd be out of your way for at least three
+years."
+
+"That would be too good to be true, but he wouldn't bite at such bait.
+His aspirations are all in a state line. He's got the usual career
+mapped out,--state senator, secretary of state, governor--possibly
+President."
+
+"You can never tell," replied the congressman sagaciously. "A
+presidential appointment, the alluring word 'consul,' a foreign
+residence, all sound very enticing and important to a young country
+man. The Dunne type likes to be the big frog in the puddle. This
+stripling you are all so afraid of hasn't cut all his wisdom teeth
+yet. It's worth a try. I'll tackle him."
+
+The morning after this conversation, as David walked down to the
+Judge's office he felt very lonely--a part of no plan. It was a mood
+that made him ripe for the purpose of the congressman whom he found
+awaiting him.
+
+"I've been wanting to meet you for a long time, Mr. Dunne," said the
+congressman obsequiously, after the Judge had introduced him. "We've
+heard a great deal about you down in Washington since your defeat of
+the Griggs Bill, and we are looking for great things from you. Of
+course, we have to keep our eye on what is going on back here."
+
+The Judge looked his surprise at this speech, and was still more
+mystified at receiving a knowing wink from David.
+
+After some preliminary talk the congressman finally made known his
+errand, and tendered David the offer of a consulship in South
+America.
+
+At this juncture the Judge was summoned to the telephone in another
+room. When he returned the congressman had taken his departure.
+
+"Behold," grinned David, "the future consul of--I really can't
+pronounce it. I am going to look it up now in your atlas."
+
+"Where is Gilbert?" asked the Judge.
+
+"Gone to wire Hilliard before I can change my mind. You see, it's a
+scheme to get me out of the road and I--well I happen to be willing to
+get out of the road just now. I am not in a fighting mood."
+
+"Consular service," remarked the Judge oracularly, "is generally
+considered a sort of clearing house for undesirable politicians. The
+consuls to those little ports are, as a rule, very poor."
+
+"Then a good consul like your junior partner will loom up among so
+many poor ones."
+
+Barnabas was inwardly disturbed by this move from David, but he
+philosophically argued that "the boy was young and 't wouldn't harm
+him to salt down awhile."
+
+"Dave," he counseled in farewell, "I hope you'll come to love some
+good gal. Every man orter hev a hearth of his own. This stretchin'
+yer feet afore other folks' firesides is unnateral and lonesome.
+Thar's no place so snug and safe fer a man as his own home, with a
+good wife to keep it. But I want you tew make me a promise, Dave. When
+I see the time's ripe fer pickin' in politics, will you come back?"
+
+"I will, Uncle Barnabas," promised David solemnly.
+
+The heartiest approval came from Joe.
+
+"That's right, Dave, see all you can of the world instead of settling
+down in a pasture lot at Lafferton."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Gilbert, complacent and affable, returned to Washington accompanied by
+David. A month later the newly made consul sailed from New York for
+South America. He landed at a South American seaport that had a fine
+harbor snugly guarded by jutting cliffs skirting the base of a hill
+barren and severe in aspect.
+
+As he walked down the narrow, foreign streets thronged with a strange
+people, and saw the structures with their meaningless signs, he began
+to feel a wave of homesickness. Then, looking up, he felt that little
+inner thrill that comes from seeing one's flag in a foreign land.
+
+"And that is why I am here," he thought, "to keep that flag flying."
+
+He resolutely started out on the first day to keep the flag flying in
+the manner befitting the kind of a consul he meant to be. He
+maintained a strict watch over the commercial conditions, and his
+reports of consular news were promptly rendered in concise and
+instructive form. His native tact and inherent courtesy won him favor
+with the government, his hospitality and kindly intent conciliated the
+natives, and he was soon also accorded social privileges. He began to
+enjoy life. His duties were interesting, and his leisure was devoted
+to the pursuit of novel pleasures.
+
+Fletcher Wilder, the son of the president of an American mining
+company, was down there ostensibly to look after his father's
+interests, but in reality to take out pleasure parties in his trim
+little yacht, and David soon came to be the most welcome guest that
+set foot on its deck.
+
+At the end of a year, when his duties had become a matter of routine
+and his life had lost the charm of novelty, David's ambitions started
+from their slumbers, though not this time in a political way. Wilder
+had cruised away, and the young consul was conscious of a sense of
+aloneness. He spent his evenings on his spacious veranda, from where
+he could see the moonlight making a rippling road of silver across the
+black water. The sensuous beauty of the tropical nights brought him
+back to his early Land of Dreams, and the pastime that he had been
+forced to relinquish for action now appealed to him with overwhelming
+force and fascination. But the dreams were a man's dreams, not the
+fleeting fancies of a boy. They continued to possess and absorb him
+until one night, when he was looking above the mountains at one lone
+star that shone brighter than the rest, he was moved for the first
+time to give material shape and form to his conceptions. The impulse
+led to execution.
+
+"I must get it out of my system," he explained half apologetically to
+himself as he began the writing of a novel. To this task, as to
+everything else he had undertaken, he brought the entire concentration
+of his mind and energy, until the book soon began to seem real to
+him--more real than anything he had done. As he was copying the last
+page for the last time, Fletcher sailed into the harbor for a week of
+farewell before returning to New York.
+
+"What have you been doing for amusement these last six months,
+Dunne?" he asked as he dropped into David's house.
+
+"You'd never guess," said David, "what your absence drove me to. I've
+written a book--a novel."
+
+"Let me take it back to the hotel with me to-night. I haven't been
+sleeping well lately, and it may--"
+
+"If it serves as a soporific," said David gravely, as he handed him
+the bulky package, "my labor will not have been in vain."
+
+The next morning Wilder came again into David's office.
+
+"I fear you didn't sleep well, after all," observed David, looking at
+his visitor's heavy-lidded eyes.
+
+"No, darn you, Dunne. I took up your manuscript and I never laid it
+down until the first streaks of dawn. Then when I went to bed I lay
+awake thinking it all over. Why, Dunne, it's the best book I ever
+read!"
+
+"I wish," David replied with a whimsical smile, "that you were a
+publisher."
+
+"Speaking of publishers, that's why I didn't bring the manuscript
+back. I sail in a week, and I want you to let me take it to a
+publisher I know in New York. He will give it a prompt reading."
+
+"If it wouldn't bother you too much, I wish you would. You see, it
+would take so long for it to come back here and be sent out again each
+time it is rejected."
+
+"Rejected!" scoffed Wilder. "You wait and see! Aren't you going to
+dedicate it?"
+
+David hesitated, his eyes stealing dreamily out across the bay to the
+horizon line.
+
+"I wonder," he said meditatively, "if the person to whom it is
+dedicated--every word of it--wouldn't know without the inscription."
+
+"No," objected Fletcher, "you should have it appear out of compliment."
+
+He smiled as he wrote on a piece of paper: "To T. L. P."
+
+"The initials of your sweetheart?" quizzed Fletcher.
+
+"No; when I was a little chap I used to spin yarns. These are the
+initials of one who was my most absorbed listener."
+
+Wilder raised anchor and sailed back to the states. At the expiration
+of two months he wrote David that his book had been accepted. In time
+ten bound copies of his novel, his allotment from the publishers,
+brought him a thrill of indescribable pleasure. The next mail brought
+papers with glowing reviews and letters of commendation and
+congratulations. Next came a good-sized check, and the information
+that his book was a "best seller."
+
+The night that this information was received he went up to the top of
+the hill that jutted over the harbor and listened to the song of the
+waves. Two years in this land of liquid light--a land of burning days
+and silent, sapphired nights, a land of palms and olives--two years of
+quiet, dreamy bliss, an idle and unsubstantial time! How evanescent it
+seemed, by the light of the days at home, when something had always
+pressed him to action.
+
+"Two years of drifting," he thought. "It is time I, too, raised anchor
+and sailed home."
+
+The next mail brought a letter that made his heart beat faster than it
+had yet been able to do in this exotic, lazy land. It was a recall
+from Barnabas.
+
+  "DEAR DAVE:
+
+  "Nothing but a lazy life in a foreign land would have drove a
+  man like you to write a book. The Jedge and M'ri are pleased,
+  but I know you are cut out for something different. I want you
+  to come home in time to run for legislature again. There's goin'
+  to be something doin'. It is time for another senator, and who
+  do you suppose is plugging for it, and opening hogsheads of
+  money? Wilksley. I want for you to come back and head him off.
+  If you've got one speck of your old spirit, and you care
+  anything about your state, you'll do it. I am still running
+  politics for this county at the old stand. Your book has started
+  folks to talking about you agen, so come home while the picking
+  is good. You've dreamt long enough. It is time to get up. Don't
+  write no more books till you git too old to work.
+
+                                       "Yours if you come,
+                                                         "B. B."
+
+The letter brought to David's eyes something that no one in this balmy
+land had ever seen there. With the look of a fighter belted for battle
+he went to the telegraph office and cabled Barnabas, "Coming."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+On his return to Lafferton David was met at the train by the Judge,
+M'ri, and Barnabas.
+
+"Your trunks air goin' out to the farm, Dave, ain't they?" asked
+Barnabas wistfully.
+
+"Of course," replied David, with an emphasis that brought a look of
+pleasure to the old man.
+
+"Your telegram took a great load offen my mind," he said, as they
+drove out to the farm. "Miss Rhody told me all along I need hev no
+fears fer you, that you weren't no dawdler."
+
+"Good for Miss Rhody!" laughed David. "She shall have her reward. I
+brought her silk enough for two dresses at least."
+
+"David," said M'ri suddenly at the dinner table, "do tell me for whose
+name those initials in the dedication to your book stand. Is it any
+one I know?"
+
+"I hardly know the person myself," was the smiling and evasive
+reply.
+
+"A woman, David?"
+
+"She figured largely in my fairy stories."
+
+"A nickname he had for Janey," she thought with a sigh.
+
+"Uncle Barnabas," said David the next day, "before we settle down to
+things political tell me if you regret my South American experience."
+
+"Now that you're back and gittin' into harness, I'll overlook
+anything. You'd earnt a breathing spell, and you look a hull lot
+older. Your book's kep' your name in the papers, tew, which helps."
+
+"I will show you something that proves the book did more than that,"
+said David, drawing his bank book from his pocket and passing it to
+the old man, who read it unbelievingly.
+
+"Why, Dave, you're rich!" he exclaimed.
+
+"No; not rich. I shall always have to work for my living. So tell me
+the situation."
+
+This fully occupied the time it took to drive to town, for Cold
+Molasses, successor to Old Hundred, kept the pace his name indicated.
+The day was spent in meeting old friends, and then David settled down
+to business with his old-time energy. Once more he was nominated for
+the legislature and took up the work of campaigning for Stephen Hume,
+opponent to Wilksley. Hume was an ardent, honest, clean-handed
+politician without money, but he had for manager one Ethan Knowles, a
+cool-headed, tireless veteran of campaign battles, with David acting
+as assistant and speech maker.
+
+David was elected, went to the capital, and was honored with the
+office of speaker by unanimous vote. He had his plans carefully drawn
+for the election of Hume, who came down on the regular train and
+established headquarters at one of the hotels, surrounded by a quiet
+and determined body of men.
+
+Wilksley's supporters, a rollicking lot, had come by special train and
+were quartered at a club, dispensing champagne and greenbacks
+promiscuously and freely. There was also a third candidate, whose
+backers were non-committal, giving no intimation as to where their
+strength would go in case their candidate did not come in as a dark
+horse.
+
+When the night of the senatorial contest came the floor, galleries,
+and lobby of the House were crowded. The Judge, M'ri, and Joe were
+there, Janey remaining home with her father, who refused to join the
+party.
+
+"Thar'll be bigger doin's fer me to see Dave officiate at," he
+prophesied.
+
+The quietly humorous young man wielding the gavel found it difficult
+to maintain quiet in the midst of such excitement, but he finally
+evolved order from chaos.
+
+Wilksley was the first candidate nominated, a gentleman from the
+fourteenth delivering a bombastic oration in pompous periods,
+accompanied by lofty gestures. He was followed by an understudy, who
+made an ineffective effort to support his predecessor.
+
+"A ricochet shot," commented Joe. "Wait till Dave hits the bullseye."
+
+The supporting representatives of the dark horse made short, forceful
+speeches. Then followed a brief intermission, while David called a
+substitute _pro tem_ to the speaker's desk. He stepped to the platform
+to make the nominating speech for Hume, the speech for which every
+one was waiting. There was a hush of expectancy, and M'ri felt little
+shivers of excitement creeping down her spine as she looked up at
+David, dauntless, earnest, and compelling, as he towered above them
+all.
+
+In its simplicity, its ring of truth, and its weight of conviction,
+his speech was a masterpiece.
+
+"A young Patrick Henry!" murmured the Judge.
+
+M'ri made no comment, for in that flight of a second that intervened
+between David's speech and the roar of tumultuous applause, she had
+heard a voice, a young, exquisite voice, murmur with a little indrawn
+breath, "Oh, David!"
+
+M'ri turned in surprise, and looked into the confused but smiling face
+of a lovely young girl, who said frankly and impulsively: "I don't
+know who Mr. Hume may be, but I do hope he wins."
+
+M'ri smiled in sympathy, trying to place the resemblance. Then her
+gaze wandered to the man beside the young girl.
+
+"You are Carey Winthrop!" she exclaimed.
+
+The man turned, and leaned forward.
+
+"Mrs. Thorne, this is indeed a pleasure," he said, extending his
+hand.
+
+Joe then swung his chair around into their vision.
+
+"Oh, Joe!" cried the young girl ecstatically. "And where is Janey?"
+
+The balloting was in progress, and there was opportunity for mutual
+recalling of old times. Then suddenly the sibilant sounds dropped to
+silence as the result was announced. Wilksley had the most votes, the
+dark horse the least; Hume enjoyed a happy medium, with fifteen more
+to his count than forecast by the man behind the button, as Joe
+designated Knowles.
+
+In the rush of action from the delegates, reporters, clerks, and
+messengers, the place resembled a beehive. Then came another ballot
+taking. Hume had gained ten votes from the Wilksley men and fifteen
+from the dark horse, but still lacked the requisite number.
+
+From the little retreat where Hume's manager was ensconced, with his
+hand on the throttle, David emerged. He looked confident and
+determined.
+
+The third ballot resulted in giving Hume the entire added strength of
+the dark horse, and enough votes to elect. A committee was thereupon
+appointed to bring the three candidates to the House. When they
+entered and were escorted to the platform they each made a speech, and
+then formed a reception line. David stood apart, talking to one of the
+members. He was beginning to feel the reaction from the long strain he
+had been under and wished to slip away from the crowd. Suddenly he
+heard some one say:
+
+"Mr. Speaker, may I congratulate you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+He turned quickly, his heart thrilling at the charm in the voice, low,
+yet resonant, and sweet with a lurking suggestion of sadness.
+
+A girl, slender and delicately made, stood before him, a girl with an
+exquisite grace and a nameless charm--the something that lurks in the
+fragrance of the violet. Her eyes were not the quiet, solemn eyes of
+the little princess of his fairy tales, but the deep, fathomless eyes
+of a maiden.
+
+A reminiscent smile stole over his face.
+
+"The little princess!" he murmured, taking her hand.
+
+The words brought a flush of color to her fair face.
+
+"The prince is a politician now," she replied.
+
+"The prince has to be a politician to fight for his kingdom. Have you
+been here all the evening?"
+
+"Yes; father and I sat with your party. But you were altogether too
+absorbed to glance our way."
+
+"Are you visiting in the city? Will you be here long?"
+
+"For to-night only. I've been West with father, and we only stopped
+off to see what a senatorial fight was like; also, to hear you speak.
+To-morrow we return East, and then mother and I shall go abroad.
+Father," calling to Mr. Winthrop, "I am renewing my acquaintance with
+Mr. Dunne."
+
+"I wish to do the same," he said, extending his hand cordially. "I
+expect to be able to tell people some day that I used to fish in a
+country stream with the governor of this state when he was a boy."
+
+After a few moments of general conversation they all left the
+statehouse together.
+
+"Carey," said Mr. Winthrop, "I am going with the Judge to the club, so
+I will put you in David's hands. I believe you have no afraidments
+with him."
+
+"That has come to be a household phrase with us," she laughed; "but
+you forget, father, that Mr. Dunne has official duties."
+
+"If you only knew," David assured her earnestly, "how thankful I am
+for a release from them. My task is ended, and I don't wish to
+celebrate in the usual and political way."
+
+"There is a big military ball at the hotel," informed Joe. "Mrs.
+Thorne and I thought we would like to go and look on."
+
+"A fine idea, Joe. Maybe you would like to go?" he said to Carey,
+trying to make his tone urgent.
+
+She laughed at his dismayed expression.
+
+"No; you may walk to the Bradens' with me. We couldn't get in at the
+hotels, and father met Major Braden on the street. He is instructor or
+something of the militia of this state, and has gone to the ball with
+his wife. They supposed that this contest would last far into the
+night, so they planned to be home before we were."
+
+"We will get a carriage as soon as we are out of the grounds."
+
+"Have you come to carriages?" she asked, laughingly. "You used to say
+if you couldn't ride horseback, or walk, you would stand still."
+
+"And you agreed with me that carriages were only for the slow, the
+stupid, and the infirm," he recalled. "It's a glorious night. Would
+you rather walk, really?"
+
+"Really."
+
+At the entrance to the grounds they parted from the others and went up
+one of the many avenues radiating from the square.
+
+The air was full of snowflakes, moving so softly and so slowly they
+scarcely seemed to fall. The electric lights of the city shone
+cheerfully through the white mist, and the sound of distant
+mirthmakers fell pleasantly on the ear.
+
+"Snow is the only picture part of winter," said Carey. "Do you
+remember the story of the Snow Princess?"
+
+"You must have a wonderful memory!" he exclaimed. "You were only six
+years old when I told you that story."
+
+"I have a very vivid memory," she replied. "Sometimes it almost
+frightens me."
+
+"Do you know," he said, "that I think people that have dreams and
+fancies do look backward farther than matter-of-fact people, who let
+things out of sight go out of mind?"
+
+"You were full of dreams then, but I don't believe you are now. Of
+course, politicians have no time or inclination for dreams."
+
+"No; they usually have a dread of dreams. Would you rather have found
+me still a dreamer?" he asked, looking down into her dark eyes, which
+drooped beneath the intensity of his gaze.
+
+Then her delicate face, misty with sweetness, turned toward him
+again.
+
+"No; dreams are for children and for old people, whose memories, like
+their eyes, are for things far off. This is your time to do things,
+not to dream them. And you have done things. I heard Major Braden
+telling father about you at dinner--your success in law, your getting
+some bill killed in the legislature, and your having been to South
+America. Father says you have had a wonderful career for a young man.
+I used to think when I was a little girl that when you were a grown-up
+prince you would kill dragons and bring home golden fleeces."
+
+He smiled with a sudden deep throb of pleasure. Her voice stirred him
+with a sense of magic.
+
+"This is the Braden home," she said, stopping before a big house that
+seemed to be all pillars and porches. "You'll come in for a little
+while, won't you?"
+
+"I'll come in, if I may, and help you to recall some more of Maplewood
+days."
+
+A trim little maid opened the door and led the way into a long library
+where in the fireplace a pine backlog, crisscrossed by sturdy forelogs
+of birch and maple, awaited the touch of a match. It was given, and
+the room was filled with a flaring light that made the soft lamplight
+seem pale and feeble.
+
+"This is a genuine Brumble fire," he exclaimed, as they sat down
+before the ruddy glow. "It carries me back to farm life."
+
+"How many phases of life you have seen," mused Carey. "Country,
+college, city, tropical, and now this political life. Which one have
+you really enjoyed the most?"
+
+"My life in the Land of Dreams--that beautiful Isle of Everywhere," he
+replied.
+
+Her eyes grew radiant with understanding.
+
+"You are not so very much changed since your days of dreaming," she
+said, smiling. "To be sure, you have lost your freckles and you don't
+kick at the ground when you walk, and--"
+
+"And," he reminded, as she paused.
+
+"You are no longer twice my age."
+
+"Did Janey tell you?"
+
+"Yes; the last summer I was at Maplewood--the summer you were
+graduated. You say you don't dream any more, but it wasn't so very
+long ago that you did, else how could you have written that wonderful
+book?"
+
+"Then you read it?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"Of course I read it."
+
+"All of it?"
+
+"Could any one begin it and not finish it? I've read some parts of it
+many times."
+
+"Did you," he asked slowly, holding her eyes in spite of her desire
+to lower them, "read the dedication?"
+
+And by their subtle confession he knew that this was one of the parts
+she had read "many times."
+
+"Yes," she replied, trying to speak lightly, but breathing quickly,
+"and I wondered who T. L. P. might be."
+
+"And so you didn't know," in slow, disappointed tones, "that they
+stood for the name I gave you when I first met you--the name by which
+I always think of you? It was with your perfect understanding of my
+old fancies in mind that I wrote the book. And so I dedicated it to
+you, thinking if you read it you would know even without the
+inscription. Some one suggested--"
+
+"It was Fletcher," she began.
+
+"Oh, you know Wilder?"
+
+"Yes, I've known him always. He has told me of your days in South
+America together and how he told you to dedicate it. And he wondered
+who T. L. P. might be."
+
+"And you never guessed?"
+
+Her face, bent over the firelight, looked small and white; her
+beautiful eyes were fixed and grave. Then suddenly she lifted them to
+his with the artlessness of a child.
+
+"I did know," she confessed. "At least, I hoped--I claimed it as my
+book, anyway, but I thought your memory of those summers at the farm
+might not have been as keen as mine."
+
+"It is keen," he replied. "I have always thought of you as a little
+princess who only lived in my dreams, but, hereafter, you are not only
+in my past dreams, but I hope, in my future."
+
+"When we come back--"
+
+"Will you be gone long?" he asked wistfully. "Is your father--"
+
+"Father can't go, but he may join us."
+
+After a moment's hesitation she continued, with a slight blush:
+
+"Fletcher is going with us."
+
+"Oh," he said, wondering at his tinge of disappointment.
+
+"Carey," he said wistfully, as he was leaving, "don't you think when a
+man dedicates a book to a girl, and they both have a joint claim on a
+territory known as the Land of Dreams, that she might call him, as she
+did when they were boy and girl, by his first name?"
+
+"Yes, David," she replied with a light little laugh.
+
+The music of the soft "a" rang entrancingly in his ears as he walked
+back to the hotel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+There was but one important measure to deal with in this session of
+the legislature, but David's penetration into a thorough understanding
+of each bill, and the patience and sagacity he displayed in settling
+all disputes, won the approbation of even doubtful and divided
+factions. He flashed a new fire of life into the ebbing enthusiasm of
+his followers, whom he had led to victory on the Griggs Bill. At the
+close of the session, early in May, he was presented with a set of
+embossed resolutions commending his fulfillment of his duties.
+
+That same night, in his room at the hotel, as he was packing his
+belongings, he was waited upon by a delegation composed alike of
+horny-handed tillers of the soil and distinguished statesmen.
+
+"We come, David," said the spokesman, who had been chairman of the
+county convention, "to say that you are our choice for the next
+governor of this state, and in saying this we know we are echoing the
+sentiment of the Republican party. In fact, we are looking to you as
+the only man who can bring that party to victory."
+
+He said many more things, flattering and echoed by his followers. It
+made the blood tingle in David's veins to know that these men of
+plain, honest, country stock, like himself, believed in him and in his
+honor. In kaleidoscopic quickness there passed in review his
+life,--the days when he and his mother had struggled with a wretched
+poverty that the neighbors had only half suspected, the first turning
+point in his life, when he was taken unto the hearth and home of
+strong-hearted people, his years at college, the plodding days in
+pursuit of the law, his hotly waged fight in the legislature, and his
+short literary career, and he felt a surging of boyish pride at the
+knowledge that he was now approaching his goal.
+
+The next morning David went to Lafferton in order to discuss the road
+to the ruling of the people.
+
+"Whom would you suggest for manager of my campaign, Uncle Barnabas?"
+he asked.
+
+"Knowles came to me and offered his services. Couldn't have a slicker
+man, Dave."
+
+"None better in the state. I shouldn't have ventured to ask him."
+
+Janey was home for the summer, and on the first evening of his return
+she and David sat together on the porch.
+
+"Oh, Davey," she said with a little sob, "Jud has come home again, and
+they say he isn't just wild any more, but thoroughly bad."
+
+The tears in her eyes and the tremor in her tone stirred all his old
+protective instinct for her.
+
+"Poor Jud! I'll see if I can't awaken some ambition in him for a
+different life."
+
+"You've been very patient, Davey, but do try again. Every one is down
+on him now but father and you and me. Aunt M'ri has let the Judge
+prejudice her; Joe hasn't a particle of patience with him, and he
+can't understand how I can have any, but you do, Davey. You understand
+everything."
+
+They sat in silence, watching the stars pierce vividly through the
+blackness of the sky, and presently his thoughts strayed from Jud and
+from his fair young sister. In fancy he saw the queenly carriage of an
+imperious little head, the mystery lurking in a pair of purple eyes,
+and heard the cadence in an exquisite voice.
+
+The next morning he began the fight, and there was an incessant
+cannonade from start to finish against the upstart boy nominee, who
+proved to be an adversary of unremitting activity, the tact and
+experience of Knowles making a fortified intrenchment for him. All of
+David's friends rallied strongly to his support. Hume came from
+Washington, Joe from the ranch, and Wilder from the East, his father
+having a branch concern in the state.
+
+Through the long, hot summer the warfare waged, and by mid-autumn it
+seemed a neck and neck contest--a contest so susceptible that the
+merest breath might turn the tide at any moment. The week before the
+election found David still resolute, grim, and determined. Instead of
+being discouraged by adverse attacks he had gained new vigor from
+each downthrow. All forces rendezvoused at the largest city in the
+state for the final engagement.
+
+Three days before election he received a note in a handwriting that
+had become familiar to him during the past year. With a rush of
+surprise and pleasure he noted the city postmark. The note was very
+brief, merely mentioning the hotel at which they were stopping and
+asking him to call if he could spare a few moments from his campaign
+work.
+
+In an incredibly short time after the receipt of this note he was at
+the hotel, awaiting an answer to his card. He was shown to the sitting
+room of the suite, and Carey opened the door to admit him. This was
+not the little princess of his dreams, nor the charming young girl who
+had talked so ingenuously with him before the Braden fireside. This
+was a woman, stately yet gracious, vigorous yet exquisite.
+
+"I am glad we came home in time to see you elected," she said. "It is
+a great honor, David, to be the governor of your state."
+
+There was a shade of deference in her manner to him which he realized
+was due to the awe with which she regarded the dignity of his elective
+office. This amused while it appealed to him.
+
+"We are on our way to California to spend the winter," she replied, in
+answer to his eager question, "and father proposed stopping here until
+after election."
+
+"You come in and out of my life like a comet," he complained
+wistfully.
+
+Mrs. Winthrop came in, smiling and charming as ever. She was very
+cordial to David, and interested in his campaign, but it seemed to him
+that she was a little too gracious, as if she wished to impress him
+with the fact that it was a concession to meet him on an equal social
+footing. For Mrs. Winthrop was inclined to be of the world, worldly.
+
+"You have arrived at an auspicious time," he assured her. "To-night
+the Democrats will have the biggest parade ever scheduled for this
+city. Joe calls it the round-up."
+
+"Oh, is Joe here?" asked Carey eagerly.
+
+"Yes; and another friend of yours, Fletcher Wilder."
+
+"I knew that he was here," she said, with an odd little smile.
+
+"We had expected to see him in New York, and were surprised to learn
+he was out here," said Mrs. Winthrop.
+
+"He came to help me in my campaign," informed David.
+
+"Fletcher interested in politics! How strange!"
+
+"His interest is purely personal. We were together in South America,
+you know."
+
+"I am glad that you have a friend in him," said Mrs. Winthrop affably.
+"The parade will pass here, and Fletcher is coming up, of course. Why
+not come up, too, if you can spare the time?"
+
+"This is not my night," laughed David. "It's purely and simply a
+Democratic night. I shall be pleased to come."
+
+"Bring Joe, too," reminded Carey.
+
+When Mr. Winthrop came in David had no doubt as to the welcome he
+received from the head of the family.
+
+"A man's measure of a man," thought David, "is easily taken, and by
+natural laws, but oh, for an understanding of the scales by which
+women weigh! And yet it is they who hold the balance."
+
+"Fletcher and David and Joe are coming to-night to watch the parade
+from here," said Carey.
+
+"You shall all dine with us," said Mr. Winthrop.
+
+"Thank you," replied David, "but--"
+
+"Oh, but you must," insisted Mrs. Winthrop, who always warmly seconded
+any proffer of hospitality made by her husband. "Fletcher will dine
+with us, of course. We can have a little dinner served here in our
+rooms. Write a note to Mr. Forbes, Carey."
+
+The marked difference in type of her three guests as they entered the
+sitting room that night struck Mrs. Winthrop forcibly. Joe, lean and
+brown, with laughing eyes, was the typical frontiersman; Fletcher,
+quiet and substantial looking, with his air of culture and ease and
+his modulated voice, was the type of a city man; David--"What a man he
+is!" she was forced to admit as he stood, head uplifted in the white
+glare under the chandelier, the brilliant light shining upon his dark
+hair, and his eyes glowing like stars. His lithe figure, perfect in
+poise and balance, of virile strength that was toil-proof, wore the
+look of the outdoor life. His smile banished everything that was
+ordinary from his face and transmuted it into a glowing personality.
+His eyes, serious with that insight of the observer who knows what is
+going on without and within, were clear and steady.
+
+The table was laid for six in the sitting room, the flowers and
+candles giving it a homelike look.
+
+As Mrs. Winthrop listened to the conversation between her husband and
+David she was forced to admit that the young candidate for governor
+was a man of mark.
+
+"I never knew a man without good birth to have such perfect breeding,"
+she thought. "He really appears as well as Fletcher, and, well, of
+course, he has more temperament. If he could have been born on a
+different plane," thinking of her long line of Virginia ancestors.
+
+She had ceded a great deal to her husband's and Carey's democracy, and
+reserved many an unfavorable criticism of their friends and their
+friends' ways with a tactfulness that had blinded their eyes to her
+true feelings. Yet David knew instinctively her standpoint; she partly
+suspected that he knew, and the knowledge did not disturb her; she
+intuitively gauged his pride, and welcomed it, for a suitor of the
+Fletcher Wilder station of life was more to her liking.
+
+Carey led David away from her father's political discourse, and
+encouraged him to give reminiscences of old days. Joe told a few
+inimitable western stories, and before the cozy little meal was
+finished Mrs. Winthrop, though against her will, was feeling the
+compelling force of David's winning sweetness. The sound of a distant
+band hurried them from the table to the balcony.
+
+"They've certainly got a fair showing of floating banners and
+transformations," said Joe.
+
+As the procession came nearer the face of the hardy ranchman flushed
+crimson and his eyes flashed dangerously. He made a quick motion as
+if to obstruct David's vision, but the young candidate had already
+seen. He stood as if at bay, his face pale, his eyes riveted on those
+floating banners which bore in flaming letters the inscriptions:
+
+"The father of David Dunne died in state prison!"
+
+"His mother was a washerwoman!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+The others were stricken into shocked silence which they were too
+stunned for the moment to break. It was Fletcher who recovered first,
+but then Fletcher was the only one present who did not know that the
+words had struck home.
+
+"We mustn't wait another moment, David," he said emphatically, "to get
+out sweeping denials and--"
+
+"We can't," said David wearily. "It is true."
+
+"Oh," responded Fletcher lamely.
+
+There was another silence. Something in David's voice and manner had
+made the silence still more constrained.
+
+"I'll go down and smash their banners!" muttered Joe, who had not
+dared to look in David's direction.
+
+Mr. Winthrop restrained him.
+
+"The matter will take care of itself," he counseled.
+
+It is mercifully granted that the intensity of present suffering is
+not realized. Only in looking back comes the pang, and the wonder at
+the seemingly passive endurance.
+
+Again David's memory was bridging the past to unveil that vivid
+picture of the patient-eyed woman bending over the tub, and the pity
+for her was hurting him more than the cruel banner which was flaunting
+the fact before a jeering, applauding crowd.
+
+Mrs. Winthrop gave him a covert glance. She had great pride in her
+lineage, and her well-laid plans for her daughter's future did not
+include David Dunne in their scope, but she was ever responsive to
+distress.
+
+Before the look in his eyes every sensation save that of sympathy left
+her, and she went to him as she would have gone to a child of her own
+that had been hurt.
+
+"David," she said tenderly, laying her hand on his arm, "any woman in
+the world might be glad to take in washing to bring up a boy to be
+such a man as you are!"
+
+Deeply moved and surprised, he looked into her brimming eyes and met
+there the look he had sometimes seen in the eyes of his mother, of
+M'ri, and once in the eyes of Janey. Moved by an irresistible impulse,
+he stooped and kissed her.
+
+The situation was relieved of its tenseness.
+
+"I think, Joe," said David, speaking collectedly, "we had better go to
+headquarters. Knowles will be looking for me."
+
+"Sure," assented Joe, eager to get into action.
+
+"Carey," said David in a low voice, as he was leaving.
+
+As she turned to him, an impetuous rush of new life leaped torrent-like
+in his heart. Her eyes met his slowly, and for a moment he felt a
+pleasure acute with the exquisiteness of pain. Such sensations are
+usually transient, and in another moment he had himself well in hand.
+
+"I want to say good night," he said quietly, "and--"
+
+"Will you come here to-morrow at eleven?" she asked hurriedly. "There
+is something I want to say to you."
+
+"I know that you are sorry for me."
+
+"That isn't what I mean to say."
+
+A wistful but imperious message was flashed to him from her eyes.
+
+"I will come," he replied gravely.
+
+When he reached headquarters he found the committee dismayed and
+distracted. Like Wilder, they counseled a sweeping denial, but David
+was firm.
+
+"It is true," he reiterated.
+
+"It will cost us the vote of a certain element," predicted the
+chairman, "and we haven't one to spare."
+
+David listened to a series of similar sentiments until Knowles--a new
+Knowles--came in. The usual blank placidity of his face was rippled by
+radiant exultation.
+
+"David," he announced, "before that parade started to-night I had made
+out another conservative estimate, and thought I could pull you
+through by a slight majority. Now, it's different. While you may lose
+some votes from the 'near-silk stocking' class, yet for every vote so
+lost hundreds will rally to you. That all men are created equal is
+still a truth held to be self-evident. The spark of the spirit that
+prompted the Declaration of Independence is always ready to be fanned
+to a flame, and the Democrats have furnished us the fans in their
+flying pennants."
+
+David found no balm in this argument. All the wounds in his heart were
+aching, and he could not bring his thoughts to majorities. He passed a
+night of nerve-racking strain. The jeopardy of election did not
+concern him. That night at the dinner party he had realized that he
+had a formidable rival in Fletcher, who had a place firmly fixed in
+the Winthrop household. Still, against odds, he had determined to woo
+and win Carey.
+
+He had thought to tell her of his father's imprisonment under
+softening influences. To have it flashed ruthlessly upon her in such a
+way, and at such a time, made him shrink from asking her to link her
+fate with his, and he decided to put her resolutely out of his life.
+
+Unwillingly, he went to keep his appointment with her the next
+morning. He also dreaded an encounter with Mrs. Winthrop. He felt that
+the reaction from her moment of womanly pity would strand her still
+farther on the rocks of her worldliness. He was detained on his way to
+the hotel so that it was nearly twelve when he arrived. It was a
+relief to find Carey alone. There was an appealing look in her eyes;
+but David felt that he could bear no expression of sympathy, and he
+trusted she would obey the subtle message flashed from his own.
+
+With keen insight she read his unspoken appeal, but a high courage
+dwelt in the spirit of the little Puritan of colonial ancestry, and
+she summoned its full strength.
+
+"David," she asked, "did you think I was ignorant of your early life
+until I read those banners last night?"
+
+"I thought," he said, flushing and taken by surprise, "that you might
+have long ago heard something, but to have it recalled in so
+sensational a way when you were entertaining me at dinner--"
+
+[Illustration: "_It was a relief to find Carey alone_"]
+
+"David, the first day I met you, when I was six years old, Mrs.
+Randall told us of your father. I didn't know just what a prison was,
+but I supposed it something very grand, and it widened the halo of
+romance that my childish eyes had cast about you. The morning after
+you had nominated Mr. Hume I saw your aunt at the hotel, and she told
+me, for she said some day I might hear it from strangers and not
+understand. When I saw those banners it was not so much sympathy for
+you that distressed me; I was thinking of your mother, and regretting
+that she could not be alive to hear you speak, and see what her
+bravery had done for you."
+
+David had to summon all his control and his recollection of her
+Virginia ancestors to refrain from telling her what was in his heart.
+Mrs. Winthrop helped him by her entrance at this crucial point.
+
+"Good morning, David," she said suavely. "Carey, Fletcher is waiting
+for you at the elevator. Your father stopped him. I told him you would
+be out directly."
+
+"I had an engagement to drive with him," explained Carey. "I thought
+you would come earlier."
+
+"I am due at a committee meeting," he said, in a courteous but aloof
+manner.
+
+"We start in the morning, you know," she reminded him. "Won't you dine
+here with us to-night?"
+
+"I am sorry," he refused. "It will be impossible."
+
+"Arthur is going to a club for luncheon," said Mrs. Winthrop, when
+Carey had gone into the adjoining room, "and I shall be alone unless
+you will take pity on my loneliness. I won't detain you a moment after
+luncheon."
+
+"Thank you," he replied abstractedly.
+
+She smiled at the reluctance in his eyes.
+
+"David is going to stay to luncheon with me," she announced to Carey
+as she came into the sitting room.
+
+David winced at the huge bunch of violets fastened to her muff. He
+remembered with a pang that Fletcher had left him that morning to go
+to a florist's. After she had gone Mrs. Winthrop turned suddenly
+toward him, as he was gazing wistfully at the closed door.
+
+"David," she asked directly, "why did you refuse our invitation to
+dine to-night?"
+
+"Why--you see--Mrs. Winthrop--with so many engagements--there is a
+factory meeting at five--"
+
+"David, you are floundering! That is not like the frankly spoken boy
+we used to know at Maplewood. I kept you to luncheon to tell you some
+news that even Carey doesn't know yet. Mrs. Randall has written
+insisting that we spend a week at Maplewood before we go West. As we
+are in no special haste, I shall accept her hospitality."
+
+David made no reply, and she continued:
+
+"You are going home the day before election?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Winthrop," he replied.
+
+"We will go down with you, and I hope you will be neighborly while we
+are in the country."
+
+The bewildered look in his eyes deepened, and then a heartrending
+solution of her graciousness came to him. Fletcher and Carey were
+doubtless engaged, and this fact made Mrs. Winthrop feel secure in
+extending hospitality to him.
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Winthrop," he said, a little bitterly. "You are very
+kind."
+
+"David," she asked, giving him a searching look. "What is the matter?
+I thought you would be pleased at the thought of our spending a week
+among you all."
+
+He made a quick, desperate decision.
+
+"Mrs. Winthrop," he asked earnestly, "may I speak to you quite openly
+and honestly?"
+
+"David Dunne, you couldn't speak any other way," she asserted, with a
+gay little laugh.
+
+"I love Carey!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+This information seemingly conveyed no startling intelligence.
+
+"Well," replied Mrs. Winthrop, evidently awaiting a further
+statement.
+
+"I haven't tried to win her love, nor have I told her that I love her,
+because I knew that in your plans for her future you had never
+included me. I know what you think about family, and I don't want to
+make ill return for the courtesy and kindness you and Mr. Winthrop
+have always shown me."
+
+"David, you have one rare trait--gratitude. I did have plans for
+Carey--plans built on the basis of 'family'; but I have learned from
+you that there are other things, like the trait I mentioned, for
+instance, that count more than lineage. Before we went abroad I knew
+Carey was interested in you, with the first flutter of a young girl's
+fancy, and I was secretly antagonistic to that feeling. But last
+night, David, I came to feel differently. I envied your mother when I
+read those banners. If I had a son like you, I'd feel honored to take
+in washing or anything else for him."
+
+At the look of ineffable sadness in his eyes her tears came.
+
+"David," she said gently, after a pause, "if you can win Carey's love,
+I shall gladly give my consent."
+
+He thanked her incoherently, and was seized with an uncontrollable
+longing to get away--to be alone with this great, unbelievable
+happiness. In realization of his mood, she left him under pretext of
+ordering the luncheon. On her return she found him exuberant, in a
+flow of spirits and pleasantry.
+
+"Mrs. Winthrop," he said earnestly, as he was taking his departure, "I
+am not going to tell Carey just yet that I love her."
+
+"As you wish, David. I shall not mention our conversation."
+
+She smiled as the door closed upon him.
+
+"Tell her! I wonder if he doesn't know that every time he looks at
+her, or speaks her name, he tells her. But I suppose he has some
+foolish mannish pride about waiting until he is governor."
+
+When David, in a voice vibrant with new-found gladness, finished an
+eloquent address to a United Band of Workmen, he found Mr. Winthrop
+waiting for him.
+
+"I was sent to bring you to the hotel to dine with us, David. My wife
+told me of your conversation."
+
+Noting the look of apprehension in David's eyes, he continued:
+
+"Every time a suitor for Carey has crossed our threshold I've turned
+cold at the thought of relinquishing my guardianship. With you it is
+different; I can only quote Carey's childish remark--'with David I
+would have no afraidments.'"
+
+A touch upon his shoulder prevented David's reply. He turned to find
+Joe and Fletcher.
+
+"Knowles has been looking for you everywhere. He wants you to come to
+headquarters at once."
+
+"Is it important?" asked David hesitatingly.
+
+"Important! Knowles! Say, David, have you forgotten that you are
+running for governor?"
+
+Winthrop laughed appreciatively.
+
+"Go back to Knowles, David, and come to us when you can. We have no
+iron-clad rules as to hours. Go with him, Joe, to be sure he doesn't
+forget where he is going. Come with me, Fletcher."
+
+"It's too late to call now," remonstrated Joe, when David had finally
+made his escape from headquarters.
+
+David muttered that time was made for slaves, and increased his pace.
+When they reached the hotel Joe refused to go to the Winthrop's
+apartment.
+
+David found Carey alone in the sitting room.
+
+"David," she asked, after one glance into his eyes, "what has changed
+you? Good news from Mr. Knowles?"
+
+"No, Carey," he replied, his eyes growing luminous. "It was something
+your mother said to me this morning."
+
+"Oh, I am glad. What was it she said?"
+
+"She told me," he evaded, "that you were going to visit the
+Randalls."
+
+"And that is what makes you look so--cheered?" she persisted.
+
+"No, Carey. May I tell you at two o'clock in the afternoon, the day
+after election?"
+
+She laughed delightedly.
+
+"That sounds like our childhood days. You used to put notes in the old
+apple tree--do you remember?--asking Janey and me to meet you two
+hours before sundown at the end of the picket fence."
+
+Further confidential conversation was prevented by the entrance of the
+others. Joe had been captured, and Mrs. Winthrop had ordered a supper
+served in the rooms.
+
+"Carey," asked her mother softly, when they were alone that night,
+"did David tell you what a cozy little luncheon we had?"
+
+"He told me, mother, that you said something to him that made him very
+happy, but he would not tell me what it was."
+
+Something in her mother's gaze made Carey lift her violets as a shield
+to her face.
+
+"She knows!" thought Mrs. Winthrop. "But does she care?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+At two o'clock on the day after David Dunne had been elected governor
+by an overwhelming majority, he reined up at the open gate at the end
+of the maple drive. His heart beat faster at the sight of the regal
+little figure awaiting him. Her coat, furs, and hat were all of
+white.
+
+He helped her into the carriage and seated himself beside her.
+
+"Have you been waiting long, and are you dressed quite warmly?" he
+asked anxiously.
+
+"Yes, indeed; I thought you might keep me waiting at the gate, so I
+put on my furs."
+
+The drive went on through the grounds to a sloping pasture, where it
+became a rough roadway. The day was perfect. The sharp edges of
+November were tempered by a bright sun, and the crisp air was
+possessed of a profound quiet. When the pastoral stretches ended in
+the woods, David stopped suddenly.
+
+"It must have been just about here," he said, reminiscently, as he
+hitched the horse to a tree and held out his hand to Carey. They
+walked on into the depths of the woods until they came to a fallen
+tree.
+
+"Let us sit here," he suggested.
+
+She obeyed in silence.
+
+An early frost had snatched the glory from the trees, whose few brown
+and sere leaves hung disconsolately on the branches. High above them
+was an occasional skirmishing line of wild ducks. The deep stillness
+was broken only by the scattering of nuts the scurrying squirrels were
+harvesting, by the cry of startled wood birds, or by the wistful note
+of a solitary, distant quail.
+
+"Do you remember that other--that first day we came here?" he asked.
+
+She glanced up at him quickly.
+
+"Is this really the place where we came and you told me stories?"
+
+"You were only six years old," he reminded her. "It doesn't seem
+possible that you should remember."
+
+"It was the first time I had ever been in any kind of woods," she
+explained, "and it was the first time I had ever played with a
+grown-up boy. For a long time afterward, when I teased mother for a
+story, she would tell me of 'The Day Carey Met David.'"
+
+"And do you remember nothing more about that day?"
+
+"Oh, yes; you made us some little chairs out of red sticks, and you
+drew me here in a cart."
+
+"Can't you remember when you first laid eyes on me?"
+
+"No--yes, I remember. You drove a funny old horse, and I saw you
+coming when I was waiting at the gate."
+
+"Yes, you were at the gate," he echoed, with a caressing note in his
+voice. "You were dressed in white, as you are to-day, and that was my
+first glimpse of the little princess. And because she was the only one
+I had ever known, I thought of her for years as a princess of my
+imagination who had no real existence."
+
+"But afterwards," she asked wistfully, "you didn't think of me as an
+imaginary person, did you?"
+
+"Yes; you were hardly a reality until--"
+
+"Until the convention?" she asked disappointedly.
+
+"No; before that. It was in South America, when I began to write my
+book, that you came to life and being in my thoughts. The tropical
+land, the brilliant sunshine, the purple nights, the white stars, the
+orchids, the balconies looking down upon fountained courts, all
+invoked you. You answered, and crept into my book, and while we--you
+and I--were writing it, it came to me suddenly and overwhelmingly that
+the little princess was a living, breathing person, a woman who mayhap
+would read my book some day and feel that it belonged to her. It was
+so truly hers that I did not think it necessary to write the
+dedication page. And she did read the book and she did know--didn't
+she?"
+
+He looked down into her face, which had grown paler but infinitely
+more lovely.
+
+"David, I didn't dare know. I wanted to think it was so."
+
+"Carey," his voice came deep and strong, his eyes beseeching, "we were
+prince and princess in that enchanted land of childish dreams. Will
+you make the dream a reality?"
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"When, David," she asked him, "did you know that you loved, not the
+little princess, but me, Carey?"
+
+"You make the right distinction in asking me when I _knew_ I loved
+you. I loved you always, but I didn't know that I loved you, or how
+much I loved you, until that night we sat before the fire at the
+Bradens'."
+
+"And, David, tell me what mother said that day after the parade?"
+
+"She told me I had her consent to ask you--this!"
+
+"And why, David, did you wait until to-day?"
+
+"The knowledge that you were coming back here to Maplewood brought the
+wish to make a reality of another dream--to meet you at the place
+where I first saw you--to bring you here, where you clung to me for
+the protection that is henceforth always yours. And now, Carey, it is
+my turn to ask you a question. When did you first love me?"
+
+[Illustration: "_'Carey, will you make the dream a reality?'_"]
+
+"That first day I met you--here in the woods. My dream and my prince
+were always realities to me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+The governor was indulging in the unwonted luxury of solitude in
+his private sanctum of the executive offices. The long line of
+politicians, office seekers, committees, and reporters had passed,
+and he was supposed to have departed also, but after his exit he had
+made a detour and returned to his private office.
+
+Then he sat down to face the knottiest problem that had as yet
+confronted him in connection with his official duties. An important
+act of the legislature awaited his signature or veto. Various pressing
+matters called for immediate action, but they were mere trifles
+compared to the issue pending upon an article he had read in a
+bi-weekly paper from one of the country districts. The article stated
+that a petition was being circulated to present to the governor,
+praying the pardon and release of Jud Brumble. Then had begun the
+great conflict in the mind of David Dunne, the "governor who could do
+no wrong." It was not a conflict between right and wrong that was
+being waged, for Jud had been one to the prison born.
+
+David reviewed the series of offenses Jud had perpetrated, punishment
+for which had ever been evaded or shifted to accomplices. He recalled
+the solemn promise the offender had made him long ago when, through
+David's efforts, he had been acquitted--a promise swiftly broken and
+followed by more daring transgressions, which had culminated in one
+enormous crime. He had been given the full penalty--fifteen years--a
+sentence in which a long-suffering community had rejoiced.
+
+Jud had made himself useful at times to a certain gang of ward heelers
+and petty politicians, who were the instigators of this petition,
+which they knew better than to present themselves. Had they done so,
+David's course would have been plain and easy; but the petition was to
+be conveyed directly and personally to the governor, so the article
+read, by the prisoner's father, Barnabas Brumble.
+
+By this method of procedure the petitioners showed their cunning as
+well as their knowledge of David Dunne. They knew that his sense of
+gratitude was as strong as his sense of accurate justice, and that to
+Barnabas he attributed his first start in life; that he had, in fact,
+literally blazed the political trail that had led him from a country
+lawyer to the governorship of his state.
+
+There were other ties, other reasons, of which these signers knew not,
+that moved David to heed a petition for release should it be
+presented.
+
+Again he seemed to see his mother's imploring eyes and to hear her
+impressive voice. Again he felt around his neck the comforting, chubby
+arms of the criminal's little sister. Her youthful guilelessness and
+her inherent goodness had never recognized evil in her wayward
+brother, and she would look confidently to "Davey" for service, as she
+had done in the old days of country schools and meadow lanes.
+
+On the other hand, he, David Dunne, had taken a solemn oath to do his
+duty, and his duty to the people, in the name of justice, was clear.
+He owed it to them to show no leniency to Jud Brumble.
+
+So he hovered between base ingratitude to the man who had made
+him, and who had never before asked a favor, and non-fulfillment of
+duty to his people. It was a wage of head and heart. There had never
+been moral compromises in his code. There had ever been a right and
+a wrong--plain roads, with no middle course or diverging paths, but
+now in his extremity he sought some means of evading the direct
+issue. He looked for the convenient loophole of technicality--an
+irregularity in the trial--but his legal knowledge forbade this
+consideration after again going over the testimony and evidence of the
+trial. The attorney for the defense had been compelled to admit
+that his client had had a square deal. If only the petition might
+be brought in the usual way, and presented to the pardon board, it
+would not be allowed to reach the governor, as there was nothing in
+the case to warrant consideration, but that was evidently not to be
+the procedure. Barnabas would come to him and ask for Jud's release,
+assuming naturally that his request would be willingly granted.
+
+If he pardoned Jud, all the popularity of the young governor would not
+screen him from the public censure. One common sentiment of outrage
+had been awakened by the crime, and the criminal had been universally
+repudiated, but it was not from public censure or public criticism
+that this young man with the strong under jaw shrank, but from the
+knowledge that he would be betraying a trust. Gratitude and duty
+pointed in different directions this time.
+
+With throbbing brain and racked nerves he made his evening call upon
+Carey, who had come to be a clearing house for his troubles and who
+was visiting the Bradens. She looked at him to-night with her eyes
+full of the adoration a young girl gives to a man who has forged his
+way to fame.
+
+He responded to her greeting abstractedly, and then said abruptly:
+
+"Carey, I am troubled to-night!"
+
+"I knew it before you came, David. I read the evening papers."
+
+"What!" he exclaimed in despair. "It's true, then! I have not seen the
+papers to-night."
+
+She brought him the two evening papers of opposite politics. In
+glowing headlines the Democratic paper told in exaggerated form the
+story of his early life, his humble home, his days of struggle, his
+start in politics, and his success, due to the father of the hardened
+criminal. Would the governor do his duty and see that law and order
+were maintained, or would he sacrifice the people to his personal
+obligations? David smiled grimly as he reflected that either course
+would be equally censured by this same paper.
+
+He took up the other journal, the organ of his party, which stated the
+facts very much as the other paper had done, and added that Barnabas
+Brumble was en route to the capital city for the purpose of asking a
+pardon for his son. The editor, in another column, briefly and firmly
+expressed his faith in the belief that David Dunne would be stanch in
+his views of what was right and for the public welfare.
+
+There was one consolation; neither paper had profaned by public
+mention the love of his boyhood days.
+
+"What shall I do! What should I do!" he asked himself in desperation.
+
+"I know what you will do," said Carey, quickly reading the unspoken
+words.
+
+"What?"
+
+"You will do, as you always do--what you believe to be right. David,
+tell me the story of those days."
+
+So from the background of his recollections he brought forward vividly
+a picture of his early life, a story she had heard only from others.
+He told her, too, of his boyish fancy for Janey.
+
+There was silence when he had finished. Carey looked into the
+flickering light of the open fire with steady, musing eyes. It did not
+hurt her in the least that he had had a love of long ago. It made him
+but the more interesting, and appealed to her as a pretty and fitting
+romance in his life.
+
+"It seems so hard, either way, David," she said looking up at him in a
+sympathetic way. "To follow the dictates of duty is so cold and cruel
+a way, yet if you follow the dictates of your heart your conscience
+will accuse you. But you will, when you have to act, David, do what
+you believe to be right, and abide by the consequences. Either way,
+dear, is going to bring you unhappiness."
+
+"Which do you believe the right way, Carey?" he asked, looking
+searchingly into her mystic eyes.
+
+"David," she replied helplessly, "I don't know! The more I think about
+it, the more complicated the decision seems."
+
+They discussed the matter at length, and he went home comforted by the
+thought that there was one who understood him, and who would abide in
+faith by whatever decision he made.
+
+The next day, at the breakfast table, on the street, in his office, in
+the curious, questioning faces of all he encountered, he read the
+inquiry he was constantly asking himself and to which he had no answer
+ready. When he finally reached his office he summoned his private
+secretary.
+
+"Major, don't let in any more people than is absolutely necessary
+to-day. I will see no reporters. You can tell them that no petition or
+request for the pardon of Jud Bramble has been received, if they ask,
+and oh, Major!"
+
+The secretary turned expectantly.
+
+"If Barnabas Brumble comes, of course he is to be admitted at once."
+
+Later in the morning the messenger to the governor stood at the window
+of the business office, idly looking out.
+
+"Dollars to doughnuts," he exclaimed suddenly and confidently, "that
+this is Barnabas Brumble coming up the front walk!"
+
+The secretary hastened to the window. A grizzled old man in
+butternut-colored, tightly buttoned overcoat, and carrying a telescope
+bag, was ascending the steps.
+
+"I don't know why you think so," said the secretary resentfully to the
+boy. "Barnabas Brumble isn't the only farmer in the world. Sometimes,"
+he added, pursuing a train of thought beyond the boy's knowledge, "it
+seems as if no one but farmers came into this capitol nowadays."
+
+A few moments later one of the guards ushered into the executive
+office the old man carrying the telescope. The secretary caught the
+infection of the boy's belief.
+
+"What can I do for you?" he asked courteously.
+
+"I want to see the guvner," replied the old man in a curt tone.
+
+"Your name?" asked the secretary.
+
+"Barnabas Brumble," was the terse response.
+
+He had not read the newspapers for a week past, and so he could hardly
+know the importance attached to his name in the ears of those
+assembled. The click of the typewriters ceased, the executive clerk
+looked quickly up from his papers, the messenger assumed a triumphant
+pose, and the janitor peered curiously in from an outer room.
+
+"Come this way, Mr. Brumble," said the secretary deferentially, as he
+passed to the end of the room and knocked at a closed door.
+
+David Dunne knew, when he heard the knock, to whom he would open the
+door, and he was glad the strain of suspense was ended. But when he
+looked into the familiar face a host of old memories crowded in upon
+his recollection, and obliterated the significance of the call.
+
+"Uncle Barnabas!" he said, extending a cordial hand to the visitor,
+while his stern, strong face softened under his slow, sweet smile.
+Then he turned to his secretary.
+
+"Admit no one else, Major."
+
+David took the telescope from his guest and set it on the table,
+wondering if it contained the "documents in evidence."
+
+"Take off your coat, Uncle Barnabas. They keep it pretty warm in
+here!"
+
+"I callate they do--in more ways than one," chuckled Barnabas,
+removing his coat. "I hed to start purty early this mornin', when it
+was cool-like. Wal, Dave, times has changed! To think of little Dave
+Dunne bein' guvner! I never seemed to take it in till I come up them
+front steps."
+
+The governor laughed.
+
+"Sometimes I don't seem to take it in myself, but _you_ ought to,
+Uncle Barnabas. You put me here!"
+
+As he spoke he unlocked a little cabinet and produced a bottle and a
+couple of glasses.
+
+"Wal, I do declar, ef you don't hev things as handy as a pocket in a
+shirt! Good stuff, Dave! More warmin' than my old coat, I reckon, but
+say, Dave, what do you s'pose I hev got in that air telescope?"
+
+David winced. In olden times the old man ever came straight to the
+point, as he was doing now.
+
+"Why, what is it, Uncle Barnabas?"
+
+"Open it!" directed the old man laconically.
+
+With the feeling that he was opening his coffin, David unstrapped the
+telescope and lifted the cover. A little exclamation of pleasure
+escaped him. The telescope held big red apples, and it held nothing
+more. David quickly bit into one.
+
+"I know from just which particular tree these come," he said, "from
+that humped, old one in the corner of the orchard nearest the house."
+
+"Yes," allowed Barnabas, "that's jest the one--the one under which you
+and her allers set and purtended you were studyin' your lessons."
+
+David's eyes grew luminous in reminiscence.
+
+"I haven't forgotten the tree--or her--or the old days, Uncle
+Barnabas."
+
+"I knowed you hadn't, Dave!"
+
+Again David's heart sank at the confidence in the tone which betokened
+the faith reposed, but he would give the old man a good time anyway
+before he took his destiny by the throat.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to go through the capitol?" he asked.
+
+"I be goin'. The feller that brung me up here sed he'd show me
+through."
+
+"I'll show you through," said David decisively, and together they went
+through the places of interest in the building, the governor as proud
+as a newly domiciled man showing off his possessions. At last they
+came to the room where in glass cases reposed the old, unfurled battle
+flags. The old man stopped before one case and looked long and
+reverently within.
+
+"Which was your regiment, Uncle Barnabas?"
+
+"Forty-seventh Infantry. I kerried that air flag at the Battle of the
+Wilderness."
+
+David called to a guard and obtained a key to the case. Opening it, he
+bade the old man take out the flag.
+
+With trembling hands Barnabas took out the flag he had followed when
+his country went to war. He gazed at it in silence, and then restored
+it carefully to its place. As they walked away, he brushed his coat
+sleeve hastily across his dimmed eyes.
+
+David consulted his watch.
+
+"It's luncheon time, Uncle Barnabas. We'll go over to my hotel. The
+executive mansion is undergoing repairs."
+
+"I want more'n a lunch, Dave! I ain't et nuthin' sence four o'clock
+this mornin'."
+
+"I'll see that you get enough to eat," laughed David.
+
+In the lobby of the hotel a reporter came quickly up to them.
+
+"How are you, governor?" he asked, with his eyes fastened falcon-like
+on Barnabas.
+
+David returned the salutation and presented his companion.
+
+"Mr. Brumble from Lafferton?" asked the reporter, with an insinuating
+emphasis on the name of the town.
+
+"Yes," replied the old man in surprise. "I don't seem to reckleck
+seein' you before."
+
+"I never met you, but I have heard of you. May I ask what your
+business in the city is, Mr. Brumble?"
+
+The old man gave him a keen glance from beneath his shaggy brows.
+
+"Wal, I don't know as thar's any law agin your askin'! I came to see
+the guvner."
+
+David, with a laugh of pure delight at the discomfiture of the
+reporter, led the way to the dining room.
+
+"You're as foxy as ever, Uncle Barnabas. You routed that newspaper man
+in good shape."
+
+"So that's what he was! I didn't know but he was one of them
+three-card-monty sharks. Wal, I s'pose it's his trade to ask
+questions."
+
+Barnabas' loquacity always ceased entirely at meal times, so his
+silence throughout the luncheon was not surprising to David.
+
+"Wal, Dave," he said as he finished, "ef this is your lunch I'd hate
+to hev to eat what you'd call dinner. I never et so much before at one
+settin'!"
+
+"We'll go over to the club now and have a smoke," suggested David.
+"Then you can go back to my office with me and see what I have to
+undergo every afternoon."
+
+At the club they met several of David's friends--not politicians--who
+met Barnabas with courtesy and composure. When they returned to
+David's private office Barnabas was ensconced comfortably in an
+armchair while David listened with patience to the long line of
+importuners, each receiving due consideration. The last interview was
+not especially interesting and Barnabas' attention was diverted. His
+eyes fell on a newspaper, which he picked up carelessly. It was the
+issue of the night before, and his own name was conspicuous in big
+type. He read the article through and returned the paper to its place
+without being observed by David, whose back was turned to him.
+
+"Wal, Dave," he said, when the last of the line had left the room, "I
+used ter think I'd ruther do enything than be a skule teacher, but I
+swan ef you don't hev it wuss yet!"
+
+David made no response. The excitement of his boyish pleasure in
+showing Uncle Barnabas about had died away as he listened to the
+troubles and demands of his callers, and now the recollection of the
+old man's errand confronted him in full force.
+
+Barnabas looked at him keenly.
+
+"Dave," he said slowly, "'t ain't no snap you hev got! I never knowed
+till to-day jest what it meant to you. I'm proud of you, Dave! I
+wish--I wish you hed been my son!"
+
+The governor arose impetuously and crossed the room.
+
+"I would have been, Uncle Barnabas, if she had not cared for Joe!"
+
+"I know it, Dave, but you hev a sweet little gal who will make you
+happy."
+
+The governor's face lighted in a look of exquisite happiness.
+
+"I have, Uncle Barnabas. We will go to see her this evening."
+
+"I'd like to see her, sartain. Hain't seen her sence the night you
+was elected. And, Dave," with a sheepish grin, "I'm a-goin' to git
+spliced myself."
+
+"What? No! May I guess, Uncle Barnabas--Miss Rhody?"
+
+"Dave, you air a knowin' one. Yes, it's her! Whenever we set down to
+our full table I got to thinkin' of that poor little woman a-settin'
+down alone, and I've never yet knowed a woman livin' alone to feed
+right. They allers eat bean soup or prunes, and call it a meal."
+
+"I am more glad than I can tell you, Uncle Barnabas, and I shall
+insist on giving the bride away. But what will Penny think about some
+one stepping in?"
+
+"Wal, Dave, I'll allow I wuz skeered to tell Penny, and it tuk a hull
+lot of bracin' to do it, and what do you suppose she sed? She sez,
+'I've bin wantin' tew quit these six years, and now, thank the Lord,
+I've got the chance.'"
+
+"Why, what in the world did she want to leave for?"
+
+"I guess you'll be surprised when I tell you. To marry Larimy
+Sasser!"
+
+"Uncle Larimy! She'll scour him out of house and home," laughed
+David.
+
+"We'll hev both weddin's to the same time. Joe and Janey are a-comin',
+and we'll hev a grand time. I hain't much on the write, Dave, and I've
+allers meant to see you here in this great place. Some of the boys sez
+to me: 'Mebby Dave's got stuck on himself and his job by this time,
+and you'll hev to send in yer keerd by a nigger fust afore you kin see
+him,' but I sez, 'No! Not David Dunne! He ain't that kind and never
+will be.' So when I go back I kin tell them how you showed me all over
+the place, and tuk me to eat at a hotel and to that air stylish place
+where I wuz treated like a king by yer friends. I've never found you
+wantin', Dave, and I never expect to!"
+
+"Uncle Barnabas," began David, "I--"
+
+His voice suddenly failed him.
+
+"See here, Dave! I didn't know nuthin' about that," pointing to the
+newspaper, "until a few minutes ago. I sed tew hum that I wuz a-comin'
+to see how Dave run things, and ef them disreptible associates of
+Jud's air a-gittin' up some fool paper, I don't know it! Ef they do
+send it in, don't you dare sign it! Why, I wouldn't hev that boy outen
+prison fer nuthin'. He's different from what he used to be, Dave. He
+got so low he would hev to reach up ter touch bottom. He's ez low ez
+they git, and he's dangerous. I didn't know an easy minute fer the
+last two years afore he wuz sent up, so keep him behind them bars fer
+fear he'll dew somethin' wuss when he gits out. Don't you dare sign no
+petition, Dave!"
+
+Tears of relief sprang into the strong eyes of the governor.
+
+"Why, Dave," said the old man in shocked tones, "you didn't go fer to
+think fer a minute I'd ask you to let him out cause he wuz my son?
+Even ef I hed a wanted him out, and Lord knows I don't, I'd not ask
+you to do somethin' wrong, no more'n I'd bring dishoner to that old
+flag I held this mornin'!"
+
+David grasped his hand.
+
+"Uncle Barnabas!"
+
+His voice broke with emotion. Then he murmured: "We'll go to see
+_her_, now."
+
+As they passed out into the corridor a reporter hastened up to them.
+
+"Governor," he asked, with impudent directness, "are you going to
+pardon Jud Bramble?"
+
+Before David could reply, Barnabas stepped forward:
+
+"Young feller, thar hain't no pardon ben asked fer Jud Brumble, and
+what's more, thar hain't a-goin' to be none asked--not by me. I come
+down here to pay my respecks to the guvner, and to bring him a few
+apples, and you kin say so ef you wanter!"
+
+When Carey came into the library where her two callers awaited her,
+one glance into the divine light of David's deepening, glowing eyes
+told her what she wanted to know.
+
+With a soft little cry she went to Barnabas, who was holding out his
+hand in welcome. Impulsively her lips were pressed against his
+withered cheek, and he took her in his arms as he might have taken
+Janey.
+
+"Why, Carey!" he said delightedly, "Dave's little gal!"
+
+
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
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